More Incubator Blankets

My quilting guild has selected incubator blankets as our special project this year, for the local children's hospital. They don't go on top of the preemie, but on the incubator itself, to both help insulate and keep the heat in, and to block some of the light for the little ones.

These are fun to do, and you don't realize how quickly something small (only 24 x 24) will work up. Here's the one I made from the pastel strip set you saw a couple of posts ago. I started it Superbowl Sunday, as part of Bargellobowl. This one's my favorite of the 5 incubator tops I've done so far. Guess I'm kinda traditional when it comes to baby blankets:


And then here's one I made Heartstrings style. I had a strip of muslin that wasn't big enough to cut regular size Heartstrings foundations from, but I was able to cut sixteen 6½ inch squares. Looking at it now, I wish I'd cut those initial red strips a bit smaller, think they were 2 inches, a little wide for the small block, but there was a lot of the hand dyed red I wanted to use.



And like everyone else says, no matter that I made 16 blocks for this, my bags of strings didn't get any smaller... :D

Big Jewel Boxes

I'm thinking of starting something that'll keep me occupied for a long time... a scrappy jewel box for my king size bed. I don't have a quilt for MY bed yet, lots of twin size and a couple of queen or double sized ones.

So I know I like the jewel box pattern, and I also like the idea of pieced borders that extend into the quilt, so I got to playing on my EQ. The middle in solid white looked too plain, especially for the big expanse of a king size. Here's the top three I came up with:


First, a small 9-jewel diamond shape made by substituting some blue for the white fabrics in the very center.


Above, a large center 25 jewel diamond surrounded by a thin blue trim that almost goes out to the edges...


And last, the smaller 9 jewel diamond middle surrounded by the thin blue trim.

I plan on doing the little squares both strip pieced (from 2 inch strips) and some leader-enders. I have a LOT of 4 inch squares I'd like to use up for this, so all those half square triangle 4-square jewel blocks will finish at six inches.

The hard part will be keeping the blue and white areas counted out, for whichever final design I decide on. Which design do YOU like better?

Bargellobowl Incubator Blankets

Here's what I worked on instead of watching the superbowl - Bargellobowl was much more my kind of fun! First the top I finished already, one in brights. Got your sunglasses on? Hopefully it will brighten up the preemie ward:


I've already made a backing of the bright fabrics for this one, it's a 27 inch square nine patch, using big squares. The incubator blankets have to finish at 24x24.

And here's the strip set of the more tame, pastel one I'm making - should finish it tonight:



I also added borders to the blue incubator blanket you saw earlier, and made a backing for that one.

Bargellobowl

Need something to do while the jocks are watching the superbowl?



I think I'm going to try to make a couple of little incubator quilts using Bonnie's bargello technique. Maybe some in yellows and greens.

Anyone going to join us? If you are, you're welcome to take the Bargellobowl graphic for use on your site.

Happy Quilting!

Quiltville Mystery Top Finished

Here we go, center section of top all finished:



Right now, it measures almost 71 x 71 with no borders. I can't decide if I want to add a skinny red border, then a green border or just go on and add the green border - I don't really need it much bigger, it's going to be a holiday table topper. I do want to put at least a one inch border on there to collect all those seams on the edge, it'll make it so much easier to bind.

Not many people have been opting to do sashing, but I'm glad I did!

Quiltville Mystery Corner

The progress so far - I had to make the sashing scrappy... well, I didn't have to but was determined to use the red Christmas fabric up instead of cutting into my red not-holiday yardage.



Hopefully I'll finish it this weekend!

Quiltville Mystery revealed!

Well, she posted the last clue tonight... and wow, it's pretty! I'm glad I started the mystery. :)

I like to do things a bit different though, so I think I'm going to try my Christmas fabric version with some red sashing between the blocks:



It'll be the same 1½ inch strips that we cut for the rail fence and nine-patch blocks, so it'll fit right in. And I'll make my borders a bit smaller, so this quilt will finish at almost 76 inches square instead of 80, just a tad smaller. :)

Now I can't wait to get this all sewn together!

Mystery Part 6 and Incubator Blankets

Well, step six of the Quiltville mystery is done, 16 Ohio star blocks with nine-patch corners. Mine have different green middles, but I thought this one was 'specially cute with the Santa face looking out the side. :)


We also had to do 16 half Ohio star blocks and four ¼ Ohio star blocks. Given these instructions, I've pretty much got the layout figured out, but Bonnie asked us not to reveal it, so I'm keeping mum.

