Lookee What Came In My Mail!

My parking ticket for the Celtic Thunder Mythology Show in September!!

... and they spelled "CELTIC" wrong!!!

Custom Dream On Queen Quilt Progress #2

The custom queen-sized Dream On quilt I am making is coming along nicely and is currently on Mrs.Singer's rails being quilted.  Below is the quilt top laid out with the batting and backing, ready to put on Mrs.Singer's rails.  I always lay quilts out on the living room floor to get the three layers sandwiched together, and I line up and pin all three layers along one edge that goes on the first rail.  One really nice thing about a long-arm machine is that the layers do not have to be smoothed perfectly flat when I put them together, because the rails take care of pretty much all of that when the layers are stretched.

Here are the coordinating queen-sized pillow shams, done and ready for shipment!  The fronts are actual quilts, batting, backing, quilting, and all.  The back has an envelope opening in a delicious red.


I am also making a 22" square pillow cover out of leftover fabric.  The squares are ready to sew together - when I decide which layout I like the best!  I will show those to you in the next progress post.

Hanging a Large Quilt on the Wall

A reader asked about the quilt rack shown in The Bare Wall Dilemma post, so I thought I'd tell all of my readers about it.  The wooden quilt rack uses pressure to hold the quilt.  It is two long pieces of wood sandwiched together and held by the six wooden knobs along its length.  The back piece of wood attaches to the wall with three screws.  The screws are installed in the wall, and the back wood piece hangs from them, which makes the entire quilt rack removable.  It is much easier to put the quilt on the rack on the floor and then hang it rather than attach a heavy queen quilt to it when the rack is already hanging on the wall, especially when the rack is about 11 feet off the ground, and I'm on a ladder!  The knobs loosen to allow a quilt to slip into the bottom section, and when the knobs are tightened, the pressure holds the quilt in place.  It is a great way to not harm the quilt and also to not need a hanging pocket.

I purchased this quilt rack seven years ago from a veteran-owned company, G-Wiz Custom Wood Products.  You can totally customize your quilt rack as to the style of hanger, the type of wood, your choice of stain/paint color, and the exact length.  They offer free shipping and currently have a 20% off sale.

The Bare Wall Dilemma

When the custom Dream On quilt and shams are completed, I plan to work on a queen-sized quilt for my living room wall.  The wall is huge and very bare without a quilt.  Many people who come over ask what happened to the quilt!

Since there is a moratorium on buying fabric at my house {with special exceptions such as fabric that perfectly matches a friend's nursery!}, I plan to use Annie's Farm Stand, the collection I bought last February ... 2012, that is.  I will use the Starlit Evening pattern by Anka's Treasures as shown in the picture below.  I so love her patterns and excellently-written directions!  I actually have this fabric collection in my stash and began this exact quilt for my living room wall, but after I got the blocks made, I decided it was too much of a winter collection to put it up now, so I set it aside to be worked on again in the fall ... of 2013 is the plan!! I made Mrs.Star for this wall and hung her there for a few months, but I took her down to photograph a custom queen-sized Barn Raising Quilt on the quilt rack and didn't put Mrs.Star back up since she wasn't really liked by the Mister.  I'm not sure that anything made with Annie's Farm Stand will be 100% approved by the Mister because the fabric is so bright and loud and fun and a huge change from the muted primitive colors of the Thimbleberries quilt that hung there for seven years, but I am done with primitive fabrics!
ETA:  A commenter asked about the quilt rack shown in the first picture.  The wooden quilt rack uses pressure to hold the quilt.  It is two long pieces of wood sandwiched together and held by the six wooden knobs along its length.  The back piece of pine attaches to the wall with three screws.  The screws are installed in the wall, and the back wood piece hangs from them, which makes the entire quilt rack removable.  It is much easier to put the quilt on the rack and then hang it rather than attach a heavy queen quilt to it while hanging.  The knobs loosen to allow a quilt to slip into the bottom section, and when the knobs are tightened, the pressure holds the quilt in place.  It's a great way to not harm the quilt and not require a hanging pocket.  
I purchased this quilt rack seven years ago from http://www.gwizpro.com/qww/, a veteran-owned company.  They are still in business.  You can totally customize the quilt rack as to the type of wood, stain/paint color, and exact length.

