It Finally Has a Real Name Now

We've been having our winter storm weather for the past two weeks. Lots and lots of snow, which makes for gorgeous scenery, and also, whenever it stops snowing, lovely, lovely light shining into the house. Thankfully it looks like it will melt off rather quickly and not stick around for too long. We don't care to drive in those conditions on a regular basis!

Antique Crows a completed quilt top now!

Feeling quite home bound when the snow is doing its worst, I have dedicated myself to finishing up the quilt top for Quarter Circles, hereafter to be called 'Antique Crows'. I'm not sure when this one was officially started, but I think it was sometime in 2017? As all the blocks were applique, it's something that I took time with working on, never making it a top priority. And in fact, this project was more of a 'squirrel' project as the little cream quarter circles were cut-outs from behind the applique on a previous quilt. Waste not, want not!

Looking at the top border....

It always amuses me how one quilt project can so extemporaneously spark yet another idea or even, at times, turn into an unplanned series of quilts created with similar elements. The ideas just keep flowing and with this one in particular, two ideas somehow joined together: the chunky New York Beauty blocks {leftover quarter circles} and the interpretation of the Antique Crows applique. So efficient when it works that way!*wink

These blocks just make me smile

The inspiration photo really made an impression on me when first seeing it. I so wanted to add it into one of my quilts some day! How to do that? Start from scratch and design a quilt around the idea? Like a lot of other great ideas, this one was probably better in theory than in actual practice, but whatever, had to try! And this was the quilt it landed on. If you looked at the photo, the whole design was a little bit short for the top border of a quilt, unless perhaps all the pieces were made really large. Putting the entire design in the center of a quilt? Maybe a better idea, but nah! I wanted these blocks to be a unit. Not every quilt is destined to be a medallion style.

So yeah, that's the real reason this particular design ended up being extended lengthwise. All about where I decided to place these larger birds in my quilt. Rather than absolute repeats of the original, I just determined to add on to the 'story'. I'm sure there are a lot of great ways this design could have tinkered with, but this way makes me smile. Plus it feels right for the fabric choices on hand. Lets not forget how important that is!

And just so you know, originally I wanted the crows to be anything but black {just to try something not as traditional looking?}, but, hmm...,  it just didn't make sense. I already had the blocks made for the base of the quilt. That part was NOT changing! No matter which fabric/color I auditioned with, those birds were determined to be made out of the darkest fabric. Okay, fine, have it your way! Who am I to argue with a quilt! In an effort to make that black look a little less stark, I made the smaller birds out of similar fabrics too. That's kinda the rule of thumb. If something stands out a little too much, then simply add more of it. Easy peasy. It's not like there's a lot of black in the quilt otherwise, right?

A close up

So no, its not identical to the original. I'm not one to worry much about accuracy in interpretation, you know that. Its more about successfully translating the feel of it all--that part that resonates so well in our heads for whatever reason. The green stems and leaves are possibly {I'm still considering} a little too florescent looking for my taste, still, they were the only greens that I could find to properly blend with all the other colors. 

Overall, I'd say this was a good ending, somehow keeping with the primitive look while at the same time leaving off most of the dark and broody elements. There was a time that I adored the darker look of most traditional primitive quilts. Now, however, I tend to want something with that same, lovely, lovely naive look {feel?}, but with perhaps a lighter, happier vibe. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Strips sewn together for Shimmer Quilt

I also ended up sewing together all the strips for Shimmer, the strip quilt that was started during Diane Knotts book blog hop. As usual, I am looking at my fabric choices and wanting to poke my eyes out with a big stick. How could this have been a good idea? Just kidding! I'm not really that much of an emotional basket case. Mostly I'm just a wee bit concerned that I didn't use enough variation in the color palette.  I seem to have this comfort zone of two colors, an accent, and then lots and lots of neutrals that behave themselves and play very nicely in the background.

This is a common theme with me--getting all excited about my original stacks of fabric, cutting into them and then at some point, having a form of buyers remorse. Questioning myself. Doubting everything. Wanting to turn back the clock and make a small correction. Thankfully, that's usually a very brief stage of the process and honestly, it's not even very stressful anymore because I just figure it comes with the territory! If I was a complete and total control freak, it would be easy enough to reload Electric Quilt 7 on my computer and do a computer generation. They say it can be done in color and with actual look-like-the-fabric swatches. Oh my goodness, how boring would that be? Knowing exactly what our quilts would like like before we ever sewed up a single stitch! 