My guild picks a different charity project each year - this year it's to make incubator blankets for the local children's hospital. It's a super place to use up orphan blocks, as blankets only have to finish at 24 x 24. I've had these teeny half nine patch blocks sitting in a box for 3 years now, 12 light and 16 dark. Too many of them to throw away, and not enough of them to do anything with.

BUT, pairing the light ones with a pink hst, and the dark ones with a blue hst, I've been able to make two incubator blankets. A couple of borders and I'll be ready to go:


Not sure what color to border the blue one with yet... I have more blue for an outer border, but what for an inner border?

Heart Block and Quiltville Mystery

Well, here's my guild's block of the month for January. I try to anticipate the holidays, so, yes, we're doing hearts already. Here's the guild's web page I made with the heart block instructions - if you see any errors, please let me know.


Finally, I've gotten all 100 hourglass blocks done for the Quiltville mystery. Each block has 4 different fabrics in it, though you can't tell it here, the flash makes it difficult to see the white patterns on the white.

Of course, while I had these red fabrics out for the heart, I couldn't resist cutting a few strips from them to add to my mystery hourglasses. I used Omnigrid's triangle #98 for the first time (although I've had the ruler forever, this was the first time I've used it for what it was designed to be used for.)



I can't wait for Thursday to see how we're going to arrange these bits into blocks. I've played with it on EQ, but my designs never work out into groups that would call for the right numbers of blocks... :D

Blocks and blockhead

First the blockhead... he KNOWS he's not supposed to be on this shelf, but the new cat tree puts it within climbing distance. Today he knocked off the stuffed siamese on the corner and sat there himself. He reminds me of the Sesame Street song: One of these things is not like the other... one of these things just doesn't belong...


I've been collecting siamese cats for about ten years now. The breakable ones and the ones I don't want to become cat toys are inside the doors, the ones on top were all gifts. :)

And I've just finished step four of Bonnie's Quiltville mystery, 40 triangular green/white units:

Christmas Gifts

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Unveiling some of the things I couldn't blog about in case family read my blog. First, my sister in law holding a set of hot mats and a table topper kind of thing I made for her granite countertops. She says the chilly granite seems to absorb the heat from any food she puts out on it. The silvery looking fabric used on the back is what they sell for ironing board re-covering, it should be able to take a very hot pan, AND reflect the heat back. I used a very thick cotton towelling for the batting:


Then, here's my folks opening their new pillow shams to match the new quilt made for their king size bed. Does anyone have any good way to wrap a big quilt? I ended up just using a large leaf bag after looking in vain for one of those huge green ones they sell to bag the old tree with.


Here they're being silly under their new quilt. The EQ pattern for this one you may have seen waaaaay back on my blog in February '07. I can't believe it's been a year in the making - I started all the half square triangles starting last January. The only change I made to that design was to increase the border sizes.


Here's my mom reading the label - I tried to burn that part of the photo in, so you could read the words, but the flash whited it out too much. When I was cutting the fan blade shaped wedges, I saved all the scraps, and where I could salvage a 2½ square, I did. I used some of them for the label border, and still have a lot left. Little blue and white squares will be useful somewhere, I'm sure!


Finally, here's my older two grand nieces, sitting on the couch, opening gifts:

Guessing at the Quiltville Mystery

I like to play on my EQ program as well as make 'real' quilts... so based on what Bonnie at Quiltville has us doing so far for the mystery ... and thinking that she might have us use the triangle ruler to make half square triangles, here's some guesses (in my Christmas fabrics) as to where she might be going with it:



Of course, Leah also did some guessing, and her guesses include quarter square triangles and 4 patches, so maybe I need to go play with adding in some of those too!

More 9 Patch Blocks and a Mug

Here's another 80 of these little 3½ inch square 9 patch blocks for step 3 of the Quiltville Mystery quilt - she says we're done with the 9 patches now... :) Although I don't really mind, aren't they cute? I really admire quilts that have a lot of little pieces, and doing a hundred baby blocks every week is a painless way to do it.


They'll look better when they're pressed, but I'll wait for instructions on whether to press those last two seams to the inside or outside.
I've also taken an idea I saw on Tazzie's blog for a nice little Christmas gift. Do you recognize the little 1½ inch squares of Christmas fabric from anywhere?


