Peaceful Sunday Morning

I went across the street to our mailbox yesterday to discover that the birds had planted a blackberry bush nearby. It was laden with fruit ready for the picking. I went back to the house, got a small bowl - because I'm probably the only one in the house who will eat these berries - and returned to the bush. It was more extensive than I realized at first. I filled my bowl but could easily have picked more. So, when the air quality and the temperature were at delightfully low levels again this morning I went back and picked another bowlful of blackberries!

 There are still more berries on the bush. Some are not quite ready for picking, some are out of reach. That blackberry bush has thorns that are more vicious than the ones on my roses! Speaking of which, the Charlotte rose has been producing abundantly this year.

This is a very minimal view of what Charlotte has on display.

 

 Which is not to imply that the Queen of Sweden has been a slacker. She's just not as abundant at the moment. And what there is is hard to photograph. 

I'm going to take full advantage of this day of rest to take a breather from the quilt I've been building. This will be my interpretation of a junk journal. It began with some panels from a line of fabric that is called Art Journal.

 I've been collecting text prints for years now. This has been the project to bring them out to play.

 My plan has been to build up the panels and then other bits and pieces into blocks that will finish at twelve inches square. Four of those across and five down would create a quilt 48" wide and 60" long. I wanted something a bit larger than that but didn't want to make more 12" blocks. I've suffered a series of minor toxic exposures while this has been underway and that makes thinking difficult to impossible. So, during a lucid moment, I figured I could make 4" wide sashing strips to go between the blocks in rows and then 3" sashing to go between the rows. That will give me a top that measures about 60" wide and 72" long. 

This is where I am at the moment:

There are a few more 4" sashes to make, and then the 3" rows. I'm on a September deadline. The quilting won't take long as I imagine a simple meander will be all it needs or wants to hold it together. I just need a few more days of good air quality and energy to get it done!

A Change in Perspective

 Kate mentioned in a comment on my Scrap Happy Day post that she'd been missing the quilt making content that was the focus of this blog for so long. I have to admit I haven't been entirely comfortable with the void either. Except there really hasn't been that big a void, just a change of direction. Miniaturization, if you will. Aside from the ATC's I've been making in conjunction with Anne Brooke's #52tags project I've been starting new stitch wraps/scrolls. I'm not going to show you everything in this post but I will share the most recent start because it has been the catalyst for that change in perspective in the title of this post. 

I've been cutting 2.5" strips of scrap batting into 24 - 30" lengths, then laying my smallest scraps on top and stitching them in place by hand, mostly with size 12 Perle cotton threads and a small roster of embroidery stitches. In the section above I used some of the piecing leftover from the Ugly Fabric challenge (Scrap Happy Day post) in addition to leftover scrap bits. 

I'm learning to embrace raw edges. My new perspective is that this process is basically improvisational hand piecing and hand quilting. It's sort of a modern take on crazy quilting as well since my intention is to gussy up this foundation layer with embellishments later on. 

At the moment I have three of these scrolls started. I have to come up with a way to name them so I can refer to each one individually. So far none have much of a theme established. Well, one does. It's going to be a macabre bell pull. 😉 Do cross stitchers still make bell pulls? It was a popular project back in the day. I'm not sure what will become of these scrolls as I complete them. They won't be useful in the way a quilt is (or can be) but they are serving a definite purpose in my world right now! 

Scrap Happy in March

 I've actually done some scrap piecing! 

Tanya McGuire posted an ugly fabric challenge on her YouTube channel a couple of weeks back. From what I've seen, she primarily works with paper, making journals of various sorts. Somewhere along the way she came across yardage of a navy and white double-knit houndstooth print hat she declared was the ugliest fabric in the world. While I cannot wholeheartedly agree with her on that point - I've seen prints I consider much less attractive - I decided to take her up on the challenge to do something interesting with that ugly fabric. I emptied out one of my bags of smaller scraps and set to work on the 8.5" x 11" piece she sent out, using the back side of the challenge fabric as a foundation for some intuitive piecing. 

My overall plan was to make a book or journal cover. I chose to piece on the back side of the fabric so the challenge print would still be visible when Tanya receives my entry. 

I kept to neutral prints, trying for those that might mimic things that would be found in one of her junk journals. I also worked on the two halves of the cover separately so there would be a back and a front for the eventual book.

That floral strip down the middle is a piece of binding, giving me a finished edge where the two halves came together. I used a variegated thread to topstitch that in place and then zigzag around the perimeter of the cover.

I was reluctant to put a more finished edge on the book cover as I'm not sure how Tanya will end up using it. It did not come out to a standard book size. She may even choose to cut it up and use bits as pockets or embellishments in her work. Speaking of pockets...

