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!

Bullseye Medallion is Finished Up!

Loving this latest finish! When the last stitches went into the binding I thought to put it immediately on our bed. Alas, too many blue markings that needed washing out.

Love how the center turned out!

Thankfully it washed up very well and though there was a bit of dye in the Color Catchers, nothing seemed to make its way into the lighter colored fabrics. 

The colors seem so intense, it's hard to see it in the pictures

I'm obviously very drawn to the look of circles in my quilts. This center motif was such a simple look to pull off, though you'll probably notice the circle is not exactly perfect. What is around here? That red and white print has been in the stash totes for years. Not even sure now where it came from {or from whom?} but I love the impact it makes on this particular quilt.

Enjoying the look of the hand quilting

I saved the circle template and will try something else with it some day in the future. Mostly, I wanted to experiment with a wide, stripped down piecing look for the borders on this quilt and thought an applique center would help give the quilt some pizazz. Focus. A place to establish the overall vibe. Plus I wanted to play with an element I saw in an antique quilt years ago. You know how it is!

A different pieced or applique element for each border

The border width exact repeats was an interesting challenge. Having the colors change so dramatically each border helped give the quilt energy for sure. I really enjoyed trying to achieve a bit of a 'blend' from one border to the next in that area where the basket handles landed. Things like that always make me smile!

A couple pieces of vintage fabric!

As always, I started with a stack of fabrics that had been simmering and ready to go forever. These were pretty much chomping at the bit for their place in line! As each border developed, I tried to figure out ways to incorporate the most interesting fabrics into each border. It didn't take long before I realized that some fabrics needed a solid break between them as they didn't transition as smoothly as others. Simple to insert a rectangle of a completely different fabric and try to make that rough transition seem more 'purposeful'.

So fun to use up difficult fabrics....

The entire quilt is hand quilted with Perle Cotton #8 and #12 as per usual around here. When I ran out of the first variegated red Perle Cotton ball, I switched to the other similar red that I had available. Same brand, number etc., but this ball of thread went from red fading to white, instead of red fading into light pink. At first I was dismayed, but then quickly started preferring the more dramatic escalation of color and then lack of. So lovely to see it helping to 'pop' the texture on the black background! I can only assume the dye lots were different or perhaps I bought them at separate times?

The variegated threads are the best!

Obviously this isn't a super complex top, but I feel that I learned a lot making this quilt. It's always a bit of a thrill when a personal challenge project ends up working out so well. This was started in the month of January 2019 and took most of a year to plow through all the details, often involving a pep talk or two on the merits of keeping to the stated boundaries. There were definitely times that I wasn't at all in the mood to put the time in, push myself, or think outside my comfort zone. But that fabric!!! It just kept demanding that it needed to be used!

Finally got the last border on Crazy Daisy this week too. After cutting the strips out, there was just over an inch wide x 42" of fabric plus another small piece leftover from the border width. So close! This was one border fabric that clearly didn't need another fabric involved to spoil the look.

The floral fabric was a one yard piece that I had picked up on a clearance sale where you had to buy the minimum to get the 'deal'. So fascinating to see it finish off this Crazy Daisy quilt in the best possible way.

I love how the extra bit of pink saturation at the border helps make the blue background fabrics shine, which of course, is what I always intended from the start, sort of fallen short of the goal along the way, and then wallah! found my way once again.*sigh  Some quilts just wanna take the hard road! This is a busy, loud, bossy sort of quilt and I can't wait to see what the quilting texture will do for it later on.

Right when I was sewing on the final 12" or so of the last border, I found a frayed hole in the border fabric. Just a little smaller than the size of an eraser on a pencil, nevertheless, it was a  big problem. After a moment of contemplation, I admitted utter defeat and just spliced in the little tiny chunk of border fabric that had been leftover from the yardage. I hate, hate, hate doing that! So tacky looking! The fabric is so busy that it's not immediately obvious, but it does annoy me that it was necessary. So thankful that I caught it NOW and not while I was attempting to quilt it! One of the good things about pre-washing fabric!

