Christmas Present Making Time

Sew for Hours ~ Make My Presents

This should have gone up last week, so I am posting it and this week’s today.

Every year I come up with a new idea for my homemade Christmas presents. This year I am making napkins/hand towels...however you want to use them.  For some I am using long 2 1/2 strips of fabric, and on others 9 - 2 1/2 inch squares sewn together and attached alone the hem about 2 inches up. I ordered the napkins from Amazon, but unfortunately the 100% cotton ones really wrinkles. They may need to be ironed before using each time...UGH! The second back I ordered were cotton and polyester mixed, and they were thicker and after preaching they dried out without any wrinkles...WOO~HOO. I have 24 of each kind...a total of 48 in al...and I still have 22 more to complete. I used white thread so the underside would look better...all white. For the pictures, I folded the napkins in different way so I could get more together to photograph.

Here are some of the ones I have finished so far:

 Contrasting Solids

 Red Quilting Squares

 Blue Quilting Squares 

 Pastel Colored Quilting Squares 

This shows you the length of the towels. They are folded into thirds.

 There are irregularities in the sizing of the 100% cotton ones after prewashing and drying..

These are waiting to be made. The fabric strips are Mary Engelbreit fabrics ~ one set of four in red and white fabrics and the other set is green and white fabrics. They are so cute and festive.

With these I think I am going to use white thread on the spool and red on the bobbin.

Will do a trial run to be sure it looks ok. Gotta have the tension correct or it will be a mess.

Here is an example package of precut coordinated fabrics like the ones I used.

A BIG HUG and SUPER BIG THANKS go out to the very talented Amanda Jean. Her fabulous blog is  Crazy Mom Quilt.  It is filled with tutorials and lots of little things you can make plus quilts. On her post celebrating the 9th birthday of her blog earlier in November, she asked us all to leave her a comment telling her about the things we had made where we had gotten the idea from her blog. Well, this is only one of MANY  of her things I have made, and I plan to post more in the days to come. So sorry Amanda Jean that I did not make it it before the cut off time to post to your blog, but I am giving you credit now. I had just made so many of your things that I ran out of time putting the post all together. I have learned so much from you.

                                               This Week’s Update ~ Made Lots More

 So far I have finished 39.

Now, I have 16 more to make!

This post is linked to Amanda Jean and her wonderful blog, Crazy Mom Quilts
 Finish It Up Fridays.
A belated congratulations on your 9th Birthday 
and ALL the beautiful things you have made durning that time.

WIP Wednesday ~ 1-8-14

 Vintage Quilt Revival Block-Aong

My book arrived on Monday so I have started my quilt blocks. This is a wonderful book which goes along with my 100 Modern Quilt Blocks beautifully. For the block-along, we are to complete two blocks a week for a total of 20 blocks.  I just finished my first one...

Oh, Happy Day!

Classic Double Z Block ~ Block #1

Keeping these blocks in the right direction for sewing was a major problem for me. I would flip the one on the right over on top of the one on the left, but somehow I would flip it again so I sewed the wrong sides together. Finally, I figured out a plan. Flip the 2 squares on each other and then take my purple marking pen and draw 2 arrows in the CORRECT direction and write the number to the row on my ironed out seam. Voila...it worked. It took lots of ripping before I figured out a plan, but I did it. 

Here it is sewn together...

...and the front of my finished first square. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to force myself to use stash fabrics if at all possible, so that is what I did. The colors are more muted that they are showing up in this shot...way more vintage looking.

Now, I am ready to tackle block #2 which involves paper piecing...ugh....Classic Riviera Block

This post is linked with WIP Wednesday

It’s Present Making Time

 I am working hard making my Christmas Presents

Quilted Christmas Table Runner

The underside is a pattern which can be used all year round.

The lighting in my dining room is nada so will try again to get a better shot.

Inexpensive student composition book covered with fabric for use as  journal.

 Christmas table runner under construction.

The backing of this one is a batik.

 Four quilted hot plates under construction.

Two mores pieced squares to make into quilted hot plates.

Quilted Christmas tree wall hanging under construction.

A fall wreath with pinked ties knotted around a coil of medium wire covered with formal tape.

Quilts for Special Friends

Faith’s Quilt

This baby quilt was made for the newborn daughter of my dear friend and fellow middle school English teacher, Megan Ziegler. Megan and Timm gave her the most beautiful name... Justice Faith Ziegler

This lap quilt was made for my friend and hematologist, Dr. Padmaja Mellidi.

