August Update

Decisions, decisions. It was either take the time to go quilt or take the time to actually write a post. Today I decided the post had to come first. 

Seedpod Flower quilt top is done!

What can I say about this quilt top? You already know that the flower itself was kind of an impulse, use-up-the-abandoned-bits sort of start. 

The full view

You also know that the inspiration pic was one that I fell head over heels in love with a very long time ago. Or did you? Regardless, I'm pretty impressed to actually see this interpretation finally come to reality. I do so adore a scrappy, utilitarian sort of look!

Scrappy goodness

I suppose this quilt would have looked fine without the Seedpod Flower center. Maybe. At this point I can't even imagine the quilt without it though. Once I wrapped my mind around how it all needed to fit together, then the top went together relatively easily. The anxiety and avoidance up to that point was stupid. Why do I always tend to overthink?

Trying to UP the 'busyness' factor with the prints this time!

All the economy blocks are the same size which means the horizontal rows are the exact same width. That was an important detail moving forward. The random placement thus relies strictly upon the differences in the various lengths of the connecting rectangles. 

A new color palette for me, but somehow it seems to work!

While they are not nearly as tall as the ones used in the inspiration picture, these started out from the scraps leftover from cutting the economy blocks. That was a good place to start. Hard to throw away the very narrow ones!  And so... determining approx. vertical measurements for the connecting rectangles became unexpectedly very simple. After all, I really didn't want the differences to be super extreme. A couple inches at most and there I was. Easy peasy.

Looking across...

Crazy how the bright, sparky applique addition to the inside border brightens everything up. I do wish the very slight, lighter blue outline above the curves still showed, but it ended up being turned under for seam allowance. This was just another one of those impulse rabbit trails that turned out to be a wonderful idea in the end. Sometimes it's nearly impossible to keep myself from traveling down the path of 'I wonder if x, y, or z would make things look better....'. 

Sometimes it works to the good and other times I find out that it's clearly wasted time. Never really know till you try though! I love how the yellow in the applique surround is more citrus than the rest of the yellow golds in the quilt. Yet it works as a very definitive framing for the Seedpod Flower, which of course, is the star of the entire quilt. Why not emphasize that even more!

This quilt top has a very distinctive mood, one that I can't quite put a proper label to. Is it retro? Vintage? Does it just convey fond memories of my grandmothers house dresses or perhaps it was the aprons she wore? Whatever it is, the mood as a whole, brings a smile to my face every time. 

Working on Spring Flowers

Another project that I've been spending time on in Spring Flowers. After seeing how washed out the flowers looked, I decided they needed a little bit of pzazz added in somewhere. After debating several different ideas {most of them ridiculously complex}, I ended up going with a very simple rail fence sort of block as the alternate. Lots of turquoise used to wake things up, but I also made sure to add insome clashy blue. For value and interest of course. There's just something about doing the unpredictable that always strongly appeals to me when it comes to quilting! The long narrow strips of the cream background fabric were added in after I realized that the flowers now needed some breathing room. So glad I had enough of that particular fabric because everything else just looked sloppy.

Auditioning border ideas

The brown and light cream striped fabric was something that I locked onto early on in auditioning border ideas. There's just something about a good striped border that speaks to me. Lots of ideas in play until abruptly I was completely done with dithering. The pink/rose fabrics were totally scrapped and simplicity became the name of the game. While I kept the strong chrome yellow, narrow, inner border {the blendy mustard gold fabric that seemed obvious was boring}, everything else got stripped down to basics. Will see how this border turns out in the end, but the thrill was just gone. Oh, and all the other orphan bits were dumped back into the totes too. So done with this particular project.Time to move on when it's not fun anymore!

Peachy Cameo in the hoop

The hand quilting is moving quite slowly on Peachy Cameo, but there's nothing very complex about what I'm doing. Sensing a theme here? One last hoop on the blue circle areas and then I'll be working on the two outside borders. I think they both will fit into one hoop {as far as width} so that's good. We're entering the long, long home stretch!

A closer look

As you can see, I often take the clamp off of one side when hand quilting. In this case, two of the blue 'circles' are right where the clamp would be, making it impossible to quilt in that area if it were to be attached. Honestly, I don't know if this is laziness or efficiency, but with this sort of quilting, having one clamp off is rarely a problem. The funny thing is, after all these years of working with only Perle Cotton thread and a long needle, my stitches are getting smaller. Still not super close together, but it's not exactly big stitching any longer. Oh well. Love the look regardless. All that instant texture is very addicting!

Will try to catch up with my emails and reading and/or commenting on other blogs in the next couple days. Have seen several posts in the Bloglover app that feel important to comment on, but the time simply hasn't been there. With time being diminished for quilting around here, often times there's really only one choice!

What's on the Wall {and Floor} Today

Sometimes I don't even know where to start, how to walk you through to where my quilting is at this current moment. It's kinda a mess really, but hopefully more of a 'creative' mess than an ugly sort of mess that we'd all probably turn up our noses at. After getting two other projects up to completed quilt top stage, it seemed like a perfect time to dive head first into this U&U interpretation project.

The very beginning of the  Interpretation quilt

This fabric has been all stacked up and ready for play since August, but somehow the 'right time' never came along. It's one of those projects where I'm really excited to see how it works out, but kinda scared too. Interpretation is never as easy as it might seem! Finally the time came where I was ready, the project was ready and hallelujah! There was actually available hours in the day!!

Making things easy

It helps so much to have the fabric pre-selected, especially when the color palette is a bit outside of my normal comfort zone. Wading through all the stash totes for one specific color or shade can be a total time suck too. The pre-sort gives me options, value changes, and limitations too. Okay, here's the best choices. If all else fails, my fall back will definitely be scouring through the stash totes once again, but it would be great if I never have to.

I started everything with the larger floral rectangle, mostly because I was absolutely determined to put that piece of fabric into this specific quilt. It's got an old fashioned charm to it that is important to me as it pertains to 'shaping' the look and feel of the entire quilt. Does that make sense?  The size cut for that rectangle determines every other measurement from here on out. Can you believe that? Better make it right the first time, 'cuz that's almost all there is!

Will this work? Or that? 

Some areas are measured out, others are 'eye-balled'. There's a little bit of free-cutting and a lot of rotary cutting. Everything is cut out and placed based on proportion of what it rests directly next too. A little bit above or below? Wider? Longer? Though I adore the rambling, curvy, rough cut look of the original, it just wasn't going to work for me to work without any boundaries whatsoever. I am absolutely NOT a perfectionist anymore, but my quilts do need to lay flat and mostly square.

Always auditioning

Will it ruin the look and feel of the quilt if things are trimmed and tidied up? I am crossing my fingers it won't. Maybe crossing more than two fingers. I just don't know. That's just something you have to 'see' and that requires a little bit of effort first! I'm hoping the quilt will finish up somewhere in the range of a good sized lap quilt, but who knows. Though I tried to start with a reasonable estimate of 'if this column is 3" then that will make the quilt X amount of inches across', it's still just all guess work. Knowing me, it might need scrappy borders or something later on to finish out a decent size. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

The first big chunk of the quilt is done now

There was a certain point where I was spending way too much time thinking about how the original improv. piece came to be. Doesn't it look like someone upended their scrap basket and just started sewing? So of course that's exactly what I did! Ditched the current project and started in on yet another. Why not? It was definitely time for a break from the color palette if nothing else! After all the sorting that was done last summer, all the new scrap pieces have been thrown into a smaller basket. The idea being that eventually they too would be sorted and dumped into the 'proper' color totes. Uh huh.

Playing with the scrap bin

I happily spent one whole evening sorting out all the scraps that looked like they might play nicely together. Yes I did. And it was great fun! A few things were sewn together impulsively, but most of the time was spent ironing and sorting into similar size units. I don't have a clue where this project will end up, but it sure was great to imagine. How ironic that this one nights play would never have even taken place except for working on {and needing a break from} the Interpretation quilt! For now it's taking up important real estate on the floor, right where I normally walk through. I am determined not to clean things up until enough work is done on it that it will not be unceremoniously tossed back into the scrap bin basket. There's just something about this project that feels.... interesting? Worthwhile? Important?

All ready for binding!

And then there's the little fall table runner which was fun to sew on initially, but since has not fired me up at all. Last night saw me putting the last bit of hand stitching in and so now, it's ready for binding! Which is good because the gift date is rapidly approaching.

The start of the Autumnal Tulip block applique

And it might not look like much, but all thirty {yes, I said THIRTY} of the tulip block stems are sewn into place now. I keep getting derailed or I'm sure there would be many, many of the tulip flower parts stitched down as well. They are just that simple and straightforward. Oh well. It's all good times, I guess it doesn't really matter what gets the attention so long as my fingers are busy stitching...