Front-n-Back Animals

I'm very excited to tell you that the Grandmothers Flower Garden Quilt, that I finished the borders on, has been quilted!!  Terri did a fantastic job.  You can check it out by clicking on her name. 

Now for some more fun, I just got these adorable embroideries from Embroidery Library.

They are the cutest little animal appliques.  I just used felt and felted wool that I had in my stash.  I have a skunk and a duck too, and can't wait to try them out. 

 Then the best part...you have the back of the animal!

I have to get some more Onesies!  I have my second cousin, Erica's, baby shower coming up!

Battenburg Lace Hearts

This weekend I finished putting together some Battenburg lace heart doilies.  I got the embroidery design from Embroidery Library. 

You make 4 lace hearts then sew them together to make the doilies. They really went together fairly easy.  It took about 35 minutes to stitch out one small heart and 55 minutes to do the large one.  The sizes of the doilies are 6", 9"  and 11".  As my Auntie Ann says "Who can't use a doily!" I thought they would make nice Valentines gifts. I bought two spools of thread, one white one red, to do these lace embroideries.  I did the small heart first then the medium one. I was down to the last few minutes of the fourth heart when I ran out of white thread on the spool.  So I had to split the rest that was on the bobbin and finish it with just a little remaining!!  Luckily I had some white thread to stitch them together.  I had plenty of red thread left so that is why the big one is in red with a white accent.

Big Old Desk

Jim and I went antiquing last weekend and this desk was my exciting find!  We went to Century Antiques.  I was so surprised to see my friend, Charlie, behind the counter when I walked in. It has been ages since I had seen him.

I found this nice big old school teachers desk and they only wanted $80 for it. I was very thrilled because I have been looking at a new computer desk for $230 that isn't even real wood!  I took the tag off the desk and when I added it to our pile at the counter, I ask Charlie's partner, Jim, (there are Jim's everywhere!) if he could ask the sellers if they would take $65 for the desk.  And they did!! 

So for the past couple days I have been cleaning and rearranging my area downstairs to make room for this thing! Sometimes I just feel like I'm rotating piles of stuff! But at least I'm getting things cleaned!  I have my computer at least set up now so that I could blog about my new desk.

I am behind on my cardigan knitting.  I have a Wizard of Oz bag to make this weekend and I'm trying some new Battenburg lace embroidery designs that I'm hoping will be a couple Valentine's presents.

GMFG Finished

I finally finished the Grandmothers Flower Garden quilt I was working on! WooHoo!  I know I talked about it before but let me give you the whole story.  This quilt top was going to be thrown out by a family going through their mothers things after she passed away.  It was rescued by the daughter-in-law because she never got a quilt of her mother-in-law's.  So she took it to a local quilter (my wonderful friend, Terri ) to have it finished and quilted.  Then Terri hired me to finish the top and put the borders on. Did I lose you yet? 

You can see I had to put a few blocks in. No big deal, you would think, they were already completed blocks all I had to do was add them to the main quilt top.  Unfortunately when the hexagon template was made they did not make it square (if you can say that about a hexagon?).  No two sides were the same!! So yes this caused me to work a little harder.  I think I un-sewed about 35% of what I did sew trying to get the blocks to lay as flat as I could get.

Using freezer paper

I had a couple people ask how I was going to put the borders on, so I took some pictures along the way.  First I cut hexagon shapes (with my Creative Memories punch) out of freezer paper, put a little starch along the edge, folded it over and ironed it in place.  This creates a nice turned edge to applique onto the border fabric. This was only done on the two sides that had mountains and valleys from the block shape.  The other two sides were straight.

Adding Roxanne's glue

After all the edges are turned I position this side over the border fabric, I add a thin line or small drops of Roxanne's Glue along the edge of the folded fabric, being careful not to get any on  the edge I will be sewing.  Then just hold the quilt top in place for a few seconds and you have a nice strong bond to your border fabric and can applique the edge down.

Edge glued down

Then after those two sides are appliqued on, straight edges were very easy to just pin in place and sew on my machine.  I forgot to take pictures of that part, sorry, I was so excited to be in the final stretch of getting it done! 

23 1/2 hours of work later, its all ready to go back to the quilter to be finished!! It is such a pretty quilt, and I have spent so much time with it I hate to see it leave!! I can just see this draped over the back of a white wicker love seat on a 3 season porch! (of which I have neither, darn!)  It has been a wonderful adventure and fantastic learning experience, I would do it again anytime.