Finished the split nine patch quilt

On the weekend, I also worked on this split nine patch quilt.  This is also an old quilt that waited a while to get quilted.  After I made my nickel quilt, from when I started my adventures into quilting back in 2003, I had a huge amount of left over 5" squares.  

By the time I finished making the nickel quilt, I learned a whole lot about making quilts.  One of the things I learned was that I don't like to be restricted to quilts that only use 5" blocks.  I like variety!  Lots of it!! The more the merrier!!!

So, I stopped cutting the squares and tried to come up with patterns to use up what I had.  I cannot stand waste.  To this date, all of those 5" blocks found a home in a quilt.  

I started this quilt in April/2006.  I worked on it, on and off for many years and finished the top in 2012.  There it sat for another while, until this weekend when I decided this one too needed to get done.  I am very determined this year to make a dent in the UFO department (UnFinished Objects).  

This year I have my priority list of twelve quilts that I want done.  That is one a month.  When the one, for the month is done, I can work on whatever suites my fancy.  Lately, my fancy has been to practice on my new longarm and to quilt up my finished tops.

For this quilt, I decided to practice some freehand with an edge to edge pantograph.  It uses different skills than doing your own freehand designs.  It requires a bit more control to follow someone else's design with the laser.  This design is called Oblique from Urban Elementz by Patricia Ritter and Valerie Smith.  It has a combination of a paisley shape or tear drop and petals of half a flower, and both are echoed throughout the design. It's pretty and adds a lot of texture.

Above is a picture of the backing and below is a picture of the front.  I still need a fair amount of practice, to get that fluid motion of moving the machine across the pattern, but I am ok with the results of this one.  I do love the texture it adds to the quilt.  Quilting just seems to liven up a quilt top.

The quilting did not go without a hitch though.  As I said in my last post, I learn something with each quilt I do.  Well.....this one was not different.  As I approached the last couple of rows left to be done......you will not guess what happened.  This next picture says it all.  Wouldn't you know it.......I was one inch short of batting!  ONE INCH!!!   

Do you see it!  The navy blue border, the white batting and just beneath that the beige backing, on the bars.  I will say it again......one inch!  So....before I could finished this quilt, I had to start by attaching a piece of batting to my already loaded quilt.  Talk about awkward, but I did it.  Glad it happened on my own quilt and not a customer quilt.

With this bit of a set back, it took me until Wednesday before I could get back to finishing the quilting.  It took me this long, because on Monday, I worked a full day at my full time job, and had to drive up to pick up my mom, as we had a guild meeting that evening.  Tuesday, I worked all day, had to run some errands, and do the groceries that didn't get done on the Monday.  

So, we are now Wednesday, the earliest that I could work on it.  Once I got the rhythm of holding the batting slightly, while I sewed it together, it went by quickly and I was able to finish quilting it that evening.  I am glad to see this one finally done.

My flower garden quilt is finished

This is what I had under my needle on the weekend.  I finally got around to uploading the pictures. 

This is my flower garden quilt.  I wrote all about the pattern and the making of it, throughout my blog.    I started it as far back as January/2013, finished the top in 2014, and I am just now getting it quilted.

I really enjoyed making this quilt. I loved the hand stitch work that is involved in the blocks, that make up the gardens.  Plus a few appliqué blocks.  I also ready liked taking the original pattern into a different direction.  Starting with enlarging the quilt, adding in some flying geese, moving blocks around, adding some additional borders around the blocks.  All sorts of things.

I'd have to say that this is probably my most cherished quilt.  It is completely outside of what I usually do.  Maybe that is why I like it so much.

My biggest worry was how to quilt it.  With all the hand work embroidery involve I was not sure how to treat those blocks.  The other day I read two separate Facebook posts from different people about what they have done recently.  

The first one was about stitching right over the embroidery.  Now, I will be honest with you, at first I cringed.  I thought to myself, yuck that will make a mess of all my hard work.  But I read on.  There were a lot of comments generated from that post.  Some for and some against it.  When the author of the post decided to show pictures of stitching it over the work, I think a lot of people that were against it, debunked and went over to the other side.  Myself included.

The post opened up my mind to another possibility, but I was not quite sold on the idea for my precious garden quilt.  It was not until I saw the second post from someone who was talking about a great thread she used, that when sewn over multiple fabrics, seems to chance colour, and blends in with the fabric.  It was a 60 weight Glade cream coloured thread.  I used the same colour she used, but in a 40 weight thread and I found it blended very well too.

To make a long story short, in the end, I decided to go for it.  The top had been sitting completed since 2014.  It was now or never.  Once I decided I was going for it, I quickly loaded up the quilt, so I wouldn't chicken out.  Though, instead of the famous cream I chose to use the Bone thread colour, as it blended better with my white embroidery blocks.  I used champagne coloured thread in the bobbin.

