Table Runner Show and Tell

This past Monday morning, I finished the last of my three "spring" table runners but haven't had a spare moment to blog about them until now.  (I think my days are full during the winter, but then spring hits and there is so much to do outside that I currently feel as though I'm on a hamster wheel.)

I hand quilted (very simply) each of the runners and am happy with the way each of them turned out.

This one is on the "display" shelf of a bookcase unit.

I love the look of cross-hatching so did the whole center of this one that way.

This runner sits on top of a storage cabinet in the kitchen near the back door.  The basket on top (hides most of the runner, doesn't it?) holds materials to go back to the library and mail on its way out.

This is the longest runner (42") and could use a little more quilting on it to really show it off, but I had to call it "done" . . . at least for the time being.

It will go on top of this cabinet where we keep the phone, answering service and usually a plant or seasonal decoration.  Right now, the runner isn't placed where it should be because of plants, and other "stuff" from the living room (which we're in the midst of remodeling) temporarily stored there.


I had all the fabric I used for these runners in my stash and if I had been able to work on them in a timely fashion, they wouldn't have taken very long to complete.  They weren't done for Easter (my first goal) but they're done now and I'll most likely keep them out until Fourth of July decorations replace them.


As soon as our living room is finished, I'm really looking forward to having some time in my quilt room this summer to balance out the gardening, lawn mowing, wood cutting, etc. that keeps me outside so much this time of year.

Three New Table Runners

When I put out my Easter decorations a couple of weeks ago, I realized that I didn't have the quilted table runners I would have liked to place on top of a couple of storage cabinets and a display shelf in the kitchen. And if I had had them, wouldn't it be great if they all were made from the same selection of fabrics so they kinda sorta looked like they matched? Novel idea!

I know I've been keeping myself from starting any new projects, only working on finishing up old projects, but the thought of these new runners just got the better of me.

I pulled some spring-like colors from my stash and decided to make the runners in three different designs but to use the same fabrics in each runner.

All three are now made and sandwiched, but I've only gotten to work on the hand quilting of one of them so far.

I didn't have time tonight to get a better picture showing the quilting on this one I'm working on, but maybe I can when all three are done and ready for a proper show and tell.

Here's the second one.

And the last and biggest one. None of them are complicated designs but I think I'll like them when they are all quilted and bound.

No, they weren't ready for Easter this year, but maybe I'll still be able to get them done to use this spring and early summer. I hope. If you have any extra hours I can use for quilting my little heart out, please send special delivery. Thanks!

The Quilt Patterns Are Going To . . .

Stephanie! I was so happy to have ten of you enter your names for the drawing for the three quilt patterns. I wasn't sure if there were enough of you out there following this blog to have more than two names to draw from! Thanks to all of you who were interested enough to comment.

But back to our winner . . . Stephanie, if you will send me your mailing address via the Contact button on my other blog, A Homegrown Journal, I'll get the patterns in the mail to you asap. (My "e-mail me" button on this blog is not currently working. Gotta get that fixed!)

Now here are some pictures of the baby quilt I recently finished.

I did all straight-line quilting on this one and am happy with the finished look.

The block is a variation (of which there are a few) of the very old block Four Patch. Easy to piece and attractive when put into a quilt with a little color switcheroo!

The quilt lines show up well on the back.

I really like this sweet little striped fabric I used for the backing. It reminds me of old-fashioned pillow ticking.

The lavender and white colors might be okay for a little boy baby, but I'm thinking a little more suitable for a little girl, don'tcha think?

Finished size of this quilt is 42" x 46" and the block size is 6".

I used Evelyn Sloppy's pattern (with a slight variation) for this quilt which appears in her book, "40 Fabulous Quick-Cut Quilts." She did it in red and white and called it "Peppermint Twist." It was easy and fun to do.

So what am I working on today as it's Thursday in Mama Pea's Quilt Room?

Yupper, yet another UFO. But a UFO with a problem. Or I should say problems. (The annoying bright green squares on the quilt are block and row markers. As I go on here, you'll understand why I need them.) I had the whole top for this full-sized quilt pieced when I noticed a portion of one of the blocks in the third row turned the wrong way. Arrrgh. I had the center of the quilt ripped out (whadda mess) when something came up and I decided to pack the whole thing away and deal with it later.

