Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Autumn's Song

Autumn leaves
combine all the colors that are my favorites.

Back in May I began working on
a small embroidery pattern by Crabapple Hill Studio.

I had gotten out crayons and

started coloring.
It even traveled with me over the summer.

When the embroidery was finished it
seemed way to big for a pillow.
So it became the center medallion for my
September small quilt.


"Autumn Song"

I added some simple borders
in those wonderful fall colors.


Why not include some beads
rather than make all those french knots
for blackberries.


Keep it simple with some quilting in the ditch

and a leaf motif for the outer border.

Autumn Song is complete and
ready to accompany the changing season.

Another month finished.
Check in with Wendy to see
some other September finishes.

****
This weekend will be an interesting one for me.
I'm traveling back to my home town in Michigan and
attending my 50th high school reunion.


Good grief!!!
How did that happen.!!

Should be interesting to say the least.
How many people will I recognize from the class of
about 200 kids?
Or even, how many people will recognize me?
I'm sure we have all changed a lot.

We were the class of 1968
and we are forced admit we are all 68.
A special combination that only happens
once every 100 years.

Two of my long time girlfriends,
(nursery school and kindergarten friends)
will be accompanying me, so we have each other
for moral support.

 I saw this recently.


It made me laugh or wonder.
I'll let you know if Barbie shows up!

Until Next Time-
Kyle

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Embroidered Hearts

It was time to gaze into my crystal ball


to see if I was ever going to finish my


The crystal ball revealed that
the embroidery had been done for awhile.


The individual wool hearts



were complicated and a delight to work on.


Lots of time, 
a wide variety of thread sizes and colors
and lots of different stitches.

What small woolly wonders.

But that was all in the past.
So what did the future show.

It showed the part 
that always seems to trip me up,
making it into a bag with a zipper.

I needed to adapt the pattern 
because the wool I used for the bag
was a bit heavy.
It would be too thick to stitch
the zipper the traditional way.

Because the wool felted so nicely,
I stitched the raw edge right up next to the zip.
Adapted the lining too and 
Wow!  The future was actually looking good.


The bag was finished.


It stitched up fairly easily.
It stitched almost perfectly.


Could my future hold more bags?
Not anytime too soon.
Until Next Time-
Kyle

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Thanks!!

It's been quite a week. 
 I've just had to keep 


pushing forward.

A little bit of stitching,
a little bit of cooking + harvesting
and a lot of Nana duty.

Hanging out with my 16 month old grandson, Weston.

Chasing bubbles and
playing with wrenches to
help Papa put together the


new honey extractor.

Thanks Weston for keeping me
on my toes and hopefully young at heart.๐Ÿ’™

****
That extractor, of course, lead to actually harvesting
some honey from our very productive hive.


Pardon the cliche,
but they have been very busy bees!


3.5 gallons of honey from 8 frames
with plenty left in the hive for the bees
to survive through the winter.
Thank you bees! ๐Ÿ

****

We have one small peach tree
that literally went crazy this year.


bending it's branches 


nearly to the ground. 

We picked well over 500 peaches


Lots have been frozen, shared and eaten!

That's been along with a couple of bushels
of apples;


Thank you fruit trees
for being so generous this year.

****

The tomatoes?

Well, enough for 

a couple of tomato pies


and being able to enjoying the simple BLT's.

Thanks tomatoes for giving 
a good effort.

****

The stitching has been minimal.

I've been working on the next border 
on my Di Ford Sutton Grange quilt.


 4 petals are being machine appliqued to a square.


I opted to sew the background squares together first,
 add the borders to the quilt,
and then applique the petals to squares.

The reason was because that I KNEW I won't be able 
to place and stitch those 4 petals properly.
I knew some would probably get sewn into the seam allowances.


There's no way I could have gotten all those
points to have come together as well as they did 
if I was concerned about the seam allowances.

Yes, it's a bit awkward handling this 
much fabric while machine appliqueing,
but for me, the results are well worth it.

Not all of them came out perfectly anyway,


but most did!


The good news is the pattern actually
has an appliqued circle over the centers.
Any issues will vanish!
Thanks, Di.  

****
Thanks to all of you
๐Ÿ’—๐Ÿงก❤️๐Ÿ’™ 
for taking the time
to read my blog and 
to leave a comment or two.
I appreciate it very much.
Until Next Time
Kyle

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Christmas or Not?

January seems like such a long time ago.
"The list"
with the quilts that I wanted to make or finish
during the year
was filled with challenges
and high expectations.


One of the projects I was 
going to tackle was this lovely vintage
applique pattern .



I have looked online
for the pattern again, but haven't been able to find it.  Sorry.

My plan was to applique

two blocks each month.



 I decided to try the Aurifil 80 weight thread.

I loved it!
It was lovely to work with.
Very thin, but strong.

Slowly over the months
the pile grew and grew.

By August, the 12 blocks were complete.

Then came the scary part,
trimming the blocks to 18.5".

If you applique, you know 
the importance of cutting your base
bigger than the finished size.

That base can shrink and 
get distorted during the applique process.

Next the three borders were added 
after measuring carefully. (see last weeks blog)

Christmas or Not
 72" x 90"

The blocks are sewn side by side
creating nice open spaces
for some fun and interesting quilting designs.


This one seems to be calling to
be hand quilted.

So I have sent it off to my machine quilter
to baste it for me.
I think I'm done crawling around
on the floor with large quilts.

I'm still considering
what kind of designs to use.


 Red and green makes you immediately think
of Christmas, but not necessarily.
We'll have to see what happens.
Any thoughts?
Christmas or not?
Until Next Time-
Kyle