Circles Collage

My alma mater featured a circles collage in the latest magazine, and I thought I would do the same today.  Here are some circles I found in the neighborhood today. It is a beautiful, warm day.

They have inspired me to make a bunch of circles to catch up on days I have missed on my 365 calendar quilt.

Quilt Reveal: Leftover Rail Fence

I have completed the leftover rail fence quilt. As usual, the leftover quilt is finished before the original finish.  Here are some beauty shots.

The finished quilt is about 13" X 17".  It is made of rail fence strips that were left over after I made the blocks for the Cultural Fusion Railfence quilt.  Even though I had more leftovers to make this bigger, I decided it was just the right size as it was.  The blue border and the elephant keep it from looking too much like the original quilt.  I left the elephant mostly unquilted so it would stand out, and quilted everything around it every thoroughly.

It turns out that the quilt top was just the right size, because I found a scrap of polyester batting and a scrap for the backing that were both just the right size for this quilt.

 Here's the backing with the stowaway label. You can see that I tried a lot of different quilting designs on it.  It has been a long time since I free motion quilted, and the first time I did so on this machine.  Since this was a leftovers, improv quilt, I decided to do the quilting improv too.

Here's the whole thing.

In case you are missing seeing circles on this blog, here are a couple of circle for you. It's hard to make circles when the machine is set up for free motion quilting.

The one on the left is made with leftover scraps that had fusible on them.  That block represents Star Wars. You're just going to have to trust me on that one.

For the one on the right, I found the button on the ground during a walk and it just had to go into the quilt. If I have ever made a yo-yo before, it has been a long time, since I don't remember making one. I've always wanted to make one though, so  I can now check that off the list!

Linked to:
Scrap Quilt Challenge

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.