Monday, August 31, 2015

Design Wall Monday 8 - 31 - 2015

ARGH!  Calendar change coming up tomorrow! Oh August where did you go so fast? 

Here's what's on the design wall today. I'm working on 2014 Row by Row.  Rather than have a long skinny quilt I've decided to break up some of the rows and add the blocks to the side of the quilt.  Unfortunately, not all blocks are the right size so I'm adding some blue sashing around the blocks to bring them up to the correct size.  Here is a fish (from a Maryland shop)block and the ice tea block from Quilter's Corner in Richmond. I have some lemon fabric to use to appliqué a lemon slice on the edge of the glass. I should probably do that before I set these together and add to the rest of the quilt. 




I didn't have a leader ender project to work on while I was finishing these blocks so I took out my Easy Street Mystery from several years ago.  Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville Quips and Snips runs a terrific free mystery every year from the Friday after Thanksgiving until about New Years.  The quilts are usually big -- queen size, lots of pieces and she encourages using scraps and fabric on hand.  Sometime in October she will be giving us information about fabric colors and approximate amounts.  You don't have to use scraps or her colors or even make as big a quilt as she does but it is so very much fun to work on it.  

These blocks scream lime to me.  I know they have some black and white prints around them and some grey four patches.  They are a long way from being finished.  I've used up most of my lime green working on this quilt.  I have most of the smaller units done so it is time to build the blocks.  What I hadn't done was cut 169 3-1/2" squares of lime green.  I finished cutting them yesterday.  I plan to take this project on retreat in 31 days. (I'm not anxious or anything!?) I'm trying to decide whether to separate the units needed for the two blocks.  Still haven't decided whether to do that or not.  It might help so I can make sure I have everything I need to sew it together.  I prefer to cut at home and have kits to work on.  Time will tell. I need to decide on what part to do as a leader ender now that these units are to this stage.  Do I start Block A or do I finish Block B? 

Decisions, decisions. But now, on to my goals from last week. Not bad, but I didn't get everything done. Sigh. 
Week of August 24, 2015
Finish piecing 2014 Row by Row √ making progress
Load and quilt donation quilt
Load and quilt Dorothy’s R, W, and Blue quilt Oops!
Mail blocks to Joan/FCQEquilter Blocks done but not in the mail
Make backing for soccer quilt√ and quilted!

And this week's goals:
Week of August 31, 2015
Finish piecing 2014 Row by Row
Load and quilt Dorothy’s R, W, and Blue quilt
Sew Talking Turkey blocks together
Mail blocks to Joan
Bind soccer donation quilt

I'm linking up with Main Crush MondayMonday Makings and Design Wall Monday. (not up yet, I'll come back later and add it.)  Take a look at what others are doing this week. 

Happy Quilting All! 







Thursday, August 27, 2015

Sometimes It All Comes Together

The long arm quilters in my guild, Country Piecemakers, have agreed to quilt small donation quilts for $5. a quilt.  I like doing these small, fast little quilts.  I get to try designs I haven't used before or thread or... you get the idea.  They are fast and fun to my thinking.  Dorothy gave me this darling little quilt to do for her at the last meeting.  Everything came together beautifully.  
I picked a design called Inkblot Flowers.  I used Omni thread that was a sage green. (Honestly, I never would have picked a contrasting thread if I was doing this as hand guided.) I believe the batting is Quilters Dream Poly.  I was so tickled with it I sent Dorothy a text with a picture (in fact, the picture above) when I first started it.  She liked it too.
 
Finished, ready to return to Dorothy and let her finish it off.  And the back... The picture is a little dark but I love the definition this combo has given the quilt.  

Next up on Ruthie is my little Soccer Bears quilt. I'm not sure what batting I will use on it.  It depends what I have in the leftover batting tote.  The front is really busy so I doubt I'll get this definition but the back is a lightly mottled cream so maybe the back will look like this.  Check back in the next few days to see what happens.  Of course, I need to decide on the design before this can get going!

I'm linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday. Take a look what others are working on now.

Happy Quilting All! 







