On the home stretch

I put my nose to the grindstone last evening and I am now down the three blocks left to quilt on the MM piece. Yeah! I am now working on the all white border. When Stephanie was helping me toss around ideas with this piece we decided to add a white border to the width of the quilt or it would have been too narrow. To quilt it the idea emerged to mimic the pieced blocks only using thread. So here are the three blocks which I have introduced color.

I have to concentrate very hard as every little wobble really shows on the white! I am going to add some darker turquoise and use that spool of fuchsia that Joanna gave me on the last two blocks then I will be on to the binding!

The sunrise look like this at 7 am

and this at 7:30

Back from Charm

I spent Friday and Saturday working at Miller's Dry Goods Quilt Shop in Charm, Ohio.

It was Charm Days and all the merchants were having sales as well as community activities occurred. The weather was beautiful. I kept fairly busy waiting on customers, but had some welcomed breaks during the day to get a snack or shop for myself. I didn't buy a lot, but did score some good deals. All the fabric was 20% off. I found a few more pieces of fabric for a quilt I need to make next year for an wedding anniversary. Here is what I found

Which goes with these I already had. I now have enough different pieces for what I want to do.

These are remnants that I picked up in the bargain basement. All good pieces that will be useful.

The I picked up these three pieces in the bargain basement.

I also scored some flannels from the basement. I want to make a new flannel quilt for my bed so I was glad to add these to my stash.

I called my friend, Peg, on Friday night and went shopping for her in the bargain basement on Saturday. She wanted some orange fabric and some tone on tone black or black and white fabric. Here is what I found for her.

On Saturday there were 7 or 8 women who came to the store to buy fabric. They had been at Nancy Crow's barn all week at a workshop. They didn't have enough fabric so Nancy sent them to Miller's to buy more. They ladies were buying solid colors and Miller's have over 200 bolts of solid colors not including whites and off whites. I had a wonderful time talking to the ladies and finding out where they were from. The bought a lot of fabric as they had another 5 days of their workshop.

I got home at 6 p.m. on Saturday. I was still very tired on Sunday so I didn't accomplish very much. Doing laundry, making a pot a chili and brown rice, and unpacking was enough! My friend, Stephanie, did come over on Sunday afternoon and I helped her pin baste a couple of lap sized quilts. I did wind some bobbins for the MM challenge quilt, but I just didn't have the energy to sew.

This morning I was up early and did get the with part of this block quilted.

Another MM block done

I got another block quilted on the MM quilt last evening. There are a lot of thread color changes on this quilt. I try and quilt the colored part of the two blocks then switch to white. Here is where I am with the aqua blocks. I now have only 7 blocks left to quilt.

To answer QuiltSwissy's question from yesterday's post, I do free motion quilting on a domestic machine. I have a Pfaff 1475CD. I don't turn the quilt at all. I made this little drawing to try and illustrate. I use my free motion foot as a guide for the width of the quilting lines. I have a option on my machine to move my needle into different positions, so between that and the marks on the foot I figure out how wide I want my lines to be apart. Believe me, my lines are not perfect, and I don't want them to be perfect. After awhile I get into a rhythm and just move the quilt back and forth and back and forth. I have pretty good control with the speed of the needle and the speed I move the quilt, but there is variation in the size of my stitch as I do not have a stitch regulator on my machine.

I went out and dug out thistle in my flower bed last evening. Look at the mess!

I dug up a nice clump of Shasta Daisy to take to Mary.

I also moved the remaining plants around so they were kind of grouped together and gave them a drink of water. I didn't get many flowers this year, but next year I will. I grew these from seeds this spring. I still need to mow, but at least the flower bed looks better.

This morning's sunrise was very pretty.

MM quilt progress

I got a couple more blocks quilted. I still need to bury the threads and I think I will do that at lunch so that I will be all ready to quilt when I get home.

