June Finish

We seem to be in a pattern of mostly clouds and rain this spring and summer. At the beginning of June we had a few days in the upper 80s and even low 90s, and we might have had only one mostly sunny day since then. I'm sure the tourists are not happy.

I can't say I mind because work at home has kept me from spending much time at camp anyway; and if it's cloudy and rainy outside, then the neighborhood is quiet, and I can get my work done. I do love my peace and quiet. 

I haven't had a lot of time to sew either, but sewing still gets done behind the scenes. I finished the binding and label on this quilt yesterday. It is the Tis the Season block of the month from Missouri Star Quilt Co. I worked on last year. 

 

I took this one to Whippersnappers in Manchester for quilting because it was too big to fit on my machine. I don't know what design she used, but it has small snowflakes in it and some quilting that reminds me of strings of pearls, and I just really liked it. 

The quilt finishes at 82" x 91", so a good double bed size. 

Whippersnappers also did the quilting for my Letters to Santa quilt, which is getting the binding treatment today. Yay! I anticipate this one will be another finish for the month.

A Couple Other March Finishes

It was 40 degrees when I got up this morning, which was a nice change from below freezing temps. April has arrived in Maine, and that means less snow, longer days, warmer temperatures, and... flowers! My daffodils have been up for quite a while, but they are refusing to bloom until it warms up.

I finished this little strippy last month for my granddaughter. I was going to donate it to a good cause, but she saw the top and wanted to know if she could have it. Of course! It's a perfect little nap quilt for spring.

I quilted this in a variegated pink thread, and the daisy swirl pantograph looks so nice on it.
 

The pink flannel back will make it soft and cuddly.

Wiggle Time in 30s repros is finished too, which used up more fabric scraps from the quilt chapter bin. It takes most of a fat quarter to make one row, and I only had enough fabric for three rows. So I added a row from my own stash and duplicated one fabric for the fifth row.

For the backing, I pieced together larger chunks of that green and yellow fabric and used up most of that. Then from the 30s scraps that were left, I cut and pieced a scrappy row on the back. I really like this, maybe more than the front, lol.

Tis the Season came back from the longarmer about a week and a half ago. When I see the lovely stitching that a computerized longarm will do, I'm tempted to trade in my Tin Lizzie. It's a whole lot of money though, so I guess I'll think about it for another year. 

I have the binding sewn to the front and have yet to start hand stitching it to the back. 

My focus for the rest of this month is to finish the top of my Christmas Words quilt. This was a Moda QAL called Letters to Santa that started last July and finished at the end of November. I've been wanting to make a words quilt, so I issued a Christmas Words challenge to my quilt chapter for this year's Maine Quilts show, because the show theme this year is Christmas in July. It simply won't do for me not to get my own quilt finished, so I have to get this done!!

There are 6 or 8 filler blocks scattered throughout the quilt to even out the rows--trees, wreaths, stars, gift boxes, etc. For only one of those fillers, I wanted to make a palm tree, just to remind myself of this year's theme. I'll have to locate a paper pieced pattern somewhere. 

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!

Bowl Cozy Day

Brrrrr, it was a very cold 16 degrees when I got up this morning, but still no snow in the forecast. Which isn't a bad thing. 

The last several days of the Advent Calendar gifties have consisted of a good mix of notions and project ideas. Along with the Parking sign, there was a small embroidery project. Neither one is really my thing, but my daugher-in-law suggested that a little duck in a charm for a necklace for my granddaughter would probably be well received. A great idea, and I'll wait til next year to make that up. the charm is tiny, about an inch in diameter. 

There was a button jar, to include a little yellow duck button (the company mascot) with directions to make a pincushion top for the jar. Using one of the unused squares from the charm pack from Day 3. 

The next day featured some blue fabric and a pattern for this snowflake pillow, using the buttons in the button jar. 

Yesterday's giftie was a needle threader and needles. Haha, they should have got someone to make a needle threader with a duck. 

Today's giftie is a stashbuilding yard of white on white fabric and a couple spools of cotton thread. 

Personally speaking, I may not use everything in the Missouri Star Advent Calendar box, but whoever put this together put a lot of thought into choosing useful items and fun projects. I have already decided to do this again next year. 

I haven't made quite as much progress as I had hoped on my current projects, but I am moving forward. Wiggle Time Oceana is on the frame, and I've made several passes. The Riptide pantograph seemed like a good choice for a quilt that reminds me of ocean waves and uses some ocean-themed fabrics. 

 

The Cozy Cup mini top plus one mug rug is complete. I still have to add the side borders to the other two mug rugs. 

