Fall 2017 Bloggers Quilt Festival: Scrappy Tulips

It's time once again for Amy's wonderful Bloggers Quilt Festival! It has a special place in my heart as it's what propelled me to first start lurking on quilt blogs and get interested in the online quilting community. My first entry is Scrappy Tulips, a quilt many have already seen here before.

Scrappy Tulips

Scrappy Tulips was finished up this August, but was started sometime back in 2014! {Not an abnormal lag time between start and finish time around here.} It is one of those quilts that I adore because the paper pieced tulips came straight out of my scrap bin. Oh those sweet little bits of fabric we are always discarding--so many good uses for them! The tulip pattern is out of an older book called 'Quick and Easy Strip Quilting' by Helen Whitson Rose I bought at a guild yard sale. I am always extremely intrigued by the idea of new adaptations or interpretations of old patterns, and this one certainly didn't disappoint.

Scrappy Tulips hanging on the railing

Otherwise, I made the design up as the quilt progressed, picking and choosing fabrics and colors as seemed to work best with the original tulips. Or as the quilt seemed to demand. As you can only imagine, the red/brown stripe being used as a background fabric completely set the tone of the quilt going forward. From there it was mostly a matter of trying to make everything come together without ending up with a circus of colors! It was a very fun quilt to play with and it also gave me a chance to use an old, funky blue fabric that never seemed to play well with any other quilt. Stuff like that makes me do a little {mental} victory dance. Wouldn't want to scare my kids with the real thing. They already think I'm weird enough!

Always love to see this particular border!

And all the fabrics in this quilt did come directly from the scrap bin or from my stash. That's always a fun line in the sand. Make do or somehow make something work? That's the sort of challenge that keeps me going. Love that.

The border was something I had to think about for awhile but eventually decided on a lighter look for the outside. As I currently had a fascination for snowball quilts {never made one before, but thought they could be interesting}, it seemed like a good time to experiment. From there, it was a short jump to continuing the dive into the scrap bin to find those little bits of color for the corners. I am so, so happy with the border on this quilt! I love how it give a lacy, sort of yo-yo look to the quilt. My regular readers know that I'm somewhat compelled to add borders, pieced or applique, to almost every quilt made around here. Can you even imagine this quilt without a border?

And a look at the stitching...

The entire quilt was hand quilted with various colors of #8 perle cotton thread, my go-to these days. Since most of my quilts are hand quilted, this is a super easy way to give instant texture {yum} and also, to get through the quilting in a speedier fashion than traditional hand quilting thread. If you're interested, I also have a 2nd entry in the quilt festival, Flocks of Geese, my brand new finish. Thanks to Amy Ellis for her hard work in putting this festival together. Always fun to cruise through the entries and find new inspiration!

The Infamous Wedding Ring (or Pickle Dish) Progress

Only have about 6-8 more sets of these arcs to go now! It's been a very slow project, but I'm not pushing myself at all. Frankly, I think I'm terrified to move on to the next step! It's so good to have quilters like Karen who aren't afraid to blog about their frustrations as they move through the process to a beautiful finish. Yay for her wonderful win! 

More finished arcs

And Yay for Rachael too. (All of the DWR winners actually.) Love it when someone dares to be different and ramps up their creativity in such a fun way. It really is a wonderful era of readily available inspiration right here at our fingertips. I know it keeps me plugging along all the time!

Auditioning the background and eye fabric

I won't bore you with the whole sad story, but this is the second piece of background fabric I bought just for this project. 5 1/2 yds of fabric that wouldn't work because it was too busy and made everything look blah-ish. (The money down the drain still just kills me.) And it pains me to admit that I even dithered about this lovely plaid until just recently when I made up mind that my quilt was going to be traditional and that was that.

A closer look at the eye fabric--
a lovely peppered cotton that makes my heart sing
even though I was looking for a super light fabric at the time...

The quilt in the Material Obsession II book makes a fabulous impression with the funky, bright floral background--so very striking. It really threw me off track for awhile in the search for my own background fabric. Sometimes I think I do better when I'm working from a black and white picture so that I don't get so distracted. This quilt is destined to be a bit of a yawn for those that are looking for something different, but so far the colors are keeping me very happy. (I must be in my blue phase?) Priorities. Who are we quilting for anyway?

A Little Progress and a Couple New Starts

Still working on the pickle dish/wedding ring arcs here and there. I try to remember and change out my needle after I'm done because the paper dulls it so quickly. (I do re-use the needle for the paper piecing though in case you were wondering.)

More yummy arcs

I seem to be in the mood for starting projects so I decided to just roll with it. I'm back to playing with my very light gray fabrics again. We'll see if I can make anything interesting from this fabric!

Geese tracks pieces

I cut out some smaller geese track blocks thinking they will make a good centerpiece for an applique quilt I am trying to get figured out. Only for about six months now! Occasionally I am a class A ditherer. Before I ever cut into fabric for a new project I will have fabric in and out of stacks and numerous papers scribbled over with plain old gibberish. You just don't see that because it's all behind the scenes.*wink

Some treasured fabrics

What helped me jump into the geese tracks/applique project was when I remembered the small bag of my grandmas fabric that I have stashed away for 'special' projects. Adding the green and red fabric into the mix finally made everything 'click' for me and I felt that prickling sensation of pure delight in my fabric combinations! I think it really helped sharpen the blend of fabric I was already auditioning and of course--grandmas fabrics? Always very sentimental and special anyway.