Lots of Things Going On This Month

What have I been up to? Oh the list is so very long! For one thing thing, at the prompting of Ann, I attempted to clean up my blog. That resulted in having to eliminate a few widgets that I rather liked, such as 'LinkWithin', thumbnails at the bottom of each post to previous, but similar subject matter. I don't understand a lot of it, but don't want people to feel unsafe coming to my site.

,

The Big Woven Basket quilt in the hoop....

I cleaned up some of the clutter, deciding to keep the 'Current Quilt in the Hoop' at the top of the sidebar. You've probably seen the progression of hand quilting projects there for years and years now. The latest quilt in the hoop happens to be 'Big Woven Basket'. It was one of those improv. projects that also sort of jumped into my Big Basket quilt series. I really love this one so was happy to get this one sandwiched and snug in the hoop awaiting quilting efforts.

Getting it ready for quilting

The hand quilting has been really sporadic on this one though, not an every night sort of thing like I expected. Sometimes I want to hand quilt so badly that's all the quilting that happens of an evening, but with other quilts, it's a different story. I've discovered that it's usually a stitching dilemma most of the time. Decisions, decision! If I can just push through, then it all gets sorted out and I'm back in the groove of wanting to stitch again.With a quilt like this, I often tend to get paralyzed at the thought of 'what' to stitch in those wide open borders. Stencils are just not my thing, so it can take me awhile to make up my mind how to address all that yawning emptiness. It's scary. That's where people can more readily see the stitching...

Always trying to figure out the game plan for stitching!

Being a new year, I've also been diligently trying to trim down the open ended quilt project list. How can I start all these new projects tantalizing me if I have oodles of old projects demanding my time and attention? One of the things that help to make certain projects drag on for so long is the addition of applique. Which is totally fine by me. There are always at least two or three {or more} projects that need applique attention around here and that is completely by design!

Quarter Circles sewn together

Eventually they all need some piecing work done on the machine though. This particular project was started with the leftover quarter circles cut from the back of another project. Rather than throwing them away, I saved them for a rainy day. In my original thinking, these blocks {after the spiky bits were added}, would have been left in the quarter circle presentation and simple joined together in rows. Then sometime during layout auditions, I absolutely fell in love with the look of four quarter circle blocks being joined together and making a sort of 'sun'.

Initial block layout

Okay. So off in that direction we went, having a grand old time. The reality was, unfortunately, that I wasn't truly happy with so much lightness glaring out at from what had become a busy, busy quilt. I played with all sorts of colors and ideas for sashing , alternate blocks,and/or applique in the centers. Finally, I settled on a cream/gray text fabric for the sashing and a basic dark fabric for the cornerstone squares. The text fabric was a last ditch effort to find something, anything and it worked because it adds whimsy, which I love. The center of the larger blocks took quite a bit more time and effort and in the end I just had to sleep on the idea one more night. The final solution just seemed way too easy, which always makes me nervous for some inexplicable reason.

Looking at the applique centers

Can you see that the circle applique is all the same fabric? The pink with white print really did the trick for me. And it's not a great fabric, just a basic two toned floral print! What's funny is that I pulled it directly out of the scrap bin totes, all that was left from the backing fabric on another quilt! Nothing else even came close to giving the feel that I was looking for. Okay then. All the circles were rough cut in different sizes and deliberately placed slightly off center. It's a really subtle thing from a distance, but really gives excellent feel-good vibes. Well, to those of us who like that sort of imperfection....

At least one thing about this project has remained constant from the beginning! Back in 2017, I saw a picture over at Kankerdoodle blog. At that moment, I knew the antique crows would be making their way into a quilt of mine at at later date! Isn't it funny the things that set off a spark of inspiration? I've been fiddling around with the parts and pieces, trying to expand the graphic out to a longer border look. Still have to get the bias stem sewn up of course, but I'm almost at the point of being able to situate the pieces and get them ready for the applique stitching.

Playing with the applique border parts and pieces for antique crows border

And last but not least has been the quilt room re-organization, de-clutter attempt. It started when I took an afternoon and pulled out a few small totes worth of scraps, thinking to use them in my string quilt blocks. The impulse was very strong to get rid of all the rest of the scraps--just toss them into the dumpster!

