Catching Up

It's been one of those busy, busy times. Just a lot going on with church functions, family and friends and little time to catch up on social media. I'm ready to burrow down in the quilting room for a good long while, soon as I can catch up on some sleep! Meanwhile, it's mostly been about the hand work around here of late. Finally got the center applique done on all these Melon Patch blocks.

Start of the Melon Patch blocks

 A reader sent me a lovely comment the other day and told me about a quilt she had noticed in a old book, 'It has your name written all over it. It could have just come out of your hoop.'  Well, little did she know that I actually tried to make an interpretation of that very same quilt several years ago!

Such a lovely old quilt

No pattern, just a fun, intriguing challenge for myself. It took a good long while as these sorts of quilts do, but this particular interpretation was finished in 2013. The picture {torn out of a magazine}, hung on my wall for years before compelling me to just dive in and see if I could really make one of my own.

My Vintage Reproduction quilt

And wowsers, do I love that quilt! Never given it away. There's just something about a re-make of an old quilt that can make it feel really special. The process of trying to keep the spirit of the older quilt and yet breathe a little bit of our own voice into it can be deeply engaging. Have you seen my latest antique interpretation attempt? This is definitely not the first time I've fallen down this particular rabbit hole...

Later on I even went digging for the template of that self-same bird, changed up the size a bit and added it into this Flocks of Geese quilt finished in 2017. So charming to see how the bird takes center stage in this particular setting!

Flock of Geese quilt

I think the more current make is probably what her subconscious was recognizing and connecting to in the old quilt--those birds! Most of my current readers haven't been following along since 2013 or even before. Either way, it was a fascinating day or two of us messaging back and forth. Oh yes! That quilt! Uh huh. Yep, Funny thing about that one....  Big smiles here and maybe with her too. It's good to find connections. And too, I adore having people recognize something distinguishing and unique in regards to my quilting. Something ephemeral that says 'Audrey made that'. It tells me that slowly, slowly, I'm finding a clear voice and perhaps even a distinct style. That means the world to me.

Bloggers Quilt Festival: Fall 2013-Vintage Reproduction

Vintage Reproduction has been pictured on my blog, over and over again. I know that. But the fact remains that it is one of my very favorite quilts. When it came time to decide on a second quilt to enter into Amy's quilt festival, this one won hands down. You'll find it in the bed quilt section if you care to go looking for it.

My Vintage Reproduction quilt

In fact, since I finished it up this summer, it currently resides on my bed all of the time. That way I can have something to smile about first thing in the morning. Even a cranky morning person like me will smile at this luscious thing, don't you think? lol

It looks so different in outdoor light...

It all started when I saw a picture in Quilmania magazine years ago of an antique quilt with a cut paper centerpiece. I tore that picture out and pinned it to my board in my quilting room, drooling over it until one day I thought, I can make that! Uh huh.

This quilt came out of the dryer at 89"x89"

Many stops, starts, revisions, and lurches sideways, I ended up with this. Of course, it didn't help that I was determined to play mostly from what was already in my stash. That really can be limiting you know. Also, I immediately gave up on the intricate cut paper center idea and decided to give an abandoned Hawaiian applique piece new life. Which, by the way, a big thank you to whomever it was that passed it on to me in the first place! It was a bit tricky to get pinned down properly so I could do my needleturn, but I kept at it until I thought it looked about right.

Love my less than perfect center. My quilts
will probably never be accused of being too perfect...

That cheddar piece changed the tone from the very start. I personally love the mix of cheddar, pink, turquoise, black, purple, greens and light blues in this quilt. I really, really do. So improbable together and yes, definitely brighter than the antique version I was loosely trying to copy! Okay, I admit that it was a brilliant day for me when I finally realized that it's possible to keep the integrity of the inspiration piece without copying down to the minutia. Obviously not happening after I ditched the cut paper idea, but hey! this quilting brain of mine is not always logical.

Doesn't hand quilting just add a little extra?

I also had some struggles trying to get the hand quilting figured out, but all was well in the end. (Especially after I got over being stubborn and added in those extra quilting lines in the last border. lol)

So happy to be able to participate once again in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. Love seeing all the wonderful eye candy!

