A Little Quilting and A Lotta Family

Would you be shocked if I said that life had been busy lately? What was it that I read the other day, something about our 'hustle culture' being the new norm? Yeah. Not by choice for most of us. I managed to squeeze in a few good minutes trimming off the points of the hsts and then throwing a few of them up on the wall. This isn't sewn together yet, still in full-on contemplation mode.

25-Patch Hsts

All those hsts sewn together properly would represent four blocks to the 25-Patch HST quilt. The look is overtly {almost obnoxiously} scrappy, yet somewhat vintage in look and feel. Most all of the fabrics used are in a 15 year range though. There is probably only one fabric that would truly be of vintage era though. I'm absolutely loving the mishmash of colors and sheer unpretentious quality that's already shining through. The Inspiration quilt has nine of these 25-patch blocks so I'll start with that, roughly following the original makers lead as to value. After those nine blocks are sewn, then we'll figure out the rest of the quilt. Pretty sure there will be lots of leftover units to play with.

Primrose Path blocks

I seem to be in this rut lately of making myself finish up one applique project at a time. So weird. For years, when I got bogged down mentally, then I just pushed the project off to the back burner and started stitching on another. Now I'm acting like Sally Steadfast and keeping my nose to the grindstone until it's ALL done. 

Figuring out the centers
Can you see the snow piled up outside on the deck?

It was really exciting to finally figure out the little centers of the primrose flowers. I knew the fabric needed to be a in similar tones of faded black, but the fussy cut flowers in the this black fabric is exactly right. Don't you love when that happens?

Moody 9-Patch in the hoop

Still hand quilting on the Moody 9-Patch quilt. It's only been a finished quilt top since February of 2021, but it seems like it's been in the quilt top drawers for much, much longer. I machine stitched-in-the-ditch between all the blocks before my sewing machine was fixed. Basically, the dual feed wasn't working properly which makes for all those stitching lines being less than fully in-the-ditch and more of a meandering trail of thread. Even with using a standard walking foot. Oh well. Made me a little mad at the time, but now I don't even hardly notice. Or care. Am sort of laughing at myself for expending so much energy doing hand quilting on a quilt that barely shows off the effort involved though. It's been lovely having it in my lap though! Such a pretty, deep fall look and feel going on here!

All the Wilson Siblings in one place and 
lightning didn't strike...

The entire family didn't end up being altogether on the big day after all, only about 45 persons or so. But by Saturday, all of my siblings were present at my mom and dads for 'pizza night'. It's become part of the holiday weekend to have one pizza night, an Asian food night and also a taco bar in the days following Thanksgiving. Anyway, on impulse because its so rare we're all together in one place, we found ourselves taking a few family photos of the siblings. Some smart-alecky person suggested we arrange ourselves in order by birth, and of course people started snapping pics for posterity. It was pretty funny getting it all sorted out and then later on somebody mentioned that half of us pictured here are Gen X kids and the other half are millennials, Whatever that means? 21 years between oldest and youngest in case you were wondering. My baby brother was only four months old at my wedding! lol

I don't really talk about this much because we got a lot of flack about it growing up. People have SO MUCH to say about people having more than four or five kids in their families. I always had to laugh when someone would say my four kids was a big family. Right.... You wouldn't believe all the things total strangers and/or supposed friends would say right in front of us kids or my parents too. And not expect anyone to get offended. It was crazy and really rude at times! You learn really quick who the real friends are! Once in a great while someone would have wonderful things to say to us and we'd all sort of relax and lose the defensive posture. Not that we care now, but as kiddos, it was terribly hard to take at times.

Mom and dad had 12 kids in all with 11 kids raised to adulthood. Let me just say that they were incredible parents to us all and never lived off of anyone or expected anyone else to pick up the slack. Two of my siblings {right smack in the middle and pretty much the bridge between 'older' and 'younger' families} have passed now and this is what is left of the tribe. We still feel their loss every time we do something like this but know it will only get worse as the years fly by. And the numbers undoubtedly shrink even more? Such is life unfortunately so we cherish the good times while we can.