The larger scrap re-organization attempt....

Being a frugal soul, I resisted and delayed, thinking there had to be a better solution. Then one evening I read through Cheryl's 'KonMari Your Sewing Room Space'. I've heard lots about the book and recent show, but am not much of a trend follower honestly! Cheryl's blog though, is something I generally read. This post was very timely for me as it hit on several of the key things I had been struggling with. 

Getting things organized....

Although I do keep things fairly tidy {else I couldn't ever even function properly}, the scrap bin for sure had gotten completely out of control, my love of quilting books were crowding into every corner of my space and entirely too much 'stuff' had resulted in yes, a feeling of being flooded and overwhelmed.  Cheryl made the case that , 'We are sewers and quilters, arguably everything we have for creating sparks joy - eventually.'  That really made me think. She gets it, us, the whole creators extraordinaire! Maybe I should pay attention and see how it could apply to my lovely mess.

She started from a different angle altogether, and broke things down into simple categories. Then she lined out a plan of attack in a direct and no-nonsense way that totally made sense to me. And part of the good timing was that it happened during those days while I had such a bad head cold so didn't feel like doing much else. Otherwise, I might never have done anything but read through the post and think 'what a good idea that is, maybe I'll get to it sometime later in the year...'

The wall of totes between my sewing room
and my sons bedroom....

It took three very long days, but I went through every single drawer, tote and shelf except for the stash fabric itself. In the end, I tossed out three black garbage bags full of stuff and kept back one box of quilting books, patterns, blocks etc. to give to some quilting friends. I organized ALL of the scraps by color and put them into totes--something I've always scoffed at before. If they don't see a whole lot more use by being organized in this manner, then the goal is to eventually start tossing certain un-used colors at the time of cutting. I keep all the stash fabrics in opaque totes so that the sun doesn't bleach them, but the scraps were put into see-through totes. Hopefully this way they will catch my eye on occasion and inspire me to do a little bit of string play or whatever. It just feels weird to keep so many scraps, but I could NOT ditch them all, though I did dump more than you realize. Part of one black garbage bag was filled with scrap fabric. That's a start!

My quilting space feels so much better now. It's been needing this for several years now. I was brutal in throwing/giving away things that hadn't been looked at for a very long time {other than the scraps}. The books are down to two shelves and a small book caddy on my ironing counter. All the old thread has been discarded and the batting remnants organized by size into two totes or otherwise tossed. All the old applique templates {kept from every project ever attempted}, have been gone through and reduced to a small drawer full. I found things that I didn't even know were lurking in the corners of my quilt room! It felt good though I was exhausted every single evening after. 

The stash fabric itself is still up in the air. As long as it fits into the current totes I use, it feels okay. One of the things I love most about scrappy quilts and flying blindly through quilt making, is the idea that I can somehow manage to use a piece of unloved, deep in the stash totes kind of fabric and make them shine. Tossing every piece of stash fabric that is years old, an odd color or so-dated-as-to-be-ugly might take away from my joy. So I'm calling it good. Brushing my hands together in a 'project finished', 'putting it all behind me' sort of way. The lure of those new projects is starting to sound pretty irresistible....

Time to See All Those 2018 Finishes Together in One Post

Some years there are more finishes than others. The last two years have been especially good ones for bumping the oldest quilts off the list . It's often difficult to want to work on the oldy moldy quilt projects, but they never get any easier to work on by just ignoring them!

2018 Finishes

It's always great fun to slip a baby quilt or two into the mix and have a fast finish. And this year I even made an oversize doll quilt {hmm... is that actually a baby quilt too?}

2018 Finishes

As usual, I kept my hand quilting hoop busy all throughout the year {both of them, if you want to know the truth of it!}. It's become an oh-so-important part of my quilting journey and I can't even imagine life without that little bit of stitching time late in the evenings. Those peaceful, meditative hand quilting minutes have become something I unabashedly crave at times. It positively grounds me in the best way possible and dare I say, nourishes me as well.

