Flowering Snowballs is a Finish, Although Looking a Little Bruised Perhaps

So once again, I completely fell off the face of the earth, blogging-wise that is. We actually went on a vacation, planned for last September, rescheduled for October and then finally rescheduled again for March of this year. The timing was terrible for my husbands work schedule {naturally}, but we decided it was probably never going to get better.

Flowering Snowball finish

Off we went, thinking it better to deal with bad timing than lose our tickets forever. Just before we left I had stitched the last bit of binding into place on my Flowering Snowball quilt and found time to get it washed while I was packing. Imagine my dismay when I pulled it out of the washer and saw some serious fabric bleeds....

It's got some dull areas now

It quickly got tossed back in the washer with a even more color catchers and a small amount of synthrapol. No luck. Upon further scrutiny I noticed that all the dye had gravitated to a single cream fabric throughout the entire quilt. It really wasn't a case of dye bleeding directly next to a weepy fabric, it simply happened that one particular fabric acted as a huge dye magnet. Great. Just my luck.

The two left corner cream pieces turned a very light lavender-gray

 What to do, what to do?

And here you can see all the bottom pieces of the snowball turned color

I know, I know. Several of you out there are shaking your heads at me for ever even washing my quilts directly after finishing. But it's just what I do. Loving that fresh washed, crinkly goodness that comes from a hand stitched quilt almost gives me no choice. And I do pre-wash all my fabrics. Every. Single. Time. But I don't do the 12 hour soak which is probably what I have to do to ensure zero dye bleeds..... Ughh.

With this snowball, it's the top half of the creamy fabrics that turned

In any case, I let this one dry on the floor until it was only slightly damp and then laid it out over my just-made bed to finish drying while we were gone. To soak or not to soak and try to release all those migrating dyes? That was the question of the day and one I needed to think on. A side effect of doing that seems to wash out all the sparkly parts in a brand new quilt. Seeing as how the dye only gravitated to one particular fabric, there was still a bit of sparkle to be found. In fact, the quilt had inadvertently gained a new moodiness, kind of a vintage thing that didn't exactly look ruinous. You know, not to an extreme? I certainly wasn't pulling my hair out in despair, although that could have had more to do with the fact that I was still packing with the intent to avoid doing laundry for gulp! 10 days?

And somehow I don't even care this time.
Just makes my head hurt!

So we left on our trip for Oklahoma to visit our bajillion family members and friends. So many to see and never enough time allotted! This trip was carefully planned out by the men folk {my husband and oldest son who bought our airline tickets for our 25th anniversary last year}. I very determinedly decided to give as little input as possible and just see what opportunities might appear. Turns out one of my husbands cousins is newly into quilting and was delighted to take me to her two favorite quilt stores: Nancy's Trunk in Ripley, Oklahoma and Quilt Post in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Both of them were very fun little shops and well worth the time. It almost helped stem the itchiness I was feeling to be reunited with my quilting projects!

A few new pieces of inspiration!

Not that I bought anything much different than what I find out here on the west coast, but it's always great fun to see how different stores present their wares! I went into both stores thinking to be conservative and only buy about four fatquarters. Yeah right...... So then later in the week I got another surprise when the same cousin suggested we head up to Pawhuska to check out the Pioneer Woman's new store! Ahh was that the most fun ever. It would have been great to eat there as well, but the line was over an hour wait so we headed to the bakery instead. Just heavenly. You gotta try those Butter Blonde Brownies! Totally worth the experience if you ever get the chance. I have been a fan of Ree Drummond for years now and never thought I'd get the chance to visit her store and see all her wonderful merchandise!

And maybe something new for dinner?

So eventually we made it home {earlier this week} and what with the time change, way too many late nights and a long delay on one of our layovers, I crashed and burned. Fatigue set in and I ended up sick for a couple days. Happy homecoming for me! But the first thing I did when I walked into my bedroom was see that newly finished quilt laying across my bed and hello? Who cares about naughty dye bleeds when it just looks, feels and smells like home. I wrapped that quilt around me and had the best nights sleep in well over a week. I aint' changing a thing.*wink

Keeping the stitching loose and undemanding.
It feels so good to have the hoop out again!!

I am so very glad to be home again. Happy to feel like I'm well enough to start quilting again too! {Took a few hand quilting stitches on my Creative Process quilt just last night!} Like always, it's going to take me a bit to get back in the groove, I've a pile of emails to get through and lots of stuff to take care of on the homefront. And although I mostly tuned out the social media on my trip, I did take a day or two and cruise through the blogs just to get my quota of quilting inspiration. Will try to start commenting again now that I'm headed back into the normal warp and weft of my life!

