Done and Dusted

That project I've been working on behind the scenes has been quilted, bound, and received by the intended recipient. Even better, she was over the moon with the gift. 😁 

I'd been asked to make a quilt in the colors of the ocean to fit into a specific color scheme in a new house. A house I'd never been in I might add, due to my sensitivity issues. I chose to work strictly with batiks and used the Scrappy Trips technique from Bonnie Hunter (again!). Partly because it was this quilt of mine that inspired the request in the first place:

 

  Whereas my quilt has the look of the sun and its' rays moving through the quilt top I wanted this new one to look more like waves washing up on a beach. It wasn't too hard to get started but after the first few blocks I got stuck. It took almost four years to get unstuck! I had to just gird my loins and get back to making blocks without thinking too much about how they were going to be set to represent the image I was after. To get going again I decided to concentrate on making tan blocks for the beach and deep water blocks of the darkest blues. Then I just played with the various teals and lighter values for the transition blocks.

I ended up with that rather hard line of teal/blue at the bottom of the flimsy. Blocks were actually sewn into rows at that point. They had to be taken apart to soften that up. I also made an additional block using some of what I had left of the lighter value prints.

James had a chance to exercise a bit of creative freedom with the quilting of this one. Rather than an overall pattern he emphasized the movement of the water with his work.

I bound the quilt with the same batik I used on the back. It's another batik in various tans, beige, and brown that I think looks like debris on a beach.

Unfortunately, all the lovely quilting James did virtually disappeared in the laundering of the completed quilt. It created wonderful texture though.

And now the quilt is in its' new home, where it fits in perfectly according to reports! 

Leaving the Nest

 About a month ago I started a new patchwork venture in hopes it would provide me with the opportunity to do some mindless sewing. It did, until the project took on a life of its' own. That seems to happen frequently!

It began with the blocks I was calling Butterflies.

Which I then surrounded with Flying Geese.

I chose to use more four patch blocks for corner stones.

And decided that was sufficient.

At this point the top will finish at about 48" x 54." It seems small to me but in reality will make a wonderful lap quilt or even a child's quilt. There wasn't much incentive to try to make it any larger anyway. It was about this time that Kate over in Chiconia, Australia posted about the quilty items she was working on to be raffle prizes for a very worthy cause. I contacted her about the possibility of sending her the top to be finished over there and added to the raffle. She was enthusiastic. 😁

I hesitated to offer up a finished quilt due to the recent increase in shipping costs. Kate was more than willing to do the quilting and binding herself, for which I am grateful. We finally sent the flimsy off today (with some extra fabric for the binding). Let me just say that I'm glad we didn't have the extra weight and bulk of a finished quilt to send overseas. It cost well more than three times what I was accustomed to paying to mail a handful of patchwork blocks over the oceans. Yikes! Even so, I know the money was spent for a good cause and am pleased to be able to contribute. 

On an entirely unrelated note Blogger, in its' finite wisdom, has changed up the formatting for composing blog posts. It now requires seven steps to add a photo to my text. That may not be more than one or two more clicks than was required in the past but it's enough to make the process that much more annoying to my impatient soul. 🤨 

And now I get to come up with another mindless sewing project...

Four Plus One

After the interruption on Scrap Happy Day I managed to create parts for four sets of potholders.

Here they are a few days later...

Winter

Thanksgiving/Harvest/Autumn

Christmas Pigs and Gnomes

Puppies

 

And a fifth set!

Fizzy

 These are on their way to the Disabled Artists Foundation Inc. (dAFi) for the November fundraising auction. The auctions are held online, via YouTube, on the second Saturday of each month. The proceeds make it possible to send art making supplies to folks who benefit from creative endeavors but are not able to purchase supplies for themselves. Some of the artists make and donate items back to the organization for future fund raising. It feels good to be able to make things that benefit others one way or another. 😊

Happy Birthday Paula!

Back in February the quilt world lost a kind and giving spirit, Paula Budinger. Today would have been her 79th birthday. Cyber friends of hers have organized a posthumus birthday party in the form of a virtual quilt show and blog hop in her honor. I'm delighted to be participating. 😊

I got to know Paula through the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. We were both actively using our scraps per the monthly color cues for a few years. Paula continued on after I slacked off. As with most things, one quilter inspired another. It was Paula's little boat blocks that got me started making my 6" Ships.

