Thursday, March 31, 2011

More Turtles

I got together with some sewing friends on Saturday at the Quilt Palace (better known as Sandy's house) to get some turtle pillows cranked out for the American Sewing Guild.  We set a guild goal of making 50 turtle pillows and they need to be done before the annual conference in August.  So far, only five have been turned in and four of those were mine.  I was able to make another two pillows and I think the rest of the group made around ten.  Each turtle pillow has a label with our guild location.  I still have labels left over so I guess I will be making more turles.  Here are the two pillows I made on Saturday.


Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Jelly Bean Quilt

The jelly bean quilt was completed last night.  All I had to do was figure out how to use the embroidery unit on my new machine to do the quilt label.  Obviously, I mastered it, well, maybe not mastered but I can limp along with it.  I can't get a lesson on the embroidery unit at the sewing store until late April or May due to their schedule and my travel schedule.  What I did learn was that this machine just gets cooler and cooler the more I use it.  The embroidery is going to be really fun to use and I must dream up more projects than quilt labels for it.

This quilt was a kit from Connecting Threads.  I completed the quilt top last year at an all night sew event but hadn't machine quilted it yet.  I wanted to wait until I took the Jill Schumacher quilting class before starting.  The quilting was started on my Bernina and finised on the Baby Lock as the first sewing project on the new machine.  It was a good practice project but is no way near ready to enter a quilt show.  At least it gave me something to hang up so I could take down the Christmas quilt. :)

Sunday, March 20, 2011

New Sewing Machine in Action

I am in love with my new sewing machine and I haven't even tried most of the features.  Because this is going to be the year I get most of my UFOs finished, I wanted to complete the quilting on this project before starting any new projects with my new machine.  I still have the Winter Wonderland quilt up on the living room wall and want to replace it with the quilt in the photo.  This quilt was started on the Bernina and then I started doing the free motion quilting on the Baby Lock.  The Baby Lock is absolutely wonderful for free motion quilting.  It has a lot of room, even stitches, great lighting and is really quiet.  Hard to believe, but I am even more inspired to sew.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

New Sewing Machine Day 1

It finally arrived.  Well, actually it arrived yesterday but since my car was sick, I couldn't pick it up until today.  This machine is amazing.  As you can see, it came in three big boxes. One box is the machine, the second box is the embroidery unit and the third box is just the accessories.  It will take me most of the evening to just unpack the boxes.  Can't wait......

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Weekend machine quilting class

I took two machine quilting classes in town with Jill Schumacher over the weekend.  On Saturday we had a beginning machine quilting class where I made the blue small quilt. 


On Sunday, we made a mini whole cloth quilt that was quite a bit more advanced.  The pink tulip mini quilt is planned for my mom for Mother's Day.  I am pretty safe showing it on the blog as she has never even touched a computer.  Hope she likes it. 


I now have the machine quilting bug and am busy finishing the quilting on some tops.  I would like to have no UFOs by the end of the year.  We'll see if that is possible.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Charity quilt #4

While anxiously awaiting my new sewing machine and the weekend machine quilting class today and tomorrow with Jill Schumacher, I decided to make another charity quilt.  I think I am going to make a goal of ten charity quilts this year.  Lord knows I have enough fabric to make way more than ten.  This quilt is pieced with scraps from a jacket and pants I made last year along with some scraps from previous quilt projects.  The back is a cute owl fabric.