Honeycomb

Honeycomb is another one of the little kits I picked up at quilt show last year, along with the True Blue quilt I had on the blog a couple of posts ago. It's another pattern with fabrics by Kim Diehl. Her method of construction for this quilt was to sew background squares together, then applique the hexagons onto the background, maybe so the background diamonds would appear unbroken.

I decided that method was not for me, so I drafted a paper piecing pattern and have been making them that way. Row 1 is a little off, so I am restitching it, and there's one more row to be added to the quilt, plus borders.

I worked on the quilt today and before this, on Friday evening. Coincidentally, on Saturday I happened to be cruising Wanda's Exuberant Color blog and saw a spiral baby quilt she just finished that she referred to in an earlier post as Fractured blocks. Her quilt was based on a quilt from Kathy Doughty's book, Making Quilts With Kathy Doughty.

I like Wanda's quilt very much, and while I was contemplating how I might draft the block for it, I realized the paper piecing pattern from Honeycomb would work just fine, minus a couple of extra seam lines. Love it when an idea comes together.

The Honeycomb blocks are 2" finished, so I kept that same size for the units in the Fractured blocks. This is one block, 6", and I want to make a 9- or 12-block quilt. I did order Kathy Doughty's book because there were other quilts in the book I liked, and I'll wait until the book arrives before I make any more Fractured blocks. Some of the units are mirror imaged, and I want to see exactly what Kathy's instructions are for making the block sets.

It was in the 40s over the weekend, and I was thankful that nearly all of the ice on the walkway and driveway melted. That would be just in time for a winter storm watch Monday night into Tuesday. Could be snow, sleet, or freezing rain. Great.

365 Challenge

The other project I've been very preoccupied with this month is the 365 Challenge quilt. It is billed by designer Kathryn Kerr as the ultimate sampler quilt. Make a block every day for a year, and you'll have this amazing 90" square quilt. Kathryn published one block a day for all of 2016, and she is repeating the Challenge again this year.

Like so many other things, I learned about the Challenge from someone else's blog and started to work on it last January. I decided to stick with Kathryn's original color plan, blue and brown; but after I finished two weeks worth of blocks, I decided I didn't like my fabrics and, you guessed it, threw it in the closet.



Kathryn has a new Gallery on her website with several finished quilts. They're fabulous, and I was inspired to give it another try. I switched out the background fabrics I used last year for a single dark dark background, and I also eliminated the greenish blues I used in some of the blocks. I am also introducing more browns, and I like them much better now. We'll see how far I get this time.

This is the first week's worth of blocks, Jan 1 - Jan 8. January 1 fell on a Sunday, and I usually consider Mondays to be the beginning of my week, so there are eight blocks from week 1.

The dark borders are mostly 3" blocks, with just a very few 6" blocks. By the second week, there are starting to be some smaller pieces. Kathryn promises there are no pieces that finish smaller than 1/2". It's definitely a challenge working with such small pieces, but the real challenge, I think, is making a block every day for a year...

Two tools have proved to be very useful with these small blocks. One is the Strip Stick. Available in several different lengths, the Strip Stick has a piece of wood or something hard inside which helps make for a very flat seam when you iron on it. I've been using the 9" Stick for my 3" blocks.

The Stick is also rounded on one side, which makes it very easy to sort of isolate a particular seam for pressing, particularly useful with a 3" block.

The other tool that has really been helpful is what I know to be referred to as a tailor's clapper. I've had mine for years and originally used it in garment sewing. I use it now to set on top of a unit or block I've just pressed. The wood draws the moisture out of the fabric and makes for a nice flat, crisp seam.

I got the idea to use the clapper from a local Studio 180 (Deb Tucker's Hunter Star company) instructor who was doing a presentation for a quilt group. She had one and was selling them, and I thought it was a brilliant way to use it. The clapper she had didn't look like mine. The top part with the points was missing, there was just the bottom part. Nancy's Notions has one for 20 bucks, but you might be able to find one for less somewhere else.

Monday I'll have another set of seven blocks done.

Farm Girl Friday

I first became aware of the Farm Girl Vintage quilt at our quilt show last October. One of our chapter members completed one and entered it in the show, and I liked it soon as I saw it. I bought the book and soon after found Lori's website and a FGV Quiltalong she did in 2015. Her quiltalong consisted of a weekly Friday post about two of the blocks in the quilt, an occasional construction tip, and sometimes one or more alternate projects, like smaller quilts, pillows, aprons, and so on.

