A Couple of Bags

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are going well here. My shingles are pretty much gone. I finished my medicine this morning and there's just some pink where the rash was. Now I just have to deal with the insurance company who decided to charge me for the RSV vaccine and the blood test that they gave me while I was there. It's always something, isn't it??? We finally had some good snow and winter is here. It really is beautiful! It looks like one of the critters in the yard is preparing for a cold winter! When I went outside this morning, I saw this in a tree:

Stuffed Animal in the Tree

Stuffed Animal in the Tree - Close-Up

Isn't that hilarious? There's some kind of a nest that's been up there for a long time, but I've never seen a bird or animal up there. Now they've dragged on of Grace's stuffed animals up there. I'm guessing it was a squirrel because I saw a squirrel playing with one of her bigger stuffed animals outside a couple of weeks ago. Very industrious!

Last Thursday I went to the local sewing center with a friend to work on bags. She was incredibly productive and finished four Clam Up bags designed by ByAnnie.  I also made a Clam Up bag:

Clam Up Bag - Outside

Clam Up Bag - Inside

I also started an Easy Does It bag also designed by ByAnnie that I finished at home:

Easy Does It Bag - Outside

Easy Does It Bag - Inside

I added pockets to the insde of this bag and I really like them!

After I finished my bags, I was looking for something else to do and came across my Flower Pincushion designed by Sue Spargo.  I had finished the embroidery a while ago, then put it aside until I had a chance to assemble it, then, of course, forgot about it. So I picked it back up and finished it.

Flower Pincushion

Flower Pincushion - Side View

The pattern just had the rick-rack and button around the side, but I thought it should be dressed up a bit so I attached the rick-rack with some visible sewing and added small french knots. I really like how it turned out!

I've also been continuing to work on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse.

Kalme Throw

As usual, that little purple marker indicates the beginning of my progress. I found that this was a project that was hard for me to do with shingles. The shingles was in my right arm and I do a lot with my right arm when crocheting, and I found that I would get aches in different places in my arm and hand if I did much work on this project.

Because of this, I switched to a new knitting project. I started The Answer scarflette designed by Laura Nelkin.

The Answer

This was the May 2025 project from Laura's Lola's Choice club. The yarn is beautiful and soft as a cloud! To add some fun, you roll a die to determine where to put the beads in the bead rows.  I think this will be fun to wear, too.

Nancy

Shingles

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is feeling well and had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I don't have much to share this week because I came down with shingles this week. Luckily, I must have an extremely mild case because I'm not experiencing any of the shooting pain and the rash is small and is already healing. But it did make me tired so I did a lot of resting last week. I also decided to cancel my trip home for Christmas because of the two young great-nieces (a one-year-old and a one-week-old). The doctor said it would be no problem for me to be around the girls at Christmas and both moms were okay with it, but I'll still have the chicken pox virus in me then and I would feel horrible if either of the girls got sick. You can only pass on the virus if they contact the fluid from an active rash and my rash is already drying up, but still better safe than sorry! 

One thing I did do last week was to quilt another piece of fabric for another Easy Does It bag designed by ByAnnie. 

Easy Does It Bag - Outside

Easy Does It Bag - Inside

I wanted to prepare this for the sewing session I'm having with my friend on Thursday to make bags. I don't think the Clam Up bag will take the entire time, so this is my back-up project to fill any extra time. I wanted to make another Easy Does It bag because I love the size of the bag that I made, but I really wish that it had inside pockets. So I'm making another one and including pockets.

I also worked on cutting pieces for another Potato Chip quilt. I started to think about making another potato chip quilt when I was making blocks for Quilts Of Valor (QOV) last month. To make the QOV blocks, I dug through my scraps to find fabrics of the requested colors. While digging through the scraps, I felt like I wanted to use of some of them so I started thinking about another potato chip quilt. Since I was feeling tired and didn't want to think about what I was doing, I decided to start cutting up my scraps for this quilt.

Potato Chip Quilt Units

I'll need a lot of units for this quilt so I'll keep cutting bricks for a little while. Then I can divide the bricks into light and dark units to start sewing blocks. Cutting these is a great project for when I don't want to do any thinking!

Nancy

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

 Hi all -

Hard to believe that Thanksgiving is this week! Where does the time go? I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!! My niece had her baby last Thursday, so I have another great-niece to meet when I go home for Christmas. I can't wait to meet her! It's so fun to watch the family grow!!

