It's a Finish!

 Ta-da! Primrose Path is a finished top! Black was the only color that made sense for the outside border, so easy-peasy. The original inspiration was a tapestry or rug {not sure} in black and white. Just couldn't quite bring myself to make a pure black and white quilt. Much too modern for me!

Primrose Path is a completed quilt top now

Thankfully I had enough of a solid to cut out what was needed for borders. Just enough actually. Really surprising as I tend to use it up in bindings and I had already used quite a bit in the sashing borders of this top. Would have loved to use a black fabric with some sort of floral print, but then that would have made things over-the-top busy. Probably. We'll never know now!

A little bit funky, a little bit charming

I love quilts with blocks set in two different directions and this fit the bill nicely. It's not immediately obvious, but I find it kind of sweet and charming.

Probably too graphic to have the cozy vibe I like

This quilt is dark, quirky and not nearly as prim as I normally prefer things to look. Still, it's got a lot of character and will hopefully, fingers crossed, look amazing with hand quilting some day in the future! The size of this quilt is 78" x 82 1/2", so a bit bigger than a large throw quilt. Love having it at finished quilt top stage after years of wondering if I wanted to make this, how to do it? In what colors, yada, yada yada. So it's not my favorite quilt in the whole wide world. That happens sometimes. I'm definitely pleased with how it looks though and happy for the experience!

Lotsa pink in this quilt....

I also finished up the hand quilting on Practice, the improv. strips quilt that I'm gifting to a nephew for his wedding. Big sigh!  I was sweating it a little with all the other things that needed attention this week.

Improv. Practice is finished up!

This quilt was started with the practice strips from the winter quilting meeting two winters ago. I had gathered up a stack of old, less than admirable fabrics for all the gals to practice free cutting on. It seemed easier to let them 'practice' before asking them to cut into their good fabric. My thought was that I wouldn't care how this stack of fabric ended up and it might be interesting to play with strips cut in widths intuitive to other people.

It's been a great practice quilt 

Later on, I used these strips to make my own quilt top, only needing to add in another couple fat quarters of color, plus the cream of course. The cohesion of the cream fabric really helps pull the whole look of the quilt together in my opinion. Good call there as the other fabrics ended up being fairly blendy looking without the offset of the much lighter color.

So glad to see the hand stitching texture come alive

Once again, I was reminded at how much better some fabrics can look when they are cut into smaller pieces. Funny how it can make an 'ugly' fabric look so, so much better!

Very snuggly looking quilt!

Mostly though, I was just done with these particular colors and style of fabric prints. Obviously, I have been spending a lot more time with brighter colors in the past couple years and have gotten away from the overwhelming earth tone phase. That being said, this was a good trip down memory lane, while also allowing me to freely play with improv. strip layout. Absolutely no pressure with this project!

Loving this backing

When I went looking for a suitable quilt top for my very masculine, duck hunting nephew, this quilt top jumped out as the best possible choice. Feeling sorry for his wife to be, I went ahead and added this Kaffe floral to the back. Well, this fabric and about five others. ha! Anyway, it's DONE! Yay me! and now I can start finishing up the two baby quilts and maybe even start on another....

Trying To Get Things Crossed Off the List

I've been hand quilting every evening possible, trying to finish up this improv. strings quilt. It's going to be gifted to a nephew for a wedding gift and time is running out. Not that it has to be given by the wedding date. Oh no. I'm much more relaxed than that. It's just that I don't want to pay postage or risk having it get lost in the mail! So hopefully it will be all wrapped up by next week. Fingers crossed!

Only three more rows to stitch across the quilt!

I have a couple baby quilts sewn up, ready to be sandwiched and quilted. This one hopefully fits the bill for 'baby boy'. I ended up doing a log cabin surround all around the improv. monkey wrench block which was super fun. Being my rebellious self, I  didn't square it up along the way. And then I made matters worse by sort of eyeballing the strip cuts. Free-cutting with a ruler. Mostly straigh-tish!

A little too wonky

When the quilt was approximately the intended size, then I went ahead and squared up the quilt as a whole. {Well, sort of squared it up, it's probably within half an inch!} Loving the sweet, laid back charm to this one already. Something about gingham and floral together that really gets to me! And I used up some pretty old, weird colored blue fabrics that have been languishing in the bottom of the stash totes forever. Feels amazing to find a good use for those! 

