Master Bedroom quilt progress

I spent quite a few pleasant hours Saturday and Sunday, working on the queen-size quilt for our bedroom. My design wall isn't big enough to lay out the whole quilt at one time, so I decided to do the quilt in quarters. I divided the various fabric squares as equally as possible into four stacks of fabric, making sure to get a fairly even distribution of sizes and colors.

Then, I took the first stack and started to lay it out on the wall. I began with the largest squares, placing one in the top left corner of the quilt, and trying (rather badly at one point) to keep colors and sizes working while laying out the fabric. While doing the planning for this quilt, I realized that if I wanted it to be random, I needed to ensure that the pieces I used could be sewn into "blocks" so that they could be easily joined without messing with set-in seams. Picturing random sizes of blocks as I laid out the squares really helped. Here's the first quarter of the quilt up on the design wall.


And, here it is all sewn up on Sunday afternoon. There were a few changes as I went along, but not too many.


Since I was in the swing of the quilt, I decided to design the second quarter of the quilt Sunday evening. Here it is on the design wall:

As you can see from the pictures of the two sections, I will be doing a bit of rearranging before I do more sewing.

If I was a bit more blog savvy I could post the two of them next to each other, but for now, this will have to do! :0) I'll have to put "positioning of pictures in the blog" up higher on my list of things to learn!

Anyway, I think it is coming along pretty well. Now, to work on my lazy daisy, cretan and chevron stitch for Take a Stitch Tuesday. I believe I may be a bit behind in my stitching! :0)

Buttonhole - final

I've spent some time finishing up this buttonhole sampler today.


I got bored with the squares and rectangles so just started playing with the stitch. The pink on the bottom portion kinda meandered around and then all of a sudden it looked a bit like mountains so I thought I would try a saguaro with some #3 perle cotton. Although the #3 was too large a thread for this treatment, I think it would be a viable way to make a saguaro with a bit of practice.

There is a three-pronged deep pink section on the lower right that I really like. To my mind it reminds me of stylized fuchia blossoms. This one I will definitely use along a crazy quilt seam.

Just a short post today as I want to get some quilting done. I'll be back in a couple of days!

Oh, about the accident... I'm fine now, although I was a bit shook up afterwards. It looks like they'll be able to fix the van... the final decision will be made next week after they pull it apart to really get a good look at the frame, etc. So far, so good!

Quilting content!

I certainly hope that the remainder of 2007 goes better than the first three weeks. Friday night I had an accident on the way home from work and smashed the heck out of my pretty red van. I had a bit of muscle soreness in my back but that is all as far as my injuries. I don't know the extent of the damages to the van yet... the insurance company got a rental car for me right away but I don't have an appraisal yet. I sure hope it isn't totalled!

On a brighter note, I chose the fabrics for the quilt for our master bedroom.


I'm going to be doing a really simple "pattern" that came from a post in December 2005 on Lisa Call's blog New Works and Inspiration (scroll down). I wanted lots of color without spending huge amounts of time working with an intricate pattern. I'm still a beginning quilter so I work pretty slowly, and I have quite a few sane quilts lined up to do this year... and I want to do some crazy quilting, too!

Glenn had to work graveyard shifts over the weekend so I spent about 6 hours on Sunday in my little workroom and got most of the pieces cut out. I only cut one group of 8 or so squares the wrong size; however, the beauty of this pattern is that you can substitute a pieced square for a solid square and no one will know the difference!

I haven't done any more on my Take a Stitch Tuesdays sampler, unfortunately. I hope to catch up this weekend 'cause I need some stitching time!

Buttonhole stitch - a beginning

I've started on my buttonhole stitch sampler for Take a Stitch Tuesdays . I decided to be a little bit more freeform this time around, trying to explore my boundaries somewhat. In between blowing my nose and trying to stay warm, here's my progress:

I like the graphic shapes that are appearing and plan to continue in this way till the sampler is full. These are 5"x7" (about 13cm x 18cm) sizes and will work well in the scrapbook I'll be using to hold all the stitches I play with this year during TAST.

Here's a photo of the scrapbook. It holds 8"x8" (about 20cm square) sheets and I found it at Target (I love Target!) and then bought some extra sheets to add to it.


Here is the cover page so when somebody stumbles across this worn little book in a 100 years they will know who did it, when and the genius behind it (that would be Sharon).


These are the inner pages... I plan on putting my sampler on the right hand side, then printing pictures of specific stitches that I fall in love with from the needleworkers involved in the challenge on the left side so I can refer to them. I think it should work well.


Since my samplers will of course be fairly thick I may have to go to a second scrapbook but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In other news... the cold is almost gone; however, I broke a tooth last night. Sheesh!

Herringbone - Final for TAST

Short post today, ladies, as I have been felled by a vicious little virus and feel like carp. :0(

Here is my Herringbone Stitch Sampler for Take a Stitch Tuesdays (TAST). I think it was pulled a bit out of square by the hoop and the word herringbone needs some help; however, I plead ill health. ;0)



After seeing everyone's freeform stitching I had to try it on the bottom section of the sampler. After awhile I kinda got the hang of it and plan on playing with it some more. Do check out the link above, there is some great stitching going on out there!

Herringbone stitch - Take a Stitch Tuesdays

Here's my Herringbone sampler... at least part of it. I still have more to do but other things have been getting in the way of my stitching. Sorry, the picture isn't the best!


I used #3 and #5 perle cotton, along with some silk floss and beads. As I said I'll be doing more on this sampler but I wanted to get it up before the next one comes out!

Everyone has been doing some great variations on this stitch. To see what others have done, please check out Sharon Boggon's Take a Stitch Tuesday page for links to examples of Herringbone stitch. You'll be glad you did!

I have been away from the blog too long. We've been spending extra time on yard work and getting everything put away after Christmas. We're also coming down to the last few piles of "stuff" from our move. This has been taking way to much time and we are VERY tired of it... I hope to see the end of the reorganization soon!! When we left Colorado quite a bit of our stuff went into storage, and then some of my Mother's got added to it, and each of the boys left some boxes, too. Well, by the time we got around to moving it down to Phoenix, everyone had forgotten that their stuff was mixed in with our stuff... so, of course it ended up here and we have the task of sorting through it... and mailing it back to them or storing it here until we drive back up. Not to mention all the collections of stuff that I no longer collect... sometimes I look at it and think "What the heck was I thinking?" and then I think "WHAT am I gonna do with this?"

We just plain have too much stuff!