Quilt Quack 14

Nothing much going on last week...or this week for that matter.

School e-learning and working.

Eat, sleep, repeat.

This photo quacks me up because I thought I had all of my ducks in a row.

Turned out that one was hiding in the corner.

Silly duck.

The ducklings are growing like weeds.

They’re almost getting too big for our tank.

The three oldest ones had enough feathers to be evicted.

:)

That leaves five ducklings in the house.

They're all the same age.

Pekin ducks, the yellow ones, grow faster than other ducks.

The darker ones are our Welsh Harelequins.

They're so pretty!

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I quilt during my lunch break at work.

Here I managed to sew a hexagon wrong side up.

You'd think it would be easier to not make mistakes when hand sewing.

Apparently that's not the case.

Oops.

In my defense, I hold them like this to sew them together.

It's easy to flip one the wrong way.

All fixed.

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I’m trying to get into a quilting groove.

Sometimes it’s hard to sit down and quilt.

Dwayne and the boys are super good at making sure I get time.

I just don’t always use my spare time to quilt.

It took me about four months to hand quilt my last full-sized quilt.

I need to get down to business!

I found this cool Celtic border template.

It fits perfectly between the blocks on the top and bottom borders.

I will need to figure out how to make it work on the side borders as they are a little longer.

Yay! Two sections done.

There are four sections across the bottom

Basically, I've almost quilted half of the bottom border.

The Really Long Quilt Post

It has been forever since I made a post about Nolan’s graduation quilt.

I have been diligently trying to get it ready to put on the hand quilting frame.

I’m so excited to say that it's loaded and ready to quilt!

I enjoyed putting this top together. It has so many different elements to it: hand applique (the dragon), traditional piecing (the Celtic blocks), and foundation paper piecing (Nolan’s name).

I started cutting the pieces for the dragon back in August. About the time I began my shop training I started to hand applique the dragon to the background. I worked on it some of the evenings when I worked the long shop hours. I also sewed during my lunch break after I went back to the office.

After the dragon was finished, I sewed the Celtic blocks. The original block design, which I found in my quilting software, was also applique. I didn’t have enough patience for more applique. I reworked these blocks so I could make them using traditional piecing. I’m so glad I did this. They were relatively quick and easy to put together. I even took fabric strips to work and cut out the parts during my lunch break!

It worked out great.

Nolan wanted Celtic rune letters in the quilt. I did some research and didn’t like the typical symbols and meanings that kept showing up. I opted to use the rune alphabet from the How to Train Your Dragon movies. I used them to spell out his name. He loved it. Using my quilting software, I drew out each block and then printed the pattern. I used a technique called foundation paper piecing. It’s basically sewing by number. It takes difficult looking blocks and makes them super easy to make. I couldn’t believe how easy these turned out to be. I’ll admit I was a bit intimidated before I started. I had only done a few things using this method. I literally sewed on the lines! 

The paper is ripped off the back when it's all done.

Even the “z” was simple to tackle.

This is from my EQ8 quilting software.

I'm amazed at how close the mock up is to the finished product!

Once I had all of the parts sewn up it was a matter of putting it all together.

All done!

 I had planned on a simple backing. Then this cool blue dragon panel was released in the quilt shops. Nolan really liked it too. So I used that for the centerpiece of the back and cut up coordinating fabric for the border. I then added a mix of left over fabrics to complete the backing. Honestly, if this panel had been released before I started the dragon on the front I would have used that for the front instead.

Oh well.

Now it’s a two sided dragon quilt!

It took me a couple of days to load the three layers on the frame.

This was be the first time I’ve loaded a full-sized quilt.

It was a little nerve wracking trying to keep it straight.

I think I got it aligned fairly well.

I have ordered a stencil for the borders.

Let the quilting begin!

Senior Photo Shoot

As most people have seen on FB and Instagram, we’ve finally done a senior photo shoot with Nolan.

I'm kind of glad we procrastinated until now.

OK, truth be told... Nolan buzzed his hair last fall and I was shopping for a new camera.

By the time the weather, hair, and camera all cooperated the world was a completely different place!

We included the face mask for fun.

 The photos I posted on social media were only a few of the ones we took.

It was our first photo session and we plan to do another.

There’s some really cool murals in town we’d like to use as backgrounds!

Without further ado here’s a photo overload!

 

 

Fifteen

We can hardly believe that Connor has turned 15!

Oh my has time flown by!

Due to the current social distancing protocol, we had to curtail our usual family gathering.

It’s hard when you can’t be at school with all of your friends either.

We took to Facebook to encourage people to email Connor.

He was pleasantly surprised with the birthday notes.

He wanted a chocolate mint trifle as his cake.

I also made his favorite meal, pepperoni roll.

Grandma and grandpa stopped out at the gate to give Connor his card and to chat for a few minutes.

All in all, considering that there's a pandemic, I think he had a nice birthday!