I'm Still Quilting

 I keep running out of time to write up this post. The 'Folksy Tree & Baskets' quilt top is finally finished! All the applique done and dusted.*sigh

Getting the birds stitched down

I am so thrilled about the birds on this quilt! They look very fat and happy.

And a finished quilt top!

It just feels like they make this very brown and blue quilt come alive.

So happy with the scrapped together
background fabric look

When all the birds, berries and leaves on the tree were attached, then I realized that the baskets needed just a little bit extra. 

And the very subtle addition of blue leaves

But not TOO much, if you know what I mean. The blue leaves were the easy, peasy way to add in the little bit of color that properly ties the baskets back in with the rest of the quilt--instead of them just being a glaringly bright, creamy white distraction. 

Crossing my fingers this quilt will look
extra cozy whenever the hand quilting happens!

Or whatever. I just know that I like it ever so much better now! Sometimes these little details sort of sneak up on us, but they are actually just as important as some of the other more obvious ones.

Glad that I saved these basket cut-outs so they
could enjoy a quilt of their own

Still super happy about the lone basket lying on its side at the top right of the quilt. Why don't I do that sort of thing more often? It seems to add a wonderful dash of character to the quilt....

Loving these colors too

Overall, this quilt ended up being really folksy and fun looking, while still holding it's own as the depository of many oldish and long-languishing fabrics. It's really quite satisfying to finish up these sorts of quilt tops! Just don't think they'd feel nearly as interesting to me in all brand new fabrics. Although, I suppose it's not totally out of the question!

A very basic quilt top

I also managed to sew together a very fast and easy 'boys' quilt top. It's deliberately done very mishmash, scrappy and utilitarian style. I'm imagining it hand quilted in a naïve, organic style that will hopefully hold to the unpretentiousness of the blended fabrics. Still need to put together a baby girls quilt and maybe one more baby boys quilt. None of them are going to be very fussy though. This is going to be the year of the more minimal looking baby quilts. And I mean that. ha!

Starting to get to the point where I can cut it up!

On my wall this past week is the log cabin look piece that is potentially going to be cut up into a largish looking basket. The handle will be cut out of a blue/green fabric in whichever of these fabrics has enough leftover! The birds jumped onto the wall after I cut them out of the backside of the Folksy Tree and Baskets quilt. The wings were a quick addition just to see if they were worth holding onto for use in yet another quilt some day. I'd say yes, these are definitely keepers!

Playing with the color layout on the border

And another project which also managed to get some traction, is the Joy Basket quilt. All of sudden after always, always envisioning multiple rows of border surrounds, I dove right into a scrappy hst border.

How about if I put all extra hsts on the bottom?

I think it was because I finally realized that the border make-up wasn't all that important to me after all. What I really wanted was lots of color and zest. So I impulsively started cutting out free-style improv. hsts in various paired fabrics. It is taking quite a bit of time to sew these together, but I think I'm up for the challenge! After some darker quilts, this is absolutely making me remember why I adore color in quilts.....

Quilting My Way Through the Summer Heat

Somehow I ended up with a quilt top that has a brown background. Still shaking my head over this one, especially after all my 'I'm so tired of brown' rant last year. The fabric has been all stacked up and simmering for at least two years. I've always really loved how the colors melded together and just seemed to hold a lot of promise. 

Sort of completed quilt top--ready for applique!

But then I could never get started because a cream background {my default} just felt boring. And the blue that I eventually settled on could never gain any proper traction. It wasn't until I had these cream off-cuts from the back of another quilt that the quilt really started taking shape in my brain.

Really hopeful that the applique will not look too clunky 
when it lands alongside all of that busyness

From the very start, the whole idea behind this quilt was that I would be making some sort of 'background' for a largish-tree holding a bird or two. I guess now you can see that the brown, pieced together section over on the left side of the quilt will be where the Folksy tree will reside.

Always a puzzle getting the random bits
and pieces of fabric to play nicely with each other

It was interesting piecing together this quilt, quite absorbing if you want to know the truth of it. First I worked on the rows of baskets, separating them by random widths of free-cut strip sections. Mostly I just didn't want them to be stacked in tidy looking rows. It wasn't until the four main rows were sewn together that I realized the quilt needed to have more length.