Well, later has come so I started in on repairs this morning. Got the mistake rectified . . . only to find another one. (Apparently I must have been well into my second glass of joy-juice when I was originally piecing this one.) Fixed the new found mistake and just a few minutes ago when I was taking the above picture, I saw (good grief!) ANOTHER mistake. (Can you spot it?) Getting this top right may be a loooong process, Folks. I know I've never had to do so much ripping on any other quilted piece. (It's just a good thing I'm a stubborn, bull-headed Taurus or the whole thing might end up in the trash.)

But nevertheless, that's what I'm working on today. And I'd better get back in to it before I come up with another excuse to pack it away for a while longer.

What A Dummy I Am!

Geesh! This is indicative of where my head has been lately. I just realized that I left off the bottom two paragraphs of my give-a-way post below. Sigh. (Somebody please send me some fully charged brain cells.)

Here's what should have been added to the bottom of my previous post.

If you don't quilt, maybe you have a friend or relative you'd like to give these patterns to. If you've never commented on my blog before, don't be shy. Jump in so you'll have a chance to win these patterns.

I'll shut down entry comments when I turn off my computer Wednesday night, probably around 9 p.m. and post the name drawn sometime Thursday morning, the 29th.

Time for a Give-A-Way!

You all know I've been working hard on finishing some pieces of quilting that have, sadly, been UNfinished for a long time. A little cleaning and sorting has also been going on in my quilting room.

Here are three patterns that I've decided I'm not going to keep. They've all been taken out of their plastic packages and looked at a few times, but they've never been used.

The first is a winter scene of a lighthouse and lighthouse keeper's house. Really attractive and would make a lovely seasonal wall hanging for your home. Or a gorgeous lap quilt. The finished quilt is 39" x 50" . . . good sized.

The second is "Woodland Santa" by Debbie Mumm. It has the pattern for six woodland Christmas/winter scenes. The four scenes put together in a four-block quilt measure 32" x 24". The individual woodland scenes measure 13" x 17".

The third pattern is a winter country scene, barn in background, split rail fencing in foreground, entitled "Snow Scene," finished size is 15-1/2" x 17-1/2".

If you'd like to receive all three of these patterns (they all go together to one person), leave a comment on this post. Just to make things a little interesting, let us all know if you do most of your quilting during a certain part of the year, or do your fingers just have to handle fabric while your sewing machine zooms along no matter what day or month it is.

Why Can't Every Day Be Thursday?

I managed to get into my quilt room by a little after 10 this morning. Keeping Thursdays as my day to quilt has not proven to be easy. Today we had a good friend stop over for a short visit, a couple of phone calls to take care of during the day and a time or two when I had to snatch off my quilting hat and plop on my thinking cap for Papa Pea and I to confer on things he was trying to work on.

In my quilting room, first thing I did was pull out my rather substantial bin storing UFOs. Tempted as I was to start something new (WHEN can I start something new?? Whine, whine, whine!) I stuck to my guns and sandwiched this finished top.

This top for a baby quilt was easy-peasy to piece, but has been left unfinished for a couple of years. It's a lovely lavender color which (of course) doesn't show up as pretty as it actually is. I started in on and got a bit more machine quilting done on it today than I thought I would. It's going pretty fast. I'll give you more details about it when I get it done. The quilt now measures somewhere around 43" x 48" but will shrink up a bit with the quilting.

These little flags are more "in progress" than they are UFOs and I couldn't resist pulling them out. I started making them around last July 4th thinking they'd make cute, tiny wall hangings for friends to put by their kitchen sink or some such place for the Fourth of July holiday. Well, I didn't get them done in time so maybe if I start working them now for this year, I'll have them done by July. I have six of them I made years ago that I strung on a jute rope and hang from a bookshelf for part of my red, white and blue decorations in the summer. None of the ones pictured above are done. A couple just need binding around the edge though. They're each 4-1/2" x 5-1/2" and I'm adding a little hand quilting to each one.

This larger version (also hand quilted) is 13-1/2" x 18" and gets put up to the left of our back door into the house in our enclosed porch each year around the holiday. Both this flag and the smaller ones are from Little Quilts All Through the House by Alice Berg, Mary Ellen Von Holt and Sylvia Johnson. A great little book with lots of neat stuff in it. I learned to quilt by following their easy patterns and good directions.

All in all, a good Thursday spent (almost all day) quilting.

Wall Hanging Completed

Yes, the decision has been made.

This finished piece has been designated a wall hanging rather than a lap quilt or baby quilt. (The coloration on the picture above is awful, but it was the best I could get with my little camera. It's much prettier than it shows, but I guess you'll just have to take my word for that. Trust me that I wouldn't lie to you though!)

