Progress

I got home a little later tonight because I had to get my hair done. I have had a gray streak running down the middle of my head for about 3 weeks now, I usually go every 6 weeks to get my color done. So, I was complaining to my hairdresser that the color isn't lasting as long as it used to and was wondering if it was because I had a darker color put on last time. She said maybe that could be it but it could be that I am just growing gray hair faster than I use to! LOL. So, I get her to put a bunch of blonde highlights in, hopefully that will take care of their growth rate. So because I got home later I didn't have as much time to spend on the flag wall hanging. I did get have of the rows sewn. The rows are a 1/2 inch apart. I sewed the line that I made with the marker and then I used that row as a guide putting my presser foot along that line as I sew. I measured from my needle to the edge of the presser foot and it is 1/2 inch. Even with this being a smaller project than the chenille baby blanket it seems to take forever to sew all of these rows.

This shows the presser foot guideline for the 1/2 inch rows.

This is showing half of the rows complete.

This is showing a view of the rows from the back side. I tried to rewrap the wreath but I still don't have enough of the ribbon. I will have to go by JoAnn's to pick some more up. I need to see what coupons I have left to use. I am headed to bed, I have told David that I need to start getting to bed earlier so 10:00 is when I am supposed to go, we sill see how long this lasts! We have had some thunderstorms rolling through tonight, hopefully they are all done for the night.

Flag Wall Hanging

Today did not go as planned. Melissa didn't come over, her daughter kept her up all night. So, I went to visit my friend in the hospital. He is doing pretty good. He isn't able to move his left arm and he is dragging his left foot. But no memory loss or slurred speech so that is good. He is supposed to move to a rehab center tomorrow. The doctor thinks he has sleep apnea and he stopped breathing in the middle of the night causing the stroke. It is really sad, reminds me too much of mom. I didn't get home until around 4 this afternoon so there was most of my day. I had a sinus headache when I woke up so been battling that all day. Then my cousin Max calls me to tell me my Aunt Ruth, my mom's sister is in the hospital because of a ruptured aorta. They have put a stint in and she is stable, she has lost some feeling in one of her legs, she is also going to a rehab center. I was kind of laying around after dinner and decided I would work on the flag wall hanging that I wanted to make. I didn't feel like cutting any of the retreat material. I've got it all layered and I started sewing the rows. This will be similar to the chenille baby blanket, same technique just using cotton material instead of flannel and also adding a layer of batting.

This is the backing. It will be face down and the layers go on top.

This is the batting. It goes between the backing and the top layers.

This is the top material. There will be four layers.

This is the four layers. When all sewn the top three layers will be cut to create the chenille/rag look. Since this is an all over pattern it isn't as important to match up the pattern. For the stain glass panels in my previous post, it will be very important to match up the pattern in all four layers in order to have the full design revealed through the layers.

Once you have all the layers, the next thing to do is pin all the layers together. This is pretty time consuming and I tend to probably over-pin my projects but I like to make sure everything stays together.

Now, you make a line from one corner to the diagonal corner using a disappearing ink marker.

Here is the line, hard to see on this darker material. I sewed a few of the lines but didn't get to far with it, I will work on it more tomorrow night. I have an idea for a project and here is the start of it. I have an ordinary florist wreath ring. I am wrapping it with this pretty ribbon. Wrapping it so the design repeats. As you can see I did not get all the way around. I will try re-wrapping to see if I can get all the way around or I will have to go to JoAnn's to get some more. I have overlapped quite a bit so I am thinking I can make it work. I hope this will turn out well...off to bed now, it is late!

