Summer Vacation

We are at the beach this week, and as you can see from the picture, we're having a wonderful time. I'm glad I got "The Ties That Bind" pieced completely before leaving town. I'd have been thinking (in a guilt ridden way) about it this week if I hadn't.

The ECQG quilt show is coming up in a few months. Deadline for entry was this week. I entered "Blush and Bashful" and "Tropical Storm" which still needs a binding. Guess what I'll be working on when I get home?

The Ties That Bind, Day Three

So... I went to Tiny Stitches on Sunday afternoon, while hubby and Kay were having Daddy/Daughter time.

The store was nearly empty, which worked out well for me, because I wound up trying out about 20 different bolts to find the right fabric for my quilt. Here are some of the things that DIDN'T work. I was looking for an alternative to the royal blue I went in thinking I might need.






Ultimately, this purply blue batik gave me the best results. I thought it might be TOO strong. Perhaps I needed to just do another yellow border and save the blue for binding? I decided to store it all for a couple of days and then lay it out again. I cut strips 3.5" wide and laid it out again yesterday morning. I laid it out in the front entry hall, so that I would see it as I went through my day. (Thank goodness that Smudge has trained himself to not walk on quilt layouts.)


I like it. So I've sewn all the strips to the triangles. Four more seams to go and I'm done.

The Ties That Bind, Day Two

I had to re-adjust the design for ease of assembly. My first design was more interesting, but I thought if I chose something TOO challenging to puzzle together, I was going to end up with a bunch of half finished piecing and another UFO. I wanted to get the top together while I was excited about it. At first I couldn't decide how to piece the outer triangles, but ultimately I figured out that if I nestled the smaller blocks right next to the larger one, the math would be simple.

I found I could use black as a sashing, if it were not stark. I used the black and white check I bought.




The outer border was a much bigger challenge than I was expecting. Not more checks. I tried every black, white and black and white on black that I have. Nothing worked. Either it was too busy, too similar to the checks, or too stark a contrast. Then I started looking at royal blue. There's enough of it in the quilt and I've always liked the way it plays with yellow and the drama of royal and black together. Pulled my blue stash box, and found I didn't have anything I liked in the amounts I needed. Off to the LQS, again!

The Ties That Bind, Day One

This quilt just happened. Almost against my will. Like a woman who didn't know she was pregnant and finds her self pushing in the seat of her car, this quilt demanded to be born where I had no plans to make it at all. Nineteen 6" blocks don't make much of a quilt, do they? Since this challenge was announced back in December I've wondered what the heck I was going to make with these blocks. I almost did nothing at all. I got them at the exchange meeting and put them in their plastic baggie and didn't even look at them until Lynda and Melinda came for a visit a week later. We started talking about them and I got them out again. Looking at them, I thought I had some OTHER 6" blocks that I had made YEARS ago, while I was pregnant. I thought I knew where they were stored and dug them out. Turns out the hearts are 5" not 6". But in the same bag were some 9" friendship stars made for me by the Monday Morning Quilters in Boston. They sent me those blocks when I first moved to Georgia. I always meant to do something with them, but didn't know what. I started playing with the three different blocks wondering if I could somehow make a quilt with blocks of such disparate measurements.



Before Lynda and Melinda left that day, I had sewn together the nine hearts in the center, and was already thinking about backgrounds and sashing. After a run to the LQS I had enough yellow to get through the project (or so I thought) and build my stash which was sadly short on sunny yellow. I also picked up a black and white checkered fabric that I thought might work as sashing, but I wasn't sure.

My first thought was to use black to expand the churn dash blocks, but I felt it stopped the design and looked too choppy.


Yellow worked better:


Then I realized I didn't like the stars in the middle of the border. Hearts worked better:


I tried again with black coping strips:


Once again, I chose yellow:

Getting these borders pieced and attached was the end of that first day.

Piecemakers' Exchange 2009

Here is a picture of the blocks I received in the 2009 Piecemakers' Exchange. They are cute, and I love the colors. We were told to use black on white, white on black and a bright color. We were all surprised to see how many had used yellow. And the three reds were all a pinkish red (you couldn't MAKE that happen if you wanted to, surely someone would throw in a scarlet or maroon if you tried to restrict them to pinkish reds!). I like the churn dash blocks quite a lot, and I've never made a quilt using them so this is potential fun.

I'm BACK!

I haven't been sewing much since spring began. I could tell you that it's because I was gardening so much more, or because I was too busy with Kay's school and ballet, and I wouldn't be lying. The truth is, I just lost my muse. I couldn't make myself work on any of the projects I have going, and I didn't want to start anything else. Oh, also, I discovered Facebook. Let me just say, don't go there. I take full responsibility for my decisions, but I swear, that website sucked whole days, not hours, out of my schedule!

