Design Wall Monday--3/10/14

A late posting for DWM, but here goes!  On my design surface are still more CW repro scraps and partially completed objects (PCOs).

 

One of these things is not like the other...one of these things was just made wrong...

This was an experiment in leftover HSTs and a pack of precut squares.  I was not happy with the size of the coping strip I had to cut in order to make the odd size of the squares (4") fit the HSTs I had trimmed to 2.5".  MATH again!  Therefore I was not paying attention to the fact that the star I was aiming for turned into a square.

This was what I was aiming for :)  I cut down the precut square for this star to 3.5" and then the coping strip was cut at 1", making a more pleasing proportion to me.

I so wish I had more of this caramel Jo Morton print and the subtle print neutral.  But, alas, I do not--only a few square inches of scraps are left.
 

Turns out I liked the second layout better.  I saved the center star block for some future playtime. Since these photos I have added borders to what will be a nice sized tablerunner--these are 8" finished blocks.  I turned my attention then to a couple of  PCOs (partially finished objects).

These tiny bits I had sewn together were left over from strips sets made for Julie's 9 patch swap of a few years ago.  I thought this would make another cute table mat and since this photo I've added borders to the long sides only.  I have just enough of this purple print for a backing, and disassembled a strip set to get enough of the leftover shirting prints to make a binding.  Sort of spring-like with the purples, maybe?  Finally, this doll quilt-along top from Lori's blog from a couple of years ago progressed no further until now.

Lori even liked my suggestion for the doll quilt's name, Pink Lemonade.  Those churn dash blocks are  small--I think they finish at 5".  Yellow and pink are very scarce in my stash and acquiring both required a couple of trips to the fabric store at the time of the quilt-along.  My iPhone photography is making the yellow rather more lemony than it is in true life. Also, the pressing job after the photo improved the top's looks.  Someday I'll get better at thinking of that before I start taking photos!

I'm going to back it with this pink print and then do big stitch hand quilting to finish it off.   See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times.

And now, some baby spam. 

Some Sunday evening Mimi time with Baby Cove!  I put him to sleep while mom and dad were trying to eat their dinner.  Check out those duds :)  He's 12 days old today.

A Bit Behind

Comments are now closed.  Thanks for entering my blogaversary giveaway!  Winner to be announced soon.

 
February was a very full month--besides my brother's birthday, Valentine's Day, my mother's 75th birthday, finishing the baby quilt, another trip to the hospital ER for me, our anniversary, and the ultra-excitement of the birth of our first grandchild, there was something else that I got a bit behind on.  I'm now caught up on this small Civil War scrap project, which when last shown was only a flimsy: 

Over the last couple of days I got the quilt sandwich pin basted, then promptly unbasted it about an hour later when I decided to use a motif in the plain alternate squares.  This came to me as I was fanning myself during a PSW (personal weather system) and noticed the bird emblem on the pretty Japanese fan I recently bought for said PSWs. Ahem.  Anyway, back to the quilt.

I drew a bird and then used a light box and a Frixion gel pen to transfer my drawing. Then I repinned the quilt sandwich and did some stitch in the ditch and cross-hatching with the walking foot. 

The walking foot worked just fine to stitch the bird with a contrasting thread--I'm lazy, so didn't want to change to the darning foot!

You can see in this photo where I drew corner triangles around the bird.  I decided to stitch those in the same burgundy thread I used for the bird, but changed it up as I stitched.

I showed this to my sister and she said it was too much--instead of flowing around the quilt, the eye stopped on the bird and you didn't see the other elements.  Well, it is a stop sign shape, but that wasn't my intention!  So I unsewed the octagon and told my sister she was right.  But there still wasn't enough quilting of the basic elements for me, so I added more. 

The 9 patch dark squares were fully X'd and the light patches got a "square in a square" design that I marked by scoring.  This meant a LOT of thread burying afterwards, but I think it was a good choice.  I also re-stitched those corner triangles in the cream thread to flesh out the traditional quilting I felt was needed. On to the border...

Hard to see here, but I had fun free motion quilting a sort of trellis design with dark brown thread.  

Or maybe those are L's like Laverne had on her clothes in Laverne and Shirley.  I loved that silly show.  Anyway, I used more leftovers to make the binding, a Collection for A Cause fabric I just love and used as borders on my Caramel Blues quilt.

And here is the finished quilt!  It is about 25" square and all machine sewn and machine quilted, crafted completely from leftovers.  I even stitched together batting scraps for the project!  What do you think?

The other event I didn't mention above was my five year blogiversary, which was February 5th, and I am giving away this little quilt to celebrate!  There are no hoops to jump through, except that I must have a way to contact you if you are not on Blogger--please leave your email address in the comment.  I will leave this giveaway open until Friday, March 7th, at 6 pm Pacific time, and I will ship internationally.  Thank you, dear readers, for sticking with me this last year of scanty blogging!
 

