Cajun Beauty - Doll Bed Quilt

I received this cute doll bed from my daughter S one Christmas. She and her husband had purchased it in New Orleans so that is why I named the quilt I made for it "Cajun Beauty".

This photo shows the quilt and the pillow I made to go on this doll bed. As you see it needed to be an oval shape because there was no way to make it drape over the bed.

The tiny oval Mariners Compass block was paper pieced and the swag border pieces were machine appliqued with the invisible applique method. I wasn't happy with how the points looked on the swags after getting them appliqued so decorated the intersection of the points with French Knot flowers and embroidered leaves. Thought that drew the eye away from the points.

I put a few more embroidered French Knot flowers in the center of the compass block and on the pillow to tie it all together. I hand quilted it - something this small doesn't take too long to hand quilt but I did quilt a small feathered swag above and below the compass and that took a little time and finesse.

Until later....
Lynn

Old and New Projects

Started quilting on this miniature auction wall hanging for our guild the other day and this is all the farther I have gotten. Need to come up with a design for the navy blue borders yet. Can't think of what design to use so it will just sit for a while until I get an inspiration.

I have been wondering for sometime how small I could go to do fusible applique with buttonholed edges. Yesterday I started experimenting with a pattern called Fragrant Memories from this book by Cynthia Tomaszewski.

The pretty tulip block in the book is 9" and I reduced it on the copy machine to 3". It wasn't as good a copy or the exact size I wanted so I decided to scan a 9" copy into my computer and traced it into EQ6 as an applique pattern. I now can print this pattern any size I want. I printed the block as a 2" block and it was really cute. Traced the pattern onto fusible, ironed it to my background square and started stitching.

You can get an idea of how small the tulip is by the bobbin sitting beside it. Chose to use silk thread on both the top and bottom of the buttonhole stitch. The next photo shows the front of my machine and shows that the buttonhole stitch is #1329 on my Bernina 730 and width is 1.2 and the stitch length is 1.2. This is the size I stitched around all the pieces.

It is such a small stitch I put the strongest magnifying lens on the machine to be able to see where I was working. Worked like a charm but I do have to make sure I keep the straight stitching right beside the edge of the applique so it doesn't show.

I didn't know for sure what to do with the tail starts and ends of each line of stitching. My solution was to pull both threads to the back and tie a couple square knots and clip the tails. Thought with silk thread the stitching might come undone more easily than cotton thread.

Here is the finished mini tulip block. I had some red silk thread but didn't have any of the blue green shade so used a med. grey. The grey thread looks better in person than on the photos.

The one part that I thought really didn't work was the very thin stem. The buttonhole stitches overlapped each other. Went back into my EQ6 file and changed the width of the stem and printed a pattern to try. Just did the stem and played with the buttonhole stitch on part of it and do like the wider width better. You can tell that there is a buttonhole stitch on either side on the second example but the first one just looks like I zig-zagged over the stem.

Am thinking of making at least 4 of the tiny blocks and make another small wall hanging for our guild's auction in April.

After Christmas I was looking at projects I had started or never finished and the Grandmother's Flower Garden miniature kept calling my name. I had started hand quilting it quite a while ago then it got put aside for other projects and never worked on since. I have been working on it for a little while each night now and don't have it half quilted yet but am making progress.

I am hand quilting it and it just takes a while as the hexagons are only about 1/2" across and I am doing quite a bit of quilting on it. Quilting through those seams is sure not fun! Most of the time I can only take one stitch at a time. I figure every stitch I put in is one less stitch to go - right?

My fingers are gradually getting the callouses back and are not getting so sore. I had not hand quilted for so long my fingers were pretty tender at first.

Happy Quilting,

Lynn

North Woods Noel

North Woods Noel ................ 11 1/2" x 12"

Here is another of the Santa wall hangings that I hang each December. I purchased this quilt at the 2001 miniature quilt auction our local quilt guild held. It was made by a member of my quilt guild and I was lucky enough to have the highest bid so it came home to live with me.

I love the branch she used as a hanger and so far have not broken any of it off in storage over the years since I purchased it. P.S. fused the design onto the background then did the buttonhole stitch around the different pieces. She does such nice hand quilting and this piece is no exception. Not that many people do hand quilting anymore so it is a treat to have a piece done by hand.

