Mirror and Sunny

A while ago I posted a picture of a painted mirror which DH wanted so I started another one. Got an antique wood framed mirror for 10 dollars and fixed and painted the frame. DH re-installed the mirror which was loose and the new mirror is ready to go to it's new home up in Canada in a cabin on a beautiful lake.

I found another mirror at Salvation Army - paid $6.oo and am going to redo that one also. Might even try to sell it!

Looking at the mirror can you see the reflection of something yellow and sunny looking? It's Lynn's gorgeous Sunflower Quilt which I bought from her - it spoke to me across the blogosphere and I just HAD to have it! Let me tell you something - this is much more wonderful in person than it's pictures show. It is beautifully done and finished and the overall piece is really wonderful. Lynn - I love it and DH is working on a dowel to hang it from and a place to hang it. I want it in every room....
Have a wonderful friday everyone

More New Babies

A friend at work had his first baby, a tiny little girl - just adorable. So of course I wanted to make a quilt. I choose somewhat brighter fabrics than I did last time and mixed it with a bold pieced border. I didn't quilt it, but machine tacked it which was easy. One night and it's complete - not too bad. And I know they'll love it.

I love making baby quilts - especially for girls. Somehow I just can't get enought of pink. But I did get some great cowboy blue fabric and that's going to be my next challenge.

Isabella's Quilt - July 8th

I finished the little "out of my color palatte" quilt and have bound it with a blanket stitch and have embroidered (badly!) "Isabella" on the back. I was going to embroider "Love from Auntie Mim" also but that is too many letters - I haven't embroidered in donkey's years. This will be her one year birthday present - hopefully a little bit early. I was having trouble with the binding on another quilt and the nice ladies at the quilting store told me that I needed a Walking Foot. Whatever - I got it and it has made a world of difference.

Away from my usual color palatte

I found this mustard yellow fabric and just loved it (it has dogs on it) so had to make a baby quilt out of it. Okay, I still made mistakes, but now I know exactly WHAT I did wrong and know how to correct it next time. This quilt will probably go to Isabella. Note...no purple, altho' one of the dogs has a little pink jacket on.

New quilt - still basically purple

I was going to stay away from purple on this quilt, but it didn't work. But that's OK with me - I know that I made LESS mistakes on this quilt than on my others and am very pleased with myself. Just got the top finished this morning and am waiting for the backing material (see the dark bars - it will be the same as that). Got beautiful thin batting for this one also which will be a delight to work with. I think that I might take this one to be professionally machine quilted and bound but I'll see how much it costs.

Bought the material for my NEXT quilt and there is no purple at all in it. Still has bright colors - I do tend towards the garish but again...I like it that way.

Off to work now - the real work

My First Quilt

I am so stubborn! Read directions? Not me! My way of learning is to jump into the middle and make ALL the mistakes that are possible and learn how NOT to do something. Why don’t I follow directions? Well, I try to but if they are not explicate enough or don’t have pictures…well; I’m just not good at following directions.
I wanted to try making a quilt so bought a “kit” - figuring that would be easy. The directions were pretty good but the things that were not spelled out became obvious very quickly. It started out with cutting the material. Rotary cutter was predicted to be the way to go, pile of quarters, template. Great, here I go. The Problem quickly became obvious when I started to sew. What the instructions didn’t tell me was NOT to cut to the edges of the pile of fabric – probably something that I should have figured out for myself. So, even though’ it appeared that the pile of pretty fabric was even at the edges, I ended up with some pieces that were smaller than others. Hence the non lined up blocks. Other problems were keeping the seams ironed in opposite directions – that didn’t work at all!
Why did I keep going to the end? Stubbornness I think! I figured that I had sunk costs and should just go ahead and keep making mistakes and get them all out of the way. Machine quilted without drawing lines – don’t do it!
If you squint at the quilt from across the room, it looks good. I just know about the errors and it bugs me but I am chalking this up to A Learning Experience and will enjoy this quilt anyway. Or someone will someone who doesn’t know enough to ask the hard questions – like a baby! Yeah, this will be a present to someone who has a baby and they can use it on the floor. Hurray for babies, we get to give them our mistakes and they like them anyway!
So…now onto my next quilt and I can’t wait to see the mistakes I make on this one. Usually I don’t make the same mistakes twice so projects are always interesting to me – what can I mess up next.

Bad lineup

Good Lineup