Rain Collage

Kaja has been making collages and I decided to copy her.  This one is from my walk today.  This is fun!

Remember this rail fence leftovers quilt?  I figured I could quilt this small piece and be able to show it as a finish for this year.  See all those beautiful colors? Wouldn't that look lovely hand quilted with lots of different colors of perle cotton thread? Mmmmm.

I thought so too, but  Jenn said I had to  "pull of the band aid and get to FMQing on your new machine." It is a small quilt so it will be easy to maneuver and since it is just a leftovers quilt, there is no big waste if it turns out to be a flop.  One of the problems is that when I went to the store where I bought the machine, they did not have a darning or free motion foot to sell me.  She said I didn't need one.  I was going to try the one I use on my old machine, but I have temporarily misplaced it.

See that polyester batting in the picture? Yuck! Phooey! I thought I had banned polyester batting from my house for ever and ever earlier this year when I cleaned my studio.  I bought it back in the day when I believed my family when they told me quilts were supposed to be fluffy and warm. What do they know about quilts? Nothing. They only know what I have told them.  It has taken me forever to use up this batting. 

This little piece was taken off a UFO that was a UFO only because of that big ugly fluffy batting.  But it was just the right size for this piece, and my options were to throw it out or to use it. It was not going back to my sewing room.

Yes, I pulled the Bandaid off and free motioned this baby. It is scary to free motion quilt without a foot because there is no protection to keep my fingers safe, but I managed to make stitches that looked like stitches. (That was my criteria; I wasn't trying for smooth, consistent stitches. Just making stitches was enough!) There was no thread throw up on the front or the back of the quilt, although I did manage to find a couple of stowaways! It's been a while since I have free motion quilted, and I forgot to clear off the table before I started.

I did manage to get the big piece off the quilt, but that little piece is staying. It is a label. Even if it is upside down and crooked.

Mad Dash

This is the last weekend before Christmas, so it means there is a lot of catching up to do.  June and I have been sending emails to each other to motivate us to clear some out of the way spaces, and it really has been helping. I have to make progress so that I can tell her what progress I have made.

Besides the holiday decorating and shopping, which got delayed because of my trip, there are quilts to make!  I started writing my end of the year recap post, and I got smart - instead of just showing the quilts I finished this year, I could also show the quilts I worked on.  The post looks much better now.

But just like my genealogy, it seems like I should be able to sneak a little more work in before presenting it. Hopefully this weekend, I will find some time to get a little more done on some projects, so there is more progress to show for the end of the year post.

Until then, you can enjoy a couple more circles.

Here's the progress shot. At some point, I am going to stop putting them all out for a group shot and just use more than one picture to see the progress. I do like seeing them together. I think they would look good with sashing, although that would make the quilt even bigger.

 This one was obviously inspired by my souvenir hats which both have the Texas star on them.

I decided to do a quick and simple circle, and as I was working on cleaning the sewing room, I found the dragonfly scrap that is perfect for a simple circle.  Our weather has been pretty warm so far, so it seemed appropriate even for December.

Then we got a cold snap, so the yesterday's circle shows the rapid change from summer to winter.

I guess I should go do the mad dash instead of just talking about.  Have a great weekend!

Missing Circles

Hello all,

I hope you are having a good week. I am sure you are all here to see my progress on my daily circles.

I had the idea to use this circle almost as soon as I decided to take on the Quilty 365 circle project. I have several embroidery patterns that are circles, and I thought it would be nice to combine these into one project.

This one was started a while ago, maybe a year or so, but I did finish it this week.  It is slightly bigger than the other squares I have, so I will have to make some adjustments on the other blocks to make this one fit.The fabric is not stained - that is part of the design.

This is a free Red Brolly design - all mistakes are my own. I am calling this Saturday's circle.  I worked on it on Saturday, but did not get it finished until Wednesday.

This is Sunday's circle since I flew to San Antonio for my work.




We went to an Indian restaurant on Tuesday. This is therefore Tuesday's circle. My food came in a bowl where one side of the bowl was higher than the other side. The X in the center is for the biryani I had, and also for multiplication for the math work I was doing. I cut this square a little bigger than usual to take into account any shrinkage during the embroidery process.

I took floss and fabric on my trip so I could make a variety of designs, but I didn't have much time or energy to make a circle every day. It looks like my stitches are too tight in this photo, but it pressed out just fine.



