Always Another Quilt in the Hoop

You know me.  Finish a quilt up and it's time to stick another quilt in the hoop! I've been contemplating how to go about hand quilting this particular quilt ever since I finished the quilt top.  I really think it can handle some free form hand quilting but I'm always so very nervous about big chunky plain borders.  Ack!

Vintage Reproduction Quilt

I love the playful, exuberant look of this quilt mixed with the reproduction setting.  The Hawaiian flower in the centerpiece was part of a friends abandoned BOM at one time.  I appliqued it to the pink background fabric and started my reproduction quilt out with a big, major change (which probably means it's not so reproduction any longer).  The gist of this quilt did follow the general look of an old quilt I saw in a quilt magazine years ago and was using as inspiration.  I'm having trouble finding that picture now, but I'll try to get the details on that soon.  I also wanted to point out that I KNOW the circles are not exactly perfect! Don't worry.  It's totally on purpose.  There's something about imperfect circles that speaks to something deep inside me, but we don't need to get into that today.*wink

Close-up of the wobbly circles.

The batting I use is 80/20 Hobbs Heirloom batting which I buy on the roll--96" wide and 30 yds. long.  Look at how flat this batting is less than 5 minutes after I take it off the roll and smooth it out with my hands! Love that!  Only one crease to deal with ever and it never ripples on me or refuses to cooperate.

Looking at the batting...

Not that I need to start another project, but I've been playing around with some light fabrics for awhile now, thinking about making another (sort of) Low Volume quilt.  I don't buy a lot of these fabrics, so I've dug really deep into my fabric totes and pulled out a strange and kind of wonderful combination.

Another Low Volume in the works?

What I really, really need to do is try to get another quilt top finished up, but in actuality, the lure of starting something new (maybe even a couple of new projects) is getting pretty irresistible.  It's not like there's any rules against this.  Is there? 

More Pictures of the Turning Twenty Quilt

I know it's a simple little quilt, but I am in love with all the texture from the stitching.  I tried and tried to get good pictures and even let my husband show me a few little tricks with the camera.  Not that it helped too much, 'cuz the quilt looks better in person than in my pics.  But I DID try. lol

I'm calling it 'Sweet Dreams'.

Every striped fabric patch has a different (casually drawn) flower stitched onto it.  The light catches on the variegated thread that I used and really makes them stand out.  You know, if you're actually in the same room with the quilt!  Oh well.  I'm sure if you click on the pics, you can see the detail better, but don't feel that you have to.  I wanted the pics for my blog diary because I know I'll forget after the quilt has been gifted and long gone.

All washed up with that crinkly goodness.

On a completely different note, I finally finished up the 4th border on my Basket Medallion quilt.  It's a double saw-tooth border that I sewed up with scrappy pale yellows and tans.  I kind of like it and then, I kind of don't.  I have ideas for the next border (which definitely influenced the 4th border), so we'll see if it all comes together in the end.

4th border of Basket Medallion

Sometimes the end result is better than I ever imagined and then there are the times that I cringe and go looking for my seam ripper.  Only time will tell with this one!

A Little Hand Work

I was making pretty good progress on my bow-tie blocks on Saturday when suddenly I realized that I didn't have any more background pieces ready to go! Wahh!!  So very sad to have momentum come to a crashing halt like that.*wink

More bow-tie blocks

Prep work isn't fun, but it's all part of the game if I ever want to see finished product in my lifetime. lol

Always more prep work

I cut the squares out with the rotary cutter and then use my plastic templates to mark the seam lines.  I know some people try to piece without marking seam lines, but I'm just not that brave.  Or crazy.  I know me and what would happen without obvious seam lines!

And more

I'm really, really liking the way the Perle Cotton stitching has made this simple little quilt come alive.  I can definitely see that it's going to be part of my hand stitching future in random quilts here and there, especially if I can find somewhere to buy prettier thread colors.

Ready to do hand work part of the binding.

Getting very close to another finish here, which is kind of unreal!  No finishes at all for 2013 until just a couple weeks ago and now I'm almost done with yet another one!  This little quilt still has no name as of now and my mind is not cooperating at all with anything interesting to call it.  Maybe I should call it 'The Quilt That Shall Remain Unnamed.' 

So very close to being done......

I usually figure something out eventually, even if I have to get my whole family to help out.  There's something about ridiculous names being thrown out there as viable options that gets me to finally wake up and make a decision.  Should I tell my family that I just use them to clarify what NOT to name my quilts?  Nah, probably not.

A Few Projects I've Been Thinking About

The borders have been finished on this Scrap Attack quilt for several days now.  I am really liking the rough, primitive style to the applique.  I drew four sets of the border detail freehand, transferred it to freezer paper and then used it for my templates.

Scrap Attack #2--red & blues

I know this quilt isn't to every one's taste, but everything about this quilt is ME from the improv. piecing out of my scrap bin, using up leftover applique pieces for the trees, and then adding primitive border detail.  My husband says it's a very dark quilt, but that's okay.  Sometimes I'm a dark and moody person.*wink

Closer look at the borders

I have slowly, slowly started working on my Learning Curves quilt too.  Can someone please tell me what I was thinking to do something like this?  (*hair pulling starting right about now!)  Oh yes, I wanted to sew better curves.  Well, I better be a master after this huh?  Oh, and does anybody know if you're supposed to iron the curves to the inside or the outside?

Learning Curves quilt

I have long been a fan of 16 patch/25 patch etc. blocks so it really shouldn't be a surprise that I went for the 16 patch drunkards path look.  The quilt below is one I was working on in the winter of 2007-2008.  It's kinda dark too! Hmmm...  Anyway, towards spring, we realized that my brother had a terminal illness and so I rushed to finish it for him.

Josh's quilt.

He always bugged all of his many sisters, me included, about making him a quilt 'cuz he loved them.  The one thing he complained about though was that most quilts were too short to tuck under his chin properly and then also tuck under his feet (he was well over 6 ft. tall).  This was something he complained about even when he was perfectly healthy because he just liked to curl up in a quilt on occasion!  I took a quilt I was working on at the time, added an improv. border, and THEN added about 11 more inches to the top and bottom just for his benefit.  Let me tell you this quilt was about 110" long so he probably could have wrapped it over his head and feet all at the same time.

The bottom of Josh's quilt.

Never could get a good picture of the quilt in it's entirety, but I have no regrets about giving him the quilt even though he only got to enjoy it for a few months.  And yes, I had already made him a quilt years before that he had already just about wore out!  He was always a little greedy about quilts, that guy.:)

25 of the Best Quilt Blogs

This quilt is possibly the craziest quilt I have ever attempted--flying by the seat of my pants just to see where I end up!  I finally figured out how to sew those slightly curved seams together so that the borders lay flat.  Yay me!  I was grinning so much my kids were probably scared to be around me.*wink

Border work on The Big Broken Dish

Lots more work to finish up the 4 applique corner blocks plus all the words I want appliqued on the borders (still missing one of those too).  One corner block is supposed to have a light bulb appliqued on it and for the life of me I can't see to draw one properly.  Agghh!!  How hard is it to draw a light bulb?

People keep coming back to read this post from last year, so I decided it's time to do an update.  I'm always looking for quilt blogs written by people who love the process, aren't afraid to admit to struggles and mistakes, show their work--not just the pretty finishes, and continually manage to find plenty of time to post about a love of quilting from their unique point of view.  Listed in no particular order, these are the 25 that popped out from my link list today.  It could be a different list on another day.

• Blue Mountain Daisy
• Tim Latimer Quilts - Quilts Etc.
• Humble Quilts
• nifty quilts
• Inspired By Antique Quilts
• blue elephant stitches
• Log Cabin Quilter
• Butterfly Threads Quilting
• Patchwork Jitka
• Collector With A Needle
• Stitched In Color
• Quilt Duffy
• Kathy's Quilts
• Quilting In My Pajamas
• Quilts... etc.
• Little Island Quilting
• Oh, Oh, Quilts!
• Quilts In The Barn
• Material Obsession
• simplebirdapplique
• Quilting Jeannet
• Empty Field
• Orange Crumpled Napkin
• Be*mused
• andie johnson sews

First Two Finishes of 2013!

Well, I did it!  I finally managed to get the binding on these two quilts so I could say I truly have FINISHED something this year.  lol  Why does the list always seem to be growing regardless of what gets accomplished?

1st two finishes for 2013!

