Time to See All Those 2018 Finishes Together in One Post

Some years there are more finishes than others. The last two years have been especially good ones for bumping the oldest quilts off the list . It's often difficult to want to work on the oldy moldy quilt projects, but they never get any easier to work on by just ignoring them!

2018 Finishes

It's always great fun to slip a baby quilt or two into the mix and have a fast finish. And this year I even made an oversize doll quilt {hmm... is that actually a baby quilt too?}

2018 Finishes

As usual, I kept my hand quilting hoop busy all throughout the year {both of them, if you want to know the truth of it!}. It's become an oh-so-important part of my quilting journey and I can't even imagine life without that little bit of stitching time late in the evenings. Those peaceful, meditative hand quilting minutes have become something I unabashedly crave at times. It positively grounds me in the best way possible and dare I say, nourishes me as well.

2018 Finishes

The program used to group my picture collages didn't have a good 4-picture setting, so I put my Quilty 365 in two different groupings. It's been on our bed for quite awhile now. I adore waking up to it and then later in the day, snuggling back into bed with it once again. Move over husband dear, I got a good quilt now. lol  Sometimes I think that all my quilting years have led up to this one quilt, in terms of making a quilt that resonates on almost every single level.

2018 Finishes

Overall, I'm not sure how much these quilts represent 'me' as a whole--the way I've mixed up the old quilting projects with the new. It's something that I always find very interesting though, these end of the year quilt reviews. You pop over to someones page and in one click, get to see an entire lineup of the years finishes! What fascinates me the most, is the quilting voice that is always so immediately apparent! There's rarely any doubt whose quilt page you're viewing and that's the very best thing about this time of year. I bet most of us could look at any of these picture groupings and immediately tell what quilter made each of those quilts. Love that!

So now with the details: 2018 found me ending the year with 19 finishes again! That kind of suprised me as it didn't feel like so many. Yep, I was on a finishing mission once again. Trying to get some of those very old, not-as-interesting quilt tops out of my hair.*whew! It was very, extremely, tedious at times, I kid you not. Crossing my fingers things won't get quite that bogged down ever again! Want some year end statistics? I do like to keep track just for curiosities sake.

• 1 Doll quilt
• 2 Baby quilts
• 1 Comfort quilt
• 7 Lap quilts
• 8 Bed-sized quilts
• 6 quilts were completely hand quilted
• 9 quilts were a mix of machine and hand quilting
• 4 quilts were completely machine quilted

By the end of the year I had also given away 17 quilts, a mixture of new and old quilts. That was a little nerve-wracking at times. My family lives in dread that they'll wake up one morning and all our quilts will have been given away! hehe  One was given for a church raffle, for helping to make money to buy their building. Still waiting to see who winds up with that one as I do like to keep track of where my quilts end up!

Lots of ideas for the next year. Stacks of fabric that have been simmering on the counters for months and months and need a little bit of attention. Mostly I just intend to quilt the things that I find interesting without getting too far into the weeds with those pesky squirrels! There are 5 or 6 open-ended quilt projects that will hopefully get wrapped up and around and around we go. I loved diving into the orphan blocks totes and intend to try that some more of that. Adhoc. Improv. is definitely still a happening thing and umm..., there is a scrap bin monster that just has to be addressed soon. No ifs ands or buts about it! Taking up way too much room over there in the corner of my quilt room.*sigh Oh, and don't forget about those oh-so-tempting QAL's popping up all over blogland. Probably gonna join in on with the Unconventional & Unexpected one and also, Lori's String Quiltalong. Sounds like a good start to me!

Hey Grandma! The Perfect Summer Finish

I told you. It's been time for finishing around here. One more quilt crossed off the list and it's already been used just this past weekend! Nothing like my girls having a sleepover for getting these medium sized quilts broken in just a little bit more.

