Final Finish of 2016

Well, I am guessing that this will be my final finish of the year. I am mixed on this quilt. I received the Hexometry pattern in a Quilty Box, and I did have fun with it. I needed to cut more hexagons so I used up some Cotton + Steel fabrics (a FQ pack that I bought a couple of years ago) that were in the same colors.  I ended up using the leftovers for the backing fabric.




The back:


It is a lap-throw size, all washed up and snuggly.  I'm planning to send this one off to a niece in the next week (Edit: just mailed off this afternoon!).

I did have some issues with quilting in a circle and had to rip out sections of quilting when I found the backing was gathered in spots.  I'm not exactly sure what happened with this project.... for whatever reason I had issues from the start to the finish with hand sewing the binding.  I think sometimes some fabrics just have different feels and sew differently.  This one was a lot of trouble--which I'm glad that I've used up nearly ever bit of the Cotton+Steel fat quarters that I had in this line.

ETA:
I took some outdoors pictures, I think the colors look close to the indoor shots...




Happy Christmas and New Year!

Quilters Madder SAL

Fun fact.... one of the red dyes decided to "catch" in a few of the white shirting fabrics.  I always find this interesting when this happens to some whites but not others.  I did not have any pink background fabrics in my quilt, but now I do... I'm ok with that.



I arranged some quilts in my hallway.  I have been really lazy lately in hanging anything new, and have had bare walls for a few years.  The blue star quilt was going to be for the doll quilt exchange, but I changed my mind and went with something else.  I blogged about it last year (you can find the post in my 2015 finishes tab).  The black and red quilt was from an ebay auction of 1880's blocks.  I finished it up years ago.  It's wavy, and I love it.  The painting was from my grandma, it was a house that she grew up in at Wagner Mill Pond in Monroe, WA.





the other wall (we need to remove that old thermostat, but haven't gotten around to it yet).  The first quilt was one I received from the 2015 doll quilt exchange.  I love it.  It says Friends are the sunshine of my life in embroidery.  Next is a fall harvest panel that I cut up and spaced in an attic windows view.  And the last was a doll quilt exchange quilt I received this year.  It is looking very fall-ish in my hallway right now.  I need to get working on some Christmas and winter quilts next!

Linking up here:  http://humblequilts.blogspot.com/2016/11/quilters-madder-linky-party-add-yours.html

Gwennie Inspired Medallion PT 4: Stars

I finally had a chance to work on the QAL this last week.  I am not sure if I am going to leave the stars round like this and add on the next theme to the other two sides or if I will continue.  I'm letting it just sit.



My yellow stars are not where I initially meant for them to be... rats.  So much for trying to be both intentional and time saving at the same time :)

Next theme is "Something Fishy".  hmmmm... lutefisk anyone?  blech.  I am actually considering something sea-worthy that fits with my genealogical project this seems to have become (at least with my grandma's pies round and now the nordic stars for my mom).  Anyway, we'll let it simmer with ideas for a few days.

Linking up here: http://humblequilts.blogspot.com/2016/09/gwennie-inspired-medallion-round-4.html

Finish: Allietare

Last night I finished the binding of Allietare and tossed it in the wash (after writing on the label of course).  Why is it that some quilts just seem to never end, but others are so much easier to work on mentally?  Very odd thing if you ask me... The binding for Allietare was finished much quicker than Field Day took, for example (and that one was smaller).


The finish looks much like the top finish, but you can see a bit of the quilting spiral.

An interesting thing: this particular fabric with printing of fabric companies and designers seemed to become a "color catcher".  That makes me wonder if there may have been a polyester in it (which I don't know why there would be).  But there is no red beyond the seams of these pieces of this particular fabric.  Very strange, but oh well, I'm not worried about it. I was showing it to Kevin last night and he said it would be a "where's Waldo" of the quilt (since it is scrappy) :)






The backing is flannel and a deep maroon-to-cranberry red.  The picture doesn't capture that, but I uploaded to show more of the quilting.  I need to go back over with a lint brush... flannel is very sticky with any loose hairs or fluff!


Now I don't have anymore tops that are basted and ready for quilting yet, I need to pull something out of my bin to work on next--maybe the bitty blocks top from last year?

Allietare Binding Time

For the next few days I will be working furiously (ok, maybe quicker than normal for me...) to finish up Allietare's binding.  I really want to finish it up before September hits!



