PQ 15.4 Time Enough 2

This little quilt is reprise of a swap quilt I made a bajillion years ago.  I was so excited that the original ended up in the collection of one of the big name quilters in the group.  But I have also been kind of sad that I had give it away.  So I tried again.  It isn't the same.  They never are.

I had to work quickly because I don't have much time this week.  So this quilt does break the prime directive.... Make it structurally sound.  This one is even on the edge for the art quilt exemption.  The background is scraps randomly stuck to embroidery stabilizer.  I intended to tear it away but there were some pretty thin seams and a few tiny holes.  So rather than try an patch or beef it up, I decided to leave the stabilizer attached.  

 

It is echo quilted.  I added fast finish triangles to the corners to hang it.  The lace is scraps from other projects... many ones done for or as a result of Project Quilting.  

Nailed It! Project Quilting 12.2 Fussy Cut Challenge

 

Let me come right out and say it.  Fussy cutting is not my thing.  Now I will tell you, if you ask me, that I don't like fussy cutting because of the waste.  But the truth is I have limitations and I know it.  Not only do you have to position the fabric and cut it out properly but 99 times out of 10 if you waiver at all in your seam allowance you've blown the whole effect.  I do not like it. 

So when I saw that this week's Project Quilting Challenge was fussy cutting, I may have let out a few rude words like '2020'.   However, I set a goal to make something, preferably something other than a cozy of last resort, for every challenge this season.  So I had to do something.  Fortunately/unfortunately I have set another goal to use only stash and I already blew that one on the first challenge because I had to buy two pieces to make it work.  So..... I had to do this with what I had.  

Now I don't go big on prints and designs in my stash other than for magic bags.  The scale is very tiny on those so they don't make for a big statement in a piece.  And I wanted to make a BIG statement  I like to whine and complain about the challenge prompts.  It is just one of those things that amuses me.  I actually find the challenges I complain about the most, push me the furthest out of my comfort zone. They make me think hard and look at fabric in new and different ways.  This one was no different.  

I did have several different ideas for this quilt.  I didn't have a lot of time to pull it together and I was pretty convinced that even if I did go to the fabric store they would not have the perfect fabric for it.  I had to root through my stash to see what I could find.

 This Heather Ross Print from several years ago was on ridiculous discount at one of the big chain stores.  I bought the ends of the bolts of three different prints because I love Heather Ross and I knew I would find a project for it eventually.  Plus, I could tell the Mr that it was HEATHER ROSS so it was as much an investment as his Magic Cards!  

 

Now before you Heather Ross fans get all shirty with me you need to know that with the exception of the one PERFECT motif in the middle all of the bits in this quilt came from the cut edge and were already essentially destroyed before I mutilated them further.   But I did get that one perfect cut!  Nailed it!

This quilt is approximately 13 x 17 inches.  It has fast finish corners for hanging.  It is essentially a ticker tape quilt.  Each little attempt to fussy cut Chloe was stitched on top of the quilt sandwich with a few extra boxes thrown in for balance.  The binding is also stash fabric.  It was the best I could do since I already knew that the local quilt shops did not have the perfect gray gingham.  (I already looked for a a different project.)  The binding is hand sewn on the back.

I quilt near St Louis, MO. 

PQ 9.5: A Stitch in Time

I have long said that if my dad had been born 100 years earlier we would have been on a wagon train going West.  After a childhood of imagining that revisionist history, I eventually came to the conclusion that I would make a terrible pioneer.  I cannot keep track of my needles! 

If you think about it, a needle is a very important tool.  In a world where you have to make almost everything you need to take care of your tools.  Some things you can make or repair, a new handle for the axe, a new edge on the plowshare.  A good blacksmith can make nails and forks.  But needles?  Needles are another story.   I haven't researched how needles were made pre-Industrial Revolution.  There were stages between sharpening bone and post Industrial Revolution machine production.   Even historic needles are fine. From reading diaries of the women who traveled the Oregon Trail I've learned that a needle was a precious commodity. 

