Welcome Blanket Start

 Welcome Blanket is a platform for engagement that transforms the abstract concept of immigration into a tangible crowd-sourced artistic action. We ask you to use your head, heart, hands, and histories to craft the country we wish to see. Handcraft makers (knit, sew, quilt, crochet, weave, felt, etc.) are invited to make Welcome Blankets.  (Lifted from their website.)

The Welcome Blanket project started some three or four years ago here in the United States. The idea is to provide cheerful tokens of welcome for the newest immigrants and refugees to a nation that has been built by immigrants and refugees from its' inception. I made and contributed one quilt in the beginning - but don't ask me to look for a picture of it or to remember anything about it at this point. I'd sort of lost track of the project, the way you do over time. Just received an email announcing the extension of the deadline for new submissions: they need to be in Atlanta by 1 March. Parts Department to the rescue! 

I pondered how I might go about creating a 40" square quilt as quickly as possible. Six inch blocks set 6 x 6 plus a 2" border all the way around would do the trick. But what if I began with a 12" block? That would eliminate four blocks and speed the process up a bit. That's where I started. Then I auditioned some of my many Shoo-fly and Hole in the Barn Door blocks.

I decided to change things up for the final round of blocks and went for my liberated log cabins. Hmmm. Let's try something else, a little less busy...

I like this better. And with one exception I had just enough of these rainbow blocks to make it all the way around. I hadn't a clue what I would do with those rainbow liberated log cabins when I was making them. That phase didn't last long either. I'm delighted to be able to put them to this good purpose. 

I will look for something to use for a whole cloth border once I get the top assembled. Fabric for the back will not be a problem, and batting scraps can be pieced together for the innards. James says it won't even take him an hour to get this quilted. He offered to sew down the binding for me too, to spare my hands. We might even make the deadline at this rate! 😊

 

Goodbye 2018

No, I'm not doing a recap of all my creative endeavors for 2018! I'm neither that organized nor that ambitious. Just wanted to get in one last post before the new year is upon us. I'm also learning my way around a MacBook. Not a brand new machine but one that will hopefully prove dependable and more comfortable to use than the PC I've been using. Already I'm missing certain keys that were on the previous laptop. I'm sure we've all learned by now that nothing is perfect. 

While there has been very little in the way of sewing or stitching going on, what with Christmas and all, I have managed to get the binding on two lap quilts and get one of them all sewn down. This one I'm calling In the Pink.

It's a version of Scrappy Trips I made in an effort to use up remnants of various pink prints (duh!). It's about 45" x 60" before being laundered. The plan is to donate it to a patient in Hospice care. I was inspired by Kat's efforts to give quilts to patients at the end of their lives in her part of the world. Rather than (or maybe in addition to) making and mailing blocks to her for the quilts she and her friends assemble I thought maybe I could find a way to do something similar in my own neck of the woods. There's a second lap quilt ready to be bound; once I have them both ready we'll see about delivering them.

This quilt gave me an opportunity to try out one of the new labels I ordered from the Dutch Label Shop.  I saw a promotional offer (expired now) over on Confessions of a Fabric Addict and took advantage of it. The possibilities for label designs are nearly endless. I chose to offset the text on my labels thinking I might be able to sew them in as I put the binding on the quilt. That plan didn't work out quite the way I envisioned but I made it work.

 I haven't yet given much thought to what I might strive for or undertake in the coming year. Mostly I expect to just keep on keeping on. 😊

Here's to a new year full of every good thing!

Ready for the Voyage

Thank you all for your input on the little blue and white quilt I'm building. You'll be happy to see that I've included the pirate ship. 😊 Although I did tuck it away at the bottom, lurking in a bay between "land masses." 

Here's the whole quilt top:

Many of the blocks were made by members of the Footsquare Freestyle group. I made a couple more blocks to fill in gaps. This Wheel of Fortune for example. 

I made it thinking it could represent a ship's wheel. I also fussy cut a buoy and a lighthouse from a nautical print I've had forever. Had to get some birds in there too!

The flying geese units were meant to represent ocean waves (I hope that's obvious!). 

And then I found a perfect print in the clearance section of my LQS for the back.

I picked this print up for the binding while I was there.

I don't think I could be more pleased with the way this turned out. James already has ideas for quilting it so hopefully we can get it finished off before the year comes to a close. I'm going to have to give my elbow a rest before I tackle cutting strips for binding. All things considered, it's really not feeling too bad. 😀

Setting Sail

I haven't talked much about the Footsquare Freestyle block swap this time around. Suffice to say that I asked for blocks in blues and white. You can see the blocks that were made for me and who made them over on the Footsquare blog. (My month was July, you'll need to scroll down just a little way to see them.) As per usual it's a lovely assortment of styles and techniques, and all well done. 😊

What with the hurricanes and wildfires here in the States recently I fully expect there to be a variety of quilt drives to benefit the victims on both coasts. One quilt drive I know of already is asking for bed size quilts, queen and king size. I can't help with that in spite of having a long arm quilter in house. But I can make individual blocks and I can make quilts for kids or for use on a couch! To that end I've pulled out my Footsquare Freestyle blocks to play with.

