All the Applique, All the Time

 There's a lot of applique stuff going on around here. Are you surprised?  First off, I went off on a little detour with the pear cut-outs. Was digging through the applique parts and pieces totes and somehow these just sort of jumped on the wall. All from left behind bits and pieces, including the background rectangles!

An impulsive start

Another project that just all-of-a-sudden starting coming together is this 'Wildflowers' quilt. The background was finished up sometime in 2023 and I really thought it was done. Yep. Until my mom gave me a piece of fabric with these gorgeous flowers on it. Just had to do something with them, so why not fussy cut them and find a background? Should have known I'd find an excuse to put some applique on this yellow quilt top. Never quite satisfied with the simplicity of piecing am I? 

At first I thought all the flowers needed to be cut very close to the shape/color of the printed flower, but after a bit of play, I decided, no. Will just sew the rough shape onto the quilt and let the colors and impact of the flowers tell their story. Don't think a bit of black behind the flowers is going to harm anything. The leaves were interesting to cut out, mostly it was just freehand work. I wanted something a bit larger and flowy looking, but it's always a delicate balance between looking a little contrived and like it was meant to be! It's going to be a bear to work all the hand stitching over the top, but I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to do. Will never be happy with the quilt now unless the flowers are added.

Starting to look more put together

Also decided to make a couple basket blocks. Will be using more parts and pieces from the leftover applique totes. They are a little brash looking for now, but hopefully will calm down with the right background....

Lets see if these go anywhere

Started cutting out more flowers for the Bramble Blooms II-A quilt. Decided that since I was already playing in the applique parts and pieces totes, I'd take advantage of the short, skinny little pieces of green vine available. If the color works, why not? They'll make perfect little stems for this quilt and then I won't have to make even more bias vine. Love having the orphan totes so much!

Very simple floral border work

I went ahead and laid out the borders to Bramble Blooms II-B quilt again, this time focusing on the colors of the green vine. I think the darker green fabric vines look better on the B quilt and the more medium greens look better on the A quilt. 

Mostly at this point I'm finding myself a bit annoyed that the border on the A quilt isn't wider. Proportion-wise it looks fine. Fitting the vine and flowers on the way I desperately thinks looks better is a whole 'nother story.*sigh  I'm half tempted to figure out a way to bump the size of the border up about two inches wider. Hmm... do I have enough fabric left to make that feasible? Will have to check it out before I get any of the applique sewn into place. Sometimes taking the extra steps makes everything look soooo much nicer. Just not sure I want to make the effort with these oldy moldy fabrics though. Please tell me it's not at all worthwhile...

Wrap around vine a little more complicated

For this BBII-B quilt, will have to come back and lay out the vine properly on another day. Right now, I'm suffering from a severe lack of sewing pins. I seem to have used most of them up getting other applique securely in place. Obviously need to get things sewn down and free up some of those pins! For now I wanted to show {for those of you who were curious} how to affix the vines in order to sew the applique on one border at a time. Sorry, not the best picture, but hopefully you'll get the general idea. 

Always good to have extra length

Yes, my vines are lying on the quilt rather sloppily. You'll definitely want to lay the vines out exactly as you wish to sew them. Pin them into place. Best to start the end of  the vine overlapping on a corner, leaving plenty of extra vine. On the other corners, pull extra vine, just kind of bunching it up on top of the quilt, so that you have enough to cut later. I like to have enough extra to leave an inch or two hanging out over the edge of the border. When you pin the vine into place, remember that you will not be sewing the last inch or two of the vine onto the border fabric until after the entire quilt is sewn together. Yes you will have to nudge the unsewn vines completely out of the way at that point and pin them so that they don't end up creeping up into your new sewing machine seam allowance.

After the all the borders are sewn onto your medallion quilt, you will free your dangling vine ends, carefully overlapping each pair. Trim each of the vine ends to land where it's most discreet and fold down the raw edge at the end of the top vine. {You don't have to fold down the edge of the bottom vine, just maybe scrunch it a tiny bit more narrow.} Then, make your last hand stitches. Just a few minutes of stitching with the entire bulk of the quilt laying in your lap. Totally worth the effort, prepping the corner vines in this way!

Easy enough to cut the vine and have extra
at each end

The last applique project prepped and ready, is one that has been patiently waiting in the stacks for at least two years. I never got anything going because I was quite sure the 'sun' needed to be yellow. As you know, I often pull the marinating fabric stacks out throughout the year and contemplate various design ideas. Always waiting on the right inspiration before diving in! In this case, it was a matter of pondering why exactly my brain was resisting having a yellow sun. Oh who cares what color it is, just get this party started! And so it goes... This one will eventually have some bird blocks thrown in if all goes well. Probably not doves, though the antique 'doves in flight' quilts have absolutely been a huge inspiration for the overall feel of this quilt. We'll see. Sometimes the quilt changes its mind and all the ideas go out the window anyway.

The yellow is much prettier than the picture shows...

Will need to get the motif more centered onto the background and see if it still lays flat. These circle things don't always play nice! And that's exactly why I intend to square things up later. After all the stitching has taken place for the centerpiece. So that's that. Lotta applique stuff prepped and even more needing more details here and there. Should really try and find a project or two that doesn't require hand work. Sometimes I just want to sit down and sew at the sewing machine....

Finding The Spark Again

I managed to finish another quilt, Blue #2! It was hard to decide how to quilt around the cameo flower area, but once that was settled, then it was relatively fast stitching.

Blue #2 is completed!

