Happy November!

We have been very productive here for November 🙂

I got the sweet buzz on Sugar Bee crafts for my Hammock Quilt Finish… check them both out!

 We cleaned the Florida room out and pressure washed it and reorganized it as we filled it back up.

 Where I am set up for hand piecing now… is the part of the table I set my quilted item on for hand quilting… keeps the dirt and my sweet animals off until they are ready 🙂

Behind me is the design board my honey made me 🙂

We found shelving on Craigslist for free and some for cheap that has really helped us reorganize the garage 🙂

Don’t look at the unorganized shelf… my honey say 🙂

The cabinet is actually one we got for FREE and was originally used at a local city fire hall… it is really heavy and all wood with magnets to hold the doors closed!

 So check your local Craigslist for finds!  I even found some quilting fabric there a couple weeks ago… more on that when I use it though 🙂

My daughter has been busy… greeting Halloween

Getting an eye check up

And hanging with friends 🙂

She also needed a chest so we found this great one … on Craigslist… for $40.00 and it is HEAVY and all wood!

And in her room… the thank you pic we sent to the people that sold it to us for so cheap 🙂

And in doing so she cleaned her room for the first time this month! lol  Okay first time in SEVERAL months… but it was clean that day!  Give thanks for what we can right?!!

Daisy has been frolicking and enjoying the fall sunny day we had today for a bit before the overcast skies returned…. check out the aloe in the top left of this pic too!

My honey made a hangar for the hammock to be stored when we aren’t using it… very cool!

And when we are using it I just finished a quilt to abate the windy days and cooler nights that will be greeting us more and more into winter time for the east coast of Florida!

Doesn’t that look inviting???  I love how “quilty” the quilt turned out!  I will be sharing the blog post about it linked at the beginning of this post to several linky parties!  This is my fave finish so far!  We have slept under it a few nights already… just cuz! lol

When we moved the hammock from it “storage spot” we found a friend finding refuge behind it… can you tell what it is???

a sleeping froggy!

 And finally… I have taken a stab at hand piecing… this is what I have done so far… it will be bigger and better… learning with every stitch.  For the record I started this on November 3, 2013.  I have given myself a month to hand piece and hand quilt what will be table toppers for family Christmas presents… Do you hand piece???  Do you hand quilt???  Would you be interested in classes if you knew someone locally???

Hope you have a completely crafty November and don’t forget to share it all on your blog so we can see what you are up to too!  It is fun to share 🙂

Kathi

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Sister Hammock Quilt COMPLETE!

This wonderful quilt was pieced over 4th of July week 2013.  Read more about my quilting adventures that week here.  Suffice it to say I ended up with this quilt that we pin basted together before my besties visit came to an end!…

Then it sat in line waiting for me to have time to quilt it… hers also waiting but as summer waned she started hers and soon I had to start mine too!  They are sister quilts aren’t they! lol

My formal quilting started September 9 and I completed all the quilting November 3, 2013… so just under 2 months to hand quilt this baby!

The back is fun too… I added a zig zag across the upper middle of the back horizontally… you can see it on the hammock from the back here.

This quilt used bamboo & cotton mix batting that is super soft and shrinks like all cotton but was easy to quilt through as it is thin but drapes beautifully after it is washed (I just finished before this one… a quilt with the same batting the washing made ALL the difference!).

I hand quilted 3 lines diagonally on the colored fabrics in perle cotton white at the center line with 40 wt YLI white hand quilting thread on either side and used my John James needles (I like size 8 betweens :))

Then in the rombuses (the slanted rectangles I made bowties and also quilted the triangles to bring out their bowtie-ness!  I used the 40 wt YLI thread for this quilting… In the above pic you can see where I signed my name to the bottom corner of the quilt 🙂

But I wasn’t happy with how it felt where I had done all this quilting so I added more to the slanted one side and squared other side colored fabrics with a geometric zig zag like this…

Pretty cool all together… and those extra 240 zig zags made the difference for this quilt… It was worth the extra couple weeks going back over the whole quilt to add this quilting… now it is soft snuggly and ready for us to use… on the hammock or in the house 🙂

Okay… now the truth… I wrote all the above while it was being washed and dried… twice!!!

