We Went on Down The Road

 This is my friend Carolyn Toledo's quilt! She is in my Monday night quilt class. 

 

 Her quilt guild was the one that decorated the foyer with quilts~
 this is a liberated wedding ring.










~loved the houses and topiary trees~

 Ginny B., Larry and I were just a few of the attendees to The Road to California Quilt Show this year. It is in our neck of the woods, so I just hate to miss! I'm sharing a few I liked, Larry is always surprised at which quilts are my faves; they are not always the ones other folks rave about or remember, but that's why there is so much diversity at a quilt show, right?

I'm always drawn to piecing and - COLOR! 

 And geometric puzzles with color!

~ I really appreciated this red and white, wow ~

~ a few close-ups ~

I think these blocks finished at eight inches-!

 

 This one was an earlier work of a fabric "sculptor" artist, she said the flat pieces (quilts) were her work before 1995 (I think). Larry loved her stuff. I thought it was funny she referred to the quilts as flat work!

I always have admiration for crazy quilts.They are patchwork fun visually. There were several there this year. Now I'm wishing I knew how to move a picture from my phone to show you, shucks!

 ~ I just liked this one~

Here is our Christmas Cactus in bloom again this year. I'm showing this for 2 reasons, 1- it doesn't live up to it's name. It must be January Cactus in our case,



and 2- my friend Vicky who gave it to us has no luck with hers blooming, and I told her I'd post it because I love her enough to tease her, LOL!!

I wanted to separate my little quilt from the beauties featured above. It has been done for a week, but no photos to prove it until now.

 How cool, you can see the writing on the picture above, "God is love"!

Now, I want to show you the Twelve days of Christmas tops, or the 12 tiny houses, but I guess that will be for next time. Tomorrow is FRIDAY, and I can hardly wait for weekend!



Blessings, Pokey

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding," Proverbs 4:7

Off the Frame-At Last!!

 

The design was based on a quilt by the creative Kathie Holland from Inspired by Antique Quilts.

 

" I get by with a little help from my friends."


Thank you for the information and general well wishes! It's just pulled it off the frame, wow! Some lessons are hard learned....



I just kept tweakin', cleaning, oiling it and re-threading. Oh, and walking away when I felt it was getting the best of me, lol.

 

I think the problem is a combination of things. I took the bobbin thread out, and changed it. I think one bobbin was not well balanced, so that one is pitched from sewing.





The top tension is about as loose as it can be, but I hit on the correct setting to where the stitches looked good, and the thread quit breaking. Hurray!!

The dedication label was added to because I did not have enough of the cream background- short a fat quarter, basically.
But we'll say it's a design call~

:-}

Edited to add: My first 3 inch house!

Happy to be quilting again!
hugs, Pokey 

"For, lo, He that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is His thought, . . . and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD, The God of hosts, is His name." Amos 4:13

Home Quilting Machines, and Working with the Old Prints

 

 As far as I could go, after 3 hours of frustration!

I have this love/hate thing with my Pfaff Grandquilter. 

 The 
back of 
the quilt top, 
it was this 
far on 
Friday night!

 Just getting it 

mounted

on the frame

at 9 a.m., 

my hopes 

were 

still high!

I must say, when things are good, Momma's a happy quilting fool. I have shared with others that having just this domestic machine on a ten foot frame has allowed me to complete so many more quilts than I ever have in my lifetime. I LOVE quilting, and for as long as I can remember, I wanted a long arm. Price has never allowed me to have one, and this is a close second. We purchased it from a friend in my quilting class, who allowed me to make "my" size payments. When I quilted for someone, I would turn my check over to her. It took me 2 years to pay her off, and she discounted it $500 from her original investment. (Poor Jill, she never made anything with it. She was designing a quilting studio that most of us would only dream of, it took 2 1/2 years to build. Once she got the sewing machine and frame all set up and ready to go, she realized her physical health limitations would not let her sew at the frame for any length of time. Since she had purchased it at the beginning of the building process, she was stuck with the machine. She "quilts by check" now!)

I do not want to push a queen sized quilt through a regular throat opening EVER again. BUT, I am totally self taught on this GQ, to the point I had to watch You Tube videos to see how to even load a quilt. Trial and error has been a tough taskmaster, with the school of hard knocks degree well earned. Except, I have no support group or instructor, or even a salesperson to guide me when I'm struggling with a lesson such as tension. That is the wall I've hit this past week. ARGH! I was on a roll, completing the 2 comfort quilts on time, praise the LORD, for the Christmas gifts they were promised to be.

Then I got the wild hair to sew the gift for my friend Ginni P's (not Ginny B., lol) 50th wedding anniversary. (Yep, New Year's Eve was the party, she was married on her birthday!)

Ginni P. in black, 
with friends. 
The room 
we were in 
was an 
old school room, 
how appropriate!

BTW, I gave her a cd with pictures we took that night, and photos of the gift to come, lol. What? I bet you've had to do that before, too!

 

Donna, my teaching partner 

and friend for  20+ years, 

with her honey, Don

 

Good friends Paul and Ginny B. and Beth

  Our "like family" friends, Beth and Jerry

 

                                                       my sweet Larry and I

My friend Dora gave me some advice to join a Yahoo home quilting systems, but I've not had a light bulb moment.


Other than to see that no matter what machine you are quilting on, tension is the #1 frustration. And all the suggestions I've read are either things I've tried, or they do not relate to my little set-up. So, with a week now passed of me walking by and appreciating the sweet quilt,

 
and kicking the frame, I think I'll go back and try again tomorrow morning. I don't want it to get the best of me, but I just don't know what else to do. *sigh*

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Okay, enough grumbling. Here is the little bit of sewing I've done since last Saturday. Since I had the civil war prints out, Temecula Quilt Company has been putting up a small sampler titled "The 12 Days of Christmas" each day, and I was lured in.

One block a day, finishing up at 3 inches, Hey, what's not to love? Even being back to school, it was do-able.

Each day added one more piece to the block. this little blue X was day 11, and my biggest challenge of all of them. That 1/4 inch seam is a bugger sometimes!

I think this will be my layout eventually. It was easy enough to make 2 blocks of each, so there will be two mini quilts. Larry said it wasn't gonna be big enough 
to be a napkin. He makes me laugh-!
:-}















He thinks this is small, well, you need to check out this blog. Really, the pattern for these little houses are 3 inches, oh, my... but it sure is a cute neighborhood! I've downloaded the paper pieced version, and I want to give it a try. Her idea was to make one for each day of the year, with a larger house in the center. 366 houses one for this being a leap year. You can make it as large or as small as you want, it was inspired by a mini quilt she did with (I think?) 12 houses.


Tell me you aren't wanting too, also. Come on, Jeanneke has the sign up until the 15th of January, and she has simple ideas for a fun quilt along that's literally world wide! Who knows, mine may end up just being another "napkin" sized quilt!

 

If any of you have any suggestions on the sewing machine, let me know.  Oh, and did you notice I've lost my signature? Shucks, I threw it away, and don't remember how to put it back!! 

So, without the pretty flourish, I'll just sign off with ~

Hugs, Pokey

"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits...

For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust."

Psalm 103:2;14