Monday, December 31, 2018

Two More Quilt Tops To Finish Out the Year!

As the year was coming to an end, I found myself very determined to squeeze in enough time to finish at least two more quilt tops.  These were projects that I really, really didn't want hanging over my head all throughout the next year!
Sweet Hospitality
The first one I tackled was the pineapple quilt. These blocks were started sometime in 2017. Can't find the exact month, but the plan was to mix them with stringy improv. basket blocks. Yeah. That was a big fat NO. Eventually I got the basket blocks together into a nice looking quilt top. I still rather like it, but the problem is, it wasn't the quilt top I wanted.*waaaah
Bad lighting inside the house, but it's a true-blue quilt top finish!
Then the pineapple blocks proved difficult and strangely unwilling to work with me. Like at all! Later in the year I finally refused to take no for an answer and wrangled them into some semblance of order. It didn't seem like enough though. Rifling through the abandoned fabrics, I decided to throw together a very basic, scrappy, two-toned, sawtooth border. {It sounds more challenging than it really was.} And I  kinda like the old fashioned vibe with the final layout scheme. It seems to work together pretty well.
Love adding in a scrappy border...
Then it started demanding a border. Let me tell you, I was not in the mood. A hundred ideas later {most of them involving applique} and I rebelled and made the decision to go super simple. Yep. It's one of those typical one-fabric borders with a tiny bit of applique embellishment on the corners. It's probably gonna be one of those quilts that look amazing with the quilting texture, but until then, I'm sort of giving it the side-eye.  Be gone with you quilt!!
A little bit of applique
Okay, then I immediately dove into the Maps Challenge from AHIQ. This project pretty much stalled out before I ever even started it. Then I accidentally stumbled into an idea for how to move forward with the challenge and well...., got to the point where I thought it needed words added. Yep, stalled out once again. While I do love adding words onto a quilt here and there, sewing them together is not my favorite thing in the world to do.
Adding words onto a quilt
The thing is, this quilt just seemed determined to have its way! Somehow during actual making, the maps thing had gotten all twisted around and the quilt was beginning to be about something else entirely. I'm not sure I can even properly explain it, but the name of the quilt is now 'Directions From a Local'. Does that help?
Starting to see the quilt take shape!
One of the quirky things that I happen to love is when local people give directions that only make sense if you've lived in the area like, forever. And if you haven't, then you tend to go around in circles trying to find what they were actually talking about. Seriously, sometimes it might not even exist anymore! When my husbands cousins moved into our area several years ago, they were told that the best deli/fountain drinks in town were at 'Bob's Texaco'. They said that they drove around town for almost half an hour looking for Bobs' 'Texaco'. Unfortunately for them, Bob's Texaco hadn't been a 'Texaco' for over ten years and in fact was now an Exxon station. And not knowing 'Bob', they had no idea which gas station to even start looking at. Small town or not, sometimes you're totally lost before you even start looking!
Directions From a Local is a completed quilt top now!
We have all sorts of {only-making-sense-if-you're-a-local} directions around here, but I figured one such directive was enough for this quilt. These letters took a couple days and more time than I wanted to spend, but really make me smile when I look at the quilt now. It's always worthwhile to try and make the quilt we are envisioning in our head!

For sewing the words, this is the one I always turn to for machine pieced style of lettering. I love that we can make the letters any size we choose and just as funky as our imaginations will let us.
Maybe I'll take a better picture later...
I do so wish that I could have finished up earlier today when the winter lighting was absolutely beautiful, but that's the breaks. I assure you that this quilt is not nearly as dull looking as the previous pictures make it out to be! I tried to change up the values in the quilt, use plaids and other old fashioned looking fabrics {and one cotton/poly gingham fabric that was probably a mistake!} and otherwise keep things simple. Any busy looking fabric I tried to use just looked ridiculous anyway.

It was great fun using the quilt below as inspiration. Mostly I consider it a great success! First, that I actually managed to finish with the AHIQ Maps Challenge! Woohoo! And 2nd, that I kept to the look and feel of my inspiration quilt without copying it exactly. Love that! Always so much to think about when using any of these sorts of quilts as a jumping off point! It looks so plain and yet somehow it's very engaging regardless.
The original inspiration
Something interesting for 2019. There is supposed to be a QAL for making quilts inspired by this particular book 'Unconventional and Unexpected' by Roderick Kiracofe. You can check it out over at The Root Connection if you are at all interested. I am definitely willing to try this again if it's something I can do from this blog.

