Finished ... but on the fence

I finished my Batik Paint Chips quilt and hung it in my living room. As you probably remember this one is based on the cover quilt of Karla Alexander's book Stack, Shuffle and Slide.

I have run through several phases in this construction of this quilt - I like it, I don't like it, I kinda like it, oooohhh I LIKE it and now I'm at the "I'm not sure what I think of it" phase. It is very different than most of my quilts. Not as bright in color, not traditional. I don't see myself as a modern quilter or an art quilter and I think I've made a modern art quilt - hmmmmm.

I quilted this one myself and about 2 hours in I wished I had given it to my long arm quilter. I completely positive that I don't like to machine quilt. I can do it, I just don't want to. I'd much rather piece. I quilted a wavy rectangular grid pattern using a variegated thread. If you click on the picture below you can see it a bit clearer.

And here is a view from the back side.

It could probably benefit from more quilting but I just don't have it in me at the moment.

This is my view of the quilt from my stitching chair.

It is growing on me. I'm spending more time on the "I like it" side of the fence than I was yesterday.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

Westminster Niner for Wednesday

Over the weekend I engaged in some marathon quilt binding and now I can show off what I got finished. This is my Westminster Niner. All the fabrics are from Westminster - Kaffe Fassett, Brandon Mably, Phillip Jacobs. The pattern in a new release from Thimble Blossoms called Niner - you can see it here.

I am so HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY with this quilt! It measures about 84" square and is going to look fabulous in my new house. I'm envisioning this hanging over the back of my living room sofa.... or on my bed. Who know where it will end up. I dragged it outside for a couple of pictures this afternoon. It was very sunny and hard to get the colors exactly right.

Lounging on the lawn - looks comfy! LOL

Here is a close up of one of the "blocks"... except I didn't follow the pattern direction and instead of blocks I put it together in diagonal rows. Doing it the way I did eliminated dealing with bias edges all along the outside of the block and made it easier to assemble, in my humble opinion. Also I cut all of the outside triangle units using my Easy Cut ruler (it is an older version of the EZ Companion Angle ruler) and I had no bias edges to deal with, at all. I probably used more background fabric the way I did it, but I had lots of the lovely yellow fabric with the orange dots.

I really love the pantograph quilting pattern on this quilt. It is a large paisley in a bright orange thread and was done by Terry Finnerty of The Walking Needle. - you can see her Facebook page here. I am very happy with her work. I really feel that the quilting give the quilt a wonderful extra dimension.

Now I'd like to wash this quilt and get it nice and crinkly but that will have to wait for the weekend. On Monday my washer decided it didn't like to do big loads and has overflowed twice. The oldest Y chromosome member of this household has "repaired" it to his satisfaction, but not mine. He believes I should only do small loads and then it won't overflow. Genius idea... too bad I do the washing for 4 people who change clothes daily and create a large amount of laundry. The washer has been going non-stop on the "small" load plan. And while this may keep him from purchasing a new washer I'm sure the electric and water bill next month will increase substantially. Grrrrr.... I'll take the quilt down to my son's house over the weekend and use his washer instead.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

Moving at a snail's pace

I am very gradually getting the Christmas stuff put away and replacing those decorations with something different. I started in the kitchen and replaced the gingerbread boy quilt with this one which I stitched a long long time ago. Sorry these pictures aren't the greatest. It is a gray rainy day. The first pic is of the quilt on the floor in my sewing area.



And here it is hanging on the wall in the kitchen where it is hard to photograph it too.



I love the look of the primitive style but I'm not fond of an overabundance of brown. This quilt was more vibrant when I first stitched it but it hung in my kitchen for years and the sun has faded the border and other parts of it mightily. Nonetheless,I love the free and happy quality of this quilt.

I went through my library of quilt books (boy does that need some cleaning out too) and found the pattern for this quilt. It is called Berries & Birds. It was designed by Sue Spargo and is included in the book, Ladybird, Ladybird by Jan Patek and Alma Allen. The copyright date in this book is 1999 - an oldie but goodie!

In the book the applique is all done by hand, not my forte. So I cut the pieces out with a Heat n Bond backing and ironed them down. I made the quilt sandwich and then appliqued and quilted them at the same time with my blanket stitch.







And if you enlarge the pictures you can see where I stippled the heck out of the background. Boy was I ambitious back then - LOL! In going through my library stash I found a fairly large collection of books with primitive quilt patterns by Jan Patek, Linda Brannock, Sue Spargo, Barb Adams & Alma Allen, Cheri Safiotte,and Gerry Kimmel to name a few. I still like the patterns but I don't see myself becoming a hand applique person. However, I may stitch up a small quilt or two from these books using my blanket stitch (it is one of the main reasons I bought my Janome) and then passing them off to my long arm quilter for the quilting.

I also came across all the patterns for the Garden Club quilt by Country Threads. Kim of Kim's Big Quilting Adventure and some of her buddies are doing this as a quilt along. I have the original issued BOM patterns of this quilt in a folder, for which I probably paid at least $5 a month. You do the math. There are real photographs glued to the inside pages of the pattern and there was a layout for a smaller quilt done just with that month's pattern included in the BOM. A couple of years later they issued the whole quilt in a book by Leisure Arts for around $20 - a third of what I paid for it. Now have I ever started it - ahem.... no! But I just might. I like Kim's version very light and airy.

Well, I should put some more stuff away but its the kind of day that makes you want to take a nap... like Big Dude.



