In Memory of Granny

As I was writing the previous post earlier this evening my husband and I left to go visit his Granny who had been transferred from the hospital to a hospice house. She passed while we were there visting. So I am dedicating this post to the wonderful woman who raised my husband. Below is the quilt top of the first jelly roll race quilt that I made. It was for Granny's 96th Birthday a few months ago, wish I had gotten a photo of her with it.  We are sad to see her go but glad that she is no longer in pain.
We love you Granny

Quilty Cousin comes for a visit

Yay! My one and only relative who quilts came to visit me last weekend.  She lives a few hours away so we don't get to see each other very often. 
Of course we had to go visit my favorite LQS and while there she mentioned that she had not yet made a complete quilt as she has been learning through her guild by making sampler blocks. 
I thought "well, we are gonna have to fix this" and asked her if she would like to go home from her visit with a completed quilt.  Of course the answer was YES! so we picked out a jelly roll and backing and binding fabrics with the idea of completing a jelly roll race quilt before she went home the next day.
Well.... We almost did it lol.  We had some other family over for dinner and ended up visting for several hours and didn't get to the sewing until around 9pm.  She had the top pieced and a border added before we gave in for the night at 3am. After going out for breakfast and more visting we went back to my house and got the quilt sandwich basted (with elmer's glue of course).
She wanted to try free motion quilting so I made a practice sandwich for her to work on.  We were having so much fun trying freemotion and chatting that time got away from us. It was time for her to go home.  So after a quick lesson on binding and writing a list of some great online tutorials and videos to reference if she got stuck she headed home.
Here is her quilt top...great job Dom!

Custom Acrylic Shapes

I still haven't had a chance to play with these yet, but I am excited to get them in the mail to Cindy@SewMeSerenity, she was the winner of my first ever (hopefully of many) giveaway during the twitter Black Friday Sew In. 
I have a new set ordered and on their way. They should be in by the middle of next week, just in time to make a whole lotta half-square-triangles for a quilt that I hope to have done in time for Christmas.

I was looking for quilting rulers in various sizes to use when trimming half-square-triangles or fussy cutting without having to repeatedly move and re-align my ruler. As far as I can tell, they don't make or sell them in any and every size. Lets face it, I will be the first to tell you that I am lazy and want to find the easiest or most efficient way to get things done, so I was determined to find a way.

That is when I came across the Delvies Plastics website.

You can get different thicknesses and are able to custom order pretty much any shape or size.
Since they aren't actual rulers I custom ordered them with the lines engraved to help with centering blocks/designs. You can get them quite inexpensively if you can manage without the engraved lines, but hey, I'm going for easy.  Even with the engraving I think that the price was very reasonable.
I ordered 2", 3", 4", 5", 5 1/2" and 6", all 1/8" thick it was $30 including shipping (so the cost may differ a bit depending on shipping rates), for 6 faux rulers I think that is a very fair price.  You can get the laser cut shapes up to 17" or 17 1/2" (I can't quite remember what she said on the phone).

The only issue I foresee with these at this point is that like most rulers they are smooth on the back and will probably slip around. Maybe it's just me, but I have this problem with every on eof my rulers, even the ones that are supposed to be no-slip. So I am going to give mine the treatment that I give to all of my rulers, a quick shot of spray adhesive on the back.  I just give them a light spray and let them dry before using.  This is the only method that has worked for me so far.  I have tried the grippers and the stickers and the vinyl sheets to no avail.

Again, they have many shapes and sizes standard and with the cutomizable options you can let your imagination run wild creating templates.  My experience with them has been good.  Customer service has been responsive both by email and on the phone.  So, go check them out.

Trimming squares - Giveaway

I have been on the hunt for a 3" square ruler for trimming up 2.5" (finished) half square triangles. I never would have thought that they would be so hard to find. Needless to say, my search has been fruitless... until I found a site that will custom laser cut and engrave pretty much any size acrylic shapes. So I ordered these.

I got a 2", 3", 4", 5", 5 1/2" and 6", each with a line engraved in the horizontal and vertical center line and from corner to corner. I was trying to get the sizes that you can't already get with the square quilting rulers. The lines should help with centering the squares since they don't have ruler marks.

I haven't had a chance to use them yet as they came in the mail the day before I left to Indiana.

The price was very reasonable, including shipping it was only a couple dollars more than the cost of a 12 1/2" square ruler. Shipping time was good, I received them in less than 10 days.

I did not think to ask them if it would be okay to link to their website, so for now if you would like info please email me and I will be glad to forward the info to you.

UPDATE: To celebrate the Black Friday Sew In (#BFSI) I would like to give away a set of these trimming squares. So if you would like a set please comment on this post or follow me on twitter @SweetAdelineQ for a chance to win. I will choose a winner at random at midnight tonight (eastern time) and contact you by email for shipping info.

Deadline met!

So excited that I was able to meet the nearly impossible deadline that I had set for myself. It was a good thing that the cousin I was traveling with had to work the day we were plannig to leave. I finished the quilt at about 2:30 Friday afternoon and had just enough time to wash and dry it before we left that evening. The top is made with fabrics from a few different lines, unfortunately, the only one I remember the name of is Double Chocolate. Guess I should start writing this stuff down instead of holding on to the selvages and then not remembering where i put them. The backing fabric is Wintergreen by 3 Sisters for Moda. I totally fell in love with it and think that I need to go back to my LQS and buy more.

This is the first quilt that i quilted entirely with freemotion. Needless to say it is not the most fabulous quilting I have ever seen but it came out okay. For the center I did lines of leaves, then more leaves in the center border and then crazy curls in the outer border.

The quilt was hand delivered to my cousin-in-law and she loved it. She is one of the sweetest people you could ever meet and is always doing for others in her family and her community. A hand made quilt is the least of what she deserves. The timing was just right as it was starting to snow a bit when we left Monday evening. All in all it was a really long drive both ways but it was totally worth it to spend time with family that we only get to see once or twice a year.

Oh, the impossible deadlines I give myself

So, amid all of the other things I have been working on like the plane quilt and another that I cannot speak of yet because it will be a Christmas gift, I have now given myself a nearly impossible deadline of one week to complete a queen size quilt nearly from scratch.

I started this project several months ago and got about 1/4 of the triangles pieced.  My intention was that this would be a (another) Christmas gift for a relative in Indiana.  So I decided yesterday (Thursday) that I am going to go to Indiana next Friday with a cousin.  I finshed piecing the rest of the triangles, 28 of each color.  Needless to say I have a lot of work to do.  I need to trim up the triangles and then decide on a layout, thinking something along the lines of what is shown in the second picture and continuing out with the concentric squares.

 

Wish me luck...

Paper Pieced Plain Planes

Wow, that's a lot of "P"s
I am also working on a quilt for a baby boy who's family loves to fly planes.  So what better on a quilt that a bunch of planes.
I don't like to make my baby quilt too juvenile (novelty prints etc) because I like to imagine that they will be kept for many years to come. So I decided to make paper pieced planes with Kona solid in Navy on a plain Kona White background.

 

I wanted to do a navy & white stripe fabric for the backing but wasn't able to find any that I liked so I made my own.

 

It is now basted ready to quilt.  I am thinking of outling the planes and then quilting a propeller design in the center of each plain block.