AHIQ:Sun Quilt Top and Autumnal Tulips #2

I seem to have fell down a rabbit hole this past little while. So shocking. This quilt top was a result of an AHIQ prompt from July 2022. I was really late getting going with my response and then even later getting it to finished quilt top stage. I was dragging my feet initially because it's just so different for me! Most of the applique pieces have been cut out and ready to go since sometime last fall though, and I've been positively antsy to see the end result.

Is it a sunflower or a daisy?

So yeah, it was time. Might as well take advantage! Working with quilt challenges is such an interesting way to grow in our quilting endeavors. To be quite blunt, a lot of the time my initial feeling is a bit of frustration. Why would I deliberately want to think about adding a 'sun' into one of my quilts? Or work from the point of trying to add in that distinct vibe? Or whatever the challenge happens to be--I'm truly not picking on that particular prompt! 

Sun of My Life a new quilt top!

The thing is, I don't generally love to be told what to do in regards to quilting. Most all of the new challenges take some talking myself into. {Yes, I'm telling on myself.} It certainly helps that the AHIQ challenges have been so open ended, but let's just say that it always seems to take a bit of an attitude adjustment. Gah! To willing embrace making a quilt from somewhere other than what I would consider to be 'organic' inspiration is just hard. Especially when I have an abundance of quilty ideas already bouncing around in my brain. Who has time to make something they have little to no interest in? But hey, wait a minute. How do we nudge ourselves out of our comfort zone if we never seek out a different perspective? 

I've learned to let these odd places of inspiration simmer in the back of my mind for awhile. Give them a lot of space and encourage my subconscious to take plenty of time to explore the many, many different ways that the idea could possibly be applied. Discarding most of them of course! And through the years I've realized the most fun is when the ideas can be manipulated to work in my favor. Like using one of the already marinating fabric stacks sitting around the quilt room or whatever. Or do a little play on interpretation. I try my best to work with {and answer} the prompt and yet, still convey something that resonates strongly as a me look, feel and vibe. That way, I will more likely follow through on the challenge to completion, maybe even enjoy the project and, bonus, sometimes end up with something amazingly better than ever expected. 

Looking across the quilt top is always fun

Sometimes it's a big fat fail, but it's so very beneficial to try! Take this quilt. I couldn't think much past using up yellow fabric, of which I have oodles of. So lots and lots of ideas about using up that. Meh. Not interesting enough on its own. Then I stumbled upon a block idea that seemed vaguely interesting. Yeah, not nearly good enough for the effort required. Everything seemed quite unsatisfactory and blah when thinking about in conjunction to this 'sun' challenge. Scratch it all!

How could the sun look any more
happy to be there?

And so it went. Me drawing up a potential foundation pieced sun block, pouring through antique quilting books, and looking for rising sun etc. blocks. Stretching my thinking even more and then finally, out of desperation, doodling a rough drawing of a large scale floral design with a big 'ol sun hanging out over the top of it. At first it felt kind all kinds of desperate. So obvious and over the top.

Loving the viny, bold flowers

A funny thing happened. Just the act of drawing the oh-so-improbable idea opened up my thinking even more. I remembered the times that I have wanted to deliberately piece backgrounds for applique and got mired in the details. Didn't gain any traction. Huh. Could this be the answer? Seeing the doodle in black and white made me contemplate how this could actually be accomplished with improv. piecing. Which of course I love doing. Would it, could it work? Maybe I could even add some orphaned parts and pieces too.... 

Subtle additions to the larger tulip

Eventually I combined all the good ideas and.... despite my very squirrely feelings of discomfort, made a plan of attack. Who cared if it was ridiculously large and naive in concept? I tried to consciously tweak each and every obvious detail into something that felt authentic, going over the details over and over till it felt right. Then, and only then, I dove into it with lots of nerves and a sort of steely resolve to see it through. No matter what kind of feedback I received, this was happening! And now, at the end of hand stitching the applique to this quilt top, I'm thinking it worked! It actually worked!! Wowsers, do I love this quirky, funky looking quilt already!

It's been a long journey with lots of hesitation and second guessing. It's wonderful to see the quilt really coming alive this last week with every single piece of applique that got sewn down. I just didn't want to quit, it was so quietly satisfying and yes, exhilarating! After all the larger applique was stitched down, then I had to add a few pieces of smaller things like the skinny leaves. Just for good balance and subtle definition.

And the value changes in the sun....
Looking so sweet to me

As an aside, the second {pink} sun has always felt like a rather silly addition. Why oh why did the quilt demand it? I so wanted to ditch the entire idea and find something else to substitute. Nope. It was the ONLY thing that looked right in that corner. And this week I think the answer made itself known in the new name for the quilt 'Sun of my life'. It sort of speaks for itself when paired with the applique design. In a surprising move, the quilt also decided that it doesn't need any sort of border whatsoever. Okay! I guess that's a wrap for now! Yay for challenges that steer us to good places!

The finished commission quilt top

I also remembered that I hadn't shown the results of the commission quilt that I had agreed to make last fall. If you think this looks like my Autumnal Tulips quilt, you would be correct.

