April Finish

I've spent several days drowning in paperwork, but I managed to finish my little potholder quilt a couple of days ago. 36 blocks that finish to about 5-3/4" for a quilt that is about 35" square. Very time consuming to hand sew all the blocks together, but well worth the effort. I've made a sleeve for it and stitched out a label, but it's finished! Yay! 

I'd love to make another one of these embroidered potholder quilts, specifically a Rose of Sharon quilt. I have the embroidery designs and the fabric, but I dare not start anything else just now! Some day. 

 

Bon Bon

First, thank you to Grace, Judy, and Julie for your lovely comments on my pineapple quilt. I've had trouble getting Blogger to forward comments to my regular email. After I complained about it one day on the blog, Wanda from Exuberant Color said that Blogger doesn't seem to forward her comments if they source from aol or yahoo. 

Yesterday, I discovered that Blogger actually did forward all the comments from the Pineapple quilt post. One of them landed in my mailbox. The other 4 went right into the Spam mailbox, which never gets anything, so I rarely check it. There they all were. It's always something with Blogger.

Back to Barbara's scrap bag, one of the piles I sorted was neutrals. I further sorted those into tans, creams, white tone on tones, low volume prints, and solids. I had just barely started the Bon Bon quilt when Barbara gave me her scrap bag, and I was using a solid white background so I could use that fabric up. All of the white solids from the scrap bag promptly went into the quilt and have already been used up.

Bon Bon is a free pattern from Fat Quarter Shop. It is a very simple, very quick quilt to make; and it uses a precut called a Jolly Bar, which is exclusive to them. A jolly bar is a stack of rectangles cut 5 x 10"; so depending on the pattern, you could substitute two charm packs or part of a layer cake. I happened to have on hand 4 identical charm packs I found at a good sale at Marden's, so I'm using them in the Bon Bon quilt. 

I had the block components assembled for 16 blocks for a 30-block quilt, and I put the 16 blocks together today. The other 14 block components are cut, and I just have to sit down and sew them. The quilt used most of two charm packs, so I'll have enough to make another quilt to use up the rest. The first quilt is meant to be a charitable donation, the second will go to a girl in the family.
 

Barbara's Scrap Bag

My good friend Barbara has been a quilter for many years. Actually she considers herself more of a crafter than a quilter, and she loves to make purses and bags, outfits for her grandkids, things like that. 

Like any good quilter, Barbara dutifully saved all her scraps for years, thinking that one day she might make a scrap quilt like so many of us do. Even though scrappy quilts have never really been her thing, she finally did try some different projects but was unhappy with her efforts. 

Recently, with destashing in mind, she finally decided to throw in the towel on scraps, and I became the very happy recipient of a kitchen-sized bag of her scraps. Lovely scraps, larger pieces, newer lines, not calicos and such. Her taste in fabrics is not as eclectic as mine, but there is still plenty of variety and appeal. 

I sorted her bag into color groupings as I considered what I might do with them. I finally decided to take a recent note from Bonnie Hunter's blog; and rather than cut them up into squares, rectangles and strips for the scrap bins, I decided to challenge myself to actually use them up in a series of quilts. 

My only rule for the challenge is to make as few quilts as possible out of the scraps. That might be a 3 or 4, or it might be 20, if that's what it takes. I have no timeline in mind, and I may work on them here and there in between other projects, or I may sit down and plug away at one in particular. I'm also allowing myself the latitude of adding my own scraps to the mix to make a quilt the size I want, but I plan to use up Barbara's first if possible. No rules, save the one.

There is a tab at the top of my blog now to list the quilts I'm working on, have finished, or thinking about.The first one is already in the works.

The 21-Year Pineapple Project

That is the official name of the pineapple quilt because that's just about how long it took me to finish it. What started as a block swap amongst internet friends stretched out for years. Nonetheless, it is finally quilted, labeled, bound, and ready for quilt show in July. It was worth the wait because I love it. 

I quilted it in a variegated yellow thread, using the Pina Colada pantograph, a pineapple motif, from Urban Elementz.
 

The quilting shows up splendidly in the border. 

 

I thought maybe I wanted the quilt to be larger, but I couldn't work out the math for the additional borders, so I wound up with extra pineapple blocks. Didn't think I'd use them in another project, so I put them on the back of the quilt, along with a couple of orphan blocks. Good way to get rid of those too!Yay!

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/

Coastal Cool

I got a couple of months behind with the "My Favorite Color is Moda" quilt along on the Moda blog. I finished these two blocks, a 36" block, and a few others before the end of May but neglected to make the ones for June and July. 