Five at the Fair

So how did my five entries do?  I was dying to find out, and since my office closed early today in honor of Old Spanish Days in Santa Barbara, I was home by mid afternoon.  My mom and I caught a ride from my dad instead of fighting the traffic to the parking lot, and once we paid for our tickets, headed for the Home Arts building.  I spied one of my entries right from the door, hanging up on the far wall, and we scurried to see whether it had a ribbon.

There was a sticker on it saying "Honorable Mention".  Not the color ribbon I would most have enjoyed seeing, but recognition anyway in a very crowded division/class of entries.  We prowled the rest of the building looking for the others.

Although the hideous fluorescent lighting turned the Baby Houndstooth to green and pink rather than its true brown and raspberry, the red ribbon sticker meant it earned a second place award.  Nice!  Further searching brought us to the Chevron Tablerunner.  I may never have shown it finished on the blog. 

 

A lovely blue ribbon was attached to the runner.   DD Erica wondered why they put a rock on top of it.  Good question I had no answer to!   It took a while to locate the fourth entry, but finally we spotted it in the farthest glass case along the opposite wall. 

Another blue!  Very exciting! (Sorry for the reflection of my legs and shoes from the glass) The hunt for the fifth entry was high and low but we did locate it at last in an entirely Halloween-themed booth. 

Another blue sticker on the entry tag!  What fun it was to share the excitement of the hunt with this cowgirl:

 Thanks, Ma! 

Finished for the Fair

What a boring blog--only the same quilt over and over again for weeks--sorry, peeps!  I'm happy to say I made the entry deadline by hours to spare, so I get to show a finished quilt at last.

The finished quilt is about 59" square, a shape I don't usually prefer, but seems to work just fine for this quilt. All the nine patches came from a swap of Civil War print themed blocks.  I found the pattern called Carefree Romance in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine that worked perfectly with these 6" finished blocks.

I used the same caramel print for the binding as the hourglass blocks, which I'm hoping ties it all together nicely.

For the first time, I tried a "ribbon" design for the border, rather inexpertly, at that.  Not my favorite!  I may end up ripping it out and going with something else in the future.  Crossing my fingers it doesn't count too badly against me in the judging.  

A pieced backing lends some contrast to the traditional front.  Happy to cross this quilt off the UFO list!  In addition to this quilt, I submitted four other items, three of which I had to borrow back from their owners:  a modern Christmas Chevron table runner and an Any Witch Way wall hanging from DD Elaine, plus the Baby Houndstooth quilt I recently made in April for my Bunco buddy (whose adorable baby girl, Kate, I got to hold for awhile yesterday!).  Finally, there was a wool applique candle mat.  Next time I see them after the Fair opens July 31st, it will be to discover whether any ribbons are attached. Wish me luck!

Wiggle

Though I've been using Leah Day's method for stippling, where she advises, "just wiggle", as she demonstrates it in her video, her gloves don't look anything like mine.

These look pretty diseased, don't they? Even right after I wash them the discoloration lingers. I'm thinking since Leah sells them in her online store she must open a fresh pair a week for her videos, rather like ballet dancers and their toe shoes :). All the wiggling is done and I'm moving to borders and binding now. Getting down to the wire since this must be turned in tomorrow for Fair entry, but I'll make it!  I'll reward myself with a new pair of gloves, I think :)

Quiltus Interruptus

While I had planned on spending Saturday quilting Caramel Blues, on Friday afternoon I got a text from my DH saying he had scheduled a carpet cleaning crew to come at 3 PM Saturday.  Oh no!  This of course meant doing a great deal of shifting things downstairs from up, inside to out in the garage, under beds to tops of dressers, and generally making a large mess everywhere.  We always have done the moving of furniture and belongings ourselves, wanting the cleaners to concentrate on the floors, and not our stuff!

Though the two man crew did a good job on our ancient carpet (20+ years old), naturally the last room finished was my sewing room--at about 5 PM--which meant the carpet was far too damp even this morning to move back onto.  With the doors and windows all open and nice sunny/breezy weather, eventually by mid day I could reassemble the room a bit, pushing the sewing desk back into place and setting up my cutting table so I could mark the remaining blocks.  

All the caramel blocks now have their arcs and circles.  Since this photo I've completed at least half of the stippling in the cream.  It goes pretty quickly since the triangles are not that large (and I'm not a perfectionist!). The nine patch blocks are standing out just as I'd hoped.  I checked my project box and I have the caramel binding already made, so I'm sure to meet my deadline of next Sunday at this rate.  Unless DH decides to schedule something ELSE for next Saturday!

Remember the modern baby quilt I made a couple of months ago for a friend of  DD Elaine? I was thrilled to learn from Elaine a while ago that the quilt was over the crib in their nursery--what a nice feeling that they liked it!  The expectant couple chose not to learn the gender of their baby, and they had to wait a long time, as mama went over a week past her due date. But today they finally welcomed a son, whom they named Jude.  Many congratulations to the new family! 