Will be covered by a lot of applique, but it's
nice to make sure it doesn't look hideous!

Which worked out very well as I suddenly had an urge to put the other half of the chopped off basket there at the top on the right of the quilt. Isn't that charming? Had to throw together one more 'half' basket too as I was lacking that particular piece of the quilt. Wouldn't look right with just the half basket at the top, right? Needed another partial basket for balance.

Loving the look of the random setting and
partial basket blocks.

All the while, I was carefully cutting and hoarding the strippy slabs, trying to ensure that I wouldn't run out. When most of the quilt was sewn together, I all of a sudden realized that I wanted a smallish brown area at the bottom of the quilt too. It didn't look right without the strip sections so in this case I had to go digging through the trash.*whew!  So glad there was just enough, even though I had to sew two really narrow pieces together at the far bottom right at the quilt!

Wish I would have had wider strips for 
the bottom of the quilt...

Overall, it went rather well, all of the myriad mistakes and seam ripping necessary to power through aside. I am super thrilled with the look of the cozy blues and violet coin strips throughout. There's one blue plaid fabric that is actually a shirt that I stole from my youngest sons closet a few years before he moved out. I mean, he never really wore it! So sweet to see it working so hard for this quilt.

Loving the look of this centerpiece! So sweet
that it's mostly all orphaned applique bits!

I also managed to find time to finish up the applique for the Joy Basket quilt. It needs a little trimming and then next will be decisions about the border or possible borders? to attach. I thought there would be the word 'joy' appliqued onto the centerpiece as well, but so far it's just not working out for me. Will hold the idea in reserve until later in the quilt and maybe try again. 

Starting to see the texture take shape

The hand quilting has been going very slowly on the Coronacrazy quilt, though I am working on it most nights during the week. Just can't seem to peel myself away from the phone and dumb scrolling early enough in the evening to get much done. Really annoying.

Had a hard time figuring out what to quilt
in the dark green border area.

I think the problem is that there is soooo much applique and there is a little more effort involved in running the needle through the quilt sandwich. Just doesn't feel quite as meditative as I generally prefer so yeah, I'm practicing avoidance. Ugghh.  May not even get 12 quilts finished up to the completed quilt top stage this year if I don't knock if off and get busy!

A New Basket Quilt

If life wasn't busy enough, I took 10 days and went to my daughters in Oklahoma. She had almost all of the days planned and then of course, there's a granddaughter there! Um., yeah. Quilting took the back seat in a hurry!

All the baskets are done

I took two applique projects with me and managed to work only one of them. This is the new 'Folksy Trees and Baskets' quilt that was started from cut-outs from a previous quilt. You know me and my proclivity to start brand new quilts from the cut-outs and leftovers from previous quilts. Just can't seem to help myself! 

Good times!

Anyway, I'm back home now. Bags are unpacked and I'm catching up on laundry etc. etc.. I wanted to get one more applique project wrapped up before diving full speed into BB2 but we'll see. I'm definitely running out of time on my self imposed deadline! 

A Little Bit At A Time

Life has been very disjointed and moody lately. We have deadlines and 'have-to's' out the kazoo. Things happening that seem quite heavy. Or at least it seems that way. It could be that our get-up-and-go is feeling recalcitrant, and everything seems to take an extra dose of effort just to get done. Our kids and grandkids came to visit last weekend, so that was a wonderful window of good times. Nothing like the honest joy of little children to make everything seem just a little bit brighter for a moment or two!

Coronacrazy progress

Governor proclamations and mandates have been getting especially wearisome of late. It feels like we're at permanent pause regardless of any available, pertinent data. I have family grappling with the public school question and I'm very relieved not to have to be dealing with that dilemma myself! Feel so sorry for the kids who will have to wear masks all day and not get to have any positive social time with their friends. Definitely time to seriously consider home school options, but if too many do that here in our valley, the result will probably be that our community permanently loses the school itself.