Baby Boy quilt finished up

Prickly Pear was sewn into a quilt top just before the boy quilt. I wish the gray pears showed better in the pictures, but you know me. Photography is not my strong suit at all. This quilt ended up being a bit longer than I like at 48". Oh well. It will make a great transitional baby/toddler quilt this way. Always so interesting to try and make these much smaller quilts when I'm completely used to having oodles and oodles of room for a quilt to grow. Honestly, it was a bit hard not to keep this quilt just to see where it could evolve to.*sigh  This mama better appreciate my restraint! Haha  Overall, it's been lovely working with these cut-out pear shapes and seeing where else they could shine. At least I got to have that experience!

Prickly Pear is a finished quilt top

There will be two more baby quilts, but I'm still playing with the fabric stacks. Not gray and beige though! Sounds a bit boring and quilts should never, ever be intentionally dull. Most of us get there accidentally once in awhile without even trying! Just trying to keep things fairly simple and uncomplicated with a generous helping of cozy. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

Primrose Path getting some attention

I did manage to start sewing the Primrose Path applique blocks into rows. Just a little bit more time involved and there should be a finished quilt top. I was very dismayed to realize that the corner triangles did not actually land where I wanted them too. Was trying for the corners to meet up with the closest pink strip, sort of boxing things in. Not going to go back and change things at this point though. This quilt is making me cross my eyes, question my judgment and just generally working to keep my emotions on a seesaw. Do I like it? Yes, no, maybe so.....

Trudging Along

 This is not a beautiful post, just a little update on progress for the past week or so. The pear blocks are appliqued and ready for further work now. Just contemplating how I want to frame the smaller blocks so end up being the same size as the larger.

Probably going to keep this arrangement

All the blocks for 'Old Fashioned' have been trimmed and now I'm sewing the rows together. It's all tedious work when the blocks don't have a lot of variation. Love these two color quilts when they are totally finished up and quilted, but it's a real effort putting them together. Soooooo boring sometimes! 

Starting to come together

All the blocks were laid out and the rows numbered before I remembered that the plan was for pieced blocks to be chopped in half at the top and bottom. Uggh... I almost backed out of the idea completely, but then reconsidered. The quilt will look ever so much more interesting to me if I stick to the original idea! Had to take five blocks, mark the centers, sew a seam on either side of the mark and then cut through the middle. That should hold the cut piecing stable at the edges of the quilt.

Always best to stabilize the outside edges of a cut block

Doesn't look like much, but I also managed to figure out the colors for the sashing on the Primrose Path quilt. Got all the pieces cut out and ready for a big sewing session. Should have cut long strips to sew together and then cut into pieced rows, but the math failed me. It's so much harder to determine when you're dealing with bits and pieces of cut fat quarters instead of larger yardage! I just threw up my hands and resigned myself to lots more sewing time.

Prep work

Yesterday was the day that I set aside for sandwiching and pinning the next quilts in the hoop. Not done with the current one yet, but it's getting closer and I know it's much, much easier to jump right into the next quilt if it's all ready to go once the hoop is empty. Apparently my mind is on the fritz lately as both of the backings were the size of the quilt tops. Uh huh. Didn't add any of the extra needed at all. And of course I didn't find out till the backings were already taped to the floor. It was terribly annoying. Thankfully my daughter offered to help pin the quilts later in the day so at least that part went really fast!

Next quilts up

While I've been hand quilting most evenings of the week, I haven't been putting in oodles of time with it. So many things taking our time and attention lately, I'm really starting to crave some down time.

Working on the outside of the quilt now

Won't be happening any time soon though as were already gearing up to head out on our annual camping trip with our church friends. I'm trying not to feel grouchy about it, but it's hard. Prices of fuel and groceries are gonna make it an expensive little vacay and me? I'd almost rather head to the ocean. It's always fun once we get there though and at least I'll get to see my grandkids there. That pretty much makes it all worthwhile.

All the Current Projects

So one of the questions I get asked pretty often is this: how many projects are you currently working on? Well, most of the time, it's a number somewhere between 5 and 10. And that doesn't even count the quilt in the hoop or if I'm finishing off the binding on yet another quilt. 

