Progress on two quilts – well actually 3 I have worked on Star Crazy too but no photos on that one – still the same area that I am working on there. I did put in an hour of quilting last night.
Farmer’s Wife, I know I said this was going to be my quilt group project to have on hand for quilting but I decided of course to quilt on it when I feel like it also 
I never last with whatever I say on quilts do I?
The area that is quilted is in this area.
Always hard to see in the photo that covers a large area, individual blocks – all the white blocks have the same stenciled flower – there are two or three of these finished.
I have never been able to figure out this block – what is it? a butterfly maybe?
Yes a couple points got chopped off – I’m not worried about it so don’t you be either!
A little of springtime in my kitchen – springtime LOL, well we had nice weather for all of January, now for the next 4 or 5 days it is winter, in the 30’s and 40’s, maybe a little ice or snow by Monday I think – it will be short lasting – Tuesday will be in the 50’s the forecasters say. That is where the stackable teapot set that my daughter got me for Christmas stays when I am not using it.
The newest row of Joseph’s Coat laid out on the floor before I start to pin together segments to make it easier to work on.
The whole thing, I had to finally drag the coffee table out of the way so I could work around it.
A close up of the two new colors – I didn’t have enough for the whole row in either color so they are sharing this row. I had to do that with some of the other colors so it will work out ok in the end.
I got all of my circles appliqued on the row of Joseph’s Coat that I was working on last night so now it is time to get the next row of colors ready. These are the colors that come next starting on the right side. I was going to use some pinks too, but the colors I have just do not flow right going from the darker reddish colors to the pinks so I decided to leave them out. I do not quite like how the pinkish/red flows to the lavender than bluish/purple but there you have it – this is what I have and it will just have to be!
I will be working on that for several days I’m sure as I need to cut more background pieces as well.
Today I got all the blocks of Dizzy sewed together earlier this afternoon and all are pressed. I have the border strips cut out and I will be working on that today after I get off of the computer!
Last night after I got done with the circles on Joseph’s Coat I moved back into the quilting room and sat down at the frame. I have been neglecting this quilt and not putting in time every day like I said I would. I did get in an hour of quilting last night and I hope once I get the Dizzy top finished I will get back to work in here.
Star Crazy – the area I finished quilting last night:
The next area to quilt. Then when I get done with this side it will be time to move over to the right side of the quilt and quilt out from there.
I already have over 50 hours of quilting in on this quilt and I have been working at the quilting now for 7 1/2 weeks. I am maybe a 1/3 of the way done – lots of work left to do on it. Now I guess I better get off of the computer and get those borders sewed on Dizzy and then take a photo – and take the design wall down and get my dinning area back in shape.
We had good news today for our family. My mother who had surgery for cancer several weeks ago was told today by her doctor that she is cancer free-pathology came back clear. Surgery took care of it. Also we have a new addition to the family. My nephew John and his wife Kandy had a baby girl this morning – C-section 4 weeks early. She had a difficult pregnancy and they had to have the baby early. It was feared that she would be under 5 pounds and possibly have to go to the ICU but little Zoey weighed in at 5 pounds 6 oz. and in excellent health! Much bigger than the doctors had thought.
My 87 year old mother now has 27 grandchildren and 25 great grandchildren ( one more is due in early April) – wow we just keep growing and growing and some people ask if I make baby quilts for family – no way – too many to keep up with!!
Work on Joseph’s Coat, I am sewing the circles down this evening on that last diagonal row that I was going to do yesterday and didn’t get around to it.
Dizzy is coming along but I didn’t get done with as much of it this afternoon as I had hoped to, I got off to a late start on it – I had to get the grocery shopping done, then there was laundry to do also. One thing after another and I was delayed. I will try to finish it up tomorrow. Right now the 2 rows on the end in length need to be sewed on and then the border fabric.
Several have asked about the Double Wedding Ring quilt hanging on the edge of the photo. It is queen size, a Judy Niemeyer pattern. It came with the paper piecing patterns but at that time I had no sewing machine working and I didn’t do paper piecing –I hand pieced it all! The applique is needle turn. Hand quilted as always, I got best of show with it at the county fair in 2002, here it is. It took me 410 hours to make from start to finish – and that isn’t the longest I have taken to make a quilt 
Now I think after NCIS is over I should have all the circles appliqued on Joseph’s Coat and I might move back into the sewing room and put the tv on back here and get more quilting done on Star Crazy. I haven’t put as much time into it lately as I had intended to.
I think today I will get the circles all ready for the Joseph’s Coat quilt for the row I finished on the weekend. I have some ready and others ready for the pressing part of it. I think I needed about 18 and I have 20 here in this little pile ready to go. All basted, ready to pull tight around my mylar circler and press. As soon as I get all these circles applique in place I will start cutting out the next row. The applique goes quickly with all the ends all ready tucked under.
I finished the last row of Dizzy last night, now today I will start to experiment with placement and see what the edges would look like if I put on the point.