I am the shorty, second to the left in this picture. Fun times and yes, I was bossy growing up. What can I say? As you can see, a few 'what are we doing here?' looks because of the relaxed attire, but who really cares in the long run? I actually think the pictures turned out better from not being overly scheduled and planned to the nth degree! We don't always get along super, magically, wonderfully well, but I know if ever I truly needed anything, I could call any one of them and they'd run to my aid in a heartbeat. You know how it is with well adjusted siblings, blood is thicker than water, but ooh... we also have memories like elephants! I had a great time telling one of my nieces this last weekend about a much younger version of her sweet mama.*wink

Wintertime in Brewster, Washington

In other news, we've had snow and then a little bit more snow on top of that. The first two pictures were snapped by my husband a couple days ago. The first one was taken at his current construction/remodeling project approx. six miles from where we live {which is a whole lot closer to that mountain in the background}. It was such a cold, clear day, the distance looks much, much shorter than what it really is!

 

This next picture was taken just as he was driving through the outskirts of our little town of Pateros {less than half a mile from where we live}, but looking off to the left across the Columbia River instead of straight ahead at Billygoat mountain {seen in the previous picture}.

The sun is shining in Pateros, Washington

This last picture was taken by a friend of ours here in town who owns a little Airbnb. She snapped this picture while taking a walk along the Methow river, right where it dumps into the Columbia river {pictured behind the railroad bridge and also in the background of the previous picture. This is where our little town of Pateros sits, right at the junction of those rivers and nestled in the foothills of the mountain shown in the first picture. We really do have gorgeous views year around here, but in wintertime, after a fresh snowfall and  then the sun comes out? It's just incredible. So pretty.

Love the steamy look to the rivers in the wintertime

And mostly we do love the winters here, but wowsers, it did come early this year! I have shoveled snow off and on in short little spurts for about three days now. Yesterday I slipped and fell splat! on my left shoulder, elbow and hip, thankfully only getting slightly bruised. Normally my husband would do more of the shoveling, but we all got hit by a stomach bug on the Monday after the big weekend and I'm the one who recovered the fastest it seems. I'm just way too impatient to wait around for him to do the work, even though my back and shoulders are crying out the entire time I'm shoveling. I am soooo out of shape! There is a huge difference between a needle and a snow shovel, but I hate having snow fall into my boots every time I head out to the garage, the dumpster or to the car. Ughh. Don't tell them, but I always miss my boys a little extra this time of year...

So Much Fun to Finish up a Forever Project!

Well, all good things must come to an end. The HST Medallion quilt is completely finished up! All 102 inches! One of those projects started sort of by impulse, but not really. I'd looked and looked and LOOKED at a picture of an antique quilt, wistfully thinking about how cool it would be to own one.

HST Medallion is done!!!!

Then one day, it just happened. I found myself putting together the centerpiece of a four year long project! It happened in fits and starts of course. Things this complicated always do around here. 

A lot going on with this one...

How in the world could I possibly make myself work on one quilt and one quilt only? Yeah. Not happening. I folded HST Medallion in half and laid it where I normally take the quilty pictures. Just so you could see the scope of how large this one is. She's a big 'ol beauty! When I moved the table out of the way {with the help of one of my daughters}, and tried to take a picture of the entire thing? It was basically a fail. It really needs to be hung up on a line and a pic. taken from a good distance. The light wasn't very friendly in that area of the room either. C'est la vie.

Trying to get a picture of the full quilt

I'd say that I don't know what possessed me to make this particular quilt, but that wouldn't be true. For some rather peculiar reason, I'm happiest when there is one forever type quilt project lurking about in the quilt room, be it all piecing, or all applique, or even a mix of the two. Call me crazy. It's almost definitely gonna be happening again some day!

All hand quilted

For one thing, I don't like feeling inadequate or incapable of making any sort of quilt that I put my mind to. Even terribly difficult quilts can be accomplished one little baby step at a time! Another thing that has occurred to me is that I might possibly relish? having an {almost} impossible task so that everything else seems quite doable by comparison. So silly, but it works.

The lighter blue hsts are facing the opposite
direction, on purpose....

You'd be amazed at how much I've accomplished through the years avoiding these super challenging quilts of mine! Or maybe you wouldn't. I've been pretty transparent about my love/hate relationship with the taking-forever, entirely too tedious, horribly intimidating quilt projects that crop up every four or five years.

My favorite view of a quilt

This quilt wasn't the most complex in the world, but it does have an awful lot of half square triangles in it. And precision sewing is not exactly my forte! If you look closely, there's just a little tiny bit of wave happening on the outside border in a couple places.*sigh  I haven't washed the quilt either, like I love to do. Though I love the crinkly look, I'm terrified some of the blue fabric might have a bleeding issue. Once it's washed up some day in the future, I'm pretty sure that slight waving issue will be less obvious, but for now we're all good. Totally content to wait!