The new medallion quilt

Right now there are 8 work-in-progress type quilt projects. They have fabric stacked up, blocks started or applique prepped, designs doodled onto paper, or something serious going on. They are the real deal and not just a dreamy little idea for the future! The first one is 'Peace Always Medallion'. Just barely got the centerpiece stitched down a couple days ago. Love, love, love having a free-style medallion quilt in the works!

Needing a sashing

'Primrose Path' is a project based on a textile print that I pinned on Pinterest years ago. Just love the naïve look to these  flowers. Took me a couple years to finally decide that yes, I did actually want to do the backgrounds in dull black colored fabrics. Next up is working out the measurements for the pieced sashing. Really intrigued by the way the sashing forces the applique into being front and center.

Getting ready to stitch these down

'Melon Patch Blossom' is part of the ongoing Melon Patch series. It will be the third one in fact! When I changed direction in mid stream, these petal look motifs didn't relish being completely abandoned. The bright green rectangles are probably going to be a sashing element in this quilt. Maybe. We'll see where things end up.

All ready for the love and attention!

'Improv. Hourglass Abstract' is something that has been nagging at me for a very long time. Really wanted to do something with the leftover hourglass units {wrong size so more like useless hourglass units?} and this seemed like the answer. Will need to be figuring out a larger scale applique flowery vine to stitch down over the top of this. Don't want it to be so small as to not make a proper impact!

Looking pretty sweet!

Then there's the 'Happy Accident' project. Cut out all the Dresden units much too narrow for Ring Around. Are you getting the message yet? Many of my projects seem to originate from leftovers and random mistakes...

Piecing is not my strong suite anymore. Feeling a bit boring...

'Old Fashioned' is just a sappy, mellow yellow quilt that I wanted to make. Supposed to be answering a Sun challenge prompt, but can't quite get there in my mind until I work with these quieter yellows. Don't know why it works that way sometimes, but there's really not a lot of point in fighting it.

Making sure I want to do what I think needs to happen

'Good Vibes' is the next quilt in the Circle Game series. #3 I think. These circles were cut out from behind Lillabelle. It's interesting how the circles are getting less and less truly circular and more obviously lopsided. Do I care? Hmmm... Probably not. I also find it fascinating that the circles really aren't getting substantially smaller with each new set. For some reason that has surprised me more than it should of. 

All prepped and ready to go

And then there is 'Prickly Pears'. Yep! Another quilt with cut-outs from a previous quilt. I thought they would be kinda weird looking pears in the gray, but this is looking rather sweet and spunky to me. Will see how it plays out in the larger layout, but for now, my fingers are positively itching to get started stitching! 

So that's that. Lots of applique as usual which tends to keep my skirt blowing up and the endorphins running at high. Will probably try to finish up another project or two before I dive into more brand new projects. The next ones should probably be something other than orphaned bits and bobs too. The thing is, we should all work on exactly the amount of projects that make sense to the way our quilty ebb and flow work best. I feel very good about this amount. Not overwhelmed and too over stretched, and yet not too tied down or boxed in. Isn't playtime fun?

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. 

Moving Things Along

 Trying to get a couple more finishes in before the end of the year. Moody 9-Patch has the initial phase of binding sewn on, all the clips on and now is waiting on the hand stitching time.

Moody 9-Patch getting a binding

It was a huge relief to get Country Stars all finished up and ready for gifting. I even managed to get the label stitched on! 

Country Stars all finished up!

Next up will be making the time to deliver it. Gotta wait on my husbands schedule as we want to do it together. Sort of a 'Merry Christmas' and also a housewarming gift. 

The compass stars are never a bad idea

It's kind of funny how it ended up with a vaguely holiday vibe, which was never intended at all. I just hope our friend likes traditional look quilts as much as she proclaimed to. Kind of a trip down memory lane for me and though I don't LOVE this quilt, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

So happy the hand quilting grid proved out

The applique could have been a little bit more exciting, but then it would have been difficult to give away. Right?

Should be a good couch throw!