Hey Grandma! a Finish

This quilt is 'Hey Grandma!', one that was inspired by a quilt hanging up at a flea market I went to last summer. It really didn't end up looking much like the original {tho I don't know for sure as I never took a picture!}. Regardless, the strange mixture of colors and fabrics were a direct result of that image in my head. All the lighter blue just happened to slide into the quilt in a sneaky, use-up-fabric-I-already-have sort of way. Amazing how it lightens and brightens and even makes everything seem happier instead of the moody vibe it should have had. There's something happening to my quilting where all choices seem to lead to a 'lighter' rather than 'darker' look these days, no matter what the original fabric pull may indicate....

Loving the odd fabric choices

The design is all my own of course, just another quirky flower in a long series of odd looking flowers. As you can probably tell, I often lean toward the traditional look of making repeat blocks in lots of similar but different looking fabrics. The border is Sujata Shah 'Cultural Infusion Quilts' inspired piecing and is easy peasy, but does require more fabric than I initially intended to use. Really fun to see the wedge spiked border pieces that {now} kind of remind me of a short little flower garden fence. I am so happy with the scrappy, make-do look and feel of it too. A pieced border doesn't have to be meticulously formal looking to wonderfully frame and add to a quilt.

A mix of machine and hand quilting works wonders...

This quilt feels like a fast finish for me, somewhere around one year from start to finish. Sometimes I just have a craving to get a certain quilt in the hoop and this one happened to fall into that category. Or maybe I was strongly avoiding having to make decisions on other quilt tops? That happens around here too, much as I hate to admit to anything so cowardly.*wink

It makes me smile just a little

I have one more quilt ready for binding and then it will probably be awhile until the next true-blue completion. Considering the amount of company, traveling, and other non-quilty distractions, I'm always blown away to see any serious forward progress in the summer.

Just another quirky quilt...

Sometimes I think the time spent in the quilt room or with the hoop must pass in a sort of fog induced haze, of soaking up quilty goodness just as fast as possible! You know, because it never seems like there can be enough time for any of it this time of year. August already???? 

I fully intend to carefully go through all my projects and re prioritize all the quilty lists. Sometime very soon because it's definitely time. Maybe even do a post on the fabric stacks as one of my readers keeps requesting. We'll see. I've got labels to put on for all the quilts entered into the quilt show coming up around the corner {and thread picking and trimming} and guess what? The last of our long weekend of company just left today. In fact, I barely moved the barricade of totes from in front of the quilt room out of the way before I sat down and started typing this post. It looks like we have two weddings to go to between the next three Saturdays which requires {TWO} trips down south to Oregon, from here in Eastern Washington, and lots of efficiency here on the home front to make it all happen without something mucking up the works. Yay! Maybe I'll just go lay down on the floor in the quilt room and take a nap... Why do we bother quilting in the summer time? Maybe we should just try and absorb the colors and textures by osmosis....

Finally Getting Quilty 365 Finished!

My quilty 365 quilt is finished. Yay for me! Completely hand quilted of course, how could I do otherwise with this particular quilt? It's become a favorite of favorites, representing a year in the life of my long-lived quilting journey. This project was started in October of 2015 and early the next month I invited others to join me in the fun.

The center of Quilty 365

Some eagerly jumped right in and others waited for the new year to start. It was a roller coaster sort of project, but always intriguing to imagine the end result. So many different options when we all considered layout!

A year long journey!

There were so many gorgeous and super unique quilts made from this prompt that it just blew our minds. Creativity should never be surprising, but somehow most of us never expected the many and varied variations. How could such a simple idea explode into so many different interpretations? Too, I was always sort of bemused that as many quilters choosing to play along as did. Many dropped out as the linkup continued on, but there were a few determined gals who made it all the way to the quilt top stage! {And others who finished later or broke it down into smaller blocks and finished more than one!} A dedicated year long project is hard to maintain....

So glad to see the value changes...

My circles started out as offerings from the overflowing scrap bin, but later on, moved into more snazzy choices from the stash totes. There are a few repeats when it comes to the scrap bin circles, but nothing very obvious. Basically, the scrap bin got booooring so it was time to try something different. And then later, I realized that I absolutely adored the scrappy circles, even more so than the solid fabric ones. Huh. How's that for being obstinate....

And the darker border....

