Sunday Quilt Inspiration: C H E V R O N S

We've done Sunday Quilt Inspiration with chevrons before. That was back in 2013 when I was making this quilt for my niece who was graduating from UL Lafayette.

Most of those pins were of the chevron design, very few quilts.  I suppose that Sunday Quilt Inspiration has changed and improved in the two years since.  

I'm making another chevron quilt and, although I'm getting close to the end, I wanted to take a look at a few quilts and decided to blend that with this post. 

I've come to like showing pins of a particular design or color or whatever and then showing quilts that mimic or use the design. 

  

I really like that this blog has been changing and growing over the years. And that I continue to grow and change as a writer. Hopefully you like it, also. 

Happy quilting,

Grands, Grins and Gear

Grandchildren can be ridiculously silly.  "I'm so bored."

And beautiful. "Two pictures, Gram, cause we're twice as beautiful when we're together."

And silly.  "No Dusti, you'll mess up my makeup!" (Said very late in the day.)

And needy. (Why is it always the grandparents to the rescue? Has anyone else noticed, or is it just in the Marcotte family?)

Dusti hung a pocket on the drawer pull and tore it almost completely off. Of course, she left it here for Grandmay to fix. "But do it now because it's the pocket where I put my cell phone!"

It was a tough sell, but I did the job in about two minutes.  Didn't even bother to change the thread color.  I had a neutral beige-brown already in the machine and just went with it. Who can tell the difference?  

Not the cutie wearing it. And she watched me sew the jacket "in the wrong color!"  She got over it as soon as she had the jacket in hand.

A New Chevron Project

Last week I began a new project. Half square triangles set in a chevron pattern. I started with the small chevrons in the middle. They are left over HSTs from a signature block project from a couple of years ago.  

I did not want the corners to go to waste, so I sewed on both sides of the line and kept the extra HSTs. There are many more, but the original quilt colors are blue, gray, green and navy--all dark colors.

Wedding Signature Quilt

This quilt may go to a six-year old, so those colors definitely needed a girly touch.  Ta da, lavender and a pretty blue plus a hit of red for a surprise.  Don't you know that I preferred the top arrangement, but got things mixed up and the second design is on the long-arm? I didn't even realize it until I saw the pictures tonight. Shoot! The purple on top really works better!

So, except for sewing some parts upside down, all was going well. I loaded the quilt on the long-arm and started quilting by following along the chevron pattern. 

Then the thread started unraveling and breaking.  At first it would happen about once on every 70 or so inches. Today it broke at about every 20-25 inches.  Not okay! 

I was able to get Richard to make a few adjustments and things are better, but they're not perfect.  (yet)

Much worse, though, is what happened on Sunday evening. I had just an hour or two for some fun, and I was really getting some quilting in using my nice acrylic straight edge. Then! the acrylic piece popped up right into the needle. I imagine I was holding it incorrectly, and it got away from me. What a mess! 

The needle broke and bent but the machine sews so fast that I couldn't stop the machine in time to keep the needle from going down into the shuttle. There went the timing and with it the tension. I changed the needle, but no matter what I did, I could not get it in straight.  I just knew the needle bar and shuttle and who knows what else were done. Finished.

Thank God for good husbands! My good husband worked on the machine Monday, and on Monday evening he told me it would cost about $700 for parts. I wanted to cry. Imagine what that kind of money could buy.  Well, I figured that the money would have to buy all the parts that I bent and broke. I was still heart-broken and upset, but there's nothing else to do.

That is until my good-for-teasing husband confessed that I was stressing for nothing. My sweet machine was fine.  I was so upset with the whole maybe-I-broke-my-machine episode that I couldn't put the needle in correctly. Richard had, instead, corrected the needle, cleaned and oiled, and checked the tension. 

This afternoon we were rolling right along.  Here are a few pictures to prove it.

I'm almost a fourth of the way with this quilt. It will be nice to have something to work on this weekend rather than just worry about parts coming in (and paying for them). Whew! that was a close call! Have you had one recently?

Pin It Weekly #138

It's cold here.  Well, not this cold.  Cold enough, though. Wet, miserable cold.  Gusty, windy, chill-to-the-bone cold. 

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We don't have ice and snow.  We don't get much snow, but ice comes along pretty often. I mean, not like this. Thick ice...that's not much of a problem. If we want to skate, we have to pay an ice rink. 

So the scenes from On This Winter Day by Nancy Prince and Linda French, which won “Best of Show” at the 2014 International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, are not at all familiar to Louisianans. 



We mostly just complain about the cold, look at beautiful art of cold, and cuddle under quilts when we think it's cold. 

I can't imagine that anyone cuddles under this beauty! If you'd like more information about the quilt, visit Bernina's We All Sew website. The quilt was made on a Bernina 830, so the site showcased it on the 20th. The quilt makers explain quite a bit about their amazing quilt and how they achieved the details. A must read!

Save Your Shirt!

I am a mess. A really, really messy person. The kind of messy person who wears stains on the front of her favorite shirt. Make that every shirt.  The kind of messy person who kills multiple trees every year in paper towels.

Meet Exhibit A.  [photo enhanced to show stain] 

Most of my shirts look like this within a couple of wearings. I've tried several ways to camouflage the stains: sweaters (too hot), scarves (too heavy on my neck), brooch (on a tee shirt--no), nothing. Really nothing works. It's hopeless. Until now.

It's quite simple and I should have gotten off my lazy end much sooner.  Here it is:

Cute, cute. Easy peasy and lemon squeezy. Cover the mess with applique. The cuter the applique, the better the distraction.

I started with a couple of my Accuquilt Studio dies.

Added a few scraps from a friend. 

A few flowers and a birdie later, the stain is covered and the tee is a little cuter for the change. At least now I can wear it in public!

Did I say all of my shirts have stains? Maybe I exaggerated a little, but the truth is that several do. Since the first one came out so cute, I decided to work on one more. This time I used my own fabric but the same friend (I love you, Leta), who happens to be a great artist and art teacher, made me a set of monogram appliques. I wrote about the shirts that I appliqued for my girls as Christmas gifts a year ago. 

This one, though, is all mine and does a great job of covering the stain that is hiding right under the largest part of the middle M. How convenient is that?

I'm loving the polka dots! The darkest ones are an almost perfect match to the true color of the shirt. Just so happens that this deep blue is one that looks really good with my skin tone. I call it a pasty yellowish off-white. Definitely my face needs some color in my clothing.