A little while after my blocks came rolling in I found yardage of beach-themed panels in blue and white. Of course I didn't think to take a picture of the fabric before I cut it up. However, one of the panels has been the catalyst for this new project.

I'm thinking of a kid's quilt. This was also an excuse to use at least a few of the many Ship blocks I've made out of scraps. Plus that Tall Ship I made for myself as part of F2F3!

I'll be shooting for a quilt in the range of 48" x 60." Those little ships will likely become alternate blocks between the 12" blocks to stretch 36" into 48." I haven't sorted out the length yet. Four rows of 12" each plus some sashing no doubt.

Today I made some additional boats to reinforce the sailing theme.

Of course I couldn't resist including a pirate ship!

Whether it ends up in the quilt remains to be seen. 😉

Welcome Blanket Project Part Two

This is one of those projects that's just about making itself! When last you saw it (a week ago!) I was auditioning 4" hourglass blocks for a border.

I debated about making some kind of cornerstone blocks but ended up sewing the hourglasses together and then adding a one inch strip (finished) to either side. That made that border 6" wide, an easier size for me to work with in terms of cornerstones. In fact, I found three blocks in my Parts Dept. that fit the theme and color scheme so I only had to make one additional Shoo-fly!

At that stage the quilt would have finished 40" square. I was determined to make a 60 x 60" quilt though, so even an adult would find it useful. Given the rather short deadline for this project (and my basic impatience) I was reluctant to make a (relative) ton of new blocks to build the next border. I was delighted to find a stripe print in my stash of older fabric that would give me 5.5" x 24" four times with very little effort. I made some little freestyle log cabins and filled in the gaps with compensating strips.

Once those bits were assembled I needed 7.5" cornerstone blocks to complete the round. Friendship stars seemed like the perfect choice. Then I went around the whole thing with a band of the navy blue and gold print. Ta daa, 60" square!

There was another piece of yardage from back in the day I'd never been able to put to good use. It made a great start for the back of this quilt. :- )

James got it quilted up for me in just a couple of hours. He created a meander with the occasional star thrown in for interest.

Now I'm going to bind it with what's left of the navy blue and gold print and maybe have it ready to ship by the Fourth of July! It won't go out on that day of course, but it will be fun to have it done by then. Woohoo!

The Welcome Blanket Project was initiated by folks who play with yarn and sticks but quilters are welcome to participate. They're only asking for 40" square blankets and there's still time to make a contribution if you're so inclined. :- )

Welcome Blanket Project

When I visited Claire over at knitNkwilt I learned she is using her Footsquare Freestyle blocks to make a quilt for the Welcome Blanket Project. Reading more about the Project inspired me to get out some patriotic prints and panels from back in the beginning of my quilt making career to see what I could come up with for the Project. I found a pillow panel that I fussy cut to begin a small medallion quilt. There were other images on the piece of yardage too, so I fussy cut four to use as cornerstones.

The next thing I did was to create a piano key border, semi-freestyle. I stacked several prints on top of each other and then debated whether to cut them to specific widths or even to use angled cuts. I opted for straight cuts but of random widths. Once the cuts were made I shuffled the stacks of prints, moving one or two or three, etc. strips from each stack to get a random distribution of prints.

The piano key border was trimmed to 3.5" to accommodate the corner blocks. That only added a total of six inches to the starter panel of 15," for a total of 21" square. I wanted to add dimension quickly with the next round so I chose to use a whole cloth border. I cut it to bring the quilt top up to an easier size to add to in the next round too: 28" x 28."

I'd hoped that print would be a place for the eye to rest but it looks much busier than I expected. At this point I was suffering from repeated visits to the vet clinic (Miss Luna is finally showing signs of improvement as I write this, thank goodness) so I wanted something easy to sew. Using the same prints as in the piano key border (for the most part) I made a bunch of 4" (finished) hourglass blocks/units.

Sorry this picture is so fuzzy but it's all I've got to show you that I tried out the hourglasses in their various orientations. I knew immediately that I didn't want to create the impression of a fence by laying them with their dark parts touching so I tried this out first:

Even in focus it didn't float my boat. When I turned every other one I knew I'd found the solution.

I've tweaked the placement of specific hourglasses and sewn them into border strips since this picture was taken. I think I'm going to be adding a one inch blue strip to the interior side of each hourglass border sand then a red strip on the outside edges. I'll have to fill in the resultant 6" corner squares with something... maybe Friendship stars. If I've done the math correctly this should bring the top up to 40" square. I doubt I'll stop there, even though that's all the Welcome Blanket Project is asking for. This would be appropriate for a child (a small child) but an adult wouldn't find it very useful in my opinion. Unless they just used it for decoration. We'll just have to see where the spirit takes me!