And I am notorious for losing my needles.  I try not to lose them in carpets and furniture and am successful for the most part but where they actually go?  I have no idea.  And so I would make a terrible pioneer.  My clothes would be ragged and the canvas on my tent would be un-patched.  It would not be pretty.

So my stitch in time quilt is a nod to those brave women who packed their precious things in a covered wagon and headed west, needle in hand, to face a vast unknown landscape.

The image is of the interior of a covered wagon.  Notice the fancy chair, spinning wheel, butter churn and what looks to be boxes of silverware and likely other tools.  I love the pretty dresses hanging on the pegs. 

The picture is printed on fabric and is embellished with embroidery floss.  The binding is a ruffle (new technique for me) made of a modern calico fabric.  It measures approximately 8 x 10 inches.  This quilt continues my Western Expansion theme for the Project Quilting challenges this year.

You can read more about Project Quilting and check out all the amazing quilts made this week on Kim Lapacek's Blog. 

 

PQ 9.2 Little House on the Prairie Points

This was not the best week of quilting for me.  I was on travel for much of the week.  I was able to plan a gorgeous quilt that was going to twin size.  I managed to go to Hancocks of Paducah with that plan in hand.  And I couldn't find the right fabric.  Well, that and the fact that the twin sized quilt wants prairie points.  It would take at best guess a couple hundred prairie points.  Given that I have no idea how to sew prairie points or how to finish the binding once I put them on, making a smaller project to practice seemed like the better idea. 

I do seem to have a theme going this season.  This is an historical picture of some women and horses standing in front of a soddy, a cabin made of sod, in Nebraska.  Because, of course, prairie points make me think of Little House on the Prairie. 

The picture is printed on fabric.  It is lightly quilted with No 3 Perl Cotton.  the binding is my first attempt at continuous prairie points (OK any prairie points).  I learned many things from this.  Making miniature prairie points for a first project is not the best idea.  I have no idea how to finish/attach/do anything with the corners.  This continuous strip thing will work really well once I make it big enough to collect and hide my raw edges and once I figure out the whole corner thing.

So why prairie points for my triangles?  Because I am a rebel.  I made triangles by cutting squares. 

This quilt is part of Project Quilting Season 9.  The challenge was triangulation.  This quilt measures about 5 x 8 inches.  I quilt just outside of St Louis, MO. 

PQ 9.1 Hometown Love: Fairplay

 I had big plans for this week.  Big Plans!

I've lived a lot of different places so I had a number of wonderful towns to choose from:  two coasts, mountains, flat lands, small towns, big cities, impressive landscapes.  However, I quickly choose a place I've never actually lived.  I've never had it on my drivers license and I've never even had a mailing address there.  But I did spend a portion of every year from the time I was eight years old until now missing at most two years.  As a kid, I was in school or in this town so I feel like I grew up there.  The town is Fairplay, Colorado.  It is deep in the heart of South Park.  (Yes, South Park is a real place.  Yes the cartoonists are from the next valley over.  Yes that is a thing.)

Having decided on the town the pattern was also a no brainer.  I was going to make delectable mountains.  I'd made a table runner a couple years ago for the PQ challenge and knew it was well within my skill set.  I could make a lot of those blocks with relative ease and could therefore go quickly.  I looked on line and saw a variation that looked liked an Irish Chain.  It was perfect.  

Now for the fabric.  I recently found a box of fabric that had been 'lost' in the move double digit years ago.  It had lots of treasures including several sets of fabric.  I remember some of them. Others, not so much.  However, there was one set that I obviously purchased in a quilt shop. Most likely a long gone shop in Fairplay.  It has gorgeous columbine and iris fabrics and coordinating purples and greens.   Combined with a white background it would be a glorious tribute to my 'hometown'.

