Working on my UFOs

I wanted to show you my progress of my UFOs so far. As you can see I finished block #12 from the Aurifil Designer BOM. Isn't it cute?

 Check out her braids. This block was designed by the girls at LizzieBCre8ive.

 Here are all the blocks together and all done. This will be on my UFO list for February. This was a fun BOM to do. Each block was a mystery.

Each month Aurifil gave a box of thread to one person who entered their embroidery on the Flickr page. I won this beautiful thread in November. I can't wait to give it a try. Thanks Aurifil!

I got block #8 cut out for Mr. P's quilt.

 #9...

 and #10 cut out. I plan to cut out #11 and #12 today. My plan is also to sew all five blocks.

Here are the sections I finished of my hand quilting UFO.

What can I accomplish today? I will be sure to share later. I hope you are having fun working on your UFOs. I will be checking on your progress later. You still have time to link up to this post.

With Passion,
Carrie P.

UFO giveaway

Have you picked out some UFOs to work on this year? Yesterday I was visiting those bloggers who linked up to my post. I see some of them are also hand quilting on some UFOs.

Nancy-Rose shared some awesome Smart UFO quilting goals on her blog. Great tips. Check them out. They might help you to figure out how to get some of those UFOs sewn up this year.

I would like to introduce a new blogger. Go by her blog, Holli of NautiStitcher when you get done here and say hi. She sews on a boat.

Now for the giveaway. Here is what you what you have a chance of winning if you finish one UFO that you had listed on your post for the month of January. I will send the winner of this giveaway the book called Spring Mill Days. In the photo below you can see the cover quilt. The back of the book also shows the patterns in the book.

 I will also send you one yard of this Moda fabric. It has been washed.

You can read more about the UFO challenge here and see my UFOs that I will be working on here. You have until Jan. 4 to link up here.

I did work on hand quilting my daughter's quilt and I finished the little Aurifil BOM embroidery. I will share that finish tomorrow.

Keep working on those UFOs.

With Passion,
Carrie P.

A New Year with UFOs

It is 2013! A time for reflecting! I just wanted to wish you all a Blessed New Year! I would like to thank you all for visiting my blog, for all your words of encouragement, your friendship, and all the inspiration you share. I have really enjoyed another year of blogging and meeting new friends. So with that said I wish you 365 days of success in your quilting endeavors.

I wish you success in making your UFO pile smaller. Today is the day for you to go through your piles of UFOs and pick out three you would like to finish in this new month of January. 

I have picked out four things to work on this month. First is this row along with Lori Holt. I have  a row of mittens to make and she mentioned that there would be another row to make this month. So I will make that one also, whatever it may be.

Next, I have to catch up on making five blocks from this quilt that Dawn Heese shared on the Henry Glass website. They all came out in December. Because I had to take a break from sewing and blogging I got behind. Remember this is the quilt I am making for Mr. P?

And will this quilt ever get done. Ugh! This is an autograph quilt I made for my daughter when she graduated high school. She is now twenty-six years old and I am still working on it. I know, I am pititful! I have the binding on because I wanted to make sure my hand quilting didn't get covered up by the binding on the outer edge of the quilt.

I am almost finished with the last Aurifil embroidered BOM.

My list for January!
1. Make the mitten row and any other rows Lori makes in January.
2.Make 5 blocks for Mr. P's quilt.
3.Finish hand quilting daughter's quilt.
4. Finish embroidering block.

If you would like to join in write a post about what you will work on for January and add it to the link below. I look forward to seeing what you all have chosen to work on. And just to clarify, A UFO to me is something that you have already started in some manner.

Come back tomorrow and I will show you the giveaway for those of you are participating in doing UFOs this year. Be sure to do a blog post showing what you will be working on.

With Passion,
Carrie P.

FMQ recap

The free motion quilting challenge has come to an end. I can say that I am proud to have kept up with the challenges and one bonus challenge. Thanks to SewCalGal for hosting this challenge and to all the tutors who put together the challenges. I learned a lot and some of my fear has gone in doing free motion quilting. I have also enjoyed seeing the other participants entries. They have inspired me too.

So here are my practice pieces for the year.

January's tutorial was presented by Frances Moore. This was a fun design to do but I had some problems getting stuck in places as you can see. I will have to learn to think ahead of time where I will go as I am quilting.

 Diane Gaudynski showed us how to do feathers in February. I really like how this turned out. I ended up making a good size throw pillow out of this piece for my son and DIL.

March brought fun loops and flowers by Ann Fahl.

In April Don Linn taught us how to transfer a pattern onto the fabric for quilting. I know I will use this technique again.

For May Leah Day showed us to do some different kind of stipple quilting to fill in spaces.

June introduced us to Cindy Needham showed us how to divide our piece into sections and fill in with free motion quilting. This piece shows the previous two tutorials along with my divide and conquer method of filling in the background.  Fun!

I had fun with the July challenge. Angela Walters showed us how to do tiles and fill in with swirls.

In August Wendy Sheppard showed us a design called Jester's hats. Oh! Boy! this one was so difficult for me. My brain had a hard time doing this design even though Wendy showed how simple it really was to make.

For September Paula Reid showed us how to quilt on lines. She provided this pattern for us. This is the first quilt I did using one of the challenges. It was a preemie quilt I donated to our local hospital.

In October, Teri Lucas challenged us to quilt our name and then fill in a six inch square with fun quilting designs. Teri showed us how to do the nautilus shell which I thought was fun to do.

There were also some bonus challenges during the year too. I did the one presented by Susan Brubaker Knapp. I had fun with this one.  Susan showed us how to let nature inspire us.

In November, Sarah Vedeler showed us how to do a swirly design that would be great for borders.

And last but not least, during December Patsy Thompson showed us how to do free motion borders with mirror image feathers.

I am going to pat myself on the back for doing all the challenges. Some months I wondered if I would be able to do them but I managed to keep up. I do appreciate all those machine quilters that shared their talents with us bloggers.

Next I will be going to my sewing room to decide which three UFOs I will be working on for January. I hope you will sew along with me and get some of your UFOs done for January too. You can read about the guidelines on this post.

With Passion,
Carrie P.

December Free Motion Quilting Challenge

I can't believe I kept up with all the challenges to better my free motion quilting skills.  I have been very intimidated by free motion quilting but have overcome my fear with these challenges. This month's tutorial was brought to us by Patsy Thompson. Patsy gave us ideas for borders. I had fun with this challenge even though I was having some issues with my tension. You can see the whole tutorial plus a video on the SewCalGal blog. 

 We were able to print out some pdfs with the border ideas. I traced my borders on with washable blue pen. The center was empty. Since it was Christmas time I decided to do my center in a holly design I got from qisforquilter. I also decided to do my quilting in a red, green, and white variegated thread. I traced the holly design in the center and then added all the border lines from the pdf.

 I quilted the center and then worked on each of the borders. The feather border was a little tricky for me because they were to be mirror images. I had to draw them on with the blue wash out pen first which made it much easier for me.

 After I finished all the feathers I decided to go back and do something that Patsy calls hyper quilting.

 It is adding more quilting inside the feather designs to accentuate them usually done with a different color thread. I decided to add some lines with a little curl to them in the center of the feathers.

 Here is my piece all finished. It doesn't look too bad. Thanks Patsy for sharing this tutorial for December.

With Passion,
Carrie P.