A corner fix. Don't worry, everything lays
nice and flat after it's ironed properly...

There is a couple more projects that I'm trying to bring to 'completed quilt top stage' by the end of the year and hopefully one more true blue quilt finish as well. Since we had most of our Christmas with the immediate family at Thanksgiving, there should be a bit more time available for quilting during this holiday than what I normally end up with. Still have one more Christmas shopping trip to work into the schedule, but the husband is self employed and it seems that we're always waiting on the next check. Also, we gave in and bought a fake Christmas tree this year and then ended up with one with a cracked base. Had to send it back and now we're waiting on the replacement. Hmm... That's a little scary with all the supply chain issues these days but what do you do? Hope the new one arrives next week like it's supposed to!!

Still in the Applique Groove

The Crossroads blocks sort of jumped to the head of the line. They just weren't happy hanging out in the handwork bag any longer. I'm having so much fun stitching these down though! Love the fact that the circles are not meant to be perfect, never will be, don't wanna be, the end.

Crossroads blocks on the wall

When I was sewing the background of the blocks together, the scrappy piecing didn't seem especially impressive. I definitely second guessed myself more than once! Now that the applique is coming along, I remember why the mixed fabric backgrounds appeal to me so much. It's the make-do vibe that makes so much of the warm and fuzzy vibes happen around here. And the blocks were too big to do all one piece fabric anyway, seeing as how I tend toward fat quarter cuts....

An Amish look for the applique

The cut-out circles from behind the crossroads applique are entirely too sweet to throw away. Because of the piecing, I have to go back and reinforce all the seams where it's newly cut. That's not slowing me down at all! I've already been playing with several ideas for a brand new project using these cut-outs. It's just soooo irresistible! The motif in the picture below is probably the winner. Love the spunkiness of that particular flower, whatever it is. Tulip? Lily?

Or something with more attitude...

All the applique is finished up on the pear blocks now. The light gray background fabrics was possibly a huge mistake, but I'm gonna do my best to make things work out regardless. It just changes up where I thought the challenges were focused at in the quilt!

A stack of pear blocks

And though it was a busy, whirlwind sort of Thanksgiving weekend, I did manage to squeeze in just enough hand quilting to move this quilt out of the hoop earlier this week. After all the initial angst about how best to do the stitching, it simply soaked up tons of texture from the hand quilting! Yay! Binding is already sewn on by machine and hopefully there will be a window for hand stitching on this later this month.

Bullseye Medallion ready for binding work

The next quilt in the hoop should be a Christmas-look quilt, but the heart wanted this one. The soft vibe of this scrappy quilt was calling out very loudly and so really, what else is there to do but get it in the hoop? I've fussed with the initial stitching on this one for three nights now and am getting close to being satisfied. It's terribly hard sometimes to 'see' in that first stitching, but some colors of thread just look so very wrong. 

Strippy Triangles

I know that once I figure out that first hoop, the rest should be smooth sailing. Crossing my fingers this quilt will be super relaxing to turn to in the cold December evenings! If you're interested in making a similar looking quilt, I posted some rough directions here. It's a very fast and easy quilt to put together if you don't overthink things. Which I NEVER do! hehe

Loving the old fashioned look to this one

So that's that. I'm thinking about doing a Christmas applique giveaway again this year {am I crazy?} and can't decide between two Love Apple designs. What do you think, the older one, or the newer one? 

Odds and Ends

I'm slowly getting a little bit of quilting done on Bullseye Medallion. I say 'slowly', because it seems like I've been skipping every other night lately. Oh well. At least there's something happening with it even if it doesn't look like much!

Hand quilting Bullseye Medallion

It's a long story, but the short version is that I got totally distracted by a squirrel last week. It started out with a mad dash through the orphaned/abandoned blocks totes and ended up being eleven doll quilts. 

Little doll quilts

These simple little orphan quilts were gifted during an annual harvest party {for the women in our church} early this week. The older women were having a lap quilt/throw exchange and I decided the littles needed something so they could have fun too. It made a couple of the girls sooo happy!

