Two Medallion-Style Quilts in Progress

I love to click onto my quilty blog list and see what all my fellow quilters are currently working on. See the progression of a specific project or where their muse is currently leading them. My favorite part is that 'Aha! moment' or the times we shake our heads and say, 'of course, why didn't I think of that with a similar project?'  There is so much inspiration to be had from following along on another's journey and making the inevitable connections--viewing the process from such unique perspectives.

Everything has a starting point...

I often wonder what it is that people see in my quilting, why they keep coming back to this blog. Does anyone really know what I'll be doing next, because I certainly don't! And then I think about the connections and inspiration gained from checking in with other quilters. Oh yeah. Maybe it's the same right back.

So, having said that, how bout some background on my latest? This little centerpiece was started a couple months ago. I found the background fabric {a fat quarter} in a box of oldish fabrics my husband bought at an auction. Probably the best find in the entire box! Immediately my mind jumped to ideas involving an applique centerpiece. Which lead to all sorts of vague ideas about a sort of 'cameo' applique used at the center of oh... a medallion quilt perhaps? You know how I love those medallion quilts.

The ideas sort of ebbed and flowed and finally I had a plausible rough draft drawn up of what my quilt might 'possibly' look like. The problem was, the cameo was not being cooperative. So I dithered around until eventually there something to move forward with. Not nearly as much applique in the center as imagined, but oh well. This is what 'fit' into my oval--everything else had to go.

The Cameo quilt

On to the next phase then. Which involved a border with diamonds. Yikes! I hate those! But the drawing. It just had to be! So, stall, stall, stall. A few tentative looks into border books and templates. Ughh.  Stall, stall, stall. Until finally {I love that word don't you?} parallelograms made their way into my consciousness too. They seem just a teensy bit easier to understand than diamonds. Uh huh. 

Fast forward to last Saturday where my entire day was made up of constructing that little bit of green and white border. I played it safe and did not try to wrap the pointy bits around the corner or make them fit together into nifty little lemoyne stars. No siree, I did not. What happened was more like this: how many repeats does it take to extend beyond the corners? And then where do I chop them off to make it look like I did it on purpose? Oh and what about a coping strip in between borders? Because, gulp, it's looking very wan and anemic without that sparky bit of color. Whew! It's done now and no-one in my family seems to get how hard all that calculating/stressing and speculating is for me.*wink

Folksy Flower with one border added

I also finally dug out my Folksy Flower centerpiece in the last week or so. It's a fallish looking project and I have not been in the mood. The first border is attached now though and awaiting the second before I trim off the corners. The plan is to turn this one on point with multiple borders on each corners. It has sat simmering in the tote for months while I pondered the setting. On point or not? Pros for? Cons? I am a ditherer plain and simple, and refuse to rush my projects just for the sake of simply moving ahead. Details matter, and sometimes more than you might think!

I have also been stealthily working on my rising sun {twirly ball} blocks. All the middle circles have been sewn together forever. You knew that. Well, now the outer rings are sewn together as well. All 12 of them! And so now, all that remains is the part where I clutch my head in terror and try to sew the inside circles into the outside rings. I may even stall for another year or two. It's not completely outside the realm of possibility when it comes to something I dread so very much.

Starting to see the blocks come together....

And looky, looky what the postman delivered the other day! This is the results of winning a giveaway over at Kyle's lovely blog. I can't get over how cute the little bag is and of course I am always thrilled with getting to add new bits of fabric into my crazy fabric totes! Talk about inspiration, Kyle is always making the sorts of quilts you and I positively drool over...

Winning is so much fun!

So that's it for now. I'm finding myself in the quilt room a little bit more these days as the days have turned cooler and fall is a lovely time to quilt!

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!

Just Dabbling

I'm a dabbler lately. Dibble, dabble and jumping around from project to project, idea to idea. I started work on my twirly balls. The first one. I think I'm committed now for real but it may still take me a couple months to sew these twelve blocks up. They take. A. Lot. Of. Time.

This might just be possible if I take it very slow....

Sorry for the lousy color in the pic below. It was taken late in the evening and then my camera died. It's an older quilt top. I sewed some blocks together a hundred years ago, tore them all apart {a couple years ago}, then got {re}inspired and ended up with this--somehow. I'm going to do a lot of basic machine quilting on it and just a little dibble dabble of hand quilting. Things need to get moving out of my quilt top drawers. Because {ahem!} I need more room.

Starting to pin another quilt.....

 Obviously. Wouldn't this be sweet new project?

Another new quilt?

I really, really wanna cut into these fabrics. And wouldn't you? I rescued the large yellow fabric from the clearance bin a quite awhile back. The plan was to use it for a quilt backing, which is no doubt why I found it buried in with the quilt tops. What was I thinking? Was I thinking? I know what I'm thinking now....*wink

Finishing Up and Starting Something New, The Ongoing Cycle

Things have been pretty slow around here in regards to quilting. We jaunted off to Portland over the weekend to attend a friends wedding and I ended up doing a lot of the driving. Which means of course, no time with the hand work because we're always busy after we arrive at our destination!

Happy Flowers ready for binding

It's already been the year for weddings with our friends and family and still one more left on the schedule for August. I'm starting to think in terms of, either gift, or money in the boot, but not both! It's starting to cut into my quilting money.*wink

I have had very little motivation since returning, but I did manage to finish up the hand quilting on my Happy Flowers quilt. Wowsers, has that quilt been in the hoop for a long time considering how small the quilt is! I picked out all the cherry red binding from my leftovers tote and had enough for half the binding length. The rest came from my stash as I did not want to go shopping for fabric right now.

A new project...

I've been considering this 'Pleasantville' quilt from the book 'Making Quilts with Kathy Doughty' for some time now. I have dithered a lot over actually starting it because the twirly ball blocks have to be cut out from templates. Ughh.. I do so hate drawing them onto the fabric and then having to oh-so-carefully cut them out. Much better to cut out using a rotary cutter and ruler! First I am going to try sewing them on the machine and then if that doesn't work out, I may switch to hand sewing. 

The quilt will not be made in the correct order of sequence because I really need to find out if the twirly ball blocks are even manageable before I progress with the rest of the quilt. Honestly, I am terrible about following directions and it's been a long time since I've seriously planned on even attempting to make a quilt directly from a pattern! Which I'm not. Just parts of it. I've already decided to change a few things just in fabric choices! The layout will probably be the same though and that's where I'll really have to focus and try to get things cut out just right so as not to waste or ruin fabric. If I remember right, some of the Kathy Doughty patterns have been a bit confusing for me to follow along with...