Kaydence’s Take 2 Blankie… The BIG Reveal!!!

November and December have flown by in a flash this year ya’ll!

I had a big finish the beginning of November and flew into working on Kaydence’s Take 2 Blankie…. her mom says that is what they will be calling it … a blankie… so I figured why not incorporate that into the name!! LOL

Linking this post with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts … HERE!
as well as Kelly with NTT (Needle and Thread Thursday) .. HERE!

It started with my friend Wendy sharing the instructions for making what I found was called Anita’s Arrowhead blocks for this quilt.

Then I made a tutorial for this block myself as well right HERE!

To make sure I was on track though I made 1 block for a final measurement of the block itself… and made this graphed drawing to work from…

I used a different color for each block and used white as my neutral ~ mom’s request as well! 🙂

Soon I had 8 of those blocks made and a special center block as well!

And at my request Kaydence’s mom sent me HER handwriting of Kaydences’ full name and birth statistics…

 I started the hand embroidery on the center block on November 13, 2015…

 And had finished better than I imaged it to look on November 18, 2015 🙂

 And by Thanksgiving weekend I had the flimsy together ready to layer, pin and START Hand Quilting !!!!

The vibrant green fabric you see in this quilt was thanks to my friend Connie  As was the fun backing fabric I used when I layered it…

Then I started the quilting in my hoop starting in the center…

while watching Bonnie Hunter’s most recent Quilt Cam… I did a fun wavy cross hatch in the center 🙂

All the Anita’s Arrowhead blocks I stitched in the ditch… I wanted their graphic quality to shine… not my stitching as much… but then there was the orange inner border…

I used turquoise Valdani 12 wt perle cotton thread as I had on the center block … in this cute Heart and Swirls pattern I had a stencil for just for this quilt! 🙂

Then back to wavy cross hatching for the outer border…

Isn’t this outer border the cutest owl fabric EVER!!! ???  I loved working with it 🙂

But those green cornerstones needed something more than a cross hatch job….

So I made a stencil from paper that would last for marking these 4 cornerstones… and stitched them in the pink I had used in the middle square in the green as well to make a great balance to the quilting overall I think…

So now that all hearts lead to the center of the quilt… it was time to label and wash the quilt .. bring out the texture and I think it shows okay here… but here are close ups of that….

 So for the blocks and outer border I used YLI 40/3 thread in white so it was all tone on tone in the end.. all else used was Valdani 12 weight Perle cotton I found searching online 🙂

I used a Hobbs Tuscany Cotton/Wool blend batting for that cool wrinkly texture but still have loft too…

Overall I am VERY pleased .. but who cares what I think… lets see what the recipient thought…

Just 7 months old and already playing peek a boo with her new blankie!!!  Thanks to my son James for catching these shots of his daughter receiving her new blankie 😀

So I do believe I can call this quilt a success!!! And it clocks in at just a bit smaller than the 49″ square it started out as before washing!!!

Any plans for New Years Eve??  I will be staying in and going to bed at regular time… I did get a bottle of non alcoholic bubbly for my girls to enjoy though !

Thanks for visiting!  Until my next post with next years goals and theme revealed…

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Friday Whoops to share :)

Well it is Finally Friday!!!

The weekend will soon be upon us 🙂

So what are you Whooping about for this week??  I have plenty to share in the hand quilting world… and am linking this post with Sarah for her Friday Whoop linky HERE 😀

My honey has been under the weather a bit this week… it happens to us all at times… so I have focused on house cleaning and quilting… I won’t bore you with the house cleaning! lol  but check out this shot I caught after stain removing and ironing this cool old Christmas table cloth I found in our Christmas stuff!  Whoop !!!!

I just love the texture of the quilt above caught in this shot … we have sunlight streaming into our living room from windows in the ceiling.. gives this cool effect without any photo enhancing too!

Here is a close up of the reason for the Season of Christmas in our home…

I think this is a better backdrop than the backside of a quilt! lol  My honey likes it too .. so he didn’t mind the change out! 🙂  WHOOP!!!!

Wednesday I marked the last of the orange inner border on Kaydence’s Blankie…

And was happy to see the meeting up my quilting to where I had started on Thursday…

By Thursday afternoon I had pulled out the stencil I had used on that center block…

This is a wavy crosshatch design.. I will use it on the outer borders but not in the cornerstones.. I have something different planned for them!

I had used the blue water soluble marker on my orange fabric marking… it was a joy to quilt with… but once spritzed away… and once DRY!  It comes back … all is well though… it is just that I am HEAVY HANDED on how I use the blue pen… spritz a second time well and it will be gone for good 🙂  No it doesn’t stain… and it doesn’t come back.. just don’t iron this marker while present in the quilt… once rinsed /washed well it will be gone forever! 🙂

Now back to my outer border… wavy cross hatch pattern… here is some of the first border done…

Doesn’t this look fun in the end.. .and it sews up fast too… no reason to stress about stitches with this meandering crosshatch either!  WHOOP!!!!

