Cherry Checkerboard Quilt and I learned a new trick!

Cherry Checkerboard

Cherry Checkerboard with Super Helper

 I started this quilt a LONG time ago with the leftovers from this quilt. It sat around as a quilt top for, oh, forever. I have a hard time quilting anything larger than a baby quilt on my Bernina. Some people can ram a king size bedspread through there, but I am not one of them, being as I am not double jointed and have only the standard two arms.

Last year my local quilt store got a long arm quilter and made it available for renting. For $15/hr you can happily quilt tents or king size bedspreads or even normal size quilts. I took a class for 2 hours and the next day I quilted TWO quilts in about 7 hours. It was actually really fun. I dislike the quilting step on my domestic machine and expected not to like it on the long-arm. WRONG! I loved it. I will definitely be doing this regularly from now on. They even change the bobbin for you- and supply the thread. It's a great deal.

 I did loopdy-loops on this quilt and am very happy with how it turned out. Next time I might get brave and do some flowers or feathers or something fancy. 

We are keeping this quilt and are already using it on the couch. 

(But we do fold it up and put it away when we're done. At least while it still has that new car smell.)

I am linking up with Lit and Laundry for Finish For Friday. Swing on over and see what other bloggy persons have been up to.

ETA- I just found a really cool new to me blog, amylouwho, with a Sew and Tell for Fridays. There are some really really cool quilts and sewing projects over HERE.

Finish for Friday- vintage sheet quilt

I have a Finish for Friday again! I am shooting for one every Friday this month. You can join in, too. Just hop on over to Lit and Laundry to see what others have finished, and maybe even post something of your own!

My finish is the quilting on this vintage sheet quilt- I had the top done already but was procrastinating (of course) with the quilting. This quilt is for Paul's cousin's little girl, Sydney. I made one for her new baby brother and realized I had not made one for her when she was born. Her parents just bought a new-old house and coincidentally her bedroom is going to be orange and pink!

I did the closely spaced wavy line quilting again, which is my favorite quilting technique right now. I think it goes especially well with the vintage sheets because it reminds me of how old bedspreads were quilted.

The back is a cute, BRIGHT vintage sheet as well. Everything in this quilt is from an upcycled sheet, except for the flower head itself, which is from a kit that was supposed to be used to make placemats. Some of the sheets are not extremely old, but they are all used/recycled. They. Are. So. Soft. This is the first quilt that I have made entirely from vintage sheets and I have to make one for myself!!! As I was quilting it, I just kept running my hands over the finished part. It feels so GOOD!!!

This is Sydney's baby brother's quilt. I showed a picture of this before, but the quiting was not finished at that point.

I did a version of the same quilting, but switched directions in each square. I won't do that again!!!! I couldn't lock my stitch because the machine kept switching directions when I did that so I had to pull all the tails to the back and knot them.

There are over a thousand little knots on the back of this quilt. Which means I pulled half that many tails through to the back. Not fun.

It looks really nice, but was not worth the effort. I think the straight line all the way down the quilt looks almost as good for about a quarter of the effort.

So maybe by next Friday I will have them bound and ready to go to their new little owners!

Progress Report

It has a name now! I am calling her (because it is definitely a her) "Pink Tie Affair".

Black and White and Pink all over

So I have three days left to finish this. Nothing like a deadline to get the creative juices (or as I like to call it: "panic") flowing, huh? Kinda gets you moving, especially when you have a whole YEAR to make something and leave it til the last 3 days. But I have been known to do heroic amounts of sewing in very small amounts of time, so there is a chance that I will skate in under the deadline. I think I am going to call a quilt top a finish in this case. (Well, I always call a quilt top a finish, but that's not what we are talking about here.)
I have a box of frou frou to embellish this quilt. It will be for me, so I can have a sparkly, girly quilt to watch t.v. under.

I am a bit of a messy creator as is evidenced by these photos.

Cutting table:

Ironing table:


Do you... smell something?

Yes, yes. In there.

Hmm...


Ah! Someone must have stashed these in here for use in case of emergency.

