Christmas Holiday Table Runner

... Old-Fashioned Holiday Table Runner ...

... 16" x 51-1/2" ...

... Reversible - the back is as cute as the front! ...

... Available in my Etsy Shop, Busy Hands Quilts ...

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Tuesday Archives 12/15/2015

Fun Twirl Skirt For Millie

... Millie's new Twirl Skirt ... 140" of hem ...!

... Fun fabrics from lines like Annie's Farm Stand ...

... you just might be finding some of these skirts in my Etsy shop soon! ...

... Contact me if you are looking for a particular size! ...

... Cute lace-up-in-the-back boots ... with heels even ...

... a hand-me-down that came at the perfect time ... she had been asking for a pair ...

... she is my cute ... e ... pie ...

... and I love her ... to pieces ...

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WIP: Double Irish Chain in Red and White

This is the Double Irish Chain quilt top I worked on while on vacation at the Oregon Coast this past week.  The center part is done, and now I am on to the seminole borders.  They will take more time to make than a solid strip border but will be much more striking in combination with the center piece.

I am using Eleanor Burns' Irish Chain in a Day:  Single and Double book.  I really like the color directions, especially the instruction on which way to press the seams.  This seemingly small tidbit of information at the right time makes quilt top assembly go much easier later on, and if a pattern does not contain this information, I may not purchase another from that creator.  Really.  It is that big of a deal to me!

A Quilt For My Mom

Finished while vacationing at the Oregon Coast ... a quilt for my mom!  I thought of her the entire time I sewed on this quilt because she loves these colors, and they are found everywhere in my parents' home.  I knew I could never sell it because it reminded me so much of her.

Quilt Stats:

• Fabric:  All Thimbleberries quilt-shop quality fabrics, quilt top and backing.
• Batting:  Warm and Natural 80/20 cotton/poly, thin.
• Quilting:  Long-arm quilted on Mrs. Singer using a meandering flower stitch.
• Binding:  Thimbleberries fabric, attached by machine for durability with mitered 45-degree corners.
• Size:  46" x 56", small lap quilt.

This is the first time I have ever pieced a multi-fabric backing!  I was worried that the stripe wouldn't end up straight when I quilted it on the Mrs. Singer, my long-arm quilting machine, but somehow it ended up just fine.  Although with the price of fabric, it really is cheaper to buy extra-wide backing, especially at Fabric.com, which I do for very large quilts.

A Quilting Vacation!

Here is proof that the skies can be blue at the Oregon Coast in November!  We have vacationed here with my parents nearly every November for 16 years, ever since Bookworm was a wee babe.  Another blessing of homeschooling is we can vacation on our own schedule, not a school's, and vacationing just before the winter holidays costs less, and there are less people around.

Bookworm, Millie, and Eagle Eye

Mrs.Hearts

   

I really did bring my sewing machine to quilt!  Quilting IS vacation to me!

 Today's weather is so stormy I took the picture from inside!

I finished the quilt you saw on the table above and am now working on my next quilt project - a queen-sized Irish Chain in red and white.  I am switching up the pattern a bit and putting the red/white vine fabric as the background where white is traditionally placed, and the three chains will be red-white-red. At this point I plan to put on the seminole borders rather than just a strip of fabric.  This just might be the quilt for my living room wall, since I haven't been able to figure out what to make yet! 

I bought this fabric to make an Irish Chain quilt as a wedding gift about seven years ago, but I was a beginning quilter then and had more dreams than know-how.  Plus, paying for it to be quilted was daunting.  Now that I have more experience and a long-arm quilt machine, Mrs. Singer, this project is much more do-able, and I am excited to begin!

Mrs.Singer Quilts Again!

I learned the hard way that fusible 100% poly batting is all around a BAD idea.  Here's my story.  In the small quilts I quilt on my old Bernina 830 sewing machine, I always use fusible 80% cotton / 20% poly batting so I don't have to pin or baste.  It works fabulously, and I don't understand why someone wouldn't use it!  Well, Joann's apparently no longer sells fusible mostly cotton batting, and I could only find fusible batting in 100% poly ... and I was in too much of a hurry to wait for an order from Connecting Threads, the only place I could find that still sells it other than Amazon, {please let me know if you have another source}. 

