WIP Spooktacular Halloween

I've been a little busy and distracted this last week, so I don't have much done since my last post about this project. Going to Quiltcon should not have meant loosing the weekend to work but apparently it did. I was inspired by going to the convention but didn't really feel like doing much of anything until late in the day on Sunday. I have however made some progress.

I'm almost done with the entire top portion. I had the panel quilted and finished quilting the body area around the lettering. All I need to do is some tight spaces actually close to the words. Then I can start on the bottom.

So far I've been using black thread to quilt with since it will blend in. I was planning on using the variegated orange thread for the colored sections in the center and I had some plain orange I used to applique the letters down. Then I found glow in the dark thread at the con. I have to figure a way to work this into the quilt.

With some of my new patterns I'm already planning on what to do next. I got this small focus freeway pattern that I want to work on. It's mostly applique work. I just need to pick my fabric. This would make a fantastic gift to some of my friends who love photography. I just gotta keep my mind on the present project. I've got too many WIP stuff going on, but I think that's a normal quilter's dilemma.

For today's tea I'm going to bust out an tea I don't use much. It's one I got before our local Teavana closed. The Vanilla Creme blend. I don't think they make this stuff anymore. It's got a warm almost caramel flavor to it. The photo is not mine. I stole it from the web but this is what the canister it was in when in store looked like. Someone is selling it on ebay if you want one.

Quiltcon 2019 Nashville Experience

#QCGreetingsfromNashville

So for my first Quiltcon experience I loved it. Now as said this isn't my first show but one of the biggest I've been to. But this is the first one to feature exclusively modern designs. I loved the experience and was very happy to get a chance to go. I only had one day and bit of a drive to get there. The weather was terrible. It rained very hard all day all over Tennessee. All the way there we had flood warnings going off like crazy.

Getting there we first went to the vendor area. Now all the quilts in the show are in front of that but I wanted to get to certain booths to make sure I got some things I was looking for. We spent the majority of the time in this area. I got tons of deals and great patterns. I made sure I went by the Soak booth and picked up two bottles of flatter. When I went by the Pink Door Fabrics booth Tula Pink was there. The crowd was crazy and I didn't really want to stand in line, so I did not get to meet her. I did go back to the booth and got a pattern I had been looking at before.

One of the first few booths I visited was the Sewing Party booth. I met the designer of the "Rose for my Boyfriend" quilt pattern and was able to see the original one done for the magazine. I also showed them a photo of mine and they asked me to email it to them so they can post it on their Instagram! I love sharing my quilts and am so happy the designer liked mine.

One of the fun things about the show is they had a lot of areas you can sit and sew. They had booths that were doing charity quilt blocks. They give you a pattern and you can go through scraps and sit down and sew the block for them. These blocks will go into a quilt that will be sold for charity.

They also had a hand stitching area where you got to try out a free hand stitching design provided by sulky. It was printed on a dissolving interface so you can put the guide on and not worry about it messing up the final look. This was a nice area to go visit cause I was really exhausted and needed a bit of time to rest. Also this lead me to go back to the sulky booth for another free design. I found glow in the dark thread that was a must have.

After that it was time to go through the quilts. They had a collection of antique quilts and a collection of youth quilts that were both very interesting. There was a feature of quilts using a mix of fibers like faux fur or knitting. I also got to meet a few of the people with quilts in the show walking around.

Afterwards we went to the Flying Saucer for dinner. I have been to this place before. It's a pub/taphouse type place that has tons beers and ciders on tap as well as in cans and bottles available. I have been trying to do a low carb diet so I did not get one of the ciders that I wanted to but did get a burger. Mom's sandwich ended up being too spicy for her so we swapped what we got.

In all the trip was a success. Mom and I had a huge bag of stuff to split when we got home and I've got a lot of new projects to add to my to do list. I have sprinkled pictures through the post of the different things I saw but I also have more photos available on google photos.