I washed it the first time on cold gentle and dried lightly in the dryer.  The second time however, I washed it on warm and used heat to dry!  Wow is it lovely now 😀 and sooooo soft!!!  I did use color catchers in both washes/dries but there wasn’t much color absorbed… and the white stayed nice n bright!  Check out this photo montage 🙂

 with my signature and last but not least the year completed!

From the back….

 The back is Hoffman fabrics white with white polkadots!  They wrinkled differently and gave the back a pebbly appearance… super cozy too!

This is a quilt for general use but mainly for our hammock out back… so pics there were needed before I could post this! hehe 🙂

Another cool fact about this quilt… my bestie finished and washed hers THE SAME DAY I did!  Isn’t that cool… so they were made together and “birthed” together and each are being loved by us!  Love that 🙂



I plan to link this finish to:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict here
My Quilt Infatuation here
       & Featured here
Richard and Tanya Quilts here
       & Featured here

Kathy’s Slow Stitching Sundays here
Sugar Bee Crafts here

If this is your first visit to my blog read my most recent post to get to know me better… here 🙂  I love comments so please leave one to let me know you were here!  Or email me directly here.

Have a blessed November… more on what we have been up to otherwise coming very soon!

Kathi

Sister quilt Phase 1 COMPLETE!

Welcome from Port Orange, Florida USA 

(near Daytona Beach 🙂

I am Kathi B. Clower!

I have been working fairly regularly every day on making triple diagonal lines on the Sister Quilt or Hammock Quilt … as I have come to start calling it.  I finally finished the gross or major part of the  quilting!  I put in the final diagonal line this morning and planned phase 2!  I started this exactly 3 weeks ago so that is pretty fast for me 🙂

Here is a section from the middle and bottom of the quilt… it is a good sized throw… will have to measure accurately after the quilting, washing and drying is done 🙂

The triple line action doesn’t show much now … but when phase 2 in complete I think the design will be well complemented.

The plan is to quilt in the rhombuses a squared figure eight and fill in the bow ties.. kinda looks like the bow ties are being reflected in the white space…

I wanted to get jazzy with the thread color but that doesn’t work because my backing is white… so I will use my lovely YLI 40 wt hand quilting thread for this part of the project… I debated also using a backstitch instead of a typical quilting running stitch…. but after a trial run I like the quilted look I think… how about you?

The blue lines will go away with the wash… and the humidity I quilt in… so I am only adding them a quilting amount at a time 🙂

UPDATE:
A few blocks of the Hammock Quilt done 🙂

And the bottom right corner completed with my name added (date will be added when I finish quilting before binding)….

The 13 year old UFO quilt I finished and mailed has been slept under and cuddled under with the grandkids and thoroughly blended into everyday life… that makes THIS worth it to me 🙂  Is the time you put into your craft worth it???

 Also…. My daughter is getting ready for her first high school dance… check out how cute she is …

Before I know it my baby will be going to PROM!

Hope you have a blessed week… back to quilting I go… Phase 2 will be FUN!  120 blocks of it! lol

This blog is linked to Celebrate Quilting Blog Hop for Fall 2013 … check it out here!  You will see lots of fun quilty stuff there 🙂 
Kathi

Hammock quilt update!

So I started hand quilting triple diagonal lines on this quilt September 10.  Relived September 11 as I stitched and have watched chapters of my life change and close and open since I started.

I am now one half done with the diagonal lines and decided I needed to see her in all her glory right now… to ponder my next steps.

with a close up of the diagonal stitching I have put in…

And a pic of the back…

I loved making the chevron for the back and piecing it in but I am not enjoying hand quilting over it and will think twice before using a pieced back like this in the future… one seam or two for a traditional pieced back is fine.. but this pieced back has much more bulk to quilt over by hand 🙂

I plan to use YLI varigated 40 wt quilting thread for the white spots… add some whimsy and fun to this quilt front and back 🙂  What are your thoughts???