This is Saturday's circle.  A snowball block is one I have been thinking of using for a while since it is fairly easy.  I need to reattach the triangles closer to the edge, but I will fix it later.  It hasn't snowed, but I found myself wearing purple - my shirt, my jacket, and my luggage were all purple.  And the fabric is somewhat chaotic, just like our way back home.

For background information, I am participating in the Quilty 365 Circles. See the link on the sidebar. I started this project on November 16, 2015.   My plan is to think of a circle idea each day.  I can make that circle that day or later (usually the following day). If I miss a circle, that is completely all right.  I can either make more than one circle on days I have more than one idea, or I can just skip a day. I am not keeping track of the number of circles I make as compared to the number of days that have elapsed. It helps that I started on a random calendar day.

As you can see on this post, I've missed quite a number of days.  I did get some other ideas to use during the week, so maybe later this week, I will be able to make up at least some of the days.

Leftover Rail Fence progress

I added a blue round for my leftover rail fence quilt.  I wanted the blue to look purposeful so I thought I would either make it smaller or larger than the other rails. Since smaller is out - did you see the width of the black strip? - I decided to make it bigger, which only amounts to 2 inch finished.

I still have more rails left, so I figured I would just join them together and keep going around the quilt. This could be the outer border. Maybe make the blue curvy too.

I have a lot more rails left, so I could just keep going around and around.

I like the look of and idea of adding more rounds, but when I recently shared my Christmas trees quilt with you, I realized I showed you 50% of my quilt finishes of the year, and my 2015 recap post is going to be a dud like the last couple of years.  What if I just finished this one, without adding any more rails, so that there would be three quilt finishes in the recap? This one would then be 13 1/2 X 17 or thereabouts, which is a good size, yet small enough to fit on my bulletin board.

 It feels kinda bad to end the quilt just to have a finish, but I can use the leftover rails and make a leftover of leftover rail fence quilt, and have yet another quilt finish to show you maybe next year.

Daily Circles!

It's been a a few days since I've shown you some circles. Did you enjoy your break? I'm sure by now you are dying to know what my circles look like.

This is part of the Quilty 365 project, where you make a circle a day. Click on the link on the sidebar for more information.

I started 11/16/2015, and have been pretty good about deciding on my circle each day. Sometimes I make two at a time, but I try not to get too far behind.  There was a day I thought I had fallen behind, and decided that I would just skip it, to avoid any pressure.  I thought that I could just keep going an extra day, or make two whenever I felt I had two good ideas to use that day, but turns out the very next day I had two good ideas, so I haven't really fallen behind yet.

Here's what they look like altogether so far.  I have two weeks done. Right now, I think I will keep whatever I make in the limited time I have, but I do reserve the right to omit or do over a circle or two when I put the quilt together.

I had big plans for the one on the left. I was going to make a clock, with the hands at 11:29 to represent 11/29. I thought that was pretty clever of me to think of it.  However, my plans got too big when I sewed down the background circle with a fancy stitch on my machine without any interfacing and everything got very distorted. There was no way it would work so I gave myself a do-over, only much simpler. I didn't have time to make the clock hands so we will have to save that idea for later.

The next day's circle is pretty simple too - a four patch cut into a circle.  I would like to make something more complex, like a dresden plate or a kaleidoscope block someday when I have lots of time.


My daughter likes to draw, and it is not uncommon for me to find eye drawings on papers around the house.  Since my goal is to learn to draw too, I decided to work on the eye too. It isn't a drawing, but it did make me think about the parts of the eye. I also saw a quilt story on you tube where someone was sharing a quilt that had an eye, so it seemed appropriate.



This one came after the shooting in San Bernardino.  There have been so many shootings this year. It seems like people have all forgotten how to resolve conflicts in a peaceful way.  We wind up disowning and discarding friends and family members instead of trying to work things out. Anyway, this is my wish for world peace. It's the only block that doesn't have a neutral background, and I really didn't want to remember this as a red letter day, but I needed a dark background to offset the white circle and this red fabric was just perfect for it.

When you are finished reading this blog post, run to the Quilty 365 circle linkup.  You will be amazed at how our creative quilters have interpreted this project.

I haven't had much time for quilting, so I haven't made much progress on the rail fence quilt.  I did make some more blocks, and am still thinking about layouts.  For the leftover rails quilt, I am going to put a blue sashing before carrying on with more leftover logs.

