Getting things done - Summer 2013

I haven't posted in a while but it's not because I haven't been doing anything. I've been working on a bunch of projects and actually finished some, so I thought I'd share. My daughter and her family moved into a different house closer to her husband's work and it caused her to mix and match furniture that were in different rooms before and she didn't think things would "go together" like they used to. I told her all she needed was a couple quilts and it would look great. So her new family room is blue and brown and has mounted deer heads in it. She wanted a cover for her ottoman, so I made these. The first one came out twice as big as I wanted because my calculations were quite a bit off, so I told her I'd finish it and she could use it on her couch. Then I tried again after re-calculating and made the one the size she wanted. Both came out pretty good. I don't normally like simple designed quilts. I'm a paper piecer, so for me, it's all about the piecing and designs, but that isn't what she wanted. She's really happy and says it fits her family room perfectly. I'm glad, because I wasn't thrilled with the simple piecing so I used a really cool quilting pattern to make me feel better. I know you can't tell from the pictures but the bottom one is half the size of the top one.  In the top one the strips are 4" and in the bottom they are 2". The quilting has a variety of leaf types and acorns.

I also worked on a charity quilt I promised a friend quite a while ago (actually before my last knee replacement in January.  I finally finished that too.  Just in time.  He's going to donate it to an auction to raise funds for Breast Cancer awareness.  I didn't have enough of the fabric I wanted to use on the back so I had to use stripes.  Not my best work, but it's the back, right?  It's quilted in hearts and ribbons which matches the fabric on the front and the back, so I liked it.

I also finished a baby quilt for one of my daughter's friends who is having a baby girl (any day now -- last month if mom had her way).  This has got to be the best baby blanket I ever made.  After 3 grandsons it was so fun picking different and pretty fabric for a girl, but I found I couldn't go too girlie, which was a good thing as the mom liked my choices.  This is one of my top 3 favorites of all the quilts I've made.  Can't wait to see the baby on or wrapped in it.  The backing is minkie and feels so soft.  I hope she loves it.  I did.  Twister quilts are so much fun to make.  The quilting is hearts. 

 

Mystery Block of the month is finished.

A year ago, my favorite online group started a Block of the Month. I posted about it last August and have been keeping up posting the individual blocks in there ever since. (You can read about it if you want and can see the pictures here: http://clkinmd.blogspot.com/2012/08/getting-back-to-sewing.html. I ended up having two knee replacements during this project. One in July and another in January.

The project was designed as a mystery, which means we had no clue what the design was going to end up as, we had to just follow along and hope for the best. Which I did faithfully for a year. I had to take time off after each surgery and it took a little while to get back in the swing of things, but I was so excited about this project and the fabric I had chosen, I got right back at it as soon as I could.

When Carol Doak first started this BOM, she designed it as a two-color quilt. I was a little skeptical about that, as two colors are often boring. Some others in the group added a zinger color or just used multi-color prints, and some even made it scrappy using every color under the sun, but I decided that Carol often has a reason for her choices, and she’s been designing quilts for years, so it’s best to listen to her. But I still thought two colors was going to be boring, so rather than using more than two colors, I decided to stick with the two color quilt, but add the zinger in the borders.

I found this Northcott Kaleidoscope line of fabric that really seemed to fit the bill. But of course I couldn’t follow her directions exactly so rather than use the layout she designed, I decided to do a little more and surround more of the pretty blocks with star points. And then it looked unfinished so I added reverse star points to make some of the blocks look like square in a square block. All those changes made me need more fabric than originally planned and I ran out when all I needed was 16 pieces of 4 x 4 inch squares. I looked all over and finally found it in an online store. I even got fabric for the backing, I wasn’t sure in the beginning what I was going to do, but since the fabric was expensive and I hate to use expensive fabric on the backing, I didn’t buy any, figured I’d find something on sale later. But the quilt looks so cool, I decided to go ahead and spend the money for the expensive backing. I decided very early into the process to quilt it with an all-over daisy design. I used a design by Anne Bright called Daisies and Loops.

I had a hard time deciding what fabric to use for the binding. Pink would look good on the front but bad on the back. Green would be best, but very boring. I could use the print, but it's so big I was afraid it would look funny. So I tried out a new technique some fellow quilters told me about. Below is a close up showing 3 layers of the binding because the quilt is folded. Two show the front which has the pink flange and the center layer is what the back looks like. All green. You can see my stitch line which should be right on the edge of the binding. I’m really happy with the end result.

Another Twister Quilt Done

After my surgery, I had a few friends come stay with me and help take care of me. I was well enough when Ann came that we worked together to make a twister quilt. She did a lot of the work, but we did get it all pieced and quilted during the week she was here with me. All that was needed was to get the binding added. I hate to admit how long it took me to get the binding finished, but it is finally done. This was not a color scheme I would have picked, it is civil war reproduction fabric I think, but I have to say when it was all done I really liked it. Everything seemed to go together so well, even the quilting. I know she'll like it and it'll be a great reminder of our time together. I have fabric for a few more of these twisters. They are so fun to make. If it wasn't for the binding I'd make one a week.

Spring Lily Challenge

The leader of my favorite online quilting group (Carol Doak) designed and dedicated a block in memory of Pat Campbell who passed away in March. She was a friend and colleague of Carol's most know for her applique quilts. Then Carol challenged us to use the block she designed with a border created using Carol's newest book (Creative Combinations). I chose Double Duty Unit 05, which is a chevron type of block. I had to make them 2" x 4" to make them look the way I wanted and then I modified the block and left off the last sections that would square off the block so that the quilt was left with a zig zag border. I had to birth the quilt instead of adding a binding and then I had to quilt part of it on my regular machine before I could quilt the rest on the long arm. I finally finished all the quilting today. I still need some more practice but all in all I'm pretty happy with it. You can't really see the quilting on the front so I took a picture of the back too. It's so nice to get back into sewing.