2018 Finishes

The program used to group my picture collages didn't have a good 4-picture setting, so I put my Quilty 365 in two different groupings. It's been on our bed for quite awhile now. I adore waking up to it and then later in the day, snuggling back into bed with it once again. Move over husband dear, I got a good quilt now. lol  Sometimes I think that all my quilting years have led up to this one quilt, in terms of making a quilt that resonates on almost every single level.

2018 Finishes

Overall, I'm not sure how much these quilts represent 'me' as a whole--the way I've mixed up the old quilting projects with the new. It's something that I always find very interesting though, these end of the year quilt reviews. You pop over to someones page and in one click, get to see an entire lineup of the years finishes! What fascinates me the most, is the quilting voice that is always so immediately apparent! There's rarely any doubt whose quilt page you're viewing and that's the very best thing about this time of year. I bet most of us could look at any of these picture groupings and immediately tell what quilter made each of those quilts. Love that!

So now with the details: 2018 found me ending the year with 19 finishes again! That kind of suprised me as it didn't feel like so many. Yep, I was on a finishing mission once again. Trying to get some of those very old, not-as-interesting quilt tops out of my hair.*whew! It was very, extremely, tedious at times, I kid you not. Crossing my fingers things won't get quite that bogged down ever again! Want some year end statistics? I do like to keep track just for curiosities sake.

• 1 Doll quilt
• 2 Baby quilts
• 1 Comfort quilt
• 7 Lap quilts
• 8 Bed-sized quilts
• 6 quilts were completely hand quilted
• 9 quilts were a mix of machine and hand quilting
• 4 quilts were completely machine quilted

By the end of the year I had also given away 17 quilts, a mixture of new and old quilts. That was a little nerve-wracking at times. My family lives in dread that they'll wake up one morning and all our quilts will have been given away! hehe  One was given for a church raffle, for helping to make money to buy their building. Still waiting to see who winds up with that one as I do like to keep track of where my quilts end up!

Lots of ideas for the next year. Stacks of fabric that have been simmering on the counters for months and months and need a little bit of attention. Mostly I just intend to quilt the things that I find interesting without getting too far into the weeds with those pesky squirrels! There are 5 or 6 open-ended quilt projects that will hopefully get wrapped up and around and around we go. I loved diving into the orphan blocks totes and intend to try that some more of that. Adhoc. Improv. is definitely still a happening thing and umm..., there is a scrap bin monster that just has to be addressed soon. No ifs ands or buts about it! Taking up way too much room over there in the corner of my quilt room.*sigh Oh, and don't forget about those oh-so-tempting QAL's popping up all over blogland. Probably gonna join in on with the Unconventional & Unexpected one and also, Lori's String Quiltalong. Sounds like a good start to me!

A Doll Quilt, a Giveaway and Progress on the 6in6in2018

I had determined to make my granddaughter a doll quilt for Christmas this year. Several fabric pulls later and I was almost gagging over the sweetness of everything chosen. I have so few conversation prints and things were looking a wee bit grim. Then Linda's post popped up and that's all it took. That centerpiece....

The doll quilt top is completed! 32" square, made
for use with a 'My Life' doll

So I went digging through the stash totes, trying to find what looked to be the perfect start to a simple doll quilt. I knew I had one of these somewhere and what do you know, it totally fits the bill of being sweet, girly and yet, super easy to add bright, sassy colors to! You can see from the pic below that the original fabric pull had a green fabric that ultimately did not look very good. Sometimes I take that I-love-clash-in-my-quilts a little too far, even for me!

The first scrappy audition didn't work out so well....

It took me awhile to stumble upon the perfect fabric to add into the quilt. One that wouldn't just make a scrappy, mushy mess. {See the blue print I exchanged for the green in the quilt pic below.} That oddball blue fabric really surprised me, but when something works, why bother arguing! I figured out pretty quickly that three repeats weren't going to be enough and cut another square. Yep. That did it.  Everything just sort of locked into place. I apologize for the murky pictures, but as I was working through the late afternoon into early evening, the light just got worse and worse. And you know me, no way would I ever stop working on a quilt just so that I could a great looking picture!

When they sell this particular panel, it comes in a 41-42" length as per usual when it comes to fabric. The panel repeat itself is only about 14" square though, and that makes for one extra 'usable' panel and also a bit of waste as the remaining panel ends up being cut off at a weird spot. {I also prewash and dry my fabric, thus a bit of shrinkage!} Since this has been such a fast, fun little project, I'd like to offer my remaining panel to one of the readers of this blog!  Wanna try your hand at playing with one of these?

