NeedledMom: January 2015

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Having Fun With Peanuts

I’m still having too much fun with the Charlie Brown characters. The little ones here are choosing the order that these are being made. The patterns are designed by Alida at Tweety Loves Quilting for a QAL hosted by Beaquilter. Alida quickly came up with a pattern for Pigpen when I asked her about one. Amazing! The children were so excited about seeing him come to life.

The QAL calls for one character a month, but I have a serious addiction to these little guys. My paper piecing skills have been challenged. I consider myself a novice, having only done pieces that involve no more than two sections. My latest ones include one with 18 sections!!!!

These are the newest members of the team.

Charlie Brown

Snoopy and Woodstock

Pigpen

Aren’t you tempted to join in on the fun?

Recently we all enjoyed the Bloggers Quilt Festival with all of the spectacular quilts that were shared. The winner of the Viewer’s Choice award went to Gosia of Quilts My Way for her Light of Stars. I have followed her work for awhile and have admired what she creates. She had a giveaway on her blog for her pattern of her winning quilt and I was one of the lucky recipients of it. I was thrilled. This is a photo taken from Gosia’s site. Aren’t the colors stunning? I hope I can do it justice in my attempt at making it.

We spent the weekend in snow with several of our children and their families. There wasn't much snow for playing, but we had a great time anyway. We need a good blizzard like they are now getting in the Northeast!

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

AYOS - January

As many of you know, I love the Schnibble projects and Sherri and Sinta have done such a nice job of selecting patterns each month for us over the last few years.

January’s small quilt was a kaleidoscope pattern by My Rainboots are Red. This was a great pattern. To my blocks I added a small white border and it finished off at about 19” square – perfect for a wallhanging or a table topper.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Paper Piecing and More

There seems to be a resurgence of paper piecing….or is it that I am just being called in that direction lately.
I always love seeing all of the wonderful BOMs that show up each January. Try as I might to deny that I would love to do each one, there are so many tempting ones this year. I have jumped on the bandwagon for a couple of them.

The first one that captured my heart was the Charlie Brown BOM. Although the patterns are already published (for FREE) at http://tweloquilting.blogspot.com, the goal is to do one a month. This is a QAL that can be found at Bea’s blog. January we were to make Franklin.

He was so much fun that I went ahead and added Peppermint Patty to my now growing gang.

The grandkids are loving seeing these come to life and are choosing the order of appearance. Next up is Charlie Brown. I am hoping for a Pigpen character as that is the one they all love.

While I am not crazy about ripping off all of the papers involved in paper piecing, I couldn’t help but start another project using the technique. This a a Judy Niemeyer placemat pattern. I LOVE the precision of the points with paper piecing. I just need to quilt these up and bind them.

I guess it is close enough to Christmas for the Christmas cactus to finally bloom. Maybe it should be called a New Year’s cactus. This was from a HUGE plant of my grandmothers. When they get too big and woody I break off a piece and start a new one - or two - or......

I’ve have had some productive yard work this past week by finally finishing the pruning of the over 100 rose bushes. It is always such a great feeling to wrap up that job! Hopefully, the rains we have enjoyed will make for a great display in a few months.

If you are interested in a really fun blog hop coming up in March, check out www.sewwequilt.com for information. If you love birds this is a great one to join and sign ups fill up quickly. Lana is our cheerleader (organizer) of the Tree Bird hop. If you have never participated in one you should give it a try. They are so much fun and they have great sponsors.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Tammy 4 All Seasons

Welcome to my day of of the Tammy For All Seasons Blog Hop. I have so admired all of the wonderful Tammy Bags that I have seen being made in Blogland so I was thrilled to become a part of this hop. There were tough choices to be made first. Which season did I want to do? If you have seen the great designs by Brooke Nolan of Brookes Books Publishing you would know what I mean. Then there were the great seasonal Pinny patterns by Cori Blunt of Chitter Chatter Designs.   Of course, I could always do one of each!

In the end I selected the winter design. I think the vintage "drama" of it pulled me. In my mind, I can imagine a grand New Year's Eve party in an elegant ballroom with the long black dress, angora wrap, long gloves, champagne and roses.

First to stitch the design..... I loved the beautiful metallic threads this chart called for as accents. White evenweave was not going to work with the white stole, gloves and snowflakes, but white is what I had.   Could it be dyed? I wondered.

First sample was a bit too dark. Therefore, I tried to dilute the dye a bit more. My eyes are much too old to stitch on those dark fabrics anymore!

Ahhhh....this is more to my liking. Now for some relaxing stitching and sewing to create my very own Tammy Bag.

The frame was suppose to be black, but when I opened the package it was only 5" and was not going to work. The replacement has not arrived yet. Silver it is until the new one arrives.

I know that the Pinny I made is not the "winter" design, but I was thinking it could be a red cardinal. No??? Don't you love the box pleats? It reminded me of the skirts we used to make during summer vacation before school started again. We wore uniforms to school, but were allowed to wear "free dress" skirts for the first week of school.

But......could I stop there???? Of course not! Autumn was calling my name next. This one I stitched up on some DMC Monaco. Using the q-snap frame on this design kept my piece from the nasty imprint of the circles that one tends to get with the circular frames.

With this cute little Pinny I sewed a strong magnet inside from an old name tag and it holds my scissors so well. I loved how the coffee mug design coordinated with the coffee pot in the cross stitch pattern.

I must add that the first frame that I got was only 5”. I knew after making my Tammy Bag that there was no way that was going to work. Rather than waste the frame, I reduced the pattern size to 83% and made a smaller version with some machine embroidery in place of the cross stitch.

Thanks so much to Madam Samm for the charming Tammy Bag pattern and the sweet pattern minder magnet and to Mary of I Piece 2-Mary for being our fearless leader for this hop. As well, we had many wonderful sponsors for this hop and they helped to make it so successful. Thank you all, including DMC, Yarn Tree, Readers, H.A. Kidd, Snap Source and Beam and Read.

Please be sure to check out the other Tammy Bag creators today and for the remainder of the hop. I know you will not be disappointed.

I'm thinking summer would be a great design for the next bag..................which one would you choose?

January 15, 2015

The Quilting Queen Online

January 16, 2015