Quilts! Finished ones!

It's been awhile!

I got a new job at work, and it's a lot busier. And since I only have computer+Internet access at work, I haven't updated this for months.

Holidays and travel (both planned and unplanned) happened, and lots of sewing.

I did little projects, which I'm just realizing now that I didn't photograph. Boo.

But I have finished TWO quilts so far this year!



Maybe my favorite quilt photo ever.

It's a values quilt. For Tim. Since I started quilting, he's said that his favorite kind of quilt is scrappy patchwork. So that's what I did, for his birthday.

I took ALL my scraps and cut them into 1.75-inch strips, and then sorted them into dark and light piles.

I followed the Bright Furrows quilt pattern from Modern Log Cabin Quilting , but did the chain piecing a bit differently. Instead of working through four blocks at a time with each block in a different place to facilitate randomness, I worked on six blocks at a time with each block in the same stage but used different fabric strips.

Does that make sense? No? Maybe this does:



OK.

The finished blocks are 9 inches, and the quilt is 9 blocks by 8 blocks. It's bound with a small black dot on a white background, and backed with a sheet! It's held up very well through several washings, and the best part is that it was only $4 at Target. Boom!



Up close, you can't see the pattern at all.



First time free-motioning.









OK, one more. Of a cute helper puppy.



:::

And then I finished another quilt! The top had been almost done for months.



Dense quilting:



So dense that I ended up cutting the quilt top down a bit. I planned on it being a wall-hanging anyway ...



:::

And now, I'm working on my first ... paying quilt job!



It's a baby quilt for someone to give as a gift!

:::

We also moved recently, and Chowder is having a hard time with it.



And Tom is still Tom.

General update (what a lame post title)

Fall.

It's almost here.

Sure, most days last week had highs in the upper 80s and 90s. But the nights were cooler. Cooler than they've been all summer.

And the leaves are changing. The warm weather can't stop that. Though I thought it would somehow. I guess I don't understand science as well as I thought I did.

I've been sewing less and running dogs more.

Pre-run

Post-run

And baking. That's been happening a lot these days.

This bread went so fast I didn't have a chance to photograph it baked.

There was also tomato pie. Tomatoes from the garden!

I've never had or made a tomato pie before. It turned out good. Really, really good. Recipe here

I have done some sewing in the last month.

These linen blocks turned into...



... pillows!



They still need to be bound. But first I'll need to clean off the dog hair.

I made a pouch for laundry (NOT soda money for the office) quarters.



An owl and undies!



I also made a mini quilt.



I'm a big fan of the mini quilt. It's fast, easy and gives me a chance to practice skills -- appliqué, in this case.



The idea for this quilt came from here.

I got all the fabric from the scrap bin plus quarter-yard cuts of the brown and blue at a local fabric store for $10. I mixed in some other scraps from my stash once I was home and ended up with lots of leftovers.

It went together very quickly. I started by cutting out the vegetable shapes. I used fusible web and did two at a time because I knew I was making two quilts. (There's a second one, it's just not bound yet.) Then I selected what greens went well with each veggie and cut the top leaves, again with fusible.

I appliquéd the leaves first, using a zig-zag stitch. I used the same green thread for each of the leaves.



Then I appliquéd the veggies. I used the same burnt-orange thread for everything but the garlic.



I used 1-inch painters tape to mark my quilting lines and went vertical in the brown (dirt) and horizontal in the blue (sky).

I backed each with a fat quarter. I had an inch of overhang on each side, so these suckers are about 17 by 21 inches. I didn't plan it that way, but it worked out nice.

I added a hanging sleeve before I bound then up, so they don't have to hang by two little bluebirds.

But the birds are pretty cute, right? They came from Astoria this summer.