I finished her off!
It is with great relief that I present to you, Calamity Jane.
Her piecing is humble.
Her quilting is simple.
And she did not want to cooperate for pictures.
Rebellious child.
Lining up with Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Quokka Quilts
The end of the year seems to be the time to look back and count things up! But this post is just about my monthly goals and to see how well I followed through on my lists. Here is the list of goals I had set for December.
But the quilt got done! Hooray! I will show finished pictures tomorrow.
2. Quilt the last 4 QOV tops that I have here. Done!
3. Border and quilt a panel that I purchased last summer. Done!
4. Make one more baby quilt. Done! In fact, I made two!
5. And I really do want to get that pink and green one done. 
I’m so close that I might get it done tonight! Stay tuned!
And what else did I finish? My quilt for the SQT challenge.
And those curtains that confounded me for so long!
I also quilted one customer quilt and did some machine embroidery work for another.
And now for January.
Do you have any goals set for this month? In the past, I have set January aside to work on quilts for me. This year, my focus will be mostly on quilts for others.
Have a great day!
I finally started quilting my Morning Star UFO. I used green thread for the piano key border. I’m having a hard time keeping this straight and even. Hopefully it won’t show much!
I am also using the green for the feathered wreathes in the block centers. As you may recall, these centers were too poofy due to some poor piecing on my part. To combat this, I decided to quilt this with two layers of batting. I have my last bit of Warm and Toasty 100% cotton on the bottom and a layer of low loft Pellon poly on the top.
Not real happy with these either, but we will move along! I am using cream Glide thread on the rest of the quilt. Here are the feathers in the background.
They don’t match real well in the corners!
This is how I am quilting the star points. I think this quilting is my favorite bit so far.
I have quite a way to go, but I still hope to finish this by the end of the year.
Linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I had scheduled several posts ahead for last weekend and I am just now getting back to writing new posts. My daughters are mighty crafty girls and I wanted to show you some of their wonderful creations today. I mentioned before having craft days with my girls. On one of our craft days recently, Daughter #3 made these adorable pillows.
She used her Cricut to make a freezer paper stencil to make this pillow top and filled it in with fabric paint.
She also made this adorable garland for her fireplace with help from Daughter #1 during one of our craft days.
Daughter #2 out in Arizona is very crafty too! She made hubby and I this incredible sign and gave it to us for Christmas.
Isn’t it adorable? The grand dogs on either end are her babies.
Daughter #1 is very crafty too, but she has been a bit busy with the new baby. She gave me these beautiful fat quarter bundles for Christmas. My first Cotton and Steel, love the colors!
And this Tina Givens bundle has some very interesting prints!
Daughter #3’s boyfriend gave me this quilt puzzle for Christmas. I’m so glad he joined the family, he will do puzzles with me and Daughter #3 even helps when he is here!
Mr. Wonderful gave me a new iPad, a useful gift for all my crafting for sure! I’ve had a mini for a while but I love the bigger screen and that I have more storage for pictures. It is how I do most of my blogging as well.
I am blessed, not just with gifts, but with kids that I can be crafty with and family that get me! I hope your Christmas and time with family was wonderful as well.
I thought I would try to get one more UFO off my list for the year. These blocks have been around for years. I finally completed the top a few months ago and I have been trying to come up with a quilting plan ever since.
But it is hard to come up with a plan when you don’t work at it! I finally pulled up this picture in my Adobe Ideas app and started to play.
Yeah, I know my last feather episode was a total disaster. But I am going to try again. And I think this might work. The blocks themselves will be challenging since they kind of poof out in the center.
I cut a piece of paper to fit this space so I could make a template for the feather spine. Once that is marked on the quilt top, I will freehand the feathers themselves. I think I will do a simple piano key border since the fabric there is so busy.
I found some old fabric for the backing that matches well. This stuff has aged enough. It is probably from the early 90s!
And just to force myself to move forward with this, I even pieced the backing and loaded it on the frame. Now I can’t quilt anything else until this is done.