Three impossible tasks that somehow 
made it to a finish!

Not that I'm ashamed of the issue at all. This quilt is way beyond what I ever hoped to accomplish back in my early days of quilting! If you'd have told me 20 years ago that I'd be making any one of the three stacked quilts {in the previous photo}? I'd have laughed in total disbelief!

For a quick trip down memory lane, I pulled the two other {very labor intensive} quilts that seemed to take forever and a day. I mean, there are lots of time consuming quilts around here, but these are the grand poobah's of sheer grit and determination getting me through! All three quilts are ones that I most definitely despaired over at different times and had to really push myself to get in another hour or two of work done here and there. Just to say that I hadn't given up on them! And I've got a sneaky suspicion that Melon Patch might be trying to join the list. But that's a story for another day.

You can read about the Pickle Dish quilt here and Worry Baskets here. All three quilts take me right back to a certain day years and years ago in a small town grocery store, impulsively buying a quilt magazine. I was completely mesmerized by a specific quilt in it, though I didn't have a single clue how to get started on making my own. And no, I never did make that particular quilt! It took a lot of years, many ups and downs, trial and error, learning, learning, learning, but now? I darn well will make whatever quilt I put my mind to. And you can guarantee, they'll be a whole lot better than anything pictured in that long ago quilt magazine.... 

Ta-da! The Hst Medallion is a Finished Quilt Top!

It's been awhile.  Earlier in the year I had determined that this quilt top was going to be finished up just as soon as I could drum up the energy. Eventually it became obvious that I would never truly feel up to this particular task. And so I set a timeline, made promises to myself. And finally, there was nothing left to procrastinate over or 'accidentally' nudge in front of this difficult project.

Hst Medallion Quilt top finish

Ughh.. Whose idea was this to recreate this antique quilt anyway? Pretty sure it was mine. Regardless, I have trembled in my shoes a time or two over the amount of work involved. I like dreaming up ideas, not sewing hsts and other mulitiple border units for literally days on end...

So many borders

You have to know it was a LOT of work. So many hours spent on this quilt. Mind numbing amounts of time. Crazy amounts of TIME wrapped up in this quilt. Am I repeating myself? I think I might be repeating myself....

256 flying geese units to piece

Cutting. Sewing. Ironing. Trimming. Sewing. Measuring. Pinning. Sewing. Ironing. Repeat and rinse... Cutting, Sewing, Ironing... I thought it might possibly never end. Obviously patience is not my strong suit these days.

Sewing, sewing, sewing...

I worked a little bit on the accuracy issue with this particular quilt, but I'm still me. Oh, am I ever! On occasion, it feels good to know that seams actually can match up, that everything learned has not been lost. And that seemed to pay off, until it didn't. In the end though {which is all that matters}, the quilt turned out relatively square. I'm very satisfied with 'relatively' and know that the planned future of hand quilting will, um... distract from anything obvious? Make it look amazing? For sure, make me forget about any supposed inadequacies!

I did wonder about not using pink for the square in a square border. The original quilt went off on a completely different tangent, color-wise, at this point. Nothing auditioned hit the happy button though, and almost all of the fabric used was dug straight out of the stash totes. Buying new would have had to involve strong motivation for its 'rightness'. When I couldn't determine a color that would almost definitely make things sing, then I went ahead with more of the pink. Oh well. Honestly, in some ways, I'm a little disappointed with the look. Playing with values with the blues and pinks apparently limited other color-use though. At least in my minds eye. That's the only thing that makes sense.

Getting ready to sew on the pink square borders

Every single strip and border had to be sewn on with lots of pins keeping things where they needed to be. So many seams.... I had to take a million breaks and go do laundry or file my nails. Do the dishes. Something really, really important. Whatever. My primary goal {quilty-wise}, was to not work on any other quilt, other than hand quilting which is always fair game, until this quilt was crossed off the list. This was a nose-to-the-grindstone sort of finish it up project. Many, many times I questioned why. Why? Why did I think the last two border additions were so important?

The very last pink border sewn on...