For the last two months, I've been sharing the links with our chapter members and working on the blocks. So far I've finished 15/48 blocks and 39/106 flying geese for one of the borders. Some of the blocks are pretty easy, some are more challenging. I'm making the quilt with 30s repros and using as many of my scraps as I can. I've added the sashing to just the first block right now. Here are the other blocks I've made.

The Milk Cow block is not in the book, but there's a Milk Day block, so I decided I needed a cow to go with it. I purchased the pattern separately from Lori's website. Definitely a challenge but worth the effort. Very cute!

We had Baby Girl last weekend for three delightful days. She's seven months old now and such a good baby, always smiling.

2016--It's A Wrap

The last time I posted was two months ago. I guess that's par for the course. I'd like to try and do better this year. The last several months were busy ones, with our chapter quilt show, fall clean up, winterizing the house and cars, a death in hubby's family and a trip to Maryland for the funeral, hubby's knee surgery, weekends with Baby Girl, the holidays and all that entails, and as much quilting and knitting as I could fit in. I finished 18 quilts in 2016, which is a record for me, and in a variety of sizes, from queen to to miniature. 12 of those were UFOs, and it makes me exceedingly happy to see them finished. 8 were charitable donations for Quilts of Valor and NICU. This year I want to continue to focus on quilts for donation and the UFOs, and I'd like to make some quilts for family as well.

A little over half of the quilts I finished last year were linked in the sidebar. What follows never made it on the blog.

A couple years back, these Turning 20 quilts were going to be one twin-sized; but I changed my mind and threw it in the closet. Last summer I dug it back out and made two crib quilts out of the blocks. One was donated, the other went to my granddaughter. Her room is pink and gray, and the quilt adds a lovely touch of color.

Credit where credit is due: Turning 20 Book 9 by Tricia Cribbs

Charity Baby #3 is called Strip Mine, from a Quilt University class by Patti Anderson. I've seen the pattern all over the place, so it's not unique to her; but her method of construction might be. A good scrap buster and easy enough to sew.

True Blue is a 24" square quilt, from a kit I bought one summer at quilt show. Both the pattern and the fabrics are from Kim Diehl.

Charity Baby #5, Jumping for Joy, was from an article in Quiltmaker Nov/Dec 2016 by Paula Stoddard. That issue arrived at the right time for a quick and easy retreat quilt. I finished the top at our October retreat in Jackman and got it quilted a week or so after.

I was in the mood to make a Christmas quilt this year, so I dug this UFO out of the closet and finished it. I appliqued the snowflakes in the blue blocks with my embroidery machine, then machine quilted it with a snowflake design. I consider it a winter quilt, not really a Christmas quilt. We have lots of gray days in Maine, and I like this quilt because it's cheery.

Warm Wynter Wishes was designed by a friend of mine when she was designing and selling patterns, but this one was never published. After a couple of years of pestering, she finally let me make it. She is now working on a sequel that she plans to share.

The last quilt I finished for 2016 was QOV #3, Stars Over America. I think I used every star fabric I owned, then quilted the whole thing with stars. The stars were paper pieced.

My goal for 2016 was six quilts of valor, which obviously was too ambitious. This year I'm aiming for four.

Credit where credit is due: pattern called Steve's Star, by Steve Bennett (Judy's husband), from Judy Martin's Piece and Play book.

One last project--a selection of small bags for Daughter-in-Law for Christmas. The cloth bags are from Lazy Girl Designs--Sweetpea Pod, Becca, and Fobio. The black vinyl mesh bags are from the pattern Zip It, Screen Play II. My DIL carries a smallish purse, so the large Becca works well for her. Not me, lol, I carry everything under the sun in my purse, so I need a big leather bag.


I will be busy the rest of the week trying to catch up on others' 2016 year end posts. Happy New Year to all.

Quilters Madder

This is my finished top from Lori's latest quiltalong, Quilters Madder. It's a reproduction of a small antique quilt that Lori saw at quilt show, and we were supposed to use madders for the fabric. I don't know how in the heck to identify a madder, so I picked out a collection of Jo Morton fabrics I had in the cabinet and used those.

I had all of the blocks put together at retreat but wanted to lay them out on the design wall before I sewed them together. Huh, after I laid it out, I wound up ripping apart 7 of the 8 Old Maid's puzzle blocks so I could turn those little bowtie units to match the antique. I liked that effect better.  I couldn't discern the pattern for setting the blocks together from either Lori's quilt or the antique quilt, so I set them the way I wanted.