This week I finished the last two Turnt cowls, designed by Laura Nelkin, that I was making for Thanksgiving. I had finished one cowl and started the second last week; now I've finished the second and also made the third. I'm spending Thanksgiving this week with friends. I don't cook so my two friends are doing the cooking. I decided to make these cowls for them as hostess gifts. (And I'm bringing beer for the husbands.....). I had three kits for this cowl, so I made the third one for myself.

Turnt - For A Friend

Turnt - For Myself

We're continuing to have unusually warm and dry weather, which is supposed to continue through Thanksgiving, but it looks like we might get our first real snow this weekend so the timing might be perfect for these cowls!

I also started working on another Clam Up bag designed by ByAnnie. One of my friends wants to make these bags for her daughters for Christmas. She hasn't made very many bags before and she likes how mine look, so we're going to work on the bags together. I reserved space at the local sewing center for us to work on these on Dec 4, but it can take a lot of time to do the quilting of the fabric before constructing the bag so I suggested that we should quilt the fabric ahead of time so we could concentrate on the bag construction. I've been having fun playing with the built-in special stitches on my sewing machine for quilting these bags, so I picked one of the cross-stitch stitches to use this time. 

Clam Up Bag - Outside Quilted

Clam Up Bag - Inside Quilted

Clam Up Bag - Quilting Close-Up

As you can see in the pictures, I drew around the outside edge of the bag piece before doing the quilting (adding a generous 1/4" to make sure the piece is completely quilted). I did this because the cross-stitch stitch uses a lot of thread. The funny thing about the pictures is that the thread for the cross-stitch stitching looks a lot darker in the pictures than it does in real life! I really like how the Soft And Stable stabilizer used for these bags feels with the dense quilting. When lightly quilted, this stabilizer is too puffy for my taste. But when you quilt it this densely, it reduces the puffiness while retaining the nice stiffness so your bag doesn't sag. But this dense quilting sure does take a long time! I'll probably prepare another quilted piece before we meet just in case we have extra time. We will have the table space for six hours and I hate to waste it! If my friend likes the space, we'll try to have monthly sew days there to help support the space and to enjoy more time together.

Again, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Nancy

First Turnt Cowl Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We had another abnormally warm week, but it looks like we'll be getting more seasonal weather this week. We could really use some snow!

This week, I finished the Turnt cowl, designed by Laura Nelkin, that I started last week.

Turnt - Red Version

This cowl is so soft and lightweight! And it's easy to knit. I knew I would like this cowl so I had ordered kits in three different colors and I also made a start on the bluegreen version.

Turnt - Bluegreen Version

I've been invited to a friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner and another friend is also cooking. Since I don't cook, I thought these would be nice hostess gifts for my friends. And I still have the third one that I can make for myself.

Last week was my busy week for our quilting guild's small groups meetings. The Monday meeting was canceled, but we had our regular Quilts of Valor (QOV) meeting on Thursday. This might be the last meeting of the group because out December meeting is canceled because it conflicts with the guild Christmas party and we lose our meeting space at the end of the year. So we made this a bit of a special meeting. We started by making little sewing caddies for ourselves. Our group leader had run across a video for making these and she thought it might be fun for us to make them together. Here's the one I made:

Sewing Caddy - Front

Sewing Caddy - Back

Sewing Caddy - With Some Stuff In It

After we made the caddies, we had lunch together. Our group leader had made some wonderful soup for us to eat. Then we got to work on our QOV sewing and made progress on our latest quilt. I also had made a bunch more of the 16-patch blocks that the group is collecting for later quilts so I turned those in since I won't be going to the guild meeting this week. Overall, it was a very productive day!

Finally, we had our English Paper Piecing (EPP) group meeting last Friday. I continued working on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. I've started working on my second rosette.

La Passacaglia - Second Rosette

I also shared the new technique for fussy cutting the shapes that I shared here.a couple of weeks ago. The technique was well-received and we had a wonderful time sewing together!

Nancy

Tulips Are Blooming Top Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We continue to have unusually warm weather with little snow. It's certainly pleasant, but we could also use some moisture!

This week I finished piecing my "Tulips Are Blooming" quilt top. The pattern for this quilt is from the book "Jelly Roll Quilts" by Pam and Nicky Lintott. The pattern is called "Floral Bouquet."

Tulips Are Blooming

I changed the borders from what were used in the pattern. I thought the squares on point looked better with the interior of the quilt. In the picture, the squares on point in the border look too small to me, but in person I think the proportions are right. Although I like the current size, I might still decided to add a narrow white border before the binding. I think that might look better.

