Start With the Foundation and Then I'll Work My Way Into the Details

I finally dove into applique prep like I've been threatening to do for weeks now. The brand new project, inspired by the fabulously creative Jane Ormes, was a dig-deep-and-see-how-seriously-you-want-to-do-this type of project. Jane had responded very kindly to my request, to try and interpret one of her prints into a quilt, which honestly kind of shocked me.

Freezer paper templates ready to go

I figured it would be an 'Absolutely Not! How about a restraining order?', but no, she was very, very nice about it and even thanked me for asking! This particular print, 'Elephantjunglematissetypething!' might seem like an odd choice, but I'm so in love with the leaves and flowers. Wonderfully whimsical. It feels like something that would continually result in feel-good endorphins while working through the stitching. Ha! Not at the start though. I spent almost 3 hours just on drawing the leaves. Erasing and drawing and erasing some more. They will not be exact, but I wanted the vibe to be very, very similar. 

Still wondering if I have what it takes to include the elephant!

Once again I don't intend to go out and buy any fabric but will try and make-do from the stash totes. Luckily I had a piece of white fabric that seemed plenty large enough. Unbelievably, it still worked when I had to throw all of my painstaking measurements out the window and start over. Yep. Just had to piece every iota of the yardage together and try to make it as large as possible. Yikes! Now my stomach is feeling a bit queasy as I never, ever intended for the background to be 68".*sigh  Plus, there's a seam right through the middle-ish of the quilt. After spending that much time on the leaves, I knew there would be no going back and trying to re-draw them in a smaller size. And, I love, love, love the larger size. They just look amazing already!

Getting started with placement for reverse applique

Many of you are probably squirming just from looking at all the rumpled fabric, but this is the wrong blog to be coming to for immaculate quilting projects or stunningly arranged quilt pictures.I slog away at the details and iron when I have to. Take pictures only when it seems necessary to keep up with the blog.

The background above? I was in a hurry and pushed for time. Ended up sewing the two large pieces of yardage together without measuring, cutting and pinning. Just sewed them together and then... just sat and looked at the rippled seam. Gag. Ughh. Agghh! How does that even happen after 20+ years of sewing? So out came the seam ripper and of course a little pity party. {Again, how badly do I want to make this quilt?} So yes, it does and will lay flat. NOW. But go ahead and judge me if it makes you feel better.*wink

All the rows are ready for initial applique stitching

The baskets are all ready to go for the Patchwork Garden quilt too. They are all some shade of navy and though this isn't the best picture, I am enthralled with the color palette thus far. A couple of the baskets are folded down at the top as everything possible will be appliqued into place per row before starting to join a couple rows. Step by step is how it goes and as always, I will be adding more of the applique details as each phase progresses. So very difficult to do hand work on a large background. Which is exactly why the previous quilt is a bit of a problem even before getting started!

Failed flower block #1

Another project that has been seeing a little bit of attention is the AHIQflowers invitational. I had this flower applique quilt in mind that for some reason made me think that all the flowers could be machine pieced. After playing around with several ideas, using scraps from the scrap bin, I ditched all the potential flowers. I don't want to spend a hundred hours making something 'not quite good enough'.

Failed flower block #2

I give up. The only look that will truly make me happy is if they are all appliqued. Do I really need another major applique project right now?  Plus, none of it seemed very improv.-y to me which feels strange knowing that the AHIQ is usually all about improv.  What really interests me right now is recreating old utility style quilts.

Failed flower block #3

So I just chucked all the previous play, ideas and assumptions and went straight to my favorite book 'Unconventional and Unexpected' by Roderick Kiracofe. What say? Anything there to make me start thinking about flowers in an intriguing way?

The new stack of fabric! Kind of a weird blue
for me to be working with....

Oh yeah. The quilt below, which is just a jumbled up mix of shapes and cast-off fabrics jumped right out at me. See the lemoyne star shape in the far right bottom corner? That's gonna be my flower right there, some how, some way. The entire quilt will be a huge improv. puzzle of sorts and that easily, the decision was made!

Unconventional and Unexpected quilt

I have friends who definitely don't understand my desire to recreate weird, scrap bin style, utility quilts. They might even worry about me a little. It's perfectly okay. Us quilters know good and well that the time to make a quilt is the time when it lights all of our fuses on fire. Not tomorrow or the next day. Does anyone understand the entirety of how inspiration works? There's a lot of books out there, but nothing definitive.

Closer look at the future flower inspiration

What I do know is this, whatever we make today, undeniably informs what we make tomorrow. In the process of [happily} following our muse, we can make something very personally compelling and then that can and will usually help generate enthusiasm for whatever the next project might be. See how this works? We don't have to understand all the whys and wherefores. We just have to make sure that the logical side of our brain doesn't succeed in drowning out our muse and stifling new growth. 

This quilt won't be an exact duplicate either. Close perhaps. Is an exact replica even possible? And more importantly, what are the benefits to stressing ourselves out attempting to? Mostly I just intend to eyeball things {skip the math} and try to make a single row before moving on the next. At most I hope to create a quilt that gives off the same kind of spunky 'I am good enough', 'I am not ashamed of being humble', or 'I am worthy' vibe. Wish me luck!

The New Quilt Top Finish and a New Addition To the Family

So I finished up the squirrel project that jumped on board all in a hurry. I can't remember the exact measurements, but it's around 56" x 72"? Something like that. Decent size for a lap quilt for sure.

I Am A Maker quilt top is finished!