Inch by Inch, They All Meet Up With a Finish Eventually

 You know me, always trying to move forward, one little phase of a quilt at a time!

Another quilt top closer to a finish!

Now that the hand quilting is done on Flowering Snowballs, then it's time for binding! Can't leave that hoop empty for long, so for now my Creative Process quilt is going to be getting some hand stitching details to go along with the basic machine quilting already done there. I went ahead and changed out the picture for my 'Current Quilt in the Hoop' caption at the top of my blog.

Getting ready to sew on some binding strips

But well, that might not take very long and I did have a very quiet day on Friday! Two more quilt tops sandwiched and pinned, including this Marsala challenge quilt. Something I've been itching to get my fingers on lately. The colors--they are calling my name....

Marsala quilt--the Unexpected Crossroads quilt

Summers End was the other quilt that got some pins in it and I'm really not feeling very thrilled to be working on that right now. I intend to stitch in the ditch around all the blocks and then come back and do some hand quilting on the little baskets. Big stitch of course. Is there any other kind anymore? Plus, I had a crazy idea that I might, just maybe, hand tie in the middle of each empty block. It's an idea. One that kinda makes me smile because it's different...

Summers' End quilt. An project that didn't do what it was supposed to do....

Really though, it's been one of those weeks where I've been focused on finishing and getting things wrapped up at the end of the quilting spectrum. I even sewed an extra two quilt backings and delivered the quilt packages to my longarm quilting friend. One has a deadline of the end of April and the other sometime by the end of summer. My friend is a busy gal and I don't want to pressure her, BUT I am loving the idea that within just a few months, my quilt top list could have 7 quilts checked off! {That's including the St. Paul quilt I'm still stitching the binding onto.}

All ready for action

Plus, all the rising sun blocks are done. Whew! I pulled out these five blocks to see if I could conjure up an idea or two for a traditional setting. So far my mind is pretty blank and everything I audition makes me feel very bored. They will just have to hang out on the wall for awhile I guess, soak up some creative spark from somewhere else.

What's left of the ruined Rising Sun blocks

Right now all the spark seems to be directed at the base blocks for the make-do rising sun quilt. The one where I'm going to chop those rising sun blocks in two and use them for an outside border? Yeah, that one.

The Make-Do Rising Sun Quilt

Very simple applique on very simple, but similar {18" blocks}. Sounds like a winner to me!

Always a Fight Getting Back Into the Groove

I was finally able to vacate the back office except for the routine, daily stuff. So nice to be able to see my desk again too. Thinking 'Yay! Gonna have lots of quilting time now' and then well, life happened. We had a houseful of teenagers over a long, busy weekend and lots of comings and goings.

Flowering Snowballs in the hoop

So great to see the teenagers have fun preparing for a Valentines formal, looking all spiffy, and then hear later that the guys bailed as soon as things wrapped up. Basketball is so much more entertaining than wearing a tie! Several of us parents indulged ourselves with a really nice meal at a good restaurant, all New Years resolutions on temporary hold of course. After everyone was packed up and traveling back home on Monday, our family sort of went into hibernation mode. That's when I finally grabbed my hand quilting again and settled into my favorite spot on the couch.*sigh

Attempting to see how the stitching will look as a whole...

Sometime later this week I was able to rouse myself enough to head upstairs and check on things in the quilting room. Everything looked sort of uninteresting and I had to almost force myself to pull out a project and get to work. Not that there's any pressure, but hey, I know this feeling and if I don't just dive in, this state of lethargy will still be winning a month later. At first I just worked on the next border to my Improv. Woven Basket quilt. After much contemplation, it looked this was the winner. Somehow a busy, complicated border just didn't look like it belonged.

A simple border plan

While checking on the progress for the Rising Sun blocks {trying to decide if they were really worth working on}, I temporarily stuck some on the wall in a mock-up border idea. Kind of interesting really, as these blocks are a joke. The more I stitch them to the background fabrics, the more I realize how messed up they are. Next time I will hand stitch them as I obviously don't have the skills to piece little bits precisely enough. My current {favorite} methods of fudging, eyeballing and winging it just don't cut it with these kinds of piecing efforts. Maybe if I slice them in half, it will help ease the puffiness in the centers? Just an idea as I absolutely refuse to take them apart and attempt a re-do.

