Third in the Melon Patch Series and A Tisket A Tasket Finish!

 Lovely to get the applique border on the Melon Patch Blossom quilt! I was ready to talk myself into another border and then pulled myself back from the brink.

Wrapping up the Melon Patch Blossom top

It really does look pretty good 'as is' and it's a large throw size now so why bother adding more onto the quilt and quite possibly ruining the look? Gotta know when to quit!

A lot going on in this quilt

In my planning, there was supposed to be some of those green leafy things inserted on either side of the corner whatchacallits. Just looks sooo much cleaner without them though. Had to leave them off of the quilt which of course meant less hand stitching and so I finished up faster. Yay!

Hard to get the true colors for this top

I've been determined to get this third Melon Patch quilt in the series {plus a couple other things} done and squared away before doing more on the Bramble Blooms QAL. And.... ahem! There are a few more of these leftover melon blossoms that may or may not be the start of a fourth Melon Patch quilt! hehe  I told you, these series quilt can be sort of addictive. But I won't start that just yet, promise!

Love the crumpled vibes

Also put my nose to the grindstone and got the binding completely sewn onto the 'A Tisket A Tasket' quilt. Now I just need to get the label taken care of.

A Tisket A Tasket is a completed quilt!!

This quilt was basically a project dreamed up just for the simple joy of using up some of the oldy gold fabrics. I don't know if you can tell, but the gold fabrics behind the baskets actually have an interesting green cast to them. I sorta love playing with these strange, oddball colors. Always so much fun to see if I can make them shine!

Looking across

I also managed to squeeze in as much of a red plaid shirt that I could. It's one that my dad wore years ago and I just loved the idea of putting it into a cozy, snuggle-up sorta quilt!

Up-cycling an old shirt from my dad

There was a lotta old, stale-dated fabrics used up in this quilt and I'm so very happy to see that it didn't ruin the look and vibe at all. Not one little bit! The few, newer bits of fabrics here and there were a big help in perking up the some of the more boring fabrics! Oh! Did I say that? Some fabrics are much more wonderful looking when carefully grouped together with a great supporting cast. 

Simple baskets

So that's that. I also managed to get six pair of jeans hemmed, all thrifted this summer. I'll be happy if three or four of them find their way into my new favorites stack as I wear jeans all fall and winter long. Last year there was way too many skinny jeans to choose from and that just drove me crazy. Ugghh.  Crossing my fingers these jeans work out better!  

Okay, now I'm gonna try and catch up with some of my blog reading. I have been falling so far behind with everything this year. Feels like all I ever have are good intentions....

Grandma's Fans is Complete!

 The brand new quilt finish is 'Grandma's Fans'!  This was started in 2021 sometime after my daughters wedding. Just felt like getting a couple of the fabric stacks moving and grooving.

Grandma's Fans Quilt is finishedd!

Didn't get the top together until September of 2022, but that's not really an extra long time for projects around here. You're probably thinking 'Wow! There's no applique in it.' but actually there is. All the wedges and quarter circle are machine sewn together, but then, well... I simply had to hand sew them to the background squares.

Doesn't really look like a quilt my grandma would have made

Just something that I prefer to do most of the time. Gotta have a couple hand applique projects in the works at all times. Might break out in hives otherwise! Plus, precision and circles are not my strong suit at all. 

Loving this hand quilting texture!

I've always really loved the fan quilts, such a lovely, classic design. Just never thought I'd make one in these lighter, brighter colors! The final inspiration {after soaking up many ideas for 'fan' quilts through the years, was this quilt. It's not very often that I make a quilt that so closely mirrors the inspiration but for some reason I fell in love with this particular quilt. 

Still happy about the change-up in fans presentation

I did change up the colors slightly and also, turned some of the fans, changing the look incrementally. My quilt just wasn't happy with all the fans pointing in the same direction! 

Love the text fabric backgrounds in mine sooo much. There's something about text fabrics that always make me smile and this design helped show them off a bit. Obviously, I didn't go off of a pattern, but made it up on my own. Always have to do things my way, don't I? It's going to be extremely hard to get rid of this quilt when the time comes. It's already earmarked for one of the nephew weddings someday! Probably. Maybe. Unless I change my mind....

