Actual Quilting

My sister Jill was here last week, and between her feeding me and watching her bustle around, I got inspired to finally start quilting this. It had been lying on the frame since March, but I haven't had much energy.

It went pretty smoothly until the end, but I had loaded the backing a little skewed, and couldn't finish. I'll have to change it around to finish the last row. 

David and Claire arrived Friday evening and wanted to understand how the quilting machine operated. They spent a lot of time Saturday evening choosing some quilts to take home with them.

Curves Quilt

My friend Jeanne, who was in our Safeco-based quilt group, asked me to quilt this wallhanging for her. She cut and pieced the top in an AccuQuilt workshop. It was perfectly flat, something that I find difficult in tops with straight piecing, let alone curves like Drunkard's Path blocks.

The background is such a busy print that we knew that no quilting would really show up. So I used a thin blue thread and quilted sort of parallel wavy lines throughout to hold it in place and provide some texture. On the yellow, red and green mottled prints I used So Fine # 30 (formerly Brytes) in 6 different colors. 

The outer patches have a spiky fern design.

The center area is where I went a little crazy. I wanted it to stand out even against all the strong colors, and I wanted it to be asymmetric, free-flowing, organic in nature. It started with only single stitching lines, but that wasn't reading strong enough, so most of the outlined shapes got stitched over 2 more times. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I think Jeanne was too. 

January Projects

Since it may be a little while before anything else is finished, I thought I'd document that I am actually working on stuff. First off is this Stacked Coins quilt on the frame. It is multiple red and white prints for the 'coins' and a navy print with Santas for the bars in between. I pieced it before Christmas and got it loaded on the frame after New Year's. The quilting is echoed swirls in gold.

Then, if you can believe it, there is a hand-quilting project. This was the oldest thing on my UFO list, and really needs to get finished. I get frustrated trying to thread needles for hand quilting, but I found one that works. And after I finish the remaining blocks and sashing, I've given myself permission to machine quilt the outer border. 

A third project is in the piecing stage, and will hopefully be ready to go on the frame soon after the Coins quilt is done. It is also a Christmas quilt. So why am I working on 3 Christmas quilts in January? I've long had an idea of giving each of my nieces and nephews a quilt they can bring out each Christmas season. But what generally happens is that I think about it for a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, maybe go through the stash of Christmas fabrics, then things get busy and I put it all away until the next year. But this time, I actually pieced the first one and laid out the fabrics for the third and just kept going. After these I'll be ready to move on to something else. 

Thread Colors

It seems that thread colors can be so different on the quilt than on the cone or as described. I am using King Tut in Caravan for this quilt. It is described by Superior as Charcoal-Med. Brown-Gold/Brown-Med. Gray, and on the cone, that's pretty much what it looks like except for perhaps having more gold to it. But when I stitch it out, especially on the solid tan fabric, it looks like green-gold-blue-pinkish gray. Maybe it's the lights on the machine? It doesn't look bad, just not what I expected.

Design Wall

Sometimes I just have to start something new, even with all the existing project piled up around me. I saw some pictures of some simple rail fence quilts, and thought that would be a good way to work with a set of peach and green fabrics. I've got at least some of all the fabrics up here, but there are still more strips to cut and sew.

Sunflower Quilt

Finally, a finished quilt! The first completely finished in over a year. I'm figuring out what to do about that.
This is a lap quilt for my aunt Doris, for her 90th birthday. The picture was taken on a bit of an angle, which makes it look more crooked than it actually is.

A close-up of some blocks. I quilted it in an all-over curvy design, and washed and dried it when it was done. I used Quilter's Dream Select batting, which said it could give an 'antique, crinkly' look. And after the wash and dry, it really did crinkle up.

Tote Tuesday

A couple of weeks ago, I found out about this thing called Tote Tuesday. Virginia Spiegel, a fiber artist from Midwest, has been raising money for the American Cancer Society for several years by holding auctions for donated fiber artworks. This year she decided to do something a little different. On the 4 Tuesdays in February, there is bidding for a few artworks but mainly for totes filled with various themed goodies. I won the bidding for the tote below, donated by the publisher of Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine. It included the orange batik quilted tote, some back issues of the magazine plus a subscription, a DVD by Kim Brunner, some rulers, some thread, scissors, chalk, and some hand-dyed fabric by Diane Rusin Doran.  Quite a nice package!