If you are at all interested in winning this panel, just let me know in a comment below, and I'll draw a winner sometime next week. If you can't leave a comment for whatever reason, just email me at audkateaster at gmail dot com and I'll enter you into the drawing with all the other names. Also, please, please leave your email address within the comment if you might possibly be a no-reply commentor. Blogger is being fickle again and I don't have all your email addresses readily available!

For those of you who are perfectionists {you know who you are!}, please be aware that this panel is not going to be 'perfectly' centered without chopping off some of the edges of the flower motif. My panel happened to be cut very narrow when I bought it--as you can see if you look closely at the pictures. Not a problem for me, but perhaps could be an intensely annoying issue for you! I will also try to ship to an international address, but not if the cost ends up being prohibitive. Just saying....

A little bit of deep stash digging and a better fabric was found.

Okay, enough of that business. Time for checking in with progress on the 6in6in2018. Honestly, it's  been a little haphazard around here. The thing is, I'm actually feeling pretty good about the total years accumulation. Yeah, about that. Would you believe that all Six of the older quilt projects on the list have been finished up or at the very least moved way down the road toward total completion?

Basket Medallion a 2018 finish!

The Basket Medallion quilt has finally made it to the finish line.*whew....  I really had to grit my teeth and dig in to stay motivated. Such a tough quilt for me to work on. I made the very last stitch in the binding just last night, so I even made good with my determination to finish up by the end of November. Yay!  But now it needs washed and dried so I can take some good pictures to show you. It's not an unlovable quilt. Not at all! It just happens to be a style or color palette that I've sort of outgrown or burnt out on? Or something. The X border is my favorite part of the whole quilt. Love that! And the binding ended up being the perfect touch. An older, reproduction style print that needed used up and was exactly the colors I was looking for. Win, win.

Cream quarter circle orphan units made into something interesting.

The only other 'need-to' work on project for the 6in6 list was the blocks above. Early in the year, I had put these leftover cream quarter circle units on the list. Just for a challenge. Slowly, slowly I have hand stitched all the bits and pieces together. And now, these chunky, naive looking, New York beauty blocks are emerging right before my eyes. Just like I imagined in my head. Loving these blocks so much! Now I'm crossing my fingers they will look as good together as I desperately want them too. 

39 blocks sewn together out of 64! And all that's left to stitch down are the yellow/gold arcs, so things are moving fairly quickly. When I sit down to stitch, I can complete about five {or more} an hour and it's absolutely stress free. No awkward, deep dive curves {or precise, tidy corners} which makes me so, very, very happy! This project won't actually be a completed quilt top by the end of 2018, but if these blocks all make it to a finish, then that's something to feel really good about too. Off to check out the 6in6in2018 November linkup over at Meredithe's! So glad I went ahead and stuck with this challenge throughout the year. Always good to see real, steady progress!

More Progress on the Applique and the Start of a New Project

The Dried Flower blocks are ready for the leaves now. As of this posting, they are cut out and ready for stitching. Nine blocks of the larger, more rounded leaves and three of the narrow, wavy leaves. We'll see how that works out, but I'm really looking forward to seeing how these odd shaped blocks finish up! 

Dried Flowers

 I've also been steadily progressing through the chunky New York Beauty blocks. Only 10 blocks to go when I took this picture, but as of last night, all that's left to do are the gold arcs across the bottom of the 'points'. Whew! It's been a real slog getting through all 64 blocks! It's time for a break though, so now I'll probably stitch the leaves for the Dried Flowers before coming back to these.

Quarter Circles/Chunky New York Beauty Blocks

I also jumped right into the middle of a project that's been simmering for a very long time. At the last minute I switched the colors around and decided to make the baskets yellow and coral/pink instead of using the yellow for background color like originally intended.

Improv. Baskets

Not sure why I did that, but it made sense at the time. Now I'll probably go with a boring cream as the background but that's okay--the basket is probably busy enough already! The vintagey fabric above was the one I was most worried about, but now that the basket is coming together, it's my favorite. Just have to be careful when ironing as it doesn't appear to be 100 percent cotton. Love, love, love the more intense colors of that block though!