Custom Dream On Queen Quilt Progress #1

I recently received an order for a custom queen-sized quilt in the Dream On pattern.  My customer provided five of the fabrics, and Millie and I had fun filling in the other 15 at a local quilt shop.  One of my favorite things is to buy fabric at the local quilt shop when someone else is paying for it!  The fabric request was geometrics and solids to match the fabrics sent to me.  The quilt top is nearly done, and I haven't made any progress reports here, yet!

The six strips of blocks below will be separated by a 7-inch white strip which really pulls the quilt top together in a cohesive way.  These strips run horizontally on the quilt, not vertically as shown in the picture.  I pinned it to my design wall in this direction because it only used two pins per strip versus pinning the entire strip horizontally.  I didn't make any mistakes in the direction of the arrows until the very last strip - go figure!

And my worstest fear is that I will finish the quilt, have it quilted and bound, and then realize that one of the arrows points in the wrong direction!

Phoebe's Flower Box Baby Quilt

I fell in love with the Phoebe collection of fabric and the flower box pattern when I saw the video that The Missouri Star Quilt Co uploaded to YouTube awhile back.  However, I had no real intentions of buying more fabric and making one exactly like it.  Buying more fabric, believe it or not, is not too high on my list of things I really need to do at this time!!  Then my daughter Millie and I visited a friend who is expecting a baby and saw her nursery - in grays, purples, and white.   When we got home, I pulled out my Quilting Quickly Summer 2013 magazine by Jenny Doan for Fons & Porter and showed Millie how perfectly this quilt would match our friend's nursery.  And the rest is history!  This magazine is a collection of the patterns that Missouri Star Quilt Co posts as video tutorials on YouTube.  I absolutely adore the entire magazine and have grand plans to make most of the patterns in it!  I found the - magazine at Joann's. I did have to do some sleuthing online to find this fabric, as there are only a few places online that have the complete collection left.  My other problem was time.  When one decides to make a baby quilt for a shower that is less than two weeks away and one is going to be out of town for five of those days, one does not have time for mail order fabric, especially since free shipping offers tend to arrive by the slowest camel in the bunch.  Alas, we were traveling last weekend to visit my family in Eastern Washington, and there was a quilt shop along the way that had Phoebe in stock, every single fabric in the line!  We made a short visit to the Gossympium Quilt Shop in Issaquah and picked up Miss Phoebe.  {I promised the boys I would take only 15 minutes, and came out of the store in a record time of 24 minutes!  Whoo hoo!} Meet Phoebe's Flower Box, completed in 3.5 days, Wednesday of this week to 11:15 this morning, Saturday.   Sorry for the rather unprofessional pictures - I was taking pictures of it as the guests arrived for the baby shower I was hostessing!  It had just come out of the dryer and was even a tad bit damp!  The binding is NOT bright pink; that is the rainbow quilt on my bed! I bought enough extra fabric to make a table runner for my sister - she plans to use it as a wall hanging over her couch.  I should have enough to make another baby quilt or several table runners, which I plan to sell to recoup the cost of the supplies for all of the projects!
Quilt Stats:

• Pattern:  Flower Box by Hillary Sperry
• Size:  45" square
• Fabric:  Phoebe by Another Point of View for Windham
• Batting:  100% cotton
• Quilting:  Loopy loops in lavender thread, done on Mrs.Singer, my vintage 1896 Singer 31-15 which is mounted on a long-arm quilting frame.
• Binding:  Double fold with mitered corners, attached by machine for durability, made from Phoebe scraps.
• Value:  Super sweet for a precious baby girl!

Linking to:

The Romeike Story - Obama Administration Seeks to Deport This Homeschooling Family

ETA:  For an extremely intelligent and well-written post on this subject, please go to Get Along Home.

The Romeike Family is a German homeschooling family who sought asylum in the United States in 2010 due to persecution by the government for homeschooling.  They did receive asylum at that time.  The Obama Administration is seeking to deport them, and if successful, this family will likely lose everything, including the custody of their children upon return to Germany.

The Home School Legal Defense Association is representing this family legally to help them remain in the United States.

This being a quilting blog, you may not know that we homeschool our three children, ages 17, 14, and 12, and have done so for seven years.  We joined HSLDA this month to help support HSLDA in representing this family and the many other homeschooling legal cases they work with.  There are very few limits on homeschooling in Washington State, and we enjoy these freedoms very much, but homeschooling is not guaranteed as the government continues to remove our parental freedoms in an effort to squelch opposing worldviews.