The last two borders measurements were cut out knowing that every single strip would undoubtedly end up being 'off' by approximately half an inch. At the very least. There was just no way I was cutting the pink squares or the geese units in 16th inch increments. I made an executive decision to not stress over perfect math. Ahh.. I do know myself so very well. Because it worked out just fine with my oh-so-accurate piecing. Nothing is ever exactly the length it's 'supposed' to be around here!

The pink strips ended up being more accurate than the geese ones, maybe because there are less of them per border length. All I had to do was lose between 1/4" and a 1/2" per length to make the borders fit. The flying geese borders were a bit trickier. Even going by the 'math', I somehow mis-figured by a lot. Each flying geese border should have had 64 units per side. Uh huh. That did not happen because I somehow ended up with 60 per side! The thing is though, I rarely ever trim them to an 'exact' size before sewing them into a border. So yes, you could say that I totally set myself up for variable border lengths! My feelings are, if the flying geese units are trimmed straight on the top and bottom sides, then they're good to go. Perfect quilts are so... boring!

I also decide what is most important before diving in with my make-it-up, make-it-do, make-it-work sort of work ethic. For this quilt? Keeping the tops points of the geese. That was the number one goal! After sewing on both side of the geese units, there will definitely be some side points disappearing into the seams. I know that. If the geese keep their pointy tops, everything else is well camouflaged except from the pickiest of quilters. And they can go jump in a lake!

Working on the flying geese borders!

To recap, the end goal was only to have borders that {fingers crossed} did not make for a wavy-edged ,waving hi! sort of quilt. Count the borders. This was a LOT of measuring and fiddling and fudging. Though I started out with a 'goal' measurement per border, in reality, they just had to fit nicely. Most of the black strips were used to whip the stitching errors back into place. You don't know how many times I had to grin at the original makers probable intent at the 'why' those specific strips were included. Wonderful design element, but wow! so genius for a subtle, but consistent course correction. Just for the record, I did eliminate one border from the original quilt look. Increasing the size of the hsts at the start made for a problematic finished quilt size

Uh oh! My bad!

Most of the time I don't take pictures while family members are at home. They would think I'm a weirdo, right? Somehow today, I got caught. There's that hypocritical thing that happens when moms do things they've always yelled at their children for doing. Who stands on a couch??? Seriously?

It's a big quilt, even folded into quarters...

Well, this quilt is obviously too big to take be taking pictures of inside of the house. I'm quite positive that other quilters do like I do though and make the best of what they have to work with. Including standing on the furniture if that's what it takes!

The spot where the best quilty pictures are taken was just kind of a joke today. That place works best for lap sized quilts and maybe bed size quilts if they are more narrow. I included the picture below so you could know how much bigger this quilt is than what I normally try to take pictures of. Perhaps we could get rid of the dining room table so I'd always have enough room, even for the biggest of quilts. lol

It's an old design, but it still somehow works!

Maybe too, I can somehow bribe my children to be quilt holders for me once again. Right now they seem to think they have better things to do, like take funny, ha ha pictures of mom doing things she hasn't ever liked for them to do. Did I mention that sewing this quilt together was quite tedious? ha! Only once or twice. I didn't ever feel very creative about the whole endeavor, to be perfectly frank with you. The design was already set, the colors mostly repetitive and the entire thing was more about implementation than true creative brain storming.

Antique quilts make for the best inspiration...

But I love it anyway. All 103" inches of it. I did it! Yay me! Now I'm left wondering if I'll ever let anyone use it after it's truly finished up some day in the future?

Never Enough Time

How about a good long catch up post? First off, the HST Medallion quilt has been front and center for well over a week. I made the determination that nothing was going to get between this project and the sewing machine until all the small hst rows were sewn on. Two hundred breaks later for hand work or changing out the laundry or whatever else I could invent and....

More progress on HST Medallion!

Here we are, finally, at hst row #10. Woohoo! That's three more row sets added onto this quilt since the last time I posted any progress! I was pretty sure if I didn't do all three of them, one right after the other, this quilt would just die a slow death. It took days longer than I expected. It's all just so very tedious. Made me want to pull my hair out sometimes. Scream. Run away. What is it about excessive repetition?

10 rows finished

I mean, look at how innocuous these hst's are. So simple and unassuming. Ugghh... Who's idea was this anyway? The last round brought the total count up to just over 1300 hsts. Which is a lot. But honestly, it feels like about 5000! All that's left now are the last two rounds {if I follow thru}, which are larger. That should help, larger is good.

