Another Experiment With Both Machine and Hand Quilting

So here it is, my Happy Geese quilt! It's been through a lot of changes since I first started it almost ten years ago, blocks completely un-stitched and reset etc.. I was also experimenting with a wonky placement of geese, but wasn't quite as successful as it could have been. I'd do a lot better these days that's for sure!

Happy Geese

The applique is all my own idea, dreamed up from somewhere inside my crazy brain and influenced by my {leftover} applique bits and pieces tote. This quilt has a sewn together, chopped off style {something not everyone appreciates}, but it warms my heart once in a great while. I like to call that my Gwen Marston influence.

All quilted and bound

I machine quilted around all the geese, along the edges of the borders and around those quarter triangle patched squares. Then I left the pointy rectangles alone. Which makes for a sort of puffiness in the quilt after I washed it. In fact all the plaid area in the quilt ended up looking puffy. Hmm.. I guess I could go back and hand quilt those areas, but why? This quilt is going to get sooo much use from my kids. I can already see the hand writing on the wall.

The top dogs (er.. birds)

It just has that sort of informal I'm-begging-you-to abuse-and-misuse-me look doesn't it? Like mom won't notice or care if this one has Cheeto stains on it.... My daughter do love to make sure all their friends have a quilt to sleep with whenever they have a sleepover and some quilts are just more fun than others.

Big stitching around all the applique with Perle Cotton. And wowsers did that go fast! But it adds just a little bit 'more' to the quilt. Glad I took the time. There's just something about that Perle Cotton that gives instant texture. Instant yummy texture I might add.*wink

A primitive look....

One of my daughters told me she loves everything about the quilt except for the plaid fabric which she said was hideous to her. And no, she wasn't being snotty, just honest because I put her on the spot and asked her to critique my quilt. Personally I adore the plaid element as it was one of those fabrics that was given to me years ago instead of being dropped off at the Goodwill. In fact, all the background fabric in this quilt were those sorts of fabrics. Gotta love that thrifty little thrill we get from using them up, challenging ourselves to make something good with them! And too, I think the quilt would be boring without the sparky plaid. Isn't it funny how we all have our very different opinions?

Want to see the stitching on the back side?

Here's a picture of the back of the quilt. You can see where I wrestled the quilt around to machine quilt around the geese. First one half of the triangles in a long row, and then the other half. If the quilt would have been any larger I'd have given up after the first try. I hurt my elbow earlier in the year and it was complaining instantly from all that back and forth stuff. You can see the plaid border where there isn't any stitching. Good thing it's not going into a show where the judges would complain about uneven quilting throughout the quilt. lol  It's all good. I used some leftover dark brown binding and found the same fabric to add the length I needed to finish this quilt. It's done, it's done, it's done!!! And I wanna snuggle with it already.....

Try, Try, and Try Again

I must be ill 'cuz I'm trying it again--combining some machine quilting with a little bit of big stitch.  It may just be a go with this quilt too. I'm feeling good vibes in the air and of course, {metaphorically} keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

Working on Happy Geese

All I can say is, I must be in a finish-it-up mood or someone pushed my determination button.....

Just Dabbling

I'm a dabbler lately. Dibble, dabble and jumping around from project to project, idea to idea. I started work on my twirly balls. The first one. I think I'm committed now for real but it may still take me a couple months to sew these twelve blocks up. They take. A. Lot. Of. Time.

This might just be possible if I take it very slow....

Sorry for the lousy color in the pic below. It was taken late in the evening and then my camera died. It's an older quilt top. I sewed some blocks together a hundred years ago, tore them all apart {a couple years ago}, then got {re}inspired and ended up with this--somehow. I'm going to do a lot of basic machine quilting on it and just a little dibble dabble of hand quilting. Things need to get moving out of my quilt top drawers. Because {ahem!} I need more room.

Starting to pin another quilt.....

 Obviously. Wouldn't this be sweet new project?

Another new quilt?

I really, really wanna cut into these fabrics. And wouldn't you? I rescued the large yellow fabric from the clearance bin a quite awhile back. The plan was to use it for a quilt backing, which is no doubt why I found it buried in with the quilt tops. What was I thinking? Was I thinking? I know what I'm thinking now....*wink

A Very 'No-Pressure' Quilt in the Works

It was a great feeling to get another quilt top finished up the other day!  But then I had to confront THE LIST.  You know the one.  It practically yells 'Don't you dare start another quilt before you focus right here missy'.  So I dutifully got the rest of the prep work done for the borders on my 9-patch series #4 quilt.  Yep.  It's ready for stitching any 'ol time I get the notion (which is obviously not right now). lol

Prep work for 9-patch series #4

Next?  Oh yes.  The Happy Geese quilt which is supposed to be full of attitude.  Hmmm.... Well, forget about that.  I'm thinking this quilt should be thrilled to pieces to still even be in the running.  It started out being rescued from certain doom and has kind of morphed into the quilt where all good rejects discards go to live.

A little 'make-it-up-as-you-go-along' applique

The geese are rescue (pieces of) blocks, the cream background fabric was a throw-away from one of my friends, the brown birds were rejected reluctantly abandoned from a long-time-ago project of mine and the hundreds of yards of bias vine were sewn for a project when I (oops!) discovered it was not nearly wide enough.  Does that ever happen to anyone but me?

The bright border

Moving along.  After I finished up on the applique bits and pieces, I decided to add on a quick border.  This loud, sparky, plaid fabric--yet another throw away fabric--seems to give this quilt a bit of life and helps dispel the sickly sweetness that comes from using way too much pink.

