Vintage Lily is A Lovely Finish

Here we go with another good finish! Vintage Lily is all wrapped up except for the label and I only do those once a year. Make a nice big stack and just attack them all at once! A little surprising, but there's just something about this quilt that makes me feel a little bit possessive of it.

Vintage Lily is a completion!

My oldest daughter has already been making noises about taking off with this one and I'm like, 'No, this is MY quilt, back off already!' Which is so funny because I know good and well how as time goes by, there will be others that I like just a wee bit better. Isn't that how it works? Always assuming that I keep quilting of course!

Loving the different red values

This quilt was made with one of Sujata Shah's free-pieced block formula's from her 'Cultural Fusion' book. I took the square-in-a-square block and cut the corners smaller so as to have the look of a snowball block instead. The thing about making the snowballs with this method, is that all the blocks will have the same four fabric corner triangles instead of mixing them up per block. With this quilt, it probably helps tone down any extra busyness, so I don't mind at all.

Lily centerpiece

I did try to orient some of the conversation print blocks 'right side up', but didn't get too obsessive about it. There is one of the larger tulip print blocks in the far left corner {don't think I caught any pics of it tho} that does drive me a little crazy. Yep, my perfectionist traits still pop up even though I've been trying to stomp them out for years and years now. At least in regards to quilting. Ha!

Looking across the quilt

I second guessed adding in the few black blocks but thought the quilt needed the depth. Antique quilt often have an unexpected color that for whatever reason seems to emphasize the main color scheme. You might not even 'see' the random color when first looking at the quilt, but upon studying it, think, 'Hmm... that's an interesting color addition!'. Though this particular mix of colors is not the traditional red, white and blue, it does tend to read that way at a quick glance and the black, in my opinion, keeps the quilt from looking shallow.

Can quilts actually look shallow? They can definitely look uninteresting or one dimensional. I always look for a combination of ideas/elements that will draw someone into {or over} to my quilt. Something that makes them want to take a deeper, longer look than they otherwise would be inclined to. See, it's a compliment even if non-quilters say things like, 'Hey, she's really obsessed about quilting, but you know, her quilts do look pretty cool'. As for quilters, I will never mind things like, 'Her stuff really isn't my style, but I like her quilts regardless.' Interest is interest is interest, right? The best comments are the sincerely given 'I love it, looks amazing etc.,' but we gotta be realistic. Not everyone is as fascinated by quilting as we are!

The side of the quilt

I'm very happy with the way the edges of the quilt look. Cutting all those snowball blocks in half at the edge of the quilt was a very good decision. There's just something about this quilt that still makes me question the proportions. Could it have used another row at the bottom of the quilt to elongate the quilt and give it a slightly better feel? I did play around with that idea and could never 100% decide that it was a better choice. Ended up accidentally sewing extra rows onto the sides of the quilt, knowing for sure that was a bad move immediately after viewing it! Chopping off the sides {to scale?}, was the best that I could come up with other than adding on a border, and that just didn't seem necessary. Though I love and adore borders, not every quilt actually needs one and I'm so relieved to have gained the maturity to finally recognize that particularly important insight.*wink

Loving this one so much!

Just because I'm me and it's fruit season. Had to brag about our first real taste of fresh peaches for the summer! My sister texted me yesterday evening with a cryptic line of  'have some peaches, biscuits and whip'. Okay. Not a huge fan of biscuits with fresh fruit, but this was my sister who has been known to make some amazing desserts. Mouth watering, drool worthy desserts barely being mentioned and off we went hoping to get there before it was all demolished.

How many times can I 'Like' it? lol

I stole this picture off of her later Instagram post just to tease you a little. The biscuits were some kind of dessert biscuit, loaded with real butter and chopped pecans. The peaches were very fresh, the taste so rich and flavorful, it was actually a bit mind boggling! Everyone knows that the first crops in our area aren't usually the best of the best, but wowsers! So yummy! The whip was her famous, sorta-secret recipe for whipped cream that includes a little bit of yogurt mixed in, and well...., lets just say the entire concoction was a huge hit! Yay for peach season! 'Course now I'm thinking about fresh peach cobbler. You'd never know I have been earnestly striving to NOT gain weight this whole year! Yikes! Don't know how I'm ever gonna survive this years fruit harvest without some ridiculous backsliding.

Vintage Lily

It was rainy, gray day when I tried to take these pictures. Really a shame, because this {now finished} quilt top looks much more vibrant than the pictures might indicate. Vintage Lily was started sometime in the fall of last year. Kaja got me started on this particular color palette with two different quilts of hers that just sorta pulled me in and made me long to play.

Vintage Lily is a finished quilt top!

