Design Wall Wednesday–Vintage Kids

      
  
I’ve been working on Vintage Kids this week at my machine.  I still have 6 of the red and white checkerboard blocks to finish and then I need to finish the borders on the embroidered blocks.  I will also need to work up a signature block to go in that space in the lower right corner.  We’ll see how far I can get this week. 
               

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Design Wall Wednesday

                  
Finally getting back with a new design wall update.  This is the Bluebird Quilt, adapted from a pattern from Crabapple Hill Designs.  Since I actually took this picture last week and am just now finding the time to blog, I have already sewn these blocks together and am working on the borders.  The borders will be white and will also be embroidered with bluebirds and ribbons around the edges.  It will take some time to complete.
            
I’m sorry it’s taken so long to update the blog.  Things have been so hectic at my house.  My husband has been sick for a very long time and he has recently has some severe medical setbacks which has necessitated the services of hospice.  The days have become such a blur with the arrival of medical equipment and nursing staff and getting our dog, Sophie, adjusted to all the new people coming and going.   At this point, I THINK things have settled down into a more quiet routine and I am able to sit down and sew a bit here and there, so will have some things to show you periodically.  Thank you for staying with me!  I do appreciate it.
                  
Until next week …….
Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Design Wall Wednesday

                

Vintage Tin is almost finished.  Well, the top is almost finished!  I have all of the hand embroidery work finished and pieced together and now I am working on some borders.  See those star blocks on the left?  There will be 6 of those on each side.  Then there will be a border around the entire thing.  Then this top will be ready for sandwiching and quilting! 

          

The next time you see Vintage Tin, it will be finished and ready for it’s photo op.  I will have it off the design wall and under the needle by this weekend and something else will be up there by next Wednesday. 

 

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Design Wall Wednesday

Here is a picture of my design wall today :

            

I am almost finished with the smaller panels.   I managed to finish 3 of them last week :

                   

There are only 3 left to embroider!  Hopefully I will complete them before next Wednesday as I would like to have this top finished by October 15, leaving me the last 2 months of October to quilt it.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that to happen.  Till next week …..

 

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Drought 2012

              

Last week I had to go to the doctor for a check-up which meant that I had to go to Cape Girardeau, about 35 miles north of me.  I had been hearing about how low the Mississippi River had gotten, so while I was so close, I had to drive down to the riverfront to check things out for myself.

             

My oldest son, Evan, was with me and since we had stopped for lunch at Culver’s and ate Butterburgers and Concrete shakes, we needed a little walk. 

You can see from the pictures above that the river isn’t exactly dry!  However ……….

          

take a look from another angle.  I was not all the way down to the water’s edge when I took this.  Can you see how far it is up to that levy wall?  What absolutely amazed me was the fact that it hasn’t been all that long ago that the big gate up there was closed and ‘they’ were scared that the river was going to flow over the top and flood downtown Cape!

I looked out across that expanse ….. the river is probably close to a mile across ….. and figured how much water it would take to fill up that area.  Boggles the mind.

      

 

Here’s a photo taken of the wall from another angle.  The university students have painted murals all along it showing the historical events of SE Missouri.  We walked for awhile along the wall looking at the murals and had a real good time.  My son has gone back ‘home’ to where he lives now and it is nice looking back at the good times we shared while he was at his ‘Missouri home’.  And it was nice to see the river at this time because I can’t ever remember it being low like this.  Kind of like watching history unfold.  Now I can say, “I can remember when the river got so low that the barges didn’t run!” 

Thanks for humoring me.   I’ll be back with a Design Wall Wednesday post tomorrow!

 

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Design Wall Wednesday

On my design wall today … Vintage Tin ……

 

          

 

I don’t have all the embroideries finished, but I wanted to sit at my sewing machine and piece today, so I started playing with the layout.  I will try to update the blog on this project at least once a week.

 

           

 

Enjoy,

Merry Gay

The End of Summer …. FINALLY!

This has been an awful summer.  Hot, sticky, heat shimmering off the pavement, miserable drought stricken Summer.  I am so happy to see the end of it.  I am ready to dive into Autumn!  YAY!
I may not have been blogging, but I have been busy.  Where should I start to tell you all the things I have going on?
          
Let’s start with something you have already seen.  This sweet little quilt, I call it my Bluebirds quilt.  You can’t see them in this picture, but there are bluebirds in this quilt.  It is almost finished.  I have the blue sashing sewn on and the top is all put together.  All I need to do to finish is to embroider the little bluebirds flying around the border, sandwich it and quilt it, then scallop the border and bind it.  That sounds like a lot, but really it isn’t.  She will have her grand reveal here soon.
Then I have been working on a quilt I like to call Vintage Kids…..
           
 
The only reason I am not submitting this one for publication is the fact that the embroidery designs were not digitized by me.  In fact, I got them as a free download from the Allbrands message board.   You can go there to their free designs thread and snag them.  There are 9 of them.
            
I am still putting the final sashing on the embroidered blocks, but then all I will need to do is sew the blocks together and quilt it.     
Also on the cutting table are 2 quilts that I am making for my guest room using one of Meg Hawkey’s designs, The French Cottage Garden quilt
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I have a loooong way to go on this quilt.  I’ve just started the embroidered panels and there are 4 of them, 2 for each quilt.  These panels are different from any others I have worked in the past.  See?……. they are colored!  Meg uses a really neat technique where you use crayolas to color your panels and then set the was with a hot iron.  Turns out beautiful ….. just like watercolors.  Kind of like coloring fabric with Pigma Pens, but this gives you more of an Impressionistic finish.  It is nice.  When you have them colored and set, you then backstitch around the designs to give them definition.  If you want to try something different, give this a try. 
This one will not be finished, I am afraid, until after Christmas.  No worries though.  These are for me.  No deadlines. 
I had to put the work on these 3 quilts on hold while I started work on another Meg Hawkey design …… Vintage Tin, a quilt I am making for my step son who will be home in November.
    
    
                
Miles and miles of backstitch!  I’ve been working on this for 5 weeks and am leaving myself 2 more weeks to get the embroidery done.  I have SOME of the piecing done.  I never follow the directions on patterns I purchase.  I love Meg’s embroideries and buy her patterns for those, but then I take off on my own and put together the quilt the way I want.  This quilt was designed to be a small quilt.  When I am finished it will fit on Brent’s queen size bed.   So, needless to say, this will be the ONLY thing on my plate until it is finished.  Then MAYBE I can get the Vintage Kids and  Bluebird quilts out of the way before we start the New Year!
Thanks for sticking with this post for so long.  I do appreciate you stopping by.  I hope to not be so long between posts next time.  Until then……

Enjoy,
Merry Gay