Another one bites the dust!

Last week was our one year House-A-Versairy (made up words I know). Over the past year since we have moved I have been working on my craft room. Refinishing the floors, painting, buying and hating many sets of curtains, rugs and furniture have been purchased and assembled. So much time and money has been spent working on this room and alas I am not yet done. I am close! I just have fabric to put away and design wall and quilt hanger to hang. Once the finishing touches are in place I will post pictures. 

During this process I have come across a number of WIP's that were shoved away with the best of intentions of completion some day. I decided that enough is enough and have started wrapping them up for good.

This quilt is for one of my step daughters. I have had the stars done for some time but couldn't decide on the layout. The more I tried the more I hated it. I bought several different fabrics to use as solid blocks in between the stars but could never decide on one I liked. I decided to switch gears and start sewing in a direction I thought I would like. The final top is not the original vision or even the 5th vision but I think it works well and isn't too busy. I may add another strip of fabric to the top and bottom for length, as of now the quilt is 72" x 82". Once it is quilted I am going to lose some in both directions. Now to pick the backing fabric (I have several good choices) and quilt it up. I just have to keep reminding myself that its only fabric and no one is as critical as I am.

It did remind me how much I love my fancy new Janome that I got last year for Christmas. These blocks were made on my old Bernina. The stitching is not nearly as nice on the old girl and the piecing was starting to come apart at the edges. As a side note look at the shiny, beautiful refinished floors! We have 4 bedrooms down and one to go! Thanks to my husband for all his hard work on the house this last year. 

Linking it up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Do.Good.Stitches Nurture August Final Pics

Here are the final pictures of the August quilt for the do.Good.stitches Nurture circle. It has been washed and bound for a minute but the weather has  been less than cooperative in Ohio.

I shared a tutorial for this star here. This will be headed to My Very Own Blanket in good old Ohio.

Here are pictures of the bug happy print I picked for the backing fabric. 

Linking it up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

Slow and steady......

I've been plugging along on my hexie stars. It is my newest hand carry scrap quilt project. I am using quilt Pati's and haven't joined these together yet as I still have template pieces. I showed these to my mother a few weeks ago and the first thing she said was I hate the purple one. Ahhhhh I know mom, I know there isn't enough contrast between the fabrics. I decided since she said something unprovoked that it wasn't just my own brand of crazy, it was at very least a genetic defect.  

I took apart the purple star and added pink fabric and it looked much better. I also had the blue star (now with the orange fabric) originally had the fabric around it that is now surrounding the red star. It also didn't have enough contrast and was picked apart. On the plus side the templates make it easy to recycle the pieces into another star. I'm at 10 stars. By my math I can make another 10 before I have to start joining them to get some template pieces back. Unless I have lost some in my travels or decide to buy more the next time I am in Columbus. All are valid options....Happy Monday! 

Linking up to Monday Morning Star Count @ Life Under Quilts.
Linking up to WIP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced

This block makes me want to punch a puppy.....

This is the October block for the Nurture circle of Do.Good.Stitches. It is a Moda bakeshop pattern and you can find it here. When I first saw the pattern I thought kick ass, I really like it...and I do, but it has so many pieces. My circle was making the smallest one, so 64 2" squares. So many HST, so much trimming and much piecing. Let me be honest this is an eye crossing, swear spewing, time consuming block. Looks great when you are finished and I think if I I was making one of the bigger ones it would be much more rewarding. These are finished and going in the mail. Maybe one day I will make the big one but for now I need a break from this pattern. God speed evil blocks, may you make a beautiful quilt for a lucky foster kiddo. 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced & Finish It Up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts

***No puppies were punched in the making of these blocks***

Friday finishes a touch late......

 Finished up last months blocks for the Nurture circle of do.good.stitches. Unfortunately the solids I had on hand were mostly pastels. 

I went back to the fabric store and bought some bolder solids, I still hate red and pink together and couldn't put them in the same block.

Last but not least I finished the sashing on the blocks from August do.good.stutches and put together the top. I will need to quilt it up.

Linking it up (late) to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday

Keep on tinkering.......

I started making HST for this quilt. Originally it was intended to be all blue and low volume fabrics. I didn't have a strong reason as to why but I saw this quilt at Sew Crafty Jess and loved it.

As the stack of HST grew I started adding purple fabrics and playing with the layouts. 

I even tried the crazy no plan lay out that made my eye twitch. We started refinishing our floors last week and I lost my layout area. I have a bad habit of not planning out the number of pieces needed for a quilt and ending up with way too many. I was trying to avoid that and I had no floor space or design wall to work with so I started sewing. I also added green to the mix at some point.