Now that's the life! I'm going to find a quilt of my own to curl up with.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

A Fall-ish Finish

Well yesterday while the sun was still shining (as opposed to today when it is grey, cold and rainy), I dragged this quilt outside to snap some pictures. This is a Jaybird quilt pattern called Unwind.



It takes a jelly roll (it is the Oh My! line by Sanae) and some background fabric and uses the Lazy Angle ruler by Creative Grids. This is a quick quilt to stitch up and I like how it shows off the fabrics. My long arm gal, Cass, did a great job with the quilting. It is wonderfully crinkly since it has been washed.



I can't believe it is already Thursday. I swear someone steals days from my week. It has been one of those weeks where I've started lots of little projects but somehow was lacking some part to finish them. And of course this has contributed to the ever growing mess. Maybe I'll get something finished this weekend. The thoughts of Christmas gifts are bouncing around in my head but I haven't latched on to any as the "perfect" one yet. But with Halloween upon us I know I need to get moving ..... ackkk!!! My sainted grandmother told me that time flies the older you get, and the way my time is speeding past I think I must be ancient!

Looking forward to the weekend-
Happy stitching!
carol fun

The sun came out....

... and I took some pictures of my latest quilt! This first picture is my attempt at "arty"...I'm not really good at this. (Notice chickens in lower right corner- I should have turned them around - they have polka dots on them!)



The quilt pattern is Thimble Blossoms - A Piece of Cake. And the fabric is by Thimble Blossom too - I forget the name of the collection.It looks pretty spread out on the lawn in the back yard.



Here's a close up of the quilting. I love how it looks after you launder it and it gets all soft and crinkly.



I can't believe it is already Friday. I had big plans for sewing this week but nothing has happened yet. Maybe a little tonight and tomorrow. I still need to get the borders on my Charming Stars and I'm itching to start a new quilt - the one on the cover of the Dec/Jan 2012 issue of Quilt magazine. I want to do it out of my Debbie Mumm fabrics. Hopefully I'll get a couple of blocks cut out tomorrow. Have a great weekend!

Happy stitching-
carol fun

He's good company....

but not real helpful when you are trying to do machine quilting. Big Dude has kept me company the last several days as I've been chained to my sewing machine. However, a 100 square inch quilt already weighs plenty without the addition of a hefty feline.

It has taken me much longer than I thought to get this quilted (but I haven't really put nearly enough thought into this quilt.) I have ALL the butterflies quilted. I just did a wonky zig zag in the wings and stitched in the ditch (sort of - my in the ditch wanders a bit) around the body and the outside of the block.



Now I have to come up with something to put in the border. This is what it looks like. (the picture is before pin basting and quilting)



There is a 6 inch border between the center and the outside border. I'm probably going to do some sort of zig zag here too. Just larger and a bit more controlled. Doing all this machine quilting has given me lots of time to think and some of my thoughts include - this quilt is BIG, there are at least a dozen other projects I want to work on, this quilt is very BIG, I really wish I'd entered this in a different category and gotten my long arm quilter to do this, this quilt is very very BIG, and I am never going to quilt a project this big again! So now I've given this quilt plenty of thought my head hurts along with my arms, back and shoulders,

Don't forget about my bloganniversary giveaways I posted on Sunday. I've heard that if you are having trouble posting with Blogger, if when you sign in you don't check the "keep me signed in" box that somehow helps. I don't understand it but then there isn't much about Blogger I do understand. Anyway if you can't post to the Sunday entry just send me an email - several people have. I will put all the entries into the giveaways. Okay off to take some advil before bed -

Happy stitching-
carol fun

Trying to catch up

Well a week without a laptop is not fun! I was able to borrow my son's a couple of times but then I ran into the problems with Blogger not letting me leave comments. Maybe it was a good week to take a break. I am very happy with my new laptop - it is so much faster than my vintage one. I've figured out how to upload my pictures and I didn't lose any of the online games I like to play like Icebreakers and Pirate Penguins and Poppit you know the games that let your mind go all mushy. I need them to keep me sane, well at least as sane as possible.

Today I got the Wonky Butterfly quilt pin basted - here is a section in the Frankenquilt stage.




This is my favorite butterfly...



it is yellow, it has dots and some buttons, and there is typography. This is a Nancy Wolff fabric - I love her artistic style. I don't think she is doing fabric anymore and that makes me sad. I do have a small stash of her prints and I am using them selectively. I did make a quilt top using a bunch of her animal prints. I need to let it see the light of day and get quilted.

And speaking of quilting, I'm not looking forward to machine quilting the butterfly quilt. First, it is BIG! I knew it was going to be around 90 something inches when I graphed it out, but the I changed the outer border which necessitated a second smaller border to balance it out and well...... the quilt is now 100" square - ackkk!!!! I do know that the quilting is going to be on the basic side. Some straight line quilting around the blocks and I'm thinking a little meandering in the wings. I was able to get several spools of a lovely variegated thread so I shouldn't run out.

I need to have this quilt ready to mail out June 7 - that gives me 10 days. It is doable and I have no one to blame but myself for getting into this situation. I think you learn something from almost every quilt you make and this one is teaching me that I need to think it through before I go off all willy-nilly submitting quilt entries. I can do machine quilting but I honestly prefer to pass this task off to my long arm quilter. She does a wonderful job and has way more skill in this area than I do.

Okay off to rearrange my machines and set the table up for the quilting. Check back tomorrow I'll have a sampler and a giveaway too. I realized last week that I've had my blog for a year now so a bloganniversary celebration is in order.

Happy stitching-
carol fun