Linking up with Patchwork Times, Cooking Up Quilts, Em’s Scrapbag
Cheryl over at Meadow Mist Designs is hosting a linky party for bloggers to share their “Best of 2015” posts. “Best of” can be defined anyway you like! It can be your favorite quilts, most popular posts etc.
Here are my favorite posts from this past year:
What are your favorite accomplishments from 2015?
Please visit Meadow Mist Designs to see other favorites from this past year.
This was a quick little boy quilt that I put together last week.
I purchased this panel last summer in Phoenix. Last week I added the yellow borders and quilted it. The quilting is not precision work! I started using a ruler and the extended base on my machine. However, the backing I chose created too much drag in combination with the ruler base. So I decided to just freehand everything. I roughly quilted around the vehicles and added some contour lines into the landscape.
For the backing, I purchased a fuzzy throw blanket at a local discount store for $7.99. It is extremely soft and probably a third of the cost had I purchased yardage. You can see it has some color variation in it. I’m good with that.
Yes, it is every bit as soft as it looks! You have to be very careful not to over stretch the backing when working with this stuff. I was not entirely successful in that but I imagine most little boys won’t care! I used a low loft poly batting and Glide thread.
I had a lot less trouble with the quilting on this than on the Spider-Man quilt I did last summer with the same type of backing. I still don’t love working with it though! I would want to do a few more practice pieces with this before I would use it with a quilt top I was in love with.
Hope of all hopes, dream of our dreams,
a child is born, sweet-breathed; a son is given to us: a living gift.
And even now, with tiny features and dewy hair, He is great.
The power of leadership, and the weight of authority, will rest on His shoulders.
His name? His name we’ll know in many ways—
He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Dear Father everlasting, ever-present never-failing,
Master of Wholeness, Prince of Peace.
His leadership will bring such prosperity as you’ve never seen before—
sustainable peace for all time.
This child: God’s promise to David—a throne forever, among us,
to restore sound leadership that cannot be perverted or shaken.
He will ensure justice without fail and absolute equity. Always.
The intense passion of the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies,
will carry this to completion
Isaiah 9:6-7 The Voice
Since Christmas falls on Friday, I thought I would post my finishes early this week.
Hopefully, this will be my last Noteworthy post for a while. Please note that I said Noteworthy, not noteworthy. I hope all my posts are noteworthy! LOL! Anyway, I finished the two baby quilts and here they are.
It was windy and dark the day I took pictures. They really are straight and square!
And here is my favorite of the two.
I made sure “Las Vegas” didn’t appear in this one either! LOL!
The backing is from Ikea, purchased quite a few years ago. It was nice to use up some bits from the stash on these!
Now, I need to get my house cleaned before church this afternoon. I hope you all have a blessed Christmas Eve!
Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts
I am working on the binding of Calamity Jane today and thought I would share a bit about my process. This is not a full out binding tutorial. Just a few tips. 
I love vintage enamelware and have collected it for some time. I use it a lot in my sewing room. When I press my bindings, I let it side off my ironing table into a bowl.
It stays loosely pooled in the bowl until I am ready to attach it. It never gets wrinkled or out of sorts.
Then I take the bowl to my sewing machine and set it on the floor. I comes out opposite of the way it went in, tangle free. I have to say that I rather perversely enjoyed needling Jane a bit.
When I hand sew the binding, I do not use any pins, clips etc. to hold the binding in place. I’ve realized recently that I hold things a bit differently than a lot of quilters. I place the quilt face down on my lap with the binding facing me. I take a stitch into the backing and catch a small bite of the fold with my needle. I hope you can get the idea from this picture. I use my left hand to hold the binding in place an inch or so ahead of where I am sewing. It is like a small applique stitch. The stich in this picture is a bit bigger than what I normally take but I wanted you to see what I meant.
The next picture shows what it looks like from the other side.
I will probably finish the hand sewing of this binding while the family is here over Christmas. I sure hope Jane behaves.
Linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts
