Wall Hangings complete!!

So I haven't been posting for the last week.  Not much to post about when I didn't get anything done as I had planned. But, the wall hangings are finished!! Pay no attention to the backgound.  Those were some flannels I was auditioning for another quilt in waiting.

Marion's wall hanging

Nova Lee's wall hanging

Olivia's wall hanging

Logan's wall hanging

All 4 completed!

Now that those are finished, I have a computer room and living room to get back to normal. Putting all the xmas boxes and things put away so they arent still sitting in the walk way come July.  The next quilts that I need to complete are my Allietare and Michaela's sunflower, and let's not forget the trash can for the crafts room..  Hopefully I can get to these in the next few weeks.

Have a good one,

Brig

Today's goals

Now that everyone has left for work or school and I have completed my morning Sudoku puzzle, it's just me & the cats until roughly 6pm.  By then I hope to have completed the borders, backings and batting for all 5 of the heart wall hangings. At that point I'll be ready to quilt and bind on Wednesday.  A quick wash to remove all markings and cat hair, wrap them all pretty and mail them off by Friday.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Brig

Getting there

I haven't done much sewing for the past few days.  I did manage to get all the hearts sewn down on the wall hangings for the granddaughters.  And as I was trying to figure out what Valentines type thing to make for my grandson that he might like but wouldn't look to girly, Michaela says, "How about using all blue hearts?"  Brilliant, why didn't I think of that???  Well no blue hearts, they kinda looked weird.  So I did a wall hanging for him using only red hearts.  Good thing he likes red and there was only a touch of pink.  Not "girly" at all.

 Again, why didn't I think of this to begin with?

   One with the borders almost complete.

That's it for today!

Brig

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions!

So this morning I had the brilliant idea to use fabric paint to outline my hearts instead of appliqueing them down.  Great, but this involved searching for the fabric paints online. I checked Joanns and found what I needed - AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY.  Crap, so I knew Wal-mart had to carry them, I've seen them there before.  But first I'll check Shopko in town here to see what they have before I drive all the way to Bozeman.  Turns out Shopko had the paints but only the basic set and I was looking for the glitter set.  So I guess I'm going to Bozeman. Walmart had the basic set the neon set the glow in the dark set and just my luck, they were out of the glitter set. I think "someone" is trying to tell me something.

Needless to say, I should have stayed home and appliqued the hearts down.

Applied Fabric Paints

 Not a bad job. But this outlining does require a steadier hand than I have. Too much squeezing here & there but I managed to smooth it out with a tooth pick.  I just didn't like the sloppy look of the paint.

Steady hands required

Here is what I finally did. Yep, appliqued them down.  I guess "someone" won.  I am going to use red & white thread also to give the hearts some definition so they stand out a bit more.

 

Yep, much better!

Brig

Hearts, Hearts & more Hearts!!

I took yesterday off from posting, but that didn't stop me from starting a new project.  I did spend most of the day Skyping with my sister Kathy and cutting all these cute hearts on the Accuquilt.  

This is a free pattern from the Accuquilt web site.  HERE. Although it is suggested that you apply fusible web to the fabric BEFORE cutting with the Accuquilt, I did not.  Because I didn't want all the extra fabric to have fusible on it which would have been a mess if I were to use it in a scrap quilt.  So the hearts got cut first then I put layers of the fusible web through and then ironed each fusible heart  to a fabric heart.  Yes, time consuming but well worth it because threre was no fused fabric waste. :)





These are my 5 wall hangings that I did today with all those cute hearts!

Tomorrow I will work on the borders.

Brig

Let's go shopping!

Today Michaela and I went to Joanns in search of backings for our quilts. Her quilt is still a work in progress that just kinda happened while I was on a break from my Allietare quilt.  Michaelas' quilt is supposed to represent looking out a window at a sunflower.  Her favorite flower. It's starting to take shape and looking very nice. I'll do another post on her quilt when we are closer to getting it completed.
Back to shopping... We arrived at Joanns and were just looking around to see what our choices were going to be.  We were also planning on going to JC Penneys to see if there were any decent sheet sets on sale.  I don't like to use cotton sheets for the backs of quilts, but if I found something that matched other than solid flannel, I 'd use it. Suffice it to say, I didn't find anything at JC Penneys so we wondered off to Macy's. Overly priced stuff, but again we were just looking for flannel sheets that might have been on sale.  Nothing there that I was going to spend lots of money on except a new set of sheets for my bed.  Goodness knows we need new sheets.  So back to Joanns we went!
Red Tag clearance fabric was 50% off so of course I had to get some more COLOR for my stash.  We settled on a few solid flannels for Michaelas' quilt back and a gray damask print for my quilt back.  All in all it was a good progressive day!

Brig

Quilting woes

No sewing again today.

I really wanted to get further ahead on my Allietare quilt today.  The top is complete, but trying to decide on the backing has become more like a chore and less like the quilt making  process.  I wanted to go through the piles of flannel I have to see if there was something I could piece together rather than go buy MORE material.  No such luck.  I didn't have enough of anything to match the front with the red, black gold and neutral colors.  I did manage to dig up 2 yards of red, 2 yards of red with snowflakes and a half yard of black - this seriously looks stupid!!  I didn't even have a decent gold/yellow color to fit in to this backing, so I guess I have to go to Joanns tomorrow.

No backing = no progress.  I'm not cutting the batting until I have a back, so lets move on to something else.  The quilting needs to be done before you cut the scallop edge of this quilt. Again, can't quilt without the backing and batting, so I drew the scallop lines on the outer borders and cut my bias border binding and called it "worked on"!

I was thinking about making a very large block for the backing that looks similar to the black blocks on the front of the quilt but then thought of the tugging and pulling that will be done on this quilt and decided to go back to the original though of using matching panels of color. 

Spent too much of the day looking through fabric web sites for some decent looking backing flannel.  I did come across a print that would have worked.  It was 108" wide but it was quilting cotton.  I prefer to back my quilts in flannel.  I hope I have better luck at Joanns.

Brig

How this came about

Busy day, no sewing.
Did the normal morning routine of a daily Sudoku puzzle and played the ever popular Bubble Witch Saga 2.  The puzzle was fairly easy, not very challenging and the "Little Witch" wouldn't let me progress to a higher level. I'll deal with her tomorrow!

Thought about working on our Cricut project for a slightly beat up metal garbage can (separate post to follow ) or maybe continue working on the scalloped border for my Allietare mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter.  (Pics of quilt to be posted later too) When I was reminded by the starving people of my house that I needed to go shopping because "there's nothing to eat".  Guess who won? Yep, grocery shopping.

But before we left, Michaela was trying to get some photos off her phone when I noticed a blog page of hers and the idea came to me again about starting my own page. I have been wanting to start my own page so I had someplace other than FB to show quilts and general crafts that I have done or want to do but never really knew how to get started. So here I am trying to wade through all the info about it.

First things first, name your blog.  Blue Diamond Giraffe - and here is where I'll leave it.   

Brig

As of March 8, 2017 I have renamed my blog "Blue Diamond Quilts and Crafts".