January Applique Prep

Lots of applique projects in the works around here. Oh we are sooo surprised! I've spent quite a bit of time here lately trying to get some of the prep work done. Always a good plan to have the hand work ready for the quieter times.

More words and tulips on quilts!

Above are the outer borders for Peace Always. Not really what I had in mind when starting the project, but I'm sure this will work fine. It's another one of those bright quilts that I'm just not always sure how to react to. Each of the three flower borders actually has three yellow tulips on it, the middle tulip being a smidge smaller. I will probably have to audition it one more time before doing any stitching because something is still nagging at me. 

I often work upstairs in the evening and the lighting is terrible in the area where I have access to the floor. Plus, the carpet is an ugly blue-gray. It sometimes becomes necessary to do one last audition downstairs on a different surface {and during daylight hours}, before I'm satisfied everything looks the way it should. 

Below is the Joy Basket quilt. Just need the letters stitched down. They've been waiting for quite awhile now! One good thing about this quilt taking it's sweet time is now I'm much more fixed on what kind of surround needs to be next. Have been dithering back and forth between piecing or applique or both and eventually I've managed to settle on some sort of improv. piecing. Yay! Love making it up as I go along.

Three letters won't take long to stitch

Another project in the works is the Folksy Tree and Baskets quilt. This is where I left it last August. Sometime between then and December, I added the primitive looking pink tree. I based it off of a tree in our backyard that has been cut down, but the stump continues to send out new scrawny branches every year until it blocks my kitchen window. Been looking forward to the fun part, but hadn't been able to find enough time with the design floor. 

Had to change out the green leaves

This past week I finally found time all kinds of time and thankfully it went fairly well. Thought I had it all the way I wanted {picture above} and then hit a major road block. I played late, late into the evening and ultimately decided it was the olive colored leaves that were not quite right. Ughh! Really didn't know what to do because the blue leaves by themselves just came off as boring. Played and rearranged with several different greens for the leaves, and then actually went to my old fashioned color wheel for help. Uh huh. Totally feeling desperate! 

Anyway, that's when I decided that a very dark emerald green could be an interesting option. I searched and luckily, found a fabric that, kid you not, has been in my stash for at least 25 years! Wowsers! So thrilling to finally find a use for it! Anyway, by using that specific fabric, I was able to salvage the olive green/blue print fabric at least. Very quickly after, the quilt decisively let me know that it had the right vibe and please, oh please, just leave me alone!

The final applique selection and placement
for Folksy Tree & Baskets quilt

Also went ahead and prepped several of these 'dove' blocks. Going to put them with this largish sun applique if I ever get it finished up. You would not believe the number of bird motifs that I have drawn trying to find the perfect one. Love the antique quilts for inspiration, but some of those birds just look like flying dinosaurs! So I've been pushing this to the back of the list. Always interesting when my motivation gets balky and stubborn. Maybe now that I have the birds figured out, I'll finally be ready to do the stitching on the sun?

Bird blocks for Doves in Flight quilt

Also went ahead and jumped into the border prep for Old Fashioned Wildflowers. I thought to do piecing in the border, but then kept thinking about a sort of scalloped look instead. Drew up this simple swag type border {with separate pieces} and thought, Yes! This is exactly what I want! 

Will probably add in the small terracotta colored circles where the scallops join up. Am absolutely delighted with finding a use for the dark, drab olive green background fabrics! They have been in the stash totes for years and years, never finding a good home no matter how hard I have tried. And believe me, I. HAVE. TRIED. 

Whatever possessed me to buy so many fatquarters of these drab greens? But this will be a very sweet use for some of them {Still have more to use up!}. There's just something so very pleasing about these greens and blues together. Sort of feel like I've inadvertently stumbled onto something very precious for this quilt....

Border prep for Old Fashioned Wildflowers

My husband finally got the quilt hanger up in the quilt room. My daughter bought an oversized one for my birthday last fall, knowing that I wanted to hang larger quilts in the guest bedroom. I keep thinking we need to repaint this very pink and orange sherbet room {thanks to my oldest daughter}, but who has time to paint? 

