It's Monday, and once again I have something on my design wall. For starters, I have a new wall. I used to have a sheet of flannel attached to my wall with Velcro fastening tape. It was only attached at the top of the wall. Blocks had a tendency to fall off when the flannel was disturbed by air movement. Now I have some insulation boards covered in flannel and screwed into my wall. I haven't had much chance to try it out yet, but I think I'm going to like this new version better.

Some of the blocks for my recent project.

My current piecing project is a crib quilt. I am using a pattern from the book Scrap Basket Surprises. My quilt will be a variation of the quilt 'A Little Tangy'. I'm still trying to decide which way to go with this one. Although the pattern calls for a completely scrappy fabric selection, I am using a constant fabric in each block. But I'm not sure if I want to alter the placement of the of the constant fabric. If I do, I'll get this quilt.

Or, I could put the constant fabric in the same position each block. That would give me a quilt that looks like this one.

Either way, I think I will be happy with the end result.

Need more inspiration? Head over to Judy's blog for more links to check out.

Design Wall Monday

With my recent quilt finish, I am once again free to work on other projects. Thank goodness! I have so many things I want to finish, as well as some to start . Yesterday I worked on my project from last month's clothesline club. This is what the quilt was supposed to be.

It isn't very big; a small lap size at best. I had hoped it might be large enough to use as a table covering for my dining room table, as I currently keep it a smaller size. But this quilt was too small even for that. So I decided to rework it a bit to see if I could make it work for something. On my design wall today you can see my changed design.

I think it is going to make a cute Christmas tree skirt. The inner corners of the outer border are not yet stitched. They are only pinned for now. I wanted to make sure it would lie flat before I stitched them.

To see what is on some other quilter's design walls this week, check out Judy's blog.

Edit: I finished the tree skirt! You can see it here.

It's Done

Finally finished with this one. I hope Matt is happy with it. I am thrilled to be able to move on to other projects. I have a few more tops I'd like to get quilted soon. For now, I'm off to sew. :)

Yesterday I taught a dozen women how to make a purse.

We had a five hour span of time in which to work.

Only two ladies actually finished with-in the allotted classtime.

Everyone worked hard.

But we all had fun.

And a couple of my students from my jacket class wore their finished jackets to class. I am very proud of them.

A new favorite quilting tool

I have been mentioning Matt's quilt a lot lately. That is because I need to get it done. By Thanksgiving. That is my self-imposed final deadline. And it is November. Already. So I am down to the wire here.
Unfortunately, I was struggling with the large open areas that needed to be quilted. I had no idea what to put in them and even less of an idea how to mark it successfully. But I am happy to announce that I have turned a corner on this, thanks to my new favorite quilt marking tool, Golden Threads paper. It has made machine quilting on my regular home sewing machine a much more pleasant experience. I love, love, love this paper!

This is Matt's quilt with a couple of the quilted motifs stitched through the paper.

I have known about this product for quite a while, but had never given it a try. Why, oh why, have I never used this before? I have been a long-time fan of printing quilting lines on paper and pinning them onto my quilts as quilting guides. But it has always been difficult to pull all the little bits of paper from the stitching. That is not an issue with the Golden Threads paper. It tears away cleanly. And now, back to the sewing room. I have a quilt to finish.

Here is one corner showing quilted motifs with the paper removed.