I simply folded a couple pieces of leftover muslin and stitched them to the inside of each end to create pockets into which the back and front cover of a journal can be inserted. (Turn the photo horizontally in your mind's eye.)

I'm probably one of the last in this link party to post what I've done with scrap materials this month. Scrap Happy is open to anyone who would like to share how they've used or repurposed leftover materials. Not everyone posts every month but you'll always find something interesting on their blogs. If you'd like to participate just contact Kate or Gun from the links below. Welcome to Bear and Carol this month! Hopefully you'll see me again next month with something new I've made from the abundant scraps in this Magpie's Nest. 😉

Kate, Gun, Eva, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Kerry, Claire, Jean, Jon, Hayley, Dawn,
Gwen, Bekki, Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin,
Vera, Nanette, Ann, Nancy, Dawn 2, Noreen,
Bear and Carol

Bee, Myself & I in January

I've been missing the little bead embroidered pieces I used to do each month for the Bead Journal Project. For my Bee, Myself & I projects in 2018 I've decided to resurrect that effort. Bee, Myself and I is a forum for selfish sewing: anything that is purely for pleasure, not for a cause or charity, and with no other end point than what I determine. Carla over at Granny Maud's Girl was the inspired maker who started the effort. 😊

The focus of the BJP was to use beads in an intuitive way. I want to return to using my beads (and sequins and charms!) but I want to expand the parameters of these little projects - the operative word being 'little'.

We were encouraged to choose a size and format to stick to throughout the duration of each year of the BJP. One year I used a diamond shape...

And another year I made ATC's:

I've decided that this year I will allow myself to use whatever shape or size feels right at the time. To that end, one day this month I pulled out the empty holiday popcorn tin where I toss my small batik scraps and just started piecing.

This is what I ended up with:

The heart shape was the one that spoke to me the loudest.

I did the feather stitching first, using some of Nancy's hand dyed flosses (of course). Then I seed stitched the yellow patch, and then added the beads and sequins.

.

The green patch in the upper right has had a couple different treatments, both of which have since been removed because I wasn't happy with them. I may end up facing and turning this before I make a final decision about how to handle that. As it is, I'm probably going to have some trouble with that process. I wasn't thinking about seam allowances when I began embellishing. I've toyed with the idea of appliqueing the heart to some other foundation, which might alleviate the seam allowance issue, but haven't entirely made up my mind yet. I'm giving myself permission to leave it as it is for the time being. As far as I'm concerned, I've fulfilled the parameters of my Bee sewing even if I don't have a finished product. Besides, I got distracted by Halloween prints! 😉

PDQ Progress

P.D.Q.= Parts Department quilt, pretty darn quick!

To recap, last week I started with a couple of chicken themed orphan blocks out of my Parts Department. They ended up creating this medallion:

I decided to build another strippy version quilt rather than a medallion quilt. To that end I added only to the top and bottom of the original square. I pulled more blocks out of the Parts Dept. but had to make a couple of new ones for a more cohesive look. (Yes, even with a multitude of scraps you can achieve a cohesive design!)

Another goal was to use up some of the scrap strips in my collection. I had Chinese Coin iterations on my mind but ended up making half log cabin blocks instead.

This made a nice dent in my inventory of 6" scrap blocks. :- )

I used a handful to top off what I've been thinking of as the central column for this quilt.

There's a similar row at the bottom of the column. The rest of the blocks were divided into two groups for secondary columns. To achieve the same length as the middle column I had to throw in the occasional extra strip.

Naturally, I can't get the whole thing into one picture!

Hopefully you get the idea. The challenge now is to decide how wide to make the vertical sashing and borders. And whether to make them whole cloth or out of more scrap strips. Or whether to use vertical sashing at all! I need to get this finished up p.d.q. as now there's a wedding quilt to build for an April wedding. :- )

I've just found out about Kat's Sew Some Love link parties on Wednesdays. Since this quilt top is intended for donation through this year's Hands2Help quilt drive I'm linking up!

Linking to Quilting is More Fun than Housework where quilts from orphan blocks are being featured. ;-) 

Gwennie-Inspired Medallion Reveal

The day we've all been waiting for is finally here! I'm excited to see how everyone else's liberated medallion quilt tops turned out. In the meantime here's my story. (Do you have a fresh cuppa? You might want to go make one before you settle in.)

You may recall that I made liberated log cabin blocks in the first round when we were to be inspired by any aspect of childhood. (You can read about that here if you missed it.) That meant I had a real challenge when the next prompt came and it turned out to be log cabins. Rather than making more blocks I treated the whole medallion as a giant log cabin and only added some framing strips, Courthouse Steps style.