Definitely a cuddly sort of quilt!

Mostly I'm just thrilled to have another quilt finish. Things are moving so slowly around here lately {in regards to quilting} that I wonder if I'm even a quilter? Ha. Nope. Not wondering at all. It's still my thing!

The background isn't stark white 'cuz of the text

Must be. Since I dream of quilts and see quilt patterns and ideas practically everywhere I go. And yes, I still have a notebook by my bed where I can doodle a quick quilt idea just before nodding off at night.*sigh

A happy looking circle of fans!

The hand quilting has picked up a little of late. 'A Tisket, A Tasket' quilt is the newest one in the hoop. It's got a very easygoing, cottage country sort of charm. I stitched in-the-ditch between all the blocks and now I'm coming back and doing some hand quilting with Perle Cotton thread. Always seems to makes the whole quilt perk up! The colors are very different from the prior quilt in the hoop, which isn't always a bad thing. Helps keep things interesting!

In the hoop

And the little baskets below are the current hand applique project finally finding its way to needle and thread. Got about half of them done now with the slightly larger {taller} baskets left to stitch. It's so lovely to sit and do hand applique. I know many of you detest the neede-turn application, but if everything is prepped and ready to go, I just love it. So satisfying! It's rather like painting a picture in fabric to my mind.

Baskets for 'Peace Always' quilt

That's it for now. Every now and then I pull out a stack of marinating fabric and fiddle around with it, trying to conjure up some good quilting mojo. Sometimes I go upstairs to my quilt room and try to soak it all in before I have to scurry and get back to whatever needs my attention more. It's been great seeing all the BBI quilt tops together--how very, very different they are! Have you seen how many there are now? Loving the creative response to the QAL prompts and how original everyone has been. Hopefully it hasn't been a waste of anyone's time. We only have so many quilts we can make in our lifetime, right?

Working It Out

I can almost feel myself start settling in to the regular routine of normal quilting habits. Almost. Why does it take me so long these days to adjust back to the usual ebb and flow of things? Probably has to do with the state of the world around us. All the uncertainty wears on us in so many different ways. So nice to burrow down into our cozy little world at home and soak up the good things.

Orphan Annie working itself into a quilt top

It took me several tries to finally settle on the sashing details for 'Orphan Annie'. I knew the colors needed to be somewhere in the darker blue/green ranges, but the design and piecing of it {or not} simply eluded me. 

Loving the mixed up, pieced backgrounds

Once I made the determination to use this Ikat fabric, then it all just sort of fell into place. At first it didn't look like there was nearly enough fabric left for sashing purposes, but I resolutely kept whittling away at the proposed width of the strips thinking 'this has to work!' Eventually the numbers gave me the right answer and yay! I could start cutting.

When first auditioning the strips, I laid them willy nilly as to where the black stripe bits ended up. Soon it became one of those questions of 'what if?' and then I was busily rearranging them to make a secondary pattern in the quilt. It's nothing super obvious or in your face. Just something to make me smile when zooming in. Look! There really are more interesting details buried here and there!

All the tulips just a little bit different...

When stitching the cut-out tulip shapes, it was difficult at times not to try and trim some of them to a more pleasing shape. Now I'm glad to see the subtle differences and yes, imperfections in the quilt. Makes for a more homespun, utility-like look. Which of course I love and adore and think is the very best thing for all quilts worldwide. Ahem. Not that you'd ever hear me say horrid things about your perfectly perfect quilts...

Some of the green background fabrics are from the late 90's and early 2000's. I caught one fabric with little bugs on it that I'm sure made it into a baby quilt for a friends son. Uh, hello? Isn't he graduating from high school this year? 

Alas, Orphan Annie isn't quite done yet, though the quilt is trying to tell me that YES, it is!*stomp, stomp  Right now the measurements are around 46 x 57 inches or something and that just doesn't do it for me. So impractical. Borders will have to be added on, period. End of story.

A Tisket-A Tasket a completed top!