Looking at the picture at the top of the post, you can clearly see that there aren't any iris or columbine or mountains in my quilt.  You see, the math doesn't work.  I was going to make cheater mountains.   My 9 inch blocks would turn into 8 inch half square triangles which would turn into a rectangle that would be about 12 x 8 inch mountains.  Those are are rectangles.  Sewing two of them together makes a block that is 12 x 16.  Still not a square.  And I needed squares to make rotate and make the pretty chain looking pattern.  I spent much of the week convinced that I could add some to the middle and I would get the right shape and it would all work out.  Unfortunately, adding fabric in the only direction that wouldn't disrupt the pattern merely exacerbated the problem.  So... no simple mountains for me. The only way to make the pattern is to go old school with lots of bias and half square triangles.  By the time I figured that out, it was way too late to get the size quilt I wanted to make finished in time.  And besides, I couldn't find my triangle paper without which this isn't happening!

So, I pouted for another day.  Then I drew some sketches.  But my flying geese paper was too big and I was still pouting and not going to try and make up the 5 paper piece patterns I would need.

I started looking for pictures of Fairplay.  I found one of the Sheldon Jackson Memorial Church.  It is a church that is so iconic... well I have to digress and tell another story.  You see I got married in that church.  I was living in DC.  My then fiance  (whose family laid claim to come from from that next valley over) was in Michigan and my mom was in Fairplay.  There were logistics.  I bought my dress in DC and was looking for a veil.  I found one in a small bridal consignment shop.  When I described my dress to the owner (long sleeve, cotton jacquard) for an August wedding, I got the usual response.  "You are insane.  You will sweat to death."  But I started to explain that I was getting married in a small town in Colorado called Fai.... "Fairplay." the owner replied "in that beautiful little church."  It turned out she spent time nearby and always wanted to attend a wedding in that church.  So I invited her.  She came.  It was special.  The picture above is my flower girl sitting on a bench in the beautiful garden of that beautiful church.  A church so memorable that a shop owner half a continent away knew about it.

Back to the quilt...  I started playing with a picture and finally settled upon an sketchy version.  I printed it on fabric and then hand quilted/embellished with with quilting cotton and number 5 perl cotton.  I had to add some of the beautiful flowers from the garden and a hint of the Colorado blue sky.  The binding is a tiny strip of my favorite forget-me-knot fabric, as appropriate as the iris and columbine.  My stitching leaves a lot to be desired.  We won't look at the back.  This was a great project to ease me back into quilting and hand stitching.  (It has been so long I don't even have a quilts 2017 folder.)  I am ready to see what the next challenges bring.

The quilt is approximately 7 x 10 inches.  It is printed on cotton with cotton backing and binding.  The batting is a synthetic.  It is hand quilted with cotton and perl cotton.

Project Quilting is the brain child of Kim Lapacek.  You can see all of the amazing quilts produced in response to this challenge here. 

PQ8.3 Texture: Feelings....

I've had quilter's block (and not in a good way) for a while now.  I've been trying to get back into the groove by at least making something for the PQ challenges.  This week it was Texture.  As in, be inspired by texture.  Since my view for the entire week has been looking at fleece and badges in my sewing room there wasn't a lot of additional inspiration to be found. HOWEVER, as I was thinking about texture, I realized that an important part of texture is touching and that is Feelings*.  (Whoa, whoa, whoa, whooooooaa feeeeeelings...  just had to share the ear worm!) 

So, given that this is February,  I made tiny little textured quilt showing the feeling of love.  For a number of reasons it had to be hand sewn.  So it is a 6 inch square quilted with seed stitch using two strands of #3 Pearl cotton.  The 'binding is a simple blanket stitch. (Yes, that seemed MUCH easier than cutting and stitching a binding... at least at the start.)  And it is finished!  Just maybe I'll get around to making are 'real' quilt again one of these days (direct your flame wars elsewhere, it is a long standing joke around here and I almost didn't survive the PQ season where I challenged myself to make big quilts.)

Thanks for the inspiration from all of the amazing quilters who are participating and even more thanks to Kim and the evil dreamer of inspirations, Trish. 




*Come on, Trish... you knew I couldn't play it straight! 

PQ 7.3 Challenge Thread

This post is long and rambling, something I wrote late at night and then had to wait for the sunlight to get a decent photo of the quilt.  Unfortunately, the sunlight hasn't added much clarity to the post.  So I am adding my pictures to the top and leaving the rest for perhaps a more clearheaded edit at a later date.