I had thought of using this piece as a wall hanging in the kitchen, but to get it to fit in that particular space I would have had to cut off the outer border on each side so much that it would no longer give a good balance to the quilt. However, I do have a bare paneled wall over our bed in the bedroom where I usually keep a quilt hanging so that's where I'll use it.

Boy, did I get myself into trouble on the binding for this one. I wanted to use the same green dotted fabric as the outer border . . . but didn't have enough of it. Rats. I was really about to panic trying to figure out what I was going to do when I realized I could cut back the backing and batting of the quilt leaving just enough of the front border . . .

. . . to fold to the back to make a (cheater's) passable quasi-bind. Whew! It doesn't look perfect and I wouldn't be happy with it on a quilt I was selling or giving away, but for my own use, nobody will ever know!

I tried to get a couple of shots of the machine quilting.

But I'm not sure how well it shows up in these pictures. I did two concentric circles on each Churn Dash block.

And repeated half and quarter circles in between the blocks out near the outer border. I also quilted in the ditch between the 7-1/2" blocks which are set on point.

The finished measurement of this wall hanging turned out to be 39" x 39".

And another UFO bites the dust! (Gotta admit, my fingers are getting mighty itchy to start something new . . . )

Still Turning UFOs into FOs

I wasn't able to get in a full day of quilting this past Thursday but I did spend some time working on two of my UFOs.

I got this 45" x 45" baby quilt finished.

My focus fabric was this cute "sweater print" I'd had in my stash for a long time before I made the top, which was also a long time ago! I took the colors of all the little sweaters and picked fabric to match each one.

The block used is "Birds in the Air." I think. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) The block consisted of one-half being the focus fabric and the other half being half square triangles made with the focus fabric and each coordinating color taken from the sweaters.

For the machine quilting, I stitched in the ditch around all the half square triangles and on the plain side I just stitched squares.

The four large squares in the center of the quilt were cross-hatched.

I bound it with the focus fabric for a little contrast. The backing that you can see peeking out (on the far right of the above picture) was a blue that I used in a couple of the blocks on the front.

I think it turned out as a suitable quilt for a little boy baby.

A little bit of time was spent working on the quilting for the other quilt (baby quilt? lap quilt? wall hanging?) I showed in my last post. I just have to finish the hand sewing on the binding on this one and it will be done.

I'm planning on getting an extra day of quilting in this weekend on Sunday when my dear hubby is taking a day out and about with a guy friend for some time off. Sounds like a great way for both of us to spend the day!

Oh, I'm Being So Good!

I can hardly believe it, but I'm still working on UFOs that have been UFOs forever. Even though I have about two or three hundred projects lined up that I would just LOVE to start, I've been a good girl in sticking with finishing some of the multitude of half done projects (how does that happen?) that have been languishing in my quilt studio for far too long.

Yesterday was one heckuva botched day as far as it being my "quilting day." If you want to read about it, hop on over to my other blog, A Homegrown Journal, and you'll see what I mean. There's another little craft project I've been working on pictured there also.

Because of not much quilting getting done yesterday, I took this afternoon, went into that fabric lined room and shut the door.

Except for the hand sewing on the binding, I finished this quilt I was working on last week. I'll show you more of it after the binding is done.

I had thought of doing some meandering or stippling on this quilt, but ended up quilting squares in the plain parts of the blocks instead. I don't know if it shows up enough for you to see that part in this picture.

Then I started the quilting on this top I had finished (again) long ago. At least I knew how I wanted to quilt this one. I just had never gotten around to doing it. (The white circle in the top of the center of the quilt is a quilting template.)

At first I made it as a baby quilt. Then I started thinking of it as a lap quilt. Today I realized it might fit in the space on a wall of my "new" kitchen where I've been putting up seasonal wall hangings. We shall see if I've changed my mind again by the time it's done.

Thursday, Glorious Thursday!

Yesterday was Thursday (as if you didn't know) and I spent it in my quilt cave again. All day. I woke at 5:30, tip-toed out of the bedroom so my hubby could get a little more shut-eye and went to play with fabric until he woke up.

Then we had a quick breakfast of granola and I was back at it.

I worked all morning on machine quilting the above baby quilt. I've had the top pieced for a long time (yep, it's another UFO) and I got it sandwiched last Thursday so I could work on the quilt right away yesterday.

The background of the small print is actually more beige than shows up in the photo. This shot makes it look closer to white than it is.

Conversely, this photo makes the beige look "yellow-er" than it really is. (Obviously, photographers for quilt books and magazines are pros at their jobs and know what they're doing!)

