A Little Bit of Border Progress

Progress is being made on the Sunburst borders. I only have one more motif to sew on the second border and then I'm half done. 

Working on the borders

Repeats are always a good thing to be sewing on when there are distractions. After the second or third motif, they almost sew themselves.*wink  Just kidding. Actually, I discovered {or rather remembered} that the curved edges did not get clipped on the second border. Ahh... What a time to remember. For some reason, it totally spaced my mind before starting to stitch down the edges of my applique pieces!

Progress on Sunburst

However, when I lay the borders side by side or even in the proper arrangement with the rest of the quilt, I see no difference at all. How crazy is that? I'm sure it means that I'm a sloppy appliquer or something less than flattering, but I'm going with the 'how wonderful is that' attitude. Now I can skip that tedious little step {completely guilt free} for the 3rd and 4th borders as well. Thank goodness for that folksy applique look I love to appreciate!

Sunburst Getting Another Border

So I dragged out the Sunburst quilt and gave it another whirl. What to do, what to do. It just doesn't look finished to me, something is lacking and I just can't give it up.

Sunburst center before

The middle has always kind of bothered me. A little too stark for the rest of the quilt maybe. So I played with a couple of small additions and finally settled on adding the pink centers to the blue.

Sunburst center after

It makes more sense when you see what I've decided to do with the next {and hopefully last} border. I finally got it all prepped and waiting in my handwork bag for that magic intersection of time and inclination. If you only knew how many times I've played with this border, contemplating, scribbling ideas down and basically beating my head against the wall. So I'm still not 100% sure, but this time I actually cut out the pieces--that's major progress. I feel like there's a hundred different ideas that would work with for this border and how egotistical of me to think I could possible land on the very best one.

Border prep

I stitched the January block for my personal solids challenge just to relax and unwind. I'm absolutely, 100% sure about that at least! Next up, getting the February block prepped and ready to go.

January Block

It's good to have hand work. Honestly, it's a challenge not to have ten projects going all the time.*wink

Now I'm Stitching Some Folky Birds

Sorry this is so wrinkled. Bad blogger alert! I've been gradually working on it for weeks and I guess it just got stuffed willy nilly into my handwork bag when I was doing the prepared evacuation stuff. As I've been working on it, the wrinkles are falling out a little. No sense in trying to iron it though. It's just gonna get stuffed back in a bag unless things change soon.

Sunburst quilt and my very weird toes

The appliqued birds were a concern, but they look like they are gonna work just fine. Kinda funny faced, these birds, but perhaps a bit folky too? It's nice to see this project finally starting to come together. There's a long ways to go with it but every bit of stitching will eventually get to a finish some day in the future. There's been times I've definitely wondered if I had what it took to do this one. I've had such a hard time with this particular project, not being able to 'see' what needs to happen next. Originally this one was going to be an 'all applique' quilt, but now I'm reconsidering. Hopefully getting this middle piece done will help me make a more informed decision about where to go next.

Still more to do.....

We are still at level one {lowest} evacuation notice but the fire does continues to spread slowly in our direction. There's been an inversion and lower temps which helps keep the fire activity at lower levels, but still, not much containment so we are all very much on edge. The smoke in this valley has been almost insufferable and we are all very weary of not getting to see our lovely blue skies. My mom and dad left for Portland this morning which will hopefully give them a break and my mother-in-law left last weekend.

Much of the fire coming toward our town is in very rugged terrain, we are not a heavily populated area and plus, fire fighting resources remain in very high demand elsewhere. All of that just makes it a wait and see kind of situation for us. Basically the fire has to get down a lot closer to the Alta Lake housing area {scary for them as about 50 homes burnt up there just last year} before they will be able to put much manpower into making a serious dent in the forward movement of this particular part of the fire. And that's only four miles away from us.*whine, whine, whine....

Nectarine pie

Many new homes have been built up there since last years devastation and so many barely moved back in. Some for less than a month! I cannot even begin to imagine their distress. So I read, stitch a little and well.., yesterday I made pie. Gotta have some comfort food in these trying times. At some point I'm gonna have to pull myself together, get back in the office, and do a boatload of that book work that's piling up. But for now?

