March finish

My NYD Mystery quilt is a finish for A Lovely Year of Finishes. (Goal post #44 and finish post #113) Thank you Shanna and Melissa for hosting :0)

Quilting, binding and a label are finished. After reading a thread on labels on Pinterest and theinboxjaunt, I made this label by folding it in half, machine sewing it on to the edges of a corner, the binding is stitched over the edges and then the one fold is hand sewn down. Worked great!

Hummm, I'm thinking there needs to be a moon added to the corner :0) Janie, who joined me on New Year's Day and started her top, finished her top this week. It's here on my table waiting to be quilted. Along with my label I also made one for Janie with a butterfly :0)

Besides finishing our mystery quilts, we cut out the center block of Amaretto Cottage. Here is my finished test blocks up on the design wall.

Post update: Amaretto Cottage is a BOM from 2012 by Marianne Elizabeth, Classically Home collections for RJR fabrics. Janie asked me to help her put this quilt together. She is working with the RJR kit fabrics. There are errors in the directions including cutting sizes. number of cuts and finished block sizes. We have done allot of unsewing and we are not sure if Janie will have enough fabric to finish if we remake blocks.  I am now "testing" the pattern for Janie so the blocks above are pulled from my CW stash and are different from the original kit.

The fabrics in the kit are gorgeous and the designer deserves kudos for that. Hopefully she has a better pattern tester now for her new kits.

LynCC in Colorado made Amaretto Cottage, HERE is a link to her post to see her finished quilt in the RJR fabrics. Also a link to one of her posts as she was struggling with this project, the same two blocks Janie and I just finished. We contacted the designer and heard back from her assistant Amanda who has been wonderful! She is sending Janie some templates.

Mother nature is not playing nice this year. Now that Spring is on the calendar, Winter has decided to show up! Good that we are getting rain (lots of it) and snow because we were headed for a drought. Along with the rain have been days of thunderstorms and tornadoes, yep in California. Forecast is more for tomorrow.

After a busy month, happy to choose an easy goal as it took until this evening to get it finished for A Lovely Year of Finishes. I do appreciate setting a goal each month to stay focused and make it happen! Yea  Click this link to see all the finishes for this month, over 100! 

Now to think about what I would like to finish for April

Enjoy your April, hope we have Spring soon!

Spring! and polyester thread

Yea, it's Spring!!!

Not much to report from my little quilting corner of the world. Making progress on the binding for my March goal. It was a good thing I picked something easy with a few set backs this month. I did make some needed items for the studio. A panel of sheers for one of the windows, too much sun was coming in and beating down on my new longarm and the quilts loaded on the frame. I also made an envelope/pocket in order to protect customer quilts while on the frame since I do a full float*.

An important bit of information for quilters that use polyester threads for piecing. DO NOT use a hot iron when pressing your quilt top! Of course, it's never a good idea to use an iron that is set too high no matter what fabric or thread is used! This week I had a quilt loaded on the longarm all ready to go. After smoothing the top and basting the edges it started coming apart in one large area plus another of the quilt top! Not a good thing! When I looked under I could see scorch marks along the seams :~( Here is a link to my longarm blog post with more pix. An added note: some of the slick polys can come unstitched easily. I've had customer quilts seams pull apart sewn with those beautiful shiny polys and rayons that look and work great for machine embroidery. Not recommended for piecing! 

*Note: My method of loading a quilt top is called a 'full float' which means I do not attach the top to a leader. Only the backing gets attached to leaders. The top and batting are laid on top of the backing and basted across the top, then along the sides as the quilt progresses. In this way there is never any undue stress or pull on a quilt top's seams (FYI :0)

It's Friday and it's Spring. Two very good reasons to be happy today!

Enjoy your weekend, with time out in the garden
or spending some time stitching... or both!
I'm headed for the mountains 

Jo

Baby Bear panto and a new Design Wall

Design wall is up! 8 x 8 feet square. Michael cut out a hole for an outlet. Made with flannel covered sound board. We used dry wall screws with finish washers. Love it! 

Thank you to my sweetie :0)

Studio is almost finished. Yesterday my first 2 visitors, Esther came by for a visit in the morning and Janie in the afternoon to lay out her NYD Mystery quilt blocks. These are quilts Janie and I started together on New Year's Day.

This is Janie's...

 

Below is my top and a March goal to finish 

 Another of my goals, a baby quilt...

A practice piece on my Innova with a Baby Bear panto quilted on a flannel Penguin pre print

with black flannel backing. It's a keeper! Next to add binding.

A little bit of Spring like weather and then we have a new rain storm coming in on Sunday. Very happy with the last storm and the amount of rain, Northern California needs it.  

Enjoy your weekend

Groetjes, Jo

March Goal

Goals for March ~
My one goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes is an easy one. I have allot to do to get my longarm business back up and running. With all I have going on I am choosing to be kind to myself.

This is my 2014 New Year's Day Mystery quilt top pieced in January. It was an online mystery with Planet Patchwork, an annual event which I've participated in over the years. This is the last year with Planet Patchwork which has folded. The pattern designer, Diane may be Mary Mayhem will be setting up future mysteries on her Facebook page. 

My goal is to finish the quilting (almost there), binding and a label for a complete finish. 

Other ongoing WIPs and BOMs to work on this month. Amaretto Cottage, a BOM I am doing with my friend Janie. Barbara Brackman's Threads of Memory block 2. A baby quilt for a March baby shower and I hope to get a little further on a quilt I pieced last month, The Big EZ. This will be a window treatment for my longarm studio. First priority is to get me and my longarm running and back to quilting my customer's quilts, then the windows.

Pattern photo of The Big EZ (with my red pen marks)
 

Jo

Looking forward to Spring this month too!


Post update: I forgot to include Cheryl's Easter Baskets QAL to my list of WIPs.
Part one was posted Friday on The Olde World Quilt Shop blog, this is the link.
I have my HST papers printed out and am ready to get started on this little guy :0)