Rolling Stone block progress

Then because cutting out fabric is so much fun--NOT! I decided to quit agonizing over how to do the rolling stone blocks for my Scrap Basket and just do it. The background color was giving me fits and I. Could. Not. Decide. Until I did, at about 12:30 one night (very early morning) just before I fell asleep. lol Like I said, I'm just gonna roll with it....

Trying Not to Get too Sidetracked

While digging through my orphan blocks the other day I stumbled upon these star blocks. Whoa! I didn't remember that there were six of them left over. Then, the very same day, I happened to see the orange leaf fabric I had bought for a border forever ago and never used. Click! You know how it goes. Blindsided by the new project that literally appears out of nowhere and all because of a fabric that's suddenly too great to leave languishing in the totes for years....

The new project

There's really no controlling the next chain of events. Might as well give in and enjoy the ride.*wink  After the initial whirlwind of work, I arrived here. I think it needs a couple of simple borders on the quilt (more of that orange fabric for sure) making it lap size and then I will probably give it as a gift. Easy peasy. Don't you just love these kinds of quilts? The thing is, I do try to be realistic too. We're kidding ourselves if we ever think it's possible to just sneak a quilt in. Ha! The time it takes to work on this quilt is most definitely taking away from time I would be working on another.

Still working on my letters

I am still plugging away at The Big Broken Dish. Found out that I mixed up the fabrics for the #3 word and the #4 word, which really doesn't matter except it DOES. Because the sequence thing is sort of important in this quilt and the right layout of light and dark fabric are important in every quilt. At this point I am just laughing inside (all of the time) at this quilt. How ironic to make a quilt based around 'The Creative Process' and struggle with it at every point! I've decide to just let it be, mistakes and all. It's my quilt, my struggling creative process and my personal joke after all.

A few more arcs

Got a few more arcs done as well. Now there are 20 sets done out of 48--definitely more than half done. It was suggested that I burn through them now and put them behind me, but this is paper piecing we're talking about. I don't HATE it, but it's still not my favorite method of piecing. For now I'm very content to be making forward progress. lol I think I might just be that kind of quilter. Peck, peck, peck....

More Paper Piecing

Just a quick post before the day gets away from me. I wanted to show PROOF that I'm still slogging away at these arcs--wedding ring, pickle dish, whatever they are!

More finished arcs!

Believe it or not, I am almost at the halfway point. Yay for me! I have slipped past the part of feeling intense irritation with having to do paper piecing in the first place and now I've reached a much scarier phase--contemplation about what it would actually take to make a New York beauty quilt. You know, how I could break it down into doable. (And I'm kinda wondering if this is still 'I'm so glad to be home and in the quilt room that I don't care what I'm doing?') Uh huh, this would definitely be called insanity in any other language. Quick, somebody go hide the Karen Stone book!

Getting the Pickle Dish Figured Out

So, I finally woke up and realized that I was actually stealing from the stack of fabric reserved especially for my Pickle Dish quilt!?!  When I pull a selection of fabric out of my totes THREE different times and imagine them being used in a quilt, it's time to do something about that.  Which I did.  I started the Pickle Dish Insanity project. Remember?

Melon fabric cut and ready to go.

Anyway, it seemed like a good moment to commit more fully to the project or just go ahead and let it gently lapse into oblivion one piece of stolen fabric at a time...

Does the picture of cut up fabric say it loudly enough or do I need to say the words? I am fully committed to this project! (You know it'll be tough to back peddle now 'cuz I really, really hate to waste fabric.) The Pickle Dish quilt has been one of my favorites forever and I also want to make would love to have a New York Beauty quilt some day.  I like to view this quilt as a good warm up to a much trickier quilt.*wink

What is wrong with this picture?

It started out with a bang, with me sewing the very first piece of fabric onto the paper wrong!  Well, that piece of fabric wasn't exactly wrong, but the idea is to sew two pieces face to face.  Next I would turn the second piece of fabric (if it was sewed on where it should be) face up the in opposite direction and iron it open.  One piece of fabric after another until eventually you reach the end of the melon.  Does anybody know if you're supposed to sew left to right? or right to left?  And does it even matter?

Two pairs of melons ready to trim.

I tried both until I got into a rhythm that felt good to me.  There are 48 pairs of melon in this particular pattern from the Material Obsession 2 book, otherwise called the 'Eyelash Quilt'.  The quilt pictured in the book is absolutely gorgeous--very funky and modern.  (Unlike my quilt which will be probably be fairly mellow and somewhat old fashioned looking.)  I am such a difficult person.  Give me a antique quilt and I try to make it look new and then of course vise versa.

LOVE the scrappy ones!

Not all of my melons were planned to be scrappy, but I'm really liking the look.  Makes me wonder if I should go back through the box of cut up fabrics and mix more of the sets?  We'll see.  After today's 'oops' it did make me realize that I should plan to sew a few of these melons every single week until I get through them all.  Paper piecing isn't difficult, but it is backwards thinking in my mind.  Probably best to try and stay in good practice....