The next design prompt was stars. Seemed easy enough but I got stuck at that point. I had a few ideas, but without knowing what the final prompt would be I was afraid to make a move. That turned out to be a difficult month for me physically too. I fussy cut more images from one of the prints in my palette and randomly made a couple of stars but didn't build a single border.

The final prompt was completely unexpected: add something fishy. Given the nature of my medallion thus far I was driven to find some fish skeletons. And I did! In the right colors and scale to boot! But how to incorporate them in a way that made sense? How would fish skeletons come into the picture? Because cats had eaten the fish of course!

Cats are also fond of mice. The lower half of the quilt became a garden in my mind, the source of the roses in the baskets that started this whole adventure.

Along with the ubiquitous spiders of course. ;- )

I kept the creatures of the air in the upper half of the borders, with the exception of a few skeletons dancing in the star light.

And now, the whole quilt top:

I do have one more design decision to make. I'm debating whether to add final border strips, partly to bring the quilt closer to the size I was shooting for (although it's perfectly acceptable the way it is) and partly to frame the composition.

On the other hand, I don't want it to look like it's waiting for another border. These whole-cloth strips will mimic the strips in the Courthouse Steps round and I wonder if that will be redundant. I'm planning to bind the whole thing - eventually - in black. This shot isn't much to go on but I don't have much room to audition any further either. I'll only be adding 4" overall to the width and somewhere between 2" to 4" to the height if I go with the black border strips. I'll take all suggestions into consideration, thank you very much.

Now, if you haven't already, I highly recommend you to pop over to the link party on Lori's blog so you can see the whole gamut of liberated medallion quilts that have been created during this quilt along! This has been a really fun trip and I'm grateful to all the hostesses for making it so. :- )

Liberated QAL - A Day Late

But I figured I could check in anyway. :- )

After touring some of the blogs of other participants I finally got inspired to work on my own liberated medallion quilt project. The prompt for July was "log cabins." I chose to build up my medallion Courthouse Steps style. At first I only added one strip to each side of the medallion...

But then in the beginning of August I decided it needed a bit more before I added anything in response to the "stars" prompt.

And then my body got the upper hand and nothing more happened until the very end of August. At that point I decided one more set of "steps" was in order:

As Gayle said, there are so many options when it comes to star blocks! I think all the possibilities overwhelmed me in my weakened state. I don't have any star prints that would work with this color palette. Sort of shot myself in the foot in that respect. I liked her solution: make stars every which way and see what works in the end. So I've fussy cut a few images and some scraps to make this:

Sorry it's a little blurry. Better pictures later!

I have two 4.5" liberated or maverick stars and one 6" sawtooth star so far. The larger owl and raven blocks may or may not become stars. I'm not sure I want that upper border to get that big. At least one of the little maverick stars will go down the side, and I plan to make more of those to fill up the side borders at least part way.

We've received the prompt to do "something fishy" for the final round of our liberated medallions. Didn't see that one coming! I have an idea percolating; we'll see whether it comes into being or not. I suspect that will be confined to the bottom border. This is shaping up to be a good size for a couch or nap quilt which is just what I wanted.

To see what the others have done with their liberated medallions go check out the link party at Humble Quilts.

Diary Quilt and Selfish Stitching

The Princess is in the closet and the Macabre Medallion has been on the design wall in her place. I've added a bit more to the MM but still haven't settled on how to incorporate stars. It will be interesting to find out what the next prompt is and whether I can use it with stars for a border, thus fulfilling both challenges. ;- )

In the meantime, it's time to check in with my version of Quilty 365, my Diary Quilt. I can no longer get the whole thing on the design wall for a photo shoot so I'll only show the most recent rows/columns:

I'm at day 290 in this year-long adventure. Rather than the circles others are appliqueing for each day I'm cutting 2.5" x 6.5" strips representative of my daily experiences. In the end there will be 13 rows or columns of strips. I have ten complete and have just begun number eleven.

I believe I began this mid-November last year so it will be the middle of November this year when I'll stop adding new strips and sew these columns together. There's a link party over at Quilty Folk today for those of us still slogging along.

It's also time to check in with my selfish stitching efforts. I haven't touched any needlepoint since my SAL post in the middle of August. Instead I've been embellishing a bit of intuitive piecing I did some time ago (probably more than two years ago in fact!). I don't think I have a picture of the piecing alone. This is what it looks like now:

It all started with some random scraps that I just sewed together as they came to hand. Very soon I was seeing the little house image so I purposefully used the yellow batik to create a frame for the house. Then I decided to set it on a strip of land at the edge of a body of water. I've seed stitched most of the background areas with either cotton or rayon floss. The fluffy yarn is couched down with an occasional delica bead. The rick rack is hand sewn in place. This is one of a pair of 4" x 6" creations. The other is next in line for embellishing.

