AHIQ Start and 17 in 2017 Progress!

It never seems like there's proper time to get a post written these days. Guess I'm spending too much time playing 'Words With Friends' with the family, catching up on my reading, or getting pulled away from what I'm doing by my husbands requests to accompany him here and there. Well, that and we just bombed through February already. Does that mean winter is mostly over?

Mock up of potential sashing units

Crossing my fingers fiercely on that one. Ughh. Am I ever tired of the snow and ice! However, there is still a bit of quilting going on behind the scenes, no matter how sporadic the approach these days. I dithered around, played with a quilting project idea, slept on it, then slept on it some more, tweaked my color choices and then finally, finally started the AHIQ-Chinese Coins challenge. These colors ended up being the pick of the day as they will probably end up being 'background' in the quilt and not a focal point.

At the moment there are only four sheets of strings sewn together. After getting through the initial work and checking to see that 'Yes, these can be cut to the appropriate strip widths and lengths', then I went ahead and free cut the approximate amount of strings needed for the entire quilt. Part of my initial reluctance to dive into this project was the feeling that Chinese Coins usually present in a formal 'evenly measured' manner. Then Kaja put into words some of my feelings about what was really stopping me from starting this project! We're all sort of inspiring each other I guess, because she referred to Sue {I personally was thinking about Ann's lovely string/coin work} and around and around we go. Mine will eventually be cut into 2 1/2" x 8" strips to be joined together in 6" sashing sets. And I want the imperfection of mismatched seam alignment although I did make an effort to not have extremes in width of fabrics cut. We'll see how it turns out, but whatever. I'm actually glad to have some mindless sewing in the works again!

Strips ready to be sewn into sets

So then, there's the 17ufosin2017 linkup. I thought there was very minor progress made during the minuscule month of February {hardly worth talking about}, but as it turns out, more was accomplished than I realized. Yay! My Peachy Cameo Medallion quilt gained another border. Hardly inspiring as it is identical to the previous one, but well... it just works. The quilt could almost be done right there, I'm so happy with the look, but it's gonna have to have that applique border I've been envisioning since the birth of the project. Yep. I can't help myself--always adding a bajillion more hours to my quilt tops, thinking applique will make it extra special wonderful....

A repeat border for Peachy Cameo Medallion quilt

Improv. Woven Basket also gained a border {very simple one} and then I've spent time drawing out and prepping for the next border. That always takes so much more time than we want to admit to doesn't it? And yes, the plan is for it to be an appliqued border as well. The picture below is what I have ready for the base of a simple flower design, mostly leaves with a very small little flower detail,that part to be determined after the bulk of this stitching is done. The flower stems were mostly gleaned from my orphaned applique bits and pieces totes which makes me smile and ensures a bit of unpredictability in stem width and color. Love that!

Prep work for border on Improv. Woven Basket quilt

Next up for gaining ground with a ufo is another border for Folksy Flower. This time I made sure to add triangular shapes to the end of my border lengths so as to address a little of the bias stretch that I will be dealing with. The math has been particularly tricky for me and so honestly I've just been avoiding it altogether. The border pieces are terribly wrinkled because I crammed them in my hand stitching bag for our recent long weekend to Oregon. Not much stitching happened tho as I found myself driving a lot instead of being passenger!

Another border for Folksy Flower quilt

While I completely finished up Geese Tracks and Black Shadow Applique {happy dance for a lovely, lovely finish!}, it doesn't feel like quite enough. If I'm going to be churning out quilt tops like a busy little beaver, then more domestic machine quilting is in order. Not just the feel good hand quilting stuff which is easy, fun and very low pressure. Ugghh. It never feels good enough, this machine quilting, but at least I'm starting to feel 'unashamed' of my unpolished efforts. Okay. That definitely feels like progress in and of itself!

St. Paul quilt sandwiched and ready to quilt

And my lovely husband tracked down some better tape for sandwiching my quilts. All of his own initiative too which makes it even more sweet. {Tired of hearing me grumble I'm sure!} I have had a terrible time with getting painters tape to stay attached to either the fabric or the floor and duck tape has been forbidden for use with my worn out, old wooden floors. This green tape is an auto body quality tape which so far is working wonderfully with everything but one fabric I tried it with. For some reason it didn't want to adhere to that particular fabric, but with everything else, I can actually pick the tape up and re-attach it!! Will wonders never cease. Now maybe I can get my quilt sandwiches to be taut and wrinkle free, something that machine quilting distinctly requires....