Category Archives: got stripes

Got Stripes? – Finished Flimsy

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I finished “Got Stripes?” to the flimsy stage last night.  It took most of yesterday to get the two borders on.  It always amazes me how long it takes to measure, cut, and attach borders to the perimeter of a large quilt.  I usually underestimate the time I need for this task.
This one is technically queen size, but I think it would fit a king size bed too as I made the outer border wider than the pattern said. I took the border fabric I had on hand and figured out how many pieces I needed, did the math, and made the border the corresponding width. The only piece of fabric left was the piece that was trimmed off in the beginning when I was squaring up the fabric–every other last bit was used! I love no leftovers!  
Finished size:  100.5″ x  117.5″.

This is a Terry Atkinson design.  The pattern can be found in the book, “Time Out Quilts”.

This one has been added to the growing, “to be quilted” pile.

Ice and Quilt Progress

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This morning, we woke up to a layer of freezing rain covering everything.

Although the ice coating on everything is pretty, it is definitely not safe to be driving or walking in this weather.

 

It was safe to stay inside and quilt though.  🙂

By 11:00 pm, I had finished making all the blocks for the Got Stripes quilt – with the exception of one.  I was short a green background strip.  I need to cut some green background  pieces to finish the last block and to replace some pieces in a block that is already pieced into the quilt top.  I made the mistake of reversing one piece of background fabric–front for back so I will need to do some reverse sewing.   

I also finished the binding on my Fire Escape quilt.  After finishing the binding, I spread the quilt out over the table to take a picture. 

A picture without the flash shows the colours of the quilt to be a little closer to reality and shows the swirl quilting design a little better.

Yet More Snow and Quilting Updates

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You just know you are in for one of those days when it starts with this:

The snow continued to fall here last night.  The snow mixed with high winds (60 to 80 km/hr) resulted in white out conditions and a bit of a wild drive to work today. 

Barbecue season and meals in the backyard seem so far away.

This truck is not going anywhere soon.

On the quilting front, progress is being made on piecing the blocks for Got Stripes and on attaching the binding to Fire Escape.

I am currently working on row 7 of 11 on Got Stripes.  Rows 1 to 5 are completely joined together.  Row 6 blocks are joined to one another but row 6 is not yet joined to rows 1 to 5.  I have just started working on row 7 – only one star block assembled so far on that row.

The binding has been attached to Fire Escape.  When I can steal a few moments, I work on hand stitching the binding to the back of the quilt.

Happy New Year!

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Have you heard the New Year’s Day superstition that what you do on New Year’s Day will be what you do all year long? 
We spent New Year’s Eve with our daughter and her fiance.  I don’t like family out on the roads New Year’s Eve with all the parties and drinking and driving that goes on, so we had them spend the night.  Because my daughter missed our traditional “Wife Saver Breakfast” on Christmas morning, because she had to work, that is what we had for breakfast on New Year’s Day morning.  After breakfast, my daughter had to head off to work, but it was nice having her here for New Year’s Eve and then breakfast the next morning. 
After breakfast, it was time to focus on how to spend the rest of the day.  Linda and I discussed this issue on New Year’s Eve and decided that we definitely would not be doing laundry or housework!  We knew we wanted to focus on quilting, but which aspect of quilting did we want to focus on?  In the end, we decided to touch on as many different quilting aspects as we could manage to fit into the day.  


I started my day by doing a few passes on the current quilt that is loaded on the long arm.  This quilt is, “Fire Escape”, finished to the flimsy state on September 11, 2011.  I just love this colour combination–red and aqua!  http://www.silverthimblequilting.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post.html
 




The next project I worked on was something that could be considered a reward–something quick to finish that would bring instant satisfaction of accomplishment.  I purchased a table runner kit on a blog hop in June 2006 that has been sitting safely in its plastic sleeve since that time.  I decided today would be the day to work on that project.  This was an old project, not really a UFO since it hadn’t been out of the plastic, that needed to be finished.   This one is now finished to the flimsy stage.  This runner finishes at approximately 50″ x 20″.  I love how this one turned out!

This runner is the same pattern as the runner that I finished up for my Mom for Christmas this past year.  http://silverthimblequiltingarchive.blogspot.com/2006/06/quilt-shop-hop-2006.html
In September 2009, I purchased the fabrics to make Terry Atkinson’s, “Got Stripes?” quilt.  This quilt is comprised of two blocks–a block made from striped fabrics and a star block.  I made the striped blocks right away and then set the fabric and pattern on the shelf.

When I took this one off the shelf to work on it, it took a bit to remember what fabrics I had decided to use where on the stars.  Only some of the fabrics for the star blocks had actually been cut.  Further confusing the situation was a navy blue batik fabric that I had also purchased at the time I bought these fabrics.  At the time, I thought I might make the star points navy blue.  I remember not being able to decide between the brown and the navy blue.  I ended up buying both fabrics and decided today to go with the brown.

I am loving how this one is turning out.  I finished 5 of the 50 required stars for this queen sized quilt tonight before having to call it quits.  http://www.silverthimblequilting.blogspot.com/2009/11/current-projects.html
I think this was a very successful New Year’s Day! 
– I stared the day with a wonderful meal together with my family.
– I managed to keep activities for the day related to quilting. 
– I worked on using my existing stash.
– I resisted buying new fabric–even though there was a 50% off sale today at a local fabric store.
– I never did any housework or laundry.
2012 is shaping up to be a great year!

Current Projects

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Although I have not been posting to my blog lately, I have been busy.

I finished a fall table topper for my mom. We purchased these fabrics at an Oregon Wal-Mart this summer. I have enough fabric to make myself one of these toppers as well. I have only finished one so far and that one is currently on the table in my mother’s kitchen. Maybe I will have mine done for next year. I have been busy quilting customer quilts and it seems that I don’t get an opportunity to work on quilting my own tops much. This fall, I have started inserting my own projects between customer quilts so that I can move my own projects forward. This plan seems to be working so far. This picture was taken Friday night and it is a top made from strings foundation pieced onto dryer sheets that I finished piecing August 1st.

I am also working on the binding on my Daffodil BQ2 quilt. I only have one corner of the quilt’s binding hand sewn to the back of the quilt so far. If I am looking for a handwork project this is the one I can pick up.


These are the fabrics that I recently purchased to start a new project. I fell in love with the floral fabric and coordinating stripe. The light green fabric in the middle will be used as background–a departure from the usual white or off white background that I usually gravitate to in a project.

These fabrics will be used to make a Terry Atkinson pattern, “Got Stripes?” from Terry’s new book, “Time Out Quilts”.

I work on the reward system to stay motivated as I work through some of my UFO’s. The reward for working on a UFO or other challenging project is to work on something new. Working on Got Stripes will be the reward for the next while.
Having several projects at various stages of the process also helps to keep things moving forward. If I feel like piecing or quilting, or doing handwork, I have something ready to go.