This was a very easy quilt to piece. What are you working on today – make sure to go over to Judy at Patchwork Times and see what everyone else is working on!
I woke up this morning with such a bad headache. I am waiting for it to go away before I get started on anything. In fact I am still sitting here in my robe and pj’s . It feels slightly better than it did when I first got up maybe that is a sign that it will be gone shortly?
Last night I put on an old Kevin Costner movie “The Postman” from the late 1990’s and remembered why I don’t watch Kevin Costner movies – he might be good in a few movies now and then but his “acting” in this one sucked big time! But I like to have something on for background noise while I am piecing and I wanted to get the piecing done on the row I was attaching and mission was accomplished, I got the row attached. Now I will do the circles before I move on to another row. It is easiest to applique the circles while they are on the end like this. It was a hassle before bunching up all that fabric to work on the circles in the middle. I think it is 18 or 19 circles to be made, some are already done but others to make.
I did measure across the bottom and right now it is 84 inches wide at the widest point. I want it to be at least 100 inches so more to go! I think I allowed for way too many yellows/orange colors and it will be tough to squeeze in all the colors I have left that I wanted to do. On the opposite corner from the yellows will be the greens and blues – might not be able to put in as many as I want. I will have to start watching that as I go and maybe cut down on the number of lavenders/purples that I was going to do – we will see!
If this headache clears up soon I am going to get my portable design wall up and move the “I’m so Dizzy” quilt blocks to it and also work on some more blocks. I have 16 more blocks to construct.
Is it too early to mention that I am going to the Paducah Quilt Show this year 
Mike is not working right now but he has a contract most likely coming up in May this year so we really need to take a trip before that right! I mentioned yesterday what did he think – a short trip to the quilt show? He asked when was it, I gave him the dates and he reserved us a couple nights at a campground nearby – it looks like we will be making that 6 hour drive over to Kentucky soon in the motorhome! (so much easier to find a campground than a motel room!!!!) I did remind him that if I went to the quilt show I would have to buy something LOL and he said that was ok he would be back to work soon I’m sure that if the weather cooperates and is not flooding rain like it was last year we will make several other stops and see some other campgrounds and things too. I don’t spend the whole 4 days at the show like some of you. I go to look at the quilts and the vendors – I don’t go for the classes and lectures which are probably all booked up already anyhow. I just like to look at the quilts and see what is new that the vendors have and how things work. And a nice stop to Hancocks of Paducah is normally a stop also of course (pick up some Quilters Dream batting and not pay shipping and handling!). We will be in the Paducah area for a day and a half.
If any of my readers are going let me know, maybe we can meet up at the show and say hi and put a face to the name and see if we have bought some interesting stuff!
Yesterday I got a little bit done on all four projects.
Thursday and Friday I quilted on the Farmers Wife:
The back shows up a little more:
Five more blocks on the “I’m So Dizzy” quilt – the design wall must come out, it is getting too crowded over here! I’m just pinning them where I can. I think it is time to take them down and stack them up until I get the wall up for the final design placement now.
A little quilting on Star Crazy and I need to get back to work on this one and keep trying to quilt every day, I am already going through my normal slack off rate on the 3 roller that I usually go through. I will have to watch that so that a day off doesn’t turn into a week or two away from it.
And last night some work on Joseph’s Coat – big mistake on that one. I went to start putting the diagonal row on it as I had finished piecing it only to find out I had turned a piece around on one that I had to take off, then I realize I had stitched two whole segments wrong and had to take that of – turned out 3 pieces had to be taken off and re-sewed down correctly. I finally did get started stitching the row down but I would have been further on it if I hadn’t had to take some of it apart first! Just all balled up here on the couch waiting for me to do some stitching – most likely I will get busy with it while the super bowl is on – I wait for the advertisements and get up and down doing other things while it is on
Wow it was nice yesterday – I think it got up to 64 degrees out here in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. I didn’t do near what I planned to on the quilting front as I was outside clearing out some brush instead. But towards the end of the day I did get busy and got the sewing machine going on some of those new blocks that I am working on.
Six blocks done. Right now I do not know how they will all come together. If I will just put them together row by row, maybe some sashing in between – maybe not? someone suggested the Bento Box quilt pattern – cut each block in quarters and mix them up and sew them back together again – hadn’t thought of that one. We will see. I don’t know how many blocks I will end up with, I’m horrible at math and hadn’t even thought to figure that one out!
I also got some hand piecing done on the Joseph’s Coat quilt – 5 more segments to piece and then I can start to put the row together. I have gotten this bunch pressed and put back in the box – I will work on the rest of them today I hope. (not all of these done today of course-this is from a weeks worth at least if not going on two weeks with as busy as I was last week out of town).
I didn’t get around to quilting on the frame until late, not much progress to show on that one. I will work on the Farmers Wife quilting on Thursday night at group and on Friday morning – maybe I will have some progress to show then.
