So while trying to create a Quilt Gallery of sorts, I started documenting all the quilts I've made that I can find pictures for. I think there might be about four that I don't have pictures of, don't ask how that happens because I swear my phone mostly has quilt pictures or pictures of flowers.
I'm not gonna lie, I've made more quilts than I realized. I have photos of 45 finished quilts. About a quarter of them are baby quilts, but there are quite a few large, bed sized quilts. And that doesn't even count the dozen or so in progress quilts that I have. When I started quilting again in earnest in 2022, I decided I wanted to clear out the backlog of UFOs that I had, so there are only two or three quilts that I made in my early quilting years that aren't completed. And thankfully, I haven't added to that pile very much.
I also find it fun to see how my scraps changed as I worked on this as a leader/ender project. Some blocks have a lot of yellow in them, and others lean more towards white/grey.
To anyone who is getting frustrated with your seam matching abilities, look at the above photo. I really wanted to make this quilt when I first saw it when I started to learn to quilt. But as you can see from the right photo, I wasn't that great at seeing value or matching seams. Fast forward eight years and I've gotten much better. No more chopping off (as many) points or squaring up blocks and ending up with rectangles in the corners.
I also learned a lot about color value and how important that is with scrap quilting. It's what takes a quilt from blah to wow. The quilt from 2014 I just use a warm and a cool color triangle to make the half square triangles. But as you can see, sometimes that doesn't work. Because I can have a light colored cool triangle and a dark colored warm triangle and it doesn't work for the pattern.
So while I didn't totally succeed in understanding value with my Jacob's Ladder quilt, I think I've come quite a long way from where I was in the beginning. Using the black and white filter on your phone's camera is a great way to see contrast. Other things I learned while working on this quilt were to square up blocks as I go. Turns out blocks actually line up if they are the right size in the first place. Imagine that. Squaring up that many four patches and HSTs was tedious but it was worth it in the end.
So what am I working on now? I took a quick break from hand quilting to make a quick baby quilt for a shower on Saturday. On Sunday, it was announced that there will be a baby shower for one of our missionary couples on Saturday. They are back in the states while they await the arrival of their first child. So naturally I decided I would make a baby quilt for them. Because normal people totally decide to make a quilt in less than a week. Luckily for me, I had 2 Kona solid rainbow charm packs in my stash that I wasn't sure what to do with them. I pulled out the pinks and purples and mixed in a few prints from my stash. The animal print was all that I had leftover from a baby quilt I made last fall and I was really hoping Hobby Lobby still had it in stock so I could use it for the backing. So I pieced the top Sunday afternoon, went to the store after work on Monday and picked up backing so I could quilt it up that evening. Tuesday I stitched the binding down, and dashed off to the laundromat across the street only to find that they closed. I didn't feel like driving 25 minutes in rush hour traffic to the next laundromat so I washed it in the tub and hung it over the curtain rod with a fan to dry it. Where they're going back to in Africa, this is probably how it will be washed anyway. Hopefully they will be able to use it in Northern Africa, even if it's just as a play mat. I doubt they'll need it to bundle up in!
I even sewed and trimmed my bonus triangles that I made into hourglass blocks. 2.5" unfinished hourglasses felt more usable to me than 1.5" half square triangles. There are only 20 of them, so into the orphan block box for now. I was going to use them across the back because I thought I needed to piece the backing, but the fabric was just wide enough to not be needed.
But now I'm back to chugging away on my Barnstar Sampler. I will have it done by Thanksgiving. Hopefully sooner, but I have a plan to have it done by Thanksgiving at the latest. I made my self imposed deadline for two reasons. One, I want to be able to take pictures of it outside with the wonderful autumn light. The few quilts I've taken pictures of in the fall just have a lovely golden glow, and the backdrop of still green grass but colorful leaves just makes me happy. The second reason is that I plan on doing the Quiltville Mystery Quilt again this year and that starts on Black Friday. So I'm trying to clear the deck so that I can keep up. Most likely I'll make it half size again this year. It's easier for me to keep up that way, but also I don't have quite the assortment of scraps as some quilters, and I'm trying not to go buy more fabric for it. I want to use up what I have.
Oh, and somewhere between now and Thanksgiving, I need to squeeze in another baby quilt that my brother has commissioned me to make for a friend. I'm not mad, he did ask me a few months ago and I did agree. He's the one person I take commissions from, he leaves the fabric and pattern choices completely up to me and has no issue paying me. I probably don't charge him nearly enough, but since he's really just paying me to make something I would probably have made anyway, I don't have any issues.
Happy Quilting!
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