I'm calling it 'Sweet Tart'

No pattern for these baskets, just kind of winging it improv. style. Basically I cut 5 1/2" squares on the diagonal and then crosscut them again, arranged them on the design wall, and then sewed them into rows. I have a certain final block size in mind and so there's a rough template for the outside dimensions too. One more to go and then it'll be time to figure out the handle and start doing the prep work for the flowers that will be stitched 'inside'. After the last bit of marathon applique, it feels wonderful to stop at only four blocks!

Never Enough Time

How about a good long catch up post? First off, the HST Medallion quilt has been front and center for well over a week. I made the determination that nothing was going to get between this project and the sewing machine until all the small hst rows were sewn on. Two hundred breaks later for hand work or changing out the laundry or whatever else I could invent and....

More progress on HST Medallion!

Here we are, finally, at hst row #10. Woohoo! That's three more row sets added onto this quilt since the last time I posted any progress! I was pretty sure if I didn't do all three of them, one right after the other, this quilt would just die a slow death. It took days longer than I expected. It's all just so very tedious. Made me want to pull my hair out sometimes. Scream. Run away. What is it about excessive repetition?

10 rows finished

I mean, look at how innocuous these hst's are. So simple and unassuming. Ugghh... Who's idea was this anyway? The last round brought the total count up to just over 1300 hsts. Which is a lot. But honestly, it feels like about 5000! All that's left now are the last two rounds {if I follow thru}, which are larger. That should help, larger is good.

The last light pink border was a calculated risk. I totally know you've been eyeballing that one and wondering....  Audrey? Hmm.. What?  I'm still using fabric from the stash and thought maybe a 'disappearing' border would be interesting in the big picture of things. Taking a look at what fabric was left helped to make the final decision. If the quilt would have stopped off at that round, then yeah, it would have been a huge mistake. So far I'm perfectly okay with the look. It's not like I do polished looking quilts. Gotta have some quirks!

So...  accuracy? I'm within an inch or less of where its supposed to be, no matter if I measure directly through the center or along any particular side. That's pretty impressive {for me} considering how many, many, many seams there are. Sometimes I pay more attention to accuracy than others, but seriously, who has the time? Mostly I fudge if its close and the black single fabric sashing rows tidy things up before the next round. The saving grace has been that my cutting efforts have been more precise and careful. Daylight hours only!

Doesn't look like much

Lots of hand work to choose from when I'm fleeing the quilt room. I've really been enjoying do some hand stitching on my Dried Flowers {squirrel} project. The colors are particularly soothing right now--spot on for early fall.  At this point I'm stalled on what kind of leaves to add on though. Maybe I'll just have to do some of both!

Auditioning leaf shapes...

The project below is one that was started from leftover quarter circle pieces cut out from the back of a long ago quilt. It's been keeping me company as well. Instead of some complicated piecing thing that would be driving me bonkers, I decided to do an applique version of a simple New York Beauty block. After all the chunky spikes are sewn down, then I will probably stitch on an arc of gold fabric, over the bottom part of the spikes and covering the edges of the curve. These colors still make me very happy, which I find interesting as I've been playing with this particular color palette off and on for years now.

Getting started on a pile of 64 blocks total

And then there is the Off On a Tangent quilt. All the hand work is finished up and yep!, I made a mistake that always makes me feel a little twitchy. All the letters are in green fabrics that blend well with the quilt, but do not show up very emphatically when all is said and done.

Got the hand stitching done

Much too late to take them off now and start over and I don't want to anyway. They look just fine up close so that is that. Don't know why I keep making this same mistake after all this time. If you're gonna go to the trouble of adding words, for goodness sakes, do them in a color that has some impact!

It's not the best color, but it'll probably do

I guess I was thinking of serenity and peaceful feeling vibes? This quilt has already jumped to the head of the line for sandwiching and quilting. Very fast turn around for me, but this quilt is determined to go live with someone else.

Ughh... Sandwiching and pinning

In fact, I already machine quilted {stitched in the ditch} thru the inside of the quilt. Now that Basket Love, shown below, is out of the hoop, I can do some quick, big stitch quilting around the borders and move it on down the line. Oh how I wish that every quilt was as easy and rewarding to stitch as the quilt below. I adore hand quilting on string quilts! I'm sure it would get boring though if that's all that ever passed thru the hoop.

