faulker094

Yahoo!  I have finished the outer borders of my "diet/therapy" project.  And I have finally come up with a name for the quilt... "FOOD FRENEMIES." A "frenemy" has been defined in the modern lexicon as a type of "friend" whose words or actions bring you down. I am SO glad I didn't proceed with my FIRST outer border plan... ...I was CLEARLY having a bad day when I did the sketch seen above!  Some of you recommended that I NOT use the sketch (but not ALL of you, LOL!).   My bad idea TOTALLY crossed the line between destroying inanimate, tempting food objects and killing off sometimes alive fast food mascots, too human for comfort.   The people playing those mascots in commercials, various public appearances, restaurant openings, and yes...birthday parties (oh boy)...are just trying to make a living, for pity's sake!  They may not even eat the food they promote (the lying misrepresenting jerks). Peanut M&M's may be my worst fren...

These are very poor quality pictures that I took late last night before going to bed following a long afternoon and evening of hand quilting.  I thought I would show you where I am in the process of quilting my "Contentment" quilt top. I am outline quilting every little piece, then echo quilting as a background fill. The quilt just seemed too busy to me to try and do anything more organized like background gridding or lines. It will look better after a good pressing...I am quilting on a hoop and have the top all wadded up in my lap as I make progress. I tried stretching it out on top of the TV table I am using to take these poor pictures. I started with the big 16-inch center block then proceeded into the twelve 10-inch surrounding blocks, heading  toward the borders. It is a lot of stitches!  I have almost burned through my first spool of YLI hand quilting thread (#002 Ecru) and several layers of skin on my right thumb and left index and middle fingers. It is pretty bor...

The bottom border for "Contentment" is hand-stitched, soaked and pressed, but not trimmed and attached yet.  I might wait until all four borders are done before I trim anything.  My little mathematical brain is a little distracted right now...better to be safe then sorry! These pictures aren't very good...I have both tops I am bordering laid out on the pool table as I ponder things.  My pieces of design wall are leaning up against furniture in my bedroom, upstairs.  I have got to figure out where and how to have my design wall down where the quilt cave is! And for my second project sprawling on the pool table, you won't believe one of my skinny stop borders I am employing in "Life's Little Treasures."   Some of you have been making these blocks in a larger size, one at-a-time, one day-at-a-time in 2016.  I just finished making 116 little versions of this hand-appliqued block in four days!  Now I just need to stitch them into strips and apply them to ...

After much moving things around, I finally settled on an arrangement for my center medallion block and my seventy-two LITTLE TREASURES hand applique blocks. The little blocks measure 6-inches finished (but can easily be scaled up larger), and the quilt top is 54-inches square... SO FAR. Patterns, both traditional and digital, for the blocks are available here . Now I am trying to figure out my options...I am thinking that I will apply another sawtooth border, but with 2-inch finished HST's instead of the 1-inch that I used around the center medallion. But then, what?!?  My mind is racing... It was interesting trying to get the blocks arranged.  I did not use seventy-two different background neutrals, so I had to worry about repeats being adjacent to each other.   I think I moved the flying pig around the most...due to the neutral fabric palette it was a little hard to balance the occasional bursts of brightness. It is busy without calming sashing, but I like that.  ...

The 18 blocks pictured above are the LAST of the 72 (total)  LITTLE TREASURES blocks; original blocks that I drafted and hand appliqued to amuse myself and stay sane over the last sixteen months.  The finished size of each block is 6-inches square. I started making these 6-inch blocks over a year ago for a project that was leaning in another direction.  That project, "Repro Madness," was to be a swap project that would contain blocks made by me and two of my Michigan friends.  I started making 6-inch hand applique blocks designed by Lori Smith of From My Heart to Your Hands designs to put together with pieced and embroidered blocks from my friends. The three of us chose Reproduction fabrics and got to work.  After I made five blocks using Lori's designs, I started drafting my own blocks, all the time making 3 of each design for a while, one for each of us. As my project got more ambitious in my head, it became clear to me that I was now working on two diffe...