Collaborative Quilt to Come….

We have finally worked through all of the the UFO’s that my Mom left for me. I consider this next one to be MY UFO rather than hers.

In the past, Mom and I had worked on a couple of collaborative quilts. The first was this one….

Mom had appliqued tons of these gorgeous flower blocks…..

…but couldn’t figure out what to do with them. I stepped in and turned them into a flower showcase!!

Next, I found a pattern from “Piece O’ Cake designs and sent Mom blocks to applique. Those I turned into this wonderful quilt…

There were WAY TOO MANY borders in this quilt’s making!!

Since that had been so successful, I sent another set of blocks….

….and she proceeded to quickly applique them and send them back.

At this point, her eyesight was failing, so these blocks aren’t quite at the same quality level.

But they are BEAUTIFUL and truly need to be finished into a quilt.

….And they will be…..SOMEDAY!!

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The importance of a thimble!!

Another reason I struggled to get started on my “Abiding Garden” appliqué was my thimble.

Several years ago, I performed a thorough search of thimbles and couldn’t find one that would work with my arthritic fingers. I finally decided that my best solution was to make one from elastic athletic bandages. It is not a permanent thimble, but I can normally get two uses out of each one that I make.

But I was finding that the end wasn’t thick enough to stop the needle from penetrating it, especially when I had to stitch through the glue used to prepare the pieces.

Before I could continue sewing, I had to fix this problem.

I had a packet of leather “dot” thimbles, so I tried one of those first….

But, no matter how hard I tried, I kept knocking it off while I was stitching.

Then I decided to merge the two thimible versions. Start off with the leather dot in place, but add athletic tape over it.

I cut two pieces of tape, one shorter and one longer…..

….stretched the shorter one over the top of my finger, encompassing the “dot” as well…..

….and used the longer version to wrap around my finger, holding the first piece of tape in place….

PERFECTION!!

Now, I have NO excuse for not sewing!!

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Who knew I would enjoy hand-appliqué SO much!

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Calendar House UFO

Continuing with my series of Inherited UFO’s, we now come to my Mom’s Calendar Houses.

As part of her love for button-hole stitch applique, she made these 12 blocks….

I love the details, like chickens pecking in the yard…

….and the Santa coming down the chimney in this southwestern scene…..

It was fun to find her notes to herself about adding ribbons to the maypole….

Although the blocks are cute, I don’t have any particular desire to finish it off.

I would love to hear your thoughts…..

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Abiding Garden update

When I started my “Abiding Garden” hand-appliqué project, I thought it would be slow, but I didn’t expect it to be quite THIS SLOW!!

When I last posted about it, I had glued/pinned two flowers to the background….

My plan was to spend a bit of time most nights and do the applique, but life has gotten in the way.

This is convention season for Michael’s side-hustle, and I needed to travel with him to help with photography and videography. Consequently, I was away from home for almost half of February!!

Needless to say, there was NO stitching going on!

When I did make a start, I added the yellow flower, but was unhappy when I realized that I hadn’t pulled the threads tight enough on each stitch, and it didn’t look great. I tugged on the threads from the back and was able to tighten it up…..