I wasn't paying close enough attention and changed the layout some, so the seems in the colored areas are all running parallel instead of making squares. I think the colors it ended up with look lighter and more youthful. I'm still on the fence so to speak but I am not ripping apart these blocks!

Linking up to 

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Let's be Social at Sew Fresh Quilts

Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts

That's all I have to say about that......

I was the quilter last month for the Nurture circle of the Do. good.stitches circle. I picked this star that has no name as of yet. Summer star, Squash blossom star......It doesn't matter. All the blocks have arrived at my house. I have completed sewing together column 1 and 3, the other two should come together quickly. It needs to get finished and off the floor as we are scheduled to sand the floors this weekend and it will be returned to use as a bedroom.

I also completed my blocks for September do.good.Stitches. Turns out my stash does still need more fabric. It is lacking solids. I almost never buy solids and the ones I do have came from swaps and scrap bags. I am going to redo these with bold colors, red, pink, orange, and purple. To the fabric store! 

Linking up to Freshly Pieced

On the road again, like a band of gypsies we go rolling down the highway.....

I had great hopes for a few weeks working at home. Working all day, going on long bike rides, making home cooked meals and sewing in the evening. I had gotten back into sewing full force spending lots of time in my sewing room. I was starting new projects left and right. I got all the blocks for the nurture circle do.good.stitches and was playing with the layout and started putting it together. 

And then I got thrown back on the road again.....Its hard to plan for anything with my job. I am covering a woman that is out unexpectedly. So I am back in my home town of Pittsburgh. I working to work off the fluff while I am out on the road. We are trying to do a half marathon in November. I would say or die trying, but I don't want to tempt fate. Yesterday I decided to do the steps in the Cathedral of learning. 36 flights up up up into the sky. My father went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and used to take us there when I was young. I had lots of time to think about him while I was hoofing it up the steps, down the elevator and up again. I left looking like I had been rode hard and put up wet, very very wet.

On the sewing front I am working on my traveling scrap buster. I have been grabbing fistfuls of scraps from my bin and making these hexie stars. I have no color scheme other than trying to make the star and the border of the hexie play nice together. The purple and white star at the bottom doesn't quite hit the mark. There is not enough contrast between the fabrics. I am not sure if it is easily fixable or if I should take a deep breath and let it go. Selective bleaching? 

Linking it up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Organized like a Dusseldorf bus schedule

Over the weekend I had some time to sew sew sew. When I got back on the sewing wagon I didn't just start one WIP, I started like 4. So here is some progress on two of them. 

I was able to make some more HST for this quilt. I am still not set on the layout so I am just sewing and waiting for the spirit to move me. I am however running out of floor. Our September house goal is to refinish the floors in half our upstairs. Then I can have my sewing room set up and I can get off my knees.

I briefly thought why be so structured, why not just throw all the HST in a bin and randomly lay them out. Then I had a panic attack and had to rock myself back to sanity while breathing into a paper bag. I need the planning and structure, otherwise it drives me mad, mad I tell you. Granted I never work from a pattern and I love making scrap quilts, but there has to be a theme, color theme or general design or I start getting twitchy.

In accordance to Murphy's law the instructions for the September do.good.stitches quilt came out and it is exactly what is below. Random HST and to make me extra twitchy pink and red together. I am going to need to be medicated to make the blocks for the quilt this month. But I am going to embrace my crazy and move on!

Then to soothe myself I put the HST together in this pattern. Oh yeah that's better!

Since we are redoing our bedroom I thought it was time to make a quilt for our bed. I also thought that my scrap bin is out of control. In an attempt to solve both problems I started working on this quilt in the style of a Spring cleaning quilt I saw here. I have been working with all pastels for the stars and low volume for the background. I have one full star done and alot of middle pieces. I have to get working on the points. Unfortunately working with scraps leads to smaller scraps, but that is a project for later.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Weekend Floor Play

I admit I have been neglecting my sewing room. We painted it and put together some furniture and then drug in the totes. But then we decided that we were going to refinish the floors and I didn't want to unpack everything and then have to repack it to move it. So it has stayed in totes. We were going to start the floors "'as soon as it got warm enough to open the windows". As you can tell we are a little behind. At this rate we are going to find ourselves back in winter with the windows closed and the room unfinished. The point of my story is that my design wall has not yet made it to the wall. So anytime I need to take a picture I have to clear a path to the floor and set it up there. If i am not quick enough some animal dashes through the blocks. I was able to get a picture of my newest WIP. 