Sunbonnet Sue

    While killing time in our local antique mall - a.k.a.flea market - I came across this old Sunbonnet Sue quilt marked $150.00. I took it off the rack and noticed a number of what I call "old age" stains on it, so put it back, walked sadly to my car, and drove to  my PT appointment. Afterwards, being that I would not get it off of my mind, I went back to the store and started looking at it again. Knowing that summer would be here soon and I could lay it out in the sun with some diluted lemon juice, I decided to go up and ask my friend, Oliver, what was the best deal was he could give me on it. He called the owner and came back with $75.00. I almost flipped, and of course I said...SOLD!  It is in WONDERFUL condition, all the precious prints are so old and beautiful, it is all hand sewn with perfect tiny stitches, and the stains I can work with in time. Why do I work at 72? Well, this is one of the reasons why....so I can treat myself to things like this every once in a while to bring joy to me and brighten our home. Buddy was ecstatic when I brought it in the house, and now it hangs proudly in our sun room. We love it, and the day of work it took me to purchase it was well worth the effort.

"Men should be judged not by their tint of skin, the gods they serve, the vintage they drink, nor by the way they fight, or love, or sin, but by the quality of the thought they think.”
 ~ Adela Florence Nicolson

This post is linked with Ruby Tuesday over at Work of the Poet, 

and

Rednesday at It’s a Very Cherry World.

A Beautiful Thursday Through the Lens of a Camera

There are not many early mornings as beautiful as today’s, but this one was so special I had to stop and take a few photos.  Every morning I leave the house just before 7:00 and go to our school’s central office and pick up the mail.  From there I drive out onto a state road and then onto the interstate for the almost 30 mile drive to my school.  Today when I pulled into our two laned Route 60, I was awed by the beauty in front of me and just had to stop and take some pictures.  The other folk on the road were not too happy with me jumping on and off the road, but I was a determined old gal.

You can see these beautiful mountains from my old middle school which after consolidation became the central office for Rockbridge County Schools.  Back in those days I only drove 5 miles to get to work.....I didn’t know how good I had it. Now I drive almost 30 miles one way! This is the same mountain range but from a different angle.

Here is the view from my school on the other end of the county when I arrived around 7:45. As you can see, it is a rural school surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  It is a gorgeous setting for a school...the tragedy is we are on the chopping block to either move into town to be combined with the another middle school from where I retired, or to a brand new school which would be built to hold both schools. Either way, I doubt I will make it that long.  Once I turn 72, it will be time to begin to seriously consider REALLY retiring!

Once inside my closet “cellblock”, I decided to make some colorful additions to perk it up a little bit more.  First I added another M.E. placemat left over from my birthday party back in February.  But I didn’t stop there.  A friend of mine who own a precious gift shop in Lexington have me a packet of M.E. Queen thank you notes.  Well, I put one of those on each side of the placemat.  Guess what????  I didn’t stop there.

On the old blackboard which I do not use, I hung the a red and blue I made before returning to work.  As you all know, I really LOVE red!!!

My next move was to hang my red, white, and green pique wall hanging on the door leading into the other half of the “closet” which houses the main system for the computers for our school. I made it one summer when I went to Arrowmont Craft School in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and it is one of my old favorites.

Adding all of this red to the room left my rocker pretty bland, so I hung a cotton quilt my son gave me years ago over the back, and I placed my red plaid back pillow on the seat for my back.

Even though I brought this in several weeks ago, I decided to close the post with Buddy’s and my favorite alarm clock which sits on my desk.  He and I are avid New York Yankees fans, and I bought this clock for him years ago during a visit to Ledgends Field in Tampa, Florida, but I took it off to work with me because the it is so funky.  When the alarm goes off, it yells out things like, “Gone, it’s a home run!” It’s programmed to say about 5 different things.  My principal allows me to call my BFF each day at 11:00 to be sure she is o.k. After 2 strokes, RA, and osteoporosis, I fret about her all the time.  He is really kind and understanding to allow me to touch bases with her each day.  When the alarm goes off, the kids get the biggest kick out of it.  My return offenders know I am calling Weezie, and as soon as I hang up - after about 2-3 minutes - they always want to know how she is doing.  I have multiple photos of the two of us on my desk so they all know who she is. 

You can see from this post that no matter how plain and drab a room can be, with a bit of tender loving care you can easily put a new face on it and make it much more enjoyable for the folk who spend time in it.

I LOVE MY SCHOOL!

In closing,  I want to share 1 last picture with you.  When I got home and was walking up to the front porch of the house, right to my left was the most beautiful single butterfly chowing down on one of our few marigolds still in bloom.

 Like I said at the beginning of the entry.....

THIS WAS ONE BEAUTIFUL THURSDAY!

