Baby Doll Quilt Not Finished

Today it was another rainy day here so I thought I would concentrate on finishing the baby doll quilt for my little granddaughter.

Yes, I know they were coming on Friday and here it is Saturday.  But they had to postpone their trip due to unforeseen circumstances.

Since they told me that they were unable to come on Friday, I postponed finishing the baby doll quilt and did other things that were put away because of the baby doll quilt.

So today I went to my sewing room to finish machine quilting the little quilt. I was doing fine, or fine by my description.  Then . . . the power goes out!!!

At first I was upset because I couldn't sew!

Aha! Then I remembered that I had a singer hand crank machine that I bought a year ago.
YAY!

I blogged about this hand crank machine on this page if you wish to read it . . .

http://avelisquilts.blogspot.com/2014/04/another-beautiful-antique-sewing-machine.html

So I uncovered this beautiful little machine and kept on sewing.  It is a little more work to sew on this machine because you have to crank with one hand and hold your fabric with the other hand.

I stopped sewing after two hours and even though I was tired, I was very happy that I had the hand crank to help me keep sewing. Even though I sewed for two hours, the little quilt is still not finished, almost but not quite. It need two more rows of quilting and then the binding.

Our power did not come back on until 7:45!! 

I will be sewing on it again tomorrow either with or without power!!!

Until then . . . keep on quilting!

Aveli

Beautiful Day in Guadalupita

Today is such a beautiful day!

I wish I could spend the day outside! But, my little granddaughter is coming on Friday and they are staying for three days.

So, its off to the sewing machine I must go. I am working on making a baby doll quilt for her and I need to finish it before Friday.

I already made one for my other granddaughter in California.  Here is the final product.

I posted about that baby doll quilt on this page . . .

http://avelisquilts.blogspot.com/2013/07/baby-baby-baby-doll-that-is.html

This doll quilt is also made out of crumb strips. I have been making 4 1/2 inch blocks and 2 1/2 inch strips every day, they are so easy to make. That way I would have plenty available whenever I need to make a quilt.

I used only the 2 1/2 inch strips in the quilt above. I wanted to make a different pattern for this little granddaughter so I sewed the 2 1/2 inch strips around a 4 1/2 inch square and then joined those blocks together. 

The original block is the one above. It looks great by itself.  But, I see that when I put these together with nothing in between, it's too too busy for my tastes. I tried to improve the look with the hearts appliqued.  But, as you can see that didn't work too well.

This is the baby doll quilt with hearts machine appliqued onto the 4 1/2 inch squares.

These are close ups of the hearts on the quilt. There are five of them.

I couldn't make up my mind on which way to put the strips of fabric so I  experimented.

I am not going to change it. It is a baby doll quilt after all. A quilt that will be played with all the time. I am sure the baby doll won't mind and my granddaughter will love that I made it for her.

Having made these two little baby doll quilts I have discovered that making little quilts this size is a perfect way to see how I like a block in a quilt. 

 Great experiment! I am glad that I did it! Now I know not to use this block in that way in a regular quilt. Maybe I will add sashing between the blocks or maybe bigger plain squares of fabric. I see more experimenting in my future.  For now, I will just finish this little quilt.

That's it for today. . . enjoy your quilting!

Aveli

Just Scrappin Around!

I am working on my scrappy string basket weave quilt.  As "feeder" blocks or strips, I use my crumbs from the strings sewn onto strips cut from used printer paper. I have a plan for these. I am also making square in a square that finish at 2" for the cornerstones of my crumb strips. These are not my original ideas. I am borrowing from Bonnie Hunter's last quilt cam broadcast.

Here are my cute little square in a square 2 " blocks . . .

 

 and all my crumb triangles. . . Can you see some of the fabrics repeated in each patch?

and my crumb strips. . .

Notice the printed paper? That is actually a health manual that I get every year from my insurance company.  It is about 2 inches thick. You know me, I hate to throw paper away! I cut it down to use for my crumb strips.  I even use letters that come in the mail. They are usually 8 1/2 x 11 paper.  After I finish the project and am stripping the paper away, I save them to use as "kindling" for my wood burning heat stove.

Several people have asked me -- where do I get so many scraps (crumbs) from?  When I cut fabric for my customers I end up with a lot of bags full of scraps!

Here is a picture of the green scraps left from cutting fabric orders.I have several bags of these scraps sorted by color.

This is what the scraps looked like after cutting a hexagon order . . .

 

Can you see the possibilities? There are triangles on the bottom and top; diamonds in the middle and if I cut carefully, I can get a couple of strips from the fold.

Here I am just starting to cut the scraps apart. I usually do this while "listening" to tv with my husband.

