Sunday, May 7, 2017

Blooming Quilters 2017

Hello and Welcome to my blog. My name is Danette and I live in Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh. I am fortunate to participate in the 2017 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop. I am in The Blooming Quilters Hive. One of the members of our hive created this great button:
Yvonne was our fantastic host.  Yvonne at Quilting JetGirl has encouraged us and offered assistance for a couple of months with our blogs. Also, Leanne at She Can Quilt and Beth at Cooking Up Quilts have new bloggers in their hives.  Please check out everyone's blog. It's a great way to follow new quilting bloggers.

I have been posting to my blog for a couple years, but it seemed that I couldn't quite get the hang of some things. A few others from my hive reviewed my blog and offered some advice. From their suggestions, I was able to make a few improvements and learned some new things.

I have always loved handmade items, so about 12 years ago, I decided to learn to quilt. I purchased Learning to Quilt Book and just kind of taught myself. Sewing and quilting is kind of a stress reliever for me. Following are some of the quilts I have completed:

This is "Checkers" quilt from Fons & Porter, Love of Quilting Magazine. This was one of the first fully-completed quilts that I made. It was completely done on my small Singer sewing machine. I definitely struggled with the quilting on that little sewing machine. About 4 years ago, I bought a more expensive Brother machine and sewed these:


Log Cabin Star Quilt
Frivol I recently completed

Quilt I made for my Mom

I like to use my walking foot for quilting. I just purchased a new book Walk by Jacquie Gering. She gives lots of options for quilt designs using your walking foot. I am going to start working some of her suggestions into my quilting.

 I have become kind of a quilt magazine and pattern junky. I have them scattered around my house so that I can glance through them. I generally don't give them away, either. If you are like me, my tip is to buy those "sticky flags". When I look through my magazines, I put a colored flag on the patterns that I like. That way, I can find what I'm looking for faster. I have them color-coded to size of quilt. 

Also, I enjoy making bags. I like to include quilt blocks or piecing and/or quilting in my bags. Following are a few of my bags:

Downton Abbey bag

 Teapot pouch

Quilted Bag
I hope you have enjoyed my Blooming Quilters Meet 'N Greet post. Feel free to leave me a message. You can let me know if you are a quilt magazine and pattern addict, too.  You can follow me, too, if you'd like.

In closing, if you are wondering about the name of my blog - Some people call me Nettie and my cat's name is Lucky. Here she is amongst the tulips.
Lucky








Friday, May 5, 2017

Starting a Baggalista Bag

I have been wanting to sew this Baggalista for a while now. So I am choosing this as my May Monthly goal.

 I really need a new bag to carry because mine are getting used and abused. I like how this is a cross body bag. We do a lot of camping in the summer and sometimes we have to run to the Dollar Store or whatever. So it will be nice to be able to just sling over my shoulder. I've had the pattern, plus the fabric, for months so I need to get started.