Sunday Pondering

I've just been visiting Esther over at ipatchandquilt. She has been working with donated blocks (and fabric) for charity quilts. Some of the prints that were donated date from the 1990's. They are high quality fabrics but not what Esther would choose for herself or her home. She's doing wonderful things with them. However, her comments and another group effort called Bee, myself and I, have me thinking about what I'm currently working on versus what I enjoy looking at or living with.

I have not yet felt the need to participate in the selfish sewing bee. I pretty much get to do what I want here in The Magpie's Nest, which feels selfish to begin with. It also pleases me to be able to make and donate quilts to people in need or worthy causes. So what need have I for selfish sewing?

Events yesterday have given me cause to ponder. The way things do in this life, one thing led to another and I am currently building another donation quilt. It began with blocks from my Parts Department, and since the intended recipient is a man I chose those blocks I thought were more manly in appearance.

The problem is that they are, for the most part, brown. And because this will be what I refer to as a puzzle quilt I need to make more blocks in brown to fill in the gaps.

Brown is not my favorite color. In fact, it is probably one of my least favorite colors. I prefer a more tropical palette, like these friendship blocks from my local quilt guild:

What made it so bad yesterday is that it's suddenly spring here. I worked on building this brown quilt, then had to run an errand out in the sunshine where I could see the flowering trees and the daffodils in beds and boxes around town. All that wonderful color and I had to come back to my little barren yard and deck and back to that brown project. {sigh}

If I had another design wall I could put those friendship blocks back up and play with them some more; take a break from the browns. But I don't, so I believe I will have to content myself with some needlepoint in happy colors. In other words, selfish sewing. ;- )

And just in case you haven't had a response from me to a comment you may have left on a previous post please know that I've read them and appreciate your kind words. Toxins and migraines have kept me from being more social again. (They've also kept me from putting even a few flowering annuals in the pots lining my back deck. Maybe I can do that tomorrow.)

His First Quilt

First of all, let me beg your pardon for gloating over my youngest son's recent accomplishment. James has been long arm quilting other people's quilts for over three years now. He just put the finishing touches on the first quilt he made from start to finish. He designed it, pieced it, appliqued parts of it, did the quilting, and put on the binding with a flat piping to add interest. I give you his interpretation of Majora's Mask from the Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask:

Naturally the colors don't read true to life in the photograph. The head is more purple in person. It's actually a blue and pinky-purple batik. The eyeballs were fussy cut and appliqued onto the black background. The horns are appliqued as well. Everything else is pieced.

The quilting disappears on most of the front but really stands out on the back:

Looks a little scary in fact!

The most noticeable quilting on the front are details or outlines. When you look closely though, the border treatment is impressive.

And is easier to see on the back:

I've added a link to his business page on Facebook in my sidebar. Just look for the hearts he quilted on my yellow block from Grandma's Box of Crayons. I'd be happy to put you in touch with him via email if you're not on Facebook. :- )

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!