This is one of three quilts I hope to hang here, rotating them out throughout the year. It's also the room set up for me to do my yoga, so I'm looking forward to enjoying these quilts from day to day. Who knows, I might make a quilt especially for the wall of this bedroom some day! In the meantime, it will be much easier to say no to giving these particular quilts away. I have very persuasive children.*wink

Quilt decor

And here's Ellie with her brand new 'big girl' quilt from grandma! She was super happy with it and wanted to carry it herself even though it's pretty big for such a little gal. Love that the grandkids enjoy getting quilts from me. Takes me back to good times when my siblings and I were fighting over my grandmas quilts whenever we went to visit! 

Brand new quilt for the granddaughter!

So yeah. Lots of work to do with all of that applique in the lineup. I'm wanting to finish at least one more of the quilt tops, maybe two before starting in on the next Bramble Blooms quilt. 'Cuz of course it will have applique too! Three of these projects will be complete quilt tops when the applique gets done so that's exciting too. Excellent motivation to get stitching, right? 

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!

Is this Not the Best Quilt?

Well, I'm definitely going to blow up this post with waaay too many pictures of Ormes Inspired! It's totally finished now, a true blue finish. And wowsers, it looks so much better with the hand quilting! Why does it always, always surprise me to see the difference between a flat looking quilt top and one with yummy texture from stitching? You'd think I'd learn by now.

Ormes Inspired is done!

But you know me, always a roller coaster of emotions from the start of making these beauties, clear up till the final showing! Once again, I want to thank Jane Ormes {a wonderfully talented artist in the UK} for her generosity in agreeing to let me sew up an interpretation of one of her prints, titled 'Welcome to my jungle'. {She certainly took a tremendous risk not knowing me in the slightest!} This was started in 2019 and took approximately a year to bring to quilt top stage. Probably wouldn't have come together even that quickly if not for the pandemic lock downs and all the time in the world for hand applique. Ughh, don't remind me.

Seriously wishing I had some quilt holder-uppers today

While I considered the quilt top finished, my mind just wouldn't leave it completely alone. Nag, nag, nag. Months later, in January of 2021, the missing piece occurred to me out of the blue. I mean, it was SO obvious! Everything sort of clicked into place and finally, finally, the design problem from the addition of a border treatment got to be resolved in a satisfactory manner.*Whew!

Loving the look of the stitching

Why are some quilts so tricky? But you know, it was totally of my own making, all the hullabaloo with the border. I was the one who took a perfectly good design and decided it wasn't quite right for a bed quilt 'as is'. Oh yes, got a lot of feedback about that, which was super interesting when points resonated and also difficult when they didn't at all. And maybe, subconsciously, it was all about attempting to make the quilt a little more mine. Because I've NEVER done that before! hehe  Whatever. It somehow ended up being one of the coolest quilts that I have ever put together! 

So much fun in the details!

I will confess to having a bout or two of insomnia over how in the world to do the hand quilting. Part of me very badly wanted to echo stitch inside everyone of the applique motifs and then perhaps do a subtle cross-hatch etc. stitching across the entire background. Possibly little bit of the antique vibe? The quilt mostly laughed and jeered at that idea and told me it felt massively underwhelmed by that particular idea. Well. If you have to be that way!

Inspiration is always a blessing

It wasn't until the top was sandwiched and pinned that I reluctantly decided on an overall stitching effort, the 'hills & valleys' one in particular. {Baptist fans just seemed a little bit too formal, even done in the freehand method.} Then I got sidetracked by being sick for a couple months, which oddly enough gave me just enough time to properly cement the idea in my mind. Soooo, here it is. Subtle, but seemingly funky and a little bit modern and whimsical too? Definitely nothing to distract in any way from the fabulous design, which was always going to be a concern. Better to push it to shine!

Don't ever be afraid to add the elephant

I want to say that I have had the most fun making this quilt! I'm laughing while I say this, but believe me. All the hair pulling aside, this has been an exhilarating quest, up to and including the last bit of stitching. It challenged me in so many ways that have positively influenced the confidence that I have in attempting whole quilt applique efforts. I'm a better quilter today for puzzlements just like this one. 

You can take a look at the original print here and compare and contrast the very small changes I may have made here or there. One of the most valuable things I have learned about attempting an interpretation is that the final result will NEVER be exact. And really, why would you want it to be?

The awkward flowers are sooo sweet

The goal {generally} is to take a look at the final interpretation quilt and instantly be able to recognize the original inspiration. But.... not get too caught up in agonizing over where the math may or may not work out or how your color choices perhaps changed things to slant in a 'you' vibe. I'm not saying the original design ever needs improved upon. Not at all! We were impressed and amazed enough to feel compelled to do something with that starting point. It's just that we're all human and inevitably something is going to be different, because for one, our eyes see color differently. Our perception of what is pleasing is tuned individually. Our hands create in distinctively unique ways. It's perfectly okay and it's a beautiful thing.