The last light pink border was a calculated risk. I totally know you've been eyeballing that one and wondering....  Audrey? Hmm.. What?  I'm still using fabric from the stash and thought maybe a 'disappearing' border would be interesting in the big picture of things. Taking a look at what fabric was left helped to make the final decision. If the quilt would have stopped off at that round, then yeah, it would have been a huge mistake. So far I'm perfectly okay with the look. It's not like I do polished looking quilts. Gotta have some quirks!

So...  accuracy? I'm within an inch or less of where its supposed to be, no matter if I measure directly through the center or along any particular side. That's pretty impressive {for me} considering how many, many, many seams there are. Sometimes I pay more attention to accuracy than others, but seriously, who has the time? Mostly I fudge if its close and the black single fabric sashing rows tidy things up before the next round. The saving grace has been that my cutting efforts have been more precise and careful. Daylight hours only!

Doesn't look like much

Lots of hand work to choose from when I'm fleeing the quilt room. I've really been enjoying do some hand stitching on my Dried Flowers {squirrel} project. The colors are particularly soothing right now--spot on for early fall.  At this point I'm stalled on what kind of leaves to add on though. Maybe I'll just have to do some of both!

Auditioning leaf shapes...

The project below is one that was started from leftover quarter circle pieces cut out from the back of a long ago quilt. It's been keeping me company as well. Instead of some complicated piecing thing that would be driving me bonkers, I decided to do an applique version of a simple New York Beauty block. After all the chunky spikes are sewn down, then I will probably stitch on an arc of gold fabric, over the bottom part of the spikes and covering the edges of the curve. These colors still make me very happy, which I find interesting as I've been playing with this particular color palette off and on for years now.

Getting started on a pile of 64 blocks total

And then there is the Off On a Tangent quilt. All the hand work is finished up and yep!, I made a mistake that always makes me feel a little twitchy. All the letters are in green fabrics that blend well with the quilt, but do not show up very emphatically when all is said and done.

Got the hand stitching done

Much too late to take them off now and start over and I don't want to anyway. They look just fine up close so that is that. Don't know why I keep making this same mistake after all this time. If you're gonna go to the trouble of adding words, for goodness sakes, do them in a color that has some impact!

It's not the best color, but it'll probably do

I guess I was thinking of serenity and peaceful feeling vibes? This quilt has already jumped to the head of the line for sandwiching and quilting. Very fast turn around for me, but this quilt is determined to go live with someone else.

Ughh... Sandwiching and pinning

In fact, I already machine quilted {stitched in the ditch} thru the inside of the quilt. Now that Basket Love, shown below, is out of the hoop, I can do some quick, big stitch quilting around the borders and move it on down the line. Oh how I wish that every quilt was as easy and rewarding to stitch as the quilt below. I adore hand quilting on string quilts! I'm sure it would get boring though if that's all that ever passed thru the hoop.

Ready for binding work!

Because the HST Medallion quilt took so long to work through sewing on the rows, I totally blinked on getting to the AHIQ work this month. That kind of annoys me 'cuz I love the improv. stuff, but there will be time for that later. Right now, things are happening that are a bit beyond my control. My sewing machine is scheduled to go in for a maintenance {in order to keep up with the warranty}, and that totally rearranged my priorities as well. The only machine quilting I do these days is on that particular machine 'cuz it has a bigger harp! Quick, what needs done before I have to do without! The quilt store where I drop the sewing machine off is three hours away so that means I'll be using a back-up machine for quite awhile, maybe even a month.*sigh  Not going to tackle big quilt work on the smaller machine.

I managed to arrange the initial drop off with the same timing as taking my kids to the airport and also an Apple store appointment. My phone desperately needs a new battery and apparently we can't do that without their help. If Bloglovin' gets any slower, the phone will be in total meltdown. Or maybe I will? Anyway, when you live out in the boondocks, these sorts of trips take some strategic planning. There is usually shopping involved. Things like that.

**Per the question asked after my last post, referring to the days when I said I would never, ever hand quilt? Well, that was 20-25 years ago, when I first started quilting. A lot has changed since then, including the fact that I don't have littles hanging on to my ankles and demanding every second of my attention. Also, I don't like doing machine quilting. Really, really don't care for it at all and in fact, when I attempt anything close to free-motion, it feels like the top of my head is going to come off. I push myself learn a lot of techniques and things that feel important to further expand my ability to make unique and personal looking quilts. Someday that may come to lessons in free motion quilting, but for now, hand quilting is as essential to me as air, both in the doing and the seeing. Quite simply, it's now part of my quilting voice, regardless of the time it may take... What elements of this craft are important to you and your quilting?