Once again I felt like I was going to get a cold only to wake up the next day thinking maybe I wasn’t after all – I wonder at times if mental and physical exhaustion can make you feel like you are getting a cold? Two good nights sleep and although I still feel a little sleepy I no longer feel like I am getting a cold 
that makes me feel better all by itself! Back to exercise and regular routine this week.
Last night I sat at the quilting frame and got back to quilting and you know it made my sleepiness go away for awhile. As the quilt gets rolled up on the frame the extension of the area I quilt seems to become smaller – I do believe that roll at the bottom makes it harder to reach out therefore I quilt less width of space and the cranking of the quilt will go faster but needs more turns to get as much done if you know what I mean. I got done with the areas of the top of the black star and the areas on the sides of it last night.
The straight lines of the border section will take little time today and then I go back to the center of the quilt and work my way to the right side. The weather though looks to be very nice today so I wonder how much time I will sit at the frame today. It is very sunny but quite chilly still this morning – maybe 60 degrees though by afternoon.
Whenever I show a photo of my quilting and my hand held thimble is shown laying on the quilt I almost always get a comment asking what is that “stick, flat thing” on your quilt so I will leave a link again – it is a hand held thimble it works and it is the only thimble I use for hand quilting.
A little work has been done on Joseph’s Coat at well – these pieces are for the red diagonal line are just laying in place, segments hand pieced but not attached to the row.
The top of the row – I was a little confused this morning when laying these out to see how it was looking and how much left to do on this row – instead of laying the segments out at the top of the quilt I started at the bottom and it just doesn’t work that way – you have to lay them in the correct order for it to come together right! Luckily instead of starting to take pieces apart I thought maybe it will work out if I start them from the top instead of the bottom and it did – thank goodness! You see this top segment has 4 red pieces for it to lay out right– all the rest of them have 3 pieces – when starting from the bottom I had one red piece too many.
I ended up ordering a few more colors of bali watercolor batik for the flow of some of the next colors to look right. I hope to get the fabric this week although I don’t need them yet I want to make sure I have the color flowing right in the colors to come.
I guess even though I am only buying when needed to make a project come out right I really shouldn’t even start the year out saying I am not going to buy fabric for the year – it just never happens!! I am trying to keep myself under control though!!
I got to thinking yesterday about the fact that I will be at my mom’s about 2 days this week. I had to get sewing stuff ready for the week – I won’t bring any sewing for the day that she is in the hospital, too many people around and talking so much! We will be in and out anyhow and Mike and I will only be there part of the day. But for the two days at her apartment I had intended to just bring the Farmer’s Wife to quilt – then I remembered how warm she keeps it there. It might be too hot to quilt – I will bring it and if I get too warm I can set it aside and work on Joseph’s Coat.
So I spent several hours in between doing laundry cutting out and pinning the next row yesterday. Another red added-
Looking down at the row added.
When looking at the new color added to the last color it looks orangey to me, because it is by the carpet? I don’t know so I brought two pieces in to the dinning area table and the contrast between the colors is better in here I think.
I pin segments together and stack on the sandpaper board covered in felt. I start at the bottom of the quilt and work my way up. Then when I piece as I finish I stack from the top of the quilt to the bottom. Then start putting that row together. This really helps to keep things organized and sew the correct pieces together.
I don’t know if any of you remember that when first started this quilt I knew I wouldn’t have enough of my background fabric – the right hand side of the photo. I ordered more but they didn’t have the same color so I ordered a different light green which turned out much darker than I wanted it to be. I bleached it, and didn’t quite care for it so then I tea dyed it! 
then it was kind of peachy – but I wasn’t going to try anymore. I figured that if the quilt had graduated colors than the background could too. In this row I am starting to use the fabric on the left for the background and you can’t even see it when it is laid out on the carpet – weird.
I finally found one lighting source in the house where I could see the difference on the quilt but I figured if I hadn’t had to try so hard it was not going to be so noticeable of a difference in color that it wasn’t going to matter in this quilt.
I’m sure y’all are getting sick of Joseph’s Coat (yes I am keeping that name for the quilt for now) – but I really have not worked on much else recently. I got a lot of circles prepped last night and this morning and last evening I sat for about 2 hours stitching! I have 14 more circles to prep for this section of the quilt top that is done – that feels great!! After I get those attached I will get back to work on more rows so there will be changes coming up.
This is the only area left that needs circles on it.
Overall view.
I think I will get the remaining circles done this weekend, next week is kind of up in the air on what I will get done. My mom is having surgery on Monday and will be in the hospital for a night or two then home. I will be there on Monday and then maybe on Wednesday and Thursday. We are kind of playing it by ear right now as to how much care she will need after surgery. She might surprise us all and be just fine. If she needs me to stay with her for a day or two day I intend to bring the Farmer’s Wife quilt with me to work on. I have it ready and it is easier than bringing a bunch of pieces. I can quilt in between helping her out a little.
I hope you all have a great weekend!