One Triangle done!

Here is what I have after I am finished cutting the scrap "sheet" that was left after cutting the hexagons for a customer. Quite a bit of fabric. Isn't it? Combine these with other colors and I get a new quilt, table runner, placemat, pot holder, sewing machine cover, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Of course you have to like working with small pieces, which I do! I guess my grandmother's frugal gene is firmly planted in me.  She made her small pieced quilts out of necessity from old clothing, as did many of our grandmothers and foremothers.  But as a quilter, I couldn't see all this fabric go to waste. My string basket weave quilt, crumb strips and square in a square are all being made from these "scraps"!

If you look at a previous posting about my granddaughter's baby doll quilt, that is made from these scraps too!

Enjoy your quilting . . . scrappy or otherwise!

Aveli

Baby Doll Cradle and Finished Quilt

This is the baby doll cradle that we bought at the flea market. I thought it was a good deal because it is all wood and it was only $12!  You can tell it has been used a lot because it has a few "dirty" little fingerprints on it!  It just needs a good washing and that should take off the fingerprints.

I have put the actual baby doll and the little quilt that I made for it in the cradle so you can see how it will look all together.

It has curved pedestals so it can rock very easily.

 

 Now what I have to do is make a little mattress and pillow so the doll won't be uncomfortable, LOL!

I thought a couple of layers of batting inserted into a pillow type casing should do for the mattress and another couple of small layers for the pillow would be perfect! I think that I will actually attach the little pillow to the mattress so it won't get lost.  Anyway, if it needs washing, I can throw the whole thing in the washing machine!

I was also thinking of adding a few hexagons to the pillow cover.  A while back I made some 1/2" hexagons to see if I was interested in doing that size.  Since then, I have decided that they are too small for me and just put them away.  Those are just the right size for this project!

I will post more photos as I finish the mattress and pillow for the cradle.

Keep on quilting!

Aveli

Baby Doll Quilt Finished!

So Yesterday I finished the baby doll quilt! YAY!

I sewed the backing, which is purple and pink hearts, to the quilt top on the machine. You can see the backing in the picture below. I decided on sewing on the machine because I didn't think I had enough time to hand quilt. After I finished sewing the two layers together I needed to bind it and decided to use the border for binding.

First I trimmed the backing close to the quilt top edge as seen below in the picture.

 Next, I rolled the border back onto the backing and tucked it under itself and pinned. See picture below.
 

 

Here you can see the rolled border from the front -- before and after rolling and pinning.  

 

I hand stitched the binding in the back and that was it! I loved making this little quilt from all my scrap crumbs.(tiny pieces) It really did save a lot of fabric and makes a very nice little quilt for a baby doll for granddaughter! Now that I saw how cute this came out, I think I will use my other scrap strips to make a table topper for the cabin. Although, I wont use white for the sashing, maybe a wine.

Now to get back to the baby quilt that I am hand quilting for my neighbor's granddaughter who is expecting in September. I will post pictures of that quilt some time later this week when I am finished.

Keep on Quilting!

Aveli

Working the string blocks, baby quilt and more!

Every morning as soon as I get up, I work on my string quilt blocks.  I go straight to the coffee pot, make hot water for my tea and while that is brewing, I sew my 4 1/2 inch string blocks. I have a large supply of strips of various size widths, colors and patterns in a drawer next to my sewing machine. I pull out the strips, sew it onto a foundation paper made from my old phone book and keep repeating until I have 10 blocks sewn. I end the chain piecing with a foundation paper sized 2 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches.  It is from these little "feeder" blocks that I made my granddaughter's "baby doll" quilt.

I know that sounds very organized, but trust me its not!  Sometimes I run out of fabric strips and have to run to my scrap box and clean cut the scraps into various sized strips to put in my drawer next to the sewing machine. I have several plastic boxes full of these scraps. I am trying to justify keeping them or "hoarding" them, as my husband calls it. 

These are scraps left from years of cutting butterflies, cats, hexagons, triangles for my customers' orders.  There are all sizes and weird shaped pieces left.  But, if I cut just so, I can get several strips of different widths and many, many triangles of different sizes! I can't even begin to think of throwing all that fabric away! If that makes me a hoarder, so be it!

I have already made enough blocks to put together a quilt top from these scraps that you can see here Click Here   But, it was not big enough to drape over the side of my double bed.  So that's why I am sewing more blocks.  Plus, after I finish this one, I am making 2 more for my other kids. I think then maybe, I will have used all the scraps in the plastic boxes, LOL!!!

In the meantime, remember the "baby doll" quilt?  Well I finally decided, I am going to quilt it on the machine.  Even though I am not very experienced in machine quilting, I think I will manage with this one because it is so small. I will post a picture when I am done, maybe on Monday???