Now, A Tisket-A Tasket is a quilt top that is finished up, totally completed until the sandwiching pinning phase. After adding this last larger hst border {red plaid fabric from one of my dads old shirts}, I'm calling it good. Doesn't feel like there's anything of benefit to add on at this particular stage and I definitely can't add on more of the lighter yellows that I so, very much wanted to use. Back in the stash totes they went. Oh well. Another quilt, another day, right?

Corners of the blue border looks better now

Some of you might not love the addition of more gold in the outer surround, but actually, I am fairly pleased with how it 'pops' the blue in the previous border. With the later addition of a binding, it should all come together fairly gracefully. You know how little borders at the outside of a quilt sometimes get drowned out? I do want this one to sing!

Looking cozy, just like I like 'em!

I had to take out the hsts at the corners of the blue and red hst border after adding on the outside border. Too much confusion. The solid blue squares better help to transition from one border to the next. Which, speaking of that blue fabric. Ughh. It is such a lame fabric, I almost can't believe that I'm using it! But you know me. Always trying to use up the old fabrics and this one was the very best color from all that I had to choose from. I am constantly amazed at how hard the most unexpected fabrics can work for a quilt if we just give them a chance!

By issue of working with so many older, uninspiring fabrics, I am definitely learning new things all of the time. The biggest takeaway is not to take any fabric for granted. Ever. Be willing to take the strangest chances with fabric prints and blends of colors. Sooo much more focus on color, tone and shades. Here's a goodie....Paying more attention to the amounts of each color as to the current quilt. Some colors just look amazingly better in mismatched pairings. Go figure. 

And that's such an easy thing to do, changing the quantities and percentages. A tweak here or there and wallah!, things start smiling and having fun. The conversation has begun! It's like I'm constantly on this roller coaster of  'Anyone can clearly see that this is the most uninspiring stack of fabric in the whole world!' Why bother? Then there's the other extreme. That's where my instincts are practically shouting at me to stop taking the lazy view and endeavor to look for the hidden potential. That's the leap of faith that often feels stupid, hard {time consuming?} or pointless, but that actually causes THE change.

There's another issue that crops up occasionally. I've discovered how much better an entire stack of marinating fabrics can look if you can just find that one, super yummy looking fabric that pulls it all together. So silly, but occasionally it's like the difference between turning a light switch on or off. I'm not even kidding. No matter how cohesive the fabrics and colors look together and you know it should work, it just doesn't. Not really. There ends up being this boring quality that permeates everything and it's incredibly hard to overcome. Seriously, it's almost painful. I work and work and work and all I'm doing is spreading the boredom around to fit into a larger surface. If perhaps this magical piece of fabric can be found??? {whether it be a print, special color etc.}, it's utterly fascinating how the whole quilt will suddenly start to feel charming, interesting and maybe even a little bit intriguing. You sly little bugger! Now how precisely did that happen? And I really, really don't understand the why exactly, but hmm... so much more willing to try and duplicate the experience in the next quilt, because I can SEE and FEEL the results!

Looking at the gingham for a potential binding

I'm truly enjoying this stage of my quilt journey. Can you tell? Yeah, it's different, but I'm wholly throwing myself into trying to make really good stuff from fabric that I used to would have gladly passed over. Maybe even backed up the car and run over again. I was {still am} a proponent of buying fabric that we LOVE. It's important to have a good foundation of fabric that speaks to us. But what if we don't have the money in our budget to do that anymore? Or what if we're trying to be more thoughtful about our fabric consumption? Or maybe we're always ready and willing to take unwanted fabric off of a former quilters hands? All of those things are me today and I'm okay with that. 

This journey of intentionally digging deep into the totes and making do is not always easy. It doesn't always, evermore without fail, feel fun and exciting. On the other hand, I want {need} to keep quilting and learning. This way is deliberate, it can often feel slow. Sometimes I start with pieces that don't make sense or feel astonishingly uninteresting. Like, can fabric/blocks/piecing truly be soooo unappealing as to be hopeless? We wonder. I puzzle over that and try to imagine what it would take to light them on fire. Is it even possible? The design becomes less of the end goal and more of a side effect. This adventure has definitely taken a detour in the last couple years and instead of burning out with it, I feel like I'm just barely getting started. And that's where my excitement lies these days. Maybe I'm crazy, but it feels like my quilting voice is getting distilled and refined into something that feels even more authentic than before. Not in every single effort of course. But overall. Hey, I don't know about you, but I'm just gonna roll with it....