Mostly, when there's a string/coins improv. quilt in the hoop, the stitching just feels inevitable. Why bother quilting a pattern over the top when it's so very satisfying to stitch through the middle of all the little strips?

Always good to have improv. strips in the hoop

I wasn't ever 100% happy with the shape of the flower until the quilt was almost totally finished. Then I was thinking that part looked okay, and found myself feeling more unhappy with the color of the bird. It looks pretty cute close up, but from a distance, meh! Not so much.

Not my best work, but I like it

Quilts are funny things. Fold this one up and wowsers, that's a lotta olive green! Still liking the color palette overall though. Surprisingly enough, it comes off as fairly serene, all the yellowy bits aside.

Found a good use for some old, olive green fabrics!

This was a quilt that would have never been made if it wasn't for the Winter Quilting thing that I did a couple winters ago for our church ladies. No Wasted Pieces was the demo quilt {example of what we were making} and Blue #2 was the quilt that was cut out and sewed up for all the in-progress demonstrations. Lots and lots of old, stale-dated fabrics included in the making of both, which of course, always makes me very happy.

Will probably end up gifting this quilt to one of
my nephews when they get married

The hand quilting on the back ended up being a nicely textured look. I'm always amazed at how much progress I've made through the years, even getting the backs of my quilts to a point where I'm not afraid for people to take a close-up look. Nothing to be ashamed of here!

Lots of good texture!

I was bustling around with lots of quilting energy, feeling very inspired, motivated and all the good things. Really made great progress with some applique prep on previous projects. Then it just all sort of fell flat. I didn't even have the heart to post about it. I'd wander into the quilting room and feel all the blah, blah, blahs. Didn't help that after my husband had re-organized his man-cave on the other side of my quilting area, he has been spending a boat load of time over there and constantly, endlessly playing all of his favorite music. Very good for him. All the therapeutic vibes etc. But aaghhh!! Sometimes I just need a little quiet time in the quilt room. Oh the joys of shared space!

An uninspiring quilt top

So I just ended up doing a lot of reading instead. Eating too much icecream. Kind of fell into a funk of wow, it feels really good not to be on call and is life really returning to normal? Don't think I realized just how mentally exhausted I've been. 

Eventually I {halfheartedly} started sort of wandering in and out of my quilting room on a more regular basis. I'd say hi to the space, maybe restack a marinating pile of fabric, even re-organize a few things if it let me procrastinate on making real quilting decisions. Couldn't really focus properly and it felt like a terrible time to start something new. Other than a little bit of hand quilting time every couple days, there was zero spark. Definitely no hand stitching on the newly prepped applique!

Always fun to play with the orphaned bits

Finally I decided it was time to snap out of it. Enough was enough. I perused all the lists and thought, hmmm... maybe it would be better to start off with some orphan blocks. Don't have to think so hard about that, right? Digging some of those totes out, I stumbled upon this plain jane quilt top you see two pictures above. It was a total flop from a couple years ago. Tried to play with some directional fabric and got the color palette very, very wrong. Not very much interest and energy in it at all. There was actually a note pinned on it suggesting it could be used for a backing some day, but somehow it had gotten shoved way to the back of a shelf. 

Coming together very nicely!

I studied the quilt top to see if maybe I had misjudged the quilt the first time around. Nope. Was it perhaps salvageable? Nope, not the least bit interested. Still a dud! Perfectly fine for a comfort quilt or a backing though. And then I had this tiny, fleeting thought. I mean, so small, I would have probably missed it if it wasn't for the forcing myself out of the funk efforts! Why not make a quilt top specifically for this? Would that even be an interesting challenge? And the next thing I knew, inspiration had come calling for real. 

Instantly, I found myself taking the lid off of the pink stash tote for a background fabric and then right behind that, was basically knee deep in the applique parts and pieces totes--not even sure the background was the right one. Parts and pieces were not exactly flying, but I was putting flower shapes on the potential background and promptly taking them back off. What about this? What about that? And then getting distracted in pursuit of the perfect fabric for a basket. Or hey, what about fabric(s)? Yeah... Even better! Changing up the colors of the flowers yet again. Hhmmm... My made-up-on-the-fly rule was that only abandoned parts and piece could be used for the applique. Definitely made for a very good challenge. 

This kept me well engrossed for a couple hours. Not because I was being picky, but because I could feel the design taking shape. Developing a look, feel, and vibe that was making me smile. Don't you just love when things start clicking properly? Eventually, I had what you see up above and it felt wonderful. So much gratitude for this lovely craft many of us enjoy!

Later, after I had sewed the larger parts of the basket together, all the pieces had to be moved down the background fabric a ways to make it look more balanced as a 'centerpiece'. I'm crossing my fingers the 'JOY' letters can be added somewhere to the quilt too, as I do so love how they resonate. It just felt meant to be, finding the letters in the totes right now. Especially directly after feeling so completely blank and uncreative for a couple weeks.*sigh  

It honestly doesn't scare me like it would have five or ten years ago. Back then I would have panicked and wondered if this could be a permanent thing! Thank goodness for a few tricks to help kickstart our flagging creativity. Wish I could dive in immediately and start the hand stitching for this right now, but I know myself very well. Will be better to try and hold out, use this project as a reward for good behavior! Not sure this little bout of creativity will last, but it felt amazing. Have started doing morning pages as suggested in 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron. Haven't read the book in years and years, but it's something I tried briefly, about 15 years ago. Ordered the book but will probably hold off reading it until my current brain fog clears a wee bit more....