My plan for the weekend is to blog with progress on Sunday sometime… I will be focusing on the remaining 3 sides of the quilt… I have just about finished the side I marked Thursday already at this writing.. so I am feeling hopeful that by tonite I will have a couple hoops of the next border complete as well as all of it marked   WHooP!!!!

Hope you all have a fab Friday and are enjoy Christmas preparations… visits with old friends and such… Make time to spontaneously do a good deed… it shall be appreciated and you will reap the rewards… I promise!!!

Until my next post…

Christmas Decorating and Hand Quilting is Happening too!

We have started our annual Christmas decorating and destashing !!!  Do you have just what you need or do you destash each year as you unpack items that just don’t have that “favorite” ring??

While I fluffed out our tree a LOT (lol) my honey found a quilt not being used to put underneath our Nativity set…

This is also our facebook header shot this year 🙂  Do you change your header for the Christmas season??

And here is our little tree!!!!

And of course there is a Christmas train running round it! lol  If you follow me you know my honey is a vintage train collector as well… so a train for the tree is a given item in our home 🙂

Then we also put up a Christmas puzzle we worked and glued together about 5 years ago… in hopes of having a beachy home like we now have to display it…

this puzzle is about 16 x 20… can you tell it is a puzzle???  We enjoyed working it as a family for sure!!!

As we were decorating I was lamenting living in Florida now means real mistletoe is hard to find… and I love kissing my honey under Mistletoe!  The idea is just so romantic and we have an awesome area for that!!! lol  I still may do something different… but when my honey found his stocking I had made he deemed it “OUR CURRENT MISTLETOE”! lol

This is the headboard of our bed… he said now we can enjoy lots of private kisses under the mistletoe until we can find some for the foyer! hahaha!  He cracks me up with his punches of romanticisms 🙂

I made this stocking our first Christmas together… the name is stitched in HIS handwriting I copied onto the stocking…  I embroidered and sequined and beaded the entire stocking in about a month and a half to surprise him on Christmas morning and help acclimate him to our family!  Well almost 5 years later we are still together and Kissing under the Mistletoe ! hehehe

Here is a fun Christmas tradition we started in 2011… we got this FREE on our local Craigslist when we lived in Tennessee… we got other things too in their destash 🙂  But this item has become our Christmas calling card of sorts.. a soldier is cool too as my honey is an Army Veteran 🙂

It is hard to see in this shot since it is daylight… but some of the lights that glow against the colored plastic glass pieces and in the dark it looks really cool… well some of those lights are out now… so he needs NEW LIGHTING and just a spruce up… so this is our reminder of the condition of our soldier before my HANDY honey gets ahold of him 🙂

Yesterday CHRISTMAS came early for my honey too!  He so wanted new pots and pans… ours were all scratched and flaking from years of teenagers growing and learning and inadvertently (sometimes) just getting worn out over the years…  So he found a great BLACK FRIDAY deal on these pots and used the money he had gleened with Featherweight sales… to buy these beautiful and top quality CIRCULON pots and pans.. VERY heavy duty I tell you!!!!  AMAZING :)…

Meanwhile I have ordered a few things to call my Christmas if my kids don’t come through for me and I feel very blessed to have Rick and my daughter Brandi by my side to enjoy this time of the year!

How do you celebrate December each year???

I have been working fairly steady on Kaydence’s Take 2 Blankie… 

I have finished the center of the quilt and have moved to the orange inner border…

Here is how the stencil started so I went with it… 1st corner down to start off with! lol

And here is that side almost done and spritzed with water… you can see the Dritz Mark-B-Gone marker I used to mark the stencil design…. and my little water bottle I spritz it with once all stitching is done… to remove the marks so I can take a pic like this to urge me on.

This may seem strange but I quilt without looking at the whole quilt over and over… I don’t see a quilt for all it has to offer until it is washed and washed again then dried.  Then I adore it before gifting it or putting it to good use if it is staying! lol

What kind of quilter are you??? Do you peek often… or do you dream of what it will look like once washed???

Here is a close up of my stitching….

For the big stitched heart and swirl motif I used Valdani 12 wt perle cotton in the same turquoise I used on the center name in this quilt… so it is very coordinated with my embroidery and then my quilting!  For the proper look after washing I used support stitching for this border by using the white YLI 40/3 thread I used in the rest of the quilt to stitch the ditch on either side of the orange border… will make it all pop once washed and dried!!! 🙂  Yippee!!!!

