KatyQuilts

Work in Progress Wednesday

Posted on February 12, 2014 by katyquilts

First of all, thank you all so much for the lovely comments regarding our beautiful grand son, Baby L. Even from a distance he brings so much joy to us! It seems every spare minute, we have been texting, calling, face timing with our son. I apologize for not responding to individual comments this week. I just haven’t been able to keep up. I do appreciate each and every one.

Yesterday I got these bow ties sewn into rows before work.

They were left over from Daughter #1’s wedding quilt. Can you believe I had 90 blocks left over?

D#1 and SIL have a friend going through chemo. So I am going to get this top finished and then she is going to come over and quilt it on my Avante.

BTW, here are some pics I snapped the other day when she was over sewing with me.

She brought the grand dog who never left her side.

I also finished sewing the rows of the hexie quilt together.

Time to get a bit of housecleaning done before work today.

I am linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

Posted in Fresh Modern Quilts, Modern Quilts, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

So much goodness!

Posted on February 11, 2014 by katyquilts

Yesterday sure was an exciting day! I spent most of it with Daughter #1 shopping for fabric and planning out bedding for Baby Q due in June. These are the fabrics she chose.

She worked on a mobile with a wee bit of help from me.

Isn’t it adorable? Those are little whales hanging amongst the “water drops.”

I started piecing the rows together for this:

And I came up with a plan to use these leftover blocks from the wedding quilt I made for Daughter #1 last year.

All this was great distraction while awaiting news of our beautiful grandson’s arrival. And here is one more pic of our beautiful Daughter in Love and Baby Liam.

We are so blessed!

Linking up with Connie at Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Posted in Fabric, Fresh Modern Quilts, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

He’s here!

Posted on February 10, 2014 by katyquilts

Our beautiful grandson was welcomed to the world by our #1 Son and Daughter in Love yesterday afternoon.

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Design Wall Monday

Posted on February 10, 2014 by katyquilts

I finished piecing the blocks for the wheelchair quilt this weekend. I hope to sew them together and a narrow border added today.

I also threw my calendar blocks up on the wall.

I made these in May of 2010 so it is time they got finished.

I loaded my little Midwinter Blues quilt into the frame and started quilting last night. I also want to finish this today.

I am linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times for DWM.

Posted in Civil War Repro Quilts, Design Wall Monday, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

A Year of Red and White Challenges

Posted on February 9, 2014 by katyquilts

SewCalGal is hosting a Year of Red and White Challenges. For more info, click here.

The first part of the challenge is to share a red and white quilt you made prior to 2014. So here is mine. I made this quilt in the spring of 1997. We were homeschooling our kids at the time and I hung it in our school room when we lived in France.

At that time, I used a CAD program called Visio to draft my block patterns. Some of these were paper pieced and some traditionally pieced. It is all done by machine. This represents some of my earliest machine quilting. The crosshatching was done with a walking foot and the Baptist Fan border was done with FMQ on my 1955 Singer 201. I love that machine!

Please check out the other entires for this phase of the challenge by clicking here.

I am linking up with Marelize at Stitch by Stitch for:

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Spectacular Saturday and Slow Stitching Sunday

Posted on February 9, 2014 by katyquilts

Yesterday, Mr. Wonderful and I took a little road trip. If you are going to take a road trip, you have to have a project…. So I got this out:

I did a tutorial back here on machine piecing these but I enjoy hand piecing as well. Because I do not sew into the seam allowances, I can hand and machine piece interchangeably on this project. Here is the kit I took.

I have an adorable sewing kit from a SQT swap partner but apparently I put it in a very safe place, so safe that it is safe even from me! I am on a mission to locate that today. I will work on this some more while watching the Olympics today.

I also plan to cut a bunch more scraps into hexies for this as I will take it to Arizona when I go to meet my new grandson. We are on full out baby watch right now!

And this is a hint of where our road trip took us:

You weren’t supposed to take pictures during the show. Mr. Wonderful got tickets to Cirque du Soleil! It was amazing and we had perfect seats.

Have you heard about the Red and White Challenges over at SewCalGal’s blog? Today is the last day to enter a red and white quilt made before 2014. There will be other red and white challenges through the year. I will post my red and white later today but here is a sneak peak.

I hope to take pictures outside this afternoon and then I will do a full post about it.

