The Mad Rush!

Okay, okay, I'm back! Things got a little chaotic over here working on quilts. One, because after I got back from vacation, I didn't feel like quilting for a week or so, so there wasn't anything to really share. Then I realized I was getting behind, so there was a mad rush to catch up. It's a vicious cycle I tell you. Then my brother started asking how the baby quilts were coming along, and when would I have them done. Even though he said the babies wouldn't be arriving until December and January. 

So I set aside my hand quilting and double downed on those baby quilts. The star one for the little boy was quick to quilt, I just made diagonal lines through all the blocks. I pulled out a scrap sandwich I have to test my free motion quilting skills, and I wasn't happy with the results. So no cute swirls for the little girl quilt. Instead I just used the serpentine stitch on my machine and made wavy lines across the width. Which turned out really well I think. 

Then it came time for the labels. Lately I've been back and forth on either just writing on a square of fabric or using the letter stitches on my machine and making the label that way. Because these are baby quilts, I figured machine stitching would probably be the better option since it will be washed more. So, before I do the stitches on my label, I have a scrap piece of fabric that I test it out on so I can center all the words. He had asked for a verse to be put on the label of each quilt, which was fine, but did require some extra figuring. Quite honestly, it looked like I was writing a code by changing the letters into numbers. 

After I had my secret code figured out, I started on my scrap fabric. And that's when the issues began. My thread broke a few letters in, so I changed the needle. Started again, and the thread broke again. So I cleaned my machine, and that seemed to fix the issue. I had everything measured out and marked my starting lines, and made my label. Made all my labels I might add. Two labels with verses and two labels that had my name and the year. Binding was cut, labels pinned, stitched the binding down to the front so I could hand stitch to the back, all was going well. I started hand stitching everything down, only to finish sewing the first label down to realize that I forgot a letter in the first word. And that's when everything was set aside to deal with another day. Because all of that happened in one afternoon and I wasn't in the head space to deal with it.

A few days later, I unpicked the label, unpicked the first word, and restitched that word. Thankfully there was enough room that I could scoot it over a quarter inch or so without it getting caught in the binding. But I texted my brother and told him they were done, I just needed to wash them and check them over and they would be ready for pick up that weekend. And when I washed it, the orange fabric bled just a little bit onto the cream border and I wanted to scream. Thankfully the bleeds washed out with 2 more washings and many color catchers and some dawn, but I was really ready to not look at this quilt again.

Both were picked up last Sunday and he gifted both of them earlier this week. And I am thankful to say, I am told both couples were overjoyed and excited. Which is really nice to hear, because making things for people you don't know can be a little tricky.

the colors I thought I was going to use

So what have I been working on since the baby quilt debacle? Well, I finished my Barnstar quilt on Thursday and it was washed yesterday so is now beautifully crinkled. That quilt is going to get it's own post because I took all the photos. I picked my colors for the Quiltville winter mystery quilt and I am super excited about that. I was debating between three color options and thought I figured out which I was going with, only to be going through my scraps and collecting colors, when I came across a charm square that I got in a scrap bag from someone, so I didn't have the full line, just a few squares, and my whole color scheme changed. And I scrounged the internet to find more of that fabric or something from the line so I could use it as backing. And I am happy to report, I found one shop that still had the fabric in stock and I bought four yards since I'm making mine half the size. Though if I like the pattern a lot, I might make it full size after the fact and go buy more fabric. 

the print in the middle is my backing 

So my Old Town Mystery fabrics are green for her red, turquoise for her melon, and red for her turquoise. And I will be using blacks for my neutral, which I've only done once before, so this should be fun. And I think my color scheme has a polish feel to it. I've also decided if possible and if I make it bigger, that I will switch out the turquoise for light blue if it makes sense since both are in my backing fabric and I was torn between turquoise or light blue. But I can't wait for this to start, and it starts a week earlier than normal which is great because I have off, but not great because we are hosting a friendsgiving that Saturday and I need to make bread and cheesecake and a soup and clean, so hopefully I have time to play with fabric a little bit?

The start of that third baby quilt

Ok, off to get that third baby quilt done before the mystery starts, and not start any more quilts until then! Happy quilting!

Quilting Again

Oops, I'm a day late in posting! In my defense, it was because I got caught up in quilting. I don't know if this happens to any of you, but sometimes I feel like I've lost my sewjo but I have deadlines. And while I initially don't feel like quilting, because I'd rather scroll social media or play games on my phone, I do force myself to sit at my sewing machine because I do have deadlines. Then, before I know it, it's been a few hours and I am happily quilting along. 

That was the case with my Barnstar Sampler this past week. My callous had disappeared on my finger over vacation and I know it's a little painful to get it to show back up, simply because it means pricking my finger over and over again with the needle. But I do want to finish it by Thanksgiving, so I needed to pick  it back up. If I only quilt the 6 blocks I need to each week, I'll have it done in five and a half weeks. but seeing as it's Monday, and I finished four blocks yesterday, I think I'll be a little more ahead of schedule. 

But I still need to figure in those baby quilts. I basted both of them on Saturday and started quilting the easier one yesterday. Well, I finished quilting it this morning. Trimming and binding is going to wait until I have the other one done as well so I only need to clear off my cutting mat once. Small space problems, my machine sits on the table on top of my cutting mat. 

The baby quilt for the little girl is going to be a harder one for me. I want to free motion quilt it, because I feel the pattern just calls for it, so bright and cheerful and happy looking. The challenging part is that I haven't done any free motion quilting yet on this machine. And I got it a year ago. Which means it's been over a year since I've done anything but straight line quilting. I'm going to need to pull out my practice block that I use as a test for quilting. I'm thinking of just doing loop de loops because that's what I'm best at. And because my brother asked if I could somehow tuck her name, Joy, into the quilt. Which I think should be fairly easy (?) to quilt in cursive and will sort of blend with the loops. That is also going to be practiced before I touch the quilt. 

I also visited the local quilt guild's quilt show that they put on every other year over the weekend. There is no way I can compete with the skill of these ladies. I may also be comparing apples to oranges because I don't do applique and I think those quilts wowed me the most. 

Like, how does one compete with those? The hardest part was picking a viewer's choice, I wanted to pick them all, in part because they all were beautiful and also because you could see the time and effort that went into each and every one and they all deserved a ribbon. 

And I finally got those blocks laid out on the wall. I'm about half done with the full blocks and then I have all the half blocks that go around the edge to make it more squarish. I think I might applique it to a piece of border fabric when I eventually get there because I don't know how else to finish the edge. This is also not the final layout, just me pinning what I have done to the wall. I'm also very happy with my decision to attach the white to two sides as I go rather than wait until the end, because knowing myself, I'd probably get stuck there and start another project because sashing is boring to hand sew. 

Well, I need to get back to quilting because I have deadlines to meet and all that. Happy quilting!

Back to Reality

I took entirely too much hand sewing work for this vacation. I did finish a bunch of blocks, but I didn't need to take quite so much. I had thought that when we got back to our AirBnB at the end of the day that I would want to wind down with some sewing. What I ended up doing instead was going through the 400+ pictures I had taken each day and deleting the blurry ones or the ones that didn't really have anything in them. In my defense, I was taking most of them out of the passenger side window while we were driving. 

I did sneak in a little bit of sewing though in the mornings a few days and at the airports. Mostly I was tired on the plane so I didn't sew a whole lot. My floor is a mess, so I'll take photos of where I'm at with that project for next week.

But South Dakota was beautiful and like nothing I've ever seen before. The sky was bluer than I've ever seen it and the contrast between the bright sky, the brown grasses and the dark green ponderosa pines started sparking a color pallet for a quilt. Mix in a few bright happy yellows to remind me of the aspens that were changing colors, and I'm beginning to understand why Bonnie Hunter has so many quilts inspired by trips she's taken. I might need to steal her idea. 

So what's on deck for me quilting wise? Well, I need to get back to some hand quilting, I have a self imposed deadline to make. And I'm hoping at the bare minimum to get the two baby quilts basted. Still no word on gender for the third one I need to make. But if I have enough batting here, I might also get my Dresden plate quilt basted. I have a bunch of rolls of batting, they're just not stored here in my tiny apartment. 

Then, this Friday and Saturday is the local quilt guild's show. I'm not a member, I'd like to be, but I can't make the requirements for meeting attendance with my work schedule. So I'll go when I can and pay the guest fee. But I'm super excited to attend, and for their next show in two years, I'm going to try to work something out with my work schedule so I can attend enough meetings so I can enter a quilt or two to be judged. Still not committing to anything though, my heart starts to race a bit at that thought. 

Other than that, it's just getting back into the routine around here, there was laundry and grocery shopping yesterday because I needed clean laundry and there was no food in the house. And after a week of eating out, I'm ready for home cooked food!

Detour!

I was able to get the top together for the Dino Oh My Stars last week, but a hectic week at work made for not a lot of quilting this week. But the top came together pretty quickly for this one. The border has a faint white polka dot on a cream fabric and it almost matched the creams in the fabric line perfectly. 

I'm not sure if I mentioned it last week, but I bought a super soft herringbone green fabric for the backing, and I'm going to bind it in solid orange. But the two baby quilts didn't go any farther than the tops being completed. 

I pulled a few fabrics together for another baby quilt, I'm leaning towards an economy block for the boy one and possibly a snail trail block for a little girl. I might just make both tops so when I'm inevitably asked for another quilt, I already have one made. 

My plan for the rest of the week was to work on basting more pieces for my EPP that I'll be taking on my trip this coming week. But then on Monday while eating a sandwich after work, I was browsing the Quilting subreddit and saw a call for quilters. A picture of a quilt had been posted a few days prior of a beautiful Iris quilt someone's grandma had made them. It had been stolen out of her car after only using it once and she was devastated. She was looking for someone to help her find the pattern and then how to make a quilt as her grandma had passed years before and she wasn't a quilter. But the call was put out for quilters to volunteer to make a block, and for someone to assemble the top and someone else to do the quilting. 

I couldn't resist. I had enough fabric to make the block and I wanted to be part of something like this. So Monday night, I said I was only going to pull fabric. But then I decided there wasn't really a lot of cutting to do, so I'd just cut the fabric so I could make the block the next morning before work. Well we all know how this story goes. I cut the fabric, then decided there was not a lot of half square triangles, so I'd just make those. I did manage to stop myself at this step and proceeded to finish my block Tuesday morning.

My block had since been mailed off and received to move on to the next step of assembly. But this was such a fun block to make that I think I might make another one, though slightly larger to make a wall hanging for spring. But that is going to have to wait until after the baby quilts are done. 

But what I love about being a part of the quilting community, is the response to this call is amazing. If everyone that commented follows through, there will be enough blocks for three or four quilts. It was suggested that the extra quilts be donated in her and her grandma's name to a homeless shelter as she believes based off what was stolen from her car that the person was homeless and just trying to keep warm.

Other than that detour, I've been basting away on my handwork project. Because by all accounts, basting, even thread basting, is not fun on a plane or airport. So I'm trying to get as many pieces ready to go as possible. I probably have more than enough ready for the entire trip, but I don't like flying and having something in my hands to distract me is going to help. I hope. 

So there won't be any block post next Sunday as I will away and trying to disconnect as much as possible.

Happy Quilting!

The Mad Scramble!

I've made some progress this past week. I have one baby quilt top complete and the second one is moving along. The lighting isn't the best in my bedroom where I hung an old curtain from my closet doors. It's a great way to have a design wall, though you need to pin to it rather than just stick them up there. I have a second curtain in my living room where my sewing machine is, so this had to do for the moment. I didn't feel like taking all those squares down just to hang this up for a moment. 

But I've come to the conclusion that I made toddler quilts, not baby quilts. This one is 42" x 53". The second one I'm working on is going to finish at 41" x 51". My justification is that they will be used much longer than a small baby quilt. They can be used for blanket forts or laying on the floor to watch TV or even laid over a toddler bed. 

I took this photo early this morning, so the lighting for photos isn't great here either, but it's bright enough to sew. The missing bottom quadrant is currently at my sewing machine. The last Oh My Stars quilt I made, I stitched it together in rows. And I remembered how much I don't like sewing long seams, so this one I'm sewing in quadrants so I only have one long seam. I'll probably have the center portion together today and work on the borders tomorrow.

There's a bit of a scramble going on for me right now. I leave for vacation in a week and a half. I want to have these two tops together before I leave. I'll switch my machine over to quilting once they're done. But that's not the true scramble right now. The true scramble is getting my EPP project ready to go. I have a seven hour flight with a two hour layover out there and an eight hour flight home with a three hour layover. I'm going to need some stitching to do! Plus, I know from past vacations, that once we get back to our room at night, I like to relax with some sewing while we talk about our plans for the next day. 

So here's my travel bag. It has enough pockets that I can keep everything organized and it's clear so hopefully I have no issues with TSA. My only concern because I've heard mixed experiences is my clover thread cutter pendant. I have a pair of nail clippers packed just in case though. It was only a few dollars, so if it doesn't make it through, I won't be heartbroken. But I'm trying to get as many pieces basted as possible, because I know that's the part I am not going to want to do on a plane. But I will be packing more fabric and papers so I can baste once we land and all that. Right now, I have enough pieces basted for eight blocks. That might last me the way out, but definitely not out and back. 

 

I know my carpet isn't the best background, but lots of people use design floors. I'm debating if I want to take the three blocks that don't have the white kites with me. I'm doing my best to sew the background to my blocks as I go so I don't have just kites to sew once all the blocks are complete. So I guess that decided for me. 

I'm still working on my Barnstar quilt. I've managed to get a little ahead of schedule, which is good, because for some reason, I decided that the four days next week before my trip was a full week and I should get six blocks done. Thankfully, I am currently eight blocks ahead of schedule to finish by Thanksgiving, so as long as I stay on track this week (while basting shapes like a mad person), even if I don't do any sewing next week, I won't be behind and need to catch up. At least that's the plan. I hope you have time to get some sewing in this week.

Happy Quilting!

My Barnstar Sampler

So I figured since I've mentioned it a few times, and because it's such a large project, I think my Barnstar Sampler Quilt should get it's own post. About a year ago, I saw a few people in one of the groups I'm in post pictures of their progress on their Barnstar Samplers. Unbeknownst to me, there was a sew a long for this quilt going on in 2023. But I fell in love with this pattern and knew I wanted to make it using 30s prints. But not having the money in my quilting budget to buy the insane amount of fabric I needed for the pattern, I added the book and a few of Lori Holt's fat quarter bundles to my wish list. And my wonderful partner bought the book and a fat quarter bundle for me for Christmas that year. He even bought me a few neutral bundles from her lines to go with it (he does listen when I go on and on, definitely a keeper!). 

The top is made up mostly from Lori's Bee Vintage line, but I think there are some of her Bee Calicos in there as well. I also added to the backgrounds he bought me with some that I had in my stash. So if you can believe it, once all the Christmas celebrations were over, and we were back home, I started sorting fabric and assigning numbers to each print based on the pattern. 

The next day I started cutting and sewing. I did end up ordering a quarter yard of two different dark brown prints because that's all I was short on between all the fabric I had gotten, so I started by making block 2 first. I probably would've finished this quilt top sooner, but I was changing and adjusting things as I went. The author of the pattern is a big fan of sew and flips. I'm not. Sometimes it feels wasteful to me, so I made the flying geese, half square triangles, and square in a square blocks the way I like making them. So there were slight adjustments to the pattern. I find I get more accurate blocks this way, so I'll continue doing it my way. This might account for why I had so much fabric leftover after the quilt was done, but it might also just have been extra fabric built into the pattern to account for miscuts. But I would also like to add, I made my quilt larger than the pattern by adding an extra row of 8" blocks and I still had extra. 

My leftover print fabric after the top was done.

It took me about a month and a half to piece the top. I had a week off of work after Christmas and that made a big dent in the large blocks and I worked on the blocks after work. Some days I would pick fabric for a block and cut it and the next day I would sew them together. By the time I was making the last few 8" blocks, I stopped paying attention to the colors the book suggested and just looked at my quilt top to see what colors would look good in that spot. I think I even moved some of the larger 16" blocks around so the colors were more evenly spread out. 

I knew when I originally saw the pattern that this was going to be one that I would hand quilt. I enjoy the quilting process, but my free motion skills are not up to taking on this large and complex of a quilt. Not only that, I was about to finish my then current hand quilting project and was in need of another one. 

To tie it all together, I decided to do a cross hatch on the background of all the blocks and outline each star. Each star would have it's own quilting design. A sampler of quilting patterns as well as a sampler of quilt blocks. I kept the backing fabric plain, Kona Snow, so that the quilting would show up and if I ever wanted, it could be flipped over and used as a whole cloth quilt (though I doubt I'll ever fall out of love with the top). I'm using Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting for this and it is such a dream to hand quilt with. It shows the texture of the quilting so well and my needle just glides through it. For thread I'm using 12 different colors of Gutermann Hand Quilting thread and matching the thread color to the fabric on the front. It means the quilting doesn't really stand out a lot on the front, but I know from experience, once washed, it will show the patterns I chose really well. 

So how close am I to actually finishing this by Thanksgiving? Well, the background crosshatching is completed. That felt like quite the milestone. I have also quilted the stars around the outside. The 16" an 24" blocks I only quilted about 8" in, because I wanted to sew the binding on because the wing nut on my hoop kept getting caught in the extra batting around the edge. So I made a scrappy binding and it is sewn on except for one corner where I'll be attaching a label once it's done. That's just clipped in place for the moment. I also added a hanging sleeve because I want to enter it in my local guild's quilt show in 2 years when they have the next one. At this point, I have it figured out that I need to quilt six 8" blocks a week to finish it by Thanksgiving, and that accounts for taking a week off for a vacation. Some of the blocks are going to be more intense to quilt and getting 6 done in a week is going to be all I can get done. But then there are also other blocks that I could probably get 6 done in a few days. I'm OK with getting ahead of schedule!

I've also noticed that when I finish a 24" block, it feels like I've gotten so much done. More so than if I finish 2 16" blocks. I don't understand it, but I should finish one more 24" block this week and that will leave me with one more to do. I might quilt a few smaller blocks before tackling that one because I've also found that I don't want to quilt the same block back to back if I can help it. 

So that's where I am with my Barnstar Quilt. In other quilting, I have all but the borders made for the baby quilt for my brother's friend. And when I asked him if he wanted anything specific on the label, he mentioned a verse, but also asked if I could make a quilt for a baby boy another one of his friends is having. 

So in order to fit all this in by Thanksgiving with a week long vacation in there coming up in a few weeks, I ordered 2 charm packs and am going to make another Oh My Stars by Pat Sloan. Mostly because I know I can make one start to finish in less than a week and I can deliver both to him at the same time. I'm still in the block arranging phase, which is a little hard with this line because there are only 9 different prints in 5 colors and I'm using the orange blocks for the stars. I still need to get border fabric for this one, I'm thinking a dark teal which should allow for the orange stars on the border to still pop.

Happy quilting!

One finish & one new start

I'm thinking weekly posts might be a better idea for me. It doesn't feel like I'm making enough progress on any quilt to post more than once a week. Part of that is that hand quilting is a slow process. And I enjoy it. But it doesn't leave much to show every few days. 

But I did finish a quilt on Friday. I finished hand sewing the binding down on my Christmas Pocket Change quilt. It was started last year on National Sew A Jelly Roll Day, which was September 16. So it took almost a year to finish. No big deal. If I remember right, I only got half of the quilt top done that Saturday, or maybe not even that. My niece's birthday falls around the third Saturday in September, so it's not a block that day off the calendar so I can sew day. I don't remember when I finished the top, but according to my quilting journal, I basted it at the end of February. And then it sat because I had no idea how to quilt it. I finally got around to it a few weeks ago after I had posted pictures asking for suggestions. I think the modern/asymmetrical design works pretty good for the pattern and fabrics. This one will be a Christmas gift to Danny's aunt who loves to decorate and has a lot of farmhouse vibes and black/white/grey colors going on. I also love that it's not overly Christmasy and that you can only see Christmas fabric on one or two of the fabrics, so it might stay out through Valentine's day. 

I really wanted to use a solid black for the binding, but when I got to Joann's, they didn't have any solid black fabric. Which was weird, but considering all the issues they've been having lately, not all that surprising. So I went with Kona Gotham Grey, which might've been a slightly better choice, but the black would've been sharp. But I had the day off and wanted to get the binding sewn on and didn't want to drive all over town trying to find solid black fabric.  I was briefly considering using the backing fabric, but I thought lining up the plaid for the binding would drive me nuts, plus the plaid not lining up with the backing would also drive me insane. 

I also started another quilt. But this one I'm getting paid for. Not a lot, but the cost of materials plus a little extra. His friend is having a little girl, so I'll be using some leftover fabric from making my Dresden Plate quilt (still not quilted) to make my Child's Play pattern. I'm still working on writing patterns for a few quilts I've designed in hopes of opening an Etsy pattern shop one day. The fabric line is On the Bright Side by Me & My Sister. The line has been out for a while so I had to chose a different background fabric. I managed to get the blocks sewn this weekend, so now it's just sashing to decide on and the outer border.

Until next week, happy quilting!