It's a tiny bit darker than the original

A quilty gal had previously contacted me for the pattern, then later on decided not to make it after all. When she sent me the first email inquiring about me making a commission quilt {for her but for her daughter]} I instantly decided that it would be waaay to much work. Right? Then I decided to think things through a little better. Maybe give it a couple minutes to try to figure out what might make it worthwhile.

Autumnal Tulips #2

A bit of back and forth and surprisingly, we came to terms. I tried to be very straightforward about what the whole endeavor would entail--what we could expect out of each other. And Linda was super accommodating. So sweet! 

This is a smaller version of the original, but it does actually have some of the exact same fabrics included. {It was requested to be in very similar colors and fabrics.} I had to comb through the scrap bins looking for some of it, but eventually found all the important pieces! 

Like most of my quilts tend to end up, it's perfectly imperfect. Huge sigh of relief. Nothing like a bit of pressure to feel insecure about our work! And even though it's the 2nd version, it still has a nice, cozy, comfy vibe, very closely resembling the one her daughter fell in love with. You can only imagine how nervous I was to make a copycat quilt when everything I do is so scrappy looking! We only contracted for the quilt top which means I've been anticipating see the true blue completion some day in the future.Will it still look like a Quilty Folk quilt without hand quilting? Hmm... We'll have to see! Thank you Linda for being a gold star customer on my very first quilt commission!  And no, that's not gonna be my new thing. This is something out of the blue and just turned into an interesting experience! 

Okay. This time around, I'll really try better to put the bulk of my quilty efforts towards Bramble Blooms. It's not forgotten, just moving at a snails pace!

 

All the 2021 Finish-It-Up Details and Looking Ahead At What's Next

It was a strange, bewildering year. A lot of us yo-yoed between depression and keeping our head down, just trying to get through. Why even bother with anger when the energy could be much better spent stitching our way to some sort of tranquility? Once again, I have been ever so grateful for this colorful, fascinating, soul-soothing hobby of mine. Though I often felt like the days were aimlessly drifting by, the 2021 finished quilts tell the real story. These hands of mine were busy, busy, busy....

I've been feeling a wee bit guilty about one particular quilt that never made it out of the quilting queue, but hey! What about that HST Medallion quilt? Huh? It finished at 102" square and the whole thing is hand quilted. Woohoo! And then I made up for all that effort by continually choosing out quilt tops that seemed easy as pie to hand stitch. Hmm... 

The baby quilts kinda took precedence this year as one of my nieces, my sister-in-law and also our daughter-in-law all had new additions to their families. The other baby quilt finished this year was the boy quilt. Of course, everyone decided to have girls this one teensy moment when I was actually on the ball and thinking ahead.

Another quilt that somehow insinuated itself into the line-up was Rhi's quilt. It was the lap quilt my oldest daughter asked me to make, starting from a cut up sundress she wore in her middle school years. It's one of the few quilts I've made with a large-ish amount of green included. One that actually turned out to be relatively successful. Yay me! Given another half dozen or so of 'green quilt attempts' and the dial might eventually be turned up to 'amazing looking'. lol  Working with green can be hard!

Okay, Details please!:

If you're wondering, the past year saw me bring a grand total of 16 quilts, plus a slew of doll quilts to fruition. Slightly less than in years past, but not too shabby considering that our family hosted a wedding and also had a new grandchild! I hoped to bring down the number of quilt tops languishing in the quilting queue, but alas, that number stayed fairly stable at 23. Apparently I reliably alternate the act of finishing up, with all kinds of excuses to start anew. See my worried face? Yeah. Neither do I.

Here's the 'finished' quilt statistics that I'm always looking for at this time of year:

• 11 Doll quilts 
• 4 Baby quilts
• 5 Lap-sized quilts
• 7 Bed-sized quilts
• 13 of the quilts were hand quilted
• 2 of the quilts were mixed hand and machine quilted
• Only 1 quilt was totally machine quilted {plus all the doll quilts}

Another number I generally keep track of is how many quilts are given away. This year saw me gifting 12 quilts, either gently used or new. As usual, there were/are mixed emotions in giving away so many of the quilts that I've poured myself into, and no doubt, spent countless hours working on. Some people are easier to gift quilts to than others and I'd never suggest it's a mandatory thing. I'll just link to an article written in 2013 by Mary Fons where she makes the point that 'Quilts are love, manifested.' When we find the perfect person {or reason} for one of our quilts, it's truly a beautiful thing.

As for what's on board for the new year? 