This is the design I chose to quilt on it.  The design is an edge to edge pantograph from Urban Elementz, called Feather Grande by Bethanne Nemesh.  I love the feminine feel to the design.  

The picture above is the backing and the picture below is part of the front.  This design adds a lot of texture and with the Hobbs 80/20 you get that little bit of puff.  I'm liking it!

Just to show you too, that the quilting did not ruin the embroidery, here is a picture if one block.  If you take a close up look at the block, you can hardly see the thread going over the embroidery at all.  Most of the block looks like it was embroidered after the quilting was done.  The white background of the blocks really shows the design of the quilting better too.

I am really loving this quilt.  Now I have to trim the edges and put the binding on.  When the binding is done, I will try and remember to take a picture of the whole quilt completed.

Sorry for the lengthy post.  Have a great day!!!

Pillow case

This is the top of a pillow case.  It is the prelude to the coming quilt.  I friend from our quilting bee group made this for her granddaughter.  It's made with flannel and is so soft and cuddly.  Can you imagine the feel on your checks when you lay your head down to sleep.  I quilted it for her, so now she can finish making it into a pillow case.

To make this pillow case my friend put two log cabin blocks together, light side to light, bordered them with a white border and a green.  She is using the same white fabric for the light side of the log cabin blocks and pretty colours for the dark side.

For the quilting she asked me to do stick stars, in a meander through the white half of the log cabin blocks.  It looks cute.  You may not see it in the picture, but the white fabric has pastel stars throughout.  Per her request, I also threw in a heart.

I don't have much else to report today.  I will be going to a quilt store to pick up a specialty ruler I ordered, for the longarm in the East end just over an hour away.  As I will be in the East end, I will probably drop off at Whirls and Swirls for some more threads, and shoot across to the West end to my mother's place.  It will be another busy day of running around trying to get everything that you can't do during the weekday done.

Enjoy!

What I was working on

On the weekend I got to play in my quilting room.  I am caught up with my one quilt finish per month, so I thought I would do what ever I was inspired to do.  

I pulled out my Canadian Northwind quilt.  All my pieces are cut out for this one and they are all sorted into block bundles too.  Whenever I want to sew on this quilt, I just have to pull a block bundle out and sew.  I don't have to try and figure out where I left off and what needs to be done.  It makes it so much easier, faster, and what I call brainless sewing.  I made 8 more units during this sewing session.

While making this block, there are  4 places that you need to use a leader/ender, before you can finish the construction.  That makes for a lot of progress on the chosen leader/ender.  This time around, I chose to use the pieces for the drunkards path quilt.

As I did 8 blocks above and each one requires 4 leader/enders, that gave me 32 more drunkard's path units as well.  These are definitely coming along.  I am anxious to see these units done, so I can start assembling the quilt.  This is going to be my spring quilt.

Prior to my little sewing session, I went to a quilt store on the way to visit my mom.  While there, I found what I think, is the perfect fabric for the block sashing and the quilt sashing, of the scrappy bears paw quilt, I am going to make.  You could read more about that one in an earlier post (on March 12th).

I think these colours will go very well with the browns of the bear paw blocks.  In the picture it is hard to see, but within those flowery black dots is a blue dot, the same colour as the blue fabric and the reddish colour surrounding the paisley, will highlight the red cornerstones that I plan to use.  Even the touches of black from the flowery dots and the dots surrounding the reddish colour will pick up the second cornerstone which will be a red and black square in a square.  

Everything will come together nicely....I hope!  If not, oh well, I will just take it all apart and come up with another idea.  That is all part of the creative process.

Enjoy your evening everyone and take some time to play.

Always trying to use up my pile of strings (QW)

I continue to look for pretty patterns that can use up my scraps.  I came across this book while visiting a quilt show a while back.  It is printed in 1979.  It's a great reference book.  There are some really unique blocks in here.

It's not a traditional quilting instruction book.  You get a picture of the block, a brief description of the block, the pattern pieces to trace and use, but that is where it stops.  You would have to have some knowledge of how to put the pieces together to construct the blocks, and the layout is left to your own creativity.  Sample of one pattern below.  There is only one page per pattern.

I have marked many of the pages to review later, as a "may do" quilt.  I am mainly looking for quilts that I can use up my strings and my pre-cut strips.

Today, I came across a quilt pattern in one of my Facebook groups, that I really want to do.  It will use both the pre-cut strips and sashing in strings.