Pics of my Vintage Reproduction in the Local Quilt Show (and a few others)

Today was the 15th annual quilt show in our little town. It's held in a small church and the quilts are quite crowded together with very little room to step back and take a good picture.

Vintage Reproduction

I'm not actually part of the local quilting guild, but they are very generous to open up the quilt show to other local quilters--an open invite actually. I used to be extremely nervous about entering my quilts into the show because my style is so extremely different than theirs, but I loosened up a couple years ago when I realized that at least a few of the guild members seem to enjoy my quilts. There are a million times I've wished I could be a fly on the wall when they hang my quilts. What do they honestly think? hehe Better not to know sometimes! My mom has encouraged me the most, saying, it's always good to have something different to look at, compare with and maybe even shake things up a bit. lol

Vintage Reproduction

The previous picture is actually taken at home--I wanted to show one pic with a closer view of the quilting. I'm really, really happy with the way this quilt turned out. The quilting on the last border about gave me a panic attack after I had gotten it washed and dried. But long story short? I went back and added in a couple hours extra quilting. Now I'm happy. That thing about quilting evenly throughout the entire quilt? It does matter.

Vintage Reproduction

I usually try to enter three or four quilts if I've managed to finish that many in the last year.  My Monkey Wrench is very dark quilt, but I thought is looked very nice regardless. Funny how much lighter it looks without the borders pictured!

Monkey Wrench

I also entered my Antique Medallion quilt which looks happy and bright.....

Antique Medallion

and then of course there is Sew Charming! I definitely wanted to put this fun little scrappy finish in the quilt show too! Had to borrow it back for a few days in order to do that of course!

Sew Charming

Just a few other quilts caught my attention today.  This one was very interesting to me. Love the ladies!

This  30's reproduction quilt looked so sweet and wonderful, especially with the light streaming through the window behind it.

I thought whoever made the star quilt below has an excellent eye for combining complimentary colors.  It really had a lovely zing to it!

Then there was this hexie quilt that I just wanted to bundle up and take home.  I had a horrible time getting a decent picture of it because it kept looking so washed out, but finally I got one close up that shows a little of the quilty goodness that I so admired...

I meant to take a picture of the explanation pinned to this scrappy 'historical' quilt below, but like always, I forgot.  Taking pictures is definitely secondary to checking out the quilts, at least in my book! The story behind this quilt was something about a specific challenge to the quilters involved (possibly the first quilt guild in the town?). I think they got a dollar for every piece of fabric in their block and then the person who had the most pieces in 'her block', got to keep the quilt as well! Talk about incentive!

The block with the least pieces of fabric had 15 pieces I believe (it's the block in the far left corner of the prev. pic). Not too shabby, right?

Well, then you got to looking (they embroidered the number below their blocks) and wow! These ladies got very creative with such a little space!

I adored these blocks with the pieced baskets! They were absolutely fabulous! And the fan below was very sweet too in a blendy, blendy way.

But this lady below? Wowsers, she ended up with 300 pieces of fabric in her block! It was so fun to check this quilt out and see how inventive they all were.  If you look closely, this block below has fans carefully pieced into the corners.  Overall, This quilt was my absolute fave in the whole entire show! So much fun!

So yeah, very enjoyable day! My oldest daughter got first place in the 5k and almost all my kids played on one of the 3on3 teams of basketball. Crazy, busy hot Summer day.  Right now everyone's trying to recover from the 100 degree heat and rest up for the fireworks later on....

Vintage Reproduction is in the Home Stretch Now!

I can't believe how fast the hand quilting has went on the last border of the Vintage Reproduction quilt! Yesterday I finished up and wallah! There I was ironing off the quilt marking. I had to be careful because I used a blue wash-out marking pen on the corner bird blocks and those particular markings cannot handle excess heat.

Ironing marks off the last border of Vintage Reproduction.

I ended up using 'Miracle Marker' on the last border because I needed a light colored quilting line and I thought it would be quicker than trying to use one of my white pencils.  The marking lines are a little rougher than a pencil, but that sort of thing doesn't bother me much.  Nothing about my quilts are ever going to be perfect! In fact, *groan, I ended up noticing two spots (see where I put the safety pins?) that needed a quick fix.  I was doing so much of the hand quilting in the evening with less than wonderful lighting, working with black thread on a dark purple border and the rest of the story pretty much writes itself. Yep, it was impossible to leave 'as is' and hope nobody would ever notice....

