My First 2012 Finish!

Last year my first finish of the year was the rally quilt. This year my first finish of the year is the rally quilt. Last year I finished the rally quilt in March, and this year it's April, but finished is finished.
I don't think this pic looks much different than the one of the quilt top, but now you can see I used red binding.

I kind of went crazy on the center applique panel. I added a road outlined with rocks, added multiple types of cactus and grasses. I tried taking a photo from the front, and it just doesn't show up, so here is my barrel cactus from the backside of the quilt. I don't know that my free motion quilting skills are up to what I attempted, but I was feeling daring and just went for it. I quilted the center panel yesterday.

I opted for an allover pattern on the rest of the quilt, so I wouldn't have to mark it. I did spirals, or as Patsy Thompson calls them, innies and outies. It is a really fun design to quilt, and goes pretty quickly. I was surprised I got the quilting finished today, I thought I would finish tomorrow. It was still light out when I finished quilting, so I hurried and got the binding on. I am sooooo happy to have this finished!

I have the pink/black beast blocks on my sewing cabinet, ready to start assembling it tomorrow. I plan on assembling it in quarters, instead of rows like I normally do. I took some time last week to assemble the backings for the pink/black beast and Orca Bay. I contacted my LAQ, and she will quilt and bind both of them. I need to mail them to her, so as soon as the pink/black beast top is together, I can send those off, and they will come back finished. That will give me time to finish up some of my smaller quilts, including the three baby quilts I need ASAP.

As I was quilting today, I was thinking about how much I have changed as a quilter. I used to dread the quilting, and today I found it fun. I never disliked pin-basting, but now I find it downright relaxing. I still have to psych myself up for applique prep, but overall, I am just enjoying the process more and more. I still love piecing best, and I doubt that will change, but I am appreciating the steps more.

I kept debating what to do about my batting problem. I really like Warm and Natural, and I still have most of a roll of it, but it is so expensive to replace with the rising cotton prices, that I hate to use it up just because I was out of polyester batting. I did some online shopping and I found the Microsafe batting traditional loft, which is what I just used the last of, for $60.20 for a 20 yard roll at benfranklin.com . The last time I bought that batting I got a 25 yard roll, but I figured the 20 yard roll would take up just a little less space, which is good, but still will last a while. When that gets here I can choose which batting I want to use for each quilt, and since I have over 20 quilt tops that need to be quilted, I will be using lots of batting. I tend to use polyester batting for donation quilts, just so I can make more quilts, since it is less expensive. I also use polyester if I want a lightweight quilt. If I am going to keep a quilt, I usually use cotton batting.

I am set on fabric, thread, and batting for a while. I think my next quilty purchase will be more Patsy Thompson DVD's. I have three of her DVD's now, and I'd like to eventually get all of them. I think my freemotion quilting is getting better, I am at least getting more comfortable with it. I still can't loop de loop to save my life, I keep trying it on paper, and I just can't do it. There are several quilting designs on the second Fast and Free DVD I am anxious to try. I've heard you should try to become proficient at a design before you go on to another one, but I am skipping around. If I didn't I'd still feel like a complete failure because I always back myself into a corner with the loop de loops. I have been skipping around and I feel pretty comfortable with several other designs, and that just makes me happy :-)

Hand Me the Envelope, Please.

...and the Leibster blog winner is my blog! At least as determined by Katie M :-) from Katie and Kwilts

Thank you Katie for the honor! I'm really glad you enjoy my blog :-)

For anyone who doesn't know about Liebster blog awards, this is how they work.

The Liebster is given to blogs that deserve to be recognized, but have less than 200 followers. And, of course, the Award comes with just a few "rules", which are:

1) Post about your win on your blog.

2) Link back to the blogger who presented you with the award.

3) Copy and Paste the award to your blog.

4) Present the award to 5 blogs that have less than 200 followers that you think deserve to be recognized.

5) Let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

So, now I get to give the Liebster blog award to five blogs. This is really hard. There are a lot of great blogs out there. When you add in that they must have less than 200 followers, it gets even harder. Since this is a quilting blog, I think I will keep it quilty in my awards.

My first award goes to Stephanie Newman . She is an amazingly talented quilter and has won many awards. She teaches classes and she also has been published in more than one quilting magazine. I am proud to call her a friend.

My second award goes to Theresa . She makes some gorgeous quilts, and she has a great conversational style.

My third award goes to Bonnie . She is on the Scrap Squad for Quiltmaker magazine, and she does lots of quilting! She also has an adorable granddaughter just a little older than my oldest granddaughter.

Fourth award goes to Deborah . She has some great patterns out there, and I just LOVE the Trinity knot one she designed. I've made one of those, and may make another someday.

My fifth and final award goes to Nann . She has all kinds of fun quilts on her blog!

I said I would limit it to quilt blogs and I did, but DH has a website for his scooter club, and he does a wonderful job with it. I will give him Honorable Mention for Sky Island Riders If you are ever traveling in Southern AZ, check out his Riding Southern Arizona series, no matter what vehicle you are driving in. He gives all kinds of ideas of places to see.

If I did all the links correctly, you can just click on the highlighted names to go to their blogs, and you may find a new favorite too!

Rally Quilt Top

The rally quilt top is done, the backing is pieced, and it's layered and spread out waiting for pin-basting in the morning! My Juki cabinet is cleaned off, the machine is freshly oiled, and it's threaded with the white thread I plan on using for quilting.