My last stitches, once I got the hang of allowing the machine to move the fabric rather than trying to control it myself 

 
My notion for this quilt was to start learning how to use the decorative stitches on my sewing machine.  I've played with them before and had enough experience to know that they are challenging.  Mastering these stitches is the first step in learning how to do heirloom sewing.  Besides I bought a fancy machine not a doorstop.  It is about time I figured out some more of the bells and whistles. 

Early stitches full of jumps and skips and do overs.  See the hearts and bells?   Neither do I.  That is what happens when you try to move the fabric rather than guide it. 

The project started out poorly.  I was trying to push and pull and direct the fabric.  I had to learn to guide it. Really I was just trying to keep the edge of the pressure foot parallel to my guide lines.  Even slight corrections on my part would throw the whole thing off.  I also learned to rip back to the start of the repeat, reset the machine to the start of the pattern and set my needle at the end of the last pattern in order to start again after a thread break.  I also learned to use a water soluble topper to keep things moving smoothly.

The whole quilt.  Lovely to me only because it represents my learning process and my steps towards mastering an intimidating style of sewing. 

Finished quilt is 18 inches square.  It is made of muslin with a poly/cotton backing and binding.  The batting is warm and white.  The thread is an assortment of Sulky and Isacord embroidery threads.  It was sewn on my Babylock Ellegante 2.  The binding is machine stitched with another fancy stitch!  The colors are turquoise and red because I always wanted to make a quilt in those colors 

OK.  Read on for some quilting philosophy if you wish...

I love Project Quilting because of challenges and the deadlines.  Well, I like most of the challenges.  I find myself thinking of Diane as the evil Diane or the diabolical Diane as I am trying to figure out what to make or as I am trying to finish a project that fits the theme but is way more than a week can hold.  I am quite sure that Diane is a lovely lady and I do hope some day to meet her in person.  I only hope when that day arrives I don't slip and call her names.  But even if I do, they are meant with best intentions.  It like a student of mine who was fed up with me pushing him to do his best.  He turned to me and said "I hate you.  You make me think."  It was the best compliment I've ever received relative to my teaching.

So  I love most of the challenges and I really like the deadline.  Deadlines are good for procrastinators like me.  But I also add my own twist each season.  I try to add my own goals to the project.  I want to stretch myself, learn something new, develop my skills.  A couple years ago, my personal challenge was to make large quilts.  That was a wonderful year and I have have a stack of great quilts to wrap around family and friends.

My challenge for the Focus Through the Prism off season challenge was to work on my piecing.  I think that the quilts I produced represent some of my best technical work.  Even better, the time and patience I exerted working on seam allowances and matching have paid off in terms of my continued improvement.

I know, you are all thinking what is up with the woman who penned that famous quilt anthem "Corners Don't Match and I Don't Care"?  Well I will always say that a finished quilt is warmer than a perfect UFO on the shelf.  If it holds together in the wash it is good enough for me.  Yes, I can hear some of your appalled voices telling me that it has to be perfect.  It has to be better.  It has to match.  And I ask those of you saying that to please revisit your first quilt.  If it was perfect (without hours and months of ripping and tearing and re-cutting) then I bow down to your superior skills.  If however, you tore your hair out making it perfect or if you had a few wonky seams here and there, remember the feeling when you finished it  It was a thrill.  You made that and wrapped your baby, or your mother or your best friend in its warmth and love  And they didn't care about the corners.

We all have to start some place.  It is far better to encourage new quilters to get to the wrap them in warmth stage.  How many would be amazing quilters have been shut down by unkind words or unnecessary rules and ripping?    So I am a firm believer in finish it up and move on, Dearie.

