Centennial Sampler ~ Monday updates

As I shared with you last week, I will give an update of the blocks I sew over the weekends each Monday. I had hoped to get a further two finished but one is all I was able to achieve as this one has 32 tiny triangles which I had to draw, cut and sew together. I ended up taking longer to do this block than I had anticipated. I am going to try to start tracing the templates before I go to Cranberry Cottage whenever possible so I have more time to sew them there.


This block is called 'Jack in the box'. I used green fabric for this block mixed with a shirting type background fabric. I am planning on using a variety of colors for this sampler adding at least three more colors to the green, blue and brown I have used for the first four blocks.

You can see the first three blocks here.

Don't forget to join me on July 25th for a fun little Christmas in July tutorial project!

To button or not to button, that was the question...

Remember back in May when I showed you my stack of yo-yo's? I finally finished sewing them together and here is the little tablerunner...


Now I must admit through my frustration about some things shown and not shown on online instructions about yo-yo's, I have now seen a better way to put these together. I think this could have looked nicer had I realized it ahead of time but my next attempt will be better as a result. I also must say that square yo-yo's are not as square as I thought they would be when I started.


I debated with myself last night to use vintage buttons on them or not. Jos came downstairs and looked and immediately said not to use them. Well as I had laid them in rows after taking them off the tablerunner to look at it without once again, I thought I will keep the buttons out to make buttons icicles for my winter tree.


I received a sweet gift this week from a friend. It is a piece of July 4th fabric and my friend's latest little design. How is she? Tanya ~ The Sampler Girl. If you don't know her designs, they are well worth a look and she takes direct orders now from her website. I have a couple of plans for this fabric but cannot share it yet as one will be a little gift in return for her. Thanks so much Tanya!


I have decided to put my Beatrix Potter Quaker sampler aside again and pick up Silent Sampler once again. Why? This one is smaller and can be finished faster than the other. I really would like to have one of these two WIPs finished this summer. It just seemed more likely that I could finish this one in the amount of time. I am just about at the half way point now. This is not a great photo. It is a sampler that is not easy to photograph.


Off to pack my Centennial Sampler fabrics and patterns to take to Cranberry Cottage. Have a great and creative weekend everyone!

Busy at the North Pole...

Why have I been so quiet this week? Well, I, Miss Pickles the Elf, am very busy at the North Pole. July is no time to sit around enjoying a candy cane. It is our busy season here...


It has been some time since I shared a tutorial so I decided to work on one today that will be a Christmas in July celebration. I hope you will join me for this fun and easy project. Just to tempt you to keep tuned, here is a sneak peak...


I will have a finish to show you tomorrow I hope. See you then...

A long~term UFO project

Let me start with saying I am about to make what might be considered a plug for someone. It is not intended to be anything other than an entry about someone I very much admire in the quilt world who I do feel at times is a little underrated in this particular project. Perhaps it will be the first time you are seeing this book and I can highly recommend it. So yes, I suppose I am making a plug but I want to share my latest UFO and also hopefully share a book you may not have known about...

I am a fan of Judie Rothermel. She used to own The Schoolhouse Quilt Shoppe in Canton, Ohio which is my hometown. I have unfortunately not met her but her husband Bob helped me with choosing the fabrics for my parents bed quilt I made many moons ago. It was one of my early quilts. Since then, Judie has gone on to designing reproduction quilt fabric lines and writing some wonderful books. Here you can see two of her books, The Centennial Sampler and Reproduction Quilt from the Civil War Period 1850-1865 (shown is back cover). The back cover shows the quilt that she made back in the 1980s and here is an excerpt from her book to explain this beautiful quilt:

"My husband Bob, encouraged me to show my best piece of work on the back cover of this book. There is no pattern for the quilt. It is called A Miniature Treasure. It was a nine year labor of love. I start the Quilt in 1981 and completed it in 1990. Many people refer to it as the Dear Jane Quilt. It is not a Dear Jane Quilt. It was started and finished well before this craze. All the patterns I used were from my own drawings. I had never seen the Jane Stickle quilt until I was almost finished with my quilt in the late eighties. If you are interested in the patterns only, not the layout, you will find them in another book I have written entitled Judie's Centennial Sampler."

I love that Judie gives you the chance to reproduce an old quilt and yet make it your own. She has given a choice of 150 patterns to use for this 56 block quilt sampler. It allows you the chance to give the quilt a more unique look as you can change the block choices here and there. This may end up being the biggest challenge as I really love too many of the pattern included. How do you decide?

If you want to see some of Judie's fabrics, just click here.


I have been working on stitching WIPs and quilt UFOs this year. I am trying not to start new projects but finish old ones. This project finds itself a bit between those two states of old and new. I had bought The Centennial Sampler a number of years ago. I just did not make the time to start and last year I did start a block. This quilt is hand pieced which I am not a huge fan of. I just enjoy doing my piecing by machine. It goes together so perfectly for me and I have more time to concentrate on the hand quilting which I love. I wanted this quilt to look historically correct so I am hand piecing these little five inch blocks. I am also trying not to 'over match' all the fabrics. Our ancestors used what they had and made do.