Auditioning something off the wall

But that's not what I was wanting for this particular quilt, so they were quickly shuffled aside. Applique is more in keeping with the general mood of where this quilt seems to want to go. And yes, it's very simple as most of my applique generally is. But it feels right. And that's really all that is needed before the prep work for applique is initiated!

And then settling on a real plan of attack...

Other than that, I've been playing with my fabric stacks. Putting those together with possible new quilt project ideas. Trying to distill those ideas into something definite. This sticking to the '17 ufo's in 2017' quilt list is all fine and good, but I am burning up with the desire to start something new and of course, something vastly more interesting.*wink  Next up will be to catch up on my emails and everyone else's latest blog posts! Plus, my mom just informed me about another one of our favorite from-Washington-on-the-way-to-Oregon quilt stores' closing. What is it with the main street quilt stores having trouble staying in business? We can't be the only people who prefer to {physically} look at and touch our fabric before buying it!

Ta Da! Flowering Snowballs is Officially a Completed Top!

I didn't have a whole lot left to do in order to call this a completed quilt top. Something I always celebrate around here, because it feels like a finish even if it isn't really a FINISH finish (sandwiched, quilted and bound). I like to be excited at this particular phase and then later on as well, when it's well and truly done. 

I love my Flowering Snowball quilt top.....

I saw the 'Who's interested in doing a Flowering Snowball Along?' over at Molly Flanders Makerie early in the summer and started getting a little flutter in my belly. Excitement? Oh yes, count me in! It's something that in years past I would have ran from just as fast as my cowardly legs could carry me, but now? I'm not nearly afraid of curves as I used to be. Something about doing a bazillion drunkards path segments will do that to you. (Or even me.) And trust me when I say this, these are gentle curves.

The lights not great today so I moved it back upstairs.

Isn't that what people always say AFTER? It was soooo easy. Nothing to it! hehe But not the matching up the seams stuff. I'm not afraid to tell you that it took some work getting through that little part. A little unstitching. A bit of grinding the back teeth off.*wink  Just kidding. I never do that. And fyi, the quilt below has not even been ironed yet. I'm positive that all the seams will look simply amazing afterward......

A close up of some of my fabric choices....

Initially, I had a little trouble cutting into my creamy white prints that I love to hoard up, but I think it was a wise choice to use them. This quilt has some dark and moody fabrics that needed the light, bright, almost whites to wake everything up and/or give it a softer feel. These colors have really been speaking to me lately and I wanted one more chance to play with them before I moved on. No reason to cheat this quilt out of some great fabrics just because I have a tough time cutting into a couple very-hard-to-get (around here) fabrics.

I am really enjoying the secondary pattern in this quilt....

For awhile now, I've been trying to branch out a bit and use 'larger' prints too, which always makes me plenty nervous. They never look properly balanced in the low percentage usage that I end up with, mostly because I don't actually buy that much largish printed fabric! The left side of my brain whines about the balance but the right side revels in the discrepancies--wants to think it looks more vintage or antiquish. Well, how can we do the make-do thing right anymore when most of us have so much more than we need? Do you think the quilters of old WANTED to use those oddball mixes of fabric? They probably apologized for them every time they showed off their quilt and people like you and me think it's 'charming'!

Anyway, I don't think I'm going to add a border to this quilt top. I like the piecing right out to the edges and it's already 77" x 89". Plenty big enough for me! If you haven't already, go check out the other Flowering Snowball quilts in Molly's Wrap Up post. Beautiful! I didn't get finished in time to link up, but this quilt top still feels like a real winner.

Hand Quilting and Precision Piecing {or not}

It took me a couple evenings with the hoop to settle back into my 'zone'. At first the needle felt really small and my fingers were a bit fumbly. The correct rocking motion was eluding me and it doesn't help that my thimble is mostly worn out. Occasionally the needle actually slips right through a hole in the leather {ouch!}.

Hand quilting the Worry Baskets

I finally found my groove late one night after everyone had went to bed, leaving me alone on the couch doing my thing. Ahhh.... Just me and some little baskets, the silence, my thoughts and the soft swooshing noise of the thread moving in and out of the fabric. Complete and total peace. I do love that. Couldn't hardly put it down at the end of that 'last' frame but I'm far from the finish at this particular point. No point in ruining my next day over a silly lack of sleep.

