Let Them Eat Cake--The Long Struggle to Completion

The Mini Cake Stands quilt is finally finished after a rather long journey! It was started back in early 2012 as I just couldn't resist the siren call of making 150 little basket blocks. Obviously. I mean, how cute are they?

Let Them Eat Cake (the mini cake stand quilt)

 After hours of making these sweet, but seriously, tedious blocks, I eventually came up with a quilt top that well, immediately made me wonder what I was thinking. Ughh. It had some good ideas, but mostly just disappointed. So it lingered in the quilt top drawers until January of 2015, when I finally just couldn't stand it anymore and started ripping the entire quilt apart. I don't feel like a perfectionist, but there are some projects that need a second chance. These baskets deserved another try! It took until July of that year before eventually I could settle on a quilt top idea that I thought would work.

Love seeing all those tiny baskets!

 I even included an upside down block in the spirit of make-do'ism. {If that's a word.} It makes me smile. As does the very few blocks with the darkest 9-patch units. They add to the utility look and give a bit of whimsy, an unexpected departure from the sweetness of all that pretty, pretty pink. I also deliberately chose some pinks to be much lighter, helping create a fade-in/fade-out impression which hopefully helps move the eye around the quilt. I love, love, love attempting to creative movement and energy, even in a 'sweet' quilt.

And a purposeful 'mistake'

 A couple months ago I went digging through the quilt top drawers looking for a quilt to gift to my next youngest sister for her upcoming birthday. If you remember, I hate making quilt specifically for people, but generally adore giving away when I feel a need or possibly a connection. This quilt really seemed perfect for her in a myriad of ways. My friend agreed to find time to very simply long-arm quilt it for me by the birthday date. Woohoo! I believe she had it for two months, so it should have been plenty of time? Anyway, things came up, life got overwhelming for her and I didn't even get the quilt back from until approximately 22 hours before the party. Yeah. I couldn't even reach her on the phone the two days before. It was a nightmare. Oh well! Believe it or not, with the help of my daughters taking care of the other birthday prep. I was able to get the binding taken care of, most all the threads snipped and even a few pictures taken!

So pretty!

And I think we totally surprised her! She wasn't even expecting a party, much less a few gifts. You know how it goes when we get older. Birthdays become more about a dinner out and less about the presents and how old we might be getting....

Happy Birthday to my sister!

Here's a picture of my original inspiration, an antique quilt from 'Scrap Quilts-The Art of Making Do' by Roberta Horton. It's one I had drooled over many times and finally decided to make a version of, changing things up as I love to do. I've never been a fan of making a quilt exactly the same as the original one. I prefer to use that original as the spark or the 'seed' and see where we end up. Ha! Sometimes that results in a big fat fail as you know! Nevertheless, one day, with the straggly stacks of recently reclaimed mini cake stand blocks, I took another look at the original quilt. Which elements drew me in the most and could I possibly capture them? It was an interesting process and one that honestly, I thought I had failed at {even the second time around}. There's just something incredibly challenging about trying to duplicate the spirit of a quilt without making an exact replica. Its a wonderful exercise and I urge everyone to try it at least once!

The seed of an idea....

On another note, before the actually quilting, the quilt top itself just looked sweet, but sort of bland and static. It was satisfying but well, uninspiring. I thought maybe it was one of those quilts where the maker just hit the jackpot on having all the perfect elements together in one quilt and I was out of luck. Imagine how completely amazed I was to to see it morph into this lovely, take-you-back-in-time sort of quilt with just a little texture from the simple stitching! Ahhh... It made me so happy! At this point, I just have to call it a success, totally worth the time and effort of tearing it apart and giving it another go. What else can I call it when in the end, it was so terribly {surprisingly} hard to give away? I wanted this one for my very own, and no one was more surprised than me.*wink

Linking to Sew, Stitch, Snap, Share!

Finishing Up With the Mini Cake Stands For the Very Last Time

Every now and then I make a really big quilt top. Like this one. It finished out at 86" x 104"! I'm trying to do better about that, but sometimes a quilt just sort of explodes on me. Either that, or I just don't know when to quit?

Mini Cake Stands a completed quilt top, finally, finally, finally.....

This quilt started out in 2012 with me having a great time playing with green and blue prints, making little cake stand blocks like they were going out of style. Fast forward to a quilt top finish and I was severely deflated by the results of my efforts. Blehhhhh....