This week I also got my box from the Pink Door box club. With this club, you get a box of Tula Pink fabric along with extras like ribbons, zippers, bag patterns, etc a couple of times a year. The box comes out when there is a new Tula Pink fabric line and contains one of each fabric in the line along with a collection of her solids. You can sign up for fat quarters, half yards or full yards. I get the half yards. It's an extravagance, but I love the boxes! This box had Tula's Graywork fabric line and a couple of ByAnnie patterns along with some other stuff. I really like the fabric and decided to make the Easy Does It bag.

Easy Does It Bag - Outside

Easy Does It Bag - Inside

This is one of the four free patterns on the ByAnnie Web site. To get the pattern, you have to create an account on the site and add the video class to your account. (It took me a while to figure that out....) This bag is a good size for holding a small knitting project.

After making my new bag, I decided that I needed to start a small knitting project to put in it! I picked Turnt designed by Laura Nelkin. 

Turnt

I've been wanting to make this cowl for a while and just picked up a couple of kits on sale. It's a simple cowl, but starts with a mobius cast-on and uses two yarns held together so there are still new things to learn. This yarn is light as a feather and will be luscious to wear!

Nancy

Ultimate Travel Bag Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well and had a wonderful Halloween! As usual, the time is flying by! As much as I like having the mornings lighter after the time change, I'm dreading the dark evenings. I did get a new Cricut floor lamp last spring that lights up my sewing area really well so maybe evening sewing won't be so difficult this year. It worked well last night.

This week I finished my Ultimate Travel Bag designed by ByAnnie. 

Ultimate Travel Bag - Front

Ultimate Travel Bag - Back

The bag has a bunch of pockets on the outside and has one of those straps on the back keeps it secure on the handle of a rolling bag. There are some mesh pockets on the inside, too.

Ultimate Travel Bag - Inside Mesh Slip Pockets

Ultimate Travel Bag - Inside Mesh Zippered Pocket

I'm planning to put the supplies that I take to sew days and retreats in this bag since my sewing machine is in a rolling case. I should be able to just secure this bag to the top of the case when taking things to and from the car.

While I had my suff out for making the travel bag, I decided to also make a Clam Up bag also designed by ByAnnie. I had a cheap kit for this bag, too, that I'd picked up years ago, but I decided to use my own fabric for this bag since the fabric in the kit was boring for a bag, but good semi-solids for use in other projects. I found a fun water drops fabric in my stash to use instead.

Clam Up Bag - Fabric and Quilting

The pattern says that you can either quilt the outer fabric and stabilizer or you can leave it unquilted. I like the stability of the quilted fabric better in my bags so I quilted it. I had fun playing with a special stitch on my sewing machine. I thought this stitch had a water drop feel. I used painter's tape to mark straight lines on my quilt sandwich 2" apart and sewed a line of the special stitch along each. Then I did another line of the special stitch halfway between each stitched line. Finally, I felt the fabric needed more quilting to get the stiffness that I wanted, so I added a line of straight stitching between each special stitching line. The result was exactly what I wanted. Here is the finished bag:

Clam Up Bag - Outside

Clam Up Bag - Inside

This little bag is easy to make, but has some nice features. The flat bottom makes the bag stand up easily on its own. The pleats on the sides will keep things in the bag and add a nice finishing detail.

I also did some work on the diamond border for my "Tulips Are Blooming" quilt from the "Floral Bouquet" pattern in the "Jelly Roll Quilts" book by Pam and Nicky Lintott. I had said last week that I was going to leave this for another retreat, but I have a bunch of white solid fabric in my project bag for this quilt and I decided that I want to get that back into my stash. I also felt like working on the math I needed to do for this border. So I cut a bunch of the fabric and started sewing pieces together. 

Tulips Are Blooming - Diamonds Border

First, I had to figure out the size of the squares of background fabric I needed so I could get the quarter square triangles needed for this border. I needed quarter square triangles to get stability along the length of the border, especially since the squares are on point and so have bias along the length of the border. You can't use the formula for cutting quarter square triangles for quarter square triangle blocks because these quarter square triangles are used differently. I also know that I am terrible at precision cutting quarter square triangles, so I did the math and added a good buffer for trimming and came up with needing 4.5" squares to make the triangles that I needed. I made a couple of test units and saw that this would work for me, then sewed multiple units together so that I could measure the final size of the diamonds in the border to calculate the number of diamonds I need for each border. Now that this part of the math is done, I can make the borders. Then I'll measure the final size of the borders and use the dimensions of the center of the quilt to figure out how wide to make the white borders that are between the center of the quilt and the diamond border so that everything will fit together perfectly. Luckily, I really enjoy playing with numbers!