Back in the bag until next time

In good contrast of different quilting methods, I've been working with my Flowering Snowballs a little every day. So glad I went ahead with this challenge, but getting through this particular phase isn't exactly fun. All the seams are pressed in the same direction and it makes for a tough time getting things to match up properly.

Sewing the Flowering Snowball row

I saw a tutorial for using glue, but I just can't quite bring myself to do that yet. Even I know it's a great idea. Fabulous really. And everybody is using glue these days. Except me. Which just makes me stubborn or old fashioned or maybe even... cautious? I mean, what if the glue loves my quilt so much it never wants to wash out? lol

Matching up the seams {or not}

Don't worry. I'm sure I'll get through this rather awkward period in my quilting life too. You know I always have before.

So basically, (by looking at the picture above) you can see what I have to deal with in about one (out of four or five) sets of the piecing match-ups. The seam on the left is just a smidge off. Which is why I baste a small area at the seam before I do the real seam thing. Still....test, test, testing doesn't always eliminate the issue at hand. Every single time I get these results, there is a decision to be made. Yippee skippee. Why does there always have to be decisions? Be fussy flossy and rip it out? Allow for margin of error in my quilt and move on without using the seam ripper? {I am a devotee of the galloping pony test afterall.} And sometimes I just pretend I don't even notice. Which, of course, is always a fun option, but don't kid yourself. It IS a decision too.  ienie mienie minie moe......

Well, this time I came down on the side of fussy. Mostly I'm trying to fix the 'smidge' if it's obvious--a seam width or so. After all, this is a challenge. I might as well try to get it right the first time and LEARN something right? Ahem, all it really means is that I'm learning to pin a little better. Just don't think I'm quite ready for that glue yet.*wink

Halfway Through With the Flowering Snowballs

Here's the first eleven Flowering Snowball blocks finished and up on the wall. I started out piecing/stitching real slow and careful, trying to get everything 'just right'. I unpicked when needed and generally just took my very sweet time.

The first 11 Flowering Snowballs

Then I decided it was time to quit dinking around and do some chain piecing for efficiencies sake.  I'm on a schedule don't you know! lol Anyway, I somehow I ended up having to take care of the unit below twice before I got it right. Seriously, the first time I took the right white piece off and sewed it on WRONG. Then I took the wrong white piece off and resewed it on WRONG. Okay, now I'm confused. But if you look at the picture below very carefully, you can see the bottom white piece was once sewed on correctly and then some idiot decided to unpick it and sew it on the WRONG way. I'm still not sure what happened here. You'd think there would be a brilliant excuse to explain things like that away, but sadly, there's not.

How not to sew this unit...

I did finally get my brain corralled and headed in the proper direction, thank goodness.There's really no point to chain piecing if you I can't even get the pieces sewn together properly.

Trying out some chain piecing

After a good nights sleep I felt much more confident about trying to put together sets of blocks instead of one measly block at at time. This time around I attempted sewing sets of four! blocks and surprisingly, it worked out very well.

The next 12 blocks

These blocks look better than they appear in the picture. Really, I was in a hurry, jumping up and down off my sewing chair--slapping the blocks on the wall and getting back to my sewing. When this kind of sewing is going well, it's not the time to be worrying about the photo op.

Another Day of Progress

I've been working on my Flowering Snowball blocks a little here and there. They are just challenging enough to put a smile on my face while I'm sewing them together, but not so easy I get to relax. So exciting that I can actually sew a complicated block together like this without extreme difficulties!

Flowering Snowball blocks

Of course, working on quilts like my Learning Curves is the main reason I can sew Flowering Snowballs together and stay sane. Well, kinda sane. I have to say, all the pin, pin, pinning and fussy sewing in the centers does get tedious after a bit. Nice to have all the pieces finally cut out and ready to go too. I was trying to pace myself with the cutting out so I didn't strain my hand like the last time I was cutting out template pieces. So hard when you want to have it all done!

All the pieces ready to put together

And then in the evenings I try to spend some time with my Worry Baskets quilt in my lap. It's really hot in our part of the state right now, but my husband keeps the air conditioning up high enough that I can usually feel glad to have a quilt hanging around.

Another day with the hoop

I feel like I'm in that wonderful phase where I'm getting nowhere very fast with the hand quilting on this particular quilt. I have to keep telling myself that another frame done is another day of hand quilting I won't have to be spending on this quilt later on. Love the look so very much so I just keep picking the frame up every evening. Eventually I'll be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Linking up with Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday where I'll be chugging along with the other slow stitchers!