• More from-the-stash quilting for sure. I'm sincerely hooked--line and sinker. It's beginning to get more and more challenging as certain colors and tones are starting to be depleted. Still, I rather enjoy the adventure of make-do-till-you-can-make-it-work. 
• Absolutely more focus on specific colors where the stash tote lids don't close as well as they should. Gonna have to bite the bullet and attack browns and tans at the minimum. {Whether I want to or not.} Grr.. How oh how to make that seem fun?
• There is still an ever-growing list of applique projects that I'm yearning to dive into. Most are very simplistic with lots of repeats. Yawn.... I don't know why this is so appealing to me, but who cares? If it drives me forward, then I say it's probably worth the effort and needs to happen.
• I don't think there was a single project started from the scrap bin last year. That needs to change. Scrap bin quilts are just too interesting to write off completely. The main thing holding me back is the sheer amount of work involved in the doing.
• The Adhoc. Improv. Quilting party is still ongoing, and in fact, there is a brand new challenge issued for the new year. Definitely one that I intend to dive into, especially as this one pertains to playing with color. Should probably {deliberately} choose a color palette that includes brown...
• As usual around here, squirrel projects tend to beget other squirrels. 2021 will undoubtedly see me continuing on in some form of series work, whether it be playing with the cut-outs from behind my circle quilts or adding appliqued tulips in a slightly different style and shape than used before. Probably gonna see another basket quilt or two, and maybe even another log cabin quilt. The world can always use yet another log cabin quilt, right?
• More hand quilting with perle cotton thread is a given, at least until the outside world settles down into something more 'normal' and truck-loads less stressful. Oh, who's kidding who? I'm gonna hand quilt until my hands give out or I get too old too see. The thing is, I'm not going to worry about trying to push myself into more and more finishes with that faster method of machine quilting. Especially during this particular season of my life. The only time I don't crave snacky things is when my hands are busy with a quilt in the hoop. Can you imagine how large a person I'd be but for this craft? Uh huh. Bet you thought we all got the extra padding from the extra quilting time....

On a different note, after deliberately shedding a few minor responsibilities this past year, I have now allowed myself to be talked into doing a short series of quilt meetings with our church group. We will be making a simple, scrappy, improv. sort of baby {or sm. lap sized} quilt from start to finish, with yours truly as the teacher. Ahhhh... What a muddle that will be. Part of me doesn't want to do this at all. Period. End of story. But the other part of me thinks that it's important for women to have connections. Interactions. Community. Doing that while creating can be enormously nourishing to the body and soul, which obviously, might be a boon after the past two years?

I thought we'd have three or four women at most who were interested, but as of yesterday, we're up to ten.*sigh  All ages and states in life and involving all levels of quilting and/or sewing experience. The only stipulation I made is that everyone need know how to competently sew a straight stitch and be able take care of their own sewing machine issues. Yikes! So far out of my comfort zone with this. Though I'm not 100 percent an introvert, I'm way more of an introvert than an extrovert which makes this feel a little painful. And I personally hate to be told what to do in quilting. How can I 'teach' a method without doing that? So many questions. Am currently trying to walk through the entire quilt project and make notes; emphasis on the basics and trying to leave room for flexibility wherever possible. Wish me luck!

Starting and Finishing

Finally brought out the Chunky Tulips for hand work. It feels like a great project for July and I definitely need to get moving on the applique list. These four represent 30% of the blocks being finished so that's a good start!

Chunky Tulip blocks

I've been thinking and thinking and then, thinking some more about the latest AHIQ challenge. It's called 'Positive Thinking' which isn't always my strong suit. I'm more the glass half empty gal, generally expecting things to get worse before they get better! Probably why I tend to veer towards making happy looking quilts, always wanting my surroundings to be more hopeful than I am on the inside. I live with an incredibly optimistic guy which is a blessing and honestly, sometimes a little, tiny bit of hardship. He's Sunny Sam to my Pragmatic Pam and well..., you can only envision how that turns out on occasion! We have learned to avoid mornings. That's where everything falls apart if it's going to.*wink

So lots of ideas have been swirling around in my brain, but nothing very concrete coming together except of course that it needed to be improv. Then, last Friday, I walked past a saying {verse} I had stuck up on my inspiration board in the quilting room. It's something that I've had vague ideas about incorporating into a quilt some day, but never could quite conjure up the details. All of a sudden, the Positive Thinking challenge clicked into place.

The start of a new AHIQ challenge

Instead of starting yet another super, labor intensive applique quilt, why not go with improv. letters? And by deliberately choosing this verse, perhaps I can focus on 'positivity' in a more personal way. I just don't wanna get sucked down into the mire of Covid-19 emotional ups and downs in regards to a quilt. If I worked exclusively with those feelings, I might have a very bleak quilt indeed. Ughh...  There's actually a meme going around that says this, 'Stop complaining about your life. There are literally people who live in Washington State.' Ha! 'Nuff said.

Anyway, this is the start of whatever it will be. I'm not sure beyond finishing the verse. So far it's all been going very well, lots of intuitive cutting and sewing on the letters. Definitely more free-style than I've ever accomplished before! I know it's been mentioned before, but here it is again. The book you want to reference for making custom pieced letters is 'Word Play Quilts' by Tonya Ricucci. The method she explains easily translates/incorporates your personal 'voice' through the style of letters you personally choose to make. This is the third time around for me and it's absolutely getting easier each and every time I attempt this!

The cream print, softer purple and blue fabrics are all cut up shirts, straight out of the closet. The cream print is running out fast which is a shame, because I wanted all the background of the letters to be the same. Waah...

