Quilting My Way Through the Summer Heat

Somehow I ended up with a quilt top that has a brown background. Still shaking my head over this one, especially after all my 'I'm so tired of brown' rant last year. The fabric has been all stacked up and simmering for at least two years. I've always really loved how the colors melded together and just seemed to hold a lot of promise. 

Sort of completed quilt top--ready for applique!

But then I could never get started because a cream background {my default} just felt boring. And the blue that I eventually settled on could never gain any proper traction. It wasn't until I had these cream off-cuts from the back of another quilt that the quilt really started taking shape in my brain.

Really hopeful that the applique will not look too clunky 
when it lands alongside all of that busyness

From the very start, the whole idea behind this quilt was that I would be making some sort of 'background' for a largish-tree holding a bird or two. I guess now you can see that the brown, pieced together section over on the left side of the quilt will be where the Folksy tree will reside.

Always a puzzle getting the random bits
and pieces of fabric to play nicely with each other

It was interesting piecing together this quilt, quite absorbing if you want to know the truth of it. First I worked on the rows of baskets, separating them by random widths of free-cut strip sections. Mostly I just didn't want them to be stacked in tidy looking rows. It wasn't until the four main rows were sewn together that I realized the quilt needed to have more length.

Will be covered by a lot of applique, but it's
nice to make sure it doesn't look hideous!

Which worked out very well as I suddenly had an urge to put the other half of the chopped off basket there at the top on the right of the quilt. Isn't that charming? Had to throw together one more 'half' basket too as I was lacking that particular piece of the quilt. Wouldn't look right with just the half basket at the top, right? Needed another partial basket for balance.

Loving the look of the random setting and
partial basket blocks.

All the while, I was carefully cutting and hoarding the strippy slabs, trying to ensure that I wouldn't run out. When most of the quilt was sewn together, I all of a sudden realized that I wanted a smallish brown area at the bottom of the quilt too. It didn't look right without the strip sections so in this case I had to go digging through the trash.*whew!  So glad there was just enough, even though I had to sew two really narrow pieces together at the far bottom right at the quilt!

Wish I would have had wider strips for 
the bottom of the quilt...

Overall, it went rather well, all of the myriad mistakes and seam ripping necessary to power through aside. I am super thrilled with the look of the cozy blues and violet coin strips throughout. There's one blue plaid fabric that is actually a shirt that I stole from my youngest sons closet a few years before he moved out. I mean, he never really wore it! So sweet to see it working so hard for this quilt.

Loving the look of this centerpiece! So sweet
that it's mostly all orphaned applique bits!

I also managed to find time to finish up the applique for the Joy Basket quilt. It needs a little trimming and then next will be decisions about the border or possible borders? to attach. I thought there would be the word 'joy' appliqued onto the centerpiece as well, but so far it's just not working out for me. Will hold the idea in reserve until later in the quilt and maybe try again. 

Starting to see the texture take shape

The hand quilting has been going very slowly on the Coronacrazy quilt, though I am working on it most nights during the week. Just can't seem to peel myself away from the phone and dumb scrolling early enough in the evening to get much done. Really annoying.

Had a hard time figuring out what to quilt
in the dark green border area.

I think the problem is that there is soooo much applique and there is a little more effort involved in running the needle through the quilt sandwich. Just doesn't feel quite as meditative as I generally prefer so yeah, I'm practicing avoidance. Ugghh.  May not even get 12 quilts finished up to the completed quilt top stage this year if I don't knock if off and get busy!

All the 2023 Quilty Finishes {Finally!} & A Little Bramble Blooms Progress

 A belated look-back at all the 2023 finishes here at Quilty Folk! Once again, life has gotten in the way of my quilty forward progress. What a shock and surprise, right? I must be human.

2023 Finishes--A

It was a very slow year for quilt finishes, coming in at 10 quilt total. Considering all that went on last year though, I feel like it was an amazing feat. 

2023 Finishes--B

Since I'm throwing this up on the blog for my own benefit, it's probably best to keep it brief.

The 2023 Finished Quilt Details:

• 3 Baby Quilts
• 1 Lap sized Quilt
• 6 Bed sized Quilts
• 9 Quilts totally Hand Quilted
• 1 Quilt mixed Hand and Machine Quilted

As a note of interest, I gifted 12 quilts last year, which is more than I finished. Hmm... You'd think the stacks would be smaller by now? But no. That's not how it seems to work. Gifting quilts is really good for the soul and making friends though, so I guess I'm fine with that! Another item of note is that the quilt top drawers are getting easier to shut. By the end of 2023, there was only 20 tops left and 2 of them were donations from my sister a few years ago. Not really something that I'm stressing about ever finishing if you want to know the truth of it. Like I've mentioned before, they will probably end up as quilt backing some day. I'm just not that invested in them!

Another interesting thing is that I finished quite a few larger quilts last year. With lots and lots of hand quilting. Even if hardly anything else got done, I still managed some hoop time. That's NOT been the case this year. My hand quilting time has dropped to just a couple evenings a week the last couple months. So many things are getting in the way of my quality hoop time. Just drives me crazy, but what do you do? 

Just for the record and journaling purposes: I started out 2023 sicker than I've even been and of course that took awhile to power through and catch up from. Then we had our youngest sons wedding at the end of April. Our oldest daughter had her first child in August and somewhere in the middle was two wedding weekends for a niece and nephew who we feel quite close to. Lots of family shenanigans to attend to as well.

Unfortunately, the year also ended with my husband being sicker than he's ever been and now, somehow we're already in February of 2024. Whew. I'm still right smack in the middle of caretaking, which is not nearly as fun as quilting. We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and feel thankful for any improvements as they are all quite hard won. Thank you all once again for your many messages of love and encouragement in this hard time. Priorities definitely ebb and flow throughout our lives don't they?