Okay, that's that. All the quilt tops that I can finish up for the year! I really don't know how many I added to the queue, but what thrills my list-making soul is this: At the start of 2016 I had somehow accumulated 28 completed, but not yet quilted quilt tops. Yikes! At the start of 2017 that number was reduced to 25, For the start of 2018--there was 22,  and now for the start of 2019 it's down to 20!! Even after adding in these last two makes.*sigh  I'm trying so very hard. You have no idea! Sitting on my hands and just staring at the fabrics stacks sometimes....  hehe  Next up will probably be the 2018 finishes post. I'm thinking it had to be a pretty good year to get down to only 20 quilt tops. Happy, Happy New Year to all!

18 comments:

  1. Gorgeous. I'm planning on a pineapple quilt of my own...Very Soon! Plus, I love your directions quilt. I had one local tell me to 'turn right where the cow is standing underneath the tree'! What if the cow moooves?! (ha. just thought of that!)

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  2. I like the pineapple quilt. Wishing you a wonderfull year with time to patch and quilt

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  3. Directions from a Local made me laugh. I love it! Anything you make is unique and whimsical, so I look forward to seeing what you do in 2019. I still enjoy looking at my Quilty 365 which was inspired by your challenge.

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  4. neat quilts - but are you ever going to catch up on the quilting LOL - I love the directions I do that too - I never ever remember the names of roads and I have lived here for years and years and I still do " you remember where so and so lived when you were a kid - turn there"

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  5. Great job on the map quilt....mine is still an idea in my head

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  6. Thanks for the happy wishes, Audrey, and back to you and yours! I love the clean look of the pineapple quilt -- simple worked very well for layout, and the two-toned HST border is inspired! As to the "Local," two things totally make it work for me. First is the words, and second is the road paint grey-and-white border. Perfect. Here's to a happy and productive new year!

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  7. Love the Pineapple quilt! The simple bars between the pineapples are perfect! Your directions are perfect too! and the grey strip border with the whites dashes is Genius!
    Happy New Year!

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  8. Happy new year! I live in a small town and we have those same directions! LOL LOL

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  9. I love how you always make things come together. I'm still working on the the last two ADHOC challenges. I guess I need to get them out again. I have my quilt top total at 20 too. I keep thinking I'm going to make a big dent and then I make 2 new tops for the 1 I finished. The words are so intriguing and really made me think.

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  10. Oh my goodness, your Directions From a Local is HILARIOUS! And so true. :) Thanks for the good laugh today. And congrats on getting your tops down to 20!

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  11. I love the words on your quilt. Fun and unexpected :0) I wish I could start making a dent in my tops ... You rock!

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  12. Your AHIQ quilt is PERFECT in every way (I used to type legal descriptions and it just cracked me up when the language included "to the fence where the bull lives" or "to the tree that was hit by lightning"). I'm planning to do the U and U QAL - love the book, love Sujata, and love making things up as I go. Win Win Win!

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  13. Love how your Directions from a Local evolved. It just makes you smile. You did stick close to your inspiration and keeping it simple. Wishing you a creative and productive new year.

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  14. Oh my gosh, this is such a hoot! I can so totally relate to "local directions" My Dad lived in the same town all his life and I remember vividly one set of directions he used to give to our house was "turn onto the River Road right after the red house with the big white horse in the field". Yup, you guessed it, he was giving the same directions years after the house became white and horse had died! I adore the pineapple quilt. I can't resist anything in the strippy format!

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  15. Oh, yes...I feel the vintage vibe of that pineapple quilt. And what you came up with for the map challenge is so fun. I can relate to that way of giving and receiving directions too. They are actually easier for e to follow than turn left/turn right since I'm right/left challenged!

    Looking forward to what you come up with in 2019!

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  16. I stalled on my map quilt, too, but oh how I wish I'd thought of this one! We can all relate to these funny directions but you are the one who thought of putting it on a quilt. I love how you combined this with a vintage design. Such a fun quilt.
    Congratulations and Happy New Year.

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  17. Happy new year to an inspiring quilter! You keep churning out some winners. Those pineapples are wonderful

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  18. Oh Audrey, I love your new tops! The map one says so much about your experience with the fire. Unfortunately, that's become the experience for so many others this year. The pineapple quilt top is wonderful too. I think, by the time you get to quilting it, you might like it better than you do now. The memory of wrestling with it will fade, and you'll see that it's a really nice quilt.

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