Good time to pull out the Coronacrazy quilt out and make a stab at moving things forward--put my crazy towards something beneficial. Just too many things completely out of our control! This picture above represents three hours of auditioning the layered flower bits and then taking off the pieces not needing to be tucked 'under' the hills. I'm not very much in the mood to do this particular applique at present, but it is all prepped and ready for when the time arrives. Which it always does.

Binding for Sweet Tarts

Lovely to have had the binding all ready for Sweet Tarts! It's well on its way to a post of its own here on the blog, and I must say, it will be very bittersweet to be finished up with this particularly sunny project. It's been a great mood elevator during these past weeks of having it in my lap.

Applique border on Seedpods

The Seedpod quilt has the applique addition all cut out, very carefully fussy cut from the remnants of a single fat quarter. Stumbled upon this fabric when combing through the stash totes and it seemed so obvious that it was the perfect choice to help make this centerpiece shine! Amazing what a little fussy cutting can do! Crossing my fingers all the colors work as well as expected....

Time for a basket!

This has been in the works for a couple weeks. One day I was perusing the multiple stacks of fabric marinating throughout the quilt room. This stack of older blues and pinks didn't seem very inspiring, but mixed with a few reds and greens, just had this little glimmer of possibility. 

A make-do background

On that particular day, I must have been feeling fairly invincible, as it was not the least bit scary to just start cutting and throwing things at the wall. In no time at all, there was a substantial basket looking back at me. Easy as pie to add more width to the chosen background fabric and then, next thing I knew, the preparation for applique was well on its way too. Love when a project barrels along, gaining momentum with every single decision made!

Figuring out the applique

I'm enjoying the faintly Scandinavian look/color palette to the applique, but you probably need to know that all the cues for this flower arrangement were taken directly from the darkest blue fabric in the basket. Still not 100% sure about the white stem and leaves, but am willing to try it out and see. The basket handle still needs some fine tuning, but otherwise, all is ready for hand stitching there too.

Next up in the hoop!

Though we did have a lot of distractions over the weekend, there is generally always a brief window for hand quilting around here too. Thankfully Peachy Cameo was already sandwiched and pinned, ready to be popped into the hoop at a moments notice! I've been dreading working on this quilt for some ridiculous reason, but finally the time had come. No more excuses or procrastination allowed!

Closer look at Peachy Cameo

Now that I've stitched a hoop or two, it seems like a rather silly 'dread' and I'm left wondering why? It was probably the open areas in the applique border that seemed rather intimidating. Sometimes it takes getting a quilt into the hoop before those decisions can ever be satisfactorily addressed in our minds. Gotta go through instead of trying to weasel our way around a problem.

Full view

Up till today, I've not had a boat load of problems with the New Blogger. Little bit of a learning curve, but not too overwhelming. Today was a doozy and I eventually just had to delete an entire post and just start over. Why? Something to do with {accidentally} engaging the link button and then trying to type out the entire post while in that particular mode. Definitely. Do. Not. Recommend. I've been working on getting a post out today for more hours than I want to admit to. You'd think I would have quickly figured it out, but no.... I'm not techy smart and it took me forever to understand why all my defaults had suddenly went pyscho. {Head banging stuff.} Blogger, you picked a fine time to change things up and I sincerely hate you. The end.

So the paperwork has been piling up around here and I've been ignoring it best that I can. {For a long, long time actually!} Thinking... Hmm.. Surely I can put it off till a less stressful time? Yeah. Not happening any time soon. I finally bit the bullet and started getting things organized for a big push in the home office. Will still try to blog here and there, but cannot guarantee any regularity. Or perhaps I will post pictures and leave off the wordy ramblings? Whatever. Will figure it all out in due time. Thankfully I have lots and lots of hand work prepped and ready to go for when I need the down time. 

Am currently trying to get my hand work bag sorted out with applique projects organized in order of priority. lol  Order of importance? Or order of interest? You tell me which ones more important...

Another Baby Quilt Getting in the Way

Lots of stuff going on around here what with Father's Day, my moms birthday and now, a new little niece to admire. You know how it is with a big family, everyone tries to step up and help out the new parents! So very thankful we don't have to entertain the older munchkins every day though. Wowsers, I am totally, completely out of the habit of running herd on kids aged seven and under!