An opportunity to use up the elephant, kitty and bunny fabrics.

I ended up bringing three back home with me, so yay! One of my granddaughters will have doll quilts for the Cabbage Patch dolly pack I bought for her Christmas. The best part of the whole, three day funfest of making, was that I used up over 700" of leftover binding! Wallah! That tote closes ever so much better now....

Plowed through a lot of short pieces of binding

While that crazy squirrel idea was fun and a tiny bit gratifying, the underlying point was that I was definitely avoiding getting busy on the latest baby quilt..... Not that I'm dreading it you understand. 

Hst's for the wrench blocks

It's more that when a project suddenly becomes a 'have to', then sometimes I get a little stubborn about wanting to. Which didn't last long and next thing I knew, I was knee deep in marking, chain stitching, joining together the wrench blocks, and just generally doing what I was supposed to be doing all along. Just a short little journey until all the blocks got finished up, sewn together in {hopefully} proper color balanced rows, and thrown up on the wall for one last look-see.

I probably should have changed out the color in the centers

I folded over the top and bottom of the quilt thinking that would be preferable to making the side and top/bottom borders different widths. Just chop it off and have a nice, easy border fix. Nah. I could tell immediately what a horrible idea that was.

Applique prep is coming together

Today I finally quit fiddling around with different ideas and what-ifs and just made myself pick something. Anything. My daughter-in-law had laughingly said that if this baby turned out to be a girl, the quilt would need flowers all over it. Okay then. We'll at least put them on the borders! 

The side borders are 5" wide, so I decided to put larger flowers there. After a quick search through the applique parts and pieces tote, I started with one leftover tulip and a long length of potential vine. That gave me a starting place, but I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of tulips for ALL of the side flowers.  I really don't know why that look doesn't appeal to me for this particular quilt? It was a simple matter to grab some fabrics and cut out some very basic flowers to audition. And just that easily, I was satisfied.*sigh  Where's the manual? You'd think I could learn to fast forward past the fiddling and dinking around after all of these years....

The top/bottom borders will probably be lollipop flowers made with more of that vine length and whichever of the coral fabrics that look the best. I'm 99% sure that's the plan and yes, the vine is cut and ready to go. Gonna have to get the side borders all stitched down before I totally commit though. You just never know for sure how your brain envisions something and the reality of seeing it in right in front of your face! Right? I'm already feeling the buzz of pleasure that tells me I'm probably on the right track for making a sweet, but not too sappy little girls quilt. Lets hope the hand work goes along well as I need this quilt done by Thanksgiving weekend!

The Latest Quilty Progress

Believe it or not, I've been earnestly trying to scratch a couple long-ongoing projects off of the list. That open-ended, not-quite-a-quilt-top-yet list. This Improv. HST Medallion is one of the projects that has been in my sights for this fall. I kinda knew where it needed to go after the applique, just didn't have the heart to do it in the summertime. You know how it is with quilts of a certain color!

A few blocks organized for the border and leftover bits

First I quit fiddle-faddling around with how wonky the outside border should or should not be. It was just so exhausting. I ended up cutting out the hsts with the rotary cutter this time around and then let the 'wonkiness' be in the fact that I didn't square them up or try to match up any points. Turns out I'm more precise than I expected. Whoops!

Trying out the third border!

If you look closely, there's plenty of wonderful mistakes though, so I was happy with that. The quilt top looked so good at this point that I just almost called it a day and stuffed it in the finished quilt top drawers. So tempting.

Improv. HST Medallion quilt top finished up!

But no.....  66 inches just seemed a bit too small for one of my quilts. Onward ho! By this time I really wanted to be done. One more border and it's gonna be moving on regardless! I was running out of options for colors etc. so it was a simple matter to go darker {purple fabric} and a little bit dull {gold fabric} in order to not compete with the bright, sparky middle. 

I tried putting the darker triangles to the outside,
this looked much better

The dark purple was a cut up, recycled tunic shirt I had bought a couple years ago at a Rummage Room sale. It was a hundred percent cotton, but kind of loose weave fabric like linen. Hmm.. Definitely not cutting things too far off grain or everything in the outside border would be waving back and forth like a flag!