Paula collected vintage doll quilts and sometimes shared what she knew about them on her blog. Mostly her blog posts were about the blocks she was making in conjunction with the RSC or little quilts she might be putting together to donate to Project Linus and others. In her honor I've assembled some postage stamp stars I made for the RSC into this child's quilt:

I've also made a couple of small quilts that will be donated through the Hands2Help quilt drive this year. I believe Paula also participated in H2H. This first one will be going to the Little Lambs Foundation.

The binding is in place but still needs to be sewn down.

This one will be donated to a child in Foster Care.

Janice has organized this quilt show and blog hop. "Door prizes" (birthday presents? 😉) have also been donated! For each comment you leave on any of the participating blogs between now and 15 May your name will be entered in a drawing for one of the prizes. Unfortunately, overseas commenters will only qualify for gift certificates or pattern prizes due to the cost of postage.

Here's the list of blogs posting today:

Karen @ KaHolly

Kate @ Smiles From Kate

Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of my Quilting Life

Bernie @ Needle and Foot

Linda @ My Sew-Called Quilts

Cathy @ Crazy By Design

These bloggers will be posting on Thursday, 7 May:

Kate @ Smiles From Kate

Diann @ Little Penguin Quilts

Rose @ Something Rose Made

Nann @ With Strings Attached

Mari @ The Academic Quilter

Louise @ My Quilt Odyssey

Susan @ Desert Sky Quilts

And these ladies will post on Friday, 8 May:

Janice @ Color, Creating and Quilting

Kate @ Smiles From Kate

Joy @ The Joyful Quilter

Susan @ Quilt Fabrication

Edi @ Edi’s Crafting Life

Carol @ Quilt Schmilt

Preeti @ Sew Preeti Quilts

Emily @ The Darling Dogwood

These are the gifts that have been donated:

Lorna, Sew Fresh Quilts, $50 gift certificate for her pattern shop.

Yvonne Quilting Jetgirl, 2 PDF patterns of choice.

Bernie Needle and Foot, $25 certificate for her shop.

A fat quarter bundle from Figo Fabrics

A set of quilty gift cards from Initial Thought by DMF  Note cards set 1

A pattern of choice from Karen, Sugar Free Quilts

A $30 gift certificate for Doris, Cactus Queen Quilt Co

A PDF pattern of choice from Joanne, www.etsy.com/shop/CanuckQuilterDesigns

$25 gift certificate courtesy of Janice to Fat Quarter Shop

Paula was a very special lady, a nurse before she retired and one who continued to seek out ways to help others ever after. I'm sure she is dearly missed. Her good works are not forgotten. 

Plaid Wrenches

Not to be confused with wenches wearing plaid.

All other projects fell by the wayside this week as I felt compelled to work on the plaid wrench block quilt top. In my last post I teased you with a shot of part of one of the scrappy alternate columns. (I knew I couldn't do a completely controlled, organized quilt!) Here's the whole layout:

This one is going to be an official twin size quilt though. It should finish at about 63" x 87." Here's a shot from the side so you can see what's hidden by my cutting table.

That's the best I can do in these tight quarters.

I didn't entirely use up my brown plaids but I also didn't have enough left of anything appropriate for the whole cloth border I wanted to put on. That's where friends with stashes come in handy. 😊My friend C~ has more brown in her stash than I and was able to provide yardage sufficient for not only the 2.5" (finished) border all the way around but also enough to make the binding that will eventually complete this quilt.

It's a nice dark chocolate brown. In this case I'm happy the binding will disappear visually.

I don't have a back for this yet, nor batting, so it may be a while before I can show it as a finished product. Still, it's pretty handsome, isn't it? 😁Just what I had in mind for a young man on the threshold of his adult life.

There are still some plaids to return to my inventory but I feel I've made a respectable dent at least. Now I can turn my attention back to the more colorful baby/toddler quilt I also have in the works. And maybe get some stitching done for the upcoming Bee, Myself and I post!