The first one I saw last week, made by Shirley Hammond and posted in a Facebook group called Scrap Quilt Enthusiast.  This I believe is one of five she made.  She liked it so much that she made more than one.  I wonder if it made a dent in her scraps. Lol.

Today, I see another similar quilt, made by Marcia Lobby Lee.  Also from a Facebook group called Scrap Quilt Enthusiast.  Marcia shared her quilt with us and informed us that she won a blue ribbon for this quilt.  Way to go!!!  It's gorgeous!  Can you just imagine the amount of work that went into the making of these quilts?  All those pieces.  They must be heavy.

I can definitely see one of these quilts in my future.  I am not starting it yet, as I already have far too many to do, but I thought I would write about it here in my blog, to jog my memory later in the future.

Yesturday, I finished the Dresden plate on the longarm (later will do the fancy design on my domestic machine).  I took this off the longarm, loaded the small pillow top and quilted it too.  Pictures for that will be in another post.

Today I am off to a quilt store to find some burnt orange fabric, and to my mom's for a visit.

Couple more purple star blocks done

On Thursday, mid afternoon, I was faced with a few hours of me time.  Me time!  Can you believe it!  I was so shocked, that I really did not know what to do with myself.  My mind went in overdrive....I can do this.....or I can do at....or maybe I should do.....and on and on it went.

Later, as time slipped by, I told myself to focus!  Forget about everything that can be done, and just start doing something, because you are wasting time by sitting here trying to figure out what the "best" thing to do is.  Just do something and take it from there.

After the stern talking to myself, I decided to start by picking up the mess that was on my sewing table.  That lead to finishing a piece that was under the sewing machine foot, which lead to starting another purple star block.

I finished two more blocks!  This now puts me at the half way mark.  I have half the blocks done!

While working on these blocks, I used this monkey wrench block as my leader/ender, as well as a bunch of units for my Xmas/Solstice star quilt.  They are moving along too.

Today, I head downstairs to try and finish the Dresden plate quilt, or at least the parts that I am planning to do on the long arm.  I have something else to do for another customer.  This next job is only a small pillow top.  It is actually part of a quillow.  A quillow is a quilt the folds up into itself and tucks into it own pocket forming a pillow.  Hence the name quillow.  I have to finish this one section first, before my customer can assemble the rest of the quilt.  So, I have to get moving on it.

Enjoy you day.

Bear paws quilt

Guess what?  I started another quilt!  I am always in a quandary about where to set my priorities.  Do I work at finishing what I have started, 100% of the time, until they are done or do I try to come up with designs that I can use up all of my scraps.

There is a group out there in Yahoo called Stashbusters.  They are a very large group that are motivated to helping each other finish up things and use up what you have.  It is a constantly loosing battle, one side versus the other.  Both have valid points, but there is no one answer for everyone.

Myself, I do a combination of both.  I work hard at trying to finish what I have started, by setting goals, but when I get so far along I reward myself with starting something new, so long as it is from my stash, preferably my strings.

I've completed the three quilts from my priority of 12 quilts, which is one per month.  I am up to date so far and I have a couple that are almost there.  So yesturday, while sorting out the last batch of  scrappy strips and what I already had, I figured it was time I try to deal with my strips/strings.  For inspiration I turned to Bonnie Hunter's books.  She has a lot of great ideas.  There are a bunch of her designs I would like to make.

My goal was to come up with a design to use up my brown scraps.  In her string book she shows the technique for paper foundation for making blocks to replace any large unit in any block.  This is what I came up with.  I did this on my EQ.  

To me brown reminds my of bears and the traditional bear paw block.  I am replacing the plain block with a scrappy string block.  Here below is the one unit I made so far to confirm I cut the right sizes.  I will need four of these units to make up a block.

Once I have my four units, I will divide them by the burnt orange sashing in the picture below and add a red cornerstone in the middle.  I will surround the blocks probably with a blue jean coloured fabric and the square in a square block that you see in the picture below will be the cornerstones to the blue sashing.

The last border in the design above is not complete.  I couldn't figure out how to add three paw units in each corner with the extended burnt orange border to separate them.  In any case, you get the jist of the design.

I have all the pieces cut out and ready to piece.  I think I will start making all the string blocks first, assembly line style.  I bit of mindless sewing.  I will share my progress......when I get back to it.

Started quilting the Dresden plate quilt

Last weekend, I started quilting the Dresden plate quilt.  I put the quilt on the longarm thinking to just baste the quilt, to be quilted on my domestic machine later.  I am still very new to quilting on my longarm, since I only got her at the end of December and only get a chance to use her on the weekends and usually only the one day, as I am still busy helping my mother.