Lazy me, it's not ironed yet!

I bundled my quilt top into a drawer and hid it away. And the quilting part? Well, it never seemed to happen even though I'd pull it out occasionally and contemplate the stitching. Something about it was just all wrong. Finally, in January of this year, I made an important decision about the future of this particular quilt. It wasn't worthy of being quilted 'as is', and I sure didn't want to waste these sweet little cake stand blocks! Anyway, shortly after that mind boggling decision, you'd find me ripping my ugly quilt apart with great dedication. It was quite the conversation piece around here, let me tell you!

Mini Cake Stands fading into the background

Deciding how to put it back together was a bit challenging, but I stuck with an old fashioned, utility style look. Hard to go wrong with that! I didn't buy any extra fabric, but raided my stash in order to find the various pink, green and brown prints used for secondary blocks. Then, deep in my cream/lt. tan fabric tote, I stumbled upon the cream and green stripe fabric that I ended up choosing for the setting triangles. It's a bit bland and unexciting really, but every other color I auditioned just made some other color in the quilt start jangling and clashing. Why oh why do I always try to push the boundaries of  specific colors/hues and shades residing comfortably next to each other? lol  {I think we all probably know the answer to that....}

Obviously not going to work....

Oh well. It's a finished quilt top now and one that I'm much happier with, all things considered! On another note, this fabulous book came in the mail from JulieKQuilts! So much inspiration. I just love it!

My giveaway winnings...

Every month she has a Binding Blitz to encourage us slackers to go ahead and finish our quilts for good. Everyone is welcome to join in! And what a sweetheart. She included a little roll of cream fabric strips too! Very fun stuff and you know me, I'm always happy to be a winner. And have an opportunity to play with more fabric!*wink

Oh yeah, for those that may have missed it, my own giveaway is still open until Sunday!

Simple Blocks

I like working with simple blocks occasionally. What an easy way to get into a comfortable 'zone' and just play with our fabrics. I finally found a use for my one itty piece of Liberty fabric too. And to think I started out quilting years ago thinking I'd never buy fabric that cost more than Walmart prices!

Chain piecing in sets of four...

Oh my. How times have changed! I wondered about the mix of greens in these blocks, but the more they sit on the wall and simmer, the more I really, really like them.

Letting the 9-patches simmer for awhile

Hmm.. I wonder if nature might be playing a part in my color selection? This is a picture of the hill directly behind our house. It's covered with weeds and grasses this year with huge pink/purpley patches of wildflowers higher up on the hill. They say it will take almost five years for the native sagebrush to come back anywhere near as plentiful as it was before. Some people don't like sagebrush, but it helps tremendously to lesson the chances of having severe flash floods. We just need to get some trees growing again this year. The work just never ends!

The view from behind our house

Next up, I'm going to put triangles of pink fabric on the 9-patch blocks so they will be on point. It seems like an awful lot of pink, but since they will be the every-other-blocks for the mini cake stands, I think they will hold up nicely to the pressure!

Figuring Out the Mini Cake Stand Quilt Once Again

These little cake stand units have been ready to go for quite some time now. I just needed to remove threads and put them back into some kind of order. Ripping blocks apart is a messy job! Ugh! So many hanging threads to take care of.

Mini Cake Stand units

I decided to go with a plain Jane background of various cream backgrounds and keep the emphasis on the mini cake stands. There are three  or four original blocks with dark brown fabric used for the connector blocks, but that should just make things interesting in the final quilt. Or not. We'll see when the quilt gets closer to layout if I have to change those out too.

Sewing them into the larger blocks...

Figuring out how I wanted to put the larger blocks back together proved to be the bigger challenge. This entire quilt was originally based on an antique 'make-do' style of quilt. The fussier I get with the layout, the farther away I get from my intended goal. The thing is, just using a square of fabric {no piecing} for the every-other-block isn't getting me very excited either. Finally, I decided that over thinking the entire quilt is driving me batty. What am I trying to make, a masterpiece? Bah on that. The every-other-blocks are going to be scrappy nine patches set on point. And yes I'm adding in some pink. My gut says this quilt desperately needs pink!

Some of the fabric cut out for the alternating blocks.

Also, I have come to the end of the handwork on my Marsala blocks. Basically all that is left to do is to trim off the excess applique fabric on the edges and sew the top together. Must find time for that...

