While waiting for the dolls to arrive

One of the four dolly knit patterns I bought and the tiny blue sweater I knit. Man, small isn't necessarily easy!!

Ellen's English Paper pieced quilt

You may remember way back two and a half years ago when I was having chemo, I had started a nice, easy to carry project for the hours I would spend in chemo. Well, I ended up with neuropathy in my hands and feet and couldn't feel the needle. My friend Judith's daughter, Ellen, who is also a friend, offered to finish the EPP quilt for me. I had done maybe a foot square. She spent A LOT of time taking teeny tiny stitched and assembled this 45 X 50" quilt. She gave it to me over a year ago and I am embarrassed to say I have been looking at it since then. I HATE UFOs so I decided to clear up all the pieces staring me in the face.

Look at all those tiny stitches. She developed a callus on her finger from the needle!

Zigzagging odd pieces of backing together to use.

This was white flannel I had used on my design wall. I popped it in a plastic basin with green dye. I thought flannel would make a soft backing.

Ready to pin. Stay tuned.

Something a "little" different

OK, this is marginally embarrassing but I am so psyched that I don't care. While recouping from some surgery in December, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the computer. I happened to spot this on Facebook and started watching all her DIY videos. Well to make a long story short, I bought a "lot" of 16 used Bratz dolls (hideous things) and they should arrived Wednesday. Sonia also sells knitting patterns for her sweet dollies on etsy so I bought four variation. I managed to find my 2, 3, and 4 size needles and gathered up some yarn scraps. I think you can count of a few posts about me playing with dolls.
Of course my ADD self can't just do one thing so I am finally finishing the English Paper Pieced quilt Judith's daughter, Ellen, made for me while I was having chemo 2 years ago. It is really stunning. I will post about next. Today I am dyeing some white flannel purple for the back of the EPP quilt. That will be soft on my lap and it will stick to me and not slide off.

* Tree Change is an Australian term used when one moves from the city to the country. It basically means "back to nature".

Quilt finished

I have been working on this for about 6 months, on and off. So to recap, this is a bed quilt I made with my gynormous stash of commercial fabrics. I made it up as I went along trying really hard not to make it another Drunkard's Path quilt although I did do 3 blocks using that template. The template also came in handy later...

As you know on a QAYG quilt you connect the blocks into rows then use connectors to join the rows. I thought (what a great idea) to join 2 rows then two separate rows instead of rows one, two, three and four. My rationale was that at least for a short time I wouldn't have the weight of all four rows while connecting. Remember this quilt is backed with flannel - HEAVY! So here are the two sections of two rows each.

Here is the quilt center completed. All four rows are joined and it is ready for the sashing and border. 

Actually, that block with the green circle is the "signature" block and is supposed to be on the lower right like in the photo below even though you can't even see it!

I cut all of the commercial batik for the border and then thought It might not be quilt large enough so I dyed two yards of fabric a matching/complimentary turquoise to add 20" in width and length (10" each side which trimmed out to about 9")

The halogen lights in my new "studio" take terribly inaccurate COLOR pictures. The fabric which I will try to photograph in natural light is actually a nice mid-value. Below is the turquoise fabric stitched to the Batik that will be the border. Also on top of that is continuous bias strips (in progress). 

Finally a sunny day! Would you believe I ran out of my custom turquoise for making bias strips!! The fabric on the right came out of my hand-dyed stash. Phew!! Now I have enough to bind the quilt.

All the bias strips are joined (36 ft) and ironing in half ready to stitch on but wait.....

I have to trim off all the raged edges before stitching. At night, in bed the thought occurred to me,"This is for a bed and not the wall so why not round the corners."

The Drunkards Path template came to the rescue and I had four perfectly rounded corners.

I of course didn't get a picture of the binding which was probably the best binding job ever (for me). I also didn't want to put it on the floor to take a picture. Trust me it was beautiful. Maybe Patricia will send a photo of it on her bed.

Here it is all ready to be mailed. It is rolled with a couple of layers of this weird fabric I bought 100 yards of but use for odd purposes like covering a quilt.

I did make a "sample" of the binding with a cut off scrap just for continuities sake and would you believe both camera's batteries were dead. Ugh! I took a picture under halogen lights with my phone. Guess it's better than a stick in the eye (Maine expression).

All blocks finished

Here they are

The main purpose of the quilt's construction was to use up some of my huge stash of commercial fabrics since I no longer use commercial fabrics in my work.

I don't know if you remember when Judith and I made these paper bowls. Just thought I would take a quick picture with the sun shining on that gorgeous cobalt.

Five more blocks

I was listening to a Stephen King book on MP3 and just sitting at my sewing machine strip sewing 18 different 2.5" wide strips of fabric. It was fun. Then I cut each of them into 2.5" wide rows. I was having such a good time listening to my book, I just stitched on and on. Here is the block. Yes, I do see the row I sewed incorrectly.

Then I still had tons of these sewn strips so I came up with this idea.

I had this beautiful batik table runner from about 6 years ago that I never used so I cut it into three 18" blocks and quilted them with a meander.

I couldn't find any of my multitude of quilting gloves so I used a plain old pair of latex gloves. They gripped beautifully. 

More DMTV art journal pages

This is a bouquet of lavender a friend gave me. Yes, I spelled it incorrectly.

This a rubbing of some oak leaves I picked up on a walk with Owen.