Maybe The Solution Will Come To Me If I Take a Nap

I've been working on the border for the A-Tisket-A-Tasket quilt. Lots of hst's which are not difficult, just annoying.

Trimming the hst's

Before sewing them into rows and getting locked into something I don't want, I went ahead and auditioned some ideas for the next border after.

Auditioning some possibilities

Definitely loving the red and blue hst's, but the rest is slow going. I had this idea to use up a lot of that really light yellow oddball fabric. Maybe in random 9-patches etc., but noooo it's not working. So I switched to applique ideas which, funnily enough is not working either.

Nothing looks right

Will have to leave it be for a bit and come back later. In the mean time, I finished up all the hand work on the Orphan Annie tulip blocks. All 20 of them! They are looking very yummy I think. Those olive green colors used on the leaves are just enough different to make me smile.

Hoping these look good together in a quilt!

I finally remembered to check back with the inspiration pics for the Country Stars quilt. It's a blend of two patterns from my inspiration folders. Both published in the early 2000's?

Original inspiration

It was all started as a quilt for someone and so I used colors and a style that I thought they might particularly like. The hand work is 'next on the list' so here we go. Definitely wanting to move on to more intriguing projects!

Should have left it alone....

When I started stitching down the leaves everything in me just rebelled. Ughh! I just hate doing sharp curves and there would be so many? So without really thinking it through, I cut four of the leaves down to a more simplstic shape.

All the weird shaped leaves

Yeah, it was probably a bad, bad idea. I've only stitched down four leaves on the right side, 1 large one, 2 small ones and 1 large simple shaped one and it's looking pretty iffy already. My regret meter is pinging off the charts.

Might have to get the seam ripper out

I threw some berry shapes on the quilt top {oversized on purpose} and am not sure if it all looks better or just more train wreck. Why do I ever think it's a good idea to make things that I'm not feeling the love for? Somewhere the seam ripper is calling my name, all the while laughing its head off....

Loving these colors together

I've been hand quilting on the AHIQ Hourglass quilt lately which has made me think about all those languishing hourglass units. Hhmmmm....  I made that first batch the wrong size so had to start over. Yeah. It was a very fun and relaxing couple of hours pulling fabric to put with them. Not sure what's gonna happen there, but I could tell my heart was all in.

Preventative maintenance

One of the results of digging through all those marinating fabric stacks in the past couple weeks--totes and buckets of fabric soaking. There's a gorgeous green fabric that had just a little bit taken out of it, looked so bright and bold. Uh huh. It's been releasing dye for almost three days now. No worries. I only used it in my Coronacrazy quilt.*sigh 

All the Hiccups in the Process

The Big Kiss quilt is totally finished up now! This one was started back in 2020 mostly because I could not resist the siren call of the simple, graphic design. 

The Big Kiss quilt is finished!

The top was complete {I thought} in about June of that year, but then, it just wasn't. I fiddled around with idea during the following January and then, finally got to true-blue quilt top stage by April. 

A little applique can go a very long ways!

Anyone who knows me understands that a quilt top has to be 'just right' before I can rest easy. And now it has a lot more of ME in it, I totally can.

Keeping the stitching simple as usual

I went with a very basic stitching pattern in those long strips. Totally copied Clare because it just made sense to keep things simple. The more that I stitched, the more I fell in love with this cheerful, happy quilt.

It definitely has the cozy vibe I usually shoot for

It always seemed kind of like a step-quilt instead of the real deal if you know what I mean, but now? I'm thinking it's all coming together just the way it was always meant to be.

Can't even hardly tell where the fabric was pieced

It's been really challenging over the past couple years to pull fabrics just from the stash totes and hardly ever buy anything new. Sometimes I feel like I'm thriving in this make-it-up, make-it-work sort of effort. The creativity is going gangbusters and good quilts are being made.