Marsala blocks ready to sew together...

And.... another wedding to attend on Saturday (this is apparently the wedding year for our extended families) and then I have a yard sale to get ready for next week. I am still reeling from shock that someone actually got me to agree to ever having another yard sale. In my opinion they are an enormous amount of effort for a very small reward--it's not like we sell anything worth keeping! lol  Although I do remember selling a quilt once to help pay the electric bill. Thankfully all we're trying to do this time is de-clutter.

Going Backwards

I'd say it was a quiet weekend, but that's probably only true if we're talking about quilting. My house was busting out at the seams a few times this weekends with all the visiting family and then the friends visiting the family. Lots of food, laughter, noise and confusion! Always difficult to find both gloves when everybodys coats, hats and gloves are piled up all together....

Cake Stand blocks

I do have the Cake Stand quilt top almost completely tore apart now. Wowsers do I dislike using the seam ripper. I keep telling myself that it will all be worthwhile when I get the mini cake stand blocks liberated from their {ugly fabric} setting and finally, I could see that it was true. People keep asking me why I'm ripping a quilt top apart instead of sewing one together and I just shake my head and say that 'it wasn't working for me--I didn't like it'. I am definitely turning into the crazy quilting lady of the family though. You know how it is in a very large family. It's extra special hard to get any attention without doing something really drastic.*wink

Random Monday

A total of eight envelopes have arrived for my mother just since Friday! Very exciting to see all the lovelies that are being sent. Wouldn't you know, she actually got on my blog and read about what was happening on Thursday night? Mind too troubled, couldn't sleep etc. So not a TOTAL surprise, but still--she didn't read the comments so has been completely bemused by the amount sent. Already. lol

Sorry the pic isn't better, I think the yellow manila envelopes
affected the color in the entire picture!

I keep telling her there will be more, but she gives me that look. Hm. hm. We'll see. Yep. We will see!! I can tell she is finding this very fun even if she's a bit bewildered to be on the receiving end for once instead of being the giver. I'm also trying to tell her a bit about the person sending fabric if I recognize the name and/or blog. It's all very touching and again--such great fun! Thank you to all the participants for that! For now I am just gathering the names of people who want one of my brown fat quarters in return. Will send them all out at once to be more efficient!

My lovely win!

I also got some fun mail of my own. Barb from Fun With Barb sent me some gorgeous fabric {and thread} I won from her latest giveaway! I am already busy dreaming up news quilt projects for these beauties. Really. I LOVE this kind of fabric and rarely get a chance to buy it around here.

In the spirit of working my way through the UFQ list, I threw my Random Sampler quilt up on the wall this weekend. All I've done so far is sew the half square triangles around my large basket block. Originally this was going to be a queen size quilt, but now, I'm thinking to downsize a bit. Will need to make a few more random blocks and then work on the connector bits to tie it all together. Mostly I need to work on the length as I prefer quilts to be longer than they are wide.

Random Sampler

I also pulled out this old quilt top and made a very drastic decision. Yep. I'm unpicking this quilt. Every single time I pull this quilt out of the drawers to consider putting it in the hoop, I absolutely am not interested. 'Not worth the effort' is pretty much my thoughts.

Mini Cake Stand quilt

So.... that's how is has to be. I've slept on this decision for oh.... well over a year? And my feelings toward this quilt never seem to change. I love the blocks--hate the way I set it together. And the birds, while whimsical, annoy me. I fell in love with the brown and cream floral print and was determined to use it even though my gut was telling me that it wasn't going to work out.

Starting to take it all apart--maybe just to the 9-patch units?

Me, being stubborn, pushed on through and sewed it altogether, then added in a bit of applique to distract from the big 'ol mess I'd made. It's a large quilt so this will take awhile.*sigh  I really have no idea what I'll do to 'fix' things but almost anything will be better than what I had. Bottom line: the baskets are too sweet to lose to an good experiment gone bad.

The Pass/Fail Grading System as it Pertains to Quilt Tops

It's been a crazy week.  My son is now a full-time student at OSUIT in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.  He is all set up and having a great time although he needs to find a job asap if he wants to have gas money.  Also, my youngest sister (she's 27) is getting married in 6 weeks and I've been co-opted to help my 66 yr. old mother--driving duties, sounding board and general seamstress ideas.  Fun stuff.  