It felt good to use parts and pieces that in some cases were over 10 years old. The most complicated new pieced units were half square triangles. Though I used every bit of the parts and pieces with yellow {no matter how green-yellow}, I ended up throwing out other units that had too much green fabric in them. And I didn't use the cut red squares at all, just the coral pink ones. Interesting how it all shakes out in a project like this!

Adding a little bit of applique, of course....

Yes, the applique flowers did end up staying for good. I just cut out similar sizes to what I was auditioning and made sure to add seam allowance. I kept the shapes very simple and naive looking on purpose. This isn't a quilt for fancy schmancy detail.

All the different parts and pieces...

The quilt states that 'I am a maker', but this last week I have been primarily a 'grandma'. Miss Reagan Anne made her appearance on Tuesday morning and we couldn't be more happy. Such a joy to be a grandparents to our sweet little girls!

Sweet little granddaughter

This is a picture her daddy took that I stole off Instagram. For some reason I always forget to take pictures and just concentrate on the snuggling! I love how he took off her little cap so we could see her fuzzy little hair. Ahh... My heart just melts. Since they live just up the road from us, we are trying to help as much as possible in the first weeks of trying to adjust to the new 'normal'. Don't expect to see much quilting out of me for a little while. Priorities!

Baby Quilts and a {Sanity Saving} Random Sampler Attempt

Making baby quilts is generally fun and easy peasy. This time I allowed it to stress me out a little because I am making 'for a special someone'. Not that I asked them for specific colors etc., but still, I'd like to feel that they will appreciate the final product.

Baby boy quilt

I used this photo as inspiration for my baby 'boy' quilt, but you know me. I had to add in a printed fabric somewhere. I also changed the look of the star and went with a sawtooth style instead of the pointier version seen in the original. Then later, just because I wanted to.... That little panda family didn't look quite right without older sister being included. Where's our little Lucy? 

I believe this is called Broderie Perse when you cut an element out of fabric and use it for your applique shape. The whole thing looks so sweet up close, but from a distance muddies up the look of the star a little too much. So disappointing. It might have to be unpicked and stitched onto the label at the back of the quilt whenever I get to that point. I've told you and told you before, that sometimes it's possible to go too far with applique additions? Now do you believe me?*sigh

With an added panda bear...

The little girl quilt {I had to have both ready to go just in case!}, was made out of leftover strings from the Dried Flowers quilt that I'm still working on. Trust me to get the secondary project finished up before the original one is even close. Though I measured and cut the string strips to equal sizes, it's obvious there is a bit too much 'ease' in the quilt. Hope it doesn't make machine quilting a nightmare. As you can see, a bit of applique jumped on the front of this one too...

Baby girl quilt

After wading through the baby quilt dilemmas I felt stuck in limbo land--not wanting to sandwich and quilt either one before I find out for sure which is needed! So the very next day I woke up and it was snowing. Ughh. No more snow! I think something inside me sort of snapped because I immediately headed for the orphan totes and started digging out parts and pieces. Yep, it's one of those 'squirrel' quilts that pop up out of nowhere.

Leftover sashing bits

Seriously, though Why not have a little fun with something that has zero expectations? I put together a nice little pile of leftovers, including blocks, fabric squares and hst units. Anything in this color palette was fair game. And don't ask me why these colors were chosen. It just was.

Orphaned blocks, units and fabric squares

I sewed leftover sashing bits together, finally put the letters for I am a maker into one unit {originally intended for the back of another quilt}, made four patch blocks, sewed units of leftover squares together, and just generally doodled with all the available bits. Some of these pieces could have long ago went into the scrap bin, but it's terribly hard for me to toss similar sized stacks of squares. What a waste of time and effort!

Sewing together the parts

While working along, I quickly realized that I was trying to force it into rows much like the Patchwork Doodle went together last year. No! Not going to work in this case at all. This is more of a Random Sampler, utility sort of quilt, going together like a big 'ol {fiber} puzzle.

Trying to figure out a piecing layout

The next day, I took everything off the wall and started over. This time I approached the layout exactly in a random sampler way, taking care not to gallop off into medallion quilt territory--my current comfort zone. I tried to work quickly and intuitively, mostly aiming for a measure of balance and calm. Charting the unknown is hard enough without over thinking things, lets not go there!

Starting over

Ahh... This felt so much better. Okay. Time to divide the quilt into sections and address them one at a time. I started on the left side of the quilt, at the top floral fabric surrounding 'I am a maker' and have worked through to the section directly underneath that middle statement. That leaves me with two sections left to figure out: straight across the top of the quilt and down the entire right side. Though I want to fill in the quilt adequately, I also don't want to spend weeks on this particular quilt. Honestly, the only real goal is to have fun and not let the sewing get too complicated.

Sewing the pieces together in four sections

I always have to laugh when my readers wonder where the applique is going to go in the latest quilty attempt. Why does everything have to have applique? Not every quilt looks good with it {as my baby boy quilt earlier in the post suggests}. But yeah... you know me too well. I almost always have to at least try....

Contemplating some applique

I have to admit, the flowers did made my heart go pitter patter immediately. If they end up staying, then I have to unpick the applique circles from the centers of those blocks. That might be a deal breaker.*wink  I kind of liked having four of those red circles contrasting with all the busy piecework in the rest of the quilt  too. Hmm... When those are gone, it does changes the entire balance. Probably gonna have to finish filling in {sewing} the top and right side of the quilt before I make a final decision. Some it just comes down to what we like best, no other rhyme or reason required! Linking up to Wendy's Peacock Party!