Accio Fabric!

Sunday, April 28, 2013

It's Raining Pom Poms

Hi Everyone and welcome to the Shake Your Pom Pom blog hop!!

I'd like to thank Thearica and Madame Samm for all of the effort they put into arranging these hops. It's a huge amount of work and they've done a great job!

I finally got my beloved Janome back last week and had an already scheduled girls quilting weekend, so I've spent the last 72 hours quilting like a mad woman! I've literally had 5 hours sleep in that 72 hours, so this is going to be short and sweet in order to keep it somewhat coherent. Even though I pulled 2 all nighters, I wasn't able to completely finish my quilt, but it's mostly done.
I couldn't believe my luck when I found multi-colored blue poms that I think actually look like a rainy day.

This is my in fully assembled quilt top. I put the hot pink rain drops on pre-applique, but found that I couldn't quilt with them on, so I had to snip them off and will reattach them once the quilting is complete. I used my pom poms to symbolize rain drops around some of the cutest umbrellas possible.

I used white metallic thread and quilted a Morton Salt girl silhouette in the focus, beaded umbrella. I used blue metallic thread to quilt the umbrellas and rain.

My dear friend Sophie happend to be at the quilting weekend, which was lucky for me since she can draw and I can't. Stick figures are my forte, so the salty girl was well out of my league. Thanks Soph!!!

Unfortunately I had a mishap and some of the colors started to bleed onto the gray, so I had to quickly wash and dry my unfinished quilt, pins and all. I would not recommend this, but I was terrified the bleeding wouldn't come out if I didn't deal with it immediately.

This is it's current state:

Thanks for visiting and putting up with my sleep deprived ramblings. I'm off to sleep for about 14 hours now.

Here's my fellow Pom Pom Hoppers, I hope you get to visit them all and enjoy their Pom Pom Shaking as much as I do!!

April 29

Accio Fabric

Quiltsmiles

Scrapbook-chickadoodle

In The Sewing Basket

life, quilts and a cat too

Debby Kratovil Quilts

Just Let Me Quilt

Meadowbrook

Monday, April 1, 2013

April Showers....

Well it's official, my beloved machine is broken! I have been without a machine for 3 weeks now and I've got one more to go! The bar that holds the needle and goes up and down is worn out and has to be replaced. Things are bound to wear out, so I really can't complain, and considering I've had it 11 years and I sew about 5 days a week, I've probably been lucky it's made it this far without needing major repair.

In the meantime I've been talked into joining the Shake Your Pom Poms blog hop at the end of this month by Thearica. I debated it for a while, because I couldn't come up with a project that included pom poms that the dogs wouldn't eat. Koda has been systematically redecorating my reading room curtains by plucking the pom poms off the trim. He chews them, decides they don't taste all that good and leaves spitty fringe all over the room for me to clean up.

Then it hit me. I bought the Laundry Basket Quilts "Dancing Umbrellas" pattern a couple of weeks back when my friend Pattie and I stopped at a local quilt shop:

As I totally love cute umbrellas, my first thought was "oooo, wouldn't this be cute in bright, happy fabrics!"
As I only have my small travel machine, which is fine for piecing but not heavy duty quilting, I decided I could at least get the blocks together fairly quickly. Then I realized it was Watchathon week and Comcast has all of the seasons of Downton Abbey for free. So I sat on my hiney most of the week and watched and watched. I did try to be somewhat productive though. I have 14 umbrellas together, not bad for the weekend, don't you think?
Here are my first two blocks:

They aren't appliqued down yet, I just posed them because I was excited to see them all together.

I've mostly used Tanya Whelan's fabrics (who has a gorgeous new shabby chic line coming out that I'm sure I will need to have some of). I did through in a couple of Sarah Jane's Out to Sea line because I totally would love a real life Narwhal umbrella! The background is Kaufman's Mix Master Fizz by Patrick Loose.

Well that's all for today. I think I'll post the rest of my vacation while waiting for my machine to be fixed. I can't possibly forget to share the time I spent with the lovely quilting ladies at Borderland Fabrics in Jedburgh!

Happy Quilting,

Vicki

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Living Like Nancy Drew

Well, it's here! My day to post my Nancy Drew project.
The good news is all of my ridiculously small flying geese are done and the top is put together.

The bad news, when I went to started to quilt it I had a machine / tension issue which I tried to resolve myself. I got the machine back together, with only one extra screw! I hope it's not an important one. The issue came back within a short time, so my project is sadly not complete.

I loved Nancy Drew as a young girl. My friends and I read and re-read every book a billion times. My all time favorite were the originals with the blue and orange covers. Nancy was smart, independent, and fearless, which are all things I strive to be in my life. These are also qualities that we should teach all girls to be, in my opinion!

Nancy maze quilt top.

Nancy's following the clues.

Flying geese lead the path to the center.

All pinned a little quilted.

I picked some of my favorite sayings from Nancy's Guide to Life for the white areas. It will say things like:
Boys like girls who doggedly pursue their goals (or prey, as the case may be) - The Secret of the Wooden Lady
Clumsy, fat men who are looking at middle age through a rear-view mirror should not attempt to keep pace with lithe young women. - The Whispering Statue
A young lady with some judo skills can take care of unwanted advances in short order. - The Whispering Statue