A Pictorial Journal of My Year of Quilting One Stitch at a Time

After about 25 years of compulsive knitting and needlepoint, my wrists and thumb joints decided I needed a rest bringing me to realize it might be advisable to look into some other sort of handwork/needlework. I had always sewn my children’s clothes when they were growing up...the little matching boy and girl outfits when they were babies and then school and church clothes as they aged. At age 70 that really didn’t appeal to me anymore, but the idea of going back to my quilting roots did.  I was aware of all the neat quilting shops opening up, the precut colorful fabrics, and the fabulous sewing machines so I decided to go for it.

Well, it has been one huge, very slow, learning experience, but it’s been exciting and a joy from the onset. I was a hand quilter with those mini-stitches, a swinging frame from our sleeping porch, church quilting bees out in the country, a huge frame in the living room as well as the big oval ones that sat in my lap.  All fabric was measured and cut out by hand with plain old heavy pinking shears. There were no companies like Moda offering precut shapes and sizes of material ready to stitch, no rotary cutters, and no protective rubbery things to cut on with those SHARP round blades.  There was certainly no quilting done on a sewing machine! All piecing and sewing together were put together by hand. All we had were LOTS of needles and LOTS of thimbles!!!

Since I could only find one photo of my huge quilting frame with my daughter, who is now 47, and a very pregnant me working away on a huge cross-stitched quilt, I decided to attempt to document my work in photos so I would have some record to refer back to in the years to come.What follows is a group of collages I made using Picnik capturing the quilted things I have made this year.  My other sewing projects I hope to share at another time.  When I look at these pictures, I am amazed at how small and simple my quilts are when compared to the magnificent quilts out there created by the “real” quilters of our blogging world, but for me I am very happy with my accomplishment.I still have a lot to learn and a long ways to go before I feel like I am even within 50 miles of those wonderful quilters whose blogs I follow, but I will persevere and keep on trying to make new and different quilts, playing with color and design, coordinating fabrics, and working to learn how to make the fascinating patterns out there and learn to use the new machine quilting techniques.  I look forward to this next year ...heaven only knows what I will come up with!

"A bed without a quilt is like the sky without stars.”

~Author Unknown

T-Shirt Quilt

My nephew, Gabe, will be 8 years old this year, and I wanted to make him a little quilt for his bunk bed. I call it his “Henry T-Shirt Quilt”. Two years ago my daughter made my grandson, Henry, a great quilt top from his favorite outgrown T-shirts and used warm and wonderful feeling fleece for the backing. I thought it was such a neat idea it I decided to make one for him. I used 12 t-shirt squares - all the fronts and a few of the backs - and the side borders and backing were navy fleece. I made a small pillow, 2 pillow cases out of the extra T-shirts, and the left over pieces of cotton I stripped together for the binding. It was a fun project, and for it the fleece worked out great. Once again, I used the Heritage batting for the center. The end product was one warm, soft, and cozy quilt that fits his bunk bed perfectly. After completing the project, I actually found a good site to go to for help named Tee Shirt Quilts. It is full of pictures, suggestions, and instructions that are easy to understand and follow.

Eloise’s Bunting Birthday

My granddaughter will be 5 years old this year so I decided to make bunting flags following a tutorial I found by TeresaDownUnder. Each triangle is a different pink print while the backs are all pink and white gingham. The gross grain ribbon is pink and white polka dots. If it is for Eloise, it has to be PINK!!!!! I appliqued the letters with my machine using the blanket stitch. I have found that it seems to work the best for me. This project was lots of fun and not difficult. It took time and patience to do the applique, but the rest was a snap. The tutorial was excellent with great pictures and easy to follow instructions.

Saturdays Are Wonderful!

For me, Saturday means no school and no students...a day to do whatever I so desire. Today I just stayed at home sewing all day. What fun! Yesterday I saw on poketypatch some directions for making St Patrick’s Day coasters, so I decided to give them a try. From my stash I selected 8 green prints - 4 for the 4 coasters and another 4 for the shamrocks. They were machine appliqued with the applique stitch ( it looks like a blanket stitch to me) on my Brother XR 7700 Computerized LCD sewing machine. The sandwich started out with 2- 5 inch charm squares for the top and bottom and a piece of cotton Heritage batting for the center. It did not take much time at all to complete the little project. Then I decided to make one of my little “goodie bags" in which to place the coasters along with a book entitled “The All of It” which can be purchased from Amazon. It is one of my all time favorite quick reads. The book is set in Ireland so lends itself to a great St. Patrick’s Day gift. I used 4 charm squares for the bag front and some left over green fleece for the back. For the ties I used white gross grain ribbon. I am a LOVER of buttons so I added a few from my collection.