The final week features some really exceptional items. Bidding is only open for a few hours on Tuesday.

Blocks

It turned out that the dial had slipped off the Auto setting and onto a manual mode that was compensating for the low light by making the exposure time long. I set it back to Auto, and presto, pictures are (relatively) sharp again.

Blocks Done

I finished up the pieced blocks for the new quilt while keeping half an eye on the Super Bowl. I took several pictures of 4 blocks up on my design wall, but every one of them turned out blurry. I don't know if I'm getting shaky, if it's because the camera's battery is running low, or if I need a new camera. Or a new memory card? I'll try batteries first, but I've been starting to feel the urge for a new camera. Anyway, the blocks are fairly simple, squares of the sunflower print surrounded by borders of random pieces of the various solids. They will alternate with larger squares of the sunflower fabric.

Braid Update

After straining my back doing yard work yesterday, I took it a little easier today in the sewing room. It was back to rain anyway. I got the braid top sewn together. This picture cuts off parts of the sides because I couldn't get back far enough from it in the hallway. But you can see more than in previous pictures. Next comes the borders. I'm pretty sure I'm going with one of the oranges for the inner border, either the dark leaf print in the small squares or the lighter one in the separator strips. But I don't know what I'm going to use for the outer border. I'm not sure I have anything in my stash that will work. Given the vast amount of fabric in my sewing room, that's hard to believe, but I don't buy pieces 2 yards or larger very often.

Progress?

I pressed the rest of the braids last night, but didn't add the ending triangles or trim them. Then I read in the book that you're not supposed to trim the edges until after you sew the separator strips on, to prevent the edges from stretching. Oops! At least I've only trimmed 1/2 of 1 braid. I can sew the triangles on 7 ends tonight, but then I have to clear some space to cut the strips and measure each braid. That may end up being a weekend project.

Fall

A beautiful fall day, sunny and crisp. I saw two pileated woodpeckers while walking this morning, the first I'd seen in quite awhile. I went back a little later with my camera, but there was no sign of them. You usually hear them, pecking away at a tree or sometimes the side of a house, and then have to look around to spot them. Later I raked leaves and chopped blackberry vines before doing a little more sewing.

I finished the last strips on all the braids. It's a little strange sewing them to just two sides; only one end matches and the other is left hanging loose. But they get trimmed later. I've only done the following steps on one end of one braid so far. First adding the end triangles:

And then trimming the edges to make a straight row.

The time change meant it got dark really early, and it already feels late. How long until spring?

Quilt Day Oct 09

Saturday was our semi-annual quilting day at Carol's house. Although my UFO list hasn't been getting any smaller, I knew I needed something to work on that was pretty simple and wouldn't require decision-making during the day. After looking through a number of books, I decided to try a French Braid quilt, from the book by Jane Hardy Miller. I started rummaging through fabrics the previous weekend, and by Sunday night had a pretty good idea of my general scheme. Then each night, I tinkered with it some more until I had the color run below.

During the actual day, along with talking with Carol, Melissa, Jan, Jani and Cindy (and snacking), I cut all the braid strips and sewed 8 out of the 1o colors on 2 ends of 4 rows. I had hopes of finishing up the rows on Sunday, but I was on-call, and got called 3 times between 2:30 and 6, so no go.

Mail Call

Look what came in my mail today! This beautiful quilt, 9 Springs, is by Juanita Yeager, who blogs here. She has been doing some downsizing in preparation for moving to Florida, and selling many of her books and quilts. I was lucky enough to purchase this one. Now I have to find a good place to display it. It is heavily quilted, some of which you can see in the larger picture.

Autumn

The first days of fall have been pretty warm, but it's starting to cool down a bit now. I switched out the bright summer quilts I had hanging in my office for a couple that are a little more seasonable, at least color-wise. One is September Liberty, which I showed here. The other one is Red Fish, from a pattern in Susan Carlson's book, Freestyle Quilts. I thought I would make more fish quilts, but although I've used her collage technique on other designs, I still haven't made more fish.