Had to fix a letter or two

That's default thinking though. Mixing up the backgrounds will probably make the quilt more interesting in the long run, right? I've already went back and fixed the second 'o' in Wool and also, had to fix the 'n' in the second And. When I sewed the pieces together, it ended up looking like an 'r' next to an 'i'. The third 'W' was sewn, redefined, and then finally tossed out altogether and restarted. While there's no reason to get terribly fussy with this quilt, it's important that it reads well overall. It's a subtle thing, the attitude that develops alongside the message. Trying to get it right....

Completed baby quilt!

The baby quit is finished up now, just needs a label! It was hard to get a good picture of it because the light kept washing out the lighter pinks. The plaid border reads green or yellow depending on the light, but regardless, it seems to help keep the quilt from looking too moody.

Still happy with the floral sashing...

I'm very happy with this sweet little quilt, but it obviously will read as too 'traditional' for some people. One of the few people who have seen this already, told me that she probably wouldn't like it for a baby quilt for herself, but nevertheless, assured me that my sister-in-law will undoubtedly appreciate the old-fashioned theme. Crossing my fingers the little bit of added hand quilting will up the appeal factor!

A feminine, old fashioned look

Sometimes I wonder. What exactly are the important variables of our lives that make up our intensely personal likes and dislikes? Apparently these preferences can change somewhat with the times, trends and life experiences. And too, there are those of us who can more more easily overlook qualities that don't necessarily appeal, if the item in question is home-made. Thankfully, that is something that still matters in our huge, extended family. There's only been one time in all these years of gifting where I had a quilt basically discarded as worthless {that I'm aware of!}. Lesson learned. When we gift something, it's not longer ours. Gift generously as our hearts dictate, but preferably with no strings {expectations} attached.

A little bit of machine and hand quilting....

It's hard to see, but if you look closely, you can see that this backing fabric has little mice on it. I don't often give a shout out to designers, but this is a Cotton & Steel fabric that I bought special for this little quilt. It just felt like it needed something to 'baby' it up. This particular fabric caught my eye because it was a subtle pink, with fun, discreetly babyish elements,. More, because it feels amazing. Then after being washed up, it gets even better! So,so soft. Sort of a cross between a muslin and a linen fabric which drapes wonderfully. Love it!

Making It Up As I Go Along

The hardest part of blogging lately is actually making the effort to write the post. I usually don't wanna these days! Then, deciding what to touch on, what to highlight and even more importantly, what to leave alone. Ughh. Does anyone even care about quilting these days? Such crazy, crazy days indeed. Oh well. Quilting is what makes me happy, so here goes!

Strippy Triangles

This is the quilt that was started impulsively back at the first of May. Mostly I just wanted to chain piece and not think about design. It's now a completed quilt top, so yeah. Really fast finish for me! I've had the fabric stacked up together and simmering though, for well over a year. That was during a time when I purposefully dove very deep into the red stash tote in response to the Red is a Neutral AHIQ challenge. The first two fabric pulls of red didn't end up quite making the grade {here's the challenge quilt with the fabrics that won out} but I couldn't just dump these straight back in. Oh no. There was just something about them that pulled on my heartstrings.

A completed quilt top!

Maybe it was because there was a small piece of a leftover plaid from my youngest sons baby years {do you know how little fabric is in a long sleeved toddler shirt?}. Regardless, it was the 'go-to' fabric stack when I recently wanted something simple and low-key to immerse myself in.

Loving the soft, mellow look to this one

I am so very satisfied how successfully the lighter areas of the quilt turned out! I consider this quilt a victory because... one of my worst default decisions is usually to pick a whole stack of fabric in a similar color with very little variation in tone or pattern. Something I'm working on changing, little by little! This time, I deliberately stretched and made sure to have better range of colors, albeit in the light to very light spectrum. There are creams, lighter pinks, light grays and in addition, very light blues. If you look closely, you will also see that on the rare occasion, medium-dark pink fabrics from the darker areas were purposefully used in place of a light triangle. But overall? The lighter area definitely reads 'light' {without being choppy}, even though up close there's more going on than perhaps is normal with my efforts.

Definitely got an old fashioned look and vibe!

I kind of love the energy and depth it adds to this sweet looking quilt! Those unexpectedly placed pink triangles really aren't dark enough to fully stop the eye from perusing the quilt. None of that, 'Hey! Those are in the wrong spot!' moments, it just adds an amusing utilitarian touch. I like to think of it as whimsical, unstudied, and kind of old fashioned looking! Basically, I just divvied the cut triangles up into 18 stacks of half light and half dark and started sewing, one light triangle to one dark triangle, one after another. And then once in a great while, threw a darker pink over into the 'light' pile just for the fun of it!

Don't what I'd do without the railing to hang my rows on
and keep them sorted! 

After I got the initial pairs sewn up and ironed, then I started joining those pairs together. Then four with four, until a whole row was able to be sewn together. The most important thing being that there was no repeat of fabric sewn closely together. Otherwise I just grabbed and sewed. Once I got larger sets together then I quickly laid them out of the floor to see if the row looked okay, then sewed it up and moved on to the next row!