I do need to mow and pull some weeds also. It has rained the last couple of days on and off so mowing wasn't happening. I can see a lot of thistle plants starting to grow in the flower beds so I want to get them removed before winter. I also need to transplant my Shasta daisy plants that I grew from seed. They are all clumped together and I do want to take one to the lady whose house I stay at during Charm Days which is coming up. I always like to bring her a little thank you gift for letting me stay at her house. She has several lovely flower beds. I enjoy seeing the previous plants that I have given her and she enjoys getting a new plant. I have never seen any white flowers so this Shasta daisy will be a nice addition.

Sewing stuff being passed to me

I received the first bags and a box of sewing stuff that is being passed on to me.

There was a lot of polyester, scraps, and a couple of clothing patterns that I would never use. I sorted thru the stuff and this is what I kept
There is a bit more than a FQ of this vintage Mickey Mouse licensed fabric

5 1/4 yards of this cotton that would make a backing for a quilt. Stephanie, maybe you could use this for one of the quilts you need to make. Let me know and I will save it for you.

Packages of interfacing. I will have to try the iron on to see if it is still any good.

A FQ of lace

Odds and ends - ribbon, a zipper, fabric paint, and lace hem tape

Two pieces of drapery weight fabric that a couple of pillows could be made from.

And some pieces of some shiny prints. Maybe ok for bits in an art quilt?

I have no plans on using any of this bounty any time soon. If there is something that you could use, let me know and I will send it to you for the cost of postage. The lady told me there is more to come.

Metal t-shirts score and a busy weekend

I had three days of busy! Friday I received my goodie bag from the Quilt Alliance. The charm pack of fabric from Timeless treasures was a nice surprise!

Saturday on my way back from getting my hair cut I stopped at the Goodwill store to see if I could find any hard rock/metal t-shirts. I came home with 3 for $5.00.
I liked the flaming skull on this one

This one was just weird. I am not a death metal fan at all, but the hot dog was funny so I just had to buy it for a dollar.

And there was this gray t-shirt with crossed flying V guitars on it.

I had bought a few t-shirts last year and here are those. The Metallica shirt has a design on both sides that I can use. So this is at least a start for the project. I had not decided how I am going to assemble this quilt yet, but at least I am on my way to collecting the materials.

I have 16 out of the 30 blocks done on the Michael Miller Challenge quilt.

Saturday night was the Akron Art Prize ceremony. I did not place. The party at the museum was fun! They had two musical acts, one was a percussion group and they were really good!

And the other group was a disco/funk/Motown group. They had horns too! I know the picture is dark, but I tried using the flash and that didn't work either.

Need your eyes

As the day approaches for awarding the prizes for the Akron Art Prize on Saturday night, I am thinking about entering a piece in next year's event. I would like to make a piece using t-shirts with a theme of hard rock/metal/heavy metal bands. I have learned that finding these types of t-shirts at resale shops can be difficult as people have a tendency to hang on to them whether they fit or wear them or not. So here is where your eyes come in. If you happen to run across any at a bargain price would you let me know? I will pay for the shirts and the shipping (U.S. only - it would be way to expensive for international). There is a Goodwill store I pass when I get my hair cut so I will be stopping there on Saturday to start my search. I also need to keep a lookout for Harley Davidson shirts for a fund raiser quilt I want to make and donate to a event next year that my nephew's band will be playing at.

I didn't get too much done on the MM quilt as I was tired last evening. I spent most of my day at work lifting file boxes and sorting thru files for one of the project managers. He moved out of his office in the field and just dumped everything in boxes. I need the organized everything for achieving and throw away the stuff we don't need. I did get the white part of two blocks quilted.

I have a lot of stuff going on this weekend so I will be taking tomorrow off as a vacation day. Again, a haircut, the Akron Art Prize ceremony, delivering the Halloween birthday quilts, and picking up my "Where's Jimmy?" quilt on Sunday.

Have a great weekend!