Using it up on the back

Then, at other times, I look at the available fabric and sort of die inside. What in the world is this garbage and what possibly good can come from that? But yeah. I'm sort of digging in and definitely not giving up. For instance, that batik fabric really did get used on the backside of the Big Kiss quilt. Uh huh. On over half the back in fact. Yep, I did soak it in boiling water {thanks for the tip!} and that helped soften the fibers. Also bled out a whole lotta black dye so now it looks more purple {in the soaking water thank goodness}. Whoopsie daisy! Now it doesn't match and blend quite so wonderful anymore.

AHIQ Hourglass quilt top

I'm sure the people using the quilt in the future will totally turn up their nose at the quilt and think it's 'not good enough'. 'Cuz that's clearly what all users of awesome quilts do.... And I'm still gonna make awesome quilts even if they are a different kind of awesome because of those self imposed limitations. Can you tell that I was a teenager in the 80's?

Time for the quilting stitches to commence!

The AHIQ Hourglass Tulips quilt is the next up for quilting. I am so loving the raspberry pink in the hoop! Just makes me feel happy to be stitching on it. It seems so basic, I should be able to plow through this one in a week or so, right? But no. It will probably be a good three weeks to a month like all the others. 

The strangely appealing blend of green blues, pink and olive

Kind of funny that I'm doing the hand applique for the cut-out tulip shapes from behind that AHIQ quilt right now. Kind of a compare and contrast thing. It's a really interesting color palette that I'm experimenting with, all the funny, old green/blues. I took the stack of fabrics and tried to use all the bits that I could in the block backgrounds. So much work but always something that I enjoy seeing in the finished product. These lanky tulips will obviously have their very own vibe and that's a relief. I can tell you that I'm still consciously {and unconsciously} dreaming up ideas for other tulip quilts, and actively working on them only makes it worse. It's probably starting to be a condition.

Still working at the applique ideas

Still playing with the possible applique for the Improv. Strip Quilt #2 Blue too. I know what some of you were saying about it looking fine without the applique, the quilting stitches filling in texture later on etc. Uh huh. Yep. I totally agree. But the thing is, it just doesn't feel like a me quilt for some inexplicable reason so I can't leave it alone. Just can't. 

Putting the flower shape inside an oval shape and then shortening the stem helped a lot, as did flipping the leaves so the tips were pointing down. Then it looked like it was sort of plopped onto the quilt top and soooo of course I had to make scallop shapes to over-compensate. And now we're cooking with Crisco! Totally feeling that glimmer of satisfaction of an idea starting to bloom. Such a hideous fabric with all the starfish and other fishy things on it. Uggh. Can't even believe it will do the trick, but the color was perfection for what was needed. Am thinking this is the real deal but we'll see after some more time spent simmering.

Kind of a county fair look

Got the main part of A Tisket-A Tasket quilt top put together. Now I will be pursuing borders. I mean, look at it? It doesn't have that I-am-completed look at all yet. Terribly hard to get a good picture of this one as the colors are so yellow-brownish it looks dull very easily. In actuality, it has a soft, down to earth vibe that feels somehow restful but cheery. I know, totally contradictory. Gonna have to trust me on this one.

Putting the quilts out there for stitching inspiration

And that's it for the quilt wrap-up for the last week or so. The bags of quilts are what I took to the last quilt meeting for people to look at in terms of quilting stitches and also, thread colors in use. One of the younger gals asked me to bring examples and it was a lot harder to put together than you might think. Once I started pulling quilts off of shelves it seemed that they all just sort of looked alike. At one point I threw my hands up in despair and told my daughter it seemed that all my quilts were practically identical! 

Hmm.. Maybe that's because I tend to use the same color palettes over and over until I get it 'just right'. Or I continually play with limited color palettes or softer hues. Maybe because I take the cast offs and cut outs from previous projects and dive right into the next quilt? Do basic hand quilting on all the finished quilts? Or perhaps it's because I've worked and worked for years, trying to get my voice inserted into every single part of my quilts. Yeah. It could really be just that simple.*whew! I was starting to think things were getting starting to get boring around here.