Quiltcon or bust

So I've only been to a handful of quilt shows and it has been way too long since I've been to one. The last show I got to attend was AQS Chattanooga in 2016. It had been a birthday trip for me and I remember it very fondly. In the past few years I would put a reminder on my phone for local shows in hopes I would get the time to go. Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity.

This year Quiltcon is in Nashville, which is a short 3 hour drive for me. Mom and I decided to make it a day trip. We're leaving early Saturday morning and I hope to get there before lunch.

I have been  stalking the Quiltcon tag on Instagram in my excitement to go. I also decided to join the Modern Quilt Guild in advance of the con. Of course I'm just getting a one day ticket but I have seen enough to get me excited.

I did make a little ID pouch to carry at the con. I've made bags before but I found a pattern for an ID wallet and kinda improvised to make this small bag. There's a lot of errors but it came out pretty good for going off without an actual pattern. Some of the ideas come from previous bag patterns I've seen and I had some of the hardware I already needed. I did not have the metal piece to make the handle adjustable so I improvised. If it gets annoying I can buy what I need later.


This is the first time I have made something with a clear ID window. I already had the vinyl for another project I never got to so I was happy to put it to use. The fabric was a recent purchase from Mountain Creek Quilt Shop in Greenback. I don't get there that often but it's nice that they remember me when I do come. It is from Fair Isle Friends by Anita Jeram. I got the little white fabric from the salesman sample bin of some Japanese fabrics. Over all it's cute and works for a first try. No one else will see it close enough to see my mistakes.

Tea today is my ever loved Starbucks green tea. I got an iced latte on the way home from Mountain Creek. I usually get the frappe but I wanted something a little different

WIP Happy Haunting Halloween Wall Hanging

Laying out the applique 

So this thing is coming out bigger then I expected. It will end up being more like a throw. The size issue started right from the beginning. When I started making this in 2016, the middle section is from a quilt pattern. I was starting with the block sizing that was given in the pattern. I should have at that time made the blocks smaller but they say hindsight is 20/20 and I can't change it now. So we're going with the larger quilt.

Top without letters

I have it broken up into three sections. I'd be done piecing it but I decided to try to quilt them separately and then put them together afterwards to make quilting it easier and give me a chance to do a higher fill pattern. This is the same technique I used when making my row by row quilts, so I'm fairly confident in going with this route. I've built in strips to cover the attachment points. 

The top portion contains a large open spot and a panel. I found this batik in my stash that has a floral print. Even though it's a floral does seem to work with everything once I put the letters down.

I have appliqued the words from the bonus pattern we got for going to all 4 shops. I didn't get the kit for this pattern because I didn't honestly think I'd use it at the time. I'm still glad I didn't because I got to use the colorful scraps from the corners of the blocks in the center section. They contrast nicely with the background and strangely I don't think they over crowd the whole thing because of the color differences.

Center without 2 inch border strips

Also note this is the first time I've used my machine to applique. Usually I do that by hand but it takes forever when I do. It's hard to get a sense of this because I didn't take a photo of everything laid out together. I'll have to have one for my next update post. This section is complete and has been basted up for quilting.

Bottom portion ready to baste

The center section is suppose to resemble a calendar page. I have 5 rows of seven blocks with two of them being small round accents from the panel piece I got. I just did a small border around this to use as a buffer and to help when attaching the top and bottom sections.  The photo was taken before I added that in. It's the same batik fabric used in the top. This piece hasn't been basted because the fabric I used for backing on the other two sections is too small. I'm going to do some decorative patchwork with the  scraps to fill out this a bit more. It will probably resemble my flying geese type row on the bottom section.

Appliqued letters

The bottom section has the majority of the applique work. I used the kits I got with the house, tree and trick-or-treaters to make this cute scene. I did not measure my fabric when I cut it for this section. I cut it the same size as the top section. The problem came when I realized my appliques were too large. Now I could have quilted it and then attached it to the center then put the applique on, but I decided I didn't want that. So I used all the triangle scraps my Tri-Tri Again blocks left over and made a sort of flying geese pattern row. I did cut the white squares new for this row. I hadn't used that fabric yet. Since it came in the layer cake, I wanted to try to use at least one of each of the fabrics. This section is also basted up for quilting.

