Radiator Cover

It all started with this article in Quilters Newsletter Magazine, dated October 2003.

The fabric above was bought specifically for the making of a wallhanging.  The fabric at top is a panel print and there are 4 fabrics below it.

After cutting the pieces for 1 block, I decided I didn't want to make a whole bunch more – a little too much fussy-cutting.  So, I set the fabric and the block aside.

Then, came the winter of 2010. It was cold.  More days in a row of cold than we've ever experienced living in South Florida for 38 years. We bought a portable room radiator and used it more times in January thru March than I care to think about.

I knew just by looking at that radiator that it was going to be a dust-catcher! It needed a cover. I remembered that fabric and the lonely block.

I went into my EQ7 with my measurements for the radiator cover and started to design.  I even scanned my fabric so I could use it in the design in EQ7.  In order to make what looks like the panel print, I took a digital picture of the actual fabric and brought the image into EQ7.  If you do that, make sure the image is “square” so that the proportion will be correct.  You end up with some real silly looking images if you use rectangle-shaped images.I took a screenshot of the upside-down back portion of design and brought it into MS Paint. I am delighted with Windows7 version of MS Paint. I can manipulate images with ease and it doesn’t have the learning curve that the high-end graphics programs do.

Here’s the layout, in progress, on the design wall.

Here's all the layers pinned together, ready to be quilted.

After a couple of movies on the Hallmark Movie Channel, the "bones" of the cover are quilted and now the "fun quilting" begins …

I used Sulky Blendable 12 wt cotton thread for the quilting.  I like the heaviness of that thread.  Makes the stitching stand out.  I use a 90/14 Topstitch needle for the 12 wt. thread.

I find I get a better fit if I wash & dry the piece after quilting and before sewing the sides together.  Especially if I use cotton batting as I did in this project. 

Finished cover – front

 
Finished cover - back

Dolphins on a radiator?
In South Florida - but of course!

Many mini Projects from Angie

Are you running out of ideas for little gifts to make for Christmas?  Well, not Angie!  She has got a whole slew of projects that will be just the thing. 
http://ajpadilla.com/patterns/bom/christmas-all-year-round

Lots of the projects are free.  Look around her website – Angie is some talented lady!

Sign up for Angie’s newsletter and she will send an email each time she puts up something new --
http://ajpadilla.com/newsletter/subscriptions

More Fabric Bags

Cute Pooh bag, eh?  Angela from Country Scrap Quilts (blog) sent me this pic of Fabric Bag that she made from my directions.  She’s made quite a few of these bags & if you’d like to see more bags from her and others, go to my Fabric Bag Gallery on my website.  You can also find a link to the directions for the regular Fabric Bags and also a link to directions for a Christmas Shopping Bag on that webpage.  Never too early to start in on that Christmas sewing.

Angela asked for my permission to sell some Fabric Bags that she made from my directions.  She is now selling them in her Etsy shop and on her website – Country Scrap Quilts.  Hope you sell oodles, Angela! 

I like it when people send me pics of the bags they make.  I love it that people are using the Fabric Bags instead of the ugly plastic things.  Fabric Bags hold so much more and you feel so “green” using them!

I was chatting with a new checker at the grocery store the other day and she said - “I remember you, you’re the one with the pretty bags.”  Yah, that’s me all right, pretty bags & all!  LOL  ;-)

More Fabric Baskets, nice gifts

I’ve been sewing away!  Made some more fabric baskets that I first found out about at the Pink Penguin blog -- http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/05/tutorial-fabric-basket.html

I like the different looks you get when you pick different colors from the focus fabric for the checkerboard rows.  Four fabrics used for each basket shown above.

If you click on the pic above, you will see a larger version of the pic and you will also see that I am in my “gridded wavy lines quilting” phase on my quilted pieces these days.  The gentle wavy lines are so easy to stitch and so relaxing.  No matter what you do, the quilting comes out looking great.  Try it sometime.  These fabric baskets are a good place on which to practice quilting.

I cut the striped fabric into squares for the checkerboard rows on the basket and when I laid out the rows, I rotated the squares so that a horizontal stripe was next to a vertical stripe.  I forgot to take a pic of it in the flat, but here’s a drawing from EQ6 to show you what I mean --

When I first made a fabric basket --http://anotherpatch.blogspot.com/2008/11/its-lovely-day-after-election.html  I cut the lining shorter so that it would lay better in the inside of basket.

On the stripes and dots basket, I experimented & cut the lining the same size as the quilted piece.  I let the top seam allowance extend up.  Did NOT turn the top seam allowance to the inside of basket.  Much easier to stitch in the ditch through all the layers – no bulk.

In the pic below you can see that the lining fabric shows at the top cuz it is brought to the outside of basket, rather than being turned to the inside of basket.I like the “cut same size” method cuz I don’t have to do any figuring and the lining does lay nicely inside.

Here’s 3 finished baskets:Each of the baskets has a “secret pocket” in the lining bottom – a hiding place for secrets.

Angie Padilla has directions for a cute basket -- http://tinyurl.com/c46c2d  I’m just going to have to make one of those!

I have a few more things that either haven’t been completed or haven’t been gifted and will put them up on the blog when I’ve made it so.

