First Finish of 2021!

Woohoo! Comfortably Quirky is the first finish of 2021! I was starting to wonder if there would ever be one. This quilt was started in December of 2019. The general thinking was that this would be another 'Christmas' quilt for the seasonal stacks, but now that it's totally completed? Not so holiday-ish looking after all.

Comfortably Quirky is finished!

In fact, it's residing very comfortably on my bed right at this moment. This quilt got its design genesis from a rather funky looking quilt in the Roderick Kiracofe book 'Unconventional and Unexpected'. {Look at the December link earlier in this post to check it out.} I took that particular quilt and multiplied the basic design times four, and then of course, had to take a little bit of artistic liberty to make it all meld properly together.

A little spotty looking....

While the original quilt looks charming with just a few circles, increasing the amount x 4 was perhaps a bit of overkill. Perhaps. There's really no regret here, in case you were wondering! There are some things you don't/won't know until you see it. That's just the way it goes when you're flying by the seat of your pants and making things up as you go along.

A little softer looking in certain light...

One of the things that I was trying to do, was to use up some of the old, tired green fabrics in the stash. Mission accomplished! The fact that I also used up many other older, difficult {but well loved} fabrics during the making was just bonus. I loved being able to finally work in a small piece of vintage green, a plucky blue and red recycled shirting, a dotty green/cream that never really played well in other quilts {but looks so wonderful in this one!}, lovely {but troublesome} florals and other various bits and pieces that just were never enough. You know how it is. 

Probably could have put more floral
in the border areas....

In that regard, this quilt is a magnificent success. You cannot even begin to comprehend how very pleased I am with the overall vibe of this particular quilt! Especially when viewing it up close and personal or draped over my bed. It's very, very good in the soft winter light, however the pictures try to portray it as dark and gloomy. Blame that on the photographer! Also, I'm always so pleased {and just a little bit startled too}, by how much difference the hand quilting texture can make. I should know better. Time after time, I am amazed to see a rather blasé quilt top take on life after just a few evenings of stitching. It's rather remarkable really and always makes it entirely worthwhile.

Very cozy vibe

Though the timing was terrible, I am so, so happy that I actually stopped and added the applique tulips when I did. It would have been much easier to say, 'Nope, way too late for this quilt!', and just leave it be. Admittedly, the quilt was quite insistent and probably would have put up a pretty good pout. Lovely to see proof that these six little pieces of applique indeed are important and definitely help to make this quilt shine just a little bit brighter.

Loving the center!

Next up in the hoop is the Hst Medallion quilt, started clear back in 2017! It's been a finished quilt top for quite awhile, but I kept ignoring it in the hopes that some quilting fairy would come and hand quilt it while I wasn't looking!

Middle section of HST Medallion

It wasn't meant to be I guess.*sigh  It's just that this quilt is SO LARGE! HST Medallion finishes out at somewhere around 103" square, which is absolutely ridiculous. I don't even know what I was thinking. Regardless, the time had finally came to move this quilt off of the unfinished quilt top list by hook or by crook. No sense spending a million hours sewing together a quilt top and then leaving it for the kids and grandkids to chuck into the Goodwill bin some day!

Ready for pinning

Would you believe it's been sandwiched and pinned since early December and even then other quilts got in the way? Yep. I'm such a procrastinator when it comes to this quilt. Maybe because it always feels just a little bit overwhelming?

Trying to get the full quilt effect just isn't possible on the floor!

Years and years ago {lets say about 15 years and not get too jiggy with the correct time frame}, I would set up a floor hoop every January for the largest quilt top resting in the queue. There would be a very intense four to six weeks while I quilted and dealt with grumbly family members over the monstrosity taking over the corner of the living room. Great motivation! Nowadays, those floor frames are long gone and it's just me and the hand held hoop on the couch. Which totally works. Uh huh. If I can manage to get the quilt into the hoop and a needle and thread in my hand to actually do some stitching....

Finally in the hoop!

So here I am, nine rows out from the center are totally hand quilted now! Lots and lots to go of course, but officially at a point where I am positive it won't end up being buried back in the quilt top drawers in a fit of pique. There was no way I could ever hand quilt this one during the summer months and well, it's gonna take awhile... Hard to explain, but where I'm at now, it finally feels like the rest is doable. Which it always was if you look at it from the perspective of 'one hoop at a time'. It just took getting a big chunk of the center done to be able to feel it. Don't ask me why that matters. Or why this quilt messes with my head. Best get going on it and hopefully bring it to a true-blue finish some time in the near future. Hope I don't run out of thread!

Wrapping up the Giveaway and A Few Christmas-Look Quilts

The Giveaway for free Autumnal Tulip applique templates is now over and I'm totally caught up! Can you believe that I sent out 86 pdf's in all? Crazy. Definitely underestimated the lure of free applique templates! For those of you who requested a pdf and did not receive one, please email me directly. 