I bought the fusible 100% poly any way, sucker that I am.  BIG mistake.  It wouldn't adhere to the quilt top evenly, so rather than throwing it away, I decided to try it in a larger quilt on Mrs.Singer.  Another BIG mistake.  She didn't like it either as it gummed up her needle and broke the thread.  But it took me agonizing troubleshooting to figure out what was wrong, as the batting was the LAST thing on my long list of considerations.  It took me weeks to figure it out, and I was nearly ready to KICK Mrs.Singer!!  Poor thing!  She was innocent after all!  Mrs.Singer now works great with the right batting, bless her heart!  I almost kissed her!

Below are some pics of my practice stitching. I thought I'd practice a bit since I had to put scraps on the rollers to make sure she was stitching okay.  I think I'll be throwing in some flowers and circles on my next quilt which is ready to go on the rollers again.  I have already ripped out the messed-up stitching - a nice way to spend the evening in front of the tube at grandpa's house.

One thing I did learn while researching online what the problem could be, is that some people "float" the quilt top.  This means one end is not attached to a roller.  I always "float" the batting since my table doesn't have a roller for it, but the quilt top?  That sounded too scary!  This practice top is floated {you may be able to see in the picture above that the middle roller is not being used}, and it works just fine - which means one less layer to pin to a roller!  YEAH!  I'm all for that!

I also learned in my researching that I was putting too much tension on my quilt layers {not my chickens, silly!}, and they don't need to be rolled so tightly.  I did notice how easy it is to stretch on-point squares into diamonds by rolling the rollers to tightly, and I'll try to loosen up a bit!  Literally and figuratively.  Little by little I am learning!

The wheeled roller contraption Mrs.Singer sits on does not run perfectly smoothly, so it is very difficult to get a perfectly round line of stitching out of her.  Mr.Hearts has adjusted it to the best of his ability, but maybe someday I'll ask him to build Mrs.Singer a new wheel assembly.

New Additions To My Etsy Shop

Busy Hands Quilts has a few new listings today!

This item has sold!

A new Pineapple Log Cabin Quilt



A huge Thimbleberries jelly roll - 79 strips!



43 Thimbleberries Fat Quarters



Please help me clear out and make room for new designs!

Castle Quilt

I made this Castle Quilt for my oldest son six years ago when we moved into our new house, and I wanted all fresh bedrooms.  To a quilter, making a quilt for someone says, I care about you, I love you, and I wanted this quilt to tell this message to my son.  He loved it then, and he still does.  I asked him recently if he wanted me to make him a new quilt, and he couldn't fathom why; he still loves it!

She is a queen-sized quilt, and this was the first large one I made.  I used a castle quilt pattern that I found online and added the border strips in a brick fashion.  The top strip of the quilt is a McKenna Ryan fabric of blue trees in the distance, chosen as a background for the castles.  I had it professionally quilted as I didn't have a long-arm quilting machine at that time.  To tell the whole story, I just put the binding on her a year ago!  She was on his bed unbound for five years!

Making this quilt taught me that I really could start and finish a bed-sized quilt.  I learned about block piecing and applique (the windows and doors are appliqued on).  I proved the importance of squaring up the quilt corners after adding each and every border; I did this, and she is perfectly square with no puckering along any sides.  :)

Please go to my HOME page to see all of my sewing projects!

I'm linking to the Bloggers' Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side.  Hop on over to see a huge array of beautiful quilts made by fellow bloggers!

What's On My Wall Today?

This pretty oversized lap quilt has been sew fun to make, and I love her colors!  The pattern is Garden Arbor by OliveTreePatterns on Etsy.  I was very glad I bought the pattern, because I would not have thought of making it this way, and my way was harder.  The quilt top is made from Connecting Threads fabrics, which I love.  Don't let their lower prices scare you away; they sell really nice fabric, with no extra charge for cutting!  It is awesome to get a stack of 10" squares and pay exactly what the fabric really cost in yardage!  And when their fabric goes on sale, it is a really good buy!

I could not find a 10" template, so I used my 10.5" template to square up the blocks.  This meant I cut each block eight times.  Not my favorite part, but it went fairly quickly.  The next step is adding the sashing between the 10" blocks and assembling the rows.  I should have added sashing to one side of 28 of the blocks before putting them on the wall; it would have saved time later.  Perhaps assembling the blocks is this afternoon's project!