Star Progress

The background has been added to the star, and I'm liking the way it looks. It's about 50+ inches square, so I couldn't get a picture of the whole thing in the hallway. Now I have to do something about borders. I don't think any of the fabrics already used will work without a lot of fussy cutting, and they are already pretty holey with 16 large diamonds cut out of each. I didn't find anything in my stash to use as background other than this print from the same collection, but that was partly due to the yardage requirements. Perhaps one of the ones where I didn't have enough for background will be just right for a border.

Heat Wave

I'm sure everyone knows about the recent heatwave in the Pacific Northwest. It was not an easy week to get through, but by Friday night it was finally cool enough to get a decent night's sleep. It's supposed to hit 90 again today, but since it was cooler last night, it should be bearable.

Yesterday I went to the Busy Bee Quilt Show. The quilt above, which certainly looks blazingly hot, was called Hawaiian Sunrise, by Klota Underwood. She called it her yellow quilt, but I took the picture in honor of my friends who like orange.

The next quilt was just called Asian Wall Hanging, and was made by Laura Collier. It's very simple but made effective use of the prints and panel.

The last one is We Are Family by Gabe Fisher. I thought it was a soothing use of color and pattern. It was difficult to get pictures of the full quilt in some of the larger ones, because of how they were hung. And, although I thought at the time that the signs were too large and intrusive, it turned out that was the only way I could identify the quilts later because the show handout only listed maker names and the quilt numbers, not the quilt names or descriptions. So I have more pictures of quilts by either Judy Irish or Linda Tellesbo, but I can't figure out which ones are which, because I didn't get the sign in my picture.

Two Steps Forward

and one step back. I basted William's quilt yesterday, and did the first row of 'straight-ish' stitching. But then I realized that it had gotten somewhat wonky, and there were several pleats on the back, with the possibility of getting worse as I went on. So I ripped out almost half of what I had done, smoothed and re-positioned the back, and then re-quilted. My wall spray-basting method is just not adequate for bed-size quilts, but I don't have floor or table space enough to do it that way either. On one of Patsy Thompson's quilting videos, she shows spray basting large quilts on the wall. The difference is that she has a foam or insulation panel setup as a design and basting wall, and pins the backing to it instead of taping directly to the wall as I've been doing. I think that would support the weight of a larger quilt better.

I'm calling it 'straight-ish' quilting lines, because I want to suggest wood grain in my Signposts quilt. I don't want to make obvious grain lines, so I'm just making it roughly straight and embracing any jerks or wobbles.

Congratulations to my nephew and godson, David, who just graduated from Luther College, summa cum laude no less.

Busy Weekend

It seems I hardly have any social life at all these days - just work and short breathers on the weekends. But this weekend was exceptional with not one but two events. First was Carol's semi-annual quilt day, with a pretty good turnout this time. Melissa, Jan, Cindy, Julie, Diana, Trudy, Carol and myself. All but Jan met working at the same company and formed a quilting group there. Now only 2 are still there. More layoffs were announced last week, so that was the subject of some of the conversation, along with what various kids are up to, etc. There was a fair amount of sewing done too, along with show & tell. I finished the top for William's quilt, and started piecing the back. Sorry, no pictures this time!

The other big event was my friend Julie S's retirement party. Another former colleague at the same company as above, she's giving up the rat race to more fully enjoy travel, gardening, dogs, etc. She and her husband Tim hosted a wonderful party at the Snoqualmie Ridge Golf Club. Everyone was supposed to wear black and white, and that did look good. After mingling with more old co-workers/friends and their spouses while tasting hors d'oevres and beer/wine, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner and dessert buffet. Tim gave a funny speech about their travel adventures past and future (he particularly enjoys telling about Julie riding a camel in Egypt, calling her Florence of Arabia). Then we played a few games of bingo (preparation for retirement!) followed by dancing to the oldies.

A couple more

The final pictures I managed to squeeze from my memory card last week. The first quilt is Day and Night by Roslyn Duffy. The first photo is one side of the quilt, called Night, showing the hidden night time secrets of a tree.

The other side is called Day, and it shows animals and flowers in and around the tree. Both sides have a lot of different types of embellishments - yarn danglies, etc.

The final quilt is Fish Concerto by Kathi De Jong. Based on a kaleidoscope, it includes beading and thread painting for embellishment.

I've been too tired and stressed from work to do much lately myself, and haven't even felt like getting on the computer at night. But maybe things will start to lighten up soon.