Buggy Barn Stars!!

I love Buggy Barn and I really loved getting this top in the mail to quilt. Donna sent it up and said to have fun...so I did!!

 

 On quilts like this one with lots of color and lots going on, there really isn't a whole lot of quilting necessary; it just doesn't show. But I did want to do something to help those stars stand out. This is what I came up with.  A squiggly line in the "logs" and an outline of the star block.  I was pleased with how they turned out.

I just love Buggy Barn quilts, which is why I made the Wonky Churn Dash during my "time off."  The Quincy Crazy Quilters are having their retreat in October this year and have decided to honor Buggy Barn by having everyone make one of their quilts. Last night was the guild meeting in Quincy and one of the members showed this quilt.

I really want to make one, but apparently its a kit and not just a pattern. I've been searching all over online and can't find one. If you guys have any suggestions on where to look, please let me know.  I have a beautiful new granddaughter who I'm dying to make this for.

Thanks for your help!!

Dory

Playtime!!!

I took a few weeks off around Christmas and did a little playing!

First I put this Buggy Barn wool wonky churn dash together--except I didn't use wool.  It turned out okay, just not as okay as I'd hoped.  It was fun to piece; I do love Buggy Barn patterns and am so sad that they went out of business before I got to visit.

 

Notice that block in the upper left corner??  That's what happens when you don't pay any attention to how many blocks you're making and you have to scrounge around for another one!

Hmmmm.....now that I'm looking at this fabric again, the quilt is beginning to grow on me. I do love the border. You just leftover bits together and then cut them into strips.  

Hmmm...I may have gotten a little carried away sewing strips together.  No idea what I'll do with all these leftovers!!! *shrug*

Then my sister told me about a Christmas Stocking tute that Missouri Star Quilt Company did. She made a couple of stockings, so I decided to give it a go too.  Unfortunately, this was after my longarm was waiting for a part, so I straight-stitched on my Featherweight.  The pic is before the quilting; the next one will be quilted on my longarm. 

Naturally mine aren't done.  Yet another UFO.....<sigh>

And finally...can you guess what I did with this stuff???

I also worked on the Four-Patch Frenzy that was a mystery quilting event at Longarm University. I have mine almost completed...then I can start quilting it! I'll show pics when I'm done.

Dory

American Flag Quilt

I love this quilt...its the first flag quilt I've seen made this way and I think it is just so cool!!!

 

Joyce made this using a variety of reds and yet kept the blue consistent. That combination and the stark white between the rows just made it pop.  When I was deciding how to quilt this one, I was stumped on what to do in the white rows.  I knew I wanted to SID all the blocks, so I did that first and then stared at it for awhile.  I finally decided on this simple design hoping it would direct your eye to Joyce's wonderful piecing.

 

 I thought this was a great touch, a cross-stitched flag!

 

No pics of the back...it was a busy blue with lots of stars.

Dory

Musings....

Okay, so this is my plan for 2015. I hope that by committing it to "paper," my follow-through will be just as good as my intentions.  Hey, I can always hope, right??? (In case you're not paying attention, this blog will be short on cool quilt photos and potentially rambling and not that exciting. In other words, feel free to delete now and go on to something more fun!)

Last year I tried Evernote for the first time. This involved purchasing a scanner for my paper bills (got a super cheap one--$20 on Amazon), installing Evernote on all my devices (computer, phone, tablet, etc.) and setting up a "Financials" file on my computer. Can you say overkill???

For every bill received via snail and/or e-mail, it was scanned (if necessary), saved as a .pdf and filed in both the Financials file on my computer and then saved into Evernote. (Super cool thing about Evernote is that if you save it on one device, it automatically syncs to the rest).  I also did this with all my tax related docs: payment for quilts, business purchases, tax donations, you get the idea.  Yes, it was time consuming and since it was my first time trying this, I was overly cautious and redundant. Because this was my first year with Evernote (and partially because I'm cheap frugal), I opted for the free version. The free versions works perfectly, so I won't be upgrading.

This year, though, things are changing a bit. I've refined my Evernote usage and will not save everything to my hard drive (don't tell Dennis that part. He still doesn't trust Evernote *shrug*). I've set up a new e-mail account that will receive ONLY electronic bills (the goal here is to keep me from losing bills and getting the dreaded "late notice."

And I'm finally breaking into my Life.doc system from Get Buttoned Up. (I've owned this for four years now; however, I didn't want to rush into it!!) Not sure what it entails, but it can't hurt, right??

Then, on the personal side, I'm determined to get healthy, I've always exercised off  and on, but this year, I intend to get serious and do something physical six days a week. I'm already doing so well!!  Yesterday we took the dogs out for a four-mile walk and today I spent 35 minutes on our elliptical. Yes, I know...its only the second day of January and there are still 350+ days to go. But, its a start!

I also plan to be more organized with my customer quilts as well as my own stuff. I will quilt for customers M-F (taking Wednesday to do some piecing of my own) and will, with a little determination, quilt my own tops on weekends. Biggest barrier to quilting my own tops? Me!!  Give me a customer quilt and I can come up with great ideas; give me my own quilt and I cannot make a decision. Go figure.

So, that is my basic plan for 2015. Did you make any specific resolutions? Share if you'd like and maybe we can motivate each other!

Thanks for hanging in there with me...

Dory

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention: I plan to post at least twice a week in 2015!