Seriously though, as crazy as it seems, it took me a couple days to work through that conundrum. It didn't help that I was right in the middle of perusing all my gathered stacks of fabric and trying to assign quilt design/ideas to many of them.  Coming up very empty. Feeling antsy and disconnected as a result of all this time spent directing my time to strippy quilts and planning directions and demos for quilt meetings. It took several days of fondling fabric and rearranging the stacks, looking through the inspiration binders, Pinterest boards, and even the quilt top drawers! until I found my center again. What is it that I truly want to make? Am I doing that? Or am I just going through the motions? Why is it that I use so much cream/green/gray/brown whatever fabric and can never find a piece of fabric large enough for good background flow? Does everything have to have applique? Silly, silly questions like that.

If you know anything about me, it's that I LOVE making quilts. Passionately, scarily laser-like focused in on what's coming next. When I start questioning what it is I'm actually producing and if it's any good? Well... it can get a little hairy around here. Okay, quilty meltdown all over, crisis has been averted. Time to get quilting!

Baskets and Flowers

It was lovely to have company for a nice long weekend. The nieces are growing up way too fast! Can't believe one of them is already driving.*sigh We are getting too old! Most of the time when we have guests, I can get out the quilting and do a little stitching. This time I just mostly curled up in the corner of the couch and settled in for the good visiting.

A Tisket, A Tasket basket blocks are done

So yeah, in terms of quilting, there is lost time. In terms of quality of life stuff? Who cares? At some point last week I stitched the last little bit of binding down on Spring Flowers. It was very satisfying to have another completion for the year. I feel very dithery and not very focused lately with the quilting stuff. It's just all sort of whatever feels right for the moment. But even more so than usual.

Spring Flowers is a true blue finish!

I'm pretty sure this quilt will be given away eventually, but not sure to whom. Yet. I really like the sweet flowers and spunky vibe, but I'm not super attached to it if you know what I mean. Some day, a person will cross my mind and I'll think of this quilt and just that easily, a match will be made. I almost gave it away already and then changed my mind. This quilt deserves to have somebody that truly loves it. Just haven't figured that part out yet.

Totally completed!

Loving that this quilt was started with the leftover cut-out circles from another quilt project. That does seem to be my modus operandi these days! Maybe my creative imaginings are getting dull and there needs to be a weird challenge in order to get something started.

Tried to keep the hand quilting low key

Oh well. We can't be 'on' all of the time, can we? This past two years has been such a roller coaster of emotion, it's simply incredible that so many of us even show up for any little spark of creativity. Lately, all I want to do is avoid any hint of the news and hibernate at home with my new Libby reading app. Where oh where have you been all my life? Just kidding. I adore reading physical books with actual paper the very best.

Looking very snuggable

The quilt meetings have been fun and also a little tiny bit of a drain on my time. You know me. It's hard to have deadlines when it comes to my quilting.*Ughh Makes me want to rebel which is really a terrible, terrible idea when I'm the one {supposed to be} trying to keep the momentum going for everyone else! 

Just sewing to sew

I was feeling so restless the other day that I grabbed up the bag of practice strips from the free-cutting demonstration day and just started sewing. All the strips are 10" long which is a bit limiting, but I'll figure something out eventually. Paired with a cream fabric, all the uglies should be toned down and maybe even start to look interesting. Maybe. I don't even care. It was just something to do while I soothed the soul and got myself ready to dive into the Improv. Class work. I think it takes more time to figure out the plan of attack than it does to do the actual work!

The latest in the hoop

Oh well, I wouldn't have it any other way when I see how much fun people are having. That makes it all very worthwhile. As you can see, I'm still plodding along with hand quilting on the occasional evening. Moving a little slower with this particular quilt than normal {'cuz all the reading distraction}, but it's wonderful to see progress. Just a little bit more and like always, it will probably motivate me to kick it up into a higher gear. Oh, I'm out to the border already? That means I'm almost done!*wink  Don't we wish!