Winner of the Giveaway and the first 2019 Finish!

First of all, the winner of the Strip Quilt Secrets giveaway is Kyle, who wrote, '...Don't know if I have a true favorite book, but I love looking at all the different states documentary quilt books.' As do I! So much inspiration in many of those books. Lots of ideas for further reading in all of the comments, so be sure and check them out too!

Looking at the stitching

My Rising Sun quilt has become the first 2019 quilt finish of the year! It was the one that kept me company late in the evenings, all through the holidays. As usual, the quilting is mostly echo style quilting with a little bit of grid work over the top of the appliqued vases. 

Rising Sun is a finish!

I machine stitched in-the-ditch between all the blocks and then put the quilt top in my hoop and started filling in the insides of the blocks with hand quilting. That little bit of 'stitch-in-the-ditch' work, prior to hand quilting, is something that I have started doing more of in the last couple years. Whether it saves me any time or not, it certainly feels like it does. Mind over matter. And we all know how important it is to have positive endorphins....

Still loving these folky vases!

I have been using Perle Cotton thread exclusively now for several years and will probably never go back to standard hand quilting thread. There is just too much joy in using #8 or #12 Perle Cotton thread. All the different color choices, including variegated threads.*swoon!  Plus, the texture from this slightly chunkier thread makes me all kinds of happy!

When the quilting makes it all look even better....

I ended up having to soak this quilt for most of two days because of a bad fabric bleed. It didn't even show in the water {just a light tinge}, but when I started to take the quilt out of the bathtub, I could see where the bleed had pooled at the back of the quilt. Only behind one vase and that fabric was a high-quality woven that should never have reacted that way! I'm telling you. This quilt top was put together a long time ago, but for the last year or so, I pre-soak every suspect fabric until all the water is clear as can be. This is getting tiresome.

It's big enough to use on a bed!

So I went ahead and soaked it overnight and then most of next day. Uggh.. I'm half regretting the remaining soak. Yes, the bleed disappeared from the back of the quilt, but unfortunately, some of it ended up migrating to the front of the block in three spots. Very, very annoying. THREE SPOTS! How does that happen? I soaked until the water ran clear for hours and then washed the quilt in the washer with lots of color catchers. They ended up with only the faintest tinge of pink, but I still have the slightest of bleeds in those three spots. They lightened considerable, but as they are a dark purple/red/blue dye, would never go entirely away. Maybe if there wasn't blue in the mix?

Some finishes just feel a little sweeter....

I made sure to not dry it fully in the dryer and so the next time I wash this quilt, it will probably be washed with Oxi-clean. That will be eons down the road though. For now I am done messing with it. Most people will never see the problem areas because they simply won't look hard enough! After a stint of brutal disappointment, I was able to shrug it off and go back to loving my quilt. This one was always meant for me anyway. It's been a bit of a problem child from the beginning, and I had great, enormous fun in fixing it so that it looks fabulous to me. 

The gold floral sashing fabric was won from a giveaway over at Barb's, and is the understudy star of the entire quilt. It simply wouldn't be the quilt it is, without that particular fabric! I want to put on record, that I'd still be tremendously nervous to make these sorts of rising star blocks again. They were very difficult to piece and that sort of complexity is just not my strong suit. Still....  even knowing that, I am extremely grateful to see this quilt laying here in front of me. Courage, my quilting friends. We're never going to get better if we don't even try!

Take One Out of the Hoop, Put Another One Right Back In....

Time to put another quilt in the hoop! Once the Christmas tree goes up, there is zero room on the living room floor for pinning larger quilts. And hello? One thing that does not need to happen around here during the holidays is an empty hoop! Those of you who enjoy hand quilting, totally know what I'm talking about. lol

Rising Sun quilt

I put all the names of those interested in the Kaffe floral vase panel {offered in the previous post},in a bowl today and drew out the lucky person. Congratulations GranChris! You are the winner! I'll get it into the mail asap after getting your mailing address.

Looking a little closer

It was wonderful to pull this quilt top out and finally start making a plan for quilting. I had a very good pattern I was following for this particular quilt and then... Well, it just wasn't working for me anymore. During the making of it, I finally stumbled into a better solution {for me} and then had to laugh at myself for being so contrary about following a pattern. Growing pains are not always easy to transition through are they?

Loving the sashing fabric I won long ago
from Barb

And really, I think those growing pains might still be happening around here. I don't feel quite as betwixt and between as before, but there's still this underlying restlessness that I deal with pretty often in regards to quilting decisions. Especially in terms of starting in on new quilts. I second guess myself all of the time. There are so many quilting ideas hanging out in my head and I really, really don't want to waste time on quilts that won't matter a lot to me in the long run.

A few false starts and now I've got it figured out....

