Vintage Lily is A Lovely Finish

Here we go with another good finish! Vintage Lily is all wrapped up except for the label and I only do those once a year. Make a nice big stack and just attack them all at once! A little surprising, but there's just something about this quilt that makes me feel a little bit possessive of it.

Vintage Lily is a completion!

My oldest daughter has already been making noises about taking off with this one and I'm like, 'No, this is MY quilt, back off already!' Which is so funny because I know good and well how as time goes by, there will be others that I like just a wee bit better. Isn't that how it works? Always assuming that I keep quilting of course!

Loving the different red values

This quilt was made with one of Sujata Shah's free-pieced block formula's from her 'Cultural Fusion' book. I took the square-in-a-square block and cut the corners smaller so as to have the look of a snowball block instead. The thing about making the snowballs with this method, is that all the blocks will have the same four fabric corner triangles instead of mixing them up per block. With this quilt, it probably helps tone down any extra busyness, so I don't mind at all.

Lily centerpiece

I did try to orient some of the conversation print blocks 'right side up', but didn't get too obsessive about it. There is one of the larger tulip print blocks in the far left corner {don't think I caught any pics of it tho} that does drive me a little crazy. Yep, my perfectionist traits still pop up even though I've been trying to stomp them out for years and years now. At least in regards to quilting. Ha!

Looking across the quilt

I second guessed adding in the few black blocks but thought the quilt needed the depth. Antique quilt often have an unexpected color that for whatever reason seems to emphasize the main color scheme. You might not even 'see' the random color when first looking at the quilt, but upon studying it, think, 'Hmm... that's an interesting color addition!'. Though this particular mix of colors is not the traditional red, white and blue, it does tend to read that way at a quick glance and the black, in my opinion, keeps the quilt from looking shallow.

Can quilts actually look shallow? They can definitely look uninteresting or one dimensional. I always look for a combination of ideas/elements that will draw someone into {or over} to my quilt. Something that makes them want to take a deeper, longer look than they otherwise would be inclined to. See, it's a compliment even if non-quilters say things like, 'Hey, she's really obsessed about quilting, but you know, her quilts do look pretty cool'. As for quilters, I will never mind things like, 'Her stuff really isn't my style, but I like her quilts regardless.' Interest is interest is interest, right? The best comments are the sincerely given 'I love it, looks amazing etc.,' but we gotta be realistic. Not everyone is as fascinated by quilting as we are!

The side of the quilt

I'm very happy with the way the edges of the quilt look. Cutting all those snowball blocks in half at the edge of the quilt was a very good decision. There's just something about this quilt that still makes me question the proportions. Could it have used another row at the bottom of the quilt to elongate the quilt and give it a slightly better feel? I did play around with that idea and could never 100% decide that it was a better choice. Ended up accidentally sewing extra rows onto the sides of the quilt, knowing for sure that was a bad move immediately after viewing it! Chopping off the sides {to scale?}, was the best that I could come up with other than adding on a border, and that just didn't seem necessary. Though I love and adore borders, not every quilt actually needs one and I'm so relieved to have gained the maturity to finally recognize that particularly important insight.*wink

Loving this one so much!

Just because I'm me and it's fruit season. Had to brag about our first real taste of fresh peaches for the summer! My sister texted me yesterday evening with a cryptic line of  'have some peaches, biscuits and whip'. Okay. Not a huge fan of biscuits with fresh fruit, but this was my sister who has been known to make some amazing desserts. Mouth watering, drool worthy desserts barely being mentioned and off we went hoping to get there before it was all demolished.

How many times can I 'Like' it? lol

I stole this picture off of her later Instagram post just to tease you a little. The biscuits were some kind of dessert biscuit, loaded with real butter and chopped pecans. The peaches were very fresh, the taste so rich and flavorful, it was actually a bit mind boggling! Everyone knows that the first crops in our area aren't usually the best of the best, but wowsers! So yummy! The whip was her famous, sorta-secret recipe for whipped cream that includes a little bit of yogurt mixed in, and well...., lets just say the entire concoction was a huge hit! Yay for peach season! 'Course now I'm thinking about fresh peach cobbler. You'd never know I have been earnestly striving to NOT gain weight this whole year! Yikes! Don't know how I'm ever gonna survive this years fruit harvest without some ridiculous backsliding.

A Quilt Top Finish and the Current Improv. Play on the Wall

It's AHIQ time again and I've been stitching and stitching, trying to get Chunky Crossroads to a quilt top finish. I sewed as much of the applique as possible before attaching the borders to to the main part of the quilt. So much easier to deal with these smaller widths of fabric, rather than have huge wadded up balls of quilt top to deal with.