Next up in the hoop is the #AHIQStringTulipsQal project. This is the top that I thought was done and then  months later, had to pull it back out of the quilt top drawers and add on an applique border. So much better looking now. I thought surely, surely I would want to hand quilt the one and only Christmas quilt top left in the drawers, but nope. Absolutely no interest at the moment. For some reason this one thinks it needs to be next.

On to the next quilt

Oh well. It should be very easy to jump into and get started. I went ahead and machine stitched in-the-ditch around the large center area and also, at the outside border. Not necessary, but something that will make the overall stitching move just a little faster. And it won't ruin the look of the hand quilting one iota. Win, win.

Ready for the next step

All the applique for the thirty Primrose Path applique blocks is done now. The little flower centers went lickety-split. Now I will be adding little corner triangles to the blocks. Just need to decide on the right color for that. Originally I thought to do a white texty fabric, then I moved on to a mixed palette of pastels. Now I'm leaning hard toward shades of the med-pink used in a couple of the blocks. I never intended for this to end up a 'pink and black' quilt, but hey, what do I know?

A quilt that refuses to be taken seriously

You can see that I've sewn together eight of the nine blocks necessary for making the 25-Patch Hst quilt. Of course it doesn't seem like nearly enough {color me shocked} and so I will be changing it to a sixteen block quilt. I started out following the original quilt look for block colors but eventually just sort of gravitated toward changing things up here or there. Now I'm in good shape to make up the next eight blocks willy-nilly and then afterward I'll probably have to mix all the blocks up to make everything make sense once again. 

I'm crossing my fingers this will be a joyful, happy looking quilt, not a sad hst vomit type thing. I went ahead and cut out more of the darker brown and medium blue fabrics for more units. So far the green is the very hardest to introduce into the quilt which is pretty on par for normal around here. Don't want to leave it out though as there will be more green used in the sashing pieces. Probably. It's been a lot of fun though and coming together without much trouble. In my head, I'm calling it a 'palette cleanser', but I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's a quilt that refuses to be treated as precious?

A Little Quilting and A Lotta Family

Would you be shocked if I said that life had been busy lately? What was it that I read the other day, something about our 'hustle culture' being the new norm? Yeah. Not by choice for most of us. I managed to squeeze in a few good minutes trimming off the points of the hsts and then throwing a few of them up on the wall. This isn't sewn together yet, still in full-on contemplation mode.

25-Patch Hsts

All those hsts sewn together properly would represent four blocks to the 25-Patch HST quilt. The look is overtly {almost obnoxiously} scrappy, yet somewhat vintage in look and feel. Most all of the fabrics used are in a 15 year range though. There is probably only one fabric that would truly be of vintage era though. I'm absolutely loving the mishmash of colors and sheer unpretentious quality that's already shining through. The Inspiration quilt has nine of these 25-patch blocks so I'll start with that, roughly following the original makers lead as to value. After those nine blocks are sewn, then we'll figure out the rest of the quilt. Pretty sure there will be lots of leftover units to play with.

Primrose Path blocks

I seem to be in this rut lately of making myself finish up one applique project at a time. So weird. For years, when I got bogged down mentally, then I just pushed the project off to the back burner and started stitching on another. Now I'm acting like Sally Steadfast and keeping my nose to the grindstone until it's ALL done. 

Figuring out the centers
Can you see the snow piled up outside on the deck?

It was really exciting to finally figure out the little centers of the primrose flowers. I knew the fabric needed to be a in similar tones of faded black, but the fussy cut flowers in the this black fabric is exactly right. Don't you love when that happens?

Moody 9-Patch in the hoop

Still hand quilting on the Moody 9-Patch quilt. It's only been a finished quilt top since February of 2021, but it seems like it's been in the quilt top drawers for much, much longer. I machine stitched-in-the-ditch between all the blocks before my sewing machine was fixed. Basically, the dual feed wasn't working properly which makes for all those stitching lines being less than fully in-the-ditch and more of a meandering trail of thread. Even with using a standard walking foot. Oh well. Made me a little mad at the time, but now I don't even hardly notice. Or care. Am sort of laughing at myself for expending so much energy doing hand quilting on a quilt that barely shows off the effort involved though. It's been lovely having it in my lap though! Such a pretty, deep fall look and feel going on here!

