Charming New Project

Hello Friends. :- ) I'm feeling reasonably well this morning so I figured I'd better take advantage of it. I even have a brand new project to share with you!

I was surprised and delighted to find an unexpected gift in my mailbox one day recently. Timeless Treasures sent one of their mini treat charm packs to express their appreciation for the quilt I'd made for a victim of Hurricane Sandy. Timeless Treasures used their warehouse space to collect and store the quilts until they could be distributed. Many of their employees and family members live and work in the affected areas.

I received the Lemon-Poppy set of charm squares:

While the yellows in the pack made me happy the other colors weren't necessarily the hues I would choose to work with. Time for some stretching exercises!

My criteria for this project were to use all the charm squares (if possible) and avoid buying additional fabric. I browsed through my collection of patterns and ideas, and did some online research into patterns for charm squares. There are a couple of tempting patterns in the Moda Bake Shop. One of them was the inspiration for my project; I may yet go back and try out the others someday.

I soon discovered that with only one charm pack it was going to be a challenge to make something more than a wall hanging, no matter how many patches I cut from the charm squares themselves. The wide range of values in this pack created another challenge: how to incorporate both the light, bright charms and the very dark charms?

Because my physical and mental energies are so limited these days I was looking for a simple plan. Minimal cutting and piecing, minimal room for errors!

It was the Road to Tennessee quilt plan in the Moda Bake Shop that caught my eye. Take a moment to click on the link and have a look. I'll wait. ;- )

I had to try out several batiks in my stash to find something that would work with all the charm squares. It helped that I figured I would need at least a yard. That eliminated most of my stash. Of the options I was left with most were printed with patterns that were too bold or busy. They fought with the prints in the charm squares. But I had a generous yard and a half of a wonderful mottled red that has small spatters and squiggles of yellow-to-gold-to-tan and greens. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

By this time I knew I wanted to try alternate squares between the charm squares. I cut 2" and 5" patches from my wonderful red batik. The 2" squares were pieced onto opposite corners of the charm squares to make the hexagonal shapes. This is the first layout I tried after the piecing was done:

Not bad, but I tweaked the placement of a couple of the hexagons.

This layout gives me a quilt top that can be turned into a lap quilt for ADCS and there are only four charm squares that don't get used. But what if I turn the charms in every other row?

Oooo, I like it! But maybe that yellow is too potent in the middle of the quilt...?

What if we do this instead?

What do you think? I'm thinking I like this the best. Unless I take it a step further and mix up the other hexagons more... (Don't forget you can double click on the pictures to see more detail.)

A person could play like this forever and never actually get a quilt made!

What?! REALLY??

My friend C~ was gracious enough to take five of my quilts to the admissions table at our local county fair last week. She also entered one of her quilts. She and her husband went to the fair a few days later and reported that there were ribbons on all of my quilts. Because she was distracted in looking for her quilt she didn't take note of precisely what ribbons were awarded. When my husband brought the quilts and ribbons home I was amazed at the sheer number of ribbons. My jaw dropped when I caught sight of this one:

Can you read it? It says 'Best of Show.' BEST OF SHOW!!!

Granted, it's only a small county fair, but none of my quilts has ever done that well in the past. I've been gobsmacked all week. Turns out I don't even have a full "portrait" picture of the quilt. Or if I do I can't find it.

My black and white Crowns quilt was awarded Best of Class.

My little art quilt for the La Conner Quilt Museum's challenge was awarded Reserve Best of Class.

The Treasure Island baby quilt I made very recently was given a second place ribbon...

As did my friendship quilt that I call Play Group.

We received a copy of the judge's comments with the ribbons. I agreed with about half of her judgments and disagreed with the other half. ;- ) I do appreciate her decision regarding Best in Show however!

I've been suffering from the fatigue that accompanies anemia. I've been sewing too, and have some things I could share with you, but it might take me a while. I'm trying to eat iron rich foods and am taking an iron supplement. We're hoping an outpatient procedure I have scheduled for early in September will take care of the source of this problem. Maybe then I'll only have the chemical sensitivities to cope with!

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!

Playtime, Magpie Style!

I had a blast pulling images out of my stash to create the reverse side for the Treasure Island panel. It all began with three 12 inch squares of a companion treasure map print and the tall ships I'd pieced. In order to get the ball rolling I decided to show some of the creatures of the deep that might be swimming under the ships.

The whales swimming under the center map square is a 12" x 6" piece that was literally all I had left of the original yardage. I confess to stopping in a local quilt shop to supplement my palette of sea creatures. I'm happy to report that my reaction to that expedition was far less severe than it could have been. :- )

Prints that implied water and sky were used to transition from one image to another.

Almost the most difficult thing was to figure out what to use to bring this side up to the same length as the pre-printed panel. In the end a simple strip of one of the water fabrics was a perfect solution!

Here are a couple of detail shots for you:

If you could see this bit in person you'd see that the giant octopus is guarding coins and jewelry on the seabed. This guy was as close to a sea monster as I could come up with. The other one I'd fussy cut was just too small.

In the photo above we have seagulls swooping over the water and more of the undersea creatures. I had one print that looked a lot like coral or sea fans but many of the "seaweed" patches were actually cut from what was a tree print.

I'm very happy with the way this turned out. There's a lot for a little child to discover and explore. The challenge now is to get it quilted! There's already so much going on that I think simple straight line quilting will be sufficient. I just have to gird my loins and get started! ;- )

Ahoy Matey!

The Americana lap quilt has been quilted and pruned. I had to go out to buy fabric for the binding; that still needs to be turned into binding. In the meantime I've set the koi pool UFO aside (bottom of previous post) to whip up a baby quilt. Or so I hope, since the baby is due next month!

It all began with this Treasure Island panel I received as a gift from my sister-in-law.

Apparently that was five years ago! The mother-to-be found me and reminded me of the panel when she reached out after missing an opportunity to buy a quilted version of the panel on Etsy. We've been exchanging email since then. What you see above is one of the options I suggested to her.

The tall ship blocks are six inches square.

Two of them are flying the Jolly Roger...

We eventually decided that I would use the ships to create the reverse side for the panel. This is the potential arrangement I currently have on the wall:

I've fussy cut a companion map print into 12.5" squares and a few other much smaller pieces from an old, old print.

I'd like to have a larger sea serpent but the little guy in the picture below is the only one I could find in my stash.

This is going to be fun to create. Keep your fingers crossed that my energy holds out!

One thing I realized after piecing the ship blocks is that block piecing is what works for me for instant gratification. Completing a block gives me more satisfaction than merely running fabric through the sewing machine. Which could be why it didn't occur to me to treat the koi pool UFO as a log cabin block and simply frame it up with strips. I want to make some blocks to go around it! I have an idea of the type of block I'd like to make too. The trick will be to find the right colors and/or prints to create the look I want. It will be interesting to see how closely the finished top comes to the vision of it I have in my head. :- )