Just a little more work to do...

Hard on the hands holding that much fabric in place and out of the way. Plus it's a risky thing when it comes to keeping track of all those pins {or the needle?} if you're constantly mauling the bulk of the quilt for any length of time! {Still not using glue....} My kids already make a habit of checking the couch cushions before sitting down, but I don't want them to completely avoid the living room. Those late evening visits are just way too interesting to miss out on!

It was a simple matter to come back and applique those smaller sections onto each corner after sewing the lengths of the borders into place by machine. And yes, I measured and cut the borders to proper length before adding the applique, only adding approx. 1/2 " extra length for applique shrinkage. So glad I went ahead and added the fat flower buds too! They add a much needed bit of spark to the green and help cut the effect of the sharp green on that primitive vine.

And we have a completed quilt top!!

I wondered for awhile if the vine was overkill on this particular quilt, but once again, the power of simple applique prevailed. I'm a huge fan, as you no doubt have noticed by now? lol

Looking at Chunky Crossroads before I fold it up to put in the drawers!

It's hard to get a proper representation of this quilt as the light wants to scatter across it, light up the greens until they're almost florescent and bleach the lighter looking fabrics until there's no real print to see. In shadowy light, the quilt gets a moody sort of attitude and starts looking kind of sulky. {In a good way because it's not a pushy teenager.} I love it to pieces.  All during the many, many, many hours of applique stitching {would it never end?}, I didn't once tire of the colors and/or fabrics in the chunky crossroads blocks.

Loving this border

That feels like success! The block 'formula' is from Sujata Shah's 'wonderful Cultural Fusion' book and the border design is adapted from one I found in an oldish book called  'Mad About Folk Art' by Gerry Kimmel.

On another note, I've barely touched my Patchwork Doodle quilt. Added a few half log cabin blocks and played with some improv. circles. The funny thing is, my oldest daughter has already claimed this quilt as her own. Hello? It's not even finished! I literally have no idea where it's going, what it will look like or shhh... have any confidence in the general outcome.... {Wouldn't want to discourage the quilt from blossoming.}

Patchwork Doodle

No matter. This is the one she thinks is really cool and since I'm mom, she's quite positive it will have a happy finish-up sort of ending.*sigh  No pressure! Ahhh... My brain is so fatigued these days from attacking the end of the year bookwork. All I want to do after dinner is curl up on the couch with some mindless hand stitching or hand quilting--soothe away those tension headaches. Maybe by next month's AHIQ I'll be able to see it more clearly and know how to go forward. No harm letting it hang out on the design wall for now!

Yeah For Viewers Choice Nomination and More Ad.-Hoc Improv.!

Wowsers! So exciting to see 'Things Will Never Be the Same' voted into the finalist round at the Bloggers Quilt Festival! Thank you to everyone who has {or will be} voting for this very-special-to-me quilt. A Viewers Choice nomination always feels like such an honor.

Things Will Never Be the Same

So today I finally have all my {Cultural Fusion piecing} improv. blocks sewn together--20 of them! When I put them side by side, they look like such a jumble. Meh! The applique circles I intend to sew onto each block will certainly help bring these blocks into better focus, so that's a given. I like that part a lot because it just feels right.

Improv. pinwheel lbocks

This has been an odd project for me. Trying to experiment  more with these sort of controlled, almost formulaic 'improv.' blocks is very intriguing to me. It gives me the perfect setting to be free; ie, cutting the single print squares out and then free cutting the shapes. I like a certain amount of clear cut boundaries, even if self inflicted. But, it also feels sort of like cheating. How 'free' it is when the shape is basically pre-determined? I am having such a hard time getting away from the idea that 'improv.' should have absolutely no barriers!

Considering a corner triangle fabric....

But that's okay. I'm getting around that notion just fine because the fact is, working in this manner allows me to take greater risks with my fabric choices--sort of stretch myself outside of that safe little comfort zone. And these fabrics are some that I've returned to time and again for some crazy reason that only makes sense inside my head. Wondering how they could be used.  Greatly enjoying the faintly 'vintage' vibe that I keep sensing and hoping that same vibe can be made even stronger by careful manipulation of fabric and piecing.

Thought about using yellow instead, but too blendy...

Do you ever feel that urge? To try and communicate a 'feeling' in your quilts? So ambiguous and ill-defined. Fabric is fabric is fabric, right? But we all know there's a key to putting it together. Because some quilts feel flat and uninspiring. Some quilts look like the 80's. Others are joyful or heartwarming. There's all sorts of feelings to convey in the quilts we make. I really, really want to make this quilt feel {and look} retro or vintage. A good challenge always keeps me interested and more focused. How about you?