Uh oh, problems with the quilting...

This quilt needs to be done by Friday, July 19th in order to be entered into our local quilt show and I'm feeling good about making that deadline now. I checked out several different colors for possible binding use.  This is a tough one.  I kind of like the cheddar yellow, but then it almost seems to dull the quilt down in an odd sort of way? Pink is definitely out--too much of that in the quilt.  Blue is bland, green is pathetic, and black disappears. Agghhh!!  I finally decided to try lavender.

Found a binding that might work for the
Vintage Reproduction.

I didn't have any really amazing lavender fabrics, but then I remembered a box of abandoned binding my mom gave to me years and years ago.  It was all wadded up in a ball, strings everywhere from where she tears the fabric, but yes! There was one long piece (over 300 inches) of a lavender binding! I had to spend quite a bit of time cutting threads, smoothing it out, ironing it and then cutting it down to the size of binding I prefer (2 5/8"). All I need now is about 43" more inches of something that will blend in and I'm set! Love these frugal finds! lol

Getting the next quilt in the hoop!

I've already put the next quilt in the hoop. You know me. Always have to have something ready to work on when I'm in the mood! This is the #2 in the 9-patch series that I did the machine quilting on the other day. There are just 12 sampler blocks that I left un-quilted with the idea of coming back and hand quilting them on a later date. Which is now of course, because the hoop is empty and would probably feel lonely and useless without a quilt in it.*wink

Slow Weekend Stitching

We were able to have a long, mostly lazy weekend. My husband had to work a little, but we definitely enjoyed having the house to ourselves.  So strange to actually be able to 'hear' my husband turn the pages on the book he was reading!  I think he struggled with the kids being gone more than I did as he was starting to get a little fidgety by the second evening.

Red/White & Blue fun

I got the stems, leaves, berries and bird stitched down on my Red/White and Blue quilt bit by bit.  Next up is the flowers.  Kind of backwards I know to stitch the leaves and berries before the flowers, but I felt like the placement of the leaves was more important than the placement of the flowers on this particular quilt. Plus, where the flowers go becomes fairly obvious after the stems are stitched down. lol

Vintage Reproduction hand quilting

Whenever I got my fill of applique, then I would pick up the Vintage Reproduction quilt and mark quilting lines, then hand quilt for awhile. Because I'm sticking with the black thread I've used throughout the rest of the quilt, I decided that the hand quilting on the dark purple border needs to be very simple.  Not sure if you can see where I marked in the picture, but basically I settled on a half circle repeat design.  Love that it is moving along very quickly now!

On Friday evening I ran out of black hand quilting thread. Even though I was sure I had another spool somewhere, it was nowhere to be found. Luckily my husband had already proposed that we get away on Saturday, so it was no problem to suggest finding a quilt store along the way.  We ended up taking a long drive that wound up being about a 200 mile loop back to home, winding along a lot of back roads and traveling past apple, cherry and peach orchards, wheat and alphalpha fields, corn and potato crops, onions and even grapes just to name the most obvious. It was a beautiful day which made it even more relaxing. And yes, I did get my black hand quilting thread and maybe even a fat quarter or two. lol

So now, even though it's probably too late to truly 'join in', I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday.  Hope you had a great weekend too!

Hand Quilting Decisions and a Little Work on my Quarter Circles

After much stalling, delaying, and all right, I admit it, sheer avoidance! I finally came to a decision about how to quilt the scalloped border on my Vintage Reproduction quilt.

Vintage Reproduction progress.

Of course I quickly realized that it looked more like an alien cat mask than a good border design.

Only one of my very bad ideas...

Not however, quickly enough to avoid having to wash out a whole bunch of blue marking lines.

The final decision.

In an effort to remove the entire image from sight (and mind) I cut the entire weird circle look right out of the middle of the template.

A very rustic system of marking...