My hexagon quilt progress will be posted tomorrow!

Have a great time quilting!

Aveli

Baby! Baby! Baby Doll That Is!

I have finished putting together the Baby Doll Quilt for my granddaughter. And, as promised I have several pictures.

Let me start at the beginning:

I wanted to use scraps for this little quilt because I have been sewing "feeder" paper strips after every step of sewing blocks for other projects.  I have several of these "feeder" paper foundation blocks.  They measure approximately 8 1/2" x 2 1/2". I say approximately because I don't cut them precisely with a ruler. I just take a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and cut across the sheet.  I can get 4 strips out of each sheet of paper. I use printer paper that I have already printed on both sides; which I do frequently when testing out sizes of patterns or designing a pattern.  Instead of just chucking them in the trash, I recycle them into these strips to be used for foundation piecing.

So, I took three of these strips and sewed them end to end and came up with an approximate size of the width of the Baby Doll Quilt.  Here is what three strips look like sewn together. I do not remove the paper foundation until the whole blanket is sewn together. This gives the little pieces more stability while I am working with them. Once the blanket is sewn together, I do not need the paper because they have been sewn cross and lengthwise so they have stability on their own.

Once I had sewn enough of these "strip blocks" together, I laid out the little quilt.

I separated the strips because laid out together, with no spaces between strips was too small. So I decided to put some sashing in between each "strip block". Now it was larger. Here it is laid out with the sashing.

Now it was starting to look very nice.  But, I thought it was too small to actually wrap the baby doll in it. So I added another strip and another sashing. Here it is all sewn together with 1 1/2" sashing and 1 1/2" borders.  I put the baby doll on top to make sure that it was big enough to wrap around the doll.  It is!
It measures approximately 24" x 26". The next step is to remove the paper foundations.

I will not put any batting in it because I do not want it to be too bulky for my granddaughter to hold.  The backing is the only thing left for me to add besides the binding and tying. I am planning on tying it with a very thin ribbon. All the fabrics used on this blanket were scraps, even the sashing, backing, and ribbon for tying.  I will post a picture of the completed project.

Hope you enjoyed my journey.  If you have any questions, please feel free to use the contact form on this blog.

Happy quilting!
Aveli

Flea Market ! Again?

Today, we left early for the flea market. I was determined to find the "pie lady" and "biscochitos" from last week and buy some more.  They were sooooo scrumptious!

Well, once again, my husband couldn't wait till we got to Las Vegas to eat.  This time though, I was also hungry. So, we decided to go to "Kristie's Korner Kafe" down the road from Mora. Mora is 14 miles from our cabin and is our "local" shopping area.  It has a grocery store, several restaurants, churches, schools, library, etc. Kristie's Korner Kafe is one of the better restaurants.  It is very small, only has 6 tables, but is very popular with the locals. Why? because it has great food!  We had breakfast there.  Of course my husband had red chili, let me correct that, red New Mexico chili with his breakfast. Restaurants in New Mexico always have New Mexico chili and the waitress will always ask "Red, Green or Christmas?" "Christmas?" That is a concoction made of both red and green chili . . ."Christmas"! I have never tried "Christmas" chili because I don't care for green chili, but my husband says it's great! He loves either color!!!

So we finish breakfast and off we go to LV.  When we get to the "Flea Market" I noticed that there weren't very many people shopping. My husband says it's probably too early for shoppers. Everyone is probably still in church!  Then I noticed that there were only 5 or 6 vendors!  I know this flea market is small, but this is ridiculous! I was so disappointed :( !  I was really looking forward to an apple pie and biscochitos for the week.

So I kept walking down the aisle and I spied an ironing board attached to some weird contraption. I stopped to look and found an ironing board that converts to a step ladder that converts to a chair.  Here is a picture of it as an ironing board

 This is the way to use it as a stepstool.

And last but not least . . .as a chair!

Isn't it amazing? Have you ever seen anything like it? Please comment if you have. I would love to hear if someone knows what it is called and from what time period it comes.

I loved it! My husband loved it! (which is very unusual) Needless to say, we bought it!!!

After our excursion into the "miniature" sized flea market, we went to Walmart to buy a few groceries and then came home.  Just in time I might say because as we drove into our driveway, a downpour started that has lasted for twenty minutes.  It tapering down some but it is still thunder and lightening and intermittent showers.

My quilting project for today is to finish sewing the "Baby Doll" quilt for my granddaughter. I will post a picture of it when I finish sewing it together tomorrow!

"Talk" to you tomorrow! Keep quilting!
Aveli