The Two, Big, Bad Borders For This Round of Progress on The Hst Medallion

So this time I went bold and cut out two hst borders at the same time. The last time any work was accomplished on this quilt was back in February which is pretty pathetic. Time to make some serious forward progress or throw in the towel.

The Hst Medallion quilt

Mostly I've just been slacking from a general apathy in doing the work, not lack of desire to see this quilt grow. These hst borders have been 'easier' overall, it's just that they are quite, quite tedious. Lots of time involved in the cutting and sewing as the size of the quilt increases.

I have been referring to a little list of notes that helps loads in getting me to the point of a hst border that will sew on with minimal adjustments. That's so helpful, especially after a couple months of not working on it at all. Of course that doesn't stop me from making mistakes. Don't think that! The last blue border I sewed on ended up with all the triangles pointing the wrong direction, and no amount of flipping that border around ended up changing anything important. Funny how you can just keep trying and trying. Maybe if I do this, maybe if I do that? But it just won't work unless you take it all apart 'cuz the pieces were sewn together wrong in the first place!

Hst Medallion quilt with 6 hst rows

The ironic thing was, I actually deliberated whether to change the orientation of the triangles on that border {prior to sewing} and thought, 'Nah, that blue is probably distracting enough without anything extra going on.' Hah! Guess it was just meant to be. I always kind of knew that there would be a time when the triangles went wonky on me anyway. It just happened later in the process than I expected.

Now it has 7 hst rows

And so I left the blue triangles as is and left my seam ripper to rest in peace. In the original inspiration quilt, there are various instances where the maker let the triangles do their own thing. Sometimes for only one row on one side of the quilt! It's really interesting but almost impossible to notice unless you look very carefully at the quilt. Just a casual glance at the quilt fools the eye really well and it's easy to assume all the triangles are all positioned in perfect repeats. They're most definitely not.

Love that about antique quilts! Which makes it simple to take it in stride when it happens around here. {Talking to myself. *It's okay. We love that. Throw the seam ripper away. Quirks and mistakes are good stuff. And on and on till I quit beating myself up for making a, sheesh, simple mistake!}

Just makes me smile...

At this point I'm starting to wish {wonder?} if these triangles should have been made smaller. Mine finish out at 1 3/4", but the problem is.....  If I make 11 rows of hsts like the original quilt AND include the 2 larger end borders, my quilt will be well over 100". Yeah. Crazy talk.

Still mostly square....

Back at the beginning, my bumbling math led me to believe that I could make 10 hst rows plus include the 2 larger rows and squeak in around 90". My math was wrong. So wrong. At this point I sit here, absolutely delighted at how this quilt is shaping up, but thinking, Thinking, thinking.... Wowsers! it totally needs more of those hst rows. That's what I keep coming back to. I just can't. Cheat. This. Quilt!

Loving this quilt so much....

Hmm.... Maybe it's time to bite the bullet and just make another king sized quilt. What do I really have to lose? Well, besides time, my remaining patience, and that little bit of hair that I pull out whenever the quilt starts to overwhelm me....

Tree of Life in the Hoop and the Other HST Quilt in the Works

Like most other diligent hand quilters, I tend to roll straight from one quilt in the hoop to the very next. This 'Tree of Life' quilt has been calling my name lately, sort of impatiently if you want to know the truth of it. It seems to be the time. 

Tree of Life in the hoop

So, okay, I'm fine with working on these colors right about now. Winter is settling into it's 'Oh no! There's more snow! mode and everything is sooo cold and chilly. These colors are bright, peppy and just feel good in contrast. This quilt was one of those bucket list quilts but also a very whimsical start. I need to remember that all those stacks of fabric piling up around my quilt room will eventually find their day as well.