I can't remember exactly what it was that spurred me on, but I decided on Friday night that I would do a spiral quilting pattern for this quilt.  I have been frozen over what to do since finishing and basting the quilt.  There is so much going on, but doing an all-over pattern isn't something I comfortable doing on my Juki (maybe on something smaller for practice).  Let me tell you... circles are not easy!  I first started off doing it free motion and trying to shove it in the arm of the machine, but after I ran out of my first bobbin I switched out feet.  It didn't really get "easy" until the final two bobbins (I used up 11!).  Now that I laid it out, I like it and I am glad I decided to do this instead waiting even longer to figure it out.

Loki in the center of the vortex... where else would he be?


As soon as I put it on my lap to sew the binding down, my buddy Loki is in my lap.  I don't think he's been feeling very well lately (very watery eyes), so it's nice that at least he's coming out to see me and lay on my lap tonight.  I'll take it.



This is what I will be doing for the next 3 days!  I can't believe September is so close, the summer has flown by.  And I have not even started working on my Gwennie-Inspired Medallion star round yet.... eeks.

Splendid Sampler

Tonight I finished up my 6th row for my Splendid Sampler quilt.  I'm not sure sure how many total rows I am going to do, but for sure I will at least have 8 rows of 8.

Bee Happy: I decided to paper piece this one so I made alterations.  It also ended up facing the other direction, but that's ok.


This is the latest block: At Home Anywhere.  Again, I drafted this one into a paper pieced pattern...  I am still on my applique and embroidery break.  When I saw this block I thought right away of a painting I have from my grandma.

This is the home where she grew up, and the chicken house next to it.  My mom used to tell me stories of visiting "Little Grandma".  When they butchered the chickens, her siblings would watch as they ran around headless.  She said the rooster was the worst as he was really mean.


Another fun story mom would tell is that her grandma wanted to redo a portion of the house.  Her grandfather came home to her tearing into a wall, and cutting down what ended up being a bearing wall.  I can imagine this as I have felt the same at times in regards to home projects!

All my guys are gone to a scouting event. I have one more free day of sewing and no cooking left!

Splendid Sampler Update

I have been working on taking a break from my Splendid Sampler progress... honestly, I am burnt out on it.  I have been considering just putting together what I have and call it good, but before I totally threw in the towel, I wanted to see what kind of sashing or alternate blocks I try.

Nine patch was a no go.  It  was much too busy.


So this is what I'm going with:


I have the width I want and at this point I am going to decide if I do all 100 or close--or if maybe I want to stop at 80.  Right now I am taking a break from applique and embroidery and I will start catching up with the pieced blocks.

I moved around blocks because the lighter backgrounds look better with the red and vice versa.  I planned to keep them in the same order but because I don't know if I am going to be doing all the blocks as well as the the light/dark issue, I decided to move things around.

And the three I have finally completed...
42. Pencils


48. Whim


54. Shell. I see a Thanksgiving turkey butt however.

New Stitch Along and Tool

Did you see Lisa Bongean's post The Magic of Christmas Stitch Along?  As if I needed to add another project, but hey... I've added another project!  Instead of the colors Lisa is suggesting, I am going with my yellow and using some fabrics from her Snowman Gatherings line.  We'll see how this one ends up!


On the secret facebook page for the Clara's Stars and Among Friends Summer Block of the Week there was discussion about getting seams flat (mostly for the Among Friends people since the pieces are so tiny).  A member mentioned she tried out her tailor's clapper and it got the seams just right.  I had to look it up, but when I saw the prices of a block of wood... I just couldn't do it.

After some research, I came across a couple of DIY's along with discussion about the type of wood to use.  I asked Kevin if he thought he could do this for me, along with wondering if we could use the kids building blocks that are unused.  I am pretty sure those are hardwood and not pine.  Instead of that, Kevin decided to try out oak tongue/groove flooring that's been in the garage for probably 40+ years (it's been here since my grandparents lived here, who knows when they bought it... we've lived here for 19yrs).  He glued to pieces together and then did a length and width that I wanted.  The best thing... we have a ton of flooring left, so if I want a longer or wider one it would be simple to construct.  $19-29 saved (depending on where you buy).

Top with sanded/rounded edges:


Bottom:


The magic of the hardwood is that it pulls out the moisture from a steamed press and it leaves it crisp and flattened.  Softer wood or wood that isn't older may pull out any pitch or oils and discolor or fabric (so I've read).

I gave it a try with my latest block for Lisa Bongean's new QAL, and it really does help the seams flatten even more.  I can't imagine doing this for every quilt piece and block, but this will definitely be handy for smaller quilts especially.  I used it to flatten the star centers for my Clara's Stars that I have together, and they do look good.  I can't seem to figure out which way to twirl them... before I sew the halves together, they look good.  After?  That's a different story :)

Bordered Diamonds Plus! Finished

Plus, because of the addition of the flying geese... creative right? :)  I know, lame. LOL!  I started Bordered Diamonds in 2015 at a quilt retreat.  It was a fairly quick quilt top to finish, but I wanted to add more to it to make it larger.  It took another quilt retreat to get through the millions of flying geese I made, and now finally it's a finish.