Monday, August 24, 2015

Design Wall Monday 8 - 24 -2015

After finishing my trip around the world quilt I gave myself permission to start a new quilt.  I had put several fabrics together on one of my desks several weeks ago thinking they would make a great baby quilt for donation to the NICU.  Janet, our NICU contact and quilting buddy, says that there are more boys admitted to the NICU than girls.  Something around 4 boys for every girl.  So I always try to make quilts that would be appropriate for boys.   Here's what I made this week. 
The block is called Bright Beginnings and has a partial seam to start it.  The best part is all of it came from my stash.  The bear soccer fabric was purchased with a donation quilt in mind.  The rest was leftovers from other projects. 
It came from More Quilts for Baby: Easy as ABC by Ursula Reikes.  I've made many, many quilts from this book and the other two by Ursula: Quilts for Baby: Easy as ABC and Even More Quilts for Baby: Easy as ABC. I know I bought the first one in 1994 or so when I was working in a quilt store. I added the other two as they came out.  These were my go-to recommendations when someone came into the store wanting to make a baby quilt. The designs are cute, quick and easy.  All three are still sold today, although Quilts for Baby is the only one sold as a paper copy, the other two are offered as E-Books.  The nifty part about the quilts is that each design can be made bigger and doesn't have to be a baby quilt.  It's the fabric choices that make the end results a perfect baby quilt.  

I think I'm going to go through each book and make one of each design.  I know I've made many of them through the years but this will be more deliberate. I'll keep you posted. 

I did great on the goals last week:
Week of August 17, 2015
Finish quilting Trip Around the World quilt (TAW)
Continue working on Talking Turkey and 2014 Row x Row
Embroidery Day at Dorothy’s√ except we pieced instead of embroidering
Make the binding for TAW √ and it is done!!! Whoot!

And for this coming week: 
Week of August 24, 2015
Finish piecing 2014 Row by Row
Load and quilt donation quilt
Load and quilt Dorothy’s R, W, and Blue quilt
Mail blocks to Joan/FCQEquilter
Make backing for soccer quilt

I'm linking up with Main Crush Monday, Monday Makings and Design Wall Monday.  Take a look at what others are doing this week. 

Happy Quilting All! 


Thursday, August 20, 2015

A Big UFO Finish!

After 8 years I've finished my queen size Trip Around the World quilt that I started in 2006.  It started with 24 fabrics, if I remember correctly.  This quilt is done in sections.  You sew one strip of each color together into a strata.  Then you "tube" it.  You carefully lay the tube out keeping all the rows even.  Then you slice up the tube into 24 sections.  Once you decide where you want to start the pattern, you separate the two fabrics and start to lay it out.  Each slice gets the next fabric down (or up for that matter) separated from the next one.  Eventually you have 24 slices that makes up one of the quadrants.  Each row is offset by one square. Repeat at least 4 times, one for each quadrant.  I actually made extra rows so my quilt is not square.  Add a border, quilt, bind and you're done.
Some interesting statistics on this quilt.  There are 2,793 2" squares in the center.  There are 177,600 stitches in the quilting. (There may be more as sometimes the computer said there were 11,840 stitches per row and sometimes it said 12,305.  I used the lower one.)   If the stitches in a row were stretched out into a straight line it would be 1,165" long.  I find these info bites pretty interesting.
I had hoped to show the quilting close up with this picture. You can click on any picture to see a larger picture.  And here's the back.  (Hum, it seems to have a bit of fullness in it.  Definitely not noticeable on the bed.) 
I used a Pellon 100% Cotton batt.  It is definitely not as heavy as the Warm and Natural 100% cotton. It may mean we'll throw a blanket on the bed during the dead of winter.  But it will be much easier to move the quilt around too.  After the photo session I put it on the bed.  It looks good except now I need to make some pillow shams.  The plain pillow cases in beige don't look good.  The blue and yellow ones look worse.  We'll need to get some new art to put over the bed because the blue and red flower just doesn't look good anymore. Oh well.  
Here's the quilt with the binding almost finished. Pat and I agreed that I should do both sides of the binding by machine.  I am a slow hand stitcher when it comes to binding and I'm decent doing the second side of the binding by machine   I was able to put 382" of binding on in a couple of hours by machine while it would have taken me days to sew it down by hand.  

And now I can make a big on my UFO list.  I am making steady progress on my UFOs.  Yikes, I just looked at my list.  I think this is the 8th UFO I've finished this year.  WOW.  I started the year with 55 UFO's.  Three of the quilts I finished were actually listed as 1 item.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Now to decide what UFO to work on next.  Actually, I cut out a new baby quilt today to donate to the NICU at a local hospital. 

I'm linking up with TGIFF at Quokka Quilts and Can I get a Whoop Whoop?

Happy Quilting All!