The page you see pictured below has been in one of my inspiration binders for close to a decade. Though I didn't closely follow the pattern directions  {my triangles are larger for one}, it's from the 2009 July/Aug. issue of  'Fons and Porter' Love of Quilting magazine. For a rough idea of how to make a similar quilt to mine, cut out approx. 100-5" squares of dark fabrics and 100-5" squares of lighter fabrics. {I think I had to go back and cut just out just a few more when I decided to add extra rows!}. Cut them on the diagonal and then cut on the diagonal again. Sew light triangles to dark triangles in sets {iron with a light touch!}, until you have 16 rows measuring 85" plus. Sew 2 rows measuring approx. 65" for the top and bottom of quilt.

Cut 15 strips @ 2 1/2" x 82" in whatever alternate strip fabric/color you like. The fabric that worked best for me was a woven so I intentionally cut my strips on the lengthwise grain for better stability. Since I had slightly less than 2 1/4" yards available, this meant that I had to cut an extra strip and sew length to length, then later measuring and cutting each strip at the desired 82".

Lay out all the pieced rows in the configuration shown below {light triangles to the outside} or perhaps like I did, {dark triangles to the outside}. Though the quilt is very scrappy, I did try my best not to have identical fabrics lined up in rows exactly side by side. This meant of course, that I had to change out pieced rows here and there until the color flow to the quilt worked the best.

Seeds of inspiration

As most of you know, my piecing isn't ever strictly precise, and so I took the {deliberately} extra long pieced rows and fiddled with them a bit at this placement stage. Moved them a little up or down so as to further distract from the fact that they were never going to match up in straight lines at the point of the triangles all across the width of the quilt. That meant that I cut a little off the top of some and a little off the bottom of others, whatever it took to make them all 82", but still have a good 'mismatched' flow overall. The one thing that I did NOT want to see happen was for them all to start out with an intact triangle at the top of the row, and then end up cut off willy-nilly across the bottom of the quilt! Then it would be altogether too obvious that I was a failure!

The top and bottom pieced rows ended up being cut at 62 1/4", but really, it's best if you measure the width of your quilt in three places, and then take the average before cutting. One thing that you might like to know too, is that I did not trim all the pieced rows to an exact width of 2 1/2". What I did do is take a ruler and trim a straight edge alongside both sides, just eyeballing things as I went. After all, it is a utilitarian look quilt, so who really cares? The original quilt in the picture dates back to the late 1800's. What do you want to bet that it isn't perfectly square either!

Cutting up shirts from the closet

On a different note, the new AHIQ challenge has been issued! For the first time in a long time I haven't even finished up the last challenge, but that won't stop me from thinking about the new one. This one is called 'Positive Thinking' and one of the ideas is raiding our closets for the start of a new quilt. Making do is something I love so of course I promptly went looking to see which shirts of mine and my husbands could be spared. Shh... hopefully he won't notice the empty spot in his side of the closet...

Positive Thinking in the works

Then I looked sown at my choices and had to smile. Me thinks this latest quilt top has greatly influenced these particular choices! {Not that I had very much to choose from as we do need to have things to wear} Whatever, I went ahead and ditched the darkest fabric {for now} thinking to uplift the color mood {positive thinking?}, and went looking in the stash totes for another spark. I guess that's going to be orange. Instead of putting the cream stripe {used in the Strippy Triangles quilt} back into the totes, I added it into the stack too. Grabbed a white/clue/orange/pink vintage fabric that never seems to find a good home and just kept flitting around in the stash totes till I felt that little hum of satisfaction. Okay. That's a good start. Will leave it there to marinate until some more definite ideas for a design gels! Will probably end up calling this quilt 'My Happy Place', but only time will tell how it turns out....

Finish It Up January

It's amazing how quickly something can happen once we're in the right frame of mind. This quilt project has been on the back burner for practically forever. Then comes January and I'm chomping at the bit to clear off the 'in-progress' list. Gotta free up space to start new projects!

Shimmer is a finished quilt top!

All the blocks were done, but I was dragging my feet big time. All those strippy pieces cut, sewn and then cut again? Yep. Though I pinned at every seam, just the weight of the rows kept pulling seams apart until I wanted to scream. Finally, I hit on the solution to fold the rows up accordion style {while resting in my lap} to take a majority of the weight off. That was way better. And for the record, all the seams nested together wonderfully, could have eliminated many, many pins if the seams had just behaved better!

The full quilt

Love the scrappy look so much and yes, the design is a bit mushier in my quilt than in Diane's {look for this quilt pattern in Strip Quilt Secrets book by Diane Knott}. These fabrics choices pretty much guaranteed a soft look which is very sweet to see closer up. So glad that the red and yellow bits add just enough spark to keep things interesting. I was afraid they might end up being too distracting in the overall scheme of things, but hey, look at that, they might actually help! I spent so many of my early quilting years trying earnestly to make 'blended' quilts, that sometimes I think it happens almost subconsciously, my inborn saboteur. Then I can end up with these terribly muted, 'flat' looking quilts that I'm looking at thinking, 'What just happened here? {Never said my blended quilts were successful, now did I?} Seriously though, have to fight that habit off all of the time.