ThrowBack Thursday - Holiday Edition

Christmas trees quilt made by Shasta Matova

 Today, I am presenting you this quilt from way back when. When was it? Oh yes, this February. I completed this quilt in time for President's Day this year.

 

Why? Because A Quarter Inch from the Edge is sponsoring a Throwback Thursday link, and I thought I should give you a break from showing another couple rail fence blocks and circles.

Christmas Trees quilt in progress by Shasta Matova

This was a fun little quilt to make with improv piecing. I was able to use some holiday and other fabric that had been sitting in my stash for a long time and make this quick project.  I am sure I was probably supposed to be working on some other UFO or WIP, but hey, at least I finished it!

I just had to throw in this dark picture of my design floor because of what she said on her blog about dark pictures and design floors being vintage.  Sorry, it is still my normal state.

Christmas Trees Quilt in Snow by Shasta Matova

 I was able to  photograph the quilt in the snow in February. We had a few tiny snowflakes fly this winter, but.the real snow hasn't started yet. I am avoiding watching the weather but I'm pretty sure it will come soon.

The pattern was free from Diary of a Quilter. She called it Patchwork Forest tree. I liked her straight line quilting and so I duplicated it, but of course I had to make it hard for myself and not quilt the trees so they would stand out a little bit.  I am still afraid to try free motion quilting with the new machine, so I twisted and turned the quilt every which way to go back and forth row by row. It was a fun little quilt to make. My finish size is approximately 18" x 26".

Quilty Circles

Hello everyone, welcome back.  I'm sure you are here to see some more pictures of quilt parts, and I am happy to indulge. Here are photos from my camera today.

Here's the circle for Thanksgiving day.  I didn't make something to represent the holiday. I just wanted to make a circle out of triangles, so I did.

This is for Black Friday.  Leave it up to me to commemorate Black Friday and not commemorate Thanksgiving.  I spent way too much.

Here is Saturday's circle. Although we are still eating turkey, I had this bowl in the recycle bin.  It is from a frozen meal, and I always wanted to do something with the design. I used the Shiva Paintstiks again, with a paintbrush this time, even though I had already put away the Paintstiks. I'm sure it would have looked better if I had picked a different background fabric.



I put up a fleece blanket on the wall to make an impromptu design wall, and tried again with the Square Steps layout.  I did better on the layout this time.  I still need to play with looking at the design to see if I prefer the the dark or the light fabric is on the top left or if it matters to me.  In some blocks, all the darks meet in the center, in others they vary.  

Wanda and Julie both thought I should make another red and black block to help balance out the design, and they have convinced me, so I am doing just that, along with some more red blocks to make another row. It will now be 5 x 7.

As a Leader and Ender, I am using the leftover rails to make this little baby. Once I had an idea to do this, I started cutting the rails the opposite way - the 22" side instead of the 18" side so I would be sure to have more leftovers. I'm not planning this piece - whichever piece happens to be the right size, shows up in the space. I am very happy with it so far.

 I started with the log cabin then moved to courthouse steps.   I still have some more rails left, which will have to be pieced together to make more courthouse steps. I like using leftovers as Leaders and Enders because then, I only need one set of fabric out. I also like being able to use the leftovers while I am making the original quilt so I don't have to figure out a way to store them.



In case you were wondering which book I was waiting for, it is this one. It came in the afternoon on Friday - I had just about given up on it when I spotted the mail truck, so I decided to wait until the package was delivered before I went out. I waited for a long time listening for the sound. It took so long, that I looked out the window to see what had happened to our mail carrier, and apparently it had been silently placed on the porch. I didn't get any other mail so there wasn't the familiar thump of the mailbox closing. It's nice to get a package and no bills.

Even though the long anticipation was sure to make the book be a let down, it is a great book.  Red &; White Quilts: Infinite Variety: presented by the American Folk Art Museum are all the quilts that were at the Red & White Quilts show that was held last year.  There are several articles about the quilts, the collection, and the show, and then there are pages and pages of photographs of each of the quilts.  It's a lovely book, and I highly recommend that you add it to your holiday wish list.

The Small Quilt Yahoogroup is making red and white quilts this month and I sure would like to join them if I could get some current projects done. It's going to have to be a very simple and quick one and this book showed several options. There are no patterns in the book, so you can enjoy looking at the pictures without feeling any guilt about the need to make them.

The other pictures on the camera are photos of quilt magazines as my scanning project continues at a relatively quick and steady pace.