I started basting the quilt in large stitches across the quilt spaced out every four inches.  I get to the end of the quilt and feel happy that I was able to get that part done fairly quickly.  While I was basting it, I kept telling myself that I should give it a try.  Try something simple, something that if it didn't work I could take out and go with the original plan.

So.....I started doing in the ditch of the outer edge of the Dresden plates.  That went so well, that I decided to try my hand at rule work and used the straight edge ruler to make the lines going up and down the side edges of each petal. 

  

I had to take some of the stitches out, as the ruler may have slipped or I didn't have the spacing quite right, but I am thinking it looks good. 

I did the whole top row of Dresden plates and I was feeling great.  This was my first attempt at ruler work and it was going relatively well.  It boosted my courage to try my hand at curved rulers.

Before advancing the quilt, I started quilting the curves of my small border.  I can still use a bit of practice, but they are not bad at all.  The curves line up nice.  It's the points I need to work on, to get a more pointy point.  The spacing is good and the placement is too.  

After I completed this small border I was so happy, I had to do a happy dance.  The family thought I was crazy, but oh well, what else is new. LOL.  It's these little things that make me happy.  Quilting puts me in my happy place.  Best stress reliever there is.

After I did the small border, I realized that I still needed to do the centre of the Dresden plates.  I did one of them in a 1" grid straight up and down and across sideways.  Didn't care so much for it, so I did another one in a curved grid, on a diagonal.  I didn't like that one either, so I tried the curved grid up and down and across sideways.  I still didn't like it.  Finally, I decided to go back to the straight 1" grid, but this time I did it on a diagonal.  Voila!  This looks better. The Dresden plate blocks are an older, traditional block, that are calling for some good old fashion traditional quilting.  The grids stand out more than they will in the end, because I did not remove the chalk lines yet.

As I knew what I wanted, I set myself to removing all the other centre stitches and stitched them back up again the preferred way.

I am now half way done the Dresden plates.  I will need another day to get the others done, plus work on the small border at the bottom of the quilt, before I can remove the quilt to turn it around and get the last two side borders.  I am really happy, this is turning out well.  I am not courageous enough yet, to do the fancy design that I want to do between the plates, but that is ok.  Progress is progress, no matter how small.

And tomorrow is another day....

Started the small pumpkin wall hanging

On my top 12 priority list, I have this small wall hanging.  I've had this for a while.  At one time I took it out and assembled the background, with the black centre strip bordered by the leafy green strips.  That is where it sat, for a while.

It sat for a very long while.  I just went in search of the post that I wrote about putting it together.......wow it has been sitting around waiting to be finished since Jan 24/2015.  I put it away and never looked at it until recently.

This is why I keep a list of the quilts and projects that I have.  It is too easy, to play around with fabric, clean-up the mess and forget about what you have.  I believe this one got put away because I had the block of the month that started that was also appliqué. 

Well, this year this cute little thing gets done.  I have the top two pumpkins sewn on, only three more to go.  Maybe I will be lucky and have it done by this Halloween!  It could be.....I am so motivated to make progress with reducing my list.

Making some progress on my Purple Stars quilt

I have been busy with this and that, but I am still finding some stolen time to do some quilting.  I've made some progress on my Purple stars quilt.  Other than attaching the sashings to the blocks, I have the first two rows done.  It's coming along nicely.

I also could not resist making another monkey wrench block, in between my Canadian Northwind block leader/ender.

I learnt something with the making of this block.  Though I do like it, I prefer a darker colour where the gold colour blocks are.  I like to see more definition of the actual monkey wrench.  

I will leave this one the way it is and may even include some others like this one, as it will add interest.  In the case of this block, it may be one of those blocks that fades out to let another block be the star of the show.

One more monkey wrench to add to my small collection.

I finally started quilting my cousin's Dresden plate quilt......but I will leave those pictures for another post.

**Progress on my top 12 list for 2017**  

1. Quilting-Lise's Dresden plate quilt (commissioned)....quilt in progress

2. Quilting-Sabryna's yellow nine patch quilt (family)....

4. Main work-Mel's romance & roses quilt (family)....

9. Main work-Purple star quilt (my own)....sewing up the blocks 

10. Main work-Grey, black & bright quilt (charity)....

5. Handwork-Reconstructed Dresden plate quilt (my own)....9 full blocks left to appliqué
7. Handwork-Mini pumpkin wall hanging (my own)....started hand stitching

6. Paper pieces-Xmas pineapple blossom quilt (my own)....

8. Leader/ender-Bonnie's mystery quilt (my own)....moving along nicely

Total number of quilts completed - 3
Total number of quilts left to be completed - 9

Completed quilts:

3. Spools quilt (my own)

12. Purple & blue squares quilt from Carol (charity)

11. Log cabin quilt from Sharon (charity)