Whoever designed this quilt did an odd thing with the sashing between the rows. The directions had you add a narrow 1/2" strip to the top and bottom of each cup and snowflake. After I had the top together, I realized it would have been easier, faster and less wasteful to omit the strips on the top and bottom of the cups and just use a wider piece for the sashing. No idea what they were thinking. This would make a great giftie for someone, so it's likely I'll make another; and I'll make the adjustment for the sashing. 

Before I can get these items quilted up, I need to finish the quilt on the frame and get some bowl cozies made. 

Anything that is not quilting is what I call utility sewing, and mostly I don't like to do it. Only occasionally will I make household items like curtains, a tote bag, or anything like that. I did, however, offer to make 4 small and 4 large bowl cozies for my kids, to use up a LOT of yardage of vegetable fabric I acquired at a very cheap price. Why so much? Because I thought I might use it for adult cover ups (bibs), only my quilt chapter never worked on that again as a group project.

So naturally I'm going to use every shortcut I can come up with to make this kind of sewing as painless as possible, so I bought precut bowl cozy batting from Gypsy Quilter. Turns out Creative Grids got together with Gypsy Quilter and made a set of 2 bowl cozy templates which are the same size as Gypsy Quilters batting, which will make it faster to cut out the fabric and more batting. Brilliant!

I made a set of two bowl cozies long enough ago that I forgot some of the little improvements I made to the method, which I remembered after I had most of the first one together last night. 

As I was getting ready to topstitch the outside of it, I realized I had no idea whether my thread was all cotton or a cotton/poly blend, which could be flammable in the microwave. I still have some of the Coats & Clark blends that I am using up, so it very well could have been one of those. So I wound up taking it all back apart, ripping the thread out of the one half, and today I'll put it all back together with the proper thread. I can also include some of those method improvements too.

One side of my bowl cozies is yellow onions, and the other side is red bell peppers. Once I get the first one together, I figure I can put three more together assembly line fashion, to limit how many times I have to change the thread colors. 

Fall Has Arrived

I took pictures for a blog post, and then kept putting it off until....four months later! Why? Well, my work for quilt show kept me busy straight through the end of July. Two days after quilt show ended, I tested positive for covid. I managed to outrun it for two and a half years, and it finally caught up with me. I counted my blessings that it wasn't even as bad as my worst cold. Hubby is still a covid virgin, hasn't contracted it yet.

In September I had the second of two planned surgeries this year and am still recovering from that. All of my health issues have now been resolved, and I got a clean bill of health from my PCP earlier this week. Yay!

My activities have been very restricted since the most recent surgery, so my recovery therapy was this 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I built a few puzzles decades ago but started building again a couple of years ago. My recovery therapy after the January surgery was a 4000-piece world map puzzle. Loved it. 

So this puzzle was a thousand pieces, and the dimensions listed on the box are 425mm x 300mm, which works out to be around 16" x 11". The pieces are about the size of a dime. 

 

I did manage to get the whole puzzle together but forgot to take a picture of it. The landscape wasn't difficult; but the sky, which looks to be about half the puzzle, was very challenging. Naughty words were uttered. 

Sitting at the sewing machine was also an allowed recovery activity. I made a bunch of single blocks from new projects I wanted to try out; and I finished some tops, some quite old, that went into an ever growing pile of quilts to be quilted. Nothing actually finished though. 

Tis the Season, a BOM from Missouri Star Quilt Co, was one of the tops that got finished just a few weeks ago. I loved the colors when I saw it, and the blocks were not difficult to piece. This one went into the RTQ pile. 

This quilt, called Scrappy Mini from 'Paper Pieced Mini Quilts' by Wendy Voster, was a project I started this past summer to use up a few scraps. I  added the borders last night and batted it up for quilting. This little quilt will measure about 9-1/2" square when finished. 

I finished this quilt top last week. I went on a bus trip with my quilt chapter a couple of weeks ago and was introduced to the concept of a 3-yard quilt. This was one of two 3-yard bundles I bought at one of the quilt shops, along with a couple of pattern booklets. I liked this pattern because it reminded me of the BQ quilt series from Maple Island Quilts. 

3-yard quilts is a concept developed by Donna Robertson from Fabric Cafe. She has a number of booklets with patterns that are quick to make. This one is not going into the RTQ pile--I hope to get it loaded this weekend and get it quilted for a little boy in the family.

One note about these 3-yard quilts. They are based on fabric that is 44" wide. I prewashed the fabrics in this bundle and wound up short. There was supposed to be another row, but I just didn't have enough fabric. So either don't prewash or buy extra.