So glad the little bright tulips were added!

I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out overall, although I do have to laugh. How does almost everything around here {quilty-wise} end up being boxed in and tidied up eventually? Just can't seem to help myself trying to contain all the wild bits I guess. Still pondering the two purple hst's on the outside corner though. Could be better if those two corner squares were solid gold colored....

Really sparky looking quilt!

It's rapidly turning into fall here in Eastern Washington and so the colors in this quilt have been an absolute delight to work with. I kind of figured it would work out that way! Love it when I start seeing the trees turn yellow and all those other gorgeous fall tones! This quilt may be a limited color palette but it's not the least bit boring. I can totally see this quilt being pulled out in the future just for a Autumn vibes pick-me-up.

Even looks good folded up. Maybe I'll just leave it this way?

The hand quilting has been moving along so well on the 'Patchwork Garden' quilt, that I knew it was time to get another top into the hoop. Or at least ready to be put into the hoop! So not my favorite thing to do these days but you know, it's all part of the progress and at least hand quilting doesn't require very many pins.

A new quilt getting ready for the hoop

You might remember this one, Bullseye Medallion from a couple years ago. I've been really hoping there would be time to slide this one into the line-up for finishing up this year. Wasn't quite sure how to approach the quilting pattern {still don't know!}, but just love, Love the colors on this one so very much! It started out as an ode to making the most of certain fabrics, not cutting them too small and/or losing the effect of the prints.

That little piece of red vintage fabric on the corner!

Letting the fabric make the statement? Whatever. It totally made sense at the time. I played with a small, different element in every border just to break up the monotony of the 5" borders. A few people tried to warn me off the idea of making every border the very same width; however, I was intrigued with the challenge of attempting to make it look good. 

The floral basket handles {leftover from a long ago project} are my favorite part of the quilt. Something about how the printed fabric below sort of fades into the handles really charms me. Or maybe my fave part is the wide, red, retro looking circle in the center? The one that makes me want to do more with circles and applique in the center of a quilt? So many ideas to think about! 

You don't have to iron your quilt backings like a mad-woman
when you're hand quilting. Just get the seams tidy...

While I was totally procrastinating about applique prep {the stuff that needs done for the pear blocks}, I went ahead and sewed several quilt backings together. Yes, all for finished quilt tops waiting patiently in the drawers. I wouldn't sew random quilt backings together and cross my finger they would work! I think I managed to sew 8 or 10 before running out of steam! The one pictured above is probably about the best of the lot, unless you prefer backings made out of a total of one yardage. 

I tend to buy a smallish {yardage} amount of clearance fabric {sometimes the rest of a bolt}, and/or make do with whatever pops up in the stash in complementary colors. Yep. A lot of the larger pieces have been gifted to me and yeah, they're not always pretty prints. In fact, most of these backings are not at all fabulous. I get that! But what can I say? My creative juices are pretty much directed solely towards the fronts of the quilts. The rest of it just sort of ends up being make-do and cheap, and I'm completely on board with that. Usually..., until I see Julie's lovely quilt backings! Then I'm super jealous and think I'll just have to do better next time. But I never do.

I don't really know why I was in the mood to sew quilt backings for almost two straight evenings. Such a weird thing to want to do. Something I've figured out in all my adventuring, is that this sort of thing works out very nicely much later on when I'm actually in the mood to sandwich and pin a quilt. Might as well take advantage of wherever the mojo leads us!

A pieced together batting usually works out well for 
the baby quilts and saves money too!

The latest baby quilt was sandwiched and quilted at the same time as the Bullseye Medallion quilt. I have been dragging my heels so bad about this quilt from the very start of the making. Ughh. Just don't know what the problem is with baby quilts lately! I've already machine quilted 'in-the-ditch' around all the long pink sashing bits. And the shorter pink and/or peachy ones. Will probably go back and do some quick hand quilting {with Perle Cotton of course!} inside the brick blocks. All that can probably be done in one day if I get really diligent about it. Then the binding and yay! Giving it away! Which is the very best part.

