Starts and Stops

I've been a little all over the place since we last chatted. I've worked on my Dresden Plates a bit, I now have four of the nine plates quilted. It's slow going though because of all the starts and stops. Which is kinda how I've been feeling with all my quilt projects lately. 

There were a few days where I didn't feel much like sewing at all, so I just worked on scrap management. Because as much as I try, there is always an overflowing box waiting to be trimmed down and filed away in its correct bin. I think the news about Joann Fabrics probably didn't help my mood at all. I think we've all known it for a while, but it's still sad to see them go. I don't didn't buy much of my fabric there, the fabric rarely felt like it was quality stuff, but I usually made at least one trip down there every other month or so. And the trip isn't really that far, they're like ten minutes down the street. But it was a great place to dig through the remnants or to get solids. 

I stopped by last Sunday, I was expecting a mess from what I'd seen online, but my store was as clean as it always is. Some areas were a little messier, but in a way, it was nice to see my old friend being treated well while she's on her way out. I'll probably make at least one more trip down before the end. I wasn't planning on buying much, but I really wanted some more of an embroidered white fabric that I picked up a yard of last time I was there. I got the last six yards on the bolt this time. I think the texture of the embroidery will make a great backing for something I'm bound to create in the future. I walked away with a  few other fabrics too, but I did restrain myself, I do have quite a bit of fabric already in my totes. And the backing fabric I just purchased online for my Good Fortune quilt. That makes three quilts that I need to piece the backing for so I can get them basted and ready to quilt. 

But other than buying fabric in the last two weeks, I also picked up my EPP project again. I finished two more blocks and added them to the completed pile. I want to start sewing them together, but I need to finish the rest of the blocks first in order to lay them out and get the color balance right. I'm not really in a rush to finish them though, it's my travel project so not something I work on when I'm sitting at home. It's a stitch on it during my lunch hour sort of project right now. 

But also in the realm of hand stitching, I picked up my Quatrefoil quilt again and started hand quilting for the first time since late November/early December. My callouses are long gone and are kinda painful to re-acquire. I'm enjoying the big stitch quilting, but also, it's harder. Maybe because I'm used to making such tiny stitches, but I can't seem to get the hang of even large stitches. I like the look and I'm learning what works needle wise and thread wise as well as what size to make my knot, but I'll probably save this technique for a quilt that truly calls for it. My next quilt will definitely be with small tiny stitches. And probably baptist fans, I've only done them once and am ready for something easy that I don't need to mark so accurately. 

Wanderlust also made an appearance under my needle again (under my snips in the above photo) as a leader and ender project while working on the I Spy Stars quilt for my brother. I'm not sure if I mentioned them before, but making the half square triangles is where I'm currently at.

I don't have all the tiny stars made yet, I only have half, and it's a very slow, in between chain piecing quilt. I don't expect I'll have it done for a while, maybe not even until next year. Unless I suddenly have the desire to work on just that. Which has happened before when I made it just past half way with a leader and ender project. We'll see.

But the I finished making all the sawtooth star blocks for the I Spy quilt today. I wasn't planning on sashing between the blocks, but it just might need it. It would add an extra five inches to the width and six to the length though, which I don't really want. It's already 42x50" which about the size I like for a baby/toddler quilt. I need to think about that for a little. 

My goal for the next two weeks is to finish quilting the Dresden Plates, or at least quilting the plates. I think the sashing/border should be fairly quick to quilt. The hardest part is going to be marking the sashing/border. I want to do a braid, so then it's also a matter of making a template to trace and getting the sizing right. I also want to get the I Spy blocks into a top. And finish working with the pink thread for my hand quilting. I think I can get all that done. Hand quilting is probably the lowest priority as much as I'm enjoying it right now. What are you up to? Any projects that you'd like to move along in the process?

Happy quilting!

Mystery Quilts! And other quilt updates!

I hate pinning. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's why I get stuck at the border stage so often. It requires pins to make sure that I don't end up with wavy borders. And then I end up sticking myself so many times while sewing on the borders because of the pins. But without them, I have wavy borders. So I guess I have a love/hate relationship with pins. And also why I end up adding borders to a bunch of quilts all at the same time.

Last weekend, I finished the top of my Old Town mystery quilt. The colors are much more vibrant and harmonious in person. I find that cameras don't seem to know what to do with the color red. But I changed up the outermost border because I didn't really care for it in my color way. I think it looks amazing on Bonnie Hunter's quilt in her colors, but the black made it look weird in my opinion. 

So instead of the larger square border, I made another row of four patches. I'm crazy, because those squares are small! But I love how it frames the quilt and I might use that again in the future, but not in the near future. I need slightly larger squares for the moment!

And since I was in the "I guess I should just do all the borders now" phase last weekend, I attached all the borders on Good Fortune as well. Oh yeah, I finished all the blocks. Again, sorry about the lighting, it's been overcast for the last month or so it seems. Or it's sunny while I'm at work. 

But because I made the quilt larger to fit my bed, I had to do some math and adding another border to make the pieced borders work. So my Good Fortune quilt has five borders. Have I mentioned I hate pinning? But I pinned each and every one and it lays flat and I have no wavy borders, so it works, I just don't like doing it. 

Now I just have to find the right backing for this one. I have backing for Old Town, I still need to piece it together before I can baste anything, but I want something with a large floral I think. But I can't find anything in the right color/style so I may end up going with a solid backing, I'm thinking light blue as I want this to feel like a summer quilt. And I even know how I want to quilt it. But Old Town? I have backing, but no idea how I'm going to quilt it on my domestic machine, especially since I can't seem to get the tension right to free motion quilt. Not that I'm very skilled at free motion quilting, but I was halfway decent at loops with my old machine. 

My friend's baby is showing up the end of next month, so I figured I should switch over my machine to quilting and just finish the baby quilt I started. And since I was ironing a quilt top and backing, I dug out my Dresden Plate quilt and basted that one as well. The baby quilt I was able to quickly quilt in a few hours after work one day, but the Dresden Plates are going to take a while. Which is probably a good thing since I need to figure out how to quilt the next one. 

I'm quilting the Dresden Plates pretty densely. The plates are hand stitched down, and while I would love to hand quilt them, there is interfacing behind the plates and I didn't trim the white from behind the plate either, so that's a lot of layers to quilt through. But it took me an hour and a half to quilt one square. And I'm going to have sooo many threads to bury once I'm done. Thankfully I only made 9 plates instead of 12 like I was debating when I started it last summer. I think I'm going to quilt a braid through the sashing. The fancy sashing is asking for something more intricate with this quilt. 

But I think I'm going to share updates every other week. The way my work schedule is, I have time for quilting after work every other week. So the other weeks I don't really do much at all and don't have much to share. My free time is more fragmented those weeks, so I tend to do things like press a quilt top and backing one day and then baste the quilt the next. Or I might do some scrap management or sew a few things together that I laid out the day before. But I think it helps in a way prevent me from burning out. I can go crazy and accomplish a lot in one week (like finish two large bed size quilts), but then the next, I have time to reset.

Happy Quilting!