I use the same crust recipe my grandmother used, which uses oil and makes for a more rustic looking pie. The recipe is 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup oil {she used vegetable oil  but we use canola or olive oil}, 1/4 c. milk poured directly into the oil, and a dash of salt. Pour the liquid over the flour and salt; mix well with a fork. Add a tiny bit of water if the dough doesn't want to stick together and roll out into two crusts {top and bottom} between two sheets of wax paper. One layer of crust at a time of course! 

The filling for this nectarine pie is easy peasy: 4 1/3 cups of peeled, sliced nectarines, 1/4 c. cornstarch and 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Stir the cornstarch and sugar into the nectarines until they are well coated. Pour nectarine mixture into bottom pie crust and then cover with top layer. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes or until bubbling. About that--I cut a hole in the center and also make about 6 slits before baking, but it always helps to put a sheet of aluminum foil on the rack directly below the pie to help catch the wayward dribbles. It's a really fabulous pie--hot, cold and anywhere in between if you like pie like I like pie.*wink

Applique Play

I am moving very slowly on this quilt. The repetition of doing the same thing over and over always gets to me and I don't have a specific finish date for this quilt. That and I don't even have a really solid idea of where I'm going with this one! I wonder if that's why it continually gets shoved to the back burner, because you know I still love the colors and fabrics involved in the making.

More progress on Sunburst

I did finally get all the leaves and flowers stitched down though. Finally. It pains me to start another applique quilt when this one has been so long in the making. I've already overlooked this one so very many times--am I committed to finishing it or not? Yes, I really am. Okay, prove it. hehe  Don't you just love all these internal conversations we have with ourselves?

I played around with several different ideas for more applique, drawing and cutting until I came up with a possibility that clicked. I'm not sure why as the birds seem sort of fat and sassy rather than what I thought they should like like {maybe scrawny and folksy?}. I guess my brain is stuck on simple and naive these days. Time to see how it looks in actual color and print!

My Current Applique Round Up

I am on complete and total applique overload lately. It's not terribly unusual around here, but once it hits, then it's almost deadly, at least to my motivation. First of all, there is my Sunburst quilt. I've firmly deemed it a 'forever' project by now, so it only proceeds in little fits and starts. A leaf here and a leaf there. Not a lot of progress ever, but I think we're good. Aren't we? It almost always makes me happy, if a bit bored in the 'doing'.

Sunburst

Next up is the low volume Log Cabin quilt, which was very sneaky about inserting itself directly into the mix. I was very happily making my free looking Log Cabin quilt top and then the idea of adding applique just sort of crept into my thought process. Ha! No sneakiness about it now. It's been like a runaway train getting all the parts prepped and on their way to completion. Just a minute there buster, you are NOT a priority concern at the moment! So weird how that happens. I've had to make myself slow down in order to concentrate on a couple of other projects!

LV Log Cabin

Quarter Circles Round #2 has been placed on the back burner for now. It just needs a little sewing done on the machine before I can attack the hand applique, so for now--no pressure. It still makes my heart go pitter patter every time I pull it out though and you know what that means.... It's one that I'm very eager to start working on! Hmm... I could probably just power through this one in no time....

Quarter Circles Round #2

The Eagle QAL quilt is basically in the simmering stage for now. I really want the next border to be an applique border, but have no brilliantly clear picture in my mind. Perhaps a classic looking vine type motif? I'm definitely leaning in that direction, but am fairly content to let it incubate--for now. Deadline is July 4th! Just curious, how long can 'for now' last?

The Eagle QAL quilt

Lately I've also been very intrigued by the Marsala Challenge, if only because I have plenty of that drab, uninteresting color in my stash. Why I ever bought it in the first place is a question that is impossible to answer, but for some reason my mind has seized upon the idea of trying to make something work. This fabric pile keeps growing larger as I wonder, hmmm...? The main problem to starting this particular project {any justification will do} is the issue of what I would clearly want to use for a pattern. It, ahem! has a lot of applique involved.*sigh  Insanity, thy name is woman... But you know, it's not like the applique would be ready right away! The initial phase of the quilt would involve a lot of sewing on the machine???