This quilt ended up being made up in these precise proportions mostly because I ran out of background fabric after making a serious math error. Then I had to pick apart fabric and basically start over. Wasn't going to ditch the starting Matisse looking leaves and well, why not wing it? Make-do with what I had available using the original as the framework and not the absolute. I've always been a little shocked at how closely the quilt did in fact replicate the print! Still shaking my head in disbelief... These are life long lessons that I've already put into good use since the finishing up of this quilt top in 2020. Start out as you map out, then be very willing to adapt, adapt, adapt.

Crumples up nice and cozy looking

I get so weary with quilters who fret and stress about how the original pattern maker will feel if they change up colors or an element here or there. If they will 'like it'. For goodness sakes, just do it!! That's what quilting is all about. Taking timeless quilting motifs, patterns and elements and doing our thing, making it our own. Putting our personal little stamp on it. {In this case, it's an artists' rendering and I tried to give Jane fair warning that the outcome would likely not be identical.} Do we need to give respect and honor to the original inspiration? Absolutely! 100%. Then it goes out into the world and morphs again 1000 more times, and where are you in this equation? Probably being a tiny, little spark to a couple of people you'll never even have occasion to meet! Isn't it wonderful?

The hot pink binding ended up working out perfectly!

Okay, enough about that. At this point, I don't know how I will be able to let anyone ever use this quilt, at least until the shiny wears off. It feels a little too precious and special. I had been thinking about gifting it to a granddaughter, but yeah. It's a lot of quilt and they're pretty little yet! We'll see. I might think about putting it into a quilt show some day. Just not sure about mailing off my quilts these days.

Making a statement in the guest room

In other news, I am still pushing forward on the Improv. Hourglass Abstract quilt. The open floor is only mine for a couple more days so really, I need to get off the computer and go quilt! All the hourglass units are where they will probably remain and now I am working on sewing improv. string units to fill up all the empty space. Right now they are just loosely plopped down into the pertinent space until I can determine how many still left to cut out and sew.

Trying to piece together a background 

There should have been plenty of them, but quickly realized that I needed a whole lot more. So bad at the guestimating! Back to the stash totes to dig for more fabric, grumble, grumble... Improv. strippy piecing takes much more fabric than single pieces of fabric, but if you want that background texture? Gotta do it! Basically, I need the empty areas to be lower volume fabrics because it will provide a nice background for the large scale applique vine I'm wanting needing to do. Uh huh. It's all starting to make sense now. 

And you may or may not know this, but I have a terrible time letting go of pretty pieces of creamy white background fabrics. Yep. I'm usually quite positive there is another much more worthy quilt waiting in the wings and of course it will desperately need this or that specific fabric....

Lots of lighter areas for better flow in the quilt

In case you're interested, here's a picture of what I see when I'm rounding the corner from the quilting 'room' back into the open floor plan upstairs. Back to my design floor. Wish I had a design wall as big as the floor area, but hey! We all do what we have to do to survive. To the right is the back of my husbands desk, which is always interesting when he's working upstairs and I'm just over the partial wall, merrily quilting on the other side. Good thing we like each other, though his music now, that's not always as palatable....

Having fun stitching the details

And here's a picture of the current quilt in the hoop. Making good progress with this one, though the individual hoops are taking much longer than expected to stitch. Somehow I always think that I can breeze through the hand quilting and get a hoop done in an hour or so. Uh huh. Right.... Hoping you all have a great Easter weekend! 

One Step At a Time

 It's been good to get back into the more normal flow of quilting around here, though I don't know how long it might last! That often means that I'm checking in with the opened-ended projects list and trying to move things forward. Little by little, one phase at a time, one decision at a time, nudge, nudge, what does the quilt want now?

Stack of Primrose Patch blocks

I've had the Primrose Path applique done for months now and just needed to figure out how to get the corners added onto the blocks properly. All along, it's been intended that there would be a pieced sashing of sorts and I want for the blocks to sort of blend and become part of it at the corners. Hopefully this will do it! It actually took a bit of time to determine the absolute best color for these corners as the black backbround is quite, quite stark. The blocks have been trimmed to size and the underneath black corners cut out since this picture was taken. 