Really like this floral on white fabric!

To that end I have kept with the aqua, red and yellow colorway that people are getting so weary with these days. There are whole lines dedicated to this particular look, but I didn't want to have someone dictate my specific fabric choices. Digging deep into my stash, here's what I ended up: There are polka dot prints, a bright, clear red fabric and a solid aqua as well, different stripes, small and mid-large florals--vintage, 30's and modern, a check fabric and also a re-purposed small blue/white plaid fabric. Some of these fabrics have been floating around in my stash for well over ten years! I wouldn't want to use a pretentious word like 'curated', ha ha, but I've certainly carefully weighed the value of each particular fabric choice. These colors and prints don't come naturally to me as a unit, so I've been second guessing myself every step of the way!

And love how it starts looking more focused when
the corner triangles get larger plus lighter!

And finally I've decided there needs to be more white. What would a vintage looking quilt be without a solid white fabric? Which is virtually non-existent in my stash. Creams, tans and golds, yes. White? You're looking at all I have.*sigh

So that's it for the September AHIQ. All I have to show you! Still prepping for applique work to finish up on my other two AHIQ projects, but eventually I'll have more to post there.

Why don't you join us in our Ad-Hoc Improv. fun?  It's a great crowd!

A Little Bit of Adhoc Improv. Quilting!

So.., big step for me with Improv. I actually cut into good pieces of fabric, not oldy moldies at the bottom of the stash totes! It seemed easier to go the 'baby quilt' route for my first time. Lesson the panic a bit and work on a smaller scale.

The initial stack of fabric. Later on I added more blue and some yellow

I used Sujata Shah's 'Cultural Fusion Quilts' to make wonky looking flying geese {she calls them tipsy triangles}. First I cut 6" squares with a ruler, then I started making my free form blocks, cutting and re-stacking as the directions state. Love that her book makes it easy to find directions for making units, learning the process, instead of having to wade through specific quilt directions for everything.

Getting started with the free form part....

Eventually I ended up with stacks of free looking hourglass units. I've been looking at these in her book for months {for another project} and just couldn't quite bring myself to cut into the fabric. This little baby quilt was an excellent trial run. I love some of the hourglass units and others, not so much. It obviously depends on how gentle or steep a curve you cut. Something to think about!

Free looking hourglass units

On to the trimming. How I do hate thee....! It's just so tedious. I wanted to run screaming from the room, really I did. But... lots of breaks over a period of a couple days and finally it was all done and out of the way. And though I'm not a big fan of waste, what was leftover seemed very reasonable.

Trimming, trimming, trimming, trimming, trimming.....

Finally I ended up with my wonky geese units. Exactly what I was wanting! Sujata suggests mixing up the squares in order to end up with a more interesting blend of fabrics. I thought about it, but in the end played it very safe as I really wanted a calmer arrangement of geese {lots of repeats} for this particular quilt.

Wonky geese on the wall

Eventually I found my way to this fun little arrangement on my wall! This is only the first layout audition, so it's not exactly set in stone yet. There are about 40 geese that still need to find their way into the quilt and of course those oddball geese with the wrong color backgrounds need to find a home as well. When it's actually sewn together, there will be many, many points disappearing, but I think that's one of the charming things about this style of quilt. Ahh... Sujata, you don't disappoint! The directions are very clear with lots of pictures, something that I for one, rather appreciate. My brain doesn't always compute well with the way people explain things!

The beginnings of a baby quilt

Then I jumped over to these little units made from my scrap bin. I'm starting to get an idea about how they need to be joined together.

Scrappy improv. units

I cut some 1 1/4" strips in a light colored fabric that will hopefully help make these blocks 'glow' a bit. It's not something I focus on very often, but when I see it happening almost by accident, it's time to take advantage!

The new unit

And last but not least, here's the last Adhoc Improv. arrangement all put together and ready for pinning. The vintage block has a little bit of rust staining and the basket wasn't hand stitched very well. Keeping it small means I can use it for a wall hanging--still enjoy my efforts without stressing over how well it will hold up to normal wear and tear.

Vintage Basket quilt

Somewhere along the line I decided it was perfectly acceptable to have two different quilts being hand quilted at the same time {two different hoops of course}. I can still hardly fathom why and how this came to be, but apparently this is my new 'normal'. Check me for a fever....

Linking up with Kaja and Ann today for lots of Adhoc Improv. fun!