Thursday, July 18, 2024

July is flying by!!

 Summer is at the midpoint and it is all downhill from here. Enjoy the warmth while you can. Today has muggy heat with thundering, but no rain. Weird. I spent most of yesterday preparing food for the guild meeting tonight. It is my turn, along with a few others, to bring the chow. I made the brownies this morning, and now I'm all set. The evening guild is my favorite. It is more laid back and fun. A really wonderful bunch of quilters! I hope they like meatballs, cucumber salad and brownies.

Remember the quilt I need to make for a wedding gift? I finally have the fabrics and the blocks cut and ready to sew. I figure I can get most of it done this weekend. Mr Wazoo is all over me to hurry it up. I wish he'd go mow something...


This is the picture from Pinterest

These are the fabrics for there plain squares and the borders.

These are the half square triangle fabrics.

Meanwhile, I have been working sporadically on the quilt-as-you-go project, but not making a huge amount of progress. I have the yellow, orange and red blocks sewn together so far. I'll get a picture later. I'll need to take it off the design wall when I start sewing the wedding quilt.


Now for the customer quilts. Boy, they really ran the gamut as far as skill and beauty go...

Talk about strange...The back of this quilt was more holes than fabric! The customer wanted a new backing put on and re-quilt the thing (over the previous quilting)  and add binding. The kicker is, there is another (pretty) quilt under the four feedbacks that make up the front. Sigh...some repairs are painful to do.

I quilted a simple grid pattern to hold the new back on.

The customer brought a burlap type fabric for the backing that wouldn't last at all. I happen to have a stash of thrift store sheets for times like this, and used a white one for the back instead. The binding is also from my stash.

This customer used a panel for this Christmas quilt.

The panto is Let It Snow.

Cute backing!

This quilt started as a panel. The customer cut it into blocks, added cute sashings around the blocks and between the rows. She did a great job!

I used a loose swirling pattern for the quilting because the backing is Minky.

A peek at the back.

This quilt is so cute! I think it was a panel, too. Halloween gnomes!

I have this spiderweb and spider panto

The backing is pieced from some of the top fabrics.

This quilt is for an Optometrist! She is having a baby so my customer found the perfect fabrics and made this. I love it!!

I used the design, Bubbles for the quilting.

Even the back has a glasses theme.

This customer makes kid's quilts in bright, happy colors

Funky Fans panto for the quilting.


soft sheeting on the back.


This pretty quilt is simple, but very effective. Squares and HSTs


The customer requested circles for the quilting.

Lots of dots on the back, too.

This is another quilt from the customer whose wife passed and left a bunch to tops behind. I really like this one. I had to repair it first, one of the background blocks and one patch had holes in them. Can you spot the odd fabric?

I used Funky Fans for the quilting.

The backing is a soft sheeting.

This is one of the member's Row-by-Row quilt from my tutorial at guild. It is big and bold!

I used Frolic for the panto.

This pattern always looks great on solid backings.

These are some of the quilts from other members. I'm in the middle, next to the lady with the orange quilt. You may remember mine was blue and white. I'll have my second one, that I made from the block samples, for show and tell at tonight's meeting.

My blue quilt.

The class sample quilt top. It's finished now.


This one is mine! It's one of the three yard quilts I made at the retreat.

The fun panto is called Chickie Babe. ha ha

The backing is from the fabric I found at the shop near Nashville.

QOV from my Florida connection. 

Simply Stars panto.

The red thread looks nice on the back.

QOV number two.

Naomi's stars panto on this one.

Starry night backing!

On Monday, I took a class on dying techniques. I admit, I will never be a fiber artist, but I like to try new things. I was a complete failure at all the different techniques!! I managed to also dye my fingertip purple because I had a small hole in my glove! My best try was with ice dying. My samples are too dark, but other classmates ( the true artists) had spectacular results. It was a fun day, but sweltering heat was tough on all of us. The class was outside at a local park picnic pavilion.

Uh oh...

My "Dark Night" sample

Judy's beautiful samples.

The QOV quilts were the last in my line of 19 customer quilts. I am taking some time off from customer quilting to do some of my own sewing and maybe a bit of quilting.  I need to take care of myself better so I can keep on trying new patterns and having some fun. I'll still post here and show you what's going on, so join me again for another Wazoo Newsbits.

Here is this post's Penny shot. She has a habit of waking me up at 6:30 by sniffing in my ear. As soon as I get out of bed, she sprawls on my side and snoozes while I make my morning coffee. What a slug.
Well, I need to get my stuff together and get ready to go. Keep on quilting and we'll see you later!!








Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Mid-Summer quilting

 We have been very fortunate to not have the extreme heat that other parts of the country are enduring. It hit 90 a couple of times, but nothing too bad. I'm still wearing long sleeves in the studio! It is cool in there.

Slow going with repairs has me falling behind on my tentative schedule. I'm plugging along on the wool camp quilt and have all the handwork done on a 'regular' repair. The batik quilt is quilted and has the binding on, but I have yet to find the time to do the hand sewing. Maybe this week...

Customer quilting moves along apace, and I'm starting to see the end of the queue. Here are some finishes.

This pretty quilt showcases Aboriginal prints.

African samba is the panto.

Looks great on the back!

The backing was skillfully pieced.

This was one of two tee shirt quilts for a lucky granddaughter.

The bed sized quilt got my go-to panto for tee shirt quilts, rounded squares.

The backing is so busy, no quilting shows!

This lively quilt was fun to quilt!

The panto (very hard to pick out on the busy fabrics) is a stylized flower that looks like the block .


Wild Brandon Mabley backing.

This elegant quilt is made from William Morris print fabrics. The subtle colors are nicely complimented by the black sashing and borders.

The panto is called Espalier

Even the backing is lovely.

Next was this eye popping HST quilt. It is right up my alley!

The pointy-petal flowers mimic the flowers in the fabrics.

Another wonderful bold printed backing.

I did a tutorial for the evening guild last month about quilt-as-you-go, and made the samples for the block progression and assembly from my scrap stash. Afterward, I decided to keep sewing and make a quilt. Here is my progress:
The blocks (with the yellow fabric on the upper right of the picture) for a chevron style quilt are scrappy colors with black polks-dot fabric through the center.
I started the monochromatic blocks with my red scraps.

Here are the red blocks.

A few days later, I had the blue, purple and yellow blocks made

I have added green blocks to the mix, and have the orange strips ready to tackle when I have a bit of time. I may move things around, but I can figure that out later. Wait until you see the back!

I found this quilt on Pinterest and decided I would make a similar one for Mr W's nephew's wedding present. All their registry items are neutrals, and their taste runs toward modern. It may not be my taste, but I think it's pretty. I have all the fabrics selected, washed and ready to start. I wonder if I can get it done in 25 days...

I'll leave you with some flower shots. I guess deer don't prefer these. They have eaten everything else!

This pot reminds me of one of my favorite quilts. 
I won prizes with this color combination!

See?!

These wild azalea bloom on Brasstown Bald weeks after ours are done.

Bright lilies

Our bee balm is doing fine

I love the color of bee balm!

One of our garden visitors!

This is my peas in a pod sculpture that is outside the studio door

See if you think this 'pea' looks like our good friend from Wisconsin...

Mr B (not pea. ha ha)


Our best friends from Door County stopped in for a couple of days.
We had a grand time seeing the sights here.