At first there was a fabric stack {probably started much earlier in the year?} pulled directly from my stash of course. That simmered for a very long time. It slowly attracted like-fabrics into the stack, and occasionally, kicked one out that didn't quite gel. I absolutely wanted a old time/vintage feel to the quilt, which isn't as easy as it might seem. Throughout those months, I carefully added in several shirting fabrics. A few came from second hand stores, one directly from my sons closet and another was a shirt he wore as a toddler! There were many vintage-look florals and/or prints tossed in and out, but it wasn't until after the fall quilt show though, that the initial 'start' to this quilt finally happened.

The overall approach to this quilt almost eluded me forever as I had great difficulty in being able to see the entire look and feel in my minds eye. How to start, how to start? Sometimes that is the greatest struggle of all--making sure that those carefully gathered stacks of fabric reach their best potential. It's a very common theme around here. In fact, at this moment in time, there are probably seven or eight stacks of carefully collected fabrics sitting around my quilt room. Just waiting for that perfect storm of inspiration and motivation!

Trying to determine if I like it.....

I used the 'Cultural Fusion' book as to the formula for making the simple improv. blocks in this quilt. There were similar blocks in the Scrappy Tulips quilt, but those little corner bits came straight out of the scrap bin. I loved that particular snowball border solution so much, but wowsers, lots and lots of extra cutting. Very time consuming! Sujata's method, tho involving lots of trimming after the blocks are sewn, is a bit more streamlined in terms of cutting and piecing. This seemed to work very well with the limited color palette going on here too. All I had to do for this 'look', was adjust the cutting in the block formula to get the smaller corners I wanted. The imperfection of the corners {that I love so much} is built right into the formula.

Testing, testing....

And one wonderful thing about getting all the blocks trimmed up after being sewn, is the rows go together very fast. It would've been even faster if I hadn't had to remove one row from each side of the quilt while it was still in the large unit stage. Miscalculation in my rough diagram.*grr  In the end, I didn't like the proportion of the finished quilt top either. There was an exact repeat amount of blocks radiating out from the centerpiece, and in person, it looked a little odd. Even to my no-opinions-about-quilts {haha} husband, it was something that needed changed. This just made me grit my teeth to think of getting out the seam ripper again. Oh just let me think about this for a minute or two, surely there's another solution! And thankfully there was. I decided on a whim to fold the edges of the quilt over and see what it looked like with a smidgen of those rows chopped off.

Making a minor adjustment...

And it was all decided in a matter of minutes. Yes! to cutting the blocks in half at the sides of the quilt! Me, the frugal, don't-want-to-waste-any-fabric-ever kind of quilter, happily chopping off the sides of a quilt. It simply boggles the mind.....

Vintage Lily

Gotta love the end result though. Somehow all the elements that I was originally inspired with translated into a good thing. Makes me feel sorta warm and fuzzy honestly! Linking up to Koka Quilts and JulieLou at sew, stitch, snap, SHARE!

The Vintage Lily Quilt is Coming Right Along.....

I've been pretty dedicated to making serious progress on the Vintage Lily quilt this week. For starters, there was eons of trimming to do.*uggh

Too much trimming

Crossing my fingers that I will never try to do it all at once again. That just doesn't work for me anymore {wrist & finger cramps, blurry/bored vision from entering zombie state of mind, abdomen soreness from letting the mat get too far away from me.. etc., etc.} There are 233 blocks after all. What was I thinking?

At first I attempted to iron all the corner pieces to the dark side. Nope. Way too much trouble. It's not like the seams have to match up anyway. So, after all the blocks were neatly trimmed, ironed and ready to go, then it was time for the sewing. Aha! The best part of that endless trimming marathon? No pinning required!

Sewing the rows

I don't have a large enough design wall, so there was lots of pre-sorting involved in an effort to get that 'random, but balanced' look. My daughter and husband both scoffed at that wordage. They said it's not possible to have both random and balanced at the same time. I really just thought they should go find something else to do and leave me to my seriously concentrated, I'm-head-down-and-getting things-done playtime.

Trying to figure out the centerpiece

After seeing some of the snowballs up on the wall, then it was easier to determine the size for the centerpiece and how it needed to be framed. I actually think the white border area is a little too large proportion-wise, but I definitely like this appliqued sawtooth border I ended up with. It blends very well with the appliqued look of the lillies and looks a little old fashioned. Plus, the top/bottom borders are 20" and the sides are 25". Lots easier to 'fudge' measurements in applique work than it is with piecing and 5" repeats {the obvious common denominator} didn't do it for me here.

And maybe add a little applique?

Of course I just had to throw some little circles up on the sawtooth borders to see if it made a difference. Oh yeah. Just can't help myself. Now I have 22 little circles to stitch down before I can sew this thing together. And maybe a couple snowball blocks to switch out too. Not that you can see those problem areas from these pictures, but you know how it is. Scrappy starts looking a little odd when the same exact fabrics end up residing side by side...