Somewhere towards the end of the year, I took a month or so and started choosing greens and blues with a black background. Just for the comfort and serenity of working with greens and blues and also, to limit my choices. I love how that ended up being a focal point of the quilt, adding some excellent value and depth {plus a nifty border look{, but also, creating a space for the center to react to and glow. Don't you just love a good glow in a quilt?

Quilty 365 feels like a good finish!

Who knew my quilt could end up so very happy looking? If you look closely there are definitely circles that are very dull and dreary looking, no doubt representing a day that was quite glum. That was one thing I never worried excessively about, whether or not all the colors and fabrics would play nicely together at the end. Somehow I felt confident that it would end up looking the way it was meant to be. Warts and all, this is real life embedded deeply into my quilt! And yes, it was leap year, so there's actually 366 circles in all. The name 'Quilty 365' was never meant to say anything other than 'this is my quilty year'.

Vintage Red getting close to a finish....

Now I have another quilt {Vintage Red} with the binding sewn on by machine and ready for that final hand stitching. It will be the 8th finish of the year, which does feel pretty good.

Hey Grandma next up in the hoop!

 As all of you know, I can't bear for the hoop to be empty for long. After an annoying session of sandwiching and pinning last week, I'm finally looking down at 'Hey Grandma' in the hoop. I went ahead and stitched in the ditch {with my trusty Bernina} between all the blocks and now I'm coming back and doing some hand quilting around the applique.

A good place for hand stitching...

It's not nearly as exciting a quilt as the previous two, but it does have its own charm and whimsy. Working with color is always extremely fascinating to me, but as usual, using a predominance of greens continues to mystify. I just haven't found the secret of secrets yet. Must be why I keep giving all the quilts heavy on greens away! Once I finally get it right, you can believe that I will melt into a big 'ol squishy marshmallow--probably feel very proprietary and never, ever give that particular quilt away....

Hey Grandma! A Finished Quilt Top

It's AHIQ time again and I was determined to work on the border for Hey Grandma! Ultimately I settled on the endless mountains style of free form blocks by Sujata Shah. I wanted a wedge look border {but not especially spiky looking} and her methods always seem very  'doable' to me.

Hey Grandma! a completed quilt top!

The other thing that was important in the making of this quilt was that I didn't intend to buy any new fabrics whatsoever. Everything had to come straight out of the stash totes. Just a little extra challenge for me in making this oldish looking quilt! And so the light blue fabric with the medallion looking flowers ended up being the background fabric of choice. And wowsers, was it busy.

Free cutting the rectangles and then sewing the wedges

So much so that I had to wince when auditioning the completed border sections. It looked spotty and drab and actually, very disappointing. Nothing like the original mock-up seemed to indicate!

Auditioning the border lengths

After sighing a lot and feeling very put upon for having to make adjustments to my brilliant plan, I finally came up with the idea to try a very thin, hot pink sashing. Trying to break up the flow of many, many pink spots and maybe refocus the eye a bit?

Hmm... Maybe needs a narrow sashing strip?

Which I think worked very well. It might not be the perfect plan, but it solved my most pressing problem. With just that little tweak, everything started gelling again. If I had my choice, many of those green wedges would be the darker colors as that's what seems to work the best. However, since I was working directly out of my stash--this is all there is folks! Yep! I have run out of these sour, citrus colored green fabrics in a hurry. Probably making my youngest son very happy as he thinks they are a bit of an ugly green!

And finally a completed top!

Sorry about not showing the entire quilt top laying flat on the floor, but the table still has the leaf in it since Thanksgiving weekend. It's been insane around here lately, all the company and comings and goings. I am currently drowning in laundry and desperately need a grocery shopping trip as well. We had such good times though, thoroughly enjoying all the company, wonderful food and excellent visits. It was absolutely wonderful too that most of the big crowd moments were at my mom and dads. Is that terrible of me to actually admit to feeling that way? Our house was a madhouse as it was. If all the extended family had been in and out of our smaller home, I would have rented a motel room!

Not exactly what I was expecting, but I like it anyway....

My hands were literally itching to get in some hand work by late last week, but it never seemed to be a good time to bring out the quilting. So I resisted and just settled in to enjoy the time with family.