Ready for binding work!

Because the HST Medallion quilt took so long to work through sewing on the rows, I totally blinked on getting to the AHIQ work this month. That kind of annoys me 'cuz I love the improv. stuff, but there will be time for that later. Right now, things are happening that are a bit beyond my control. My sewing machine is scheduled to go in for a maintenance {in order to keep up with the warranty}, and that totally rearranged my priorities as well. The only machine quilting I do these days is on that particular machine 'cuz it has a bigger harp! Quick, what needs done before I have to do without! The quilt store where I drop the sewing machine off is three hours away so that means I'll be using a back-up machine for quite awhile, maybe even a month.*sigh  Not going to tackle big quilt work on the smaller machine.

I managed to arrange the initial drop off with the same timing as taking my kids to the airport and also an Apple store appointment. My phone desperately needs a new battery and apparently we can't do that without their help. If Bloglovin' gets any slower, the phone will be in total meltdown. Or maybe I will? Anyway, when you live out in the boondocks, these sorts of trips take some strategic planning. There is usually shopping involved. Things like that.

**Per the question asked after my last post, referring to the days when I said I would never, ever hand quilt? Well, that was 20-25 years ago, when I first started quilting. A lot has changed since then, including the fact that I don't have littles hanging on to my ankles and demanding every second of my attention. Also, I don't like doing machine quilting. Really, really don't care for it at all and in fact, when I attempt anything close to free-motion, it feels like the top of my head is going to come off. I push myself learn a lot of techniques and things that feel important to further expand my ability to make unique and personal looking quilts. Someday that may come to lessons in free motion quilting, but for now, hand quilting is as essential to me as air, both in the doing and the seeing. Quite simply, it's now part of my quilting voice, regardless of the time it may take... What elements of this craft are important to you and your quilting?

Getting Serious About Sewing the Rising Sun Blocks and Other Stuff

So I finally quit procrastinating and started work on the rising sun blocks again. The only one I had sewn was the one on the far right bottom. Things were going well, or as well as you can expect with curved piecing, when things started getting interesting.

Rising Sun blocks

When sewing curved pieces, I generally use the one-pin method as in the picture below. Convex side up means the pieces sew together almost by themselves. lol  If you look at the top left rising sun blocks, the blades are going in the reverse direction as the others. What I didn't realize is that by reversing some of the blocks {I only reversed 7 out 12 blocks}, I would end up with a really tricky situation in doing the curved piecing. No matter which way I tried to sew the blades together, I ended up with two options: either sew them from the bottom up (no way Jose!) or sew them with the concave side up (no way Jose!). Arghh! I cannot believe I got myself into this situation! Anyway, long frustrating story later and lots of 'un'sewing resulted in my doing the two reverse blocks with the concave side up whether I wanted to or not. So now I only have 5 more of them to do. 5 more!! Thankfully, it gets a lot easier after I reach the middle pin and fabric isn't constantly trying to get wadded up underneath my needle! But oh! I am not happy about this at all!

Some curved piecing

Also, I've been trying to decide on a setting plan for my Lil' Red Riding Hood blocks. I think this is what I'm going to go with. It is a bit old fashioned, but still allows for the blocks to stand out and do all the hard work. I bought the pink floral fabric for another quilt altogether awhile back, didn't use it and then found it later in the clearance bin. Yep, I bought some more thinking it would work for a backing and then, well, it starting intriguing me as a sashing fabric. You know how I love to play with sashing in my quilts! Love those scattered darker bits of flowers especially and how they will {easily} add just a touch more interest to these mellow, very sweet blocks.

Playing with layout

And of course I'm still plodding along with my circle a day--picking out the fabric. Stitching is starting to be about a three-circle-at-a-time thing, twice a week or so. I am just completely blown away by all the creativity I'm seeing with others circles though! I keep thinking, 'why didn't I think of that?'

A few more circles

I think that's the best part of quilting, taking a project or an idea and making it very personal and unique. It makes our quilts so much more special and meaningful! If you'd like to know more about Quilty 365, the link will take you to a description of what it's all about. Please feel free to jump in at any time! Love all the interest and support with this project. I think we're getting a good little group to prop us up and help motivate us along the way!