Fabric Shack

It has been a busy day today. David and I went to an estate sale in the morning. We didn't find too much there. I bought these 4 little glasses. I think you would call them cordial glasses. I have plans for them which you may some day see here on the blog. I am including a close up detail picture of the Couch Quilt that I posted last night. I am really liking it and can't wait to get it all done. Melissa and I went to Milano's for lunch. It has been our favorite place for sometime but they have not been consistent with their food lately so we may have to find a new favorite. After lunch we went to the Mason Jar quilt shop which is our local quilt shop here in Beavercreek. Melissa found a backing for the baby quilt she is making and it was 30% off so that made her very happy! We picked up Clarinda after lunch and went to Waynesville, OH, the home of Fabric Shack. They have a lot of fabric. I am posting a picture of the sign and a picture of one of the rooms they have there. They have so much stuff to look at in a small space that some days it can be hard to get around the store and they are really slow at cutting what you want, so don't go there unless you have patience and time. I was on a mission to buy the fabric panels to make the chenille rug/wall hanging. You can see them in the picture. The panels have a stained glass look to them, I bought the same panel in pink and purple. In the picture you will see the panel as I bought them and then the sample of the finished project as it is hanging in the store. The finished project can be used as a wall hanging or small throw rug. I am going to make the purple one for Beryl, it is her favorite color. The pink one is for me of course! I also picked up some fabric to make Jack his quilt. I am going to make it the same style as the Couch Quilt, the material is the picture of blue and brown shades with solids and stripes. We left Waynesville and headed to Miamisburg for the quilt show. I am including some photos from the show. They had some pretty quilts there. Some were old, some were new. I thought they were going to have a few more vendors there but it was a small show. We didn't win the raffle for the quilts so we were soon off to the big JoAnn store. I picked up a few things there not much. On the way back we stopped at Hancock Fabric. I found the stars and stripes material there and I am going to make a wall hanging with that. I also picked up a couple pattern books. That was the end of the shopping day! I am now sorting through everything and deciding what will go to the retreat. Tomorrow I am going to cut the material for the Take 5 quilt which I am making with the blue/gray flannel material that you see pictured. I will also finish cutting the Japanese fabric for Mark's quilt and the fabric for Jack's quilt. So, here is my list of things to take to the retreat: 1) Couch Quilt (layer backing, batting, and top; get ready for quilting) 2) Mark's Japanese Quilt (finish top) 3) Jack's Blue Quilt (finish top) 4) Chenille Panel for Beryl (finish except for washing/drying) 5) Airman's Take 5 Quilt (finish if time) That should be enough and may even be too much but this is my priority list. That's all for tonight. I need to tidy my room because Melissa is coming over tomorrow to work on her quilt. Oh, here is a picture of Marley helping me clean up my room. :)

Couch Quilt

I finished the top of the Couch Quilt tonight. I think it looks better in person than in the pictures. Plus it is so big it is hard to get a good picture of it. I will pack it up and take it to the retreat for show and tell and to do the layering with the backing and batting. I think I am going to try to do an all over quilt on this one. I need to learn how to do that with my machine. Tomorrow Dave and I are going to an estate sale in the morning and then I am going to lunch with Melissa. Then in the afternoon we will go to the quilt shop in Waynesville and to the quilt show in Miamisburg. We are also going to stop by and see one of our friends that went into the hospital today with what they think is a mini-stroke. The doctors are still running tests so he will be in there the whole weekend. I will try to take some pictures at the quilt shop and show, post something different for a change. The rest of the weekend I will be prepping for the retreat! I can't wait.

Chenille Quilts are Finished!!

I finished the blue chenille quilt late last night so didn't have time to post. I think the blue one turn out better than the green one. I like how the dark blue contrasts with the lighter blue colors. I gave them to the captain this morning and he was really excited about them and asked how I made them. He said his wife was going to love them. Got to see updated pictures of the twins, they are so cute. Their names are Jack and Harrison, two really good names :).

Tonight I am going to clean up a little and pull the material out to finish up the couch quilt top. I am still unsure how to finish the edge blocks, but I need to get moving and get it done. I am going to take it with me to the retreat so I can layer it with the back and batting in a large area, I am a bit confined here in my craft room. My next craft room is going to have to be a lot bigger and have a raised table to do the layering so I don't have to crawl around on the floor.

I am going with my friends Saturday to the Fabric Shack and to the Miamisburg Quilt Show. I need to pick up a couple of fabric panels to make the chenille wall hanging that I saw hanging at Fabric Shack last time we were there. />This next week and weekend I am going to have to start cutting the quilts I want to accomplish at the retreat. I like to go and sew, I don't like cutting quilts while I am there. We are going to leave about noon on Friday, 11 May. We will hit a couple of quilt shops on the way up. Check in time is 3:00 and dinner is at 5:30. I am not sure if I described where we go in a previous post but it is a retreat center in Marie Stein, Ohio. It used to be a convent and now the church uses it to host these retreats. There are no TVs in the rooms, Internet access is limited and cell phone signal is about nonexistent. Perfect place for a retreat. We get breakfast, lunch, and dinner included in the price for the two night stay. We usually stay up late most nights, I don't usually make it to the breakfast, I find that they feed us way too much so I just skip the full breakfast and eat my peanut butter crackers in the morning. This is the third trip I have gone on with my friends Melissa and Clarinda.
Here is a link if you would like to see some pictures of the retreat center http://www.spiritualcenter.net/Photo%20pages/interior/interior-index.htm All right I am going to kick back and relax for a little bit before I pick up this room! I will post tomorrow night on the Couch Quilt.