On Sunday (4 September) I'll be linking up with these ladies who are cheering each other on with their individual needlework projects: Kathy, Susan, Kate, Avis, Claire, DebbieRose, Gun, Carole, Wendy, Lucy, Jess, Christina, and Constanze. If you'd like to join us every three weeks just leave a comment when you visit Avis. :- )

Recent Finishes

I don't remember whether I posted these first pictures previously. I trust you'll forgive me if you've already seen them. ;- )

My most recent string quilt was built directly onto squares of batting rather than a fabric or paper foundation. I cut the batting squares at six or eight inches, sewed my strings and strips to them, and then trimmed the blocks to 6.5 or 8.5 inches. My thinking was that the quarter-inch seam allowances would fill in the depth between the squares of batting. It was a bit tedious to press them open but overall I think it worked.

Next time I might try leaving a half inch seam allowance around the batting to make pressing easier. Maybe. In the photo above you can also see where the rows of six inch blocks butt up against the rows of eight inch blocks.

Here's the completed top:

The very middle of the quilt is built of six inch blocks, the two ends are comprised of eight inch blocks.

I bought backing fabric from the clearance section of my local quilt shop and made the back. Then it sat in the closet while I pursued other projects. In the last two weeks our quilt guild received a plea for quilts for the children coming into Foster Care this summer so I pulled this out and finished it up right quick. All I had to do was lay the quilted top on the backing fabric and stitch the two layers together. I used one of the utility stitches on my machine that reaches across the seam lines to help stabilize everything. You may be able to see it in the detail shot below.

And in this picture you can see the print I used on the back and for the binding.

My most recent finish is the Treasure Island baby quilt:

Hopefully by double clicking on the picture you'll be able to see it in greater detail. I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

One more finish:

You've already seen the top complete but now it's been quilted. Not that you'll be able to see the quilting unless you have the quilt in your hands. :- ) I used a dark thread and mostly just outlined the major elements.

It's honestly going to be a little painful to part with these two small quilts. But better that someone should use and enjoy them than they sit around my house taking up space!

Decisions, Decisions...

You saw my piles of string blocks in the last post (toward the bottom of the post). Probably the hardest step to take in any creative process is the first one. In this case that was choosing which block to put on the design wall first!

In addition to the string blocks I fussy-cut these images of birds to include in my "reading material" quilt. They look to me like pages out of a book on natural science. But, there were only three different images. Since I was planning wide four columns in my quilt I needed a fourth image. Along the selvage edges of the bird print was a gilt border of birds. I cut and pieced them together to create a fourth block.


That made it easier to know where to start with the string blocks. Once I had the birds roughly where I wanted them to be in the quilt I started adding string blocks above and below them. This was a slow process. After I had fleshed out the four columns I started fine tuning them. The pieced bird block just wasn't sitting well with me. Back in the stash I found another piece of yardage featuring big images of birds and butterflies and things. I was able to fussy-cut a block from that print to make it fit in with what I had going on in this quilt.

You'll see it as the nest and eggs in the second column from the left.

When I had the four major columns pretty well settled I started thinking about what to do between them. There were plenty of string blocks left over but I didn't really want the more traditional format where all the columns are the same width across the quilt top. The concept for this quilt originally came together when I purchased this print of stacks of books:

I knew I wanted to use it for the outer border, but what about using it between the string blocks? A single stack of books from this print would fit nicely, with a narrow sashing strip separating the books and the strings.

Or I could cut my remaining string blocks down so they would finish at three inches and then use a narrow separating strip between them and the larger string blocks. That option more closely mimicked the inspiration for this quilt, the quilt on the cover of Karla Alexander's book New Cuts for New Quilts.

I eyeballed the book print with the wide string blocks and decided to go with option number 2.

It's been as much of a challenge to place the trimmed-down blocks between their big sisters as it was to place the big blocks originally. In fact, it got harder as I went along because I was running out of choices in my blocks. Some of the blocks I'd made just didn't work at all, big or small. I have extended more than one block by adding a string to it before joining it to the next one in the column. I've also removed and replaced a few strings. At this point the narrow columns are just blocks on the wall still, not sewn together yet. I'm letting it rest for a day or so before I tackle the job of making them long enough. Who Let the Dogs Out?! is back from the quilter so I'm putting the binding on that in the interim. When the string blocks are finally all sewn together I'll have to decide on what to use for the narrow sashing strips...!