Dutch Trade is Done!

A Christmas present to myself...my third Dutch Treat quilt, which I'm calling "Dutch Trade" is now finished!    Tom says it is the best of the three.

I will need help getting a good full on picture.  But for now here are a few angle shots

The individual blocks and progress pictures of this quilt can be seen here

Dutch Treat #1  can be seen here

Dutch Treat #2 can be seen here

Is there a fourth one in my future?

Childhood Games

Trying to go to sleep last night I started thinking about the outdoor games we played in the 1950's and how sad it seems to me that my great-grands may never enjoy this kind of simple fun, preferring cableTV, computers and electronic games.

 

How many of you remember playing Fox and Geese after a nice big snow?

 

And just making huge snowmen and snow forts?

 

 

Or Red Rover in the warmer months?
 
Also Kick the Can?

Annie, Annie Over?

Crack the Whip?

Roller skating up and down the sidewalks and back and forth to school with our skate key on a string around our necks.  It was the height of fashion to make a braided chain out of yarn or string for your key.

Hour and hours spent in the municipal swimming pool playing Bird Catch (though I have no idea why we called it that or exactly what the rules were..basically a tag game).

What fun times we had growing up in a small Iowa town when it was safe for kids to be gone for hours without cell phones to keep in touch.  

Parents didn't have to max out credit cards to buy Christmas presents for us.  I even got the same doll for more than one Christmas.  I told that story here

In this picture my cousin Phyllis is holding that doll, with my sister and me sitting behind her.

Miss those simple days!

 Lastly, because this is a quilting blog..a couple of pics of the progress being made in quilting the borders on Dutch Treat #3.  Two borders done..two more to go and then bind the scalloped edge. !

 

Think I'll make it by the end of the year? "2011" is appliqued on the botton border, so I'd better

 

Quilting Again

The corners are appliqued with butterflies

And one side border  is mostly quilted

Happy Sunday!

Border Progress

Someone asked me last night if I'd been sick since I hadn't been posting regularly.  Nope..not sick..just haven't had anything new to post. I've been working on the appliqued borders for Dutch Treat #3 and last night I finished the 4th side.  Just have to decide what I'm going to do in the corners and then it will be time to start quilting the borders. 

Took some time out this afternoon to start working on a memorial T-shirt quilt for one of the daughter-in-laws who lost her brother earlier this year.  And in the middle of doing that we had a surprise visit from Great-grand#5 (aka Aly). 

Much more fun than quilting!

Center Finished

Last night I finished the quilting on the 196 center 4" blocks. 

Close up of one section. Wish the quilting showed

Now "all" that is left is to add the four outer borders, design the applique for them, do the applique, quilt them and lastly bind the quilt.  It will be another scalloped edge like the first two.

Not sure why the quilting is taking longer this time, but I've spent a little more than 3 months on just this part of it.  I started the quilt in April. Still hope to have it done by the end of the year.

Quilting Progress

The first four rows are quilted. 

It's laying on top of another project I've been working on.

Trying to get quilting to show is always difficult.

I've received several siggies in the last couple of weeks.

Adrianne from the Netherlands

Marieke from the Netherlands

And sisters, Angela

and Deborah from South Australia

Receiving siggies makes me smile!

Waste Not

The quilting on Dutch Treat #3 (aka Dutch Trade) may be going slow, but I finished another quilt made from the SCRAPS of DT3.  Remember a few months ago I showed what I was doing with the skinny little strips left over from trimming these blocks

Here's where I talked about it

I'm so glad I decided to sew these as I trimmed, because I now have a completed quilt instead of the boxes of trimmings that I have left from DT #1 and #2.  Sitting down and sewing all of them together is going to be a long boring task that may or may not ever happen.

But since I worked on these a few at a time, I now have this

I machine quilted it Thursday and Friday.  Yesterday I decided to add some Broderie Perse applique to three of the corners

It has a wild orange back with some gold detail that doesn't show well in this picture.

None of these are very good pictures and I apologize for that.  This was another quilt on which I used Superior Thread's King Tut "Old Giza".  I absolutely love this color of variegated KT thread and it ends up working well on many of my quilts lately.  Who would think that looking at it on the spool

I had a terrible time thinking of a name for this quilt, until a friend on Facebook suggested "Waste Not".  I think that will be it unless some of you have better suggestion?  Thinking of names may be the hardest part of making quilts. Do you name yours?

Slow Progress

Evenings are now spent quilting Dutch Treat #3 but I don't feel like it is going very quickly.When I did the first two I was able to average a row a week if not more, quilting the whole quilt (plus stopping to applique the borders) in 3 months.  I started quilting this one July 25 and I'm not quite finished with two rows, so we'll see if I can catch up and maintain the pace. 

It's really hard with my camera to get good shots that actually show the quilting.  I'm still not the best hand quilter, but I'm no longer ashamed to show my stitches.  That's improvement!

We've had a dramatic cool down in our temperatures.  Almost feels like fall is in the air.  With schools starting soon I suppose it really is. 

Happy quilting.