Flying Rose, Finally!

She is finally finished! I'll be entering her in the ECQG show scheduled for this September.

I have gotten quite a few UFOs off my conscience in the past year and a half. I've also started a handful of other projects, of course. I've missed blogging and often thought of returning to it. I hope you enjoy seeing some of what I've been up to.

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.

Doesn't She Look Guilty?

Joyce was the murderer!

The retreat was great fun. I wish I had taken a picture of the sun setting over the mountains that first night, because the weather was awful the next few days. Melinda has a lovely picture on her blog, check it out!

There was a murder mystery, along with a mystery quilt project. We had many chances to figure out who the murderer was as we sewed our clues together, but I am no good at catching the subtle clues. I rallied hard, trying to raise an election to make me the murderer, and I think we all had great fun with it, but Melinda stood firm that the murderer had already been chosen and there was no way to know if I had been selected without solving the mystery. Obviously, it wasn't me.



On Saturday afternoon I had finished my mystery blocks and went off into the hall and tried to imagine what the final solution might be. (We wouldn't be getting the final clues until Sunday morning.) I was close, but not correct. Here's the layout that was planned. I like it better, there was too much emphasis on purple in my solution!




I still think there might be too much purple. I've got the top sewn together, there are two more borders called for, but I've put it on hold for a couple of weeks. I want to look at it with a fresh eye and see what I think at that point. (And goodness knows I have enough other irons in the fire to deal with!)

Honestly, I think my favorite part was getting to spend three uninterrupted days with my friend. (I dunno if she feels the same way. She might be sick of me!) But it was all great. I got the Ramblin' Rose blocks undone from their failed sashing, and got some good thinking time to consider how to move forward. I also traced the pattern for another of my blackwork blocks, and I got to spend some time being good to myself. I finished the book "Water for Elephants" which was wonderful. So it was an enormously productive weekend. I wish all my quilting friends had been there. Maetha told us on Sunday that Tiny Stitches had already reserved the same weekend for next year. I'm looking forward to going again!

Ramblin' Rose is Crying

Grrr. I started to put Ramblin' Rose together yesterday, and although I was sure I had measured and trimmed up my blocks way back when I finished them (Hello.... January of 2008?) the sashing doesn't line up properly. I've got a ton of frogging to do. (RIp-it, rip-it.) and then I need to take another look at the blocks and figure out what to do with them. Perhaps I'll abandon my first idea and do some kind of irish chain blocks in between Marti's blocks.

Ramblin' Rose Never Made it to Jamestown

This is the block of the month quilt from 2007 at Tiny Stitches, my LQS. I was really proud last year, that while I didn't actually make a block a month, I DID make all the blocks before 2008 arrived. I never intended to set the blocks as Marti Michell did in her Ramblin' Rose Goes to Jamestown quilt. This was the first time I ever worked with Marti's templates, and I'll tell you something, if you don't know what a quarter inch seam is, your blocks will NEVER come together properly using her templates. Making these blocks has improved my piecing accuracy DRAMATICALLY.

The original design for the quilt calls for setting the blocks with diagonal rows of log cabin blocks. I just didn't think it showcased the blocks as strongly as I'd like. (God help me, I'm criticizing Marti Michell for heaven's sake.) So after staring at my design wall for a QUITE SOME TIME I have decided I can't set the blocks directly together, the differences in corners and other "meeting points" are too different to look good that way. I'm going to do a simple sashing. I don't have enough of the color I wanted to use (the lighter red) so this is as far as I've gotten:



I want to do a border all around these blocks when I'm done, possible one of the blacks, and then decide about the outer borders.