Finally, I did some evening work on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse. 

Kalme Throw

As usual, it's hard to see the progress, but I did get several more inches done. Someday, I'll have another soft blanket to cuddle under when watching TV!

Nancy

Ultimate Travel Bag Started

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here! As I mentioned last week, Grace is now three years old. Hard to believe it! Buttercup, my cat, had her semi-annual vet visit this morning and everything went really well considering she's 17.5 years old. She's one tough little girl! Tomorrow is my great-niece's first birthday. She's getting so big! And my second great-niece (from a different mother) is due sometime next month. The family keeps growing!

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent last Friday and Saturday at a retreat with one of my quilt guilds. This time we went to Twisted Stitches in Superior, CO. This is a new sewing space that was just opened by a member of our guild. We were her first official event. It was a really nice space. Each person got their own table, with the tables arranged in groups of six. The tables are very stable, each had a little bank of electric plugs and the chairs were comfortable. There was an iron and ironing board at the end of each bank of tables and there were large design walls that could be rolled to different spots in the room. She also has HandiQuilter longarms in the space that can be rented and theres a kitchenette with a full size refrigerator to complete the space. I also brought my Gidget sewing table and was able to position it perpendicular to my table to make a nice workspace. Even though the table is heavy, I like to bring it because I like to have my machine sunk into the table. I worked on my Floral Bouquet quilt from the book "Jelly Roll Quilts" by Pam and Nicky Lintott. I'm calling my quilt "Tulips Are Blooming."

Tulips Are Blooming

I already had 25 blocks finished before the retreat, so at the retreat I pieced the other 14 blocks and sewed them together to make the main body of the quilt. I also got a very small start on the borders, but lost my steam and ended up going home a couple of hours early. I'm happy with what I accomplished! I don't like the borders in the pattern, which are a background border followed by a 2" border made from the leftover fabrics from the flowers. It makes sense for a jelly roll quilt, but I found it boring. I'm planning a plain background border, then a border of 2" squares of the flower fabrics on point, and then another fairly narrow background border to separate the squares from the binding. I figured out the math for the border of squares and got a few of those units prepared. I'll make a bunch of those squares and then will eyeball things to figure out how wide I want each border to be. But I've got other stuff I'm working on at home, so this will be put aside for now.

While I was looking through my collection of kits to prepare for the retreat, I came across a kit I picked up years ago for making the Ultimate Travel Bag designed by ByAnnie. (The kit is for the original version of the pattern; there is now a 2.0 version of the pattern on the Web site.) Since I don't like to work on complicated bags at retreats, I decided to get this kit out of the closet and start working on it. I got this kit years ago from Craftsy/Bluprint when they had a store along with their online lessons (and they used to have incredible sales). This kit came along with an online class so the written instructions frequently refer to the video, but I don't feel like spending the time to watch the video so there have been a few places that were confusing, but I also own the 2.0 version of the pattern so I can look at that to quickly verify some things. (I decided to stick to the original pattern rather than just making the 2.0 version because I wasn't sure if I would have the right supplies for the new version which has slight differences in the materials list.) Here's what I have done so far:

Ultimate Travel Bag

A lot of the time-consuming stuff is finished so I should have this bag finished by tomorrow.

One other little thing I've worked on this week is preparing pieces for my second rosette in my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. I wanted to get started on the next rosette because I spent some time catching up on unwatched episodes of TheQuiltShow.com and I came across one (episode 3705) where Tina Craig talked about English Paper Piecing (EPP). She shared a technique she has for positioning things for fussy cutting units. She makes a template out of card stock with a cut-out for the piece and uses that to position the paper EPP piece on the back of the fabric to get perfectly matched images. I don't want to go into any more detail here because I couldn't find a video of her technique on YouTube so I don't think she's sharing it publicly. Here's the units I prepared using her method:

La Passacaglia - Prepared Pieces for Rosette Center

I highly recommend this episode of TheQuiltShow.com if you like to EPP and you are a member of the site. She has ways of using this same technique for creating perfect mirror-image units from fabric that has mirror image motifs and for positioning images in the fabric that span multiple EPP pieces. I'll be trying that second method soon so will share a picture then to better show what I mean. While I was playing with the fabric, I also picked the fabric and did some prep work for the next couple of rounds of this rosette.

La Passacaglia - Second Rosette Center Rounds

I probably won't sew these together until our next EPP small group meeting since I've got other things that I want to work on first.

Nancy