Hope you do something productive this weekend!  I will if you call quilting productive! lol

Kathi

Whoop! Whoop! My exciting week :)

Hope you are having a happy end of the week and planning a fun fall weekend… Fall is official in just a couple days!  Temperatures a cooling a bit on Florida’s east coast and quilting is in full bloom… along with my back yard 🙂

I finished quilting and sent this quilt to it’s owner.  She recieved it Tuesday 🙂

Here it is in full view 🙂

And here is a close up of the quilting on it… fairly heavily hand quilted 🙂

 

She loves it and is sleeping under it as I write this 🙂  Yipee!  Whoop!

Wanna know the specifics on this quilt???  Check out this post 🙂

So what is next???

I started on my “sister quilt” as it has a sister … me and my bestie Connie made quilt tops together this summer and now I am quilting mine and she is also quilting hers… both by hand 🙂  Whoop!  She is almost done with her quilting and I just started mine… they both have lots of love being sewn into them… read more on this quilt here.

And finally… I took a little shopping trip to JoAnn’s… got me lots of fun colors of hand quilting thread by Coats & Clark… YLI just doesn’t have enough color selection and this is my second fave thread …

I plan to use the lighter blue/teal on this quilt in all the white spots… follow along and see what happens 🙂

Planning to link this finish up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict here & Richard and Tanya Quilts here  & Sew Many Ways here 🙂
Hope you have a great weekend…

Kathi

Another day in paradise!

So much is going on with me personally I want to let you know that all is well but my family would covet prayers for understanding and patience.

As I think on the need of these things in our situations… I look at the beauty God has surrounded me with in my own back yard… let me share a bit with you…

You see I spend most of my time outside in a screened in porch… off that my honey built a patio with this beautiful mexican petunia bush growing and blooming each morning to greet me… I am up EARLY and so are these blooms 🙂  By afternoon they are all gone… but the bees and I sure enjoy the mornings 🙂

The hammock in the background is a great place to pose quilts for now and relax in the breeze come fall and winter 🙂

The big aloe we moved into the corner is also doing well it it’s new home and after a good pruning….

Check out the new shoots coming up from the center… she seems VERY happy 🙂 

Hoping she produces some babies next year too!  This is the same aloe that bloomed twice for us this year 🙂

New life is going nuts in this planter… we put in a few springs from a wandering jew we already had when we trimmed it and let them root… then put them in this planter and they are just taking off like crazy!!!

I sit right behind this … I can see the glasstop table my laptop lives on from here 🙂  Welcome to my paradise 🙂

Daisy loves the morning grass to lay in and sun herself… I caught her enjoying this paradise too!

This fall I hope to find myself quilting in these yummy chairs with ottomans… and adore my mexican petunias and maybe some birds will find a home for the winter in our birdhouse 🙂

So those are the things I try to think on when the going gets tough.  I appreciate you taking a look at all I have to be thankful for including my honey who did all the work to make it so special for me 🙂

I also want to thanks Connie who has been the best “bestie” a girl could ever ask for as I have trudged through this chapter of my life… she is amazing… I am so glad she now sleeps under the quilt I just finished 🙂

Meanwhile I will return to stitching… 3 needles…

3 rows of stitches going diagonally across the colored seams… so many seams to go over! lol  This is the sister quilt I now call the “hammock quilt” cuz that is where I see it being used this winter 🙂

Truly I am loving it but find it harder to pray for my self than to pray for others while I quilt.  You see I pray for the recipient and try to think of blessings for the recipient while I quilt something for them… it urges me on really… with this quilt I have to urge MYSELF on… much harder! lol

I will persevere on this front as I want to start another project and this project needs done… we don’t have a good big cozy quilt to snuggle under yet… we NEED it before fall… so I gotta get done! lol

Thanks for your prayers in advance and I hope whatever you do this mid week day you make the most of it and find the paradise in it someplace 🙂

Kathi

Quilting revisions… SISTER QUILT :)

As usual… the quilt “spoke to me”… after that post the 2 lines I am putting on this Picnic quilt diagonally just didn’t look right… it didn’t look quilted enough… so I pulled out my pearl 8 cotton and added another line in the middle… now me and the quilt are happy… what do you think?