The light is terrible in my house at certain times of the day and our yard is scrubby and very unkempt right now so I was trying to think of other ways to take pictures of these two quilts.  Hmm....  Back to the wood floor for the next photo session!

Finished Antique Medallion quilt
and G'ma's Kaleidoscope quilt

I don't know if you can see the binding in the picture below, but I am extremely happy with my choices.  The pink is a (surprisingly) great complement for the Antique Medallion quilt and the blue binding seemed perfect for the Kaleidoscope.  I actually had to baste one edge of the quilt and then cut the extra backing off just so I could have enough of the blue fabric for to use for binding!  There was nothing in the totes that looked half as good and I wasn't going to settle for less.

Love how the binding turned out!

My husband was out of town today so I invited myself and the kids over to dinner at my mom and dads.  While I was there I managed to finish up two bow-tie blocks for my forever project.  It doesn't seem like much now, but two here and two there eventually add up to a whole bunch of finished bow-tie blocks!

Two more hand pieced bow-tie blocks.

Now I am linking up to Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday where everybody gets to feel good about working on hand work projects whatever the method or approach.*wink

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National Quilting Day Appreciation

In honor of National Quilting Day coming up on Saturday, I thought I'd do something a little dorky, but fun.  I'm going to show you what my family chooses to sleep with in this house--QUILTS!  Lots and lots of quilts!  Lately I've been trying to find inspirational pins for my 'Good Place to Sleep' board on Pinterest, which is what got me to thinking about this in the first place.  I'm not much of a decorator, but I've been dreaming about it a lot.*wink

My sadly neglected bed frame.....

On my bed, I change out the quilt with whichever of my most recent finishes I really want to spend time with.  I LOVE sleeping under quilts although my husband does not like any extra coverings at all, so it usually hangs off of my side of the bed all night long.  lol  FYI, we picked up the bed frame at an auction about 8 years ago for $30 and have been arguing about it ever since.  I want to paint it in a funky color (or two) and my husband wants to strip it down and refinish it properly (he's in construction).  I figure we'll finally move up to a queen size bed before we ever agree on anything and the point will then be moot.

My 2 teenagers daughters have to share this space....

My teenage daughters (almost 17 yrs. and 15 yrs. old) have to share a queen sized bed which they really, really hate.  My oldest daughter asked for a horse quilt with blocks made from all her aunts, mom and G'ma when she was like 6 yrs. old.  My next youngest sister got us all hopping on the project and came up with the sweetest horse quilt I have ever seen in my life!  Still her fave after all these years.

My youngest daughter still uses a quilt from her childhood too.  My mom made a receiving blanket when she was born (March 6) that said 'kiss me, I'm Irish' all over it.  Since her name is actually 'Irish', that became her favorite blanky and when she was about 3 yrs. old I cut it up and made it into a much larger quilt for her that she still uses to this day.  Simple pattern, but very sentimental for her!

My youngest sons bedroom.

For some reason, my youngest son has been using this old triple rail fence quilt lately. It's usually stashed away in the closet for extra padding under a sleeping bag or something and I noticed he pulled it out and started using it a couple months ago.  Oh well.  He has also been using the huge colorful log cabin & insect quilt one of my sisters made for our oldest son.

Better than the floor!

And last but not least, this is the torn apart, never finished (but still getting remodeled some day) tiny upstairs bedroom our oldest son uses when he comes home from college.  Since our kids maul their bedding, lay about on it while watching movies and playing X-box, plus eat things like Cheetos in their bedrooms when they think I won't notice--this is the not-so-fancy quilt I chose to use up here.

We have lots of other very well-worn quilts that have received plenty of love through the years too.  Happy National Quilting Day to you this year!  I'm hoping I can work on some more quilts this coming weekend.  Hope you can too!

Measuring For a Pieced Border

Ever want to add on a pieced border and do your own thing?  It's really just a matter of getting the numbers right.  I'm going to try and explain the basic concept for the easily intimidated because it's NOTHING to be scared of! First you have to find the top, middle and bottom widths of your quilt.  Easy peasy.

Measure the top width of quilt

You'll want to have that tape measure flat and taut for an accurate number.  For some reason I couldn't take the picture and hold the tape properly at the same time. lol  The top measurement of this quilt is 40 5/8".