Sweet Tart Baskets

Regardless of all the distractions, hand quilting did get accomplished, and finally.... it was time to pin the next quilt for the hoop. This one {Sweet Tart}, definitely wasn't anywhere near the top of the queue, but it's basically the only one that I looked forward to working on, at least for this moment in time. How do you argue with that?

Getting ready to pin the quilt...

Mostly, I think the next-up-in-the-hoop needed to be happy, convey positive vibes or at the very least, trick me into thinking I am happy with my world! I'm so very weary with the roller coaster of emotions these days. But here we are and it's only June. I don't think I'm alone in wistfully looking forward to the year 2021? Which is so sad. Wishing away our days is rarely an uplifting feeling!

Never enough baskets in my quilts....

So I just keep pushing off the news of the day and end up making my world a little bit smaller. Though our quilting stores are now open {even if with limited hours}, it's become a habit to shop in the quilting room first. Antique Crows already has the first round of binding stitched down. Most of the it came from the binding scraps tote, which of course, is something that never fails to impress me. Whether or not it looks very good is probably open to interpretation, but somehow it's almost become a signature look around here! The fabrics that actually come straight out of the totes for binding purposes are rarely magnificent, hard-to-cut-into specimens either. I generally shoot for a certain color range and then settle on the fabric bits that seem most reluctant to incorporate themselves into any one of my quilts.

Binding ready for the hand stitching

The new niece warrants a new baby quilt being made. Absolutely! Can't leave the littlest sister feeling left out! Since mama likes the old fashioned look just fine, I went ahead and challenged myself to work with more of those 'So-Tired greens' I've been trying to get rid of all year. The stack is surprisingly getting much reduced, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Love seeing a good plan come together!

Ohio Star blocks on the wall

A simple color palette, non-flashy fabrics and an easy, oldish style block all came together very fast with almost zero dithering about the details. I couldn't resist adding a floral sashing {cut-offs from the back of another quilt!}, and at the last moment when cutting out, I impulsively added an extra 1/2" to the width. It just seemed like the right thing to do. That skinny little sashing 'look'  didn't seem nearly as much fun after the flowers were cut down to nothing. The corner stones were potentially going to be a bolder green than used in the blocks, and then looked so tame and 'flat', I ended up going in an entirely different direction color-wise.

Getting ready to sew the rows together

In the event you are interested, the Ohio Star blocks are 9" finished and sashing strips a finished 1 1/2", all adding up to a 40 1/2" quilt. Should have been fine and dandy at that size, but no.... You know me, big fan of the border addition! So I played around with several different options including this floral in the picture below, a deep green and then various pinks etc. Blah, blah, blah. Quickly decided that pieced borders were a 'no-go', and then finally settled on a random fabric that caught the corner of my eye.

Auditioning border fabrics

It was a really pretty {though odd} yellow-green plaid hanging out in one of the simmering stacks of fabric. I don't know what it is about raiding the stacks of fabric lately, but sooner or later I'm bound to regret all this indiscriminate pillaging! It perfectly lightened up the whole quilt though and made me a happy camper as to overall look and vibe. These things are important even if this is just a baby quilt! It was sandwiched and pinned late last night after running an errand with my husband, and this afternoon I was able to machine stitch-in-the-ditch around the sashing. Now the plan is for it to receive a little bit of hand quilting in the star blocks areas. 

A little binding prep

Yep, after only one evening of stitching on Sweet Tarts, that quilt gets to be shoved out of the way for the new kid on the block. I wrestled mightily with myself while machine quilting, because the baby quilt could have been finished off so very quickly and then been done. Why do I do this to myself? I suppose it all boils down to being truly satisfied with the end results. That's probably just as important as 'gifting' the quilt, knowing we did our best work within the perimeters of what the project is and how important it is in our creative journey. If I gift a quilt that feels 'less than' and it's for my precious little niece, well.... How precious is that niece exactly? One or two nights of having it in a hoop in my lap is nothing in the long term! And we all know the limits of my machine stitching skills. They are most definitely 'less than'.....