Mine won't be as beautifully packaged as Tazzie's are, but I did borrow her idea about putting a square of cardboard under the mug mat before I put the mug on top and wrapped them both in cellophane. I also got one of those big containers of loose hot chocolate, put three heaping tablespoonfuls in a baggie, added some mini marshmallows and tied the little bag of 'gourmet mix' on the outside of the gift. The purple candy in the mug is coffee flavored, if they want to add one to the hot chocolate, that might be interesting... :)

Another idea is to take a plastic spoon, melt some chocolate, and dip the spoon several times, letting it cool between dips, so you have kind of a chocolate lollypop spoon to stir your hot chocolate with. You wrap that in plastic, tie some curly ribbon around the 'throat' of the spoon, and stand it chocolate side up in the mug you're giving. It'd be a pain to just make one though - be better if you were giving several of these as gifts.

More Quiltville Mystery blocks

Here's my finished step 2 of the mystery, 100 nine patch blocks with three light corners, four dark sides, and one corner the accent color. I also cut the spacer blocks you see off to the right side, a stack of white and green 3½ inch squares.


And here's my nosy 'helper' trying to see why I spread out all these nice soft stacks of ten blocks... is it a kitty napping-place perhaps? Did I bury any mousies under there?


Decided that I didn't want only white-on-white for the white squares, but scrappier whites, so I went digging in my FQ piles and drawers. I found some fabrics that hadn't made my 'Christmas' collection, but could go nicely in a holiday themed quilt. Then I went out and bought the red and green on white snowflakes, found some precut strips that I picked all the white or cream bits out of, so now I have some snowflakes, some white on white, some snow covered trees with teeny redbirds, white with small gold metallic stars, and last, added in the two Christmas themed FQ's on white I wasn't going to use because I only had two.

Ready for the next step! Wonder what this quilt's going to look like?

100 Rail Fence Blocks

I took the bait and decided to start Bonnie Hunter's Mystery quilt, from Quiltville. She is calling it Carolina Crossroads, there's the link. Even though I normally don't like mysteries, I like her designs a LOT, and thought it might be a perfect chance to use up some Christmas fabrics. So far, I'm using 8 green prints and 4 reds, all from my stash. My light color will be white, I think.

So here's the first installment, 100 rail fence blocks, next to the white I plan on using:


She's also started a yahoo group for chat about the mystery, and last time I checked, she had 668 members signed up to do the mystery. They're not only from all over the United States, but all over the world, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia, etc. That's pretty impressive for only getting the group started about 48hours ago!

Thanksgiving and Cat Tree

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I went up to my brother's place on the Tennessee River. Thursday afternoon, they not only taught me how to shoot a gun for the first time, but also built a cat tree for me.

Here's my brothers Dan and Bob standing on either side of my new cat tree, on Friday afternoon. They don't always dress in camo, they were about to go hide in the bushes and attempt to splatter each other with paint guns. After seeing the bruises those paint balls can leave, I've decided it's not MY idea of fun, I'd rather be quilting... :)


This is a better picture of the Tennessee River, you can see a glimpse of it in the picture above. His house has a great view of the river, and it's fun to sit in the living room or at the kitchen table and watch the big barges go by.


This is the back of his house - his wife has the big bow window just full of all kinds of plants and flowers, growing on shelves and on a fountain and a trellis thing, they love the sun, and are just beautiful. The big arched windows above that let in a lot of light - on Wednesday night we saw a thunderstorm go past, and the lightning show was great! From a distance, of course. :D


One of my nephews is a welder, and he made the wrought iron trim and stair rail and balcony. Bob, on the right in the picture at the top, is a builder, and built this house - actually it's a work in progress, every time I go up there, he and his wife have added more detailing on the inside and outside.

Not much to report on the quilting front, I've done most of the binding on a quilt I've had sitting around forever, waiting to be bound. I wanted to do this one by hand, and it's taken me a LONG time - another few feet to go and I'll be done. And I've got all the pinwheel blocks done and half of them sewn on to the center, I DID decide to go with the blue next to the purple instead of doing it all one color. In fact, I think that's what I'll go work on now.