I had thoughts about adding a border after, 'cuz you know, BORDERS?  but couldn't come up with anything that set my pulse racing. Never say never as it's not quilted yet! There's still time to drag it out of the drawers and slap some fabric along the outside edges if I so get the urge....

Love the scrappiness!

Though it should be way down at the bottom of the quilting queue, I already have someone in mind for this quilt, so that feels good. Wonderful to have a destination already in the works. It just somehow looks like great potential for excellent snuggling and with all the purple involved here, maybe I won't have to intentionally make a purple quilt, which has been stressing me out. Just a little, nothing important. Definitely not my favorite thing though, to try and make a quilt FOR someone, with all their potential likes and dislikes in mind. Not that I ever ask, but we can only imagine?

So much easier to end up with a great 'match' at the end of a enjoyable little quilting adventure that had nothing at all to do with anything, other than the fact that we were just having fun. Did you catch all that? The point is, I'm exceedingly happy to have another stalled project checked off the list and team that up with 'maybe I don't have to make a special quilt for so&so after all, 'cuz hallelujah, this little quilt will work out just fine there.'  There's something about starting a new year that helps motivate me even more towards crossing things off lists and moving them along. It seems to come free with the frosty air around here!

Pattern is much more obvious when it's laid flat..

I put the last {quilting} stitch in 'Gather Ye Roses' quilt just the other day too. I had completely underestimated how much time I would be willing to put into this one. One area would be quilted and then I'd go back and add in more stitching. Just because it didn't look right. There's even more stitching that could probably be done, but I just don't wanna. I'm done. This isn't an heirloom quilt after all, and it's time to move on. The binding was put together from various, scrappy lengths of complimentary red fabrics, though darker than the reds used in the center of the quilt. It's a perfect quilt for the make-do, use-it-up binding look, and much, much easier on my pocket book!

Waiting for binding work

The next quilt in the hoop is 'Directions From a Local'. It has such an old fashioned, serene color palette, perfect for our very cold, winter weather of late. Been itching to get this one in the hoop! So looking forward to the simple quilting too. Nothing complicated about a big 'ol Log Cabin quilt.

Directions From a Local next up in the hoop

This project was started as an interpretation of one of those 'Unconventional & Unexpected' quilts that I so love to play with. Then later, the idea morphed into a blend of that, and also, meeting the Maps challenge over at AHIQ. I obviously went my own direction, but it's something that has made me smile. Never underestimate the power of a quilt that can make you smile!

Getting it sandwiched and pinned

So yeah, it ended up being a 'don't-take-me-seriously'' type of quilt, which is good, as I am absolutely loving jumping into the hand quilting now. Some quilts want to be stubborn and reticent, won't tell you right off what they need for the stitching. They make you attempt several different designs or colors of thread, and basically waste a lot of time with guesswork and what-ifs. This quilt doesn't seem to be the least bit interested in anything complex or different. So relaxing and chill, makes easy to settle into my corner of the couch and dive right in.

Already started with the stitching!

It's been a little challenging to carve out enough time to hand quilt,as my mind has been turning to hand work and attacking the applique projects once again too. You know how I sort of cycle back and forth with the hand work, sometimes expending big chunks of time on it and others, barely pecking away. Lately I've been wanting to do more with the hand work projects {they are starting to squawk loudly from sheer neglect}, but then found myself getting completely sidetracked on the latest Ugly quilt. Was gonna get it totally finished up and then... once I started working on it, decided to play with even more applique. Why do I do this? I have perfectly good applique projects begging for attention! Anyway, the real problem is that my sit down time is about the same time of day most days of the week, and it's usually either or. Either the hand applique or the hand quilting. Do one then their's not a lot of time for the other. I've been trying to squeeze in more minutes there and that does help. Maybe if I could kick myself off the computer more often?

Also, the upstairs has been in a constant state of uproar since sometime in October when our youngest son moved out. I wrote a long segment about that and then deleted it. Suffice it to say that my husband has completely taken over most of the upstairs with all his stuff, sorting, organizing and even tossing. Good stuff, it definitely needed to be done, but wowsers does he take forever. And a day. My brief time with laying quilts out flat on the floor nearby the quilt room has been done and over with for at least 2 months now, and now I'm basically just squeezing through, past all the rubble, just to get back to my area . I'm trying to be patient and supportive and have gained extra shelving in my quilt room as a result. Yay! No extra floor space, but a good place to get stuff up off the floor and help in de-cluttering the counter tops. Pretty amazing. Of course that means a little bit of time sorting and tidying myself. So ready for that chaos to be over and done with, but I keep telling myself, 'At least it's not in the living room'. Right?*sigh 

Last Project for 2019

In June of 2019 we were issued an #ahiqflowers prompt that basically said, 'Make a flowery quilt--all design perimeters are up to you'. Well, since I make a lot of quilts with flowers popping up here and there, it actually felt like a pretty tough challenge. It took a long time to get started and then only progressed in fits and starts. So good to wrap up the year having this quilt top out of the way!