Basting down

I'm actually stopping for the night so I won't be tired when I start quilting. I still have thread choices to make. I have some orange variegated thread I'm thinking of using for the center section and maybe a grey or black for the other sections. I have to look at my collection a bit more. The piecing and applique portion of this quilt has only taken about two days. I went out for part of the days and put my work on hold. I'm hoping the quilting doesn't take long because I've already got the next project bugging me for attention.

For tea today I found this Hibiscus Peach by Pure Leaf. It's been a while since I spotlighted their tea because I always get the green or black unsweetened tea. I've become diabetic and need to watch my sugar. This is a new product of theirs and is sweetened but it's not overly sweet. I found it very refreshing.

Village Quilters Guild Meeting and Mom and Meg Quilt Shop

So my mom joined the Village Quilters Guild in Tellico Village, TN. Even though she lives in Knoxville this is a guild she has gone to meetings for often and also has been to many of their quilt shows. The guild is hosting a bus trip to Missouri Star at the end of April, which I jealously can't go because I can't take the time off for work.

I don't know who this quilt belongs to.

The February meeting was her first meeting as a guild member and they had a trunk show and guest speaker from Mom and Meg Quilt Shop in Dandridge, TN. Mom came back from the meeting raving about the quilts, the speaker, and wants to plan a road trip to Dandridge sometime in the future. Maybe we can go in May as a mother/ daughter trip. Maybe I will get a chance to accompany mom to the next meeting.

Now some of the quilts were brought by guild members and the photos she sent me she did not clarify who owned what. She did send me photos of her spoils and got a pattern for me. I can't wait to make this Elizabeth Hartman quilt. I have her Greenhouse pattern which is another WIP on my to do list. I've got the top complete. I just need to make a backing and quilt it.

One of the Teas Organic Apple Red

Our Table

As for the tea for today I'm actually going to talk about an event I did get to go to. My co-worker's church had a Ladies Tea the Sat after the guild meeting. Both of mom and I went and had fun. They had lots of sweets and a huge variety of teas. Some of the church members played hostess at the tables and they decorated the table and brought in the teas and some even brought beautiful cups. I collect tea cups also, so I enjoyed seeing the variety.

A Rose for My Boyfriend Finished!

No more WIP posts for this one. I have a finished quilt! It's not my fastest quilt time but I did finish it pretty quickly compared to my average quilting time. So, Lets start with a little time line of my quilt.

• Dec. 29, 2018 to Dec 31st- Piecing. I Found the pattern out of Simple Modern Quilts & Crafts # 15 which I believe is the December 2018 issue. It hadn't been out long. I got the magazine for a cute penguin pattern but decided to do this one first. I still want to make a penguin.
• Jan 6th 2019 - Backing and Basting. I started the backing the next weekend out of the scraps from the quilt top. This was an excellent use of scraps and left me with almost nothing. I've been tempted to toss my remaining pieces but I keep stopping myself. Most of the backing is a sold black fabric I picked up from JoAnn's on New Year's day. I decided that if I finished it quickly I would try to enter it in a local quilt show. I've missed that deadline now but It was motivation to not stop. 
• Jan 7th to Feb 13th- Quilting. I'm still slow at sitting down and quilting because my work area has always been slow. Last minute inspiration from the web showed me an idea on expanding the work area so that I'm not hurting myself so badly pushing and lifting the fabric. I am no expert at quilting. Anyone who sees my stitches will not argue with that, but I am learning and getting better. 

  

  Almost no scraps!

• Feb 14th- Binding and Finishing! With the final week of realizing how close I was to finishing I was able to get myself to work harder and finish everything on Valentines Day. I do still have to label it but for now I call it a good finish. The binding fabric was a scrap from a walker bag I made for my aunt years ago. It was a large piece maybe a little smaller then a fat quarter. It matches the pinks in the quilt and even if it's adding a new fabric to the whole project it matches the thread color I used. 