Trying to use up some more hst's

I only added the plaid border to three sides because I really, really don't like all of my quilts to be square.  Still not sure what I'm doing or where I'm going at this point, but hey, lets try to use up some more of those discarded hst's!  The new tan fabric is yet another rejected unwanted piece of fabric being salvaged by this quilty adopter.  Chop, chop when I get to the ends--easy peasy on the measuring.  You know I've been reading up on those funky Gwen Marston techniques.*wink

Adding on a spiky border

Now for the big dilemma: adding more length than width to the quilt without having the entire quilt radiate incompetence.  I decided to cut and sew a quick spiky border with directions from 'Collaborative Quilting' by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston.  Yay!  Things are taking shape and this whole process has been a tremendous amount of fun!  No pressures or worrying about ruining anything.  Very little measuring and/or pinning.  Just free-wheeling through the stages and feeling good about using up the misfits of quilting.  Kinda fun really......

A Few More Baskets On The Wall

My design wall isn't very big, so I can't really present my quilt in the vertical setting the way I intend to eventually sew it.  That's what the floor is for around here.  Anyway, I'm getting more baskets finished up every day.  They are sewn in a fairly casual way, making some points disappear and creating a very slight wonkiness factor.  As you can see, I'm still playing with basket handle ideas.

Baskets for vertical rows quilt

I picked this stack of fabrics out a long time ago because of the rich look I thought it could create.  Then, of course, I couldn't pick out a pattern to go with and so it sat for a long time feeling neglected!  I have been terribly uncertain about the minimal repeats in fabric color, but now I think I'm seeing enough value change to pull it all off successfully.  I'm calling this a 'Kaye England' look, because it reminds me of her quilts for some reason (although her quilts are much more polished looking!)

Happy Geese quilt

And then we have this.  I've been adding bits and pieces to my Happy Geese quilt, trying to find my direction.  It's not what I really want to be working on right at the moment, so I confess that I'm not spending very much time on it at all.  It's just something that nags at me because it could be finished up and out of my hair so very quickly when and if I make some decisions.*wink

Just a Little Bummed

I've been cruising right along the last couple days.  Little by little I could feel things start to come together as I jumped from one project to the next.  My big plan for the upcoming weekend was to get at least one quilt top completely finished up before my kids came home and life resumed it's normal chaotic schedule.

Looking more like little cake stands every day

Alas, unexpected out of town company has arrived.  Momentum is fizzling away even as I write.  Positively draining away.

Clipped and ready to iron.  (well, sort of clipped)

 I still have a few hand work projects in the works.  It's not like I'm completely at a standstill you know.

Ta da!  150 mini cake stands all finished up.

Ha!  But really, I just don't think I'm brave enough (or crazy enough) to tackle this in front of my unsuspecting company.  Have you ever noticed that there are some people who just don't GET the whole quilting thing?  I mean, like at all.  It's very exhausting to try and explain the unexplainable.  Even my most faithful readers don't always understand where I'm going and no doubt fear to peer too closely into the dark recesses of my mind.

Still noodling around with this monstrosity.

I'm so glad I didn't give up on this sweet little project way back when.  It's almost too sweet for me at this point in my life, but I'm gonna fix that up real quick.  Some prim. applique, sporadic wonkiness, and probably some unneeded borders just for fun.  This project has untapped potential.  I know these things.*wink

Just 'cuz it's old fabric, doesn't mean it's worthless...

My Strange and Wonderful Process

So.  I truly am working on my Mini Cake Stand quilt.  Honestly.  But there's a point (or several points actually) when things always seem to get extremely tedious.  The back and shoulders start hurting.  The eyes blur.  I almost run over my finger with the needle.  Again.  

Mini Cake Stands in progress, really

That's when I feel the need to either leave the quilt room entirely OR find something else to work on.  It's the number one reason I have several quilts in various stages of completion all at the same time.  Plus, I focus better when I don't just push through the boring stuff all in one big step.  It's the simmer system.  If I let things simmer until I feel good about the next step, I come up with better ideas.  Feel more creative.  And usually, more old fabric/scraps/leftovers are used up.  It's a win win all the way around.

I need to use my leftover viney stuff somewhere.
It's getting all sad and neglected feeling stuffed in the box.

My Happy Geese quilt (the project where I ripped ugly blocks apart and started over) has been busily simmering over in the corner of the quilt room.  The moment came when I couldn't bear to sew on my Mini Cake Stands for another second and then my eyes happened to rest upon the geese panels.  All of a sudden I had ideas.  Ideas that no doubt I could go digging through my inspiration books and discover have been done a dozen times before today by other quilters.  But that's okay 'cuz my leftover vines need rescuing and I'm not pretending to reinvent the wheel.  Just enjoy my quilting.

Curvy wurvy stitching and me:  Not getting along at all.

I tried out that curvy stitching stuff.  All these good ideas and I don't know anything about what I'm doing.  After 2 hours of trying to get things to sorta lay flat and then intensely examining a good quilting book with instructions and everything, I finally gave up.  My seam ripper was about to melt and I was done.  Absolutely fried with the entire effort.

Hand stitching it is!

So, back to the basics of what I do best.  That lovely hand stitching.  I feel pathetic.  Obviously I need a class.  With lots of visuals.*wink

I think I've been here before.....

Thankfully hand stitching is a fairly soothing endeavor.  Isn't it incredibly relaxing to work with something that actually wants to cooperate?