Haven't got this quilted yet, hopefully in the next week or so. Thanks, Lori, for a fun quiltalong! You can see other Quilters Madder quilts here.

Jackman Retreat

Last weekend was Fall Retreat up in the mountains of Jackman, ME. Twelve of us from quilt group were in attendance, along with other quilters from around the state for a total of 25 quilters. Despite the fact that it was a tad crowded, we all had a great time and got lots of work done.

The drive up was frightful--rain for most of the two and a half hour drive. 20 minutes away from Jackman, the rain changed over to all snow. The snow was wet and slushy, and driving up on the mountain was more than a little hair raising. After we got settled at the resort, it snowed hard the rest of the afternoon, then changed back to rain. By Sunday, the roads were all clear so a nice drive back home. This was the view from our work room.

A number of tops were completed over the three-day retreat, and this was one of my favorites. The fabrics were all from Jinny Beyer, and I'm guessing it was a kit.

Joyce, a new quilter we met, must have had most of her top together before she arrived and then finished it at retreat. This was her original design.

I spent two weeks before retreat cutting and kitting up about 12 quilts, knowing full well I might touch 3 of them at retreat. And now, all that work is done! I worked on a quilt of valor; a small quilt called "Quilters Madder" from a new
quiltalong on Lori's blog,  humblequilts.blogspot.com; and Charity Baby #5, "Jumping for Joy" from the latest issue of Quiltmaker magazine. The quilt in the magazine was quite a bit larger, but mine is only 36" square, which is the size our quilt group has been making this year and last. I'll bind it in the blue.

 Halloween was Monday, of course, so I made this Sweet Pea Pod from Lazy Girl Designs from black vinyl mesh and crammed it full of candy for, I guess what would be my step-grandson, who lives away. My son, his wife, her son, and Baby Girl all came up for a visit on Sunday, and I was very happy they were all still here when I got back from Jackman. I added a band of Halloween fabric to the mesh.

Baby Girl is 4 months old now and a very happy little baby.

Tacoma Quilt Show

My problems with Blogger have apparently been resolved, and thanks to those who wrote to me about the email forwarding issue. I learned a few things I didn't know before.

I spent the latter half of September and the first half of October scrambling to get some quilts finished for our chapter quilt show, which was the weekend of October 15. Not only did I have three quilts to finish, to include two big ones, but I was also on a couple of committees for the show itself, so lots to do.

We do a quilt show every other year, and our theme this year was Log Cabin. Log cabin quilts abounded in the show--nearly a quarter of all the quilts in the show were log cabins. 

I put seven quilts in the show, including two log cabins. One was a 24" mini hourglass log cabin, which appeared on my blog here, and this was the other one, Crooked Cabins. 196 six-inch blocks and all paper pieced from a pattern with crooked logs in the Sew Precise software  (Electric Quilt Co). It started as a block swap between four online friends, and then I spent the next 15 years making additional blocks here and there. Truthfully, I never thought I would get this done. Gave it away just yesterday to a dear friend who needed a proper quilt for her bed.

 The setting for the quilt came from a quilt I saw at the Heritage Quilt Museum in Lancaster, PA some years back. That particular quilt used squares instead of logs and had fewer blocks than mine, so I played around with the corner blocks in EQ7 until I came up with a setting I liked.

I started Indian Summer last fall; and when the trees were finally bare, I lost interest in the quilt and back into the closet it went. Decided to get it finished this year for quilt show, and my husband claimed it right after the show ended.

The pattern was "Fall, Leaves, Fall" from Cozy Quilts.

Someone gave me this pantograph, with loops and leaves, and I love it!

Thanksgiving Dinner, measuring 22" x 28", was another longtime UFO that I finished in time for quilt show. It was a pattern from Pine Tree Lodge Designs (which may not exist anymore), called "Turkey Time". Love that turkey! I enjoy paper piecing; but if I remember correctly, templates were used for all of the piecing. Although you can't see it, the stems on the apples are three-dimensional.

Another mini that went into the show was Cascadia, from a quiltalong on humblequilts.blogspot.com. I discovered it quite a while after the quiltalong ended, but the directions are still on Lori's blog. She does these mini quiltalongs from time to time, and they all seem to be based on antique quilts that she's seen one place or another. She's just finished another quiltalong called Quilters Madder, and I cut out the pieces for that one yesterday. The Cascadia quilt measures roughly 16" x 17".

The other two quilts I put in the show were my Dakota Farmer, from the last post, and It's Not Plaid, which was on the blog here.

You can see more of the quilts from our quilt show, including the quilt that won Viewer's Choice, here.