Happy Houses

My local quilt guild has a monthly block lottery in which I usually participate. Last month the call was for any size house block, any style or technique, but the house needed to be lime green and the sky black on white or white on black. I love the combination of lime green and black and white. I also love house blocks. I made three. 😁

One of the things I enjoy most is putting images in the doors and windows.

And of course I wouldn't resist adding a touch of Halloween. 😉

There weren't a lot of other blocks turned in this time but I won the lot!

There are a couple of truly improv houses, which I love. And check out the duplex!

Someone else was thinking along the same lines I do:

Apparently some of her spools of thread got away from her!

These will be a fun start to a new quilt for a child in foster care or a hospital setting. 💕

Meanwhile, I've entered two quilts in another guild's annual show and will probably put them both in the county fair a few weeks from now. I've officially declared this one a wall hanging. (I thought for a long time it would be a child's quilt.) Six of my F2F3 blocks helped to carry out the theme. It was a fun quilt to build.

Let Your Dreams Set Sail

After being on exhibit it will be donated to Hospice of the Northwest for their annual fundraising auction. Sine we live relatively near the coast I'm hoping some of the folks who live in the expensive houses oceanside will bid on this to have in their home.

This one is going to one of my granddaughters for her September birthday.

August Nights

I'd really like to get a more official portrait of the finished product before then.

Scrap Happy Day is coming up on the 15th. I may not have a lot to share but there will be a few scrappy blocks at the very least. 😊See you then!

'Tis the Season...

To take long breaks from blogging apparently! Honestly, I've been having a particularly difficult time this winter. It's very frustrating. But on a happier note, I have been working inbetween bouts of incapacitation. I made more six inch Bow Tie blocks for the newest quilt project. Wasn't thrilled with what they were doing by themselves so I played around with other arrangements:

You may remember I am planning a horizontal row quilt. Originally I figured I would use the bow ties as two smaller rows but I quite like them as alternating 12" blocks of X's and O's!

I have also made up some new nine inch blocks. There are a few simple Shoo Fly blocks, but I also made up these two liberated stars:

I just have to be careful to keep this from becoming a full-on dog quilt!

Meanwhile, I have also sewn the binding onto Sunshine & Blue Skies and run the quilt through the washer and dryer.

I could not be happier with the way it fluffed and wrinkled up! It's a wonderfully cozy, happy quilt now.

Just what stressed out folks left homeless by Hurricane Sandy can use at the moment. I only wish I could work faster to get it to them.

I have taken to using Fast Finish Triangles for labelling my quilts. I sew them in place before stitching the binding down and then just have to secure that long loose edge. I used two on this quilt, on opposite corners. One will have the facts about the quilt (maker's name, date, etc.) and on the other I will write a message of hope and encouragement. Coming up with those words has been the hard part.

I had hoped to get this shipped so that it would arrive in time for Christmas. I'm not so sure that's going to happen now but I'm going to do the best I can. I do need to send it on its way and move on to the Christmas gifts I promised to make for family members. Time is runnning short!!!

WooHoo! Pictures!

Is it a fluke or a fix?

I tried to load pictures from Flickr. The prompt said my pictures had loaded but nothing showed up, twice. Then I made my picture files smaller. For whatever reason that seemed to do the trick although it still took forever for the photos to load.

Here's the finished version of the quilt that went to New York for the BASICS program.

I don't know whether you'll be able to see it bigger or not. I did very simple quilting so there's not much to see in that department anyway.

And here's the ATC I made up for October.


I haven't figured out what to call it yet. I just got a kick out of the juxtaposition of the whimsical skull and crossbones print and the elegant Art Nouveau lady and the spider. The beads are all pewter except for three glass trumpet flowers that are a faint pink with yellow stop beads. I had difficulties machine stitching around the edge this time. Between the fat presser foot I have to use for the blanket stitch and where I put those leaf beads there just wasn't enough room!

So now that I've finally been able to show you these two projects I wonder if I'll be able to show you what I've been working on since then?

Another Dashing Quilt

After I delivered my Medallion quilt to Heather for quilting I remembered another Churn Dash project I had started back in the day. It must have been the mid to late 1990's. I was playing with plaids and homespuns, and I think this was one of the first times I tried a diagonal set.