Measure the middle width of quilt

If you sew anything like me, there will be at least two different measurements and maybe even three!  That's pretty normal and nothing to stress over if it's within half an inch or so.  Ahem.  I have even worked with worse before.*wink

Middle width of quilt

 Moving on... The middle width of the quilt appears to be 40 1/2".

Measure the bottom width of quilt

And it looks like the bottom width of the quilt is reading at 40 1/4".  So here's the big three numbers:  40 5/8", 40 1/2" and 40 1/4".  I hope you wrote them all down!

Now turn the quilt one time and measure all three widths of the quilt once again from the other direction of the quilt.  Think 3 horizontal measurements and 3 vertical measurements!  (Sorry no pics of that part, it seems pretty self explanatory.)  The three numbers for that particular measurement of the quilt came out to: 40 1/2", 40 1/2" and 40 1/3".  Now you should have a total of 6 numbers written down.

Looking at all of those 6 numbers together, we now know that the average measurement of this quilt is 40 1/2".  Subtract the seam allowance from that average and we come to 40".

40" is the important number here! When you make a pieced border, you have to figure out how many repeats (of each piece of the border) you can have and more importantly, what size they need to be.  Playing with the number 40, I came up with 6 numbers that are clearly divisible without any remainders:  2, 2.5, 4, 5, 8, and 10.  Those are the numbers of repeats that will easily work for this border.

Repeat widths including the seam allowance

You'll want to think about proportion and what looks good with the rest of the quilt of course.  I decided to do a split sawtooth border which is actually three strips wide, but for the purposes of this exercise, lets focus on the measurement of the border that will be sewn directly to our quilt top.

I chose to make my border with 2.5" repeats.  Lets do the math:  40 divided by 2.5 equals 16.  That means I will have 16 repeats per each inside measurement of the quilt top.  (In other words, the 16 repeats for each border strip do NOT include the corner piecing.)

Remember!  We've been working with the finished size of the pieced block repeats.  In order to truly have 2.5" finished sized repeats, my blocks will need to be 3" before being sewn together for the border strips.

I used the half square triangle above as my REPEAT.  This can be anything you decide you want to do.  In my other borders I used an X-block as a repeat and in the border before something completely different.

Border strips

Sew your repeats together for each side (16 for this particular border) and then iron them.

Start pinning in dead center

Find the center of your quilt top and then the center of your first border.  I always pin with two pins to clearly define the center.

Then pin at the start, end, and every seam in between

Pin the start of your border to the quilt top, then pin the end of the border to the quilt top.  Great! Now you can pin in the middle of those areas and then pin at every single seam in between.  Pin extra where the quilt needs more adjustment or help.  Stretch gently and/or ease the fabric and pin,pin, pin.  You can see that I pinned more at the beginning.  It happens, especially when your quilt top measurements have that 1/4" plus difference!

Sew on border and iron

See!  It works!  A pieced border made up of sixteen 2 1/2" repeats clearly sews onto the quilt without any trouble.  Next I will sew the opposite border on just like I showed you with this one.  Then, I will have to add on the corner piecing to the remaining 2 borders before I sew them on.  Corner piecing is usually just one more repeat per each end of the next borders, but obviously I have changed that up so far with this quilt.

This was just a basic explanation of course.  Did it make sense to anyone or clear up any confusion?  Maybe next time I will explain how I got the measurements of the previous solid pieced border to make sure I ended up with a number that would be easy to work with for the next pieced border.  It's good to think ahead, but that's way too much for one post! lol  I'm going to go ahead and link this up with Fabric Tuesday over at Quilt Story!

Today's for Binding Work

I don't know why I always put the binding work off, but that's the way things usually happen around here.  I am happy to say that there is now only one side of this quilt that the binding is not hand stitched down!

Binding for Antique Medallion

Yay me!  I might actually get a real finish for 2013 before the end of today.*wink  Go check out what everyone else is doing by hand today over at Kathy's.  She's got a great little post about chaos theory that makes me think about raising kids.  You really can't overlook anything 'cuz everything matters in the end.:)

Working on the Basket Medallion

I have been enjoying the Temecula Quilt Co. quilts popping up all over blogland and thought I'd try a similar X-shaped block for the next border of my Basket Medallion quilt.  The pattern I wanted to use asked that the inside rectangles be cut out on the bias with templates and you know me.  Bah humbug on the templates if I can possibly get out of using them!