Back of the quilt

Now I'm not sure I want to continue to do so many of the bed size quilts but I do have a few tops this size to quilt. I think I have a better idea on what to do to make it easier. One thing I want to invest in is a walking foot or a free motion foot for my sewing machine. I use a Project Runway Brother I got several years ago on a black friday sale. It has been a wonderful machine but I never bothered to buy extra feet. 

Now that this quilt is done I will start on my next WIP and I'm thinking about the Halloween one. 

For tea today I have a Ginger Peach Green Tea. I picked this one up recently at Tuesday Mornings. It's very peachy. I love the smell of this one. The tin had 50 bags and I got it at a good price. Inside they were packaged into tow foil pouches of 25 each. I took one pouch to work and left one at home so I can have the tea both places. The cup in the photo is one I picked up at world market a few years ago. I like it because the green part is silicone so it keeps you from burning your hand on the warm glass.

WIP - A Rose for my Boyfriend

Time for a work in progress check. I think I'm 1/3 done with the quilting now.

As much as I complain about the process of quilting I always feel very proud of my final projects. Piecing is my favorite part, and quilting is fun on smaller projects. If the project I'm quilting on is larger then a crib sheet size then it's a major pain in the butt. I mean I could avoid this by paying a long arm quilter to do it but I do enjoy when a project I'm working on was all me.

Updated work space

My arms have actually been hurting from pushing and pulling this quilt around. Up until now I have had no support around my sewing machine. It made me want to stop constantly.  It also makes me want to skip doing any of the fancy stuff. I've just been going around the block so far. I did one area with extra stitching on one of the big blocks. I figure since there's a lot of space there I need to fill it more.

My biggest issue with this has been space. I don't have a separate sewing room to spread stuff out. Today I managed to squeeze a folding table in behind the table that has my sewing machine on. This has worked wonders. I wish I had room for a table this big all the time.

I've gone through 5 bobbins so far and I may run out of this color thread before the end of the quilt. I got it as part of a limited edition set one Christmas. I don't really want to go out and buy more. I have a back up thread that is close in color to use once this does run out. I have used it to hand stitch around in flowers in the second to largest  block. So it won't be unusual for a change in color. Plus I was thinking of going back with dark grey or black when I do the largest and try to do some of the stripes in that block also. I do my best design decisions on the fly sometimes. If I hate it I will find a way to fix it. I think Bob Ross said "there's no mistakes, only happy accidents."

Hopefully my next update will be me putting the binding on and finishing this thing.

For tea this morning I'm just going to make some of the royal palace tea. Nothing new, sorry. It's very refreshing and it has grapefruit and lemon in it. The grapefruit flavor it's as obvious, but it has become more obvious as I've had more. I'm glad I bought two containers.

WIP - Spooktacular Halloween Wall Hanging/Quilt

It may be a bit early to be thinking about Halloween but since I was dipping into my WIP pile I have this one I started but didn't get far into. In Oct 2016 I did a small shop hop that consisted of 4 shops.

It was near the end of Oct. I don't know why I didn't blog about the shop hop at the time. I know that was around the time I lost my job and was very depressed. I did not get much from the hop because I wanted the patterns but needed to be conservative with my money. I am still very happy I got them because Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year and I don't really have many projects I've done with a Halloween or Fall theme.

The pattern was of an applique of a Halloween scene of trick-or-treaters that says Happy Haunting. The samples I saw were a cute play on the silhouettes that ranged from a quilt to wall hangings. I have the kits for all the people but the words.

At one shop they used part of a quilt pattern to make a quilt/wall hanging that looked a bit like a calendar. I wanted to do that with my project. I had a layer cake of Haunted Gala by Moda already in my stash and picked up the Tri Tri Again pattern for the day slots from the shop. I started this almost immediately and then something happened to make me put it aside. I don't remember what but it's over two years later and I've not picked it back up.