Which I guess is pretty much the way I was feeling with the Basket Medallion quilt. So sad because it was a great learning quilt for me. Thankfully, I only have one other much older quilt top in the queue these days. All the rest only go back a year or two! And I have to remember that there is very real value in the learning and doing. It's how we get to the next step of amazing ourselves with our wonderful creativity!

The Basket Medallion quilt is completed!!

And you really can't go wrong with a quilt that has basket blocks in it! Right? Always a place for these in our repertoire. You better believe that I am not done making basket quilts any time soon.

Little basket blocks making up the last border

Plus, this is a medallion quilt. Something that I still love and adore making up as I go along. There are like a million different ways to work through a medallion style quilt and pretty much none of them are wrong. I am sure there are many, many more medallion quilts in my future....

A close up of the hand quilting...

Very fun to work out the math. Play with various options in size and proportions. Get each pieced border to attach to the previous one like it was always meant to be.

And a closer look at the more subdued center baskets...

Sure, if I could do things over, I'd change a few things about this particular quilt. For instance, the yellow sawtooth border has a funny way of turning and going around the corner. I didn't really know what else to do with it, but it bugs me just a little.

Six borders in all, counting the coping borders

And I'd probably place the black hourglass corner blocks so that they were all presenting the same direction. Maybe. But maybe not. I've always loved the energy and whimsy of them being different. One of my favorite things about any quilt is including something that feels unexpected.

The last larger quilt finish for 2018!

The very best thing about Basket Medallion quilt being finished is now I can mark it off the list! It won't be nagging me or haunting me anymore and that feels so... good. Other than the doll quilt and a couple pot holders I'm making for my mom, this will be my last finish for 2018. 

Linking up with the Peacock Party over at Wendy's Quilts and More. It's a new 'quilt share' linkup with a more laid back philosophy than most linky parties. Gotta love that this time of year!

Making Progress on 17 UFO's

Knowing May would be a busy month, I worked hard on my 17 ufos in 2017 list early on in the month. It felt good to knock two quilt tops right off the list: Rising Sun and the Improv. Woven Basket. 

Two more finished quilt tops!

And all through the month I made myself keep plodding away at the Vintage Coxcomb blocks too. The star pieces took a surprising amount of time and it took forever to figure out the most efficient way to get them into place. Finally after sewing {and then seam ripping} the fifth block, I got smart and marked the circle shape onto each block. It's not a perfect solution, but it really helped with placement of the star tips, of which I did not want to be same-o, same-o from block to block. There seems to be enough variation to satisfy my imperfect soul and now I'm just looking at sewing the circle shape onto the remaining 10 blocks. This part is easy and by the end of the month I should definitely be playing with layout!

Vintage Coxcomb blocks

Learning Curves is in the hoop and making very slow forward progress as well. There have been a lot of interruptions the last couple weeks and also, I've been focusing a lot on the applique projects. All my hand work time seems to be in the late evening and there often is a choice that has to be made, applique or hand quilting? Occasionally, the applique wins out, especially if I'm really pushing a project completion such as with my Vintage Coxcombs blocks above.

Learning Curves in the hoop

This latest border on Folksy Flowers was a mixed applique/pieced border and so of course it had to be slipped into the queue too. I tell myself, 'Oh it's just a little bit of hand work' and then three days later I finally finish up.*groan   There will be two more rows added onto each corner of the quilt and then there will probably be one large row to enclose the entire quilt. I've been trying to make sure the corners of each of the latest rows are not cut out on the bias, but there definitely is a bit of wonkiness with this quilt. Hopefully not enough to ruin the quilt! Crossing my fingers with this one.....

Folksy Flowers border

So that's that. Two more items marked off the list and forward progress on three others. Not bad for a crazy, busy month!

Marking things off the list!

Time to link up with Meredithe and other fellow quilters over at Pomegranate and Chintz!

Giveaway Winners and A New Quilt Top!

A very big thank you to everyone who linked up their Quilty 365 quilts or quilt tops! So exciting to see 19 wonderful versions all together. The Random Generator determined that Wendy Caton Reed from 'The Constant Quilter' is the winner of the first giveaway! {I included the names of 3 quilters who finished quilt tops but didn't have a blog to link up to.} Congrats to the second giveaway winner, Karen from 'Karen's Korner'! as well.

Loving these blocks!

On a more personal note, I finally got the quilt top finished up for my Rising Sun blocks that were giving me oodles of trouble. Several were puckered so badly in places or 'hilly' in the middle, that it seemed impossible to go further with them. But after all that work? Crazy to throw them away.

A new quilt top!

Being an intrepid soul, I came up with a plan to cut them in half and use them for border work in a totally different layout than originally planned. I marked the center line and then sewed very close on both sides. After that, I sliced through the marked line. Having the the edges of the quilt stay-stitched will {at least partially} secure the blocks from unraveling while engaging in future quilting. It's an offbeat solution, but using them way helps mask the glaringly, obvious mistakes by demoting them to a secondary position in the quilt. Plus, cutting down through the middle helps stretch out that poofy area that happened from my careless stitching. In my pie-in-the-sky dreams, hand quilting will eventually smooth out the worst of the worst and then washing and subsequent crinkling of the quilt will make it all look charmingly make-do.