The first border on Herbs & Berries Baskets

The Herb and Berries Baskets quilt has also managed to be moved forward.... clear to the point of being a completed quilt top! Ta-da! I had all kinds of ideas for a pieced outer border, but just before cutting the fabric, kept changing my mind. Meh. Yuck. Ughh. Definitely not that. Are you sure? It was a bit exhausting actually.

A finished quilt top!

Finally, I just went with the warmest, most simplistic idea imaginable. A bit Jan Patek-ish, right? And I adore it. The quilt loves it. We're all happy as clams. Complicated is not always better. Another thing, the first border fabric was a cheapie, cheapie fabric gained from one of my relatives years ago. It had the perfect colors and subtle stripe look that I wanted so..... I obviously had no choice but to use it! I mean, what would you do? So annoying how it wanted to pucker though. Might have to throw the rest of it away 'cuz I'm just not sure it's worth the headache.

Looking a bit closer

Serendipitously, I was also able to get a big block of time with the upstairs floor open and free of people tromping back and forth. Uh oh. Time to quit procrastinating on the Hourglass Improv. quilt! I know it doesn't look like much right now, especially with that horrible carpet underneath, but wowsers. This work represents about four hours of really hard, keeping-my-nose-to-the-grindstone effort. Then I promptly stacked all the bits and pieces up and put them back into a tote. 

Next time they are taken out, I may or may not move them around again. Succeeding steps will be making big sections of string pieced slabs and then chopping those down into whatever size needed. Next week will probably be the next time the floor frees up again for auditioning and further layout decisions. And yes, I'm feeling great about making progress, but less great about the final results. Ho hum. Right now things seem to be looking a lot more tense than what I had hoped for. Definitely need to incorporate more light colored fabrics and work on opening up the overall flow somehow!

Hourglass Improv. progress

A big 'hope this can happen', but not entirely expected, was getting the Ormes Inspired hand quilting completely done by the end of March. Barely squeaked it into the timeframe. Wasn't it lucky that the binding was already sewn together and ready for phase one of machine sewing?*wink  Made me so, so happy! I know, I know, who cares how long it takes, really. Nobody cares but me. 

Ormes Inspired getting a binding

Next quilt up 'in the hoop' will be the Melon Patch Rows {Jubilee} quilt. The one that took years and ages to bring to quilt top stage and looks absolutely nothing like the original idea. 

Melon Patch Rows ready for pinning!

I'm usually a big proponent of cutting out the behind fabric for applique, but in this instance I took a pass for all the lettering. Just too many homespun fabrics used, which unfortunately has a tendency to fray. Normally I would do a Baptist fan stitching or something back and forth over all the double layer applique areas, but nah! This time I want to echo stitch inside all of the letters. Hmmm... Dreading it a little, but we'll see how awful it actually turns out to be. The beauty of homespun fabric is that it really is quite soft and the needle usually glides through like it's butter. Maybe a double layer of fabric won't be completely untenable.

Loving the look of the wording across the top

While pinning the quilt, I kept admiring the border applique. Really, really looks so sweet to me. Such an impulsive decision to cut those border scallops in half, but look how effective it is in that position! We just never know where a quilt wants us to go, do we!

And this flower and the border? Makes my heart melt!

So that's that. I'm feeling all sorts of creative these days, like maybe the floodgates opened up for awhile again. The main problem is that my opened-ended projects list has jumped from four or five to ten just in the past couple weeks. I should have NEVER rummaged through the orphan blocks & parts and pieces as four new projects seem to be the back up and try again sorts of effort. Oh well. It was really worrying me that the applique projects had dwindled down to a measly one on the list. Now that it's back up to a robust six applique projects {with the beginning stages prepped and ready to go}, things are feeling a lot more positive.  Just can't help myself for wanting to play with these orphaned bits and bobs right about now. 

A Stitch a Day Makes the Fidgets Go Away

It's been a busy couple of weeks. We had to leave town for a couple days to attend a cousins funeral and then last weekend, our grandkids came to visit. Yay! We're always up for that. Plus, there was a bridal shower for our new-to-be daughter-in-law. Wedding the end of April in Oklahoma! And our oldest daughter is expecting their first child. So very exciting. Shaping up to be one of those years. I almost turned the commenting off on the blog 'cuz I've been such a terrible blogger lately. It's all I can do to throw up a post once in awhile, much less, properly keep up with postings elsewhere.