I had started a single block and enjoyed it but knew I needed to come back to it later as I was too busy with designing the theme projects for my quilt group. That really does take up much of my time. This weekend, I packed up a couple of pieces of my reproduction fabrics and everything I needed to make a couple of blocks from the book as well as put the last seam in the block I had made previously. It had been sitting in two halves. Here are the results of a weekends work. I am going to start taking this with me to Cranberry Cottage on the weekends. It is nice to hand piece there as it is easier not to have to carry my sewing machine along. And it feels 'right' to do this project at my little country retreat in the woods.


I will be starting on two more blocks this coming weekend. I will be making this quilt entirely from my fabric stash. I hope to be able to share new blocks with you each Monday throughout the rest of this year.

If you happen to be working on this quilt, I would love to see yours so far. This is what I mean about this being underrated as I have, as of yet, never heard anyone I know say they are working on it or have even seen the book.

Lace in summer's heat...

It is hot and very humid here today. I have the quilt group coming tonight and it will be a small group as many are not going to make it. One is because it is too hot and she doesn't feel well. I just cannot enjoy the summer heat so I have been indoors keeping my mind occupied with another little finish.


Yesterday one of my lacemaking friend's came over in the afternoon so we could do some hobbies and chatting over tea. I worked yesterday and today to get a new piece of bobbin lace finished for...


...my lace pinkeep. I don't know if you remember me mentioning it? It has been a while since I have added to this project which you can see the last post about it here. This has sat too long now that I look at the date. I would like to finish it this summer.


I now will have to decide on the next piece of lace to make. I can either make a wide piece needing only one or two smaller pieces. Time to search through my books and patterns once again...

Gather round the hearth...

...is the name I am giving my latest quilt. I am so pleased that I was able to close June with another UFO finished! I started this quilt in the middle of December 2007. I was enthusiastic with sewing all these logs but then January was approaching and I had to put it aside to work on the quilt group's 2008 theme. There is hang on a quilt rack waiting all this time for some love and attention.


The idea comes from the book "Small Quilts with Vintage Charm" by Jo Morton. I just love the quilts in this book. I always enjoy seeing her Little Women quilts but not living in the States, I cannot be part of a club there.


The Concentric Log Cabin is just the first of a number of the quilts in the book that I hope to make. I did have to adjust this a little as I have 'misplaced' that last three fabrics I had set aside for the quilt. Misplaced you ask? While my mother was here, we were preparing the quilt studio for one of my stitching friends to sleep in and we have no idea where we put the fabrics. I will find them one day but I just pulled out a last red fabric from my stash and did less logs on the pattern.


The quilt measures 26 1/2 inch square (approximately 68 cm) which is a perfect size to use on our table. It is similar to this log cabin quilt I made in our group's last block swap. I had asked for blocks in red and brown. I just love that color combination and now these quilt can even be layered for a display.


As I am on a stash diet, I used fabric from my cupboard for the back of the quilt. I decided on one of my Kansas Troubles Quilters' 'Scrapbook Garden' fabrics. I love this collection and think the fabrics are so pretty just whole like this.


Of course, a quilter will always look on the back to see the quilting and this one has a really neat effect as I hand quilted the logs as they went around the center hearth. If you enlarge the photos, I hope you will be able to see the details better.


I am now going to make my label for as you know, I don't consider a quilt truly finished until it has been labeled.

My Good ol' Summertime swap gift.....

...has arrived at its new home in Spain. We had secret partners this time and I pulled Margaret's name. She pulled mine too by chance. I first had decided on strawberries as my theme which would have really been funny seeing what she made me was also with a strawberry theme. Then I was reading my emails and got a notice of some free patters on the Better Homes and Gardens site. I looked at some and just fell in love with this quilt right away. It had Margaret's name all over it as I immediately thought of her lovely balcony in sunny Spain. I could picture this tablerunner sitting on a table on her balcony.


Now I have to admit that I had tons of fun putting this quilt together for Margaret! I know she loves Thimbleberries so I just grabbed my red fabric stash and got started using the reds common to Thimbleberries (although they are not all from them). I had it done way ahead but left it sit on my own table to enjoy for a couple of weeks. If you would like to try this fun and easy quilt, the link for the pattern is here.


I wish everyone a Good ol' Summertime! I know my online group's is starting out right with this swap...

All things old are new again.....

It is almost weekend and I can't believe how fast another week has past. I am still working on hand quilting a UFO and it is taking longer than I had anticipated. I do only have to more rounds to go and I can sew the binding on. This time when I say that I hope to have a finish to share with you next week, I can really mean it.


I am also working on all the blocks of my last border to my own medallion quilt as you can see some here on my antique embroidery table. But look just a little closer...