Last night while watching Miracles From Heaven (*note below for a comment on this), I took the last stitch of the binding.  Even though this quilt is larger, the binding went a lot faster for me than the Field Day binding did.  I think I like multiple fabric bindings for that reason.  It changes things up and keeps it interesting.



  I used up all the pieces I could from the fabric collection for this quilt.  I know I could have saved large pieces and used them in other quilts, but the fact is... I have a lot of those large pieces I've saved from other projects that just linger in my stash.  Instead of using backing fabric that I had recently bought on sale for this, I decided that using up the fabric was more appropriate and would fit better.  I had (and still do) so many flying geese leftover, that incorporating that into the back was obvious.  Splitting up that last piece of pink Begonia fabric to use for the backing needed to be done.  I have searched twice now for more yardage of that fabric for this quilt, so that final 2+ yards left of it was going to get used up in this quilt.  It's an older fabric that takes some sleuthing to find.

Blowing up the backing photo you can kind of see that I practiced more feathers in the border.  I did some back and forth wiggles in the diamonds, and stitched along the outside of the diamonds.  I did a wavy pattern on the pink Begonia fabric between the center and the flying geese as well.  Because the fabrics are so busy, and all over pattern would have been just fine.  You can't really see any of the quilting.

Now I can get back to my Clara's Stars for night time stitching.



*Miracles From Heaven.  This was a great movie.  I hadn't realized that it was based on a true story until the end.  What I found most interesting was that my 9yo who typically doesn't sit and watch movies with me, chose to sit and watch this movie with me!  It must have struck him so much that this morning I came downstairs to find him watching it again (I rented it from Amazon).  This is what I meant about him being a thinker which I noted in a previous blog post. I don't know if the two are related (the movie subject and the death of his birthmother) or if it was just an interesting movie to him.  But to watch it a second time, to me, was really something.  He could have chosen to watch cartoons, or spongebob, or whatever!  Instead it was this movie.

Anyway... Have a great day.  I need to see if there may be another quilt top I can finish up to keep this roll going :)

Field Day: Finished!

After 9 days of working on the binding (and a lot of distraction!), I finally took the last stitch in Field Day last night... now I am on to Bordered Diamonds.  Hopefully by the end of the week I can call that one a finish as well.

A few pictures (with it being overcast outside, it is even more bright of a quilt!):

I did not go fancy on the quilting, I already planned to follow the seams in a grid pattern.  Adding the two extra borders, I needed something else so I decided to practice feathers in the yellow.  I know so many are so good at that, but I need to keep practicing on them.


Hancock of Paducah had a great sale on quilt backing....


It's popped into the wash, and it may go on the bed tonight as it feels like fall is already here!  We don't even have our upstairs fan on at night.  This is August, right?  Though this is probably more typical weather for the northwest, last year was a scorcher.

I'm thinking about making another quilt from the Kona Color Of The Year patterns. There is a yellow/white star quilt (Lemon Stars by Darlene Zimmerman) that I liked also.   With Field Day in mind, I may put in another color than just white and yellow.

Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL

When it was stated that the next round is about log cabins, I had an idea in mind to bring my basket on point.  I finally worked on it this past week,and I do like how it turned out.  Along the first round with my "Grandma's pies", I have an idea in mind for embroidery as well, I will likely work on that later on.

For the latest round, I dug into my bin of strips and found several different fabrics that I felt worked well with what I have started.  From the pile, I decided to just stick with red and brown strips of various widths.  I also picked out a coordinating background fabric and cut three different strip widths.  And the center of the log cabins is the yellow from my basket block.


I created two log cabin blocks which ended up being close to 15", cut them on the diagonal, and then I laid it out to see how it looked.....


Originally I ended my log cabin blocks in the background fabric, but when I put it altogether I didn't like how the outside brown fabrics didn't line up on the outside.  I am fine with the variety of widths, but I wanted a more clean look.  I trimmed up the block to a 1/4" from the basket points and added four border strips.



Maybe it's not as "free" as what so many of Marston's quilts are, but this is more me.  And I didn't worry about the strip widths, so there is that :)  Looking through many of the finished 2nd rounds so far, mine is pretty subdued.  There are a lot of fun ideas that others have done.  Take a look at the link up.

Linking up here:  http://humblequilts.blogspot.com/2016/08/gwennie-inspired-medallion-qal-part-3.html
The next theme is..... Stars!