Retreat and Linda's Classes

The last few pictures and stuff from retreat! Here's my Winter dreamwatcher fairie, from Linda Poole's class. I really enjoyed taking her class, even though I didn't use the freezer paper applique technique she taught, I learned how to do it, and would like to try it on another project. She's a great teacher, and a very sweet person, besides. :)


I plan to add a snowman on her right side there, the sort with stick arms and a scarf and knit hat, I also have a bunch of little crystal snowflakes to sew on. The penny is on there for some idea of scale - I made mine small so she could be ¼ of a seasonal fairie wall hanging. You've seen Summer several posts down, I still have Spring and Fall yet to do.

And here's the bended bias butterfly class with their butterflies in progress. Linda's the third one from the left, standing, and not holding a butterfly. You can click on any of these pictures to get a bigger version:


Christine (flippytale quilter - here's her blog) got her big king size quilt top all put together, and used the large tables at the retreat center to baste the three layers:


And she even managed to recruit some assistance:

Wonky Squares Revisited

From the comments I've gotten with the last post, people seem to think this might be a difficult quilt to put together, far from it! I went to my EQ and colored the sashings white (the better to see you with, my dear... lol) On MY version of the mystery, I used 4 inch squares, because you can find them so easily on e-Bay, already pre-cut, any theme you want. They're also easy to cut, 20 from a FQ. My sashing was 1½ inches wide. I like to strip piece, so I cut long strips of sashing, sewed down my squares, cut them apart, and added the sashing on the other side. My version made 9 inch blocks.


Can you see the sidewise 8 in the block? Tilt your head to the right. (: As you're putting your sets of 4 sashed squares together, look for the 8 shape to make sure you're laying them out right.


The block is called Patience Corners. If you google 'patience corners quilt block' you'll find a page of links. It's on Quilter's Cache, under the P's. Marcia did it as a 12 inch block, with thicker sashing. If you look around the web, you'll see it with scrappy sashing and all one color square too, the opposite of what I've done here. I also found it as a charity pattern, with 5 inch pieced blocks - and thought it'd be a great setting for crumb blocks.

Happy Sewing!

Wonky Squares Mystery

Well, here's the mystery I taught at the guild's retreat. I posted the palette of fabrics a long time ago, but didn't dare show any more of the quilt top coming together. Finally, the Wonky Squares mystery is over and you get to see the whole top, finished:


I wanted to try something different with the border, so decided to make three of the blocks into escapees. Here's a closeup. I used dryer sheets to sew to the right side of my three squares, then trimmed a hole in the sheet and pulled the square thru. Finally, I used a blanket stitch to applique them down. I'm tempted to add another block and a half to this, to make it look like they're escaping all the way off the top completely:


Here's three of the quilts that were finished in my class. I didn't ask permission to use their names on my blog, but here's their quilt tops! They all did a great job, and it was fascinating to see the same design in different colors. First, P.M.'s all-batik version with bright yellow sashing:


And G.E.'s I-Spy version with sashing that's my very favorite color, forest green. G's the hair you see near the middle. Over on the right, you'll see C.T.'s one block with maroon sashing and NO florals or feminine prints (she has 47 more done, just not sewn together) meant for a guy type quilt:


And finally, S.M.'s pink and yellow and green baby quilt sized top, with purple sashing, that will be a quilt for a 1 year old little girl:


An easy mystery class, and some great results, don't you think?

:)

Square Dance Quilt

Well, here's one of the things I worked on at the retreat this past weekend, a small quilt based on the technique in the book 'Square Dance' by Martha Thompson:



Bright, isn't it? I started by sewing a 7x9 grid of 6 inch squares, with a 3 inch border in purple, then drew a template, traced around it on my grid-fabric, then cut the plain squares up according to her instructions. I was surprised how much it shrunk when I rotated the little squares and sewed them back together to make my pinwheels.

Now I have a pile of three inch squares (produced when you hack the plain blocks apart) that I plan to put on the outer border, but the inner rectangle is so much smaller than expected that I need to add some blocks to it to make it bed-sized. There's lots of the purple fabric left, and I also have the exact same tone on tone print but in royal blue, same color value, that would look good in there too.

Here's my dilemma - Should I make the whole quilt with a background of purple... or use some blue as background for the pinwheels to break up the purple a bit? Or should I make some of the other borders blue? I can bind it in blue OR purple. Which of the following two EQ6 design pictures do you prefer? The actual blue/purple fabric color difference is more subtle than the colors you see here:



More on the retreat when I get more pictures ready to post! I also taught a class and have some photos from that, and took a class and have some things from that to show you. :)