Rising Sun blocks now in the border...

Honestly, I am absolutely thrilled and yes, giddy! with the way the alternate applique came out! It's so sweet in a look-at-me sort of way. Totally holding its own with the more complex rising sun blocks! It was so odd though, to work backwards and then be scrambling to fill in the middle of a quilt. So challenging and yet, zero pressure to speak of. I mean seriously, how much worse could it get? I literally had almost nothing to lose from this experiment! So ironic how the challenge of working with a big fat 'oops' can cause us to be more invested in a quilt project too. In this case, it ended up being so much better than the original plan 'cuz I just totally went with my gut and played for the pleasure of playing. Hey, why not try this? And the results are more 'me' than ever expected. Maybe the  'me' look is a big helping of mistakes with a generous side of 'fix-it'. Hmmm... Something to consider?*wink

17 in 2017 and Other Misc. Stuff That I like to Chatter About

Don't forget to check in with my Quilty 365 Linkup and Giveaway. Lots of great variations and creativity on display! Also, I have EQ7 software for Windows that I've decided to sell. Shoot me an email if you're interested and we can discuss the details! So... there's been a little progress on Meredithe's 17ufosin2017 challenge. I'm lagging a bit behind for linking up, but wanted to record my forward motion.

Another border for Folksy Flowers

Folksy Flowers {above} has the next border all planned and prepped. What you're looking at will have to be appliqued as I don't like to sew fiddly little blocks together. Much easier to hand stitch! It looks so simple, but actually represents at least an hour or two of contemplation and fabric play to come to a final decision.

All of my alternate Rising Sun blocks are now appliqued and ready for the next phase. There are 12 in all as I quickly determined that the 9 initial blocks were not enough. Sometimes I have to laugh as my quilts always seem to grow and expand at rapid rates, quite beyond my control it seems! Bed size {or close to those measurements} just make me happier than most little lap quilts that won't even properly cover our toes.*wink

Looking at the alternate blocks for Rising Sun quilt

And yes, you've seen this border work already for the Improv. Woven Basket quilt. I haven't progressed much past this yet, but honestly, this is the project that I'm dying to work on. Every single time I get to work on these leaves, it just makes me smile. But... there are other things in the queue and these borders are {so far} working as a great carrot and stick approach!

The border work for Improv. Woven Basket quilt

Then, there's a totally completed, get-to-cross-it-off-the-list quilt finish! Woohoo! My Big Broken Dish quilt, otherwise known as 'The Creative Process' is DONE. After a conversation with my husband, I ended up gifting it to a longtime friend. It just seemed like a good fit. Hard to ignore those urgings!

So, at the beginning of May, I have managed to cross 7 out of 17 items off my list. Not all were actual completions, but the ones that weren't, were brought to the 'quilt top' stage which was the goal for about half of my projects on the list. Real progress. And what's funny is that it's not a whole lot different that what I've been doing for the last couple years. The thing is, I'm a lot more aware of the projects that seem to be languishing. Ahem. Could it be because I'm going to totally ditch them in the near future? lol  So very tempting!

The Creative Process quilt is finished!

And in other news, the city museum peoples approached me about putting my Fire Quilt in the museum for an extended period of time. There had been talk last year, but this time they wanted it asap as the 'firestorm' exhibit was finally coming together and there was a tour planned for the County Historical Society. The museum {which is in the converted old firehouse} only had a small room for the new exhibit and the quilt rods available were too short. Thinking outside the box, my husband and one of the museum volunteers suggested hanging a new rod directly onto the wall in the meeting area, immediately to the right of the exhibit. It ended up being a wonderful place to showcase the quilt as people come around the corner before they 'see' it and so the impact is magnified. Plus it brightens up that drab corner considerably!

I had lots of pains of anxiety, but weathered through it while frantically trying to find a good hanging sleeve tutorial. Both of these tutorials were of great help to me and to my relief, the quilt hung very well from the pole--no pooching out at the rod or having the quilt sleeve poke up over the top sort of issues!*sigh   {A big thanks to my husband for reminding me make two sleeves with a gap in the middle for the bracket hardware!} One long sleeve would have been such a disaster! Oh, and they wanted me to type up a legend for the quilt. Yeah. Uh huh. It ended up being a two page, abbreviated story instead and I was a wilted, wet tissue afterwords.

Things Will Never Be The Same on display at the local museum now!

But it's done now. Another chapter in the life of my crazy story quilt! I heard it was very well received by the Historical Society so that's something. It's just all so interesting as I really am generally very low key about my quilting adventures to the people I live around {immediate family and Internet blog posts aside}!