The next border on Basket Medallion

 So...... somehow I ended up with a measuring miscalculation and the rectangles were too short.  What to do, what to do?  I had the block repeat measurement correct so I didn't want to end up with smaller blocks and then have to chop one block down resulting in awkward corner solutions.  haha.  Me?

Detail of border...

Okay, yes.  It's not something I'd normally be too upset about, but this quilt seems a bit too formal for that.  I decided to ditch the now too little corner triangles and cut newer, bigger ones so that my X-shaped block would now have a floating effect and my blocks could be the correct size to fit onto the previous border properly.

Sometimes mistakes actually make things better....

In the meanwhile, I realized that I had used up all of a couple of my cream fabrics.  Oh well.  Substitutions here we come.  And, get this--I love it!  I know it's hard to see in the pictures, but it adds another layer of interest to the quilt with the faint, random snowball look.  Some day I will think of these things before I have to make a mistake in order to get it figured out.*wink

Auditioning next border...

The next border needs to be a narrow strip of fabric without any piecing--just sort of frame the quilt and pull things together.  I'm still working as much as possible from my stash totes and the first fabric was the best I had come up with out of about 6-8 fabrics.

Auditioning yet another fabric....

Then I found the madder red stripe fabric!  Woohoo!  That's it.  That's the one I've been looking for! Unfortunately I only have one fat quarter piece of it, so this time I'm prepared to measure once, twice and then probably a third time for good luck.....

A Smaller Quilt in the Hoop For Once

I wanted to show the quilt that I'm playing with now.  I sewed the top together about two years ago all in one day.  I think the name of the pattern is 'Turning 20', but it's been so long I really don't remember!  The main thing was, I didn't want to cut some of the fabrics up too much and I wanted a fast, mindless project.

The next quilt to go in the hoop

When I sandwich a smaller quilt, I always have to dig through my leftover batting to find out if I can piece something together.  Yep!  Three pieces sewn together with a double stitch and then cut very close to the seam makes a big enough piece for this particular quilt.  I do so love being frugal.*wink

Pieced batting works just fine too...

 It's not a fancy quilt so I decided to play with the stitching.  I've been wanting to try out some big stitch quilting with some of that yummy Perle cotton.  I had to read up on it and figure out the size (#8) and if I was supposed to use one strand or two and hello?  It's pretty obvious after you look at the thread on the roll! I know, I know, I could have picked a quilt that would show-case it a little better, but I'm learning.  Maybe when I get my confidence built up I'll try for something more umm, spectacular and showy.  lol

Turning 20?  I think that's the name of this pattern

So far, so good and it's going super fast too!  I think my stitches could actually be a little larger, but for now I'm having fun and not worrying too much about anything.

Big stitch quilting experiment

I can definitely see why this could become addictive.....

I'm Sure This Only Happens to Me

Last night I was very busy making good progress on the applique work for this quilt.  Feeling good about things and happily visiting away with my daughters, which yes, is a bit distracting at times.  Then, I did it.  I accidentally snipped out a little hole in the curly-cue on the corner applique piece.  Groan.....

The little oops that feels like a big oops.....

You can barely see it in the picture, but it's there and it's definitely a hole in the fabric.  Oooh, I was so mad.  Grumble, grumble, snarl and all the while everyone is busy asking 'what happened?' and then of course jumping in with all kinds of advice about how to fix it.  Which really made me want to tell them all to go jump in the river and leave me alone.  Seriously, some days it feels like one step forward and two steps back.....

Loving the Hand Piecing

I'm back home from our big weekend at the state basketball tournament.  The girls brought home a 5th place trophy which isn't too shabby for such a young team!  It was very nice to take in a few of the bright lights of city life too and eat lunch at places like Panda Express instead of McDonald's or the local mini-mart.

Bow-ties Forever Project

Three back to back games (and days), then back home we come with a car load of tired, worn out kids and grumpy parents.  The state tournament is always an emotional roller coaster for kids and parents alike and I AM SO GLAD I HAD MY QUILTING WITH ME!  Total life saver for me this trip.  I only have 13 more blocks pieced as of today, but wowsers, did I appreciate the relaxing qualities of hand piecing this particular weekend!  lol

You can check out all the other slow quilting going on over at Kathy's if you like.  As for me, I have a whole list of quilt blog reading to catch up on!