A few weeks ago, I received a recent eBay win in the mail. I got this wonderful flower frog. It is a perfect and fun way to display some of my antique and reproduction scissor collection. I had them sitting in my wall cupboard up to now and even with the glass shelves, they just did not show up well. A flower frog was the answer. It is fun to use old items for a new function. Do you have any fun ideas for using vintage things?


I hope you all have a creative weekend. Summer is a great time to sit in the garden with your stitching or quilting.

Heartfelt decorating

Although I have been working away at a couple of projects, I have not had any finishes to share with you in what seems to me like ages. There is a little quilt from my UFO stack which I have been hand quilting but it seems to be taking so long to finish. I am just being very impatient with myself so I decided yesterday that I needed to set my quilt UFO aside just for a day so I could make something I have been wanting to do.


If you read my other blog, you will know that I had been working on redecorating the guest room (alias my mother's bedroom). I have had fun working on things for this room. Recently, I found this adorable little white rack at a garden center. I 'antiqued' it by rubbing some furniture wax on it and finally had Jos hang it for me last night.


I have been wanting to make some fabric hearts from one of the Tilda books for some time thinking I would hang them on doors or dresser knobs. This rack was a perfect place to hang these hearts so I opened my stash cupboard and got started. Here are the results of an afternoon's sewing.


You can click on the photos to enlarge them and see the hearts even better.

A summertime swap

One of my online stitching groups is holding a summer swap with the theme "In the Good ol' Summertime". I asked everyone to make a homemade gift and also send along a strand of floss in a color that says summer to them. This is a secret swap so we have no idea who our partners are. I received my swap gift and can show you now what I received.


This package came in the mail from Margaret. She sent the gift along with a few extra items of a chart by Brenda Keyes and some strawberry bonbons.


Margaret made me a thread tidy bag with an attached pincushion stitched with an adorable strawberry motif.


She also stitched me this little strawberry scissor fob. How cute it is with even a tiny strawberry on the back. I am pretty sure that she made the cording herself. It is just wonderful!



The thread Margaret choose is Strawberry Fields by The Dye Is Cast. Ironically, I almost used a strawberry theme for my own swap gift but changed my mind at the last minute when I found a cute idea which also was very summer to me.

Thank you so much for my summer swap gifts Margaret! I love them and I know this thread tidy bag will be a joy to use.


I will share the gift I made as soon as I hear that my partner has received her package in the mail. It should arrive today or tomorrow but I cannot say where... Are all you ladies out there guessing where it will arrive? *grins*

Medallion quilt project ~ parts three and four

I can now show you more of my quilt group's medallion quilts. This border assignment was a representation of our family members. Part four I will not be showing as they were to add a strip of fabric to the quilt in order to create a certain size for their final borders. You will notice the very last two photos have this fabric edge added. They are now busy working on the last assignement.

Here are the members results for third assignment...


Elly ~ She choose the quilt block 'Pages of time with bookends' which symbolizes all her friends and family that have been her support over the years.


Miep ~ She choose to use a diamond shape, one each for her three children and 9 grandchildren. She choose the rose prints as they are her roses. The corners are done in crazy quilt blocks as her (grand) children are a little crazy she says with a wink and a smile.


Jacomina ~ She choose this border more as a symbol for the fabrics. Her siblings, two brothers, are much older than she. As a result, she did many things with her mother alone and one of them was to go visit the castle 'Menkemaborg'. This border stands for the rose gardens at the castle.


Bep ~ Her quilt has little symbols denoting her parents and brothers along with her nieces and nephews. The hearts in the corners are for her dear husband.


Nell ~ She did two mini medallions which are now turned into pillows.


Enny ~ Her diamond shapes stand for smooth sailing in life with her family.


Albertha ~ This is the first time you have seen her quilt so I will start with the center which is the symbol of her first grandchild. At the time she sewed this compass block little Joshua was not yet born. He is now a healthy little three week old baby. Her next border uses four different blocks on each side which are her four children who are all very different boys. Her last border is all the family built around them.


Joke ~ Her border has crossovers throughout which stand for the difficult moments in life. The four yellow squares are for her four grandchildren. The four corner crossovers are symbols for she and her husband, her son and daughter. The background fabrics in the corners are symbols for she and her husbands parents.


Saskia ~ I shared her center block earlier but her first border is the friendship star block used in the pattern forming tumbling stars. This was because it was the first project I had done together with the quilt group after we started many years ago. Saskia was part of the first group and the first person to join my quilt group. Her second border has trees in the corners symbolizing her grandparents. The apple tree on the right is for her mother (Joke is her mother who is also in the group) and the red maple on the left is for her father. At the bottom, there is a red maple leaf and a green leaf which stands for herself. One the top, which I unfortunately cut off a little, are two doggie paws which symbolize her adorable chocolate lab Rover.

These ladies are doing a marvelous job on these quilts. I am humbled by them each month as we show them once again. They are really allowing these quilts to tell their stories both good and bad letting them become a spiritual journey. I feel very honored to lead this group of very talented women!