Field Day: Front Porch Sewing

I totally understand the merits of machine sewing the binding, but I just haven't been satisfied with my attempts at it.  I do it sometimes if I need to get a quilt out right away... otherwise I plan on one side a day of handsewing it down.  I think I am now 7 days into this 4 day process! LOL!  Currently on side 3 :)

Clara's Stars

Just an update on Clara's Stars.... I have four finished, which means only 212 to go (per the pattern).  I really like them, I hope I can stick with it through this year.



Now I need to get more going so I can have more than just a tiny wallhanging--or worse, pot holders.

Clara's Stars, a New Project

I thought I'd report on my latest project that I finally started this week. Instead of two different block of the weeks, Primitive Gatherings decided to lose their minds and have three options for a Block of the Week this summer! I am still not done with my BOW from two summers ago (to do the final border or not...), and although I bought last year's wool version as a BOW, I never started it. I love their pieced version this year, but I decided instead to do option #3, Clara's Stars. It is an English paper pieced project and I think I lost my own mind when I decided to go for it (my hexie quilt is lingering!). I think this week marks week 5, so that meant two days ago I was 5 weeks behind as once again I hadn't even started the project yet. But after I saw this great pile of 29 finished blocks from another quilter on our "secret" facebook page, I decided to start basting. I finished up week 1 and am about halfway finished with week 2, but I still need to baste the background and triangle pieces.



We are sent 50 different repro fabrics each week for the diamonds and triangles... after 12 weeks, that is a huge variety!  After I get a few done, I'll snap another picture altogether.

I'm taking a breather from the Splendid Sampler for a bit.  I'm waiting for another pieced block to pop up!

Bordered Diamonds Border

So now the question becomes... do I want this to become a bedsized quilt or do I make it as is for a twin or comfort quilt?  I'd love for this to become a queen sized quilt, but that would mean adding 20" to the width (it's currently 62x84).  So that's the conundrum. I could very easily use more of the left over fabrics and make a piano key border, but I'm not sure that would work with this quilt.


Anyway... I went for a third option in regards to setting the flying geese.  This way works much better with the leftover 2" that I needed to work with.  I am left with two corners having just one flying geese block instead of the two, but it looks fine this way.  I would have had to do some funky figuring with the other options.  I now have 6 flying geese borders that I can use in another quilt (I made a lot of flying geese, and I still have a lot of single blocks leftover).  I could play around with those for additional borders.  We'll see.  I'll stare at the top for a day or so and see if anything strikes me--or if I decide to leave it as is and quilt it up.



On to irons:
After hoping it was just a fluke that my Rowenta with 400 steam holes and awesome steam blasts decided that it was meant to be a waterfall out the back and totally drench my ironing table and projects more times than I can count.... I did an iron survey of what others thought. I really wasn't wanting to go beyond $50 this time. I've never used a Shark before, so I am giving it a try. I wanted an iron that was at least 1700 watts, and the one I bought today is at 1800. I just got/bought it today, so this marks day 1. We'll see if the Shark (Ultimate Professional Iron GI505) outlives my Rowenta DW5197 that I ordered on August 16,2015 (yes, I am getting very specific on dates... Rowenta should be better than this!). I really like the form of Rowenta, but if function isn't working, than your product is junk. Form Follows Function. But knowing how companies make appliances today, they aren't built to last. They want people to buy again before 5yrs. This is very frustrating.



I will likely hold on to the Rowenta since it still heats up well, but if the Shark lives beyond a year, it'll be going bye-bye.

Field Day and Bordered Diamonds Updates

I finished up my Field Day quilt top, the pattern from the collection of Kaufman's Kona Color of the Year: Highlight.  I made it larger with borders and now I await backing fabric.  I could piece some together, but I opted to search out some wide backing instead.  I love the top!  For the color pop at the bottom, I used the Kona fabrics I won two years ago from the Row By Row.  It was perfect for this, and no using the same color twice.





Next, I am trying to figure out a border arrangement for the Bordered Diamonds top.  I am about 2" off, so I will need to do something intentional for the corners.  We'll see what I come up with.  I can't decide if I like the streak of lightning in the pink fabric, or using it along the edges.  I will likely make the other two sides (since the flying geese rows aren't sewn together yet) and then make the decision.  Right now I am sort of preferring the pink lightning down the center.




The binding will also be the pink fabric (if that makes a difference in which you prefer).

and then there's this....


I walked into the living room to grab my camera and found Gordon in one of his contortions. I'm surprised he hasn't totally tangled himself up :) His smile makes me laugh...