Love Me Do

Don't hate me, but I just finished another quilt. Yep, a true, blue finish with binding and everything. All it needs is a label and I'm gifting this baby sometime over the holiday weekend. It's been at my longarm friend's since early this spring and I was just sorta inquiring about an ETA a couple weeks ago.

Love Me Do

 Agghh!! She totally panicked--lots going on, no time for quilting etc.--so I backed off immediately and told her 'no pressure'. And then figured I wouldn't get it until sometime next year. Imagine my shock when she called up last week and said, 'Hey, do you want this now so you can start working on the binding?' Yes!!

I started this quilt back in 2015, wanting to play with some bright fabrics and also, wondering if I had what it takes to make a lone star. Turns out the diamond piecing is a little more than I want to work with, but overall, it's been a very fun project. So challenging as it's out of my normal comfort zone and that makes for lots of twists and turns of course. But that's the way I most love to work.

Adding another finish to the 2017 list!

I handed this quilt top off to my friend for longarm quilting thinking it would be easier than doing hand quilting. It's just so busy, I figured the hand quilting wouldn't really show up well enough to make it worth the effort. About that. I'm starting to realize that my friend and I have a bit of a communication issue when it comes to what we each like and expect out of machine quilting!

I tend to want very loose, open style quilting and she loves very tight, compressed looking stitching. As you can see from the picture below, she did a little of both and so of course, the star poofs quite a bit in comparison to the tighter stitching. It's so funny because we always talk about what I want and then I turn to her and say, 'well, whatever you think will work best'. Maybe not the best way to handle things because I do want what I want and am sometimes surprised by the end result. Overall though, I trust her with my quilts and know she will do the best job she can. That means a lot.

Can you see the difference in quilting?

And as always, I took advantage of the opportunity to include some hand quilting. It was practically begging for more stitching in the very center blue/green area of the lone star and also the letters--they looked too simple without. So it was a great way to add more 'personal touches' to the quilt and make it a little more mine again. Honestly, I'm one that prefers to say the entire quilt was pieced and quilted by me! And it's tempting to go back and add more stitching through every diamond area as well, but I'm telling myself to just quit with the perfectionist tendencies. This really is a fun looking quilt, it should survive some 'unequal' quilting areas!

Love Me Do in the stairway

Overall, I'm fairly happy with this quilt and loving the happy, cheerful vibe. I'll be gifting it to one of my nephews and his lovely new wife over the coming weekend. This will be the second 'marriage quilt' in what will now probably turn out to be a years long project. Big families are funny about things like that.

Such a sweet quilt

Oh, almost forgot to mention. This lovely finish had a bit of red bleeding when I washed it up. Thankfully it wasn't horrible and another wash with some extra color catchers and some Biz took away the worst of it. I always prewash my fabrics so it annoys me to see the colors bleed. Guess I have to do a 12 hour soak with all my red fabrics to make 100% sure it never happens though and that's just not going to happen. Thankfully, this one wasn't ruined and the little bit of pale pink left in the quilt doesn't even show to those who don't know! Best get going--lots to do for the Thanksgiving holiday. The family think the food is the most important part....

Another Quilt Top Finish

What a wonderful turnout for the Quilty365 December Linkup! Sooo many great versions of our daily circles. I even spied some when I hopped over to Josie's blog yesterday. Such a surprise! Her friend Sally has been feeling very creative lately! A big thank you to everyone playing along. I am loving the company.

My Scrappy Lone Star quilt now a finished quilt top

Alas, there are other projects that demand attention as well. I've had the green borders done and ready to put onto my scrappy lone star quilt for a couple weeks now. Just trying to find the proper outside border fabric as that could change things up in the middle. It has happened you know and I don't like to use my seam ripper any more than I have to!

I'm renaming this 'Love Me Do' of course and my daughter
somehow thinks I made this specially for her, which I didn't.
Although I do know she loves the Beatles...

As you know, this quilt started out as a square and then I decided it needed to be elongated. Hmm.. What to do? I played with a few ideas and then added the red border, a bit thinner on the sides of course. Okay. Good start. Now what?

While sewing the floral background fabric to the diamonds, I kept having the Beatles song 'Love Me Do' playing in my head. Don't ask me why, but some songs just go with specific quilts and that's that! Well... I do love having words on quilts and this one seemed like a no-brainer, especially considering my quest to make the quilt longer than it was wide.

I dug around and found a brightish but dark, green fabric that honestly I have had since about 2002!, considered my other options and finally settled on a sweet limey green for the letters. I just love how it glows against the darker green. The vine and the flowers were a little more difficult to figure out, but I knew it had to be simple, yet still pack a lot of punch. Leaves or no leaves? I finally said an emphatic 'no' as the rest of the quilt is quite, quite busy. Simple is good. But then I worried. Would the bright red inner border look weird if the outer border of green was only on two sides?

It's a bright happy quilt, with that kind of beachy, cottage charm I love...

It actually made the border fabric a bit of a problem--I had myself a design dilemma! Or not. I auditioned the darker blues, greens, reds, hot pinks, even the orangey tones, but nothing jumped out as me. The greens made the appliqued borders disappear. The reds and hot pink looked brassy and make my teeth practically clench. The softer bubblegum pink, bleh! I threw some of the turquoise floral at the quilt--not happening! I briefly considered making a patchwork border, but then, what if I lost the lovely look of the floral/scrappy center? At one point I noticed the pink/orange plaid fabric with the light background already incorporated into the quilt and a light bulb went off. Ahh... That could be the perfect touch. Large, bold print with just the right combination of light and bright. And of course I only had a couple inches left of my original fat quarter.....