This situation is not an emergency yet, unfortunately. Maybe on the 31st as I am frantically trying to finish this quilt top I will break open the box. MAYBE this situation won't even turn into an emergency and I can save it for later. ;0)

Some of my quilts

Duh! I realized that folks will want to see pictures (just like I do)! So here are a few that I have saved on my laptop already.

Here is my stash/sewing cabinet. It is "upcycled" from an old Sauder armoire that my grandparents used for years and passed on to me about 10 years ago. I had hubby put bead board behind it and I painted it off-white to match my dining room furniture. I sew on the dining room table and this way everything is handy. (So, yes, sometimes we eat in the living room!)

And this is a quilt I made for my SIL's wedding almost 3 years ago and I JUST finished it a couple months ago. (She hasn't even gotten it yet.) In my defense I had a second son in that time and worked full-time, night shift (DH works days) so there was very little "me" or craft time. These were their wedding colors and the center square is copied from their invitation. (A local embroidery shop did that for a reasonable price.) This quilt was long-arm quilted (not by me!) and is very large- a king-size.

This one is the one I chose for my avatar as I made it for myself. To keep! Yay! (I have given most of my quilts away.) I got the applique pattern from a book at the library and as I started it about 5 years ago, I have no idea what book it's from. It's a very happy quilt! This quilt was also long-arm quilted. This one is about a full-size.

This one was made for a friend's (30th!) birthday recently and it came together quickly. This was my first attempt at embellishing and I loved doing that. (It goes well with my OCD.) I do have regrets with this quilt. I don't like the borders- too big- and I wish I had quilted it more heavily. I hand quilted it (in the ditch), though, and only had 2 weeks to make the quilt, start to finish, so it is what it is. This is between a lap and a twin size quilt.

Here are some closeups of the individual blocks. This one I hand sewed little crystals "in the ditch". I got all the embellishments from old clothes- prom/bridesmaid dresses that were beyond other usefulness.

Little crystals in the corners.

For this one I used ribbon and wove it for the very center of the block.

The brown fabric has iridescent dots- so pretty in RL, but does not photograph well.

It's a bit hard to see, but there are little mirrored beads all over this square.

This block has turquoise sequins. Yes, I put sequins on a quilt! (I sewed them on really tight.)

More of the ribbon. I so enjoyed all the little fussy details on this quilt.

This quilt had a lot of sparkle to it. When my friend opened it and shook it out, it caught the light and just shimmered. I loved that, so I will have to make one for myself like that eventually.

I apologize for the quality of my photos. I need a better camera. That is on the list AFTER I get a new sewing machine. I had borrowed one but I think I wore it out as the needle won't go up and down anymore, so currently I am sewing on an old (pretty rough) White machine I got at a rummage sale for $3. (Good thing I picked that up!) DH has promised me a new machine, so here's hoping it's sooner rather than later.

I'm here!

I wanted to ask to join a quilt challenge and couldn't figure out how without a blog, so... here it is. Ta da! That was easy, now, wasn't it? Also, I have been saving a ton of cool blogs in my IE favorites and it's getting really full, so now I can link to them from here and make myself some room! (Sort of like "destashing" my favorites!)

I have recently discovered that there are a ton of wonderful crafty bloggers out there and I have gotten so much inspiration from them. Many thanks to all. After lurking around on here for a couple of weeks I want to throw away my whole stash and start over. Soooo many cool quilts. Wow. Now I want to start a bunch of new quilts, but first I have to read every post on every blog that mentions "fabric", "quilt" or "vintage". So that might take a while.

I reallyreallyreally like vintage fabric, well, ANY fabric, and love any vintage (or vintage-inspired) quilts or bags. I do like vintage clothes, but prefer to buy those. Making clothes is hard! (Ok, in all honesty, I prefer to buy and wear only pajama pants and/or steal my husband's.)

We are a cat-friendly household (we have 3 of them) and I often find myself saying "Git down kitty!" (I say "kitty" like Cartman on South Park does) so that's where I got the name for my blog. The kitties would quilt if they were tall enough to reach the foot pedal, and they enjoy changing up my designs. I lay quilt squares on the floor and the kitties immediately jump on them and start mixing them up. (Apparently I don't have "cat style".)