All the Wilson Siblings in one place and 
lightning didn't strike...

The entire family didn't end up being altogether on the big day after all, only about 45 persons or so. But by Saturday, all of my siblings were present at my mom and dads for 'pizza night'. It's become part of the holiday weekend to have one pizza night, an Asian food night and also a taco bar in the days following Thanksgiving. Anyway, on impulse because its so rare we're all together in one place, we found ourselves taking a few family photos of the siblings. Some smart-alecky person suggested we arrange ourselves in order by birth, and of course people started snapping pics for posterity. It was pretty funny getting it all sorted out and then later on somebody mentioned that half of us pictured here are Gen X kids and the other half are millennials, Whatever that means? 21 years between oldest and youngest in case you were wondering. My baby brother was only four months old at my wedding! lol

I don't really talk about this much because we got a lot of flack about it growing up. People have SO MUCH to say about people having more than four or five kids in their families. I always had to laugh when someone would say my four kids was a big family. Right.... You wouldn't believe all the things total strangers and/or supposed friends would say right in front of us kids or my parents too. And not expect anyone to get offended. It was crazy and really rude at times! You learn really quick who the real friends are! Once in a great while someone would have wonderful things to say to us and we'd all sort of relax and lose the defensive posture. Not that we care now, but as kiddos, it was terribly hard to take at times.

Mom and dad had 12 kids in all with 11 kids raised to adulthood. Let me just say that they were incredible parents to us all and never lived off of anyone or expected anyone else to pick up the slack. Two of my siblings {right smack in the middle and pretty much the bridge between 'older' and 'younger' families} have passed now and this is what is left of the tribe. We still feel their loss every time we do something like this but know it will only get worse as the years fly by. And the numbers undoubtedly shrink even more? Such is life unfortunately so we cherish the good times while we can.

I am the shorty, second to the left in this picture. Fun times and yes, I was bossy growing up. What can I say? As you can see, a few 'what are we doing here?' looks because of the relaxed attire, but who really cares in the long run? I actually think the pictures turned out better from not being overly scheduled and planned to the nth degree! We don't always get along super, magically, wonderfully well, but I know if ever I truly needed anything, I could call any one of them and they'd run to my aid in a heartbeat. You know how it is with well adjusted siblings, blood is thicker than water, but ooh... we also have memories like elephants! I had a great time telling one of my nieces this last weekend about a much younger version of her sweet mama.*wink

Wintertime in Brewster, Washington

In other news, we've had snow and then a little bit more snow on top of that. The first two pictures were snapped by my husband a couple days ago. The first one was taken at his current construction/remodeling project approx. six miles from where we live {which is a whole lot closer to that mountain in the background}. It was such a cold, clear day, the distance looks much, much shorter than what it really is!

 

This next picture was taken just as he was driving through the outskirts of our little town of Pateros {less than half a mile from where we live}, but looking off to the left across the Columbia River instead of straight ahead at Billygoat mountain {seen in the previous picture}.

The sun is shining in Pateros, Washington

This last picture was taken by a friend of ours here in town who owns a little Airbnb. She snapped this picture while taking a walk along the Methow river, right where it dumps into the Columbia river {pictured behind the railroad bridge and also in the background of the previous picture. This is where our little town of Pateros sits, right at the junction of those rivers and nestled in the foothills of the mountain shown in the first picture. We really do have gorgeous views year around here, but in wintertime, after a fresh snowfall and  then the sun comes out? It's just incredible. So pretty.

Love the steamy look to the rivers in the wintertime

And mostly we do love the winters here, but wowsers, it did come early this year! I have shoveled snow off and on in short little spurts for about three days now. Yesterday I slipped and fell splat! on my left shoulder, elbow and hip, thankfully only getting slightly bruised. Normally my husband would do more of the shoveling, but we all got hit by a stomach bug on the Monday after the big weekend and I'm the one who recovered the fastest it seems. I'm just way too impatient to wait around for him to do the work, even though my back and shoulders are crying out the entire time I'm shoveling. I am soooo out of shape! There is a huge difference between a needle and a snow shovel, but I hate having snow fall into my boots every time I head out to the garage, the dumpster or to the car. Ughh. Don't tell them, but I always miss my boys a little extra this time of year...