The garden is doing beautifully, Kay is done with second grade, and tomorrow she will finished the two week intensive program for ballet. What am I going to do with the rest of my summer? I'm going to sew, of course. How do I know? When I haven't been sewing for the past few months? I got a kickstart. The Piecemaker's block exchange was due last week. 6" churn dash blocks, 20 of 'em due on last Monday. On Saturday night I sat down to a nice dinner with Lynda and confessed I hadn't even started. I estimated it would take six hours to make the blocks, and it turned out I was darn close. I turned my blocks in and spent a lovely time with some of the Piecemakers. I looked through the blocks I had received and considered some setting options, but really I wasn't too inspired. I thought the blocks were too small, and I didn't need a wallhanging in these colors. Leaving that day, I thought I might not make anything at all.

This Monday, that all changed. Stay tuned and I'll tell you all about it. Thanks to all of you who have contacted me in the past few months to make sure I was okay. I'm doing fine. Buried up to my neck in yellow squash and zucchini at the moment, but otherwise I'm just fine.

The Promise of Things Hoped For

We began cleaning out some of our flower beds this weekend and look what is about to bloom:

Rose Takes Flight

An interesting series of events informed my decisions about the border designs for "Ramblin' Rose". I had gotten the blocks put together last week, and as I looked at the piece, lying on the floor, I thought the next border could be flying geese or it could be a swag applique border. On Monday I decided to go visit Melinda at Tiny Stitches where she was teaching a "beyond beginners" class. I walk into the classroom and isn't she teaching the students about making strips of flying geese?



I showed her the quilt top and we talked about Pat Sloan's method for making flying geese blocks. I went home and made a slew of blocks, and spent most of the week making the strips of borders (including using downtime in a class I took on Thursday).



By Saturday afternoon the borders were all made and ready to go on the quilt. As I worked, I began thinking about the next border. I had just taken a class with Kathy Kansier about edge treatments, and decided I would make a scalloped border for this quilt. So, I set to work cutting the fabric. It's ten inches now, but I think ultimately it will be between 6-8". I'm happy to put this project up for a few days while I work on that last table runner, getting "Briner's Picnic" sandwiched, and finish turning the binding on "Princeton Plainsboro"

I'm thinking about quilting designs, and what I want my scallops to look like, so that when I get serious about finishing this piece I'm ready to go. I think I have enough of the black floral in the final border to use it for the backing.

Someday I'll do a swag border. Honest.

The Monster in the Closet

So, the big four: "Princeton-Plainsboro", "Briner's Picnic", "Ramblin' Rose" and my old stack and whack top that got pulled apart to be a pile of blocks again, are starting to look like the monster in the closet did by the time I was 14.

You know that feeling? When you were a teenager, and you could remember that you USED to think there was a monster in the closet, but you no longer feared opening the door? That's how I feel about the big four, and the big six before that. Honestly, looking back, I think having so many UFOs kept me from being able to make any progress ANYWHERE in my quilting life. I have seldom worked this hard on a goal, but it's been totally worth it. I knocked off "Blush and Bashful" and hired out "Tropical Storm" to get it finished. "Princeton-Plainsboro" has binding, and "Rambling Rose" blocks are pieced, and I'm working on the final border this week. "Briner's Picnic" will be easily quilted and bound, in fact, I might get it sandwiched next week.

Of course, I now have "Mystery in the Mountains" to finish, as well as the Piecemaker's 2008 exchange quilt, but I really am starting to see that the monster was not something to be feared. It is entirely possible that by March I will be HUNTING to the bottom of that closet for other UFOs that need to be attacked.

Monthly Accounting: February

Aren't you proud of me? For several months running I have managed to report to you about my progress for the month. Well. I'm proud of me, at any rate. I was thinking a monthly feature might REALLY stretch my ability to commit to blogging, but it's actually been a great motivator, both for sewing and for blogging.

Finished:
- 2 tables runners which were actually Christmas gifts, I didn't get to finish them, so I pieced them and presented them as gifts. (My dear friends opened their boxes, laughed with me and graciously handed them back so I could finish them!)

Made Progress:
-Quilted "Princeton Plainsboro" (2007 Piecemaker's house quilt project)
-1 table runner
-Continued to stitch on blackwork blocks, but won't be done anytime soon!
-Went on retreat and pieced center of "Mystery in the Mountains", it needs two borders
-Frogged non-working sashing on "Ramblin' Rose" and started over, blocks now pieced together in a happy arrangement. One border finished this weekend. Final border to go.

Left Untouched:
-Sandwich, quilt and bind "Briner's Picnic"
-Applique center for 2008 Piecemakers' exchange quilt


In February:
-Finish that remaining table runner
-Finish piecing the top for "Ramblin' Rose"
-Bind and make a few little adjustments to "Tropical Storm".
-Bind "Princeton Plainsboro"
-Get started on Piecemaker's 2009 exchange blocks