Ormes Inspired getting some attention

I feel like the hand quilting has been massively neglected this year and it's been hard to get back into the regular routine of things. It's just one of those things where progress tends to happen very slowly. Then, little by little, that steady bit of effort {several evenings a week} can add up to a whole lotta by the end of the year! The current quilt in the hoop is getting the overall 'stacked hills' stitching treatment and I'm finally, finally closing in on the second row up from the bottom. This is a quilt where I wanted the stitching to mostly stay in the background. We'll see how it looks when more of the top is finished! So far I'm really liking the look and I'm usually fairly indifferent at this point. Crossing my fingers! 

Piddling away on the Hourglass Improv. quilt

Quilting time has definitely been a bit sporadic lately, but so have my moods as per which quilt project seems most interesting to work on. The hourglass quilt is to a point where all the larger hourglass blocks are stitched and now all of the smaller ones are sewn into 4-patch hourglass units too {didn't get a picture of that}. Time to lay it out on the design 'floor' and see where to go next! I just like to make sure auditioning time is mostly distraction free so I'm biding my time waiting on the perfect moment.

Making progress on the 25-Patch HST

I've also started sewing the 25-patch hst quilt blocks into rows. This project feels a little 'meh' at the moment. All the crayon color vibes are getting to me I guess. It's my own fault for trying to make it larger than the inspiration picture though. Just doesn't have the same look and feel as I was intending. Will have to look at it again later when it's all put together and see if my opinion changes any.

The start of Old Fashioned

A couple brand new projects are popping up around here for some reason or another. The cutting phase is getting close to being finished for the old fashioned yellow quilt. It's been a good excuse to use up more of the older fabrics that have been languishing in the stash totes. Don't know why exactly, but I have such a fondness for good cream fabrics. Always have had which means there is always an abundant supply on hand. Really hoping that these mellow yellow fabrics shine with the cream backgrounds and very simple design that's been chosen. Have you ever heard of the Crown block? That's what's happening here. Probably on point, but we'll determine that much later. For now, just need to get the blocks sewn together!

The start of Peace Always

Also, there just isn't nearly enough applique work prepped and ready to go around here. Makes me a little bit antsy! I gave into temptation, grabbed a marinating stack of fabrics and started in on the details. Quite an enjoyable afternoon pondering the exact shape that was needed for a basket, flowers etc. This quilt will be called 'Peace Always' and will be yet another medallion quilt. 'Cuz you know there's never enough of those! And they are so much fun to put together, playing around with all the interesting options available when making the quilt one row bigger. And then another row bigger until the quilt finally screams 'Enough!'. Well, maybe not a scream exactly. It's more like a very firm 'We're done now. You can go away'. Right? 

Progress on Several Fronts!

It was a good week for quilting around here. The #AHIQTulipQal quilt is finished being hand quilted and the first phase of binding is already sewn down. I didn't expect to like the wavy stitching in the outside border so much. Just has adds a bit of whimsy that funnily enough, makes me like the quilt better!

Binding all ready for hand stitching

The next quilt in the hoop is 'Ormes Inspired', an impulse quilt started clear back in 2019. Most of the work was completed in the early days of the Covid lockdowns and finally, the bulk of the quilt top was finished up by May of 2020. Later on, I went ahead and added the word at the bottom of the quilt and that was that!

Ormes Inspired getting sandwiched and pinned

This was probably the trickiest all over applique that I had ever attempted to do for a quilt. It still boggles my mind that most of the placement was done by eyeballing positions and sort of working backward from large motifs to much smaller ones. When I go out on a wing and a prayer with the quilting efforts, I just don't know when to quit! Oh well. Look where I ended up! On a totally different note, this was supposed to be my January quilt in-the-hoop and thankfully, it has been sandwiched and pinned since sometime in early December! 

Almost ready for the hoop...

One of the things that I really wanted to get accomplished in the past week was to work on the 25-patch HST quilt. I was crossing my fingers to get to 'completed quilt top stage', but count myself fortunate to at least see progress in a serious way. This picture below is a stack of all the completed blocks. They are trimmed to size and nicely stacked into rows according to the layout that was deemed appropriate one late, late evening. 