Let's Just Call It a Finished Quilt Top and Move On....

I never just sit down and sew something from start to finish. Those books about making a quilt in a weekend? Uh uh. Not happening around here. The initial sew-on stage of the binding is done on my Scrap Basket quilt and now ready for some hand sewing. At the same time, I've been sewing my Quarter Circles--Round #2 blocks into vertical rows.

The new quilt and the old quilt

Shh.... don't tell anyone, but I sewed all my circles onto the background fabric presenting in the wrong direction {back when I was doing the applique work}. Yep. That's me. The original plan was to center the circle with the 'x' pointing into the corner of the blocks, not having them be on point to get that effect. Imagine my surprise when I finally pulled them out to sew into  rows!

Not all sewn together yet, but checking things out

Whoops! New plan. Way too many of those guys to unpick and start a do-over! So you know me, I scrambled around and came up with a new plan. It's not quite what I imagined, but it will do.

Looking at a possible outside yellow border

And all along, regardless of how the blocks were sewn together, I thought the outside border would be more of that gorgeous yellow fabric. I could just see a bright, goldy looking border making this quilt look more antiquish, more of a rooted-in-days-of-yesteryear sort of quilt. Yeah. That's not working either. So I played with the idea of more brown on the top and bottom of the quilt and thought about how to extend the quilt a bit. But I don't have the right color brown fabric so it ends up looking kind of 'meh'. And I don't want anymore piecing on the border or shockers, even any applique.

Or a brown? 

Which makes the quilt a funny size if you look at the quilt in the vertical row position-- 85" x 78". So I'm contemplating a change in the technicalities without actually changing {or adding} a single thing to the quilt. Looking at the quilt with the rows in the horizontal position, I now have a 78" x 85" sized quilt. Really, it's all in how you look at things. Now it's a perfectly acceptable size. Nothing weird here at all people.

Maybe this is how my quilt should present?

And then all of a sudden I was just done with the entire project. Who cares about weird sizing anyway? It feels finished. Completely. Done. With. Me.

A finished quilt top for now....

Unless of course I run across some great purpley looking brown that I can tack on to two sides of the quilt. Ack! It must be a disease.....

Quarter Circles in Spring 2015 Bloggers Quilt Festival

Okay, this is one of my all-time favorite quilts that I've ever made! I just adore it, in spite of the slight fading it has from near disastrous bleeding issues. I'm entering it as my second quilt in Amy's Spring Bloggers Quilt Festival.

Quarter Circles

I'm being very, extremely brave and entering into the Hand Quilted category! Normally I would leave that for the much more talented hand quilters, but I'm having trouble figuring out where to place this particular quilt. It could go into large quilts, applique quilts, hand quilts and maybe even original design quilts.

Hanging on the railing....

Einie meinie mienie moe and hand quilting won out! This quilt started out being a pile of low volume prints that just sort of spoke to me. Some had been in my stash practically since day one, some were given to me {basically rejected fabrics} and others had been bought personally by me, but had never found a proper home.

Looking at the texture...

I have always loved the use of red mixed with cream and then combined with slightly floral prints--something those talented Netherland bloggers do so very well. It took me awhile to get up my nerve to try it out and then once I started, I just fell in love. And kept on falling.

A close-up of some stitching...

I started small and took it slow, beginning with a cream dotted fabric. Then I took some {freehand cut} printed fabric circles and needleturn appliqued them onto the cream. From there I cut those squares into four pieces {the quarter circles} and started working out how to make my sort of wonky looking sashing. That process certainly had its ups and downs but eventually I conquered all and built me a quilt to be proud of.*wink

The back side of the quilt...

And I thought it was wonderfully beautiful. Until I finished it all up and washed it for the first time. And sure, having the bleeding issues and getting-the-bleeding-issues taken care of, sort of out took the shine out of the brighter areas. But it also gave me a lovely, faded, antique look that I have always loved and admired. After having plenty of time to think about it, I still think it's wonderfully beautiful, just in a little bit different way than I intended. So I guess you could say it all worked out well in the end.

Almost looks like a postcard!

My Quarter Circles quilt is about 70" x 85", just perfect to lay on the foot of my bed and pull up over me on the colder nights. I have a second quilt entered into the large quilt category as well if you want to go have a look-see.