No holiday is complete without some drama and unfortunately for us, we had a boatload of it on Thanksgiving morning. About 4:30 in the morning, my sister woke my husband and I up to tell of smoke gathering upstairs. It was a very scary twenty minutes or so, trying to figure out where the smoke was coming from and if we needed to call the fire department. After the household was gathered outside, my husband and brother-in-law turned off the electric and systematically checked for where the burning electrical smell was originating. Thankfully they eventually narrowed it down to the furnace underneath the house and after a phone call asking our oldest son to please come help {he's a heat and air tech}, it was determined that the fan motor had frozen and was smoldering. Poor guy, having to get an emergency call out on his day off! Such a huge relief to find the origination and also, to have the least amount of damage done while finding it. The fire department would have quickly solved the problem, but the damage would have no doubt been extreme!

So between the three men, the problem was quickly addressed and by 6:00 the women were back in bed {or to the couch and recliners if they had been upstairs} and the men went off to the restaurant for breakfast. After a day of fans blowing air out the open windows and upstairs doorway, most of the smoke smell had dissipated and things returned to normal. Whew! So much adrenaline. I can't hardly take it anymore! All of the adults were emotionally drained, but nevertheless, we were all especially thankful the rest of the weekend. I'm quite sure things could have been a whole lot worse!

Back to the quilting--I'm linking up with Kaja and Ann for AHIQ #27. So glad I still have everything needed to quilt! This was a fun exercise in that the improv. was very planned, there wasn't a great deal of waste and Sujata's directions made for very easy block joining. My after-holiday, is-the-house-going-to-burn-down, fuzzy brain syndrome needed something exactly like this. Hopefully next time will be the improv. string baskets done in a postage stamp style block. I'm definitely ready for more improv.!

Hey Grandma! Starting to Come Together

I was able to find time to lay these blocks out and decide on an order for sewing. Just had to wait until a time when the living room floor was relatively free of traffic! This is such a bold looking quilt top already. Can't wait to see what adding borders might do for it, but I have a feeling this quilt isn't going to get very large. Of course, nothing is set in stone and quilts have a tendency to change directions on me mid stream.

Hey Grandma!

If you remember, this was the initial layout when trying to determine what fabrics might be included in the quilt. I'm still hoping to incorporate some of that oldy blue fabric for the border and see if it will add a little more 'punch' to the quilt. Because of course it needs something more.*wink  In, fact, this quilt is very eye-catching already--from anywhere I have it laying, on the railing upstairs or where ever, it totally demands attention. Don't let these washed out pictures make you think differently!

Close up

Also, I had mentioned before about hand quilting taking up most of quilting time. Well, this little beauty is all done now except for the final stitching on the binding. It's right on schedule with the way I tend to finish things, about 2 years since it was started! 

Lil' Red Riding Hood

There's just been something about the colors and simplicity of the pattern that have been a balm to my very scattered mind lately. So soothing to sit and stitch, stitch, stitch myself into a state of peacefulness. I was thrilled to find this old piece of a light red plaid to use for the binding! I think it was used as a backing fabric many moons ago, but regardless, it's been in the stash totes for well over ten years. I had pretty much determined it to be useless for any quilt ever--just an odd color and it never seemed to play well with other fabrics. Now it becomes the perfect touch for this soft, dreamy quilt! Love how that works out. Now onto another quilt in the hoop. I'm thinking this one needs to be fall colors....

If Only There Was More Time in a Day....

I've been doing a lot of hand stitching lately. The flower blocks are finished and now, as of last night, the alternate petals blocks are completed as well. Although the colors in this quilt are a little funky, they have a richness and depth that I really, really admire. Don't ask me why, they just do!

Hey Grandma! progress

Just the other night when I was stitching away on my blocks {in a tired haze, but attempting to wind down after a long day}, there was this memory of a specific quilt that flashed through my head. The colors in this project reminded me very much of it and I struggled to put the pieces together. And after many long moments of trying to recollect, it came to me. The flea market we went to earlier this summer with the shabby, vintage looking, simple-squares quilt hanging in a back corner space!