Moving along

Starting the Bramble Blooms QAL seemed like an exciting adventure back when the momentum was carrying me along with the inspiration and initial drive. Now, it's one of the few quilty things that I can think about without feeling completely overwhelmed and uninspired. Most days. Maybe just a little bit blank around the edges of my brain sometimes? Or panic that I might be letting you down? Uggh. There's so much to appreciate though: Using up the Oldy moldy fabric, an easy-peasy medallion quilt plan of attack, Improv-ish, open-ended, loosey-goosey style? Nothing to fret about or bother getting overly excited about, right? Except for the issue of time.*sigh

So yeah. Time is definitely problematic these days. Both for finding enough time in the day to do the applique work and then the computer time for posting. Wowsers, has that been a tough one! I keep telling myself that I did in fact warn everyone about the slower pace of this QAL. It's either bag the whole project or just keep plugging away at it and find the joy where it comes. You know me. Gonna keep after it until the challenge runs cold.

The picture above is the current state of my BBI. Both the top and bottom borders have been stitched down and all that is left for stitching on the side panels is the leaves. I have them pinned where they will probably stay. Still deliberating whether or not to remove a leaf or two from the top and bottom border and thinking yeah. Might as well leave them alone now. Afterall, it's extra work to take them off! 

Also, I keep making these flaky little mistakes {so surprising considering my state of distraction these days}. Right now the quarter triangle corner blocks are just a wee bit too small for seamlessly sewing onto the centerpiece. I've already cut the coping border down once, but may have to trim a little more off. Or maybe trim a bit of fabric off of the outside of the applique borders? Regardless, this phase of the quilt is very, very close to being done. 

I don't know about you, but I'm really liking the end result thus far! As per usual, I am a little shocked and dumbfounded by how interesting this older fabric can be made to look. It's nothing new to me as I've had this result before. But it always, always amazes me because in the fabric stack, the whole thing just looked pretty dismal if you know what I mean! 

I managed to squeeze in enough time to scroll though all the blogs and instagram accounts that have been linked up to the QAL. Very exciting work! Many lovely, exciting creations to contemplate and be inspired by! Wish I could be more present on the blogs especially but maybe later. I'm very encouraged by the creativity and courage many of you have displayed in branching out with this strange little QAL.  I'm hoping that if you manage to push through with the details in the first quilt, then my thoughts pertaining to inspiration and the connection to series work will start to coalesce in the 2nd and 3rd. It's a bit of a slog at first I know, but we have to get some foundational work in place before we can begin to build on anything personal.

  

I can't promise any hard and fast date, but my plan is to move directly into action with the next border phase of BBI. There is quite a bit of organization involved so please bear with me. Crossing my fingers I'll have all the details together before the end of February at the very least if not the six weeks I was originally hoping for. Don't be afraid to email me if you have a late start and want to be added to the link list!

Trying To Get Things Crossed Off the List

I've been hand quilting every evening possible, trying to finish up this improv. strings quilt. It's going to be gifted to a nephew for a wedding gift and time is running out. Not that it has to be given by the wedding date. Oh no. I'm much more relaxed than that. It's just that I don't want to pay postage or risk having it get lost in the mail! So hopefully it will be all wrapped up by next week. Fingers crossed!

Only three more rows to stitch across the quilt!

I have a couple baby quilts sewn up, ready to be sandwiched and quilted. This one hopefully fits the bill for 'baby boy'. I ended up doing a log cabin surround all around the improv. monkey wrench block which was super fun. Being my rebellious self, I  didn't square it up along the way. And then I made matters worse by sort of eyeballing the strip cuts. Free-cutting with a ruler. Mostly straigh-tish!

A little too wonky

When the quilt was approximately the intended size, then I went ahead and squared up the quilt as a whole. {Well, sort of squared it up, it's probably within half an inch!} Loving the sweet, laid back charm to this one already. Something about gingham and floral together that really gets to me! And I used up some pretty old, weird colored blue fabrics that have been languishing in the bottom of the stash totes forever. Feels amazing to find a good use for those! 

Baby Boy quilt finished up

Prickly Pear was sewn into a quilt top just before the boy quilt. I wish the gray pears showed better in the pictures, but you know me. Photography is not my strong suit at all. This quilt ended up being a bit longer than I like at 48". Oh well. It will make a great transitional baby/toddler quilt this way. Always so interesting to try and make these much smaller quilts when I'm completely used to having oodles and oodles of room for a quilt to grow. Honestly, it was a bit hard not to keep this quilt just to see where it could evolve to.*sigh  This mama better appreciate my restraint! Haha  Overall, it's been lovely working with these cut-out pear shapes and seeing where else they could shine. At least I got to have that experience!

Prickly Pear is a finished quilt top

There will be two more baby quilts, but I'm still playing with the fabric stacks. Not gray and beige though! Sounds a bit boring and quilts should never, ever be intentionally dull. Most of us get there accidentally once in awhile without even trying! Just trying to keep things fairly simple and uncomplicated with a generous helping of cozy. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

Primrose Path getting some attention

I did manage to start sewing the Primrose Path applique blocks into rows. Just a little bit more time involved and there should be a finished quilt top. I was very dismayed to realize that the corner triangles did not actually land where I wanted them too. Was trying for the corners to meet up with the closest pink strip, sort of boxing things in. Not going to go back and change things at this point though. This quilt is making me cross my eyes, question my judgment and just generally working to keep my emotions on a seesaw. Do I like it? Yes, no, maybe so.....