So... quilting.  I worked on my mini-cake stand quilt off and on this week.  If, for some reason, I was being graded on a pass/fail standard, I'd say that this quilt top is a big fat fail.  No, really.  I bought the big floral print sometime last year because it is beautiful and I adore it, but now I'm finding out that it is impossible for me to work with.  Every time I see beautiful floral prints, I should just RUN away.

Mini Cake Stand quilt in progress

The blues and greens looked really great with my lovely floral print when they were all snuggled together in a thick stack.  They still looked good even after being cut and sewn into the cute little mini-cake stand blocks.  In my imagination, this quilt was going to be fabulous.  Apparently I'm still having immense difficulty with applying my wonderful ideas to reality.

This is the entire quilt--looking incredibly sad
in the bad lighting of my living room

I quickly realized that my printed fabric was going to be a huge problem when I attempted to use it as the alternate blocks to my mini-cake stands.  Waaay too busy and the light bounces around on that fabric like crazy.   So, after much contemplation....  Do I ditch the printed fabric altogether and save my mini-cake stand blocks from massive disappointment?  Put the printed fabric on the back?  Charge full speed ahead?  My oldest daughter was a great help to me at this stage.

On a whim I took a picture from the opposite direction
and the lighting is much more flattering tho the quilt is
now presented in the upside down view....

In the end, I used the printed fabric for my setting triangles and a few alternate blocks.  I arranged all the mini-cake stand blocks in a very value oriented way with some intense spots of color and a few fade away corners etc.  Not great, but I kind of like it.  Antique setting meet the crazy modern era.  Or something.  Help me out here.

My freehand birdie looking somewhat like a crawdad?

At some point I had made a conscious choice to sew two mini-cake stand blocks with one less point.  I liked the idea of a birdie or two stealing pieces from my quilt.  Of course I didn't understand how busy my quilt would be then.

Much better after the wing is added....

I've decided to go with the applique bird thing.  It's whimsical and amusing, which this quilt desperately needs.  There will be a total of four birds scattered over the quilt top unless I change my mind.

The weird, funky flower that holds down a busy, ultra-light
spot in the quilt.

You can't really see it in the pictures, but this flower does amazing things to the quilt.  It kind of says, 'We don't take ourselves very seriously around here and maybe you shouldn't either.'*wink

Push On?

You know how you find a picture of a quilt that makes you absolutely drool at the very sight?  The one that settles into the very cells of your being and you have no choice left except to try and recreate it?

Cutting off the jagged edges....

Yeah.  I'm working on that very quilt right now.  I'm about halfway through and it just occurred to me today that I may have made one or two (unimportant little teeny, tiny) changes that might (maybe sorta?) change the very thing that spoke to me in the first place.*sigh

The blocks are trimmed now and awaiting departure of the state of frozen panic I currently find myself in.  Push on or pull back?  That is the question for the day.....

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?

A Little Here, A Little There....

It's been an odd week so far.  Still hot and so my quilt room is not the place to hang around in for too long.  I've had these mini cake stand blocks all cut out for awhile and so I head upstairs and plug away at them a little at a time.  Doesn't feel like I'm making much progress, but there is an awful lot of them.  These are just the base block for each set (without the bottom of the basket sewn on yet).  I wanted to check and make sure the colors were playing nice before I went any further.

Partial Mini Cake Stands

All of my kids were gone for several hours one day, so I decided to take advantage.  I pulled out this Broken Dishes project and played with it for awhile.  I finally decided to keep to the original sashing width, chose a fabric and got it all cut out.  Then I contemplated the center squares for the sashing until my eyeballs wanted to scream.

Broken Dishes Park Deux

White seemed too bright and/or in-your-face and all the other colors were busy, busy, busy.  Then I remembered a stack of black and gray squares I had from a fabric trade a bazillion years ago.  Wallah!  Very exciting to me when I get to use up random bits and pieces of leftover projects or something that has been lying about feeling neglected for years.*wink

Now I just need to wait for another day when the kids are all busy elsewhere so I can take over the living room floor again.  This quilt top is obviously not going to go together easy and I want the blocks to be properly balanced if at all possible.  It is possible isn't it?  I'm still weighing my options for the setting triangles.  Traditional?  Or not?  Yes, no, maybe so.....