Soon I will be taking this fabric…

 And making a couple of stockings…. you see my honey has a homemade stocking… my dd was old enough when I was making it to make her own and wanted to so she started it but has never finished it.. so she has a store bought and personalized stocking that we have yet to uncover…

I thought with all that in mind… I would make her and her best friend, Tanisha, who will be visiting over the holiday… a stocking each that is quilted… maybe something like this??

This is a pic I found on the internet… just to use for an idea booster!  And the ideas ARE swirling!!!

So we will see what I can do with those fabrics to make a couple scrappy quilted stockings that can be personalized to each girl and enjoyed for years to come I hope!

Do your children use stockings?? Would love for you to share stocking ideas with me if you know of a “recipe” 🙂  You can email me directly HERE to attach a pic if you have one with the web link/blog post/etc….

I will be starting on sewing this together next week… I plan to focus my current sewing time energy on finishing the Fall Wall Hanging and completing and binding Kaydence’s quilt if possible…

So now that you are all caught up I better get back to digging through decorations… we are destashing this year a LOT too… and hand quilting 🙂

Have a blessed December whatever you do and make time especially this hectic time of year to …

Happy December Ya’ll!

I can’t believe December is here!  We have a busy month in store… and this morning I started on the 4th Anita’s Arrowhead block in Kaydence’s Take 2 Blankie 🙂

Here is the first one I stitched.. there are 8 in this quilt…

I do pin baste my quilts while they are pinned to the floor… then hoop them and remove the pins as I stitch around them so no shifting occurs.

Here is that block finish…

I am simply quilting these in the ditch on the white side… I am using white thread so I want it to not show in these blocks except for the quilty texture it leaves behind… soon I will have enough to show you a shot without the hoop… but for now I am making progress…

I think I shared the center block with you in my last post.  I finished it as I watch a bit of quilt cam by Bonnie Hunter…

 Here is a shot of just the center block I hand embroidered in mom’s script…

 I really like how it turned out too!!!

And while I have been stitching away on this quilt… the recipient turned 6 Months Old!!!

Here she is for her 6 month check up 🙂  Isn’t she a cutie!!! ❤

Here she is with my son James… her father!

As I have been stitching this morning I finally finished all 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls on Netflix…

They even have a fb page.. who knew?? lol  And they are planning on filming a reunion exclusively for Netflix if I understand correctly… still reading up on that.. but hoping it comes out sometime soon… next up … probably some Christmas movies… I really am not yet in the Christmas spirit so something needs to wake that part of me up! lol

Meanwhile I have been pondering this center I finished last week of my Fall Wall Hanging… planning the inner border… and the width of the outer border…

The grey way my initial thought.. and I even cut the strips for it… but now I am just not loving it…. it is tooo similar to the pumpkin spice fabric that I used in this quilt so far I think… I needed something more bold… so I am thinking of going with a thin black inner border and a outer border in the fall leaves..

Now who knows if I will quilt this soon or not.. I have some Christmas secret sewing going on as well… so I will see… but I really would like to get this project to a flimsy state before the Christmas holiday!

More necessary shopping has happened this week in the Cyber Monday deals we found this set of pots/pans for a great sale price.. so we splurged a bit but they will soon be in our possession we hope!!!

They are Circulon Elite series … we have one skillet already that we bought over the summer.. when we saw a full set with no repeats for sale we just had to have them 🙂 lol!

We also have invested in something more practical.. a new ceiling fan as our previous one broke and the room it goes in NEEDS a ceiling fan going 24/7.. this IS Florida ya know! lol

Well.. the stitching… and my honey are calling me so have a happy December.  Would love to hear your December plans too.. or if you blog share what you have going on .. if you can! lol

Make sure you take time this month though to …

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend in the USA :)

My blog has been so quiet all week.  Here in the US it is a Holiday Weekend…

For us Thanksgiving is a long weekend of food, family and shopping sales!!!

Although Thursday is the nation wide Thanksgiving Day each year… we celebrated with food and family on Wednesday evening with a big pot of my homemade chili… Yummy!!!

I have done shopping with a little fabric purchase… some 10″ squares of beautiful Christmas fabrics… and a new seam ripper… I call Jack… aka Jack the Ripper! lol (my daughter lost my previous one…)

Also we bought a new vintage 1890’s sewing machine!!!  Pics to follow when we receive this beauty 🙂

Here is a CLONE of it that we currently own… Circa late 1800’s also…

This one is a Kruse Sewing Machine Company chainstitcher 🙂  And it sews such a nice chain stitch too!  Can’t wait to see what is different from a real Willcox and Gibbs versus this clone we now have!

But mainly over this holiday weekend I have been stitching!! Slow and fast stitching combined…

First was some slow stitching on my Garden Bouquet Whole Cloth quilt…

I have sewn on it every day for a few hours… and that is a lot of back hatching quilting too!!!