Foray into Free Motion

It is always so nice when needle, thread, and quilting come together without skips, breakage of thread, or breakage of needle while free motion quilting.  Makes all the repositioning I have to do with my small-harped sewing machine the only bothersome bit.  But first there was some marking.  Now, I am mostly a "no-mark" type of quilter, however, when necessary I get it done with simple tools I have around the house :)

An oval baking dish and a spool in this case--the spokes in the spool helped me line up the positioning with the point of the triangle while I traced around it.  I changed the design by making the circle on top of the arc instead of within, to fill up the tip of the triangle sections, and I think it looks better than my original sketch.

I'd say I'm consistently inconsistent in the way I do my quilting.  This time I'm switching back and forth between marking the caramel triangles and stitching them with caramel thread, and the stippling in the cream sections with matching thread. 

Pretty busy from the back side!  Since these photos I've gotten another bunch of the caramel blocks done and additional stippling, with probably a little over a third of the quilting complete, and so far am liking the effect.  I think the arcs will show up a lot better once the quilt is washed.  It was a good session!

Nine-Patch Quilting--What Shall I Do?

County Fair time is nearly here and I've been thinking about what I'd like to enter this year.  Deadlines being a good thing for me, I mentally ran through some unfinished quilts and decided starting on the one furthest along in being quilted was a wise place to start.

This poor project I'm calling Caramel Blues has been stuck at about halfway quilted for quite some time.  The CW print nine-patches came from a swap of nearly three years ago by Julie K and the pattern is Carefree Romance from AP&Q magazine.  Simple hourglass blocks make this a much more complicated looking quilt than it was to construct. The caramel and cream prints came from Temecula Quilt Company.  I think the caramel is a Jo Morton print.

I used a walking foot to stitch pumpkin seeds diagonally across each block's center and corner squares with variegated thread, and then cross-hatched the remaining squares.  But then I became stuck on what to do in the surrounding triangles formed by the hourglass blocks.  I want the nine patches to stand out and not be over powered so my original idea of using the same variegated thread in the cream triangles was ripped out--it was far too distracting and kind of looked dirty on the cream.  I did manage to purchase some matching thread some months ago but that was as far as I got. 

Out came the sketchbook.  I sometimes come up with great ideas while not really thinking too hard, just doodling and playing.

 I didn't want to repeat the pumpkin seed but did want some more curves to play off the patchwork. 

 Hmm, this is coming along. 

 A full size mock up of the triangle.  These are 6" finished blocks so not a lot of area to fill. 

Today I wandered over to my LQS and picked up some General Pastel marking pencils and scored a cool tool pencil sharpener for 15% off since it was the tester and the last one.  Now for the ITIS part of the quilting process: I'll Try It & See.  Future post to come featuring success or failure...cross your fingers for the former!

Weekend/Auditions

Finally some sewing time came my way this weekend, in between visiting with our guests, playing with an adorable blue-eyed blonde 5 year old with an equally adorable Russian accent, who calls our dog "Yussell" instead of Russell. She was thrilled to play with our girls' old dollhouse, and happily ride Nick's skateboard while holding onto my hands.  Today they are away at a family BBQ so I devoted some more time to the pile of unfinished work in my sewing area.

The center of the Pinwheel Garden quilt is sewn...auditioning borders now.  Meh for the burgundy print.

The green dot is okay but I don't have enough of it.  A big no to the yellowish print.  I have no other light prints in the stash--no light blue, pink, green, or purple.

This creamy white looks better than I expected.

I believe there are enough lights in the pinwheels to make this the right choice.  With the addition of more green from the vines and leaves to be appliqued, I think it will look great.    There is only a yard of it so I'll have to do MATH to see if there is enough.  If not, I'll find another at the fabric store that will work.

While I had the camera out,  I took pics of the lovely gifts our guests brought: a picture postcard tour of their city, Nizhny Novgorod, a thimble and t-shirt with the city's name, and an adorable set of matryoshka.

The tallest one is only about four inches, and the little bean of a baby about 3/4".  I love these! 

Tonight I hope to complete all the crosshatching on the Caramel Blues quilt.  This needs to be completed by Friday if I want to enter it into the County Fair and there is still stippling, borders, and binding to be done.

May UFO Progress

No finish for me this month by today's deadline for Judy's UFO Challenge, but a good deal of progress on Caramel Blues, which at the beginning of the month was only the center of the top.  I cut and added borders, a pieced backing, made the binding, and I'd say it's got about 1/3 of the quilting completed. 

Slowly more basting pins are being removed.

All the 9 patches have pumpkin seeds in the corner and center blocks.   Some of the rectangular pieced squares have Xs quilted through...

...and I'm liking the Xs through the alternate squares on the 9 patches, but am torn about stippling in the framing triangles.  I don't want to overpower the 9 patches.  In the meantime some stitch in the ditch around all the hourglass blocks is giving me time to ponder.  My DH really likes this quilt and is happy I said it's for us, unlike so many of the quilts I make that fly out the door the second they are completed.  I'll be really pleased to add this, when completed, to my dream goal--a stack of handmade quilts in my home!