Which resulted in a quite pleasing border design after all. I'm strange that way. Don't try to follow my process too closely.  It might be contagious.*wink

Oh yeah.  In case you were wondering. (I know I was), the reason the template is scrunched up in the middle is because of the shorter scallops on the ends of the border where I have to make proper adjustments.  Otherwise I would have redrawn it onto stronger template plastic. Maybe?

Always playing

I also pulled out my stack of appliqued circles the other day and started playing with them.  There is actually a roughly drawn plan for this quilt, but I'm a little nervous about showing it.  For right now it's just fun to play and see if it will all pan out like I envision in my head.

Cutting out the excess from from the back.

Probably not.  It rarely does! I'm loving working with these very light prints though and that is enough to prod me along on my journey. If you work with what you love, I say you'll work a little longer and maybe even stick it out to an wonderful finish someday...

I Know I Could Figure This Out If Life Would Just Slow Down For About 30 Minutes....

After I finished quilting the red and black half square triangle border (well over a week ago), this quilt has been sadly neglected.  Too much going on in our crazy, busy life to figure out the next step I guess.

The next border to be quilted on the
Vintage Reproduction quilt.

Next up to be hand quilted is the pink scalloped border, which for some reason is causing me no end of frustration.  I just can't think!  I don't want a fussy pattern or excessive marking issues.  It doesn't need to be quilted through the scallop into the light blue fabric or anything else that would diminish the curving effect.

What to do, what to do?

Simplicity.  That's all it needs!  Oh well.  I'm sure it will come to me eventually even if I have to stitch a few different ideas and then promptly take them out because they look horrible. Meanwhile, all the basting pins need to be taken out and the last borders smoothed and repinned.  It's obviously starting to look a little wonky around the edges.*wink

And because I'm a mom and we all like to brag on our kids, let me just say that my youngest daughter got the English Student of the Year Award and my oldest daughter received the Art Student of the Year Award plus the History Student of the Year Award for the entire high school.  Woot woot!

Slow Stitching and Machine Quilting in the Same Weekend!

Today has been a very good day.  I got treated to a nice dinner out and a box of Dove ice cream bars too.  Seriously yummy stuff!  I wanted to link up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching today because hand quilting has often been the key to helping me sort through the jungle of mothering teenage kids.

Vintage Reproduction in the hoop

So many times I sit with my hoop in my lap and try to stitch away all my worries and frustrations!  I'm a thinking person and it really helps to be stitching while I sift through life's happenings and try to put things into proper perspective. I'm not 15 anymore.  I'm 43 and a long way from the impulsive, often illogical ways of young men and women!

While my mind has been busy doing it's thing, look at what's been accomplished in my hoop!  Don't you just love all that texture that appears one little stitch at a time?  There's nothing quite like it.

Working around the corner on the solid purple
and also the red/black hst border

I was also able to spend a lot of time at my sewing machine this weekend, which is good because the closer I get to the end of the month, the less time there will be for that.  This quilt top measures out at approx. 55 inches--quite a bit smaller than what I generally do, but so very sweet.  This is the quilt that really inspired me to dig into my orphaned 9-patch blocks.  I saw the chrome yellow with the scrappy blocks and just melted.

My weekend sewing frenzy

Of course I'm not using chrome yellow because I couldn't find enough in my stash! I did find a buttery yellow print that looked like it would work though and off I went sewing up my quilt top like there was no tomorrow.  Once I got to the borders I was completely stumped, but my mom totally saved the day for me.  Let me just say that her stash is WAAAAY bigger than mine.  Now we need to work out something for trade, which I suspect will be something along the lines of sewing on the binding to all her future quilts.  lol  She's getting good about making the trades work to her advantage!

Learning to use the walking foot

This is the first quilt that I was able to use my new walking foot with and I gotta say, I have a very lot to learn!  I sewed in a simple grid using the 9-patches as my guide so I didn't have to mark the quilt at all.  Love that I didn't have to worry so much about puckers on the back of my quilt, but I am sad that the texture is so different from the hand quilting.  I always am!  The benefits of having the quilt come together so quickly is what I know is going to keep me trying to improve my skills.  I suspect that some quilts don't need to be hand quilted in order to be fully loved and appreciated.*wink

Not so very much left...

