A Bit of Quilting...

Its been a while....

again....

Time has been getting the better of me again and its been almost two months since I last posted.  I seriously don't know where the time has gone.  It seems like I was just home visiting with my older sister, but that was at Halloween which is 6 weeks ago now.

To show how things have been going....


This was what happened one morning...before I had my coffee or tea.  I was trying to take the slow-cooker out of the pantry and the cat treats when all over the place.  It was a fairly easy pickup since most of the treats landed on the lid, but it just goes to show that coffee needs to come first before anything else.  :c)

I have done quilting and even finished a quilt!  I know... crazy that I actually finished something this year.

It didn't take long to quilt this one once it was loaded onto the frame.


Even as I was quilting it, I could see the texture starting to show.  I really like this panto and its great for a kids' quilt.  Its called Celebrate.


Of course, right when I got to the last line of quilting.... the bobbin thread ran out.  And it wasn't even the start of the last line, but with only about 20 inches left.  Grrr!


Here it is all finished though.


The angled view on the frame gives a nice view of the quilting and texture pre-washing.


On this particular quilt, I didn't know the baby's name, so I only put my standard generic label onto the binding.  Instead of doing a label on the back of the quilt, I embroider it right into the binding.  Its less obtrusive I think and it would be pretty hard for someone to remove it.


After washing, the quilt has that beautiful crinkled look to it.  I love this batting (Quilter's Dream Cotton in their Supreme Loft).




I also really liked the backing on this one.  The polka dots were really cute for a baby quilt.


And one last shot of the texture along the length of the quilt with the fading sun of a winter afternoon.


Hope everyone is doing well and getting ready for Christmas!  It will be here before any of us know it!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Heat Wave!

I wish we had a heat wave right now.  As it stands, we've had to use our fireplace the past few nights to take the chill off the air in the house.  Sunday we definitely needed it though as the overnight low was down to 24F and the daytime temp only reached about 45F.


We even had it... S N O W!!!!  I was not happy to see these little babies on the porch and the little white things flying in the air.


So what's a girl to do???

Stay inside and quilt!  I purchased Judy Laquidara's book Nine Patch Extravaganza several years ago and even bought the fabric to make her quilt called Heat Wave.  I decided to finally pull it out and get to work!


I have similar colors to Judy's original quilt and started cutting up all the pieces I needed.


My "OCD" factor is coming up high on this one while I was cutting things out.  LOL


And all the pieces cut for the center portion of the quilt and the non-pieced borders.  All neatly lined up and ready to go.  Sometimes when I stack this stuff up, it makes me not want to do anything more so I can keep it in the nice and neat little piles.  Thankfully, that feeling doesn't last too long!


I have about 20 of the 80 flying geese blocks made so far for this quilt.  There are a lot of bonus HSTs as part of making those flying geese, so i'll have to figure out something to do with the tan and gold-ish HSTs.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Baby Quilt Progress

I know its been a while again since my last post.  Life has been busy around here.

I've been focusing a lot on work and my health lately.  On the health front, its no major issues...just trying to be more health conscious.  I picked up running over the summer and still try to get in two or three runs every week.  With cold weather and dark evenings on the horizon, I'm a little concerned that I won't be able to keep up my running routine.  I can easily run 3 miles outside in 30 minutes without much effort, but once I get on a treadmill.... good bye.  I feel like I'm dying after the first mile or so.

I don't know whether its boredom with being on a treadmill or if I just find it hard to run on a treadmill.  I know I will still look forward to my weekend running that I can do outside for as long as I can!  The good thing is that with running and paying attention to myself over the past year or so, I've gone from a size 8 or 10 down to a size 4 (sometimes a 6 if the style is really trim cut).  I'm now holding steady around 126 or 127 pounds, which is something I haven't been at for about 8 years, so I'm really pleased with that.

Anyway - on to the stuff you really want to see... the quilting!  :c)

A friend of ours is having a baby (boy) this fall, so I went about making a cute quilt for them a few weeks ago.  Here are the fabrics/squares all laid out in my OCD fashion.  LOL!


It was quick work to sew all the pieces together, especially since it just had to be random for the most part.  I did line up the larger squares as well as the 3-piece strip sets on my design wall to make sure there wasn't too much of one color family in any area of the quilt.


All the strips came together quickly and I think I got most of the top done in just a few hours.


When it came to sewing the longer strips, I sewed the strips first and then laid them out on the wall and moved things around as needed to try and minimize having the same colors next to each other.  The image below is missing some of the white sashing pieces, but it was only up there so I could see how the colored squares went together.


And here is the middle of the top... only one large border to add...


Ta-da!

One happy quilt top all put together.


I prepped the backing yesterday and hope to get it on the frame and quilted this weekend.  The backing material is a really cute polka dot that has similar colors as the front of the quilt.  I have a deep blue that I'm using for binding.  I wanted to use the green and the blue to give it a slightly more masculine feel since the baby is a boy.

I hope everyone is enjoying their fall.  I did see on one blog that Alaska is already receiving snow! September is a little early for snow...even for those of us who enjoy the snow!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

AQS Quilt Show - Syracuse 2015

I had the opportunity to go to the AQS Quilt Show in Syracuse, NY this summer.  The show was held in July and it was my first "real" quilt show.  I've gone to fairs and local guild shows, but never something as large as this (and this isn't even large compared to the Houston or Paducah shows).  I ended up going to the show with my Mom and we had a great time and took a lot of photos of the great quilts there.

"Hurricane" by Janneke de Vries-Bodzinga from the Netherlands.




"Petals" by Marcia Baraldi from Brazil.


"Red and Black Illusion" by Kaiko Ike (I think that's the right name, my picture is a little blurry to read the text on the card now.)




"For Ewe" by Janet Henshaw

"Weighed in the Balance" by Marilyn Smith




I don't have a close-up of the name of this quilt or the quilter.  :c(  It was a beautiful quilt though.



"One Cake, Two Cake, Red Cake, Blue Cake" by Linda Neal.  This quilt had a wonderful whimsical feel to it.  It was really creative and I loved the different types of quilting on it.







"Byrne's Spiral" by Beth Nuler.  There were a fair number of quilts with grey as the background instead of pure white or cream.  It was an interesting change to see that type of background.









"Georgia On My Mind" by Diane Evans.  Since I'm a music fan, I loved the music symbols surrounding the center section of this quilt.








This next one was the Best of Show.  "Stars on Mars" (I can't read the name of the quilter off the picture).

Again, this used a dark background and the quilting detail was fantastic.  I'm not surprised one bit that it won Best of Show.










I loved the use of colored thread in the next picture on the border area.






There was also a red and white exhibit (non-judged.  The quilt below was "Uneven Nine Patch" by Linda Lasco and quilted by Judi Madsen from Green Fairy Quilts.  Judi does fantastic work and this is no exception.










Overall, I really enjoyed the show and it gave me quite a bit to think about in terms of my own quilting and where I want to go with it.  Hope you all enjoyed the pictures.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations