A Long While

I've been gone a long while from my blog, and how annoying to discover Google search links automatically appearing in my post!! Took me a while to figure out how to get rid of that unwanted feature. I suspect that is more for Google's benefit than mine! 

This year has gone by in a flash. At the beginning of July, I realized half a year had elapsed, and now here we are almost into September. The most momentous thing that happened this year is that my younger son got married earlier this month--his first marriage and her second. We welcomed his bride and her two children to our family, ages 14 and 7. 

I spent much of the earlier part of this year doing my work for the Maine Quilts show, which happened at the end of July. I have worked for quilt show now for nine years, and I'm thinking next year might be my last. I'm not getting any younger, and I really would like to spend more time with my family at camp during the summer months. A real vacation might be a nice idea too.

I really haven't gotten much quilting done this year, which is a crying shame because I have so much beautiful fabric. There's another good reason to give up my activities with Maine Quilts. The neutral strings quilt, which I called Cafe au Lait, from my last post was finished. 

I like this quilt so much, and I'd love to make another one, maybe in diamonds, especially since the bag of strings I was working from doesn't look like it was touched. An altogether too common story. 

I pieced the backing in an effort to use up some tans I no longer wanted. 

And I quilted it with a pantograph called Malochite, which was interesting and fun to do.

In April my quilt group held a charity sew day, and we made this pattern called Iceberg from Villa Rosa Designs. Precut friendly, makes a great lap size, and it's easy to sew. 

I quilted it with a pantograph called Knit 1 Purl 2, which I hadn't tried before. I liked the way it looked, but I wish I could have kept those lines a little more even.  

I got two more quilts finished in July. One was a UFO that was several years old, Bitcoin, a Bonnie Hunter design. Another quilt that will be a favorite of mine. And, in an altogether too common story, the strip bin doesn't look like I touched it, even though there are 3,330 rectangles in the quilt. I may have also, ahem, cut more fabric as I went along making the quilt. 

And I used everything in this quilt, civil war repros, batiks, calicos, modern fabrics, florals, novelties, kids prints, you name it. And some of them are really old, like from decades ago. It all went together so well.  

This was, as Diane Harris from Stash Bandit likes to say, a ridiculous amount of fun. I had a ball picking out each set of matching rectangles to sew together and moving them around on the design wall. The rectangles finished to 1 x 2, and I am working on another Bitcoin with slighter wider rectangles. There might also be another one in my future with bigger rectangles.    

My other finish in July was this quilt called From Our House, a free pattern from Riley Blake Designs. I used the same fabrics from Riley Blake that were used in the pattern because I liked the colors so much, and I liked the look of a textured solid-like fabric. This is more  modern for me, which is something I'm gravitating towards more and more. It would probably be more accurate to say modern traditional. 

I had a friend quilt it because I was running out of time before quilt show, and I love how it turned out. The pantograph is called Bayside, I think.  

 

December Finish

The weatherman predicted 6-10" of snow for us today, beginning about 10:00 this morning. It finally started snowing at 8:30 this evening. 6-10" ? I don't think so. 

I finished Wiggle Time Oceana yesterday and gave it a good washing so it would be soft and cuddly. 

 

The quilting looks like swirling water to me, and I love it. The Riptide pantograph was perfect. 

I also finished the four small bowl cozies for my kids. The base of these is about 5 inches. I have cut out four of the larger size and will be working on those over the next week.
 

Ribbon Candy, a pattern by Doug Leko of Antler Quilt Designs, is the next one being moved into my five-project quilt rotation. And I'm quilting it with a pantograph called Ribbon Candy, haha. I finished this top earlier this year, but I don't think I ever blogged about it. 

These were all scraps left over from my Holiday Solstice quilt that I made in 2020. I used up a bunch of different white-on-white scraps for the background too. I used the wrong side of quite a few of them to make the print less noticeable.

 

This Debbie Mumm print is what I'm using for the backing. 

The last several days of the Advent Calendar have consisted of a bunch of interesting notions--a threaded needle case, which I've never seen before; a little redwork kit, which will be given to my daughter-in-law; a spool of beeswax, which I will definitely use....

..... a zippered hard case, very nice; fingernail art stickers, which my granddaughter will love....

.... and this thread cutter that uses an old rotary cutter blade, which I've also never seen before. 

Fun, fun, fun!

Shar's Quilts

Like many other places around the country, we've had record breaking warm temperatures in November. And shortly we'll have record breaking cold temperatures! Like night times temps in the 20s for us. 

I'm caught up to date on November's row in my temperature quilt. Those cold blues are finally starting to make an appearance. 

My son remarried last year, and it turns out my new daughter-in-law's mother is a quilter. Or at least she used to be, up until 7 or 8 years ago. She made a bunch of tops and then seemingly couldn't figure out how to get them quilted. 

She took at least one to a longarm quilter and apparently wasn't happy with it. Then she bought a sit-down longarm and was too intimidated to use it. Fast forward, the quilts are still not quilted, so after Christmas last year I offered to quilt them for her. 

The brown, green and teal was the first one I finished for her, and I thought it turned out really well. I used a teal thread and the Daisy Swirl pantograph from Willow Leaf Studio to mimic the flowers in that light print. 

The next one was the Dora quilt, which was supposed to be for her granddaugher, who is now 13 and might find it too juvenile. No idea what Shar plans to do with it now. My son's daughter is now 6, and it might be perfect for her. 

I quilted the Dora quilt with the Twofold Feathers pantograph from Urban Elementz in purple thread. This is one of my favorite pantographs, and I thought it looked good on all the open spaces in this quilt. 

Both of these quilts I finished in April. 

I have one more of Shar's quilts in my possession, and it is this chain link kind of block. I've never seen this design before--it looks very modern to me. Has anyone else ever come across it?

And it's actually not a block design. The half hexie shapes are sewn together in long rows, and the center section is sewn in long rows, then all three rows are sewn together. Interesting.

There's some fullness in the print strips between the hexies, so I am using a less dense pantograph so hopefully no tucks anywhere. For the thread color, it didn't seem like much of anything would show up on that busy print, so I went with a variegated brown, which I thought looked okay in the hexies. 

A few more passes tomorrow on Shar's quilt, and maybe a few more blocks for the Scary Faces quilt.

What I'm Working On

It has been about 6 months since the last time I posted. It was not a great year last year in many regards, and the new year didn't begin much better. I've had some different health issues to deal with, plus a surgery in January; and I'm hoping all of that is behind me now. 

Last year was also a dry year for quilting. I finished exactly three quilts, and all of them went to other homes. None of them were UFOs, and I have so many. However, that is not to say no quilting got done. I've amassed a small pile of finished tops, so it's time to work on finishing them up. 

Part of the problem was the pineapple quilt. I loaded it on the frame in June and quilted two rows. In a thread color I didn't like, in a pattern I didn't like. Took me months to rip it out, and I was so dejected that it sat on the frame for more months, then I finally just took it off the frame altogether. It wasn't until December that I finally got back in the saddle and quilted this Christmas tree skirt for my son. That was my third and final finish for 2021. 

In January I thought again about trying to get the pineapple quilt quilted. I got as far as locating a new pantograph that I liked a lot. 

In February I made one of Mary Johnson's strippy quilts to try out the pantograph. I liked it even more.

Yes, it's a pineapple.

In March I finally reloaded the pineapple quilt and quilted it with the pineapple pantograph in a bright yellow variegated thread, and I absolutely love it. Sigh of relief. 

The pantograph is called Pina Colada from Urban   Elementz.These photos are a preview of the quilting. The quilt is now off the frame, and I'm getting ready to sew the binding on. Soon as it's finished I'll put a photo on the blog.

 

Another project I've been working on for quite a while is these small embroideries from a couple of years ago. They are from an embroidery collection called Baltimore Revisited by Anita Goodesign. My blocks finish at 5-1/4", and there are 36 of them in my quilt. Each block is part of a set of two, one with colored thread and one redwork block, so 18 different designs. 

Each block is a complete little quilt, quilted and bound; and I am sewing all of them together using the potholder method, which is a different style of quilt-as-you-go quilting. My blocks will be set together in a 6 x 6 format, and I have the top two rows completely sewn together as of this morning. It's all hand sewing, so it takes time. 

If you are curious about the potholder method, visit Wendy Caton Reed's blog, The Constant Quilter, and search within the blog for "potholder quilts". Wendy is an award winning quilter, and she's made quite a few quilts in the potholder style. She is located here in Maine, and she came to my quilt chapter a couple of different times to teach the method. You can see beautiful quilts that she's made in the potholder style on her blog. 

There is also an interesting article about potholder quilts here:

https://www.quilts.com/suzys_fancy/potholder-quilts-of-maine/

OMG for October Done

Woo hoo, made it under the wire again, and two more UFOs bite the dust! One is Yankee Puzzle #1, and I'm donating it to a local veterans' shelter.

The other one is Stella Blue. I think my friend Koleen did an excellent job choosing the colors and fabrics.

See in the upper left corner of the photo, how five of the flying geese blocks are flying the wrong way? I panicked momentarily, thinking I got them backwards; but I double checked the pattern, and it's correct.Not that it matters, I suppose.

I used a pantograph that was more dense than I usually use, but it is the sort of thing I think Koleen would have chosen had she quilted it herself. In the end I very much liked it.

There are some excellent finishes this month. See what others have accomplished here.

I'm aiming to finish two more quilts in November. The blocks for the Missouri Two Step are all put together, just need to add some borders. And I have a BQ2 quilt top finished and ready to quilt. 

I made this sewing gadget holder a week or so ago. The pattern was given to me by a friend, and unfortunately it wasn't attributed. I hunted for it on the internet but no luck. Anyway, it is nothing more than a quilted cover with pockets that slips over a freestanding acrylic 10" x 8" picture frame. Quick to sew and oh so handy. 

Not having made one before and not having a photo in front of me, I didn't realize that so little of the base fabric would show on the front. This is the back of the sleeve, and I really wanted to see more of this fabric on the front. Had I known, I would have used my focus fabric instead of the red for the bottom pocket. I have more of the selvage fabric, so maybe I'll gift this one and make another to keep. 

I also made a bunch of soap this month. Candy corn... 

Beehive soap, scented with honey...

And animal soaps for my granddaughter.

I like to admire my soaps, so I line them up across the windowsill in my kitchen, lol. DGD stayed with us a couple weekends ago, and she piled all the soap bars into her big teapot and played with them all weekend. Sometimes the simplest things are the most fun.

365 Challenge -- March 13 to April 2

I worked on bunches of 365 blocks this past week and all weekend long and finished up three weeks worth, mostly. I'm still missing three blocks, one from this past week and two from a couple weeks ago. Hopefully I'll get caught up with those this week. I hate getting behind because it's so much work to get caught up, but that's life.

New concepts Kathryn introduced over the last few weeks--mitered corners, units set on point, log cabin style blocks, and partial seams. We're getting the full treatment, especially when you consider that these are 3" blocks. Imagine how much easier it would be to apply these techniques to a larger block. By the time we finish the first dark border, we'll be able to handle just about anything.

I think the tan in that one block is too light, and I expect I'll have to remake it. But I'll wait and see what it looks like on the design wall. I had to remake the checkerboard block above because there wasn't enough contrast in those tiny half-inch squares. Sometimes you just don't know til you make it up.

This past week we worked on two of the borders that go round the central medallion. It was a lovely change to work with some lighter colored fabrics, and there are more light colored blocks coming up this month. Later this month we also sew together the central medallion with the first round of dark borders. Can't wait.

No finishes for March, didn't have time for much else this month, but I dug out this small quilt and decided it was time to get it quilted. This was an experimental piece, 15" x 18", from a long, looooong time ago. It was a technique developed by Pat Coulter called frigid piecing, so called because every single piece is inset, and freezer paper was applied to the back of each piece for accuracy. It is a lot of extra work to make a template for every single piece in the quilt, but it worked exceedingly well because every single seam I sewed is perfect--no puckers. Her website is still online, and if you google "frigid piecing", you'll find her notes on the subject.

Naturally it sat in the closet for years, because that's how I operate, lol. Actually it was because I had no idea how to quilt it. Recently I signed up for a class on Craftsy called Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot, and Jacquie teaches something called matchstick quilting. Thought I'd try it out on this small piece. In the photo I've quilted lines at different angles 1" apart, and I'll go back and quilt in between those lines 1/4" apart. I am marking with painter's tape, and it's working very well.

My Christmas cactus is in full bloom this week. Strange plant. I have another one that I've had for two or three years, one that had white blossoms and was labeled a summer cactus. Stupid thing hasn't bloomed since I bought it. If it doesn't bloom by the end of the year, I'm trading it in for another model.

Even though we just had another snowstorm with a 6" snow dump, I found these strawberries from California on sale at the grocer's for $1.88 a container. That's a really good price for my neck of the woods, so we bought a bunch, cored them and flash froze them. They're huge, aren't they?