I have 29 of the Tri Tri Again blocks complete. I want the hanging to have 5 rows of seven so it matches a calendar page. Two of the blocks are going to be of the circular details in the center of the panel. I'm most likely just going to use the top part of the panel for the hanging since most of the colors are leaning to that color scheme. I will save the bottom house in orange for another Halloween wall hanging project.

I plan to work on it next. I'm still forcing myself to work on the Rose for My Boyfriend and I've not been able to work for the last week on that. I can't let myself switch or I'll never get this done.


The Shops that participated were:

Atomic Fibers - Oak Ridge TN
Gina's Bernina Sewing Center - Knoxville TN - This is where i picked up the pattern.
Lana's Quilts and Sew Much More - Cleveland TN
Chattanooga Quilts - Ooltewah TN (Also found this awesome article about them in the Badass Quilters Society blog)

I always like the trek from Lana's to Chattanooga Quilts because the path takes me by the Little Debbie factory. They have their factory store there and it's fun to stock up on snacks.

Today's tea is Bigelow's Orange & Spice. One of my favorite teas is the Hint of Orange that Petros sells. The celestial seasons Orange tea is closer and this one a bit bolder then the other two. I have a habit of picking up Bigelow's though because I don't always think of that. I just think "Ooh! Orange Tea", and grab it. I like the Bigelow's a lot also. I wouldn't buy it if I didn't.

UFO - Block Rockin by 627Handworks

Few years ago, when Craftsy was still around, I used it to look for cool paper piecing patterns. I had gotten a taste of paper piecing with my first Row by Row quilt and I wanted to do more.

One of my favorite block series is by Julie Hirt of 627 Handworks. The blocks are called Block Rockin based off rock groups. I printed a bunch out for myself to do as a block of the month attempt.

I know I still have 11 of the patterns and made several of the blocks. I'm glad I had kept the patterns safe in one of my pattern binders. I was looking for links to them for this post and found out about Craftsy. It's sad I haven't been to the site in so long  that I missed a huge thing. However never fear. If you want to do the blocks yourself Julie has them on Etsy for sale.

You have blocks called Led Zepplin, Icky Thump and Penny Lane. They all are really well designed and the patterns easy to use. They unfortunately suffered from my short attention span and I didn't finish all the blocks. I managed 8 of the 12 patterns and one came out small. Probably a print size issue, but I'm not sure what happened there.

All in all I think the blocks came out really nice. I know several of the fabrics are still in my stash. I keep telling myself I'm going to get back to it and finish them. I think I need to border up the small block and make one more. A small project will work out with them. It's still a project on the to do pile. (sweating at the size of that pile right now.)

State of the Blog

I'm going to try to keep up better with this blog then I have in the past. I've posted a lot of content lately and am trying to think of more. I want to use it to show off my quilts and help keep track of the quilting process I'm going through on some of my projects. I always like to be able to see where I started and the origins of some of the fabrics and patterns told as part of the quilt's story.

Every quilt tells a story from the quilter. It shows this persons likes, and what they may be focusing on at a particular time. The fabrics and patterns can tell a story of where they've been. No one but the quilter will know this story. If I share mine here more people can see them.

I plan on trying to do certain types of regular posts.

• WIP on Wednesday to get my mind on something I'm working on or half started ideas.
• Shop Hop on Saturday or Sunday. This won't be every weekend or even necessarily an actual shop hop I've done. Sometimes it will be planning for a trip or just talking about shops I visited while I was on vacation. It also may talk about past shop hops that I have completed while I wasn't blogging.

Now there are other ideas that I've thrown around in my head I would like to see a regular thing, but maybe not a weekly thing.

• Fabric Party- So here can be two concepts. Pull a random fabric from the web or my stash and talk about it's designer and what I have that would pair with it for a great project. Or spot light recent releases from the web that I like and would like to get.
• Video Vision- I usually watch YouTube videos while I sew. I use to have my computer read books to me with a free online text to speech software. The company that ran the app took away some of the voices it used and now it sounds too jarring to use for reading. With my recent video craze I thought I can spot light a YouTube video that I've watched that inspired one of my quilting ideas or projects. 
• UFO - Once or twice a month I will talk about a UFO I have hiding around here. Some of them may eventually get picked back up and finished.