I'm hoping for good results after quilting. This quilt is not my flattest :-( I decided to use polyester batting for the higher loft, and this quilt took the last of my roll of batting (another :-( here). I have some poly batting scraps I can piece together and probably do a couple baby quilts with, but that's it. I am down to just cotton batting in large pieces. Overall I prefer cotton batting, and I'm not out of that, so that's good, but I like to keep both on hand. Batting storage is an issue in the new sewing room (no closet), so I really can't store a full roll of polyester batting until I use up some of my cotton batting. I guess that quilting spree will have to be soon ;-)

Tomorrow DH and I have a date planned, so I may not do more than pin-baste the rally quilt. I am really looking forward to a date. We are both so busy at rally at rally time, that it is good to make time for us. I think it will be an afternoon movie and dinner, followed by the obligatory grocery store run.

Working on the Rally Quilt

I admit it, applique is not my favorite quilty thing to do. It's not too bad once I get started, but oh, the struggle I have getting myself to start! I have a chronic pain issue, and today my pain levels were completely out of control. I felt nauseated because of it, so between the pain and feeling sick, it wasn't a great day to stitch detail work. I had finished all the fusing yesterday, so all the prep work was done, if that hadn't been done, I don't think I would have attempted it today. With frequent breaks, this is what I got done.


The covered wagon is all stitched. The rear tire looks flat! I think some of the fusible came off when I took off the paper, and that section kept moving as I was stitching. I might add some more thread tomorrow to make it look round, or I may just leave it and tell everyone the wagon hit a rock ;-) I am really feeling the time restraints at this point on this quilt, and I just need it finished. Finished is better than perfect, finished is better than perfect, finished is better than perfect!

There are four scooters pulling the wagon. These are the two Lambrettas, which are vintage scooters. I think these came out pretty well.

Tomorrow I need to stitch the other two scooters which are modern. Once those are stitched, I can assemble the quilt. I plan on just using the quilting to connect the scooters to the wagon. I don't want to add visible ropes or anything.

I went to Hancock fabrics today, and picked up some Wonder Woman fabric. DD#3 and DDIL both love Wonder Woman, so when I noticed online that Hancock's had Wonder Woman fabric, I had to get some. I was pretty good while I was there, I picked up a few remnants, I figure remnants are always fair game, and I bought some border fabric for the rally quilt. I was going to use some stash fabric for the outer border, but the closer I get to assembling this quilt, the less I liked what I was going to use. I am much happier with what I picked up today. I also got two other fabrics, some duckie fabric to make Miss S a dress, she loves rubber ducks, and the video Elmo's ducks on Youtube, and she goes around quacking all the time, she's so cute. The other piece of fabric is going to be the background for one of my next quilts. I wanted a constant background for that one, and the stuff I had on hand was either too large scale or I didn't have enough of it.

So, in total I bought four pieces of cut yardage, all of which have imminent uses. The remnants were a luxury purchase of sorts, I do have plans for two of those already. I love it that Hancock Fabrics marks their remnants down to $2 a yard. It's hard to resist that if I really like the remnant. I got a solid red that there is almost 2 yards of fabric, and I think it will be enough to make Bonnie Hunter's Nine Patch Split. That pattern is here
http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/06/nine-patch-split.html

Tomorrow I'll be stitching all the detail on the last two scooters and hopefully assembling at least part of the top. Oh, while my machine is set up for applique, I put eyes on my penguins for a baby quilt, and tomorrow I will applique the one block that needed something added to it on my sampler quilt. My Bernina Aurora came with a foot I didn't have for my old Bernina 1080. It is an open toe embroidery foot #20. It makes doing all the detail stitching SO much easier. I can actually see what I am doing. My detail stitching is far from perfect, but as long as it's getting better, it's all good, right?

A Happy Easter!

We had a lovely low-key Easter. Only 11 for dinner which is a small holiday around here. I'm just now having time to post, though I've been thinking all day of wishing everyone a Happy Easter.

The twins ended up with two Easter baskets a piece, one each from us, one each from their other grandmother. A bit spoiled I think ;-) We put a few plastic eggs in plain sight for them to "find" and Mr. L was really good at it. Miss S did spot one from across the room though, and we thought that was impressive too.

I thought the series of photos DH took of the twins was pretty funny, so here are a couple.

^Here was the first photo of them in their Easter outfits. Miss S likes getting her photo taken most of the time, so a big smile from her. Not so much from Mr. L

This one really cracked me up. Brother was lifting up her dress and she was complaining!

Finally a smile from Mr. L. He doesn't usually like getting his photo taken.

We had a fun day. My sisters and BIL came down from Phoenix for dinner. I tried out a new recipe with one of my sisters in mind. She loves chocolate and this recipe made me think of her

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chunky-cheesecake-brownies/

DH said the recipe is a keeper. I am not much of a chocolate fan, so a half a brownie was a bit much for me, but all the chocolate lovers liked them. I had made lemon bars too which are one of my favorites, and I had seconds on those.

DH smoked pork and chickens for our meat, they both came out wonderfully. Since we had fewer people than I expected, I put some of the meat into the freezer already. I also made some chicken broth from the smoked chicken carcasses. It makes amazing soup.

I kept the menu pretty simple. I made homemade rolls (white and wheat) and the desserts yesterday. Today I just had to make the sides since DH was handling the meat for me.

Oh, one of the sides I often make for holidays is a great recipe to pass on.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/southern-butternut-squash/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=southern%20butternut%20squash&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe

I make a couple of changes to the recipe though. I half the white sugar, and use 2% milk instead of the cream. I also normally make a double batch, and use one butternut squash and four or five sweet potatoes. Even today, when I only needed one batch, I made a double batch and froze the second batch before baking. I've done that several times, and it works just fine. I often make too much of something and freeze part of it for a later meal, it's especially helpful to have ready made meals when quilting all day!

I hope you all had a wonderful day.

He is Risen!