Old Fashioned Strings in Fall 2015 Blogger's Quilt Festival

Old Fashioned Strings is my second entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival. This is a scrappy little quilt made directly out of my scrap bin so it seemed fitting to enter it into the Scrappy Quilts Category!

Old Fashioned Strings

It was great fun to try and use up some leftover bits and pieces, plus this was the first ever string quilt I'd ever attempted!

Always looking so cozy

Old Fashioned Strings is hand quilted with #8 and #12 Valdani Perle Cotton thread in a very loose Kantha stitching style throughout each block. I love the simplicity of the this kind of stitching against the scrappy bits. And honestly, this quilt just makes my heart melt a little every time I use it or see it or see myself using it. I'm sure you get the idea...

Simple stitching....

To find out more about how the blocks were sewn together you can go here. They were really, really easy to put together and I've often wondered if it's time to attempt another?

And another view....

After all, I do have about a gazillion more fabric scraps taking up space in my quilt room.... Go ahead and check out all the other wonderful quilts entered into the Festival! It should keep you busy for a couple days at least. And if you'd like to see my other Festival entry, go here.

It's a Finish!

Ooh, I do love this quilt. It's a simple one. Came right out of my scrap bins in fact.

Old Fashioned Strings

But it speaks to my heart and it's helped sooth my frazzled nerves here in the last couple weeks.

It's a finish!

This is the exact kind of quilt that I longed to make back when I first started quilting. On a trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas in 1996, I saw a scrappy quilt hanging from a balcony. I stood there for the longest time, mesmerized by the simple beauty of a scrapped together quilt.

A little closer look...

There's no way to know exactly what that quilt looked like now, after all these years and without a photo, but it still remains a beautiful memory in my minds eye. I am so grateful for the opportunity {and ability} to make the kind of quilts that look like they belong in a home. Being used. Snuggled under. Bringing peace and comfort to me and my own.

Making these kinds of quilts, I have to say that I also feel a tiny bit closer to understanding my grandma. She made quilts for years, hand sewing and/or hand quilting most evenings, using what she had on hand. I like to think she'd get a chuckle out of me hand quilting my quilts when most people don't want to take the time. She personally wasn't at all concerned with the time involved. She was just making space for beauty in her very busy life. How ironic that some of the most stressful situations in my life oft compel me to sit down and spend a bit more time with the handwork--learning the things that grandma already knew and probably couldn't begin to explain to a very young granddaughter....

Ready for Binding

It's going to be a bit slow around here for a couple weeks. Probably. Maybe. There are things I want to work on, projects dancing around in my imagination, and fabric that is tantalizing me, but... well, life has some different demands on me right now.

Getting ready to hand stitch the binding

I did get the binding sewn onto this quilt and now, just need the time to do some hand stitching. A little tonight, a little tomorrow and it should finish fast. I am cruising along with my hand quilting on the pinwheel quilt as well. For some reason, the hand work is what I'm finding time for these days and that's okay. There are seasons for everything, right?

The fire is starting to seem more in control although you wouldn't have known it by the upgraded evacuation levels this weekend {already dropped back down again}. There has been a little bit of rain, cooler temps and yes, a lot of wind. However, that wind didn't seem to do quite as much damage as was feared. My husband and I are almost ready to unpack the totes and get back to living. I haven't even put my sewing machine back in the case from sewing on the binding, so there you have it--we are relaxing our guard. We took a drive yesterday just to get away and wowsers did it feel wonderful to be out of the valley. And if that drive took us by a quilt store? All the better! Too bad we hadn't actually planned it better as I only had 15 minutes to shop before they closed up for the evening. Now you tell me, what is the correct way to handle only having 15 minutes in a great quilt store?*wink

Time to link up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching!

Slow Stitching My Day Away

For those that have inquired, we are doing just fine here in Pateros. We have had level 1 evacuation (lowest level) warnings in place for over a week, but so far, the nearest fires seem to be moving away from us.

Keeping it simple...

As far as quilting goes, all I seem to be interested in is hand quilting. It feels very calming to me and doesn't require much in the way of brain power. I did try stitching something a little more complicated on the border of my string quilt, but after seeing part of one border done, I ripped it out and went simple. The quilt thanks me. It doesn't want anything complicated I guess.

Hand quilting done on this one!

I have had various things I consider important to me packed up and ready to go at a moments notice just in case. These are the totes with unfinished quilt tops, basic sewing supplies and quilt projects that are 'in process' but not nearly at the quilt top stage. I also have the quilts that are in the hoop (or fresh out) and of course my sewing machine. Closer to the front door (downstairs) I have things like photo albums, papers, baby books etc. and of course we all have a bag of clothes packed. Scattered throughout the house are also TJMAXX/IKEA bags with about three quilts each in them--only my very favorites and of course the one from my Grandma. We figure we could easily have all of these items out of the house in under 10 minutes if we had to. No sense in putting them in the car unless or until we have a more serious evacuation warning.

Trying to be ready.....

News stories can be very misleading so we have been trying to get our information from more official channels. There is a lot of panic in our valley because of last year of course, but also because of how quickly the fires have grown and changed. So far we have had a small area of relative peace here in Pateros, with evacuees coming toward us rather than us having to flee. 

Here is an interesting YouTube video that shows a Fly Through map of the Chelan and Okanogan Complex fires. At 1:06 you can see exactly where our town is in relation to the fires. Pateros is up on the left corner, under the grid. At 4:52 you can see a broader view of where we are in relation to the fires in our county {we are the green arrow directly below where it says 'Brewster' in the bottom middle of the screen.} And then at 5:12 you can start watching the animated playback of how the fires have progressed and grown from where they were at on August 16. Obviously, the closest {to us} fires combined around that date, maybe just before, and then they have steadily blown past us except in the farthest areas of the county. That's where they still remain largely uncontained. Look for a town called Carlton. That's where the fire started last year that did so much damage to our little town and of course the surrounding areas. Now you know why we are still on level one evacuation notice. Even though the fires are primarily burning away from us, there is still some activity on every side--having the fire be 6-8 miles away from us with a river in between? Not feeling so safe until it's all put out.....

Time to link up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching. I don't know about you, but it sure helps this mama stay a little more sane....

Always, Always Another Quilt in the Hoop

Sometimes it's hard to 'see' how the stitching is going to look in terms of a fully stitched quilt. Everything is right there inside the hoop and there's no real sense of texture. Once again I settled with lighter colored thread as all the darker colors seemed to distract from my pretty scraps.

Old Fashioned Strings in the hoop

But the lighter colored threads sort of disappear into the quilt which always makes me wonder. You know, wonder why I even bother with hand quilting efforts if the threads are just going to vanish? As I finish a hoop or two, I have to pull back and take a good long look. Hmm....

Looking at the completed stitching...

Gotta trust our intuition. It rarely steers us wrong! As you can see, I'm stitching a very loose 'Kantha' style pattern {with #8 Perle Cotton in neutral colors} which the quilt seems to be absorbing with great delight. Always a relief to have it verified so as to move forward with greater confidence.

It's starting to show me what I can expect going forward!

And look what arrived in the mail from Diane! Ahhh... I am hooked already. What a beautiful publication!

A lovely gift...

It looks like there's a sale on subscriptions too. Can I weasel this one into my budget? Along with Quiltmania, my long adored fave? And better yet, will my husband even notice? haha Thanks so much Diane, for putting me in this dilemma!

*You can read more on the details of this quilt over here.