Also something important to remember is that just because a quilt was on my bucket list doesn't mean that it will end up looking exactly as imagined. This crazy blend of busy-ish fabrics tend to make this quilt look a little more vintage that all the patterns and photos I usually admired. I really stretched myself with this fabric selection and that's a good thing. It feels unique and makes each block feel a little more special. I had to work harder to feel satisfied if you know what I mean. Plus I learned a lot. I wouldn't be where I am now if it wasn't for making and learning from these sorts of choices 3 1/2 years ago! And yeah, it's a little wonky from using homespun fabrics in the setting triangles and not trimming every block to exactly square. Hand quilting will take care of the worst of it {it's very forgiving} and then washing and drying after should take care of the rest of the wonk. In spite of the fact that this quilt rejected most all the fun colors of perle cotton, {it wants to do boring white/cream thread}, we're all good here.

Tree of Life

This past weekend saw me working on adding another round of borders to my HST Medallion quilt too. It was the 5th round of first the black coping strip border and then the pieced triangle border. I tend to lump them both into '1 border round'. It never seems to photograph well when the pink hst's are on the outside edge, especially if they are sewn in the lightest pink colors. Ughh...  Oh well. You can get the idea of where I'm at--exactly halfway through the 10 rows of hst border work! Uh huh. It's gonna be a big one....

One more border for the HST Medallion

I am extremely pleased to report that this hst border went on together as well as the last one did! Yay! Improvements have been made and might be here to stay! {Well, for the life of this quilt anyway...} Lots of notes to refer to, but basically there are specific perimeters that make all the difference in precision. So proud to know that all that improv. work hasn't quite ruined me yet....

HST Medallion about halfway thru....

And because I couldn't bear to take if off the wall just yet, I simply piled all the quilting paraphernalia back on the counter like usual, pushing and stacking it way to the back. Can you believe I iron large quilt tops in this space? Without emptying the countertop first? If you've been following me for very long, you understand that my quilting room is quite small. There is absolutely no room for complete chaos and I often have to tidy up just to jump to the next quilt. Projects are almost all in small totes or the 'in progress' units piled right on top. I have to be extra efficient with all my under-the-counter-space and try really hard to always have my iron and cutting area board ready at a moments notice too. Seriously, I am not complaining! Anythings better than having to work from the corner of the living room, dining room table and/or hall closet like I did for so many years. Having a dedicated quilt space is divine. I'm imploring you, please make room for your own if you haven't yet! You'll never, ever regret it.

Linking up with Linda and Julie for sew, stitch, snap, SHARE!

HST Medallion Progress and a Christmas Table Runner in the Works

I can't seem to get a straight photo of this quilt project, so here goes. This is the current state of my interpretation of an old HST Medallion quilt that caught my fancy. I always dread getting started on the next round of borders, but while working, generally find a renewal of determination to keep going.

Round #3 finished on the HST Medallion!

There's a lot of work involved as I'm not the most accurate of piecers. There are a couple things that are making things a bit easier for me though. Number one, it helps to cut out the units during the day time as my lighting is horrible in the quilting room at night and even the slightest of not-quite-right cuts snowball on me. Yeah, kind of a no-brainer, but you know me! I just tend to plow ahead and try to make things right after the fact! Also, I've spent a little time playing around with the needle position on my sewing machine. There is no single position that gets all the hsts to end up being perfect {again, I'm not perfectly precise with my sewing}, but there is one position that is definitely better than the others. And the last thing that I find to help is this: After I sew all the hsts into a long chain of 'pairs' of hsts, then the next sewing marathon involves flipping the hsts upside down and sewing from the opposite direction. This helps so that those long row of hsts don't have that funky arch from always sewing a little more narrow at the bottom of each seam--something I am terrible about doing when getting in that sewing zone! I'm sure none of you ever have that problem.

With this picture, you can see that I've just finished the third round of borders. Each round consists of a single black fabric border and then alternately, the blue or pink hst border. The last border was 72 hsts all by itself, something that makes me wonder how crazy one has be in order to continue on? The original quilt has 11 rounds of these hst borders and then two larger pieced borders to finish off the quilt. I already know that 11 rounds will make my quilt way too large, so at the moment, 10 rounds is the goal. We'll see about that! As the quilt grows, there will be more and more mixed fabrics in each round as I don't have a lot of large cuts of fabrics and want to shop straight from the stash. It's been especially fun to try and use these black fabrics that always seemed a bit too contemporary to play nice with so many of my other fabric choices.