Yesterday I put the pedal to the metal and cranked out 13 blocks. Not all of them are on the wall because I am trying to sew smaller sections together as I get the blocks made. This morning I finished 2 more, so now I am all caught up through the month of August. 

I am well past halfway through the blocks now, and 3 or 4 of the ones that are left are a lot more complicated. There are also 4 blocks composed of these units, which are simple enough to make but which I generally have trouble with. 

These are often times made by placing a smaller square in the corner of the larger square or other shape, drawing a line on the diagonal from corner to corner, and then sewing on that line. And I rarely get them right. I've tried sewing on the line or to the right of the line, and they always seem to be just a little off.

I CAN sew an accurate quarter-inch seam allowance, however; so it occurred to me to just cut away the excess and then sew. It doesn't eliminate the waste triangles, but now I have...

.... perfection!

I have tried the Studio 180 Corner Pop ruler and  Doug Leko's Simple Folded Corner ruler, and those both work well too; but they only eliminate the waste triangle from the larger shape. It's faster for me to use the method above. 

Life is full of trade offs. Time or fabric?

Millenium Charm

First, my profound apologies to those who commented on my post from June and who did not get a response back from me. Blogger fails to forward comment notifications on a regular basis, it seems, and it rarely occurs to me to actually look in the comment section. I just expect the notifications. I don't think I have a setting wrong anywhere because occasionally it works. I've attempted to fix it again by trying a different email address for forwarding. I wish I could get off the Google platform altogether, but I haven't had the courage to try switching to Word Press. 

Anyway, it's been a busy summer. I've been sewing as much as I can, but I haven't accomplished a whole lot. Only two quilts this year on the completed list. Doesn't bother me a bit. After I ditched the One Monthly thing, I decided to work on what I felt like on any given day. Sometimes projects came out of the closet for a day and then went back in. Sometimes I worked halfway through a project and had enough of it. Quite a few times I assembled the materials for a new project and made just one block to see how I liked it. And I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. 

The pineapple quilt is still on the frame. I finally got the rest of the errant stitching ripped out about two weeks ago. After chipping away at it for weeks and weeks, I am tired of looking at; but I'm going to have to get cracking on it again. 

My major accomplishment this week is that I have finally finished sewing together all 1,998 triangles for my Y2K quilt. If you've been quilting a long time, you may remember that at the turn of this century, many quilters wanted to make millennium quilts with 2000 pieces. I remember looking at pyramids and log cabins among other things, but my Icelandic friend and I settled on triangles. The number of rows and columns was chosen to incorporate as many as possible, which worked out to be 1,998. My plan now is to add a border and applique the last two triangles someplace in the border. Then I'll add more triangles for every year after 2000, so 23 triangles total. Then I'll add another one next year.

This is also a charm quilt, meaning every one of the 1,998 triangles is a unique fabric. Accomplishing this was no small task. In the year 2000, my collection of fabrics fell way short of this goal, so I resorted to the purchase of a 2000-piece anniversary collection of 4" squares from Keepsake Quilting. Not all of those pieces were usable however. There were duplicates; and there were some that were unusable, primarily those that were multicolored or large scale prints. I made the effort to use all the rest. 

Over the years, many triangles were added and subtracted. It was relatively easy to weed out the duplicates of the dark fabrics, but the light colored fabrics proved more challenging. So for each color group, I tried to use light colored fabrics that contained bits of the same color as its companion. For example, the lights in the yellow grouping all had touches of yellow in the light print. That made it a lot easier to weed out duplicates in each color group. 

After I got the top half of the quilt together, which was years ago, I think I came across one duplicate. I've never been able to locate it again, so maybe one day I'll have a contest and give a prize to the person who finds it. 

I used all kinds of fabrics in the quilt--batiks, stripes, dots, plaids, 30s repros, civil war repros, modern--but no solids. I also incorporated fun little novelty fabrics when I could, like this hot dog...

 

... and this golf ball and tee. My mother-in-law was a golfer, so it reminds me of her. 

All those triangle seams inevitably create a lot of bulk, so on the back I twirled quite a few of them. The bottom third of the top is all twirled, but I didn't always do that in the top two thirds. Wish I'd been more consistent about that. 

Not sure yet what I'll do for the border. Probably black, I guess, but I'll have to see what it looks like. I don't really want the center to look smaller. I also thought about tan with a black binding. For now, I'm just so happy to get the rest of the top done.