Diary Quilt - My Version of Quilty 365

I've been doing a good job keeping up with my plan to cut a strip a day to reflect a year of my life. I began this mid-November last year after reading about Audrey's project featuring circles, Quilty 365. I have almost four columns at this point. There will be a total of 13 when I've circled back around to November this year.

There have only been a few days when I've had a struggle to choose what felt like an appropriate print for the day. I have quite the selection of novelty prints. They've been a big help. For example, one day I spent quite a bit of money online and the next day I made Ohio Star blocks.

Here's a section where I worked on a basket quilt, bought a new print, then bound the teal and cream quilt that we sent to Ohio for our F2F playmate. I had quite the headache the day after that.

Audrey started her circle project by pulling from her scrap bin exclusively. I've chosen instead to pull from my stash, wherever the right print might be found. Others have put their own personal spin (pardon the pun!) on Quilty 365. Audrey is hosting a link party so you can click over to here and see who else is playing along and how they're participating.

Now the question is, what to do for Leap Day? ;- )

Endings and Beginnings

While I was away from the blog I finished the twin-bed-size quilts for our twin granddaughters.

Fronts on the left, backs on the right.

The top I built out of my Parts Department was backed, quilted, and bound. Here it is at our local quilt guild meeting this week, photographed by one of our guild members:

about 85" x 85"

I pulled together most of the 12" Ohio star blocks I made over the course of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last year to make this top, also photographed at the guild meeting:

about 84" x 84"

I think quilting will really make this top sing.

I've just completed another large top too but I think I'll give it it's own post. (Hopefully I won't forget or get distracted!)

Now it's time to get back into making blocks. Late last year Gayle and I were pushing each other to make orange Ohio Stars. I've lost track of what she may have accomplished since then. I only had half a dozen when I put my head down to begin building these bed quilts. The other day I had occasion to get out some orange prints so I made another 9" Ohio star for the collection. That started me wondering how to set these new blocks. Right now I'm considering an alternate block to put between the stars...

At the moment my plan is to make a quilt I'll keep for myself. A personal quilt is going to feel small after building the bed size tops I've been working on lately!

I believe I will whoop it up on Friday and link up with the other rainbow scrappers Saturday morning. :- )

We Did It

In our Foot Square Freestyle block swap Miss May/January had almost a week with her completed quilt before she passed away. Kate informs me that it was exactly one month from the time we decided to move Pat up in line to accommodate her shortened life span to the date the quilt was shipped to her. What a relief and a blessing to be able to get that assembled and quilted and then shipped overnight. You can see the image of the virtual quilt and the work in progress in my previous post. Here's what the end product looked like, photographed in my local quilt shop:

James Brown did the quilting for us and Kate created the label.

There were some struggles when it came to choosing thread color and quilting design. James wanted to do his best work and display his talents but the feathers he was planning to use proved to be too much for the quilt. In the end we chose leaves. They speak to me of hope and new life.

With a Hobbs 80/20 batting the quilt turned out soft and fluffy. I was surprised by how pretty the color palette was too. 

Kate has written up a memorial page about Pat and her quilt. I encourage you to take a few minutes to go over and read it.

After that concentrated effort I had to take a break. That's one reason this blog has been so quiet. I have been stitching however, working on a needlepoint case. I love Stitch and Zip kits for mindless stitching. C~ asked me to make up this e-reader case for her:

It's nearly finished. I've already purchased another kit that I'm looking forward to working on. There's a new quilt project on the design wall too. I'll save that for the next post though, and hopefully you won't have to wait weeks to see what it is!

Status Report

There's so much to catch up on here in The Magpie's Nest that I hardly know where to begin. My head is not fully in the game at the moment either. Let's see... how about a list?

1. I finished the binding on the second twin's quilt. Need to get that photographed.
2. I'm more than halfway around the binding on a Parts Department quilt, then that will also need to be photographed.
3. I'm making more of the 12" Ohio Stars I made for last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge to fill out a second Parts Department quilt. 
4. As the blocks are coming in for Miss May's Foot Square Freestyle (F2F) quilt I'm sewing them together. 
5. My sweet, charming father-in-law passed away. It's a good thing really, we just have to adjust to the new normal and sort out funeral arrangements.

The one item I can elaborate on a little bit right now is the F2F quilt. When we began our swap Miss May knew she might not see her blocks or be able to assemble them into a quilt. We didn't know it at the time but she is in the late stages of ovarian cancer. A drug trial did not have the desired benefits for her. The rest of the swappers have now taken it upon themselves to make their blocks for her immediately instead of waiting until her scheduled turn in May. They are being sent to me and I am sewing them together according to the plan Kate and Avis devised digitally. They also created a virtual quilt for Miss May so she can see what her quilt will look like.

I have about half the blocks here in The Nest. I put them on my design wall this morning to show you the progress so far.

Once again the quilt will be larger than my design wall so what you see above is not entirely true to the design plan. Almost a whole column has been left out. Nevertheless, you can see that it's coming along nicely. I'm expecting blocks from Germany, France, the UK, and Australia any day now.

When this top has been assembled my son will do the quilting. Our hope is that we'll be able to get this done and shipped to Miss May before it's too late. Whether she has time to enjoy it or not, it will eventually be donated to the M.D. Anderson Ovarian Quilt Project to be auctioned off to raise monies for research into the screening for and treatment of ovarian cancer.

Speaking of the Foot Square Freestyle swap, I haven't been very good about posting the blocks I've been making for each month's participants. You can see all the blocks that have been made over the last seven months by all the participants by clicking on the highlighted phrase above and scrolling down.

Two Finishes!

The baby shower I learned about in mid-December is being held this weekend. I won't be able to be there, but it was my goal to have the baby quilt I've been working on ready to be presented at the shower. Goal achieved!

It's about 48" square, bound in blue since, according to reports, the expected infant is a boy. I didn't think to get pictures before I laundered it. The quilting was done with white thread so it was hard to see even before shrinkage happened. The quilt turned out fantastically crinkly and cushy though. (There's flannel on the back.)

The other finish also had a close deadline, the first of February (just to be on the safe side). I amazed myself yesterday by pruning the quilted sandwich, making binding, applying the binding by machine, and then hand stitching the binding down all the way around the twin size quilt. All in one day! With no apparent ill effect to my hands or shoulders - yet.

This is the first of the quilts for our twin granddaughters. Most of the blocks were made as a result of my participation in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2015.

The second one is on the long-arm now. I'm a lot less concerned about getting the pair done in time for their birthday with one under my belt already. :- )

I chose a multi color print for the binding. It would have been nice if there had been enough for both quilts but that was not to be. However, it was gratifying to have a perfect place to use this print that had been in my stash for 20 years or more.

The quilting shows up really well on parts of the back:

Although it may not be as obvious once the quilt has been laundered. I used a Cicely Mary Baker panel and border print for the bulk of the back of both quilts. This one happens to be in pinks, the other is more blue and purple.

All in all I couldn't be more happy with the way these two quilts have turned out. I only hope the finishing of the second twin's quilt will go as smoothly as there's another project in the pipeline I'll want to be able to give my full attention to when all the parts are in hand.