I glimpsed this wonderful looking quilt from clear across the way, and immediately had to go suss out the details. After examining the quilt, I determined it wasn't worth the asking price, but those colors and that strange mixture of prints! So very intriguing! No, I didn't take a picture of the inspiration quilt as I desperately wanted to try and make something that 'felt' similar, but perhaps in a style of my own interpretation.  Ah.. but it feels good to know that somehow I have managed to capture the emotion of that particular quilt enough to link to it in a tired, weary moment. However different this quilt is in the actual details, it just makes my heart sing too {success!}. Linking up to sew, stitch, snap, share #11 with Linda and Julie. Thanks ladies, for the great inspiration and also the motivation to find time to post. Lately it's been a toss up between computer time or stitching time.....

One Stitch at a Time

It's been busy here. I had to make the three hour drive to Spokane so my Bernina could get in a maintenance. It's one of those trips that is usually planned around someone flying in or out of the airport, but this time it was all about the sewing machine.

Applique for Hey Grandma!

And because they do it first come, first serve, I was too late to get on the list for the next planned maintenance. Won't be getting my machine back until the first week of September now. Ughh  Oh well, this guy does a fantastic job and I had gotten fairly disillusioned with the {much closer} maintenance service available in our area. Good thing I have a reliable backup! And also, the next trip over to Spokane will include some serious school shopping. Our closest big city shopping apparently doesn't have the appropriate stores needed for, oh yeah, attaining the coolest shoes? My girls were more worried about other girls showing up in the same exact clothing. Not my son. No, he is much more concerned about the shoes.

In the meantime, there's been a little bit of applique done on the Hey Grandma! blocks. I had the leaves all drawn out on the back of the fabric and was scared they were gonna be too small. It looked pretty discouraging at first try. Luckily I hadn't cut out more than two so it was easy enough to cut them larger than the drawn lines {I never draw my applique pieces so tight there isn't a little bit of wiggle room}. You wouldn't think it would be a substantial difference, but even an extra 1/8" of an inch gives enough to fully cover the width of the stems. So relieved I didn't have to ditch this fabric and go find another. This was exactly what I wanted in terms of color and print!

Hand Quilting for Flock of Geese

There has also been a bit of hand quilting done on the Flock of Geese quilt. Simple Kantha-like stitching through the flying geese blocks and an overlapping circle design in the wide sashing strips. So far I'm just doing an echo around the birds, but may come back and do more there. We'll see. It's been very relaxing overall. Just a meditative stitch, stitch, stitch and the occasional dilemma over specific thread color!

Signs of summer...

My husband is a contractor/carpenter/fix-it-guy and earlier this year he fixed a door for a customer. Didn't feel like he wanted to charge for such a simple repair and of course the man insisted. After some wrangling, they decided he would be paid in peaches later when the customers peach trees had ripened. Yay! We had to go pick them ourselves, but whatever. That is NOT a problem for us! I've been elbow deep in peach juice though, getting them prepared for the freezer. We do so love frozen peaches, peach pie, cobbler and of course, peach smoothies. Yum......

I Think There Will Be Time to Quilt This Weekend

A little bit of everything going on in the quilt room! I have one quilt out of the hoop with binding attached by machine. Luckily I had three fat quarters of suitable fabrics to use so I didn't have to go out and buy special. Next up will be hand stitching the binding to the back of the quilt, something that shouldn't take very long at all. Just need the motivation!

Scrappy Tulips with binding ready to stitch down

Hey Grandma! now has the smaller part of the flower applique attached to the larger flower pieces. Once I get the stems stitched down, then it's time to stitch the flower and leaves down to the background. I'm a bit worried about the leaves because they are very, very small and they might, possibly, probably, definitely? be too narrow to completely cover the stripey stem ends. What was I thinking?*aghh!  And they're all cut out of course. Will have to start from scratch too because that was most of whatever amount was left in that fabric....

Applique prep for Hey Grandma!

Since Scrappy Tulips is out of the hoop and on its way to a real finish, it's time to get another one back in quickly. Can't stand to have that hoop sit idle you know! I chose this scrap bin Improv. quilt for 'next up' as I was hoping it could be a fast finish.

