Rhododendron Trail, At Last

In my last post, I mentioned that I didn't much like this quilt when it was finally done.  It languished on my quilt rack for a long time, until my friend Linda and her husband came from North Carolina to visit us on Long Island.  She is a wonderful quilter (see some of her quilts here) and she has a special talent for making me feel competant and re-kindling my love of quilting whenever we see each other.  She assured me that I'd like the quilt more after it was quilted, and she volunteered to quilt it for me at no charge.  What a friend indeed!!

Last year we met up in Florida and she took the quilt home to work her magic.  This week we met in Florida again and she brought along the quilt.  

Linda was right.  I do like it better.  Of course, absence makes the heart grow fonder, too.  I'm glad that she took her sweet time getting this done.  (Sorry, the palm tree photo-bombed this!).

Here you can see where all those flying geese found a home.  If I had known that this would be the border, I probably would have given up before I ever started.  I'm so glad I persisted!  

The back of the quilt is a pretty teal that Linda and I found while shopping in Ft. Myers last year.  Look closely and you can see the quilt motif that Linda chose.  I told her to just pick what she thought would be good, and I do think it's perfect.

This week we went back to the same quilt shop to pick out some fabric that I needed to make my next quilt top.  Of course, we ended up with teal -- there's lot of pink in this new quilt, too.  I'm not a huge pink fan, and I think some teal (my favorite color) helps me enjoy sewing all that pink.  Just getting started, you can follow my progress in the weeks to come.

Another Quiltville Mystery solved!

JOINING MR. PEABODY IN THE WAY-BACK MACHINE

Hello, and happy Quilting Month! 

After an on-lie absence of two years (!!!), I am finally resuming my quilty posts.  I'm not sure why I've been hibernating.  In part it's been because I've been busy sewing, without actually finishing much.  In part it's been because I've been less than thrilled with the results of my endeavors. Often I neglecged to take photos, which are the heart of my quilting diary.  And I've let myself get distracted by useless wastes of time (e.g., online jigsaw puzzles).  Whatever.  I guess most quilters sometimes have days, weeks, even months when they just can't get their mojo going.  At least I was sewing, just dropped the posting. 

2021-2023:  Rhