Design Wall - January 28

Wow, January is almost over!

My Design Wall has something different this week - Little Dresses for Nicaragua.  This is my quilt guild's charity for this year.  We had a work day Jan. 19, which I wasn't able to make it to, but I did make my share of dresses at home.

These little dresses were really pretty quick to make, once I got an assembly line going for myself.  This is the small (2-4) size.  I also made two mediums, two larges and two extra-larges.   The pattern for these is free on the Nancy's Notions website.  There is only fabric, elastic, and double-fold bias tape involved in making these.

These dresses will be donated to a group making a healthcare mission trip to Nicaragua in June.  I hope some little girls there enjoy them.  It's hard to imagine wearing a sundress right now - we had several days below zero last week!

So, this is the fourth item of my four things to do for January.  I can start on my February UFO list a few days early.

Thanks for stopping by!

January Progress Report

I'm excited to make this blog post - I have lots of progress to show on my January UFOs!

My Column Quilt is done, and I love it.  This quilt is made using all scraps, and I used it to practice my Free Motion Quilting.  I'm really happy with the daisies in the purple stripes

and the leaf quilting in the green stripes.  I also love the sunbursts in the yellow stripes

and the Caryl flowers in the red stripes (those could use more practice, but I can live with them).  I don't love the feathers in the blue borders, so I'm not going to show a close-up of those!  I watched Cindy Needham's Craftsy class and got some nice tips, but I obviously need a lot more practice on the feathers.  I did try some different threads on this quilt.  Some of it was quilted with Aurifil cotton and some with Superior polyester.  I stitched in the ditch along all the long lines.  Much as I didn't want to do it, I have to admit it did help a lot, and it looks a lot better as a result.  I guess Cindy was right about that.  I got a sampler pack of threads from Superior, so I'm anxious to try out some of the other threads that came with that.

I've been thinking my machine bindings could use some improvement, so I did the Sharon Schaumber glue thing on this quilt.  The results were better, but still not wonderful.  I think that's something that takes a little practice, too.  I managed to get glue all over everything - this is obviously a technique that will require me to develop some glue skills!

So, anyway, this Column Quilt is done.  It's a very happy looking quilt because of all the bright colors, so I think its name is going to be Happy Go Lucky.  The pattern for this quilt is free here.  I had originally planned to use this as a charity quilt, but I've gotten pretty attached to it with all the hours of quilting (!), so I think I'll make a smaller version to donate.  This one is a twin bed size, which is usually a little big for charity quilts.  A lap size would probably be better, and I still have plenty of these scraps to make another quilt.

Boxy Stars is finished, too; quilted and bound and ready for a new home. 

I did a lot of FMQ practice on this one, too - that same starburst is in the sashing.  I did some loops in the star/box part of the block, and some flowers and leaves in the outer borders.  I'm happy with how this quilt turned out, and it used up a lot of 2 1/2" strips I've had forever.   Our guild is having a scrap workshop on March, and I'm going to show them how to make this quilt and another Bonnie Hunter scrap quilt.  The pattern for this quilt is also free on the Quiltville.com website.  After the workshop, this will be a charity quilt.

Annie decided she wanted to be a pillow with rick rack (thanks for the suggestions!).  I added a double row of baby rickrack, and found four matching red buttons in my grandma's button box, so this has antique buttons in the corners.  She looks right at home on my guest bed with Chatty Kathy (also an antique by now, LOL).  She was my favorite doll when I was little.  She doesn't chat anymore, but she's still in pretty good shape for her age.  This Annie stitchery was really fun to make, and Cleo and Me has an Annie for every month, so I may need to make some more of them.

So, that's my January UFO progress!  I still need to make the little dresses for Nicaragua - that workshop is coming up next Saturday, so I will get going on that then.  One thing about January in Wisconsin - it forces you to stay inside and tackle some quilting.  Our snow mostly melted, but it's pretty cold here now, so it's nice to stay inside and sew.

Thanks for stopping by!

Making Plans

Happy 2013 to everyone.  It started out pretty cold here - only -5 degrees F this morning.  I hope we don't do this all winter!

One thing about all the cold and snow - it makes it easy to stay inside and quilt.  My sewing room is nice and warm (thanks to the 13 lightbulbs in there). 

I'm going to participate in Carrie's UFO Challenge and Judy's Getting It Done Challenge.  Although I don't always get everything done, it does help me stay on task a little better.  With that in mind, here are my UFO/Getting It Done items in January:

1.  Finish quilting and binding Boxy Stars.  This is going to be a charity quilt, and also used up a bunch of older fabric.  A lot of these fabrics I recognize from when I owned a quilt store, which was from 1995-2000, so these fabrics are at least 13 years old, and maybe 18 years old! They still play together nicely, though.  I made a lot of progress on this today.

2.  Turn this cute Valentine redwork Annie into something - pillow, wall hanging, framed picture, Valentine postcard?  Anybody have any great ideas about this?  It's not too big, about 5" or so.  I won this pattern last year in a giveaway from Barbie at Cleo and Me.  I love to do stitchery, but frequently don't get around to finishing the stitchery into a usuable item.  That's going to change in 2013!

3.  Add borders, quilt and bind this Column Quilt.  This is another charity quilt to use up scraps.  My goal is also to practice my free-motion quilting skills on these quilts. 

4.  The fourth item, although not a UFO (yet!) is to make this pile of fabrics and trims into some dresses for Nicaragua using the Little Dresses for Africa pattern (free on the Nancy's Notions website).  A group from our town makes a medical mission trip to Rosita, Nicaragua each year, and our guild is going to make dresses and shorts for them to take with them.  We have a sewing retreat on January 19 to make these, so hopefully this is one item that will get done this month.  There is enough fabric here for at least 8 dresses, depending on the size I  make. 

That's it - that should keep me out of trouble for January!  Thanks for stopping by my blog.