Lynn

Fabric Purse & Another Doll Bed

Feel like I was away from home all week. John and I entertained our German cousin Peter so spent a lot of time "playing" and seeing the sights. We took in Church services last Sunday, South Central Cattlemen's meeting, Husker Harvest Days in Grand Island, had dinners with our daughters and John's sister plus went 4-wheeling, horse back riding (not me-I don't ride)and took a trip out to see the Sandhills area of Nebraska. All that on top of driving to Lincoln (2 1/2 hr trip one way) to pick him up at the airport there and taking him to Omaha (3 hr trip one way) yesterday to catch his plane home. Whew...no wonder I am tired!

I have some fabrics gathered to make this bag/purse pictured below. Of course I will not use all the fabrics but this is the color pallet I selected - now to weed out the ones I don't want. They showed this bag/purse at the last Club Sew at the meeting at the Bernina Store in Lincoln in September. Really liked it so will give it a go. Want to try some of the techniques that they showed on one of the purses she made. Have a pin tuck foot and will use that on some area and want to couch some yarn too.

Thought I would get to it this afternoon but after catching up on reading all my lists and answering email the afternoon has just slipped by. I have not checked my favorite blogs yet either.

I belong to several Yahoo lists and get a digest from them everyday. This week I have not had time to read any of them so had many to read then delete. I enjoy these lists as there is a constant flow of questions and answers. I contribute very little but read them everyday and have learned a lot, picked up tips, etc. There are groups for any subject you might be interested in but I belong to NebraskaQuilters, Applique-Lovers, Applique-Addicts, one for my Bernina Sewing Machine called 430_440_630_640_730 and a list Info-EQ from Planet Patchwork (good help if you own the Electric Quilt program.) I used to also belong to a few digital camera lists and a couple of garden lists but have dropped them - too much reading and I couldn't keep up.

Some groups have a lot of messages everyday and others don't have very many or may go several days between messages.

The doll quilt I am going to show you today is called Swamp Star. I made it in 1997, designed it on the Electric Quilt program and the blocks were foundation pieced. Four of the 3/4" blocks make up each star. The quilt is hand quilted along the seams. I purchased the doll bed in New Orleans so that suggested the name I gave to the quilt.

Weather report for today....it is windy and temps are mid 60s but the sun is shining. After a week of overcast and rainy weather the sun that came out yesterday afternoon was wonderful!

Lynn

Roses and Grandmothers Flower Garden

Just looked at my blog and realized it has been a long time since I have posted anything. I thought when I started "blogging" I would be adding something everyday or so. Think I was waiting for something profound to happen or needed to wait and post only quilty things. Maybe I will just post a note about what ever is going on that day instead of waiting to post quilt news as it seems right now during the summer I don't get much quilting done.

My flower beds are looking pretty good now with flowers blooming here and there. I do love flowers and have planted quite a few. I planted some bushes a couple of years ago when I got the beds going but they are very small. I didn't want to spend a lot on larger bushes so went cheap and got the tiny ones at Wallmart.

I try to plant a few perennials each year and plant annuals between the little bushes, which are growing slowly. I figure by the time I don't want to have to take care of such a large area of flowers the bushes will be large enough there will not be space for flowers. Either that or I will have to hire a gardener to plant and pull weeds for me.

I had only one rose survive a year ago, it is a full peach rose with a wonderful scent - don't remember the name. This year it leafed out early and had multitudes of buds on it and I was so excited. A week ago it started blooming - Red and Peach roses. The buds were mostly red and two peach ones and am figuring part of the grafted rose died back to the hardy root stock which was an old fashioned red rose. There are two stems that have the larger peach roses on it. I hate to cut all the red ones back as it is really covered with red blooms and looks so nice - almost like a Knock Out rose.

Aren't they both pretty?

I did start quilting on my Grandmothers Flower Garden quilt named "Lady in Waiting" but it is slow going. Hand quilting takes me a long time and I am doing a lot of quilting on it. I do a lot of quilting on my miniatures as I want them to look like large quilts. I am quilting in the center of each 1/2" hexagon and think there are over 800 hexagons in the quilt besides the applique around the edge. I am hoping to get it finished to take with me to the Nebraska State Quilt Convention in Chadron the end of July to hang in the teachers display. I told them this is the quilt I would be bringing so need to get moving to get it done in time. Don't know why I do things like that to myself. Should have just planned to take a quilt already finished. Below are a couple of photos of what the quilting on this piece looks like so far.

All for now and I will try to do better from now on.

Lynn