Pink Ribbon Quilt Tops for Breast Cancer Charity

My favorite online quilting group is doing some charity projects in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness. We started in October. We had 56 people volunteer to make pink and white ribbon blocks, 15 members volunteered to assemble all those blocks into quilt tops, 16 more people volunteered to quilt the tops, and 12 people volunteered to finish the quilts by binding and adding a quilting label. Then these quilts are to be donated to charities that would use them for fundraisers to promote efforts toward breast cancer research, awareness, or related activities.

I volunteered to quilt the tops that other people made. I did 5 of those and it was so much fun picking out what quilting design to use to highlight the quilt but not overpower the quilting design. I got to try out a bunch of designs I hadn't used before. Someone misread the volunteer list and thought I wanted to assemble the tops, so she sent me 9 pink ribbon blocks. I was supposed to send them to someone else but I kept forgetting. Then another member posted a design she came up with and I liked it so much, I decided to use her design and the 9 blocks sent to me by mistake and make a top. It came out great. I posted on the group that I needed some more blocks and got 9 more, so another top is in my future. Don't think I'll get it done before my surgery though

I went to the local quilt shop looking for fabric for the backing (when I was there previously they were having a clearance sale and had a bunch of pink fabric). Of course when I went back (after the inventory) there wasn’t hardly any pink fabric left and none with enough fabric to cover the back of my quilt. So I ended up paying full price for some really cool pink ribbon backing fabric. I'm so glad I did, it looks perfect. I also got some fabric on sale from a friend who has a fabric shop. I ended up buying 10 yards at a little over $4 per yard. Quite a deal. I used it on the back of 3 quilts.

But I had the hardest time picking a quilting design for the top I made. So I decided to use my favorite quilting design which is just swirls. It takes a long time and a lot of thread, but I didn’t care, it was what I wanted. Then I added the binding, including the hand stitching I hate. But the hand stitching wasn’t holding well, so I had to add machine stitching around the binding too (something I hardly ever do). So this charity project ended up costing me a bit more than planned and taking a lot more time than I dreamed, but I am so happy with the end results, it was definitely worth it. Now I just hope the charity it goes to will be able to use it to raise a bunch of funds for Breast Cancer Awareness.

Below are photos of the quilts I quilted (I didn’t piece 4 of the tops, they were each someone else’s design/work); the one with 9 stars is the one I made the blocks for (except the center ribbons) and added the perfect backing, quilted, and machine and hand-stitched the binding. Wish I was keeping it, but hopefully it’ll raise money for the cause and provide comfort to someone special.

A New Twist for Me

I haven't been motivated to do much of anything lately and that includes sewing. But I had promised my baby girl that I would make her a throw quilt to match her tree skirt that she liked so well. I already had the Layer Cake in the same fabric and had planned on using the Twister tool I bought more than a year ago. I had to force myself to do it but I laid out all the blocks and sewed them together. That's the first step.  When I was finished I thought it looked pretty cool and with some fancy quilting it might be okay just like that. So I sent a pic to my daughter of the blocks and then a pic of a twister quilt in similar colors I found on the Internet. And wouldn't you know it she wanted the Twister. So I got busy. The next step is to use the Twister to cut those blocks apart and then sew them back together. Sounds like a waste of time and fabric. But, it wasn't. It really is as easy as they say and I have to say I am awful glad I did it. It looks even better than I thought it would.  This picture just doesn't do it justice.  No two fabrics are the same -- all but 3 are prints.  I've got the top done and that means all that's left is the quilting and binding, which I'm going to get started on as soon as I find out if she wants a border around it first. But I have to say, that little tool is pretty awesome. So I'm a little more motivated now. And when you're finished cutting them all apart, you end up with a bunch of much smaller squares in the same colors that you can use a smaller Twister tool with (of course I bought all 3 sizes) and I can make a mini quilt from those and I have the charm pack I bought before I even bought any of the fabric that I could make a matching wall hanging. So I may have some other twister projects in my future -- but probably not before this Christmas. Here's the before and after pictures. And I've also included a picture of the finished quilt, the front and back, with a closeup of the quilting.
 

My best quilt ever

In 2007 my son asked me to make him a quilt for his bed.  The online quilt group I belonged to had just started a block of the month.  I hadn't even been quilting a year, but I told him I would make the blocks of the month in whatever color he wanted and in a year he would have a quilt.  He wanted red, white and black.  So that's what I did and I kept up with the blocks and after a year I had 12 blocks.  But he said he wanted the quilt to fit his queen size bed so I needed twice as many blocks.  So I used some of the free ones offered on the group site.  But he wanted it to hang down the sides so I figured I needed 49 blocks.  And then I thought it would be best if it was longer so that it could cover the pillows, which meant I needed 56 blocks.  This quilt just kept growing and growing and needing more blocks.  Finally I decided to just make 28 blocks (I had 24 already) and alternate that with 28 solid black fabric squares.  That made it easier.  But then I had to quilt something pretty in those empty black blocks.  He wanted a celtic design so I gave him some options and picked what he wanted.  But the pieced blocks were stars so the design he picked wouldn't work well so I got a different one for the pieced blocks.  But it didn't go into the corners and left a lot of unquilted space so I added some quilted celtic triangle knots in the corners.  Then I wanted to try a different border and corners.  So that was another quilting design -- all celtic.  When it was finally done, 5 years later, it was the best quilt I ever made.  I'm so glad it's done and I was able to give it to him for his birthday which landed on Thanksgiving this year.