I'm still going to end a daily post with tea. One of the ideas of my blog was because I drink so much tea and love to see all the variety. If I do more then one post a day I plan on only doing one post that features a tea. 

Today's tea is a short one. It is one I have shown before. It's my Jasmine Silverneedle tea. I made a cup just before starting this post. I know the last photo of it I stole from another website, so this time I'm using mine. 

Panels

I've a collection of a few panels. I can't help myself. I see them in the store or in magazine samples and I want to do THAT quilt so bad. I get them and pull together some accent fabrics. I take them home with all the intention of working up a great panel quilt. And that's as far as they get. I

 have the fabrics and panels in my stash and they get buried with the next one. I will admit to having a bit of ADD when it comes to thinking of, starting and finishing quilts. My finished ones are very few and far between compared to what I have waiting. So here are some of the great panels I have, excluding what I went over in a few of my recent posts.

• Natural Thicket by Gingiber. Woodland Critters that's what drew me to it, but Alas I don't know what to do with this thing. I've got it in the pile to find ideas for.

• Geisha Woodprint blocks. This is one that I got from a friend. She got it in a thrift store in Florida but I believe it's by Kona Bay Fabrics. Every time I go to their website it says it's inaccessible so I can't look up manufacturer information. This is another beautiful panel that I've not made up my mind on what I want to do with it. Hopefully I'll come up with something soon.

• Cat-i-tude by Ann Lauer for Benartix. I have a couple of fabrics already picked to go into a project with the panel. I just haven't planned it out. I love cats and the jewel tones in this one is gorgeous. This was one of the panels I got from my recent shop hop post. 
• Van Gogh Iris Panel by Robert Kaufman Fabrics Another much beloved artist. I do love when paintings are turned into something I can use. I don't know what I'm going to do with this either but I have two panels to play with once I figure it out. 

• Haunted House Panel. This is one I got as part of a shop hop back in 2016. It was a fun trip with mom with 4 shops in Oak Ridge, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. I got a quilt pattern at my last shop on this trip and have started it. So this is a bit of a WIP. I'll have more details about the fabrics and the panels once I get the WIP post started for this one. 
  
• Day at the Museum Impressionist panel. I actually only saw the degas square when I had to have this. My cousin has a print of one of Degas's paintings at our house. I've always loved his techniques. Again don't know what I'm going to do but it will be fun when I figure it out. 
  
• Santoro Gift of Friendship Panel by Kori Kumi. I found this one while on a shop hope and couldn't pass up how cute it was. I did start trying to figure out what I wanted to do and then got distracted and put it away. I was unhappy with what I had started to do and unfortunately haven't had the motivation to go back. This is slightly a WIP but I need to give myself a fresh look. I love these sweet panels and want to do something with them.
  
• Santoro The Traveler By Kori Kumi. Another so cute panel, this one I split the panel with my mom so I only have half the squares. I picked it up at my local shop. I want to do a separate project with it and not use it with the other Kori Kumi I have. I think I picked up more accent fabrics that was part of it's collection. 
  
• Crab Shack Panel by Two Can Art for Andover. This one I got lots of fabrics to do something with because I had picked it up on a shop hop and making a project with the panel had been on my mind. I just don't know the lay out yet and I've always tried waiting until I finish a project to start it. Then I forget that it's there waiting for me. I put it in my reorganized project piles so hopefully it will get something done to it this year. This will have to be another project planning/ WIP post soon.

Today's tea is Harney & Son's Royal Palace tea. I made a mistake of getting a glass at Barnes and Noble Cafe and then had to have it. I did end up buying two tins because they had a special on two for $15 when they're regularly $10 a piece. It's a Earl Grey with lemon. I've never had lemon in my earl grey but I do like it. This one is part of their Historic Palaces Collection. It is part of a charity that takes care of the royal palaces.