I am linking up with Kathy for Slow Stitching Sunday. Also linking up with A Quilting Reader’s Garden for Hexie Weekend.

Posted in Civil War Repro Quilts, Hand piecing, Hexagons, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Pieces and Parts

Posted on February 8, 2014 by katyquilts

Like most quilters, I have scraps. I cannot tell you I have a great solution for dealing with them. I do keep my Quilt of Valor scraps separate from the rest in baskets like this:

For the last few months, I stop every so often and cut them into units I think would be useful and store them in containers like these:

I also toss in any leftover pieces and parts from QOV blocks.
I found out this week that our local VA hospital is in need of wheelchair quilts. It seemed a perfect time to start using some of these bits! I had lots of these red parallelograms that I had cut wrong for a quilt last summer and found enough whites and blues in the box to make these units.

Which will become these blocks:

It will only take 9 to make a wheelchair quilt. I hope to have it finished by next Wednesday to drop off at our local guild meeting.

Happy Saturday!

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Finish it up Friday

Posted on February 7, 2014 by katyquilts

I just have two little finishes today because I forgot to take pictures of my big finishes this week. Maybe tomorrow. On my list for the FAL 2014, was a project with these:

These little 9 patches have been around for at least 4 years. I made them from a Moda charm pack of something or other! I tried several layouts.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to add other fabrics into charm packs that are from a different line? Nothing looks right. Finally, I decided to just put them together by themselves. I did find a suede looking brown for the border that matched pretty well. The blocks are 3 inches and the whole quilt measures about 27 inches square. It will likely end up in our local Habitat for Humanity quilt auction. M y original FAL 2014 post can be found here.

I quilted a half inch diagonal grid across it.

I have one other small finish for the week, my challenge piece for the Small Quilt Talk group. I decided to make a pincushion instead of a quilt. Although I had planned to use all vintage fabrics for these challenges this year, I decided a pincushion needed to be made of sturdier stuff. So I used new scraps. Here is the front:

And here is the back:

I fill my pincushions with rice.

I am linking up with Amanda at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday and Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get whoop Whoop?

Posted in Doll Quilts, FAL 2014, Finishes, Small Quilt Talk Group, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

The Pink Sheet

Posted on February 6, 2014 by katyquilts

Woo hoo!! This week I am featured on Gemma’s blog, Pretty Bobbins! Thanks, Gemma! If you have never visited her blog, please have a look. She makes the loveliest quilts and is just starting her long arm business. I know you will enjoy her colorful little corner of the world. And the art deco inspired quilt she just finished quilting will blow you away!

I have decided that I need to be intentional about making time to practice my feathers. This means I have to be more patient about taking a quilt off the frame when I am done and using the extra batting and backing to practice. I bought a bright pink sheet from the thrift store and I have been tearing a piece off to practice on at the end of every quilt.

The next set is my next strip. I marked some squares and lines before stitching.

And that is about all the pink I can handle for one day!

If you are still with me, I am linking up with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday and Gemma at Pretty Bobbins.

Posted in Free Motion Quilting, HQ Avante, Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Hexie Tutorial

Posted on February 4, 2014 by katyquilts

I had so many questions about my hexagon quilt that I showed Monday, that I decided to do a quick tutorial to answer them.

First , here are the dies I used.

I know, they look like they don’t go together, but they do. The hexagons have 2 1/2″ FINISHED sides. The triangles do too but the measurement listed here is UNFINISHED. Why did Accuquilt do this? I have no earthly idea. Trust me, they work. (ETA: I knew they were compatible because Accuquilt will list compatible dies in the product info.)

Start by cutting a bazillion hexies and two bazillion triangles. Seriously, you need two triangles for every hexie.

The dies cut the points off the triangles so they line up nicely with the hexagons when you are ready to sew.

See? They really do fit!

Sew one triangle to two opposite sides of each hexie.

Press seams toward the triangles.

Arrange your pieces into rows.

Take care when placing them right sides together. It will look weird, but those nipped corners will help you line things up.

I don’t use pins. And my points are close enough for me.

I actually wait to press the seams in my rows until I have them all pieced. That way I can press rows in opposite directions so my seams nest.

When your rows are long enough, cut strips as wide as your hexies and cut at a 60 degree angle with a rotary cutter and ruler.

This is how you straighten out your rows. There are two different ways you can piece your rows together. I did mine like this and got white 6 pointed stars.