While hunting through the binding tote, I went ahead and pulled pieces for Sweet Tart and also one other quilt that's quickly coming up in the queue. The baby quilt binding ended up being yet another of the 'So-Tired' green fabrics and the only thing that would have made me happier, is if that binding would have needed ALL of it. Wonderful to having these bindings prepped and ready to go. While it feels like I'm just spinning my wheels and getting nowhere really fast, in reality, there are two quilts here almost on the verge of being totally, completely finished! Ahh... you know I'm just itching to dive into another fun quilt start. Something a whole lot more open ended than making a baby quilt! Just have to tidy up the quilt room and decide which particular fabric stack is calling out to me the loudest....

Linking up to Wendy's Peacock Party. She's got some really great advice on how to write the little blurb that ends up hanging with your quilt in a show. Interesting to think about though I don't have to worry about it for at least another year. Maybe you're lucky and actually have some quilt shows to look forward to this year?

Come Take A Look At All My Basket Quilts

It was an interesting exercise to go completely through the blog from beginning to end. All very quickly of course, just looking for anything 'baskets'. The first several years of the blog found me very tentative about posting pictures and I know there are several quilts missing in action. Such a shame.

More modern looking basket wall hanging

And no, I couldn't find pictures of them elsewhere either, because the main reason I started taking pictures of any of my quilts was for the sole purpose of posting them in a blog post. In those first years, it felt very nerve-wracking to throw up a picture and basically say 'Hey! This is my work. Love it or hate it!'.  

The basket wall hanging posted above was finished in perhaps 2011? I just can't remember much about it other than it was made all in a rush one week when I was feeling desperate to have something pretty hanging on a wall in one of our bathrooms. A new shower curtain probably inspired the on-purpose color palette, but it's never been taken down since as I've always found it cheerful. The middle part is very closely based on a quilt out of 'Intuitive Color & Design' by Jean Wells; however, the border was all my own imagining.

Little Prim wall hanging

This primitive little wall hanging with the tiny little basket was the very first wall hanging I had ever made and perhaps the first time baskets were ever attempted either? If so, that would mean that I've only been indulging my love for stitching basket elements since the year 2002. Wowsers. Only 17 years? It's from an ancient American Patchwork and Quilting magazine and I assure you that I felt all the anxiety of the doomed upon starting it. Bear in mind that this little wall hanging was also the very first hand quilting attempt by yours truly as well. My hand quilting mentor was quite, quite dubious about the predictably shaky results, but I showed her. Here I am a million stitching years later, still slogging it out with the hand work. She has thoroughly moved on to bigger and better hobbies, leaving us plebeian quilters quite firmly behind in the proverbial dust. {Btw, do you feel that your quilting hobby is ignoble or unworthy? Nor do I. Her loss, really.}

Vintage Lily in the hoop

Vintage Lily is the latest quilt in the hoop and by chance it has a basket motif in it as well. I know, so very shocking. This quilt was made in response to one I saw hanging in a quilt show back in 2017. It lit a little fire in me and finally, I was able to come up with my very own interpretation.

Baskets still remain extremely inspirational to me, even after so many years of playing with them. There's a timeless beauty and charm to them that easily translates into many different styles. As you can see from comparing the Vintage Lily basket {above} to the original inspiration quilt, simply changing colors and prints can create a completely different look and feel to an entire quilt! Love that!

After considering all the different ways to show you the lineup of basket quilts made here throughout the years, I decided to keep it simple. Here's the link to my brand new Pinterest board: Quilty Folk Baskets. There's about 40 different basket quilts to look at in all. At the very least, the quilt will have a basket represented somewhere. Many of them are my own design, though some are not. Obviously. Baskets are pretty universal so don't expect anything breathtakingly new and different. If you click on a picture, it should take you directly back to a post on my blog where hopefully you can read more about that particular quilt. Please don't be shy about asking questions concerning any of the quilts pictured. Writing about each and every quilt just felt a bit too daunting for this moment in time!