A little nerve-wracking to be working on a quilting project so late in the day as occasionally my judgement does gets a bit impaired. There comes a point in most all layout auditioning sessions where we are just DONE with all the what-ifs and what abouts. I'm sure you know exactly what I mean! There's something here in this particular layout that is still bugging me but not enough for a do over. For now I will sew it together and just wait to see if or where things might have went sideways. It's not like it's a precious quilt with tons of hours wrapped up in the decision making or stitching. Who knows? It might just end up being a quilt backing some day. 

Getting ready for sewing

A couple more applique blocks finished up with the Herbs and Berries quilt. I'm still really enjoying the laid back feel of these blocks. And since auditioning seems to be in the cards this past week, I went ahead and rearranged the blocks on the wall to make way for potential sashing. Because this quilt was always meant to have sashing and I wouldn't dare try and cheat it out of what it expects!

Auditioning for Herbs and Berries

Another thing that caught my attention almost immediately since getting back into the quilting room on a regular basis? This orphan block project {plus fabric pull} from almost a year ago. There has been the odd, random moment of trying to gain traction, but somehow it never amounted to anything solid. So easy to  just give up and walk away rather than feel like I was beating my head against a brick wall.

Hourglass Improv.

The thing is, I have this idea that will NOT go away. It haunts me. There's a longing here that feels kind of important though the entire project itself has felt overwhelming. Or totally underwhelming? Boring at times. Or maybe just a hair above my creativity level? And I'm so tired of that particular mental block. What a waste of time and energy to go there and think things like that. Uggh. 'I'm not good enough.' Seriously, what's the harm of trying? 

So here I go, mentally picturing something about making an 'intentional' background piece and then perhaps absolutely going over the top with a big 'ol applique design. Nothing formal of course. There needs to be lots and lots of glorious imperfection in order for me to properly connect with the flow. If there ever actually ends up being one. Somehow I rather suspect that part will come fairly rapidly if the irritating background would ever get busy and properly manifest itself!

Here's the latest plan. Instead of trying to put the smaller abandoned hourglass units together first, {as seems perfectly logical but wasn't getting anywhere in almost a year}, I will now switch to making these slightly larger hourglass units first. A small but important change that looky, looky! is translating into sewn units and good things happening!! Then.... I will most likely try to puzzle piece the new units with the smaller ones until there ends up being a largish, potential background piece. I may have to make more hourglass units than what are currently cut out. No way of knowing how many will be needed! And this process will probably include having to incorporate various pieces of gray, beige or white/cream fabric into the layout as well. Hey, whatever gets the project moving forward, right?

Staying Focused

It feels so good to check a couple more projects off of the open-ended projects list. Gives me just a little bit of breathing room for the brand new starts. 'Cuz there's always gonna be new projects here, there and maybe every where!

Once again, it's a finish!

It was a relatively quick finish for the Ormes Inspired quilt once I put my mind to it. Just had to grit my teeth and plow through the last little bit of hand work on the batik fabric lettering. After that, there was a very small amount of effort to sew the block back into the border. Once that was done, then it was super simple to sew the white tulip over the top of the 'I' and wallah! the whole thing was back to being a true blue finish. I am so much happier with the final result now,  than ever before. Love how the appliqued word makes it feel more special.

AHIQHourglass/Tulip quilt

The AHIQHourglass challenge quilt/#3 in the tulip series quilt top is finished up too. I am so amazed and happy with the overall vibe to this quilt! All the hourglass units were sewed together in sets of four and then chopped off willy nilly at the ends. This makes for less-than-perfect economy block {look} cornerstones at the sashing, but I don't see that detracting from this utility style, improv. quilt at all.

The full quilt

Using the raspberry pink background fabric really amped up the cozy, almost romantic look and feel to this quilt. That was a bit unexpected, but so much fun to just 'roll' with! As always, I tried to push with certain fabric combinations, trying for blendy prints as well as throwing in a few larger print fabrics too. My default ever seems to be for using 'safe' fabric combo's and I've tried and tried and tried to break that habit throughout the years. Quilts tend to have a much more interesting feel when the fabric group as a whole takes on a personality! When all the prints are exactly the same scale, then the vibe tends toward boring. At least in my opinion. You're welcome to feel differently! 

All the leaves are blue in better lighting....

This same scale thing is sometimes a very good idea in certain areas of a quilt. You can't deny that some places will benefit greatly from this application! It helps give off a uniformity of spirit that seems a bit more peppy than simply using 4 yards of the same exact fabric and of course, enables all of us 'use-up-the-stash' lovers to really excel. 

