Design Wall Monday and More

This is still on my wall, but there are more blocks done. I'm happy with the progress, considering I'm only working on this as a leader and ender project or in between other projects. Click HERE to see what I had done last week. 

If you read yesterday's post about my quilt challenge, then you know that I finished my Stepping Stones quilt before the challenge deadline. So did Sarah, and she sent me a picture of her completed quilt. She finished before the deadline too. Yippee!  It's beautiful!

And finally, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly the grandkids are growing up. I got a call from Quinn yesterday, and this picture. She lost her first tooth! She is so excited! Most of her classmates have lost a number of teeth and she was thinking that she would never lose any. Well, she also said that the one next to it is loose, so I guess she was wrong. hehehe

What is happening in your quilting world?

Check out what other quilters have one their design wall.

Go to Judy L's Patchwork Times

Quilt Challenge - Done!

The past January or February, my niece Sarah and I were texting each other about various things and the subject of our unfinished Stepping Stones quilts came up. We were encouraging each other get them done when Sarah said, "Let's set a deadline. How about Mothers' Day?" 

Shoot, that was over three months away so I said, "Sure! I can do that." After all, my top was completed and it just needed quilted and bound. Well...you guessed it. I waited until the last few days to finally complete that quilt, but it's done! 

I had never been totally convinced that the borders I made were quite right (I changed it from the pattern for a number of reasons) and I had that quilt out so many times trying to decide if I should change them. I finally just said, nope! They are staying as they are.

Then the decision on how to quilt it needed to be made. I had visions of specialty/custom/heirloom quilting, but no time or the skill to do that and that bummed me out. I kept thinking, maybe, just maybe I'd wake up one morning and realized that I'd been blessed with those quilting super powers of which I'd been dreaming. 

Sadly that never happened so I had to change my plans. 

Last month I decided on a design to use (Spilled Ink by Sarah Ann Myers) and happily and quickly got it quilted. I didn't have the time to bind it right away, plus I was thinking about adding a flanged binding, so this quilt was put in the "To Be Bound" pile. That was a big MISTAKE! It stayed there until finally on Friday I told myself that I HAD to decide on the binding and get this done.

I made it happen and here are the results. (The quilt is sideways in the picture. I guess I need to tighten my clothes line so I can hang longer quilts on it. Oh, and use it for drying my clothes.)

  

I love the backing fabric I chose. You can also see the quilting a bit better here.

Sarah is finishing her's up as well, but she has an excuse for waiting. Besides having three young children, she broke her wrist and just got the cast off recently. I can't wait to see her final quilt.  :-)

Another reason I am thrilled to have this finished is that I told myself I could not start a new Judy Niemeyer quilt until I finished this one. :-)  I think that perhaps I should inventory my UFOs before actually staring something new. I should quilt a few more, finish up the piecing on a few and then start the next Judy quilt. 

Yes, that's the plan. But of course, I can still start looking to decide which quilt I'm going to make. I just won't start it. Which pattern should I choose? Should I use one of the kits I have? Should I make a kit for one? Oh the choices! What a wonderful conundrum I have! 

Design Wall Monday and We Support You Blog Hop Day 8

It's Day 8!

Tomorrow is MY day. YIPPEE!

Check out the awesome projects created by these talented people 

Feb 9^th 

Stitchin By The Lake

 Tea Leaf Quilts

Books, Hooks, Sticks, etc

Seams To Be Sew

Stitchen' My Life Away

On my design wall is a quilt top that has been finished for a while and has found its place in one of my "Tubs of Shame."

Here is my version of Judy Niemeyer's Stepping Stones.

I changed the border on my version. It looks really pink and purple in this picture, but it isn't really that bad. I'm not sure why it looks like that. Anyway, I changed the borders for a couple of reason, but mainly because I was using scraps for this quilt and I had a bunch of these pieces that I wanted to use. 

So why is this on my wall today? Because of a text conversation I had with my niece Sarah. Sarah sent me a message a couple of weeks ago saying that she had started working on her version of the same quilt and I said something like "Maybe you will be the inspiration to get mine quilted and bound." Well, then she said "Let's challenge ourselves to get these both done by Mothers' Day." I agreed and then did not even get mine out of the tub it was in.

Well Sarah finished her quilt this past week and is ready to sent it to the quilters. Not only was she the inspiration I needed, she was also that swift kick in the butt I needed to get this out, put it on the wall, look at it for a few days and then decide how I'm going to quilt it. Any suggestions?

The next time you see this, it will be quilted and bound. Done, done and done!

So what's on your wall today?

Check out what other quilters are working on by going to

Judy L's Patchwork Times

Be sure to stop back tomorrow for 

Tip Tuesday!

and 

My We Support You Blog Hop Post

Friday Finishes

I haven't really been posting any "Finish It Friday" things lately, but I have some free time and I remembered to do it.  :-)

Note: I had this post ready to go almost 3 hours ago but we lost power during a thunderstorm and that put an end to the post. The power has finally come back on and I decided I better do this now or I may just forget about it again. 

I've been playing around with the borders to my Stepping Stones quilt (a Judy Niemeyer pattern) for quite a while because I just didn't like MY fabrics and placement of them in the original pattern. (I love the original quilt, just not my border fabric choices.) I toyed with the idea of just not adding any borders, but I liked that even less. Here's what I finally decided to do. The borders look much more purple than in reality. I'll try to get a better picture, but in the mean time, you get the idea.

 

What have you accomplished today? Check out what other quilters have been doing today by going to Crazy Mom Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.