Binding

Tonight I worked on the binding. I didn't show how to do this on the first quilt. So what I did was cut strips from the material you want to bind the quilt with. I cut mine 2 1/2" wide. You have to splice the material together because the length around the quilt is usually longer than what you can cut from a length or width of material. So to splice things together you place the strips right sides together at 90 degree angle, then you sew diagonally across. When you open it up you will have a diagonal seam. I had to pay special attention for this print to make sure the print flowed in the same direction. After sewing the seam, cut off the excess material to 1/4" seam allowance. You then press the seam open. You sew these strips together until you have the length you need to go all the way around your quilt. For this quilt, we will do a double fold binding. The first step is to iron the length of the binding in half. Then open the binding and fold each raw edge into the middle, and iron. This give you a folded smooth edge on each side. We do it this way because we will pin the binding folded over the edge of the quilt, pin to edge and sew all the way around. Previous quilts I have only used the single fold binding that is sewn with the raw edge to the back and then the folded edge is pulled over to the front side and sewn again. So, by sewing the binding this new way it cuts out a step but I have found that you do not always catch both sides of the binding and you have to go back and re-sew some spots on the back side. I did not finish sewing all the way around tonight so I will finish up this quilt tomorrow night and post pictures then.
I am not sure how the pictures are going to post but hopefully you will be able to follow along.
1. Cut strips 2 1/2" wide (as many as you need to go around quilt)
2. Sew strips together 90 degree angle, right sides facing, sewn diagonally
3. Cut seam to 1/4"
4. Iron seam open
5. Fold strip in half and iron
6. Open strip and fold each raw edge to middle, iron folds
7. Pin binding around edge
8. Sew binding around edge of quilt, sewing close to the edge in order to catch both sides of binding
9. Check that all binding is sewn on both sides

Blue Chenille

I got really far on the Blue Chenille blanket today. I was up until midnight sewing the rows and got half way done. I finished the other side this afternoon. I cut the rows, squared up, and rounded the corners. Tomorrow I will make the binding, sew it on and wash it and then I will be done with this project. The strips I am showing are what will be used as the binding. Tomorrow I will show how to make the binding.

Next I will finish the top of the couch quilt and then start preparing for the retreat.

Not much else going on today. It was still quite chilly today, I hope it warms back up soon.

Saturday!

I haven't posted in a couple days because I was having trouble getting the binding done on the green chenille baby blanket and finally went to JoAnn's and got some extra material to cut a new binding. I had been trying to use the packaged prepared binding but it just didn't work out. I finished it up last night and washed it. It turned out okay I had to trim a few of the strips and I washed it again and now I think it looks pretty good.

Today, I started working on the blue chenille baby blanket. I am showing it here in the sewing machine. I stitched rows on half of it tonight and hoping to get the other half sewn tomorrow and maybe get to cut the rows. It is going much faster this time around, I have overcome the learning curve.

Jack went to the prom tonight, he looked so handsome in his suit. His date's name is Shauna. I loaned him my car to drive tonight, hopefully it comes back in with out any new scratches or dents. They went to a fancy place for dinner and he texted me to say it cost $75! After the prom the have an after prom at one of the churches and I think they will change clothes before they go. I think he said they have carnival rides there. Too bad it turned off cold today. It will be cold night to be on the rides.

I knew it would turn out yucky for the weekend. The weather was beautiful all week and turned out cold and rainy today. We even had to turn the heater back on. I went and had reflexology done today. I've been going about every two weeks. It is so relaxing and feels so good. Other than that I have been working on the blue quilt and cleaning my room up. My friend Melissa will be coming over tomorrow to work on her quilt. She comes on Sundays sometimes when her little ones go down for their naps. Gives her a little time away and time to actually get some work done.

Jack just came in to change his clothes and he is headed to the after prom. He said they had a really good time.

I'll post some more pictures of my progress tomorrow.