In this quilt, I used very similar prints for the sashing {with both the creams and the gray-browns}, thus giving more room to push on the value in the gray-browns. Would it have looked fine with all the gray-browns being the same exact value? I think so, but mixing them up helps {subtly} to bring energy and movement to the quilt. If there would have been larger contrast used in the scale of the sashing prints, then there would have been less movement throughout, and undoubtedly, a  much choppier look.

For the eye popping 'look at me' prints {go ahead, pretend with me here!}, I definitely focused in on the tulip shapes and the stems. With the stems, it was easy. The same fabric is on repeat for every single block, but feels more engaging than one solid or blendy-type fabric combined with this particular background. If they become a little less noteworthy and more mundane due to repeats, meh. You probably like more chaotic looking quilts than I prefer! 

In a quilt like this, every single tulip could have been a busy, cool looking print. Alas, that's not my quilt stash. So, then it's time to make-do. Basically, I just play with a stack of fabrics, trying to mix and match interesting prints with change-ups in the color and value of blander looking fabrics until I get to 20 magic fabric pairings--the number of blocks needed here. If I have to toss out fabrics here and there, then that's exactly what happens. 

It's pretty obvious what I did for the leaves, mixing up both the color value and the print scale. In every quilt, there are decisions that inform the next move or phase of a quilt. With scrappy quilts, most of us are never quite sure what we intend to do until we are actually doing it. Experience makes it far easier to find the right opportunities to change up scale or value or when it's probably best to rely on a similar look/feel fabric mixture.

This one might be hard to get rid of some day!

It was difficult to feel comfortable using the med. pink for the tulips, but in the end, I really had no choice. What is contrast really, but what you make it to be? They couldn't all be red, white or black, either and the lighter pink had to go somewhere! Plus, I adored the sassy sweetness of adding slightly lighter pink over the darker pink. After all the applique was stitched,  I even threw out one fairly interesting printed white fabric tulip and substituted one more pink fabric tulip. Just because. 

Did you notice the orange tulip clear up in the far left corner of the quilt? I like how it ties back in with the larger print pink and orange floral fabric down towards the bottom of the quilt. Sometimes it pays to echo a cuckoo color in some other area of the quilt and since I wanted to use that scrap of larger floral? Super easy decision even though a part of me, that left brain, 'don't be a crazy' side, wanted to scrap it all. When I say that it was easy, that's because experience has taught me the importance of taking these sorts of chance in order to make a true 'me' quilt. You would take an entirely different risk and achieve a much better outcome--for you!

Always have to add something that
fades into the background!

So yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. This is me telling you why I love and adore this particular quilt. Yes, it was an impulse make. Yes, I was trying to use up the hourglass units. The thing is, successful scrappy don't generally happen entirely by accident. I don't care what people tell you, throwing a big pile of fabric in a bag and grabbing whichever pops up next, rarely works out wonderfully! 

Loving this quilt!

In most cases, there needs to be a measure of controls set into place. The when, where and how? That is entirely up to you and YOUR vision. Try to make your color palette, print scale and values WORK, but don't work exceedingly hard making it happen. Does that make any sense? Have a little fun and take chances and gradually {so gradually you might not even notice at first},  you'll be going with whatever flow the quilt quite organically generates. 

Do you think I wasn't the teensiest bit concerned about sewing all the leaves in blue? My mantra through the years has basically distilled into this one pragmatic thought: If a set of fabrics look good together in a stack, then they'll look great together in a quilt. Just pick a spot for each color and make it happen! As you struggle through the process time and again, you'll naturally get better at sorting out the proportions and pesky {but quite specific} details that take it to the next level. 

Rhi's quilt

Okay, time to get off my soapbox. After last weeks improv. adventure, it seemed like an excellent time to tackle the rest of my daughters dress quilt. Scrappy, improv. coins sounded fun and quite a good distraction from all the hand work currently filling up my evenings.  

No need to overthink it!

Though green is actually a challenging color for me to use as a predominant color in a quilt, it was the only way forward for the next round of this quilt. Try as I might, the blue fabrics {that I really, really wanted to use}, look completely uninterested in happily responding. Too much black and white bumped the quilt up to formal looking, instead of 'charming' {not a suitable look for those sunflowers} and yellow made the celery green center look like puce. I was doomed. Green it was! Next round will bring the quilt up to a good lap quilt size and feature more of the large floral. Trying like mad to keep this one as uncomplicated as the quilt will allow!