It was put away because once I had the setting triangles in place I didn't know what else to do. It was also a strange size, slightly under 33" x 42." I really liked it but it was too big to be a wall hanging (given the wall space we had at the time) and it felt too grown up for a baby quilt. Now, with more experience under my belt, it seemed natural to just put a couple of borders on it to bring it up to a workable size. In this case that was 36" x 48."

I thought of this UFO because I had some blocks and pieces leftover from my Medallion quilt and I was pretty sure they were basically all the same color scheme. I also dug into my orphan blocks to see what else I might have that would work. I found a few blocks that I think must have been leftover from when I originally put the diagonal set together. The first thing I did was to frame them up so they would finish at 12 inches. Then the 10" and 12" blocks went on the design wall with the UFO.

Not bad!

Next I took my leftover flying geese units and used them to make more blocks. I was able to make a couple of Dutchman's Puzzle blocks and a couple that are variations on that block (the geese are pointing in a different direction). I used some of the geese to frame up 5" Churn Dash blocks I had on hand so that they became 10" blocks. And I cut a few new patches to fill in the blank spots. Then I had to resort to using the bed to lay out the blocks because it had all outgrown my design wall.

Oh yes, I made a star block with a Churn Dash center too. You'll see it in the picture below. That block didn't make it into the final version though because of its' dark background. I ended up making a lighter star block for that spot.

Fortunately I still had enough of the brown that I'd used in the diagonal set to sash the border blocks. Unfortunately, when I had the borders all sewn up they were one and a quarter inches longer than the center panel of the quilt. Arrgh! And I thought my math was so accurate!

Finding a solution for that little problem required some sleep. The next day I took out four sashing strips and replaced them with slightly wider strips.

That seemed to do the trick. All it needed then was 3" at either end to get the length I wanted. This quilt will finish at 60" x 80." I don't have a picture of the finished flimsy - sorry. I'd found the perfect backing fabric in my stash and was getting ready to baste the layers together when I thought about it and by that time it was too dark to get a decent picture. And now it's all rolled up, pinned and waiting for me to figure out how I'm going to quilt it. It won't be anything fancy, believe me. My goal is to get this done and on its' way to New York ASAP. I kind of have a hankering to do some more piecing before I start the quilting process though... ;- )

And Done!

It feel so good to be productive again. Even the itch of the hives has been damped down to a tolerable level. Whew!

If you take a quick look at the previous post you'll see that I had just put the flying geese border on my Pioneer Medallion flimsy. My plan was to then border the whole thing with another set of ten inch Churn Dash blocks, all in blue, and end by putting flying geese along the top and bottom edges to add length. Once I had the blue Churn Dash blocks on I put the flimsy on the bed to see how it looked.

The bedroom furniture we use belonged to my husband's grandparents. I believe it to be from the 1930's. When I put the flimsy on the bed I realized that I didn't really need the extra geese at either end of the quilt. Because there's a foot board and we are short people I don't need the extra length. (In the picture above the blue Dashes you see at the bottom are hanging over the footboard.)

Here's a shot of one side of the bed (the side where the window is, thus making it possible to get a decent picture!). The top fits the bed beautifully, just as it is. :- )

That's also a west window so it will be helpful to be able to turn the quilt a quarter turn every so often to avoid fading (in case you missed it, the quilt is a square). Yippee! All done! I've called my machine quilter and will be handing this off to her later in the week. She recently quilted the I Spy Disappearing 9 Patch I made too.

Just a simple meander but she donated her services and it's all the quilt needed.

The stars are the backing. I hadn't a clue what I would use for the binding. When I saw that Heather had used a green thread for the quilting I went to my green stash and found an old print that was perfect. There was just enough of it too!

Now all I have to do is get it turned in so one of the kids in our local Foster Care program can put it to good use!

The flying geese that I didn't use on my Medallion quilt are going into a quilt destined for the BASICS program in NYC via Victoria at Bumble Beans. Stay tuned!

Basics Promesa:

BASICS/Promesa, is a community based organization in the South Bronx, New York City, founded by Latino Leaders. Our goal is to assist disadvantaged families and individuals, as well as to enhance their ability to thrive in the community. The organization offers housing services, primary care, substance abuse, mental health and harm reduction services — everything an individual needs in order to recover and actively participate in the betterment of our community.