I got the whole center cross-hatched (I love cross-hatching whether done with machine or by hand) and most of the blocks around the center are 50% done. I think I'm going to do some meandering in the solid parts of the blocks.

I am not a relaxed, comfortable machine quilter. There, I said it. If I had a sister or quilting friend who loved to machine quilt (and I know there are those of you out there who do!), I would be in heaven. Piecing is my joy and I could piece, piece, piece forever . . . if only I had someone who would love to quilt all my projects. What a combo that would be. Unfortunately, that's not the case and I keep hoping I will someday get to a place where the quilting part of quilting (!) will go easier for me.

As it was yesterday, by noon my shoulders were stiff and I was developing a real crick in my neck so I decided to leave the baby quilt and go to a different project.

Darling, dear husband made us smoothies for lunch. I drank while I worked. Perfect.

My daughter had requested some Easter themed pot holders. I don't have much fabric that specifically says "Easter" but the above is what she picked out of my stash. I found I had to add the beige on the bottom left hand corner as a neutral.

The fronts . . .

. . . and the backs.

It took me all afternoon to put the pot holders together and quilt them. I did the hand sewing on the binding after our dinner of leftovers which just had to be warmed up. Fishcakes, Leigh's Green Bean Caesar casserole and potato salad from the fridge.

Now, how many days until next Thursday?

One Finished UFO!

Right after dinner tonight I hurry-scurried into my quilt studio and managed to finish hand sewing the binding of this baby quilt I've been working on for . . . forever? Nah, I think it just feels that way.

The lavender/lilac/purple fabrics in the quilt have proven very difficult to photograph. These shots were the best I could do so you'll just have to believe me that it's much prettier in person. Honest.

I started the quilt by choosing this pretty little flower on the yellow background. I ended up using this fabric as the backing also. I knew I wanted to use some lavender and I immediately found two fabrics in my stash that filled the bill. If you look closely you'll see that the flowers have a pink center.

I struggled and struggled to find a pink fabric that looked good with the lavenders but as I neared the point of going cross-eyed and drooling, I finally gave up and decided to go with only the two lavenders.

The block pattern I chose is an old one. It's called Grandmother's Pride and I used a size of 7-1/2". I made twelve blocks, laid them out in rows of three across and four down, added some sashing and I had the center of the quilt. Then I repeated the yellow print for the borders. I was going to use one of the lavender fabrics for the binding but saw that it detracted from the center of the quilt so went with a repeat of the yellow.

Finished size of this baby quilt is 33" x 41". The fabric and batting are 100% cotton. It's most likely going to be sent to a girl baby due to be born this spring.

Now on to another UFO I've had hidden away for too long. (This is fun!)

Hard to Believe But I'm Posting on My Quilting Blog!

I've had real qualms about getting a new post up on this blog. It's been so long since I've done so and I'm afraid I won't be able to keep at it with the regularity I want. Giving it my best shot is what I will do, so please be kind and understanding with this gal who wants to find more time for quilting but is having a hard time doing so.

Where to start? How about with some UFOs? I love to begin new projects as much as anyone else, but upon doing some serious cleaning and sorting in my quilt studio, I find I have way more projects in various states of completion than I would have ever guessed. (Ooops.)

I spent Thursday of this past week locked (not literally although that would not have bothered me) in my wonderful quilting room and worked on a couple/three works in progress.

Seems I'm always making pot holders. And that's okay 'cause I love making them and they make great little gifts.

Plus, I'm so hard on the ones I use in my own kitchen that I can always use replacements.

The above were made with a spring/summer motif in mind.

I got this great cow fabric a while back and now wish I had purchased a lot more of it. Mooooo! Ish! The color on this picture is AWFUL! I'll try to get a truer depiction when I photograph it finished.

I think I have been working on the quilting on this baby quilt (10 minutes here, 15 minutes there) for months. Well, I KNOW it has been months! Because it's taken me so long, I found myself shying away from it even when I had the time to work on it. On Thursday I spent about two hours straight quilting, quilting, quilting on it and, lo and behold, finally finished the job. Then it was lickity split to get the binding sewn on. All I have now is do the hand sewing part of the binding and it will be done!

I'm actually saving the hand work on both the pot holders and the baby quilt for a get together with some good gal friends this coming Monday morning. We visit for a couple of hours while everyone works on hand work of their choice.

I also got the top, batting and backing of another baby quilt sandwiched together and started machine quilting on that. I'll show it to you next post.