#ahiqflowers

I love to over analyze things and then unintentionally wade into really deep waters. It's a particular charm of Virgos. After envisioning all sorts of super complex ideas, I ditched all the crazy and settled onto making an interpretation of this scrappy, make-do quilt pictured below. As mentioned before, it's from the Kiracofe book, 'Unconventional and Unexpected'. Anytime I had ever flipped through the book, this quilt would catch my eye and that jumbled up LeMoyne star block in the bottom right {do you see it?} would want to stand out as a flower. Only it wasn't. But it could be with a little work, right? Easy, peasy.

#Unexpected&Unconventional quilt

Though the quilt looks deceptively simple with it's pour-out-the-scraps-from-the-scrap bin look, there's really nothing simple about it at all. Oh no. The color palette for one thing, is just all over the place. So many yellows and golds, clashing merrily with each other, muddy tans, strange gray fabrics and lots of murky blue/greens. And if that's not a strange enough combination, the obvious blues in the quilt are bright baby blues all the way to country blues. It's just odd. The pinks range from bubblegum to coral and then back to mauve. There's some lavender in to shake things up even more, and don't forget the in-your-face reds and then those greens and bright whites.

This was HARD for me to get a handle on until I finally started going through the stash totes color by color, pulling out anything and everything seemed likely for the quilt. Honestly, I didn't even really like the combination all that well. But whether they matched, clashed or sat in a big sulky pout, the fabrics needed to be settled in, nice and tight together, ready for me to reach in and say, 'eenie, meenie, miney, moe!' And boy, oh boy did it help to have that part out of the way. Sometimes it was a choice of 'this is better than that', but most of the fabrics ended up finding an important place in the quilt.

Starting to come together

During the first part of December, I had most of the left side of the quilt sewn together, and from the gray vertical divider strip over, was playing with a basic outline for the remaining vertical, pieced units. Up to that point, the picture in the book had been open for constant referencing. Though I didn't stick to the design 100%, it felt important to stick closely to it, in order to retain the look and feel of the original. When I got to that busy area around and above the LeMoyne Star, things got really hairy. Just too cluttered and well, ugly. Couldn't handle it at all.

Finally, I closed the book up and set it firmly aside. It was getting in the way of me truly 'seeing' the quilt which meant all decisions were becoming abnormally dissatisfying. I really had to take a big step back. Leave the quilt up on the wall and play with other things while 'thinking' about it. It only took a couple days, but helped enormously when I came back to fiddle again. And believe me, I didn't include the book from that point on unless I wanted to compare what was already sewn together with what the original maker had done. Then there was no 'Well, I should have done that.' It was more like, 'Hmm... that was an interesting difference.'

Finally seeing the foundation for the first flower

Back to the top I went and replaced fabrics here and there, cleaning things up, sewing unit by unit until I finally got down to the Star area again. All the darker greens were tossed, brighter pinks were included. The black and white piano key strip was moved up and changed to a vertical, rather than abutting horizontally into the Star area. {You can barely see it in the original photo, but it felt like important energy.} The base of the Star area was majorly cleaned up, but the area below needed a little more going on than the original photo indicated. I tried more piecing and another hst. It was painstaking, relentless, focus-till-your-eyes-burn sort of work. Late, late into the evenings.

The full finished quilt

The yellow flower ended up being appliqued onto red star background, with the extra red triangles appliqued onto the middle edges of the square after the entire vertical strip was sewn together. It felt kind of like cheating not to figure out a way to piece it, but finally I just threw up my hands and went with what felt obvious. And easy, lets not kid ourselves. But who really, truly cares how it goes together, the important thing is to bring it to the point of being together? 

The flower 'stem' was a random piece of fabric I had picked up off the floor. Yep, straight out of the junk pieces, a very thin cut-off from when I used the fabric earlier in the quilt. The curved edge {a remnant from some other completely different project} was absolutely perfect for the look I wanted. It sang to me in all it's unpretentious glory. Thankfully there was enough of that same exact fabric left to copy the cut-off and add the necessary seam allowance, as well as cut out a leaf and the flower center too. I was so, so glad, because nothing else would have worked nearly as well as that odd blue fabric with the yellow flowers. Perfect! How does that even happen with a quilt like this? 

All of that was stitched onto the quilt before the long pieced units were sewn together side by side. The bottom dark red fabric had to be ripped out and replaced with a longer piece of the same fabric later, when I ran into trouble finishing up the left side of the quilt. Just piece by piece, puzzling things out until it all made sense and flowed well together. If I stood back, looked, and something bothered me, I would go back and fiddle and fiddle until something looked better or yeah, it all looked a lot worse. lol  From a place of a lot worse, it had to start looking better eventually, right?