So that's my crazy Mother's Day weekend.  I only have a tiny little pile of 9-patch scraps left from all those orphan blocks and now a super sweet quilt top well on it's way to a finish. Yay me!

Slow Stitching Through the Week and a Little on Sunday

I still have a wretched cough, but it doesn't stop me from doing some hand work when and if I want.  I'm still plugging away at my Vintage Reproduction quilt several evenings a week.  Progress seems very slow, but even one frame an evening eventually adds up.

Quilting round & round the Vintage Reproduction quilt.

I never know exactly how it will be quilted before I actually get to the section in question.  It's not uncommon at all for me to be making the decision right as I'm sticking the needle into that particular part of the quilt.  'Okay, lets see if this works!'.  Borders that aren't pieced are my special nemesis.  My brain seems to freeze in agony at making a decision about what to do with those.

Detail of the hand quilting.

The hand piecing on the bow-tie blocks has been a bit confusing at times.  Some days I seem to have it all figured out and just breeze through them.  At other times, I end up with puckered corners and terrible looking y-seams.  Does it really just come down to what kind of mood I'm in?  I thought hand piecing was supposed to take care of the funky moods with all the needle in, needle out repetition?  Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching post today made me smile with the reminder to just enjoy every stitch.  lol

And a few more hand pieced bow-ties.

Mostly, I AM enjoying working on them.  Really.  The fabric in particular has been a good choice for that I think.  Very fun to jump from one print to a completely different one and see how they look against the teal background.  Well, Moda wants to call it Mermaid something or other, but over 20 years ago when I got married, it was called 'teal' and I thought it was the best color ever.*wink

Our lovely dandelion patch.... 

On a completely different note, my daughter decided to take some pictures of our ratty looking yard from an shameful interesting perspective.  Last year we had a sprinkler problem and the yard got terribly neglected.  Enough so that the dandelions got a stronghold on our lawn--obviously.  If we didn't live on a dead end road, our neighbors would probably snub us for making them look bad!  Oh well.  Maybe after the kids are raised and life slows down, we'll have more time to dedicate to the yard....

Finding Time to Hand Quilt and Prep on Low Volume #2

Hand quilting is almost always a slow process around here.  It is my absolute favorite late evening sit-on-the-couch-and-unwind-from-the-day method of relaxation.  With kids and a busy life, I must say though, that there are lots of evenings the poor quilt never even makes it out of the bag.

Hand quilting

For the last two years or so I have had a general goal of completing one hand quilting project every two months.  It doesn't always happen, but since my drawers are overflowing with quilt tops, this sort of keeps me on track to at least occasionally celebrate a 'real' finish.*wink

Progress on Vintage Reproduction

I'm trying to keep the hand quilting on this quilt relaxed and fairly organic.  I did mark the straight line on the green fabric, but otherwise, there has been no other marking on this quilt so far.

So much loveliness!

It's amazing how much can be accomplished in a couple hours here and there until eventually the entire quilt is done.  Again, it is a SLOW process, but I think the rewards are well worth it for me.  Our life has been very stressful the last couple years with all of our financial difficulties and hand quilting is incredibly soothing and calming.  A few stitches in and out and I am usually well on my way to a better frame of mind.

Inspiration pic

I dug around the other day and finally came up with my original inspiration picture.  It was a 'no-name' antique quilt published in Quiltmania magazine several years ago, but I can't find the date on the front or back of the page. Funnily enough, I just discovered the same picture on Pinterest early this week, so apparently it's making it's way around there right now too!  You can see I took the liberty to change a few things, but the integrity of the quilt is still the same. Oh how I wish I could see the original!

Low Volume #2 circle prep.

On another note, I started in on the initial prep work for my Low Volume #2 quilt.  (Yes, I am entranced with circles right about now.)

Cutting circles freehand...

I cut them out ala 'Country Threads' in all their freehand beauty.  I'm enjoying the results from my drunkards path project, but I really want these circles to have an older, less contemporary, appliqued look.

Not so perfect looking...

Some of the circles haven't turned out so pretty, but I want that too.  Some people can't handle the look and that's okay. Personally, I find it rather charming.  lol