Cherries & Improv.

The plan is to machine quilt the inside of the quilt in a basic cross-hatch grid, probably with those forgiving organic, straight lines, and then hand quilt the outside applique very simply with Perle Cotton. I love how the inside is straight out of the scrap bin and together with the outside fabric, it has that slightly old fashioned look. All together it makes me very happy. Possibly the colors? The scrappy bits? The vintage pops of red? My kids are like, 'Yeah, it's nice mom', but I am positively dreamy eyed over the various bits of pink and butter yellow. It just feels happy and cheery to me.

Lots of scraps

Anyway, it's starting to get a few lines of stitching this weekend and I'm crossing my fingers all the quilting {both machine and hand quilting} can be done in a week! Just keeping it very simple!! Hey, there are drawers and even a couple shelves full of completed quilt tops around here. If I don't make progress with completions, then I feel terribly somewhat guilty about working on current quilt projects. My kids and I have actually had conversations about what to do with those quilt tops if for some reason I die unexpectedly. Don't you dare throw them away! lol  I will come back and haunt you! We might be a strange family. I'm hardly in the best position to judge.

A little machine quilting

But yeah, that guilty feeling that pops up occasionally? Most of the time it's not a real and present problem 'cuz I just brush it off like a pesky little fly. Quilting is good for me. The truth is, because I am primarily a hand quilter, the quilt tops and true-blue finishes are a wee bit out of balance. It's a fact. One I'm dealing with it in my own way. Like, now that Folksy Flower is actually a completed quilt top? I've already made plans for the next medallion quilt. This time no applique. At least I waited...

Always Something Going on Around Here

Scrappy Tulips is the quilt in the hoop these days. Since each red block is 22", I have to move the hoop a couple times in order to stitch each tulip in the block. I probably could have stitched the middle sashing down at the same time as the middle tulips, but was unsure what to do there.

Scrappy Tulip quilt starting to get some stitching

Lots of pondering about that and now it's starting to come together in my mind. I started out stitching every other string in the tulips and after about five of them, found myself going back and filling in. Finally I just gave up and am stitching through every single string. Much faster to do them all at once! Loving the look though. It's one of my favorite strings quilts ever.

A closer look at the blocks. It's amazing how different the
red looks depending on the light!

This afternoon also found me doing very basic sashiko mending on some summer capris. When the holes wear through to the point of showing skin on my upper thigh, it's a no-go. I had to go back and touch up the patch on the left as I didn't stitch quite far enough out on one side. I also clipped a few of the white threads so the patch could show through--just a bit. It's a fun, casual boho look. I don't mind it at all for hanging out at the house or going grocery shopping etc.

It's so hard to find capris that I feel look okay on my middle aged shape--I often give in and buy the ones with the pre-distressed look if necessary. {If they're cheap enough!} The mending is an annoying task, but also kind of interesting as I often play with different colors of thread and/or the shape of the stitch. Plus, it holds up really, really well. I taught my daughter how to do this several years ago and then wondered, why not do it for mine as well?

#sashikomending

And here's the next quilt project that persuaded me to jump in and play. I've been eyeing this stack of fabric for awhile now and quite by chance, stumbled on the green/turquoise stripe fabric the other day. I only bought a 1/3 of a yard {since they didn't cut fat quarters} and all of a sudden, the quilt started making sense.

My new quilt project that I'm calling 'Hey Grandma!'
because some of the fabrics remind me of prints she used.....

I know there's some 'ugly' looking background fabrics appearing in the quilt, but it's so intriguing to try and blend the old with the new. It just never gets old to me, unless I start churning out failure after failure of interpreting my ideas and inspiration. I'm also very interested to see if I can use that oldy, lighter turquoise print that I'm auditioning there for the border. That one was a fabric that almost got moved down the road when it was first gifted to me! Then I had second thoughts, 'Nah! Maybe save it for a backing fabric?' And now I've dug it out of the totes for something totally unexpected. We'll see. There's a lot of work to be done before I reach the border, blocks to cut out, applique to prep, stitching to happen. Well, you didn't really think I'd make something this colorful without applique did you?*wink