Next thing will be cutting the circles in quarters and
sewing in the blue/green strips.

And of course, I had to start another quilt project. It's Fall. This is Me we're talking about. It's the Right Thing To Do. And I couldn't resist, obviously. Checking things off the list can only lead to starting new things, right? I'm making this one along the lines of Quarter Circles Round #2, a quilt that ended well, but didn't behave exactly as originally intended. I was trying to do an interpretation of an antique quilt and somehow hand sewed the circles onto the background squares 'on point' instead of how I wanted them. Or something. Still not sure quite sure what happened with that quilt, however well it managed to rescue itself. I'm going to study the original picture a lot before sewing these so hopefully, hopefully!, the same mistakes are not made as before. And I'm only working with nine crossroads blocks this time around, mostly because these are larger. Should go pretty fast once I get started!

Oh the angst and the frustrations of a quilt that takes a turn in the wrong direction. It's haunted me ever since and I'd really like a do-over. Do you ever feel that way with one of your older quilts? Imagine my pleasure when I stumbled upon some largish gold fabric cut-outs from behind some older applique project. Already cut out in circle shapes? Easy peasy to cut out a few more and even more fun that I left them in the same, not-quite-perfect circular shape. Hmm... This could be loads of fun. It's almost like serendipity!

Don't be surprised if I don't get back to this blog for several weeks. Lots of family stuff  in the works, no doubt to be taking up loads of my time. It's good to have hand quilting waiting in the wings and the applique bag packed up and ready for business. Of course, my good intentions are generally more than the actual output when life gets super busy. We'll see how it all shakes out! By the way, my opened ended quilt project list is now down to five projects, with another two 'gonna-happen-soon' from abandoned bits from the Melon Patch project. That feels like an excellent place to step back and take a short break!

Crossing These Two Off the List!

We had a quiet weekend which was wonderful. Long overdue. I was able to bring two different quilt tops up to completed quilt top status. Yay! Sometimes it feels important to clear off the lists a little in order to create some new head space for creativity!

Patchwork Garden

After getting the applique work finished on gangly flower baskets, I wiffle, waffled around about the border. A three strip border made up of equal widths {as per the original pattern}, isn't always a favorite of mine. After much pondering, it became obvious the quilt needed something there on the borders. Nothing I was conjuring up seemed any better.

A completed quilt top!

Don't you just love those kinds of solutions? 'Well, it's better than nothing...'. Yeah. But actually, it really is in this case. I had a problem coming up with a good blue or green or even blue/green, but eventually settled on the one pictured. I thought to use a good lavender or violet but the quilt wasn't having anything to do with those possibilities.

A few changes to the pattern

This particular blue fabric has a darker blue print design that echoed nicely with the dark blue baskets. Because it came off as fairly moody, the white text print combined with the bold coral/red ended up being the best pick {from the stash} to complete the trio of border strips. Yes, it's very sharp and sparky looking, not at all what I started out thinking the border should be. In fact, the entire quilt all but vibrates now that all the parts and pieces are in one place!

The one thing that I really liked about this border pattern was that the inside strip was made up of offset side strips. Since this coral/red fabric is so very bold, I was careful to make sure that it in particular, ended in an appropriate area of the quilt. Didn't want it to compete unduly with the pretty applique flowers and so easily switched which side of the quilt ended up with the longer red strip.

As you know, I'm very fond of text fabrics and so was very happy to find a good place to use this one. I know it's super popular and will date my quilt like no other could, but hey, when it works, there's no sense fighting! And it was on sale the weekend of the quilt show earlier this year. I always have to buy a little something to bring home, you know, like a souvenir.*wink

The blue border fabric has some of that darker blue in it too

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of the Patchwork Garden quilt effort. It definitely ended up with a slightly different feel than the prim vibe to the original pattern, which is perfectly okay to me! It's still cozy and country, a little charming, even when made up in a significant departure from original color choice. That's the hallmark of a good design in my book. Good bones make for a good quilt!

