What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Get your marking pen out, I have a nice grid pattern for you! The shapes that make up this design are pretty easy, but the stitch path can become confusing. Please mark the stitch path too! It takes less time to mark than to undo your work! So, take your time, and go slow!

I have selected this Busy Bee design on purpose for this week. I know that for many of us Monday is ‘ back-to-work-day’ and ‘busy-busy-busy-today’ and it may feel like you never even had those vacation days off. Maybe try this fun design to counterbalance that? You ...

In June I made two quilts for people who were becoming grandparents. I knew the grandparents but not the baby’s parents that well. It was a bit of a puzzle to come up with a color scheme for the baby quilts. Both sets of parents were so kind to sent me their preferred colors and photos of the baby’s room.

Baby #1’s parents really liked the Dutch baby brand ‘Little Dutch’ which had wall paint as part of their collection. I selected some colors from the range that would fit with the colors in the photo of ...

How did I ever finish a quilt before my grandcat moved in last year?

Here, while preparing to audition different bindings on a gift baby quilt, Cleo helpfully provides aeration. Certainly, the extra movement and fur will make my binding more accurate.

For Cleo, quilts in progress provide a far better high than catnip. 

Next, the finished quilt, which I had to bring outside in order to get a picture of it flat.

Ponderosa Charm Squares

(Below, a brand-new human on a recently finished quilt. Eyes are covered to protect anonymity.) 

Is romance in the air? For whatever reason, in my world, babies are a-poppin! Fortunately, I am prepared! Here's my neonatal kit: An oversized shoebox full of maybe 200 4" squares, some of them sewn into 9-patch blocks.

Unpacked, below, you'll find stacks of squares, many tourniqueted with torn white fabric strips, and the category name scribbled in pencil on torn-paper labels, in handwriting so terrible (mine) that I can barely read them. 

In the photo above, the categories, starting on the top ...

I've been playing with wrapping quilt fabric around batting scraps, and weaving them into baskets. Just in time for the holidays, I made a couple of black holes this way, including one for this guy:

I was inspired by a talk at Cal Tech last month by Kip Thorne, who won a Nobel Prize in 2017 for creating LIGO, the project that detected gravitational waves emanating from colliding black holes. (My DH works on this project.) 

Instead of resting on his laurels, Kip has been having a blast producing black hole art, including movies (Interstellar, and soon, a sequel ...

So last Thursday I drove to Oklahoma for our girl's baby shower and our DIL and granddaughter flew in to help celebrate. When they reached the bottom of the elevator, E ran to me squealing, "Gram! Gram!" Made my heart leap with joy and melt into a puddle all at the same time,We are all avid readers and we treasure books so we based the shower around books and everyone brought a book instead of a

Ok done, washed and dried.  Machine pieced and machine quilted (by me) I used whatever kind of batting it is that Hobby Lobby carries on the super big bolts I think it was Warm and White? it was very flat which is what I needed for my machine quilting to not bunch up and ripple.  […]

Yesterday I was reading a lot but I still got some things done in the sewing room.  I could have finished a one Carpenter’s Wheel block but I kept taking breaks to read!  Right now I am reading a fairly new to me author James Hayman featuring two Maine Police Detectives McCabe & Savage, he […]

Yesterday was spent getting the Carpenter’s Wheel back in progress.  I started the quilt last year for one of my many Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts and I started too many so this year has been spent trying to play catch up and finish some – which I have had great success in doing!  But I […]

Finally the weather was clear, we were back and caught up from being out of town – no reason to not get busy!  First the binding was made for the Toddler quilt using a variety of left over fabric for scrappy, pressed and got busy with the machine. then I got down to work of […]

We had a great family reunion it went on with people coming and going the whole five days we were in Northwest Arkansas.  We were lucky the weather wasn’t too bad and my brother was able to have shading over the deck the whole time.  It was hot some days but the last two days […]

Done! well except for the binding that is. I worked on the quilting for this toddler size quilt for the past two days.  After starting last week and ripping it all out that is – I’m glad I did it turned out much better the second time. I was about half way done at this […]

Not really very much to share today I finished getting the toddler quilt ready for machine quilting and this time it seems to be laying flat and staying flat with this other batting that I got from Hobby Lobby that you get by the yardage – it is on a great big round bolt I […]

Yesterday was a slow Sunday and I did a bit of hand work.  I finished taking apart the machine quilting that I didn’t like and ready to baste the toddler quilt again today.  I am linking to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts today. This section for Noriko’s Star is nearly done – one more of […]

First a crown falls out of my mouth – the same one that did 4 months ago – luckily I quickly realized what I was almost biting down on and retrieved it – dental appointment this morning!  Then about an hour later I was at the sewing machine – machine quilting my toddler quilt – […]

I should have gotten done with more yesterday then I did but for some reason I don’t seem to have done much of anything.  I did beat the heat and got out to the grocery store and home before it hit 90!  That is hard to do lately isn’t it – I have been watching […]

The toddler quilt top is finished and I will probably try to get it machine quilted next week.  It is 52 x 52 inches  linking to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts — A close up of some of the fabric – these were all in a Tula Pink fat quarter bundle that I got last […]