But I also think that working on the fundamentals is not a bad thing.  We can all use practice on those seam allowances and there is always room for improving technique...  IF you want to.   Matching seams and perfect points should be a thing to celebrate when they happen.  And if you want to make them happen more often then that is wonderful.  To each her own.  Lets all find our best path to wrap the in warmth.

oh... better step off my soapbox and tell you about this quilt.  I invoke the galloping horse rule for this one.  This was one of those 'evil' Diane challenges for me.  I did not want to make a thread quilt.  It did not help that my husband suggested it would be easy.  Just make a whole cloth quilt and do amazing quilting in bright colors of thread...  Arghhh.

So, I made a whole cloth sandwich and stared at it all week.  Finally I decided what I needed to do was practice working with the built in decorative stitches in my machine.  It would definitely take a lot of thread.  And I definitely need the practice.  It started pretty rough.  I was crooked.  The thread broke.  The fabric stuck to the foot. The satin stitches bunched.  The spacing was random.  The stitches did not look even remotely like the picture.  But, eventually, I started getting the hang of it.  I used a water soluble topper to solve the sticking and to keep the stitching crisp.  I learned to let the machine to the walking and to stop trying to guide it.  I learned which stitches I actually liked.

So while the project is far from perfect.  It is finished.  And it represents my own personal growth in sewing and patience. And that is really why I don't much care when my corners don't all match.  I'll just continue to celebrate the ones that do. 

Georgia's Cabin

  

It is a quilt.  

It has three layers.  

It is held together with stitching.  

 It is made using the red Cherrywood fabric.
It is 20 inches on each side.
It is a log cabin.

It is simple.  I don't particularly like it.  But a finished quilt is always better than a pile of fabric on the shelf.

My sister made me finish it.  She wouldn't let me get out of the car at the beautiful beach until it was done.  The beach was beautiful.  I am very happy to have been able to get out of the car.

This is my entry in the #focusthroughtheprism off-season challenge for Project Quilting.  I could write more but I am tired from a lovely day at the beach and a mad spate of stitching.  Be sure to check out all the really amazing entries at Project Quilting!  Believe me.  They are more than a quilt with three layers stitched together and finished so that the maker could frolic in the waves. 

Oh, and it is called Georgia's Cabin.  I will leave you to puzzle out that reference!

PQ 6.1: Trees No Purple Trees in this Forest

This is the first week of Project Quilting Season 6.  This is the third full year I've been doing my best to keep up with Kim Lapacek's brain child challenge.  You can keep up with all of the Project Quilting challenges and quilts here.

The challenge for this week was trees. I have done some variations on trees in the past so I wanted to try something new.  I love Birch trees.  Growing up there was a cluster outside my bedroom window.  They were beautiful.  There are about a million variations of Birch tree quilts on the internet. This pattern by Crazy Mama Quilts was appealing because of its simplicity.  I could easily see this done in black and white on backgrounds of greens.  I changed things up a bit by making the blocks much larger more rectangular to emphasize the heights of the trees.  I also used printed fabrics to provide texture. 

So far, so good.  Except that this has been a strange week and I haven't been able to get much done.  I finished 12 blocks by Saturday evening.  This is a decent size quilt.  It would make a good lap quilt or a large wall hanging.  I really wanted to have 20 blocks and make it a bed quilt.  I'm still debating on the size.

It became clear that there was no way I was going to finish the quilt the way I wanted to in time for the Noon Sunday deadline.  Now here is where the story takes a twist...

You've probably read about the spuds before.  All three of them have a fantastic eye and some pretty amazing skills when they want to admit it.  I always ask for their opinions about projects.  And if they don't give me the 'meh, I'm busy' look, they have some pretty good input.  But then sometimes I wonder if they are just messing with me.  Clearly Spud 1's suggestion that I use gummy bear fabric for the backing was an attempt to push the limits.  However, before he got to that one, he suggested that the quilt needed one block of purple trees.  He even went to the stash and found the purple.  I made the block.  It seemed reasonable.

While I was still hopeful of finishing the larger quilt, I asked Spud 3 to  come and work his block arranging magic.  (I set things up they way I think they should be and then he comes along and tweaks here and there.  It always amazes me to see what a difference he can make in the overall flow and feel of the quilt by changing a couple blocks here and there.  His perspective is unique.)  I had all 12 green blocks and the one purple.  Spud 3 rejected the purple out of hand, much to the disgust of Spud 1. 

So, the blocks are arranged and it is even more clear to me that I love this quilt and there is no way I am going to be able to finish it to the standard it deserves in the time allotted.  Looking around for a mini quilt idea that I finish in a couple hours I spy the orphan purple block.  A couple more trees, backing, quilting and binding and I have a complete quilt to submit!

The trees are pieced from scraps of black and white quilter's cotton.  I Love the eyes peeking out from this scrap from a Halloween quilt!  The binding is left over from a PQ season 3 challenge.

It is machine quilted.  My machine was being derpy and my FMQ skills are rusty.  This was a good practice piece and I am very happy I didn't try to force finish the big quilt under these conditions!  The quilt has fast finish triangles for hanging.   The batting is a generic synthetic and the backing in cotton muslin.  The overall dimensions are 25 x 17.5 inches.

Be sure to check out Project Quilting on Flickr and you can also follow along with Challenge Quilts on Facebook.  Voting for the viewer's choice award starts soon so I will post a link for that. 

Hoppy Easter!

This is the wee quilt I made for the Little Quilt Sew Vote Swap.  I used my new Micron markers and Derwent Inktense pencils on the drawing.  I had a lot of fun 'painting' it.  The quilting is simple leaves and flowers.  (My machine was acting up so it was a bit more challenging than it should have been.)  And it has a simple black and white striped binding.  I wanted to do a black and white check, but I wasn't sure I could get it square enough. 

I will be sad to be sending this off to it's new owner (that part is still a secret) but I am looking forward to doing more drawing-based projects. 

First Snow!

That means it is winter.  And I haven't updated anything since what seems like summer.  I'm just going to toss in some pictures of things I've been making rather than try to catch up individually. 

Quilt finish!  Only one in months for the Craftster Mini Art Quilt Swap. 

My partners theme was a story called "The Yellow Wallpaper".   It is a pretty dark Victorian tale about a woman who is confined and starts to see a woman in the wallpaper.  She tries to free her.

She tries to free her.  My partner is also an amazing and very  modern quilter.  She loves bright modern colors and wanted bright modern fabrics.  I did what I could to reconcile the two notions.  Probably not getting very far on either one.  But it was fun.  The yellow isn't very modern but it was pretty wallpaper-y.  I liked using the Madrona Road bits because of the implied story.

I couldn't bring myself to actually rip up the quilt.  I know it needed it.  Instead I left it intact and applied the shreds over the top.  My partner could remove them and finish off the binding if she preferred. 

It is hand quilted with teardrop shapes that mimic the face in the center.  The face is an Urban Threads design and is repeated in the top left, although I doubt anyone will ever find it.

This is the stunning quilt she made for me.  I love it!

OK.  That is enough for today.  Hope you all are doing well.  I'll be back with more as soon as I can.  

Wee Quilts

I finally turned some of my Spring photography into wee quilts.

Images were printed on specialty quilt fabric.  (The blue in this picture and the one below is really purple.  Nothing I tried made it photograph purple.)

I was going to make one big wallhanging.

But the wee quilts appealed to me more.

 Plus they will each be going off to a special graduate soon. Shhh....  They might not read my blog but some of their mommies do. 

Bloggers Quilt Festival: Art Quilt

Amy of Amy's Creative Side Hosts the Bloggers Quilt Festival each year.   This Spring is no exception.  Quilters get to choose two of their quilts to enter in two different categories.  I am sure that is going to double the already huge number of quilts available for us to look at.

I decided to submit my little lotus flower mug rug to the art quilt category.  The origami flower has taken my quilt thinking process in a new direction.  The improvisationally pieced lily pad continues my experiment with that style of patchwork. 

This quilt was made for the Craftster.org Mug Rug swap.  I was inspired by some origami lotus flower votives, my partner had pinned.  It is approximately 12 x 10 inches.  It was machine pieced and quilted with hand stitching on the origami flower which is made out of muslin.  I have made one follow on piece and I expect I will be experimenting with this more in the future.