Did you catch that about the 'souvenir' thing? hehe The things we tell ourselves when we're trying to justify buying fabric! The second quilt top finished up is the Bullseye Medallion quilt. Though the black and the green/blue borders were a little bit hard to figure out, the red border went swimmingly. So well, in fact, that I couldn't wait to tinker around with the yellow border!

Bullseye Medallion quilt

I really didn't set out to finish this particular quilt top over the weekend, but once started, it just wouldn't let go. It helped so much to have large chunks of time with no interruptions. Just me and the husband rattling around in the house. Bliss! Ha! That's my absolute favorite part when the kids are gone. So much more quiet time. I mean, it's only for a weekend usually or maybe a week so enjoy it, right? But my man, it doesn't take long before he has to have the music playing, wanting to fill up the entire house.

Busy corner with a little touch of applique

Anyway, the yellow border took more time to cut out and sew together than it did to puzzle together. I waited a full twenty-four hours and then started attacking the {next} black border. My big empty floor space adjacent to the quilt room? Yeah, well.. ,the husband took that over sometime over the weekend. 'Sorting' stuff. I can see that I'm gonna have to dial back my expectations about that as well.

When a quilt is done, it's DONE. What can you do but listen!

The plan was to have a black border and then finish up the whole quilt with a final darker blue border. After the initial layout for the black border {sadly uninspiring}, I went ahead and laid out the blue fabrics in a potential mock-up last border. Ughh. Just awful. For awhile I even considered making the black border a very thin sashing-look border as it didn't seem to make any sort of meaningful impact on the quilt. And the blue was so wrong, it almost hurt. But that seemed like cheating. Doing the default thing without half trying.

So happy with all the different fabric prints used!

What is it that the men always like to say? 'Drop back ten yards and punt?'' Sometimes our plans just aren't going to work out and then it's time to make something else happen. Instead of giving up on the 5" border round idea, I decided to try combining the black and blue border into one. If the black was sucking up all the joy, maybe it just needed a lift. Thankfully, it didn't take any time whatsoever to see the immediate change in the quilt.

The wider 'different fabric' break in the red border is
one that actually acts as a spark in better lighting

It's really amazing sometimes to see how well a quilt can react to certain fabric/color additions. Or subtractions even. Whew! Scared me for a minute there. I thought the quilt was going to go from being bright and spunky to a defeated fit of melancholy! Trying to work fat quarter lengths into longer and longer border pieces was kind of tricky, but somehow it all came together. There are a couple lengths that are carefully pieced to make the length a smidge longer and not be super obvious about it. Other places I deliberately joined right into a different print fabric even though I had more of the same fabric if needed.

One of the challenges of using these shorter lengths is the choppiness of the piecing look. If you're not careful it all just starts looking blocky. I used a trick that I discovered while making my Big Tipsy Basket quilt--break up the shorter lengths with thin contrasting strips. Funny how making the breaks in border lengths more obvious can actually create a better flow overall! 

There were two places where I didn't get the look quite right and had to go back with the seam ripper and insert a different width fabric break, both wider and more narrow depending on the area. In the case of the the blue fabric breaks on the outside border, you can see on the left side of the quilt where I ended up chopping the busy blue print apart and sliding a strip of the gray in-between. I really liked the {necessary} energy of that specific blue fabric, but it wasn't showing up very well attached to the end of the blue striped fabric. Inserting a calm space in between helped that {kinda magical} fabric work harder.

There are applique additions in two different border areas of the quilt. The first is the basket handles on the red border and the second spot is the far top left corner where I stitched a not-quite-perfect gray circle cut from a homespun plaid. Both times it felt really, really satisfying to take a moment and do some hand stitching on the quilt--something not quite as 'rigid' looking as machine piecing tends to be. I'm not sure why that satisfaction was so deeply felt, but I'm not gonna question it. Maybe make a note for future quilting? The quilt looks {and feels} like a 'me' quilt now and that's really all that matters. So that's it! No more borders. The quilt said it was done and I can't see any reason to argue....