Looking at it from further away and straight on it looks like this…

My plan is to “stabilize the quilt with these diagonal lines then decide what other stitching it needs… and quilts do talk if you LISTEN to them 🙂

I finally got all the pencil marks out of the quilt I finished and took some pics… but alas the recipient gets first dibs on seeing it whole… so here is a sneak peek pic of the quilt between pics 🙂  TEASE!

Grand reveal of this quilts photo shoot next week… mailing it today 🙂

Have a blessed weekend and don’t forget to enjoy the beauty all around you no matter where you live!

Kathi

My latest quilting endeavor!

Well last night I finished binding the quilt I was working on and washed it but all the pencil marks didn’t come out 😦  So off to buy some oxi-clean as I hear it will take out what remains of the pencil marks… I think after a few more washings the pencil would be gone as light as it is now…
See…

So while I work on that ENDEAVOR!  I am starting my next project which got switched from my initial intentions… but they all gotta get quilted so SISTER QUILT TIME it is 😀

We started with this “Picnic” pattern in a book my bff got from JoAnn’s using her 40% coupon 🙂

We bought 3 jellyrolls and had scant amount left over… in this pic you can see mine has about 20 more blocks than hers as I wanted a bigger snuggle blanket and she wanted more of a lap quilt 🙂

She laid hers out as the pattern called for after fussy cutting each block to bring them back to square… I left mine slightly rectangular and set them in a chain pattern.  Do you have a fave?

Quilting was easy on hers… she is using pearl 8 cotton in beige to quilt her cream based quilt.  I am using YLI 40 wt thread in white to quilt my white based quilt 🙂  We both used cotton and bamboo batting… it beards a bit when quilting but hand quilts easily and is soft and cozy when washed sooo 🙂  I am happy!

I am quilting mine with double lines going diagonally.  I got feedback from a facebook group I belong to called “Celebrate Hand Quilting” and loved this new idea!  I am using 2 needles at a time to keep my lines straight with no marking this time 🙂

We pieced the tops together machine by machine on my back porch this summer… read more about that here.

So this week I plan to quilt away and wash away the graphite marks … what are your plans ???

My daughter had a friend over this weekend… I caught them playing in the hammock 🙂

with Daisy!

Have a blessed week whatever you do!

Kathi

Memories of my summer quilt retreat :)

So many happy memories to share… my bestie Connie and I planned a week of quilting fun and here are some highlights and details for you to enjoy.  Plan your own quilt retreat with your quilty friends 🙂

Me n Connie

Birthday quilty shirts on and beach approved!

First we pinned this quilt….

All pinned here but it took some effort from all of us 🙂

We had to touch up iron the backing… thanks honey for the nice tile floor to lay the quilt tops out on!

then Connie, me and my dd all pinned the quilt

Brandi put the last pin in!

Making quilt tops that we both got pinned and pictured….

Sister quilts

From a pattern called Picnic in this book!

And this great fabric from Basic Grey for Moda “PB&J” line… jelly rolls 🙂

Connie used cream background and I used tone on tone whites for my background… LOTS OF FUN!

We also celebrated birthdays!  First was Connie’s on the 3rd, me on the 4th, my honey on the 20th and my dd on the 26th 🙂  July is a fun month in this home 😀

We also squeezed in shopping and beach time… and of course a snooze in the hammock 🙂

Finally my dd and all of us worked on a quilty puzzle that we mod podged and sent home with Connie as her personal souvenier 🙂

Hope you enjoy this quick trip through our quilty week!

Have a blessed week 🙂

Kathi

Back from a quilting retreat!

After being off the grid for the last week I have a finish to post… and much to share… too much for this post… for now though… check this out 🙂

Me and my bestie made “sister quilts” … we used the same pattern for the blocks but set them differently… hers is also smaller by mine by 1 row each way 🙂

We both used the same Basic Grey by Moda “pb&j” jelly rolls for our quilts and had hardly any left over in the end 🙂

Now we are both gonna hand quilt our “sister quilts” 🙂

Linking this to Confessions of a Fabric Addict this week!

Have a blessed weekend!

Kathi