AOL Quilting Community Project #3

AOL Quilting Community Project #3

I have put up another project from the old AOL Quilting Community. This time it’s a Mystery - “Case of the Progressive Units” by Billie Lauder that can be made into a quilt, a wallhanging or a table top -
www.anotherpat.com/qt/03LauderMystery.pdf

Several quilters have sent in pics of their finished items – http://www.anotherpat.com/qt/gallery03BL.htm

Here’s a list of Quilting Community projects -
http://www.anotherpat.com/qt/index.html with more to be coming.

AOL Quilting Community Project #2

I have put up another project from the old AOL Quilting Community. This one’s from Tish Douglas, again. Tish designed this one in the days after 9/11/2001. Complete instructions, with graphics, are available as a PDF--
http://anotherpat.com/qt/flagquilt.pdf

I have a list up with another project on it and more will be coming –
http://anotherpat.com/qt/index.html

Several quilters have sent in pics of their Flag Quilts – http://anotherpat.com/qt/gallery6.htm

Something coming up!

Hi, I'm working on something that I will be sharing with y'all in a couple of days. I hope to do my first tutorial in my blog. But, first I have to see get all the pics and parts.

Close to finishing

I’m thread painting on my current project. Getting close to finishing it and details will be posted then. I’m very happy with it and find myself walking by and admiring it!

I had bought the fabric on 9/25, but with interruptions for moving a couple of websites and creating this blog along with learning the stuff you can do with a blog, I haven’t had the chance to work on it as often as I would have liked to. A couple more Lifetime movies and I should be finished. Except maybe for the beading.

Quilting Community

Long ago, in a land far, far away there was a village of communities at America Online. The Quilting Community was one of the best. Its volunteers hosted chat rooms, manned the boards (forums), created projects & BOMs for quilters and put out a great newsletter – the NinePatchNews.

I was part of that community and was webmaster from June 1999 til June 2005 when AOL discontinued the Volunteer Community Leader program. When AOL did that, we no longer had access to any Quilting Community webpages and couldn’t edit any of those webpages, all of which were still online.

Then, on October 31, 2008, AOL stopped hosting all member webpages, after giving us a month’s notice. There were a lot of quilting projects on the Quilting Community webpages and when trying to access them you get a message “… AOL® Hometown has been shut down permanently. We sincerely apologize ...”

As webmaster, I had copies of all those projects saved on my computer. As time allows, I will be putting them online, again, as I get permission from the designers. Here’s the first one – just in time for Christmas – a Tree Skirt designed by my good ‘ole buddy, Tish! http://anotherpat.com/qt/notherpat.com/qt/ This project is tailor-made for beginners. Tish has a knack for writing that makes it easy for beginners to follow and gives them the confidence that they can do it. Experienced quilters will also enjoy her style and her projects. There is also a gallery of a few Tree Skirts that others have done -- http://anotherpat.com/qt/gallery9.htm


There is only 1 project on the list at this time, others will follow.

Blogging and shopping

Have now added some gadgets (widgets). What fun it is to do that kind of stuff. You know, if you have always wanted to have a blog – it’s not that difficult to do. This blog is on blogger.com/. You can have your blog be viewable to everyone or you can have it be private. Or you can have it be private with an option of sharing it with others who are on your list.

What is really nice about blogs is the organizing and the archiving that the blog does -- without any effort from the blogger. And those cute little widgets. All these new words I’m learning …

So, you could journal your stuff and have it private, just to be viewed and accessed by yourself. Once you do this little bit to the blog and then do that little bit to the blog – ya get hooked! And it’s not a bad addiction! I found it has put my writing skills back into practice. Remember how we used to write letters, put a stamp on them and drop them in a mailbox? The best part was getting the letter in your mailbox and then sit down in a quite corner and enjoy the letter that someone took time to write and send just to you. We all had good writing skills then.

I have gone green with my shopping. My house was getting overgrown with plastic bags, so I did some hunting on the Net and made some fabric shopping bags, using features I liked on various bags. I wrote up a webpage on what I did – anotherpat.com/fabricbags.htm

Are you using fabric bags for shopping? Have you made any fabric shopping bags?

It's a lovely day after the election

Yahoo!!! Yahoo! Nor more political ads on the TV! Two years of those political ads is just about 1 year and 10-1/2 months too long.

Finished watching my tape of Sunday nite’s “Army Wives” finale. Can’t the Army just let Joan stay with her baby ‘til she’s done breast feeding? How cruel to separate mom & baby now.

Dollars to donuts, Claudia Joy’s family won’t be going to Belgium any time soon. I can’t see them doing the show without her character in it.

Oh dear, Denise sure picked the wrong kind of guy for herself. He’s too young for her. Seems closer in age to her son.

Didn’t take Major Frank too long to start bed-hopping. Since when does “separation” mean “time to have an affair”? Goes for both Denise & Major Frank.

Oh yeah, I watch “All my Children” at lunchtime!

I await next year’s episodes. Did you know that Lifetime put out 19 episodes of Army Wives this year? That’s a whole lot more that what the networks are putting out now. And a much better show than most of the stuff that the networks are putting out.

Have you made any of those fabric baskets, yet? I found out about them at Pink Penguin’s site -- http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/05/tutorial-fabric-basket.html

Here’s a couple that I have done, without handles. I like the softness of the fabric, rather than the harshness of the wicker baskets I previously had the contents in. I made one little change in the construction. I found that if I cut the lining just 1/2” shorter than the length of the face fabric, the lining laid much tighter to the inside of the basket. For example: Face measures 7-3/4” x 11-1/2”cut the lining 7-3/4” x 11”.