Parts and Pieces

I've been making Scrappy Trip blocks out of the 2.5" strips that had accumulated here in the Magpie's Nest. My goal was to make 24 blocks to create a panel 36" x 96" for the quilt I'm making for Debra's Smokin' Hot Quilt Challenge. About half way through I had them on the wall like this:

Then it occurred to me that since this was going to be a vertically oriented design I might be better off making my 'waves' vertical rather than horizontal....

And then of course there was much rearranging of blocks to distribute prints and values as evenly as possible. This central panel had to be created in two sections, the upper half and the lower half, due to the size constraints of my design wall.

I have no idea which of these pictures is which at this point!

The next step was to use the string blocks I showed you in my last post to create columns to go on either side of this central panel. Originally I thought there would be four columns, 6" wide each, separated by a narrow sash. I really wasn't excited by the prospect of dealing with that narrow sash however. That's when I had the bright idea to mash four blocks together in a four patch arrangement like this (it's fuzzy because it's a re-crop of a cropped photo):

So the upper left column now looks like this:

And the upper right column like this:

I think.

I have the lower halves of the columns sewn up too. Hopefully these are the pictures I want; I'm getting confused!

I have some new yardage to use between these three columns (strings - scrappy trips - strings) and as outer borders. It looks to me like a reproduction of a Civil War era print, a nice dark blue that I think will help to calm the chaos of all these older prints. My goal today is to get these sections assembled and at least cut the strips for the sashing and borders. Once that's done I'll have to get help to get a picture of the finished product for you. And I'll be ready for a SMALL project by then!

 

 

Nearly There

I don't know whether I'll be able to show you what I've been working on of late. There seems to be a glitch in the process for uploading photos...

Ah ha! Guess I get to do everything in HTML today. Not being a code nerd this isn't the way I would choose to work but if it gets the job done I guess I'll have to make do.

This block pretty much represents the way I've been feeling lately. I don't need any extra challenges, thank you very much.

I had a really good day on Monday. Wish I could figure out how to make that happen more often!

There's been slow but steady progress on the row-by-row quilt that began out of my Parts Drawer. I chose to offset the 9 inch liberated stars within a twelve inch row. Once I had the ten inch tulip blocks set in a row I added a one inch strip on either side to bring that row up to 12" as well. The Bow Tie blocks were set into 12" X's, and the dark Churn Dash stars were also framed up to a twelve inch row.

At that point I decided to just make all the blocks into 12" rows for ease of assembly. The 9" Shoo Fly blocks were offset the same way the liberated stars were.

A lot of time has been spent trying to figure out how to arrange the rows to accommodate that single really dark row (the Churn Dash stars). While most of the rows have a light background, that one and the Bow Tie X's read as dark and medium respectively. That made it a challenge to balance out the values over the surface of the whole quilt top. Once I assembled the six inch Shoo Fly and Hole in the Barn Door blocks into two additional rows (that I left at 6" each) I was able to move things around more easily and get a better idea how the whole would look.

I think this is the final arrangement for the upper half of the quilt top. Below the Bow Tie X's will be another mixed row of 6" Shoo Fly and Barn Door blocks, then the row of liberated stars. For a time I thought I would be making dark sashing strips to go between certain rows. Yesterday I decided to just piece my short bits of 1.5" strips together end to end and use that for sashing between all the rows.

The next step will be to lay the rows out on my bed and decide which sashing strip goes where. After that it will be time to figure out what to do about a border. I need at least a 3" border all the way around to achieve twin size status. And in spite of all the fabric I've added to my stash courtesy of year-end clearance sales, I don't think I've got anything that precisely fits the bill!

Sunshine Flimsy

Work has continued on the quilt I'm making for a victim of Hurricane Sandy. As I stitched on the long sashing strips it occurred to me that I would have to figure out how to deal with the corners where the Hourglass blocks in the final border would come together. You may remember that this was what it looked like as I was auditioning design choices:

I finally decided to make four Diamond in a Square blocks for the corners:

You may be able to see in the picture below (double click on it to make it bigger) that I had two different blue prints coming together in this corner. It took a little bit of time to decide how to handle that!

Here's a full-on picture, as much as I could get anyway.

The quilt should finish at 65" x 85." I found this print on sale at Delta Patchwork; it's perfect for the back and binding!

I'm thinking of calling this Sunshine & Blue Skies. As it turns out I will be able to send this quilt almost directly to a couple whose home was one of those burned to the ground in Breezy Point, NY courtesy of connections my sister has through her job. And then I'll probably begin another top for someone else who needs a quilty hug. :- )