Over the summer, I started hearing about temperature quilts. Evidently the idea has been out there for several years. After a little research, I thought it was an interesting idea for a quilt and decided to give it a try.

The inspiration for my design was a pattern called "Temperature Quilt" from Canuck Quilter Designs. Her quilt uses rectangular blocks, but they undulate in regular waves across the width of the quilt. It was more interesting to me to place the colored squares within the block based on whether the daytime temperature went up or down from the previous day. If the colored squares remain in the center of the block, then the daytime temp did not deviate from the day before. I like the unpredictability of this approach. Maybe it's going to look like a hot mess, lol. but I like it. 

I also liked the simplicity of this design, and I knew it was something I could stick with every day for a year. We're talking 3 or 4 pieces in a block, so that's quick to sew every morning. I had no idea about yardage requirements, so I decided to use solids that I know I can reorder if I run out of a particular color. Plus the quilt looks modern to me, and I like that too.

I'm using 12 warm colors and 11 cool colors for my quilt. Each color represents a 4-degree temperature spread. After working on the first three months, I recognized that there are three or four sets of colors that are too close in value. Moving the colors up, down, or middle helps to make the temperature changes more visual. I'm debating whether to start another one sometime next year for a different location, and I would look at changing up either the colors, the temperature spread for each color, or both. 

I started my temperature quilt on August 1, and the months of August, September and October are all sewn together. November should have more blues in the blocks, but Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be 70 degrees, so maybe not, lol. The weather has been crazy all year.

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/

New Year, New Projects

The weather has been bone chilling this month, especially at night; but we don't have much snow on the ground. When we first moved to Maine nearly 20 years ago, the snow might be up to my waist some winters, but not anymore. Snowmobilers and skiers aren't happy about it, but I'm fine with it. Pandemic or not, I've stayed in because it's just too darn cold to go out. 

The holidays passed uneventfully. My sister-in-law was here for two weeks, and it was nice to have the company. We worked on a puzzle together, something I hadn't done in years; and I enjoyed it so much that I hauled out a few more and built those too. The last one was 2000 pieces, and I have one left I haven't built yet that is 3000 pieces. That might be big enough, lol. Ravensburger, whom I heard from my SIL is a premiere puzzle maker, has one that is over 40,000 pieces. Can't imagine. 

Hardly any sewing got done in December because of the festivities and company, but I did manage to get the Holiday Extravaganza top put together. These fabrics were a collection from Alison Glass, and I just love them. Not a clue how I'm going to quilt this yet. 

Nothing much got done in January either, but the Christmas Cards I was working on as a leaders and enders project is now a finished top as well. The letters are machine embroidered, and the tiny Christmas bulbs make them look like strings of lights. No clue how I am going to quilt this one either. 

I'm not in the mood for One Monthly Goal anymore, preferring to start new projects and skip around between the new ones and the old ones. I updated it and left it in the sidebar simply as a space holder so I could remember how to do the html if I go back to it at some point. There seem to be a bunch of sew alongs that started in January, and I decided to follow along with a couple of them. 

Michelle Renee Hiatt's Best of the 60s mystery quilt actually started in mid December. This block of the week focuses on the use of Studio 180's Star 60 ruler; and as you can see, all of the blocks so far have been 60-degree pieced triangles. Clues up through clue 11 have been posted, but I've only worked up through clue 8 because I am having a bit of trouble with fabric choices. That should be resolved by clue 13, and then I can get back to work. 

There are three of each block so far, and I'm wondering if the entire quilt will be pieced blocks or if there will be any plain filler blocks.
 

I've had a couple sizes of Strip Sticks for quite a while, and they're working especially well to press open all the seams in these blocks. Batiks press up well anyway, but the strip stick helps my blocks stay nice and flat. 

For those who might not know, strip sticks are wood sticks covered with a thin layer of padding and some muslin. They are flat on one side and rounded on the other, making them especially handy for ironing strip sets. In blocks like these triangular blocks where there are a lot of seams close together, the strip stick is superb at isolating one seam so you don't accidentally mess up any surrounding seams with the iron. 

In February, Moda started a monthly sew along called My Favorite Color is Moda.Sampler style quilts are suddenly appealing to me again, so I bought a kit of fabrics in a colorway I liked plus the pattern book and got started.

I have never like working with solids, and this kit is all solids. Some of the fabrics in my Holiday Solstice were solids, hand dyed fabrics with a little texture actually, which I liked. So I decided I would give this a try. So far I'm bored, lol, but I think it will get better. 