The extra flower

At some point after getting the yellow and red flower on the right figured out, I decided to play with some of the floral yellow diamonds abandoned for being too small. When I threw them over on the big gray chunk of fabric {a place that sucked up all the light in the quilt and annoyed me}, things started coming together very quickly. I mean seriously, it was like billboard shouting at me, 'Find the best eclectic mix of yellows and make it SCRAPPY!' And then it was hilarious, because I cut out the blue center fabric three times until I finally got it large enough to make the impression it was demanding. It was exhilarating, exacting. So very much fun. Yes! This quilt finally started making sense as regards to a 'Flower Challenge' too!

I think this flower is better than the other one...

I'll say it again. So much fun. I just love when incubation stops being stubborn and turns directly into illumination. It's the best part. The crazy thing is, sometimes you have to be DOING in order for it to happen properly. Which all just feels so silly, because how do we know what to do? Well, sometimes we won't actually know until it's happening and it's really just that simple and really just that complicated. Like getting to use more of that yellow texty fabric. I threw it out of the quilt, decided not to use it 'cuz it didn't look right. Yes, I had the sads about it. Then, in a blink of an eye, it was the only fabric that would work because it needed to be in the FLOWER. All of a sudden, it had a purpose.

Very scrappy

I don't regret following along with the book and starting out from a place of confidence. Knowing that up to that point, my interpretation looked strong. The original quilter made a striking quilt, what an honor to learn and gain from her creativity!

Starting out, I never did graph out the quilt for measurements or try to do anything other than guesswork at a finished size. Maybe that's insane, I don't really know, but it's how I have to work when it comes to improv. The entire quilt grew from the first older, cream, floral piece that I cut out and starting joining other pieces too. It felt marvelous to add in all the rest of that little bit of floral fabric until it was all gone too. It felt intentional and very personal. Just because I'm doing an interpretation doesn't mean this quilt can't reflect me!

That lavender stripe saved the day

The left side of the quilt was not completely angst free. The red and white column of rectangles was where I first realized that my measurements were not going to accurately reflect the original quilt. My oh my, what a shock! The rectangles ended up being much chunkier and shorter than they should have been. Did you even notice? There was a choice to be made right at that junction of the quilt. Make a shorter, fatter column of red/white or chop off some of the work that was already pieced to go well above. Hmm... Choices, choices. I chose to basically 'fake it'. The tall, skinny red/white piecing unit was thrown out and I played around with the adjoining fabrics, cheating here and there with proportion. When I got the correct amount of {wider} rectangles to fit into that area without an awkward 'flow', it felt like a victory. The design was well represented, but I didn't have to sacrifice any prior piecing or bits of color. I'm not even sure this quilt could be made without that very important focal point so it was absolutely worth the effort. Not all areas deserved that much time, so I worked out different sorts of compromises. Super easy in some ways. Mind boggling frustration in others!

The original floral square that started the entire quilt 'size'

There was also some fabric seam-ripped out at the bottom left to make way for some colors/fabrics to be introduced again. I can't help it, colors and values need to be well balanced in my quilts, that's just the way it is. Plus, the left corner of this quilt isn't cut off on an angle, so there was more piecing to be added into that area. Because the right side of the quilt was all but finished when I focused on the bottom left, there was a little, tiny, horizontal strip of fabric having to be added to even the length out on the left. You can probably barely see it in the 'full' pic of the quilt, but it was terribly irritating. I couldn't believe that I need literally 3/4" of an inch of fabric squeezed in, or face cutting off some very important {to me} small chunks of quilt balancing color.*grrr  I ended up cutting and piecing that skinny little length into four different pieces of fabric, three various creams and of course, one lonely piece of a red. Good redirect from the 'oops'! Such a forgiving quilt though. How could anyone ever tell where I cut too short or had to piece more in? It actually happened more than once. Shh...., don't tell!

Gonna be fun to hand quilt this one...

This entire quilt was sewn together with fabric pulled straight out the stash totes. Nothing was bought new for it and in some cases, I couldn't find a fabric light enough or dark enough etc. Maybe the fabric didn't quite have the proper 'vintage' vibe that I was looking for. Regardless, I just pulled from whatever was available, and it felt like this quilt almost thanked me for it. Like it honored the original intent of the quilt.

On that last vertical unit on the right side of the quilt, I almost dumped the stash totes upside down looking for something that would cooperate instead of the green that simply WAS NOT WORKING OUT. The blue/green plaid was serendipitous. Truly. Definitely not perfect, but close-enough to call good and just keep moving things along. That is probably the only area of the quilt that I worried and fretted about until everything was totally sewn together.*whew! It actually did do the job it was meant to do!

This ended up being a very intense quilt and I have to say, it felt absolutely wonderful to sit down and hand stitch the various parts of the flowers onto the quilt. I've noticed that before in other quilts where I add just a tiny bit of applique. After all that focus and seeing almost beyond what our eyes are reflecting back at us, it feels incredible to have quiet time using our hands, not the machine to do some of the work. It feels like paying respect to the quilt or maybe even signing our name in fabric. Saying, 'This is important. It really does matter.' What a fabulous challenge this turned out to be. Thanks again to Ann and Kaja for their thoughtful, interesting AHIQ prompts. I definitely feel more prepared to play with the the Scrap bin bits and pieces again! Okay, that's it. Last project for 2019!

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!