February Adhoc. Improv. Play

The next AHIQ challenge is an interesting one. It's all about playing with scale--in whatever manner we'd like to interpret. I've been contemplating the idea of making a quilt with rows of simple blocks and/or shapes. Something in subdued colors and just playing with value changes to see if I could make something with an antique 'utility' look.

Playing with Scale--The start

It was an obvious choice for incorporating scale changes as I already had the fabric pull and rows can be easily tweaked for size. As I went digging for inspiration, I kept coming back to the idea of having a centerpiece though. There's something about the idea of a pretty center with radiating piecework that just appeals to me. So of course it had to be applique. Everything lit up when I saw this on my Pinterest boards {sorry Lori for not linking directly to the pertinent post}.

Sewing together the foundation piece

So as things go when we're making things up as we go along, I doodled some quick ideas until one looked about right. Not an exact copy, but something with similar vibes! Then it was time to start making the drawing happen in fabric. I started with rows of small strings or coins for the background. Just a mellow blend of sagey greens and a piece of cream/black toile. I deliberately left the middle of the foundation free of pieced units as I didn't want to cut any of that fabric out of the back of my applique. It's really not large enough, but I also needed enough foundation to securely sew the applique 'circles' to.

To get the appropriate sizes for the applique, I re-drew my doodle drawing onto a perfectly sized piece of freezer paper. Then I carefully cut out each circle, ironed it onto the chosen fabrics and cut out with plenty of seam allowance--especially the inside brown circle as it's easy to move overlay applique a little too far in one direction or another. At that point, I sewed the outside seam of the brown applique with a quick straight stitch on the sewing machine. Who cares. Nobodys ever gonna see that seam! I trimmed the pink circle a little bit, especially at the bottom where it was too flat looking and hand stitched the outside edge of the circle. I cut the cream {applique foundation} circle out and carefully slipped it inside and underneath the brown circle. And yes, I deliberately chose a fabric with a smaller scale of print! Ooh... gotta love layers of interest!

And so I stitched the brown circle to the cream applique background and then the pink circle to the brown circle. On and on until it was time to cut out my flower pieces, still from that same freezer paper drawing! {So efficient!} It was tough on my fingers stitching over areas with seamed rows, but like I said, NOT going to cut the background out on this one. Too much fear of raveling. It's a good start to my 'playing with scale' quilt and for now I'm mentally calling it 'The Quiet Quilt', the centerpiece notwithstanding.  Lots of the fabric pull are soft, quiet and a little blendy. We'll see where it goes from here. At some point I definitely intend to start with some vertical rows, but just had to establish the beginnings to get a feel for the rest!

Adding some applique details

I was hoping to be farther along with the Vintage Lily quilt, but these snowball blocks have been soooo tedious to sew. Easy as pie, but just yawn inducing. All are sewn now, but next up is the ironing and trimming.*ughh  Not my favorite part of the quilting process! Robin is doing something similar with her scale challenge, so it should be interesting to see both of our quilts progress. My snowballs are a little different than hers as I wanted the corners on mine to end up looking very scrappy and a bit messy. You might remember the look from my Scrappy Tulips finish?

Improv. Snowball blocks for Vintage Lily

So the other adhoc. improv. work in progress are these postage stamp baskets. Originally I had plans to mix them with my pineapple applique, but that flew out the window in a hurry. These baskets are just a little too strong to mix with sweet looking applique shapes. First I laid them out next to each other and tried every which way to be happy with the look. I'm certainly intrigued at the intersection where each basket joins up, but it's so not me. It just feels like a waste of all that time I spent stitching on the basket handles!

Improv. Postage Stamp Baskets

On to other plans! There's not much I can do to make these look more like basket blocks and less like loops with stripey corner units. I contemplated adding 'feet' to the basket like someone suggested the other day, but it just made a muddle at the point where the baskets met. There's probably oodles of different things that could be done with these basket blocks, but what appeals to me right now is giving them lots of breathing room.

Auditioning a layout

So yep. The're going to get the good old, classic sashing treatment. Kind of a fall back around here, but when you like something, there's not point in trying to reinvent the wheel! I cut up all the rest of the pale background fabrics {had barely enough} and started auditioning placement. Two brighter blocks got tossed out immediately and the rest seem to be cooperating. For now, I'm using little fussy cut roses I cut out of a fat quarter for all those inside sashing squares. There's not enough for the outside squares, so that and the setting triangle fabric still remain a mystery. 

Overall, I'm quite pleased with where this quilt is headed though I admit to being a wee bit disappointed when the original plain went south. It's not a bad thing to be surprised by a quilts independence though. Just makes us more determined to try and get it right! Linking with Kaja and Ann for AHIQ #30. Are you having fun yet? 'Cuz I certainly am.....