Dr Del Tackett of Focus on the Family states, "[The US Government] doesn't believe that parents have a right to educate their children.  It is more in line with the National Education Association that homeschooling shouldn't be allowed.  It believes that the government can best educate 'America's children.'  It doesn't want another worldview taught in this country.  It wants America's children to have one worldview and one worldview only."

The Obama Administrations' position indicates that the US Government is siding with restrictive homeschooling laws in Germany.

Even if you do not homeschool, and even if you are against homeschooling, this case and its outcome will affect the lives of every family in the United States - yours, your neighbors', your sister's, your grandkids' - for generations to come.  It is about the basic right of parents to make decisions regarding their own children.  It is a case about parental rights, and it sets the precedent for future policies.  It is another step in taking away our personal freedoms.  I urge you to watch this video and sign the petition through HSLDA.

If you cannot view the video above, please watch it on YouTube.

http://youtu.be/TTw8x4Uuf8Y

Full Size Rainbow Wave Quilt for My Daughter!

My daughter's newly decorated room.  Don't you love the walls?!?  The other two walls are blue, which I may show you on another day.  That half of the room is ... not ... clean!!!  I had originally planned to make a Rainbow Plus Quilt on the top bunk {remember the 60 solids I purchased?}, but when Millie and I found this set at Kohl's for uber cheap, we couldn't pass it up.  It matches perfectly! The bottom quilt is a full-size Wave quilt with 18 different solids, made by yours truly.
It is LOVE ... or what!?!
It turned out truly AMAZING! The backing is a Riley Blake chevron in apple green and white, and oh, my, this fabric was a charm to work with!  WAY nicer than lesser quality flannels from other sources.  I washed and dried it once before assembling the quilt since flannel shrinks more than regular cotton fabrics and will shrink again when washed a second time.  The quilt top and binding were not preshrunk.
Here is a close-up of the candy binding.  YUM!  I quilted across the quilt twice in the colored areas, varying the height of the "swoops" as the wave progressed; and the white has tiny up/down swoops in it which you can't see.
Can you see where the two chevron fabric pieces were joined?  It's pretty hard to find it!  This high-quality flannel from Riley Blake was printed so perfectly on excellent fabric that the points met amazingly well.  I pinned the two pieces together at every zig zag and had no problems whatsoever.
Quilt Stats:

• Pattern:  New Wave by Oh, Fransson!, free
• Size:  75" x 85", full bed size
• Quilt Top Fabric:  18 Kona solids with white
• Batting:  100% cotton, thin
• Backing:  Riley Blake Chevron in flannel
• Binding:  Sweet Treats, double fold with 45-degree mitered corners, attached by machine
• Quilting:  Varying sized "swoops" within the colored waves and small swoops in the white
• Value:  Truly uplifting!

I am taking custom orders for Rainbow Wave Quilts in any size in my Etsy shop! Busy Hands Quilts Linking to:

Show and Tell Tuesday
Crazy Mom Quilts

Custom Quilted Window Valances in Primitive Colors

Just finished are two custom quilted window valances in the primitive colors of black, tan, mustard, and pumpkin.  They were made completely from my stash!  Yeah!
I have a love/hate relationship with hourglass blocks!  I love the way they look when set together in fours to make pinwheel blocks, but they are a bit labor intensive.
A peek at the back rod pocket.  This time I remembered to put the pocket on before adding the binding!  This way only one seam needs to be hand tacked down, rather than two seams.  They are not stitched down, yet!  I think I will watch a Celtic Thunder music DVD tonight and stitch away!
I use unbleached muslin on the back so they look neutral from the street if they happen to show through the window, plus, the muslin won't fade in the sunlight.
Quilt Stats:

• Pattern:  Hourglass / pinwheels
• Size:  10" x 36"
• Fabric Top:  Quilt-shop quality fabrics, almost exclusively Thimbleberries, along with Moda Bella black
• Batting:  100% cotton Hobbs
• Backing:  Unbleached muslin
• Quilting:  All over meandering stitch in black thread on my old Bernina 830, a treasure from my grandma.
• Binding:  Double fold, attached by machine with 45-degree mitered corners with quilt-shop quality fabric.
• Value:  Prim!

These quilted valances were made as a custom order in my Etsy shop.  If you would like custom quilted window valances in most any pattern, color, and size, please convo me through my Etsy shop, Busy Hands Quilts!