Back hatching is what I call all these straight lines in tone on tone stitching..

Until I finally found another bow…

If you look at my previous post last Sunday (yes it has been a week since I last posted & I have been so busy stitching…)  It looks similar to this hooping above… but this is 1/4 way around the quilt… slow but sure progress is the key to finishing a project though… now it is back on the back of the chair it temporarily homes at as I stitch other things that have deadlines…

So my fast stitching was Friday and Saturday in between slow stitches I finished this flimsy…

The center block is embroidered with the recipients name and birth statistics… here was a close up I shared when I finished that part last week…

And here is the backing I pieced for this flimsy…

Very fun and Whimsical… kind of like the front of the quilt 🙂

So yesterday, Saturday, I got it all layered and pin basted and today I started my day by auditioning different stencils for the center block…here is the one I decided to use..

And here it is marked with a blue spritz away marker…

And here is the cute recipient also known as my granddaughter… She will be 6 months old tomorrow… hoping her mom posts a new pic of her then!

So that is my weekend!  How has your weekend been??

Linking this quilty slow stitching progress and the beginning of a my latest slow stitching to Kathy’s Quilts… Slow Stitching Sunday Linky party HERE!  Come on and join in the fun if you have some slow stitching to show off.

Me… I will be slow stitching all day on Kaydence’s fun quilt!  Hoping to have it done by Christmas!!!

Hope you have a happy Sunday and can ….

Shifting gears…

I can’t believe it is Wednesday.. I have had such a busy and productive week!!!

I have been focusing my week on the center block embroidery in the center quilt block above…

Here is a close up of the outline stitch I used…

and today I got that FINISHED!!!

I am using pink variegated Valdani 12 weight thread for the embroidery in the green areas 🙂

Then I got the center part all sewn together once I re-ironed the center block.  I then added an orange border that needs mitering and cut the outer border that I thought would fit for mitering but it won’t 😦

After pondering what to do… I called my bestie Connie who sent me that green fabric and she had enough to send me cornerstones in that same green fabric 🙂  Yippee!  But that means that this project is on hold until USPS can deliver.. Saturday or Monday at the earliest I would think!

So I have decided to dive into a couple of other projects… my Colorful Whole Cloth (aka Garden Bouquet Whole Cloth Quilt) will be my hand quilting project…

Here is my first hooping of that 🙂

And I will start piecing my Fall Wall Hanging… here is my intro shot of that project…

I bought some fall pinwheels in various fabrics/colors and some shot cotton that will be the solid in my pattern above… I am excited about this project too!  It will hang in our foyer next fall probably at this point.. but will be nice to have an Autumn Wall Hanging in the foyer for sure!!!

So that is what is going on in my quilty life… What is going on in yours??

Would love to hear from you!  Please leave a comment if you can 🙂

Hope you are having a blessed day!  And remember to…

What’s up next…

Happy Sunday Ya’ll!

From Florida’s east coast to each of you 🙂

Having a stellar finish on Thursday… made me happy I had been working on this as I finished that!

This is the beginning of a new quilt for Kaydence Ava Grace Clower.. my granddaughter 🙂

Here is a very sweet picture of her taken this month 🙂  She is now 5 months old… and if you are a regular reader of mine you know I made her a quilt before she was born and gifted it at the baby shower… Alas there was a terrible house fire when she was only 2 weeks old that took this quilt away… luckily no one was home… but this is now the second complete loss home fire our family has suffered!!!

Anyway, there is now a need for a REPLACEMENT BLANKIE!!!! Yippee 🙂

Now that she has come into the world … and mom and dad have had time to adjust to their new lives… it is time to get this little angel a new blankie … so I am calling this… Kaydence’s Take 2 Blankie!!!!

So mom had some requests this time around… and I had some suggestions she liked… starting with sending me her handwriting that will all be embroidered on the center block of this quilt… the the white center with nothing in it…

Above you may be able to make out my pencil… I couldn’t get the pencil marks to photo well… but I can see them 🙂

So November 13, 2015 in the wee hours of the morning I started on the embroidery of her name…

Can you see the beginnings above of a little chain stitching action??!!!

I decided to start with the center of the block and her middle names… “Ava Grace”.. then I moved down to her last name “Clower” 🙂

Now I am starting on her first name…

I keep her pics close by… Keashia (my daughter in law) sent them with her handwriting via snail mail!

Here is a close up of the chain stitching in my 7″ embroidery hoop too!

So as I finish up on this name … then work on the green surrounding sections on this block to add the birth statistics (date, time, weight, and length) also in her mom’s handwriting… I will do those in pink to pop off the green background… 🙂

I am having a blast with this slow stitching… and pondering so many other projects on my plate for this month… let’s see how I go!!!

Hope you have a blessed and peaceful rest day!