The blocks in the sampler are variously sized, and block 1 is the largest at 36" square, big enough for a one-block baby quilt. I didn't imagine this block was so big in the picture above, but it's a pretty big quilt. 

The projects above are on hold for the time being, so I've switched gears to pineapple blocks. The colored blocks were swap blocks from years ago, and I dug them out two summers ago to work on at camp. The colored blocks are finished now and sewn together in rows of two; and I'm working on a border of blue pineapple blocks at the moment.

I've always been a slow sewist, slow at everything really; and these blocks take a long time for me to make. I'm about halfway there, and if I can make  two a day or every other day, I can finish the rest by the end of the month. Then there is another pieced border and some plain borders, so there's still a lot of work left to do. My goal is to have the quilt completely finished by mid May in time to register it for Maine Quilts 2021. It's virtual again this year, so the quilt has to be finished to take the photo.

Working with scraps always seems to beget more scraps, and the pineapple blocks are no exception. I continue to accumulate strings from strips that are no longer wide enough to use in a round. Coincidentally, I came across this block on Pinterest the other day, and a light bulb went on. This block is absolutely perfect to use up the blue strings, along with smaller chunks. I decided that my only rule for these blocks was that the fabrics had to be predominantly blue. Other than that, I don't care if the fabrics are prints, plaids, batiks, calicos, whatever. As long as they read blue, they're going in. No worries either about contrast or value, just sew them together. How refreshing! Mindless sewing at its best.

The pattern for this block linked from Pinterest to happyturtlequilts.blogspot.ca. If you search on Eastern Sunrise, you'll find it. It's 7-1/2" finished, and it's paper pieced, but that's not a hard and fast rule for me. If my strings are too narrow, I'll add more until the paper is filled. Plus they're pretty fast for me to make, a lot faster than pineapples anyway. A size 90 needle and a 1.5 stitch length makes quick work of removing the paper. Put together in rows, these blocks kind of remind me of barbed wire. I love this!

I plan to go through the stash and cull all my blue fabrics that are ugly, unappealing, old as the hills, or problematic in some way, and cut them up for this quilt. I could probably use the ones that are fat-quarter size or larger and piece them together for the back. Probably won't put a dent in it, lol. I also have a stack of muslin I've been trying to figure out what to do with, and these blocks will be perfect for that too.

One Monthly Goal for December

My favorite thing to do is quilting, and my favorite quilting thing to do is piecing--units and blocks. Which is why I have 3 almost finished tops at the moment. I decided to join the One Monthly Goal bandwagon once again because it is a good motivator, so my goal for the month of December is to finish the aforementioned 3 tops. 

To see what others are working on this month, visit Elm Street Quilts here.

In last month's post, I uploaded a photo of the holiday medallion I've been working on, Holiday Solstice. The only difference between that photo and this month's photo is that the quilt is now sitting on the table instead of on the design wall. The rest of the borders have still not been added. There is one more pieced border to add plus 2 plain borders for a total of 3 more borders. I want to get this top done!

This was last year's holiday medallion mystery quilt from Michelle Renee Hiatt called Holiday Extravaganza. I am in the process of adding pieced borders....

... and I still have to finish the round I'm on, plus one more pieced border, plus 2 plain borders. I want to get this top done!

Then there's this--blocks and parts of blocks, and none of it has been put together yet. So the third top I would like to try and finish this month is Ticker Tape Parade, another Michelle Renee Hiatt mystery quilt from last year. I want to get this top done!

If I really put some serious effort into it, I could probably get the first two tops put together in a week; but there are just too many other things to do. Well, anyway, 3 finished tops is the goal this month. 

My little Leaders and Enders envelope blocks are also coming along. I think I probably have a pile of about 25 by now. Also, I lied in my last post--these will finish to 2-1/2", not 3". 

These little blocks are composed of 4 half square triangle units. I could have used a flying geese unit for part of the envelope, but it didn't occur to me to do that immediately. Going forward, I'll try that if the remaining scraps I have for this project are large enough. 

It is stunning how rapidly Covid is spreading everywhere, including in Maine. Today we had the largest single day total of new cases since the pandemic started. I wonder if people are throwing caution to the wind because they are so fatigued with all of it. Two of the people in our family circle decided to visit the Maine Mall on Black Friday, and the mall was packed that day; so we cancelled our plans to have our granddaughter up for the weekend, which was disappointing. Just didn't want to take the risk. At Christmas time, we may just have to do a drive by and throw the kids' gifts out the window.

Stay safe, everyone!