I found inspiration at Sew Crafty Jess

And also here at Kat and Cat Quilts 

I can't decide which layout I like better, However the second quilt is all HST with white on one side and I have started making some HST with color on both sides. We will see as it progresses. 

Linking up to WIP wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Finish it up Friday - EPP for the littlest Peach

This is a quilt I started quite some time ago, might have been last year. When I found I was pregnant this spring I started working on it for the new baby. After I lost the baby I packed it up and shoved it in a closet. I took it out and finished up the top last night. I will add the fabric corners to square it off this weekend. I am not sure what I am going to do with it, maybe to charity, maybe for a future kiddo if we are blessed again...for the time being it is in memory of Georgia Peach our littlest Peach

linking it up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

Works long in progress

I pulled out some old WIP's. I will go into more detail later as to why they were shelved. One reason is that my job has me driving more and flying less. A lot of time I spent on planes and in airports were consumed with working on these hand projects. I am breaking them out again in the hopes of making some progress in my free minutes. Hotels are not designed for quilt photography and perching on a dresser to get a shot will most likely be the reason they find me dead at in a Holiday Inn.

 This baby quilt in progress is almost finished. My mother reads a lot about quilts and always tells me that there needs to be a surprise in every quilt. For this quilt it is the white star in the upper corner. Just a couple edge pieces needed to be added to this project. I have the fabric at home to square off the corners and for the backing. But then again we don't need to talk about how much fabric I have at home. 

I'm not sure what I am doing with these hexie stars. But I have started a couple and we will see where they end up. 

How I learned to EPP

Life under Quilts

I am linking up to WIP wednesday at Freshly Pieced

do.Good.Stitches-Nurture Circle......August Block

Greetings.....Welcome to the Peach Patch if this is your first visit......I've been oftly quiet recently.....

Today I am posting a tutorial which I hope you will enjoy. This is my first month as quilter for the Nurture circle of do.Good.Stitches. I had been trying to get involved with this program for some time and some space opened up. As a bonus the Nuture circle makes quilts for one of my favorite charities; My Very Own Blanket. I have had the chance to make quilts for this charity before and go to the workshop to sew in Ohio. I struggled to decide what block to pick for the quilt. I flipped back and forth from traditional blocks, tutorials already floating around the internet or creating one of my own. In the end I created on of my own, at least I haven't seen it before. As of now I am still working on a name for this block
.....Spider Star
......Crab Star
........Sunshine Star
.....Supernova/Exploding Star
....I haven't figured it out yet, send your suggestions.....

So to get started on this block we first need to select our fabrics. For this block we are going to have three fabrics. For this quilt I would like to keep the color scheme to Blue/Green/Orange. I would prefer bold jewel tone fabrics that contrast well with the background and colors that are complimentary to each other. Please stay away from pastels for this project.

A - Background star points- Blue or Green or Orange
B - Main star - Blue or Green or Orange
C - White/Cream/Low volume background fabric

The fabric cutting for this block is pretty simple.

A - Background star points- Blue or Green or Orange
1 - 8" Square

B - Main star - Blue or Green or Orange
6 - 5" Squares

C - White/Cream/Low volume background fabric
1 - 8" Square
2 - 5" Squares
4 - 4.25" Squares

Once we have our fabrics take the two 8" blocks (A & C) and place them with front sides facing and sew a 1/4" seam around the entire perimeter of the block.

Next cut the block on the diagonal in both directions

Set the seams and press open

 Press the seams open

Line up the 45 degree line on your ruler up to the seam of the block and trim down to 5"

Draw a line perpendicular to the seam of each of the half square triangle blocks as well as on the diagonal of the 2 5" (C) blocks. Pair one 5" (B) block to each of these and lay them face to face.

These lines are used as a guide. Sew a straight line 1/4" from the mark on both sides. Using your rotary cutter, cut these 6 squares along the mark between the two seams.

 You should now have 4 of each of the following

Set the seams and press them open on each of the blocks

Line up the 45 degree line on your ruler up to the seam of the block and trim down to 4.25"

Add the remaining 4 4.25" (C) blocks and you should now have 4 of each of the blocks below

Now to assemble the star yet to be named block
Place the 4 4.25" (C) blocks in each of the corners
Place the 4 4.25" HST in the middle with white facing in

Next place the squares with the accent fabric to the right as shown below

The remaining squares with the accent fabric to the left finish out the layout

Sew each row together and press the seams open
Beware that the intersection at the corners of the inner white square are bulky and should be sewed and pressed carefully

Sew each row together and trim the block down to 15.5" square

Please make two blocks and send to the address below.
Feel free to contact me with any questions :)

Dhia Peach
519 Smith Road
Fremont, Ohio 43420