So... I did something I never, ever do and combed the Internet for this specific piece of fabric. It's one of my hard and fast rules. There is never just one piece of fabric that will work and only that piece. Ever! Uh yeah.. About that. It's last years fabric and sold out everywhere. Did I want the green/blue plaid? Finally I found the right color on a site for full price, had it in my cart and then, finally, my brain kicked in. Seriously? Was this the only fabric that would work? I don't think so! So I clicked out of the Internet and went to bed. So sad, boo hoo. Then, a few days later I visited my most local quilt store and would you believe this particular fabric was in their clearance bin!! My eyes about bugged out of my head! Happy dance! So now I just think it was fate and really, I didn't have any choice in the matter after all.*wink

What's hanging around on my design wall right now...

And I've also worked on more of the rising sun blocks, finished the other six out of twelve. Well, sort of. Except for that pesky triangle border they will need and the applique centers. I just thought this was the tricky part!

Also, I've been having computer problems so if I disappear for several days you'll know why. The computer guy is supposed to tell me tomorrow if mine is fixable or beyond hope. Keeping my fingers crossed he can tune it up enough to get me through the winter before we have to buy new!

A Handwork Round Up

I was trying to throw together a quick post and then I got sidetracked of course. Trying to catch up on the blog reading will do that to you! It's hard to believe I'm starting the stitching for the borders of the Big Star quilt. Just as I suspected, working on this quilt has reminded me of how much I truly do love it. So much effort and anxiety in putting these big stars together--I'd love it just for my courage in attempting it!

Hand quilting Big Stars

It's been a fairly relaxed weekend after the previous week of some troubles and trials. Things that make you want to hold your kids very close and cherish the family time. Guess I'm ready for some mellow, fairly calm looking fabrics. After today, I will have officially stuck with Quilty 365 for 21 days!

Another two days worth of circles....

There's been a lot of different applique in the stack around here and so I just had to get this border work cleared out of the way. Hopefully later this week I can find time to put it together with the other one and see what my Scrappy Lone Star will look like with borders!

Getting through the letter applique

And Folksy Flowers got a bit of attention as well. I'm trying to do the prep work for the flowers that will be appliqued into the center. Just a bit of free hand cutting with paper and then I have a template to draw onto the fabric. I spent almost an hour trying to find my inspiration photo (the little spark that lit me up for this project) and it's nowhere to be found. I remember seeing a piece of embroidery or something on an odd, random blog a very long time ago. I have it in mind that it was from Denmark? but who really knows and obviously I've been interpreting this as my brain dictates because I've never seen the pic since. Perhaps it was in one of my antique quilting books instead?

Prep work for the Folksy Flower

An interesting thing, the seeds of our quilting ideas. I'm always grateful for inspiration and the things that propel us into a new idea {and ta-da! eventually a new quilt}. I love the process, the what-if's, and of course the hand to heart connection of slow quilting. As I've said before, it calms me. It grounds me and makes me a better person. Time to link up once again to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching!

A Few Quilty Projects

Our Internet went down last week and so we've had to survive the entire weekend without. At first we were all rather frustrated, but then, oh well, there are always books to read and other things to do! I piddled a bit with my Scrappy Lone Star quilt. The borders were looking a little too simplistic and I wondered about my lame looking efforts.

More work on Scrappy Lone Star

Until I finally put them together with the rest of the quilt. Then I relaxed and went 'okay, this will work just fine'. My expectations are sometimes completely unrealistic and I'm not sure why that is. The letters still need to be stitched down on the bottom border and that will take a special mood. You've heard this before: although I do love words on my quilts, I quite dislike stitching them into place! And I'm still pondering whether or not to add leaves to my vine. Will work that out later I'm sure.

Looking at the border work....

I have really been itching to sew on the machine as well, but sadly, nothing catches my interest of late. So I cut into some random fabrics and just played for an evening. This will probably end up being a back to a quilt, so absolutely no pressure here!

Just playing with fabric....

Also, I started another quilt project last week. Just because. This one just seems to be intriguing me on a whole lot of levels. It will have background fabrics of these {primarily} grayed down cream prints. At first I thought to go buy a single piece of background fabric and then had to reconsider. There is nothing wrong with scrappy backgrounds, and in fact I generally far prefer them for the subtle interest it can add to a quilt.

I am going to be choosing fabric for a new {rough looking} circle every single day for 365 days. It can be one to four fabrics total but mostly I'm choosing fabrics from out of my scrap bin. It will not preclude adding fabrics directly out of the stash because I want to choose fabrics according to the mood of the day--that seems important for this particular project. Depending on my whims, the circle will be just a single fabric or possibly a patchwork style instead. If I don't have time to do the stitching on that day (I'm two circles behind with that already), that's okay. The main thing is to pick out the fabric for each day {or very closely after}, which means I have to be patient and will not be able to jump ahead. I am so very, very curious as to what colors this quilt will be after an entire year!

Project 365: A new quilty endeavor....

 And of course, I had to do some hand quilting late in the evenings. It relaxes me so very much.

And some hand quilting of course....

I'm trying not to get too crazy with the stitching on this quilt as I don't think it will be an extra special quilt to me. Yes I love it, but I don't LOVE it if you know what I mean. The loose echo quilting I'm doing on most of the quilt is coming along very well, slowly adding some wonderful texture. If I think it needs more when I get towards the finish, I can always go back and fill in areas that need help.