Thinking about making a 'Marsala' based quilt

And then there is the quilt that is the culprit of all my quilting stress--the 2014 Fire in Pateros quilt. Stress is NEVER, ever allowed in the quilt room, but somehow sneaks in through the back door occasionally regardless. It's a quilt I really, badly want to make {sort of feel compelled to make actually}, but it's driving me insane. The creative stage of figuring out the details was fun and a bit thrilling, but the implementation is so, very difficult and yes, a lot tedious as well. I love and adore words on my quilts. Getting them there is the problem. Arghhh!!

2014 Fire In Pateros quilt

It's also possible that I've bitten off more than I can chew. Why oh why did I plan out such a largish quilt for such a crazy, emotional project? I now have most of two 'thoughts' appliqued onto my first panel, but there are six more to go, plus two or three other areas that have words included. Not to mention a panel of other applique 'shapes' and other various appliqued bits to be placed here and there. It's the real deal, 'whole applique' quilt and would be very, extremely interesting if I could just mix it up. The problem is, this first panel needs to be completely finished before I know for sure how to proceed with the rest. The colors, balance etc. depend primarily upon this first {very wordy} panel that somehow gets me all churned up. It's not like I was at war people! 

I've recently challenged myself to complete one 'thought' per week in an effort to make some real progress, not this namby, pamby, dinking around stuff. If this means all the other applique work gets shoved aside for now, then so be it. It really need to be determined if this quilt is actually 'doable', before it gets shoved in the back of a closet somewhere out of sheer frustration and temper tantrum type antics. Who, me? haha We all know some quilts are very, very difficult to implement, but this one feels like it could be well worth the effort if I can just tackle my antipathy towards sewing on so very many of these fabric letters. {And no, I don't want to do an iron-on type of applique. I don't like how they feel in a to-be-used quilt.}

So there you have it--a complete overview of my recent applique overload. It's important to make quilts we're gonna love, right?*wink

Sunburst Quilt Progress

A little bit of work on my Sunburst quilt, but not much else quilty-wise. Too much cooking, cleaning, list-making and then, the subsequent Black Friday shopping.*sigh  Someday they will push it too far even for people like me and then I'll be done with it.

My Sunburst quilt

So glad to have a quiet, peaceful Thanksgiving Day though. Wish our oldest son could have made it home, but it's hard to compete with a family gathering at the Oregon coast. Now there's not much else to do except wash up the leftover containers as they get emptied out one by one. Why do we always cook enough for an army? lol

Hopefully the trees on this quilt will look more like (funky) trees when the leaves are added on. Right now it's looking a bit odd, even to me....

My Sunburst Applique

Just a quick update on my Sunburst Applique project. It's finally all together just the way I want it to look. Now to make plans for the applique in the corners. You know, if I can find that little block of time that is always necessary for intense quilt bonding sessions.

Sunburst Applique in its infancy

I really want to do trees similar to ones in the original quilt but with softer looking leaves perhaps. I love how the branches of those trees stretch out and give character to the corners of the quilt. Will have to play with some ideas and see where I end up. For anyone interested in recreating the truly fabulous original, Dawn has made up a wonderfully detailed pattern that you can purchase directly through her shop. I have not, as yet, bought the pattern myself as I am apparently challenging myself to do the impossible.*wink

For the record, I did in fact pick out fabrics two separate times just to make the original red and yellow quilt.

Off the record, I never felt like my fabric choices could even begin to adequately convey the beauty and wonders of the original quilt. That being said, I'm taking myself completely out of the possibility of my quilt ever being compared to the real deal {in a relevant way} by doing my own thing, in my own colors.

Ahem. Got to give credit where credit is due though. My little quilt project would never have been made possible if not for the original maker and creator of the quilt that has since been named 'Calico Paradise'. What I wouldn't give to see more of this particular quilters creations!