Always a mistake or two

This is a project that involves keeping the seam ripper very handy and I've had to use it more times than not, even taking off one whole row of hsts to turn it the proper direction. Eventually I plan to deliberately let a row or two of hsts present in the wrong direction, but not just yet. Out of curiosity, I measured the entire quilt for accuracy and discovered that I'm 1/8th of an inch off on two sides. Waahh. For me, that's like, dead on accuracy! I'm telling you, making this quilt is the funniest mix of frustration and exhilaration that I've felt in quite a while....

Fabric pull for a baby quilt

Isn't it interesting how one project can so directly influence another? I quickly pulled some fabrics the other day for a potential baby quilt and hello? Aren't those the same colors I'm working on with the HST Medallion quilt?

But the little table runner below is totally different from everything I'm working on these days. Very Christmassy in all the fabric choices and hopefully the perfect size for a little end table in the living room.

Christmas table runner

My girls were lamenting the fact that all the little table runners had fall colors and what do you know. The very next day found me pulling old, languishing Christmas fabrics and thinking up a quick and easy design. Hopefully the little improv. strip blocks in the runner will look better with some Perle Cotton stitching. Right now the whole things looks a bit sad!

Linking up with Linda and Julie at Sew, Stich, Snap, SHARE!

On My Design Wall

I have been thoroughly enjoying my time in the quilt room this week. Obviously I have a bit of a thing for pink and gold right now, but that's just the way tend to things happen around here! This week saw me finally diving into trying to make pieced letters.

What's on my design wall

The capital 'I' was super easy and so that was a good start. From there it got a little mind boggling at times, but eventually there was a rhythm going that felt easy and good. I had forgotten until diving into these playful letters, that years ago, I put pieced wording on the back of one of my younger brothers graduation quilt. It was laborious work, cutting every piece of the letter just so. Tonya's free form method {Word Play Quilts by Tonya Ricucci} is so much more fun! Sometimes I follow her general guidelines and sometimes I don't, but it's definitely keeping me entertained. For instance, I made the 'M' accidentally by cutting and sewing the angles wrong on the 'W'. Oh well. It will work just fine in another word. There are certainly going to be plenty of words before I get done!

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I also got a good start on the hst medallion quilt. It was a bit tricky making sure the measurements were right for the first black row, but after getting that settled, the rest should just be a matter of repeats. I decided to use the Easy Angle method {Diane's tutorial is my go-to} for increased accuracy and well, less trimming. I hate the trimming part of the traditional hst method! And as this quilt will continue to build around rows of hst's, accuracy is key for ending up with a square quilt, right?

Right.... Hah.  I ran into trouble immediately because that increased accuracy only occurs when cutting and sewing is happening in a precision sort of way. Ugghh... Too many distractions happening around me and so my hst rows were a little bit too long. Consistently too long, but still. Not good. And then it occurred to me that those black strips would be placed between every single row of hst's! Serendipity, or a very smart quilter. Hmm... Me thinks the black rows had a different sort of function than just good aesthetics. 

So I did what I would normally do and just fudged on the seam allowance here and there. {*Confessing my sins here...} Just a smidge extra sewn into the seam in about three spots on every row. With that, the row of hst's shrunk to the proper length, easily allowing the corner squares to fit properly. Can you even tell when you look at the top picture? I can't! From here on out, every corner square at the end of both the black rows and the hst rows, will have to be the exact same size. That means I can play around {and fudge with the hst's wherever I need to} as long as the black rows and corner squares remain a constant. *whew!

Are you shaking your head at me and wondering why I don't just sharpen up my cutting and piecing skills? This is an old make-do sort of quilt that I'm interpreting. On closer examination, the hst's don't even represent the same way from side to side of the quilt or even a complete row around the quilt--the only constant is that the dark part of the hst is pointing upwards throughout. I couldn't believe it when I started taking a closer look. So fascinating! And because there are so many rows and rows of hst's, it's not at all obvious to the casual viewer. Woohoo! This means I can fudge with impunity and yes, great glee!

Another couple blocks for the Solids Challenge quilt

I have also found time to do some applique work. These blocks have been practically begging for some attention all year. After this there are only three left, and as always, they have been ridiculously easy to do. And fun. I love the stark, simple beauty of them! Why I have drug my feet for so long on these is a mystery. Having several new applique projects waiting in the wings finally compelled me to get going on finishing these blocks, but really, the reasons for why I continually dawdle around on certain projects, then speed right through others? Motivation and Mojo. Crazy stuff....

Linking up with Sew, stitch, snap, share....