Quarter Triangles for the finish!

Quarter Triangles ended up being the very last finish of the year. I started the quilt with the idea of using up old tired green fabrics sometime last winter.

Loving this backing fabric

Then I found the Christmassy floral languishing in the bottom of a tote and decided the entire thing would be a marvelous Christmas-look throw! I'm never in the mood to work on Christmas quilts until the season so I'm always putting ideas off. Maybe later. And then later usually never comes....

Easy peasy throw quilt

It's not super exciting, but this one makes me happy. The hand quilting went very fast and the binding was found in yet more of those tired old green fabrics. Can't argue with that! I had a little bit of fabric bleed with the reds {I thought they had been properly presoaked!}, but they mostly rinsed out.

This one's mostly about the fabric...

Next up in the hoop is this funky looking quilt that I made based on a U & U quilt. I took the simple, utilitarian look quilt and multiplied the base of the quilt times four. Then I inserted my color palette along with the floral vibe and made it mine.

Love the not-so-perfect circles

I'm not exactly thrilled with the overall look of the quilt, but I do so love the soft, floral vibe to the end product. Having it in my lap for hand quilting just makes my heart melt and I'm charmed that these difficult florals finally found a good home. It's a quirky home, but it still looks and feels right.

And the applique ends up being icing on the cake!

And you'll be shocked and appalled, but I just had to add just a teensy bit of applique after all. The quilt was totally sandwiched and pinned {of course!} when I made the decision to go ahead. Why oh why does that happen to me? Such a difficult time to start adding on applique pieces to a quilt, but now I'm even happier with the quilt. Much, much happier. I guess it was meant to be!

Another Christmas quilt in the works

And then there's this quilt that has finally progressed enough to actually mention it here on the blog. It's another one that I cut out last December in the hopes that it would end up being another Christmas-look quilt. I've been piddling around with it off and on all during the month of December, but it's been very slow go. All the fabric is oldy moldy stuff that somehow ends up looking perfectly fine in this holiday themed quilt. Right? This particular quilt block has been on my bucket list for probably well over 15 years and I thought, why not? 

My seams are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination so I will probably end up sewing the blocks together with a very thin sashing. In my mind I'm thinking a plaid would be good, but we'll have to see what's hanging out in the stash totes. Not planning on spending any extra money on this one. Nine blocks are done out of sixteen! Might actually have a another quilt top done before the years end....

Reconnecting With the Process

 As usual, getting back into routine is harder than it seems. After my initial enthusiasm about getting back into the quilt room, I quickly found myself wasting a whole lot of time with indecision and dillydallying.

Finally, I started tackling an impulse project started back in December. You know, just to have something to focus on! At the time it was started, it seemed like a potential 'Christmas' quilt, but as the project has moved merrily along, many of the more holiday themed fabrics have been left far, far behind. Go figure.

This particular quilt was {surprise, surprise!} based on a quilt in the 'Unconventional and Unexpected' book by Roderick Kiracofe. Circles quilts are a real draw to me and these quirky, imperfect circles were just too much. At some point I made a practice block and then from there, a rough cut template to cut my units. I've worked sporadically on these ever since but never felt any special drive to speed things up.

Even with zeroing in on these as 'the current project to finish', it still took awhile. I'd only sew a few sets and be easily distracted again. Eventually though, I got to a place to try and audition some fabric for use in key layout positions. When I came to the set below, I actually thought 'this is it!' and turned off all the lights in the quilting room and went downstairs to do other important things. As you can see, I was so confident, that I even cut out all the wide sashing units to place between the circle blocks. So clever. Using up some of those 'So Tired' fabrics I've been itching to find a place for...

The first layout

Bad move, cutting up those sashing units. The next day when I got a chance to return to the quilting room, all that boring green just made me wince. Uggh.  Talk about dragging a quilt down! It didn't take me very long at all to find a soft dreamy floral to use instead. Everything inside me sort of melted and said, 'Oh yes, this is much, much better'. And then I tore all the fabric down from the sides and decided that I'd worry about that later. Plenty of time for that after the middle part of the quilt was nailed down and properly cooperating! And then I cut out and sewed a couple more circles because the numbers just weren't working out.

The second layout

Moving along, there was the challenge in deciding where and how to balance out all those lovely, imperfect circles. What a nightmare. No matter where I moved the red, the blue would squawk in protest. Or the reds would be too close together. Or whatever. And who's idea was it to make so many rust colored circles? I definitely could have paid more attention when making those last circles and tried to figure out where the need was. After awhile I remembered that the entire premise was based on a very make-do sort of quilt, and that nothing was supposed to balance. In fact, how odd would this particular quilt look if everything ended up perfectly matching and balancing?

Balancing color. Or not.

Oh yeah. So I got that all sorted out {in my head and on the floor}, as best as could be and started sewing the rows together. I saved the decisions on the alternate rows with two {or three?} circles for last, whatever was left over in fact! Gotta use them all, right?!

Sewed the main rows together super quick. Easy peasy, just simple floral sashing joining the circles, but then... it took an evening or two trying to determine whether to use green or cream or brown or what? color in the rows with longer sections between the circles. And how long a section should there be between the circles? Should the measurements be precisely equal? Honestly, I wasn't feeling super creative during most of this process. It was more a case of immersing myself in the process and forcing the brain to wake-up! Most of the final decisions probably came around when I uncrossed my eyes and relaxed a bit.You know how you zone in for so long that you start seeing things in a fog! Which is fine. Every quilt comes with its own set of challenges.

Sewing the rows...

And finally it all started coming together and the circles rows were totally sewn together. Imagine my shock when the fabric choices for the long connecting sashing strips didn't work out so well after all. Oh nos! What was I thinking? And who knew cream fabrics could actually clash? Thankfully I hadn't joined any rows together with the long sashing yet, and was laying them out for one last audition just to 'make sure'.

Without any forethought or really, much deliberation, I grabbed up all those green, pre-cut, wide sashing units and sewed them into a couple of long strips. Laid them out in the rows between and thought, 'Okay! That's good enough! Went on a sewing marathon and got the whole quilt top sewn into submission. And once again, I left the quilting room basically brushing my hands together thinking I had it all in the bag. Picture tomorrow, this quilt top is FINISHED!

It's a quilt top!

But no.... Something was bugging me about the entire thing. While I had basically looking at this entire project as an easy, no brainer sort of bridge between too much time off {brain full of mush} and a good place to dive into something I might actually care about, I had also rediscovered the bane of a creative mind. When something doesn't feel quite 'right', it just sort of haunts you. Good luck moving forward girl. First you gotta figure out WHAT the problem is and then, you have to figure out HOW to address it!

I do my best thinking away well away from a problem project. While doing the dishes by hand {easy since our dishwasher is on the fritz}. While hand quilting late in the evening. That sort of thing. Most of the fabrics used together were giving off this very sweet, subtle vintage feel, but well..., it just came off as too spotty looking when viewing the entire quilt top from a distance. Which we do occasionally. We're not always face down with our head in a pillow, glasses off and only catching a little teensy glimpse of the current, beloved quilt. Don't want to end up with a quilt that gives us a cramp of regret every time we catch a glimpse! 

Over and over I had went with the lighter, softer fabrics over anything with color and now all those funky circles were a little too prominent, screeching and seemingly not altogether happy. This was what I kept coming back to. What to do, what to do? I emphatically did NOT want to tear the entire quilt top apart to get rid of a few circles, though I would if nothing else worked out.

Finished! Calling it Comfortably Quirky

Thankfully, on day two, which feels really fast for the way things usually work around here, my brain had finally kicked into gear. The very next morning, during my shower, a possible solution hit me from out of the blue.  Ahh... yes. All those lovely floral fabrics that I wanting to input into the quilt? The ones the quilt kept kicking out because they were trying to steal all the limelight? Yep. They became the perfect top and bottom border units, pieced together in uneven lengths. Excellent spot of color to sort of pull in and tame the louder color from the circles. Almost surround them and say, 'you're not the only important thing about this quilt'.

Quilt with top and bottom borders....

Not a perfect fix for sure, but an easy one and more importantly, one that felt right. If the border went all the way around the quilt, then the circles would pop more again. It's a different sort of quilt, still a little spotty looking, but I very much enjoyed playing with these fabrics. It was a stack that felt destined to go into a quilt someday and yet, it never felt quite important for any project that I wanted to start. I think the best part about making this quilt was finally getting to incorporate more of these florals into the quilt. Simultaneously softening the overall look while subtlety ramping up the vintage feels.

Just enough red to make its presence known...

I won't try to pretend it's a masterpiece or even an especially striking quilt. In fact, you'd probably have to see it in person to even fully grasp all its quiet charm. Though it's been years since I read the book 'Quilt Me' by Jane Brockett,, I had to go find my copy and take a quick look-through. Yep. Uh huh. Hmmm... Did I finally just make a quilt that was really based primary on 'fabric inspiration'? Loving it? Showing it off? Using it? Me thinks it was just that simple.... haha  Laughing just a little here. Why is it that what should be the most basic of quilt ideas are never, ever EASY?

On another note, my phone died a couple weeks ago and I'm using one of my daughters old phones. Am very unhappy with the quality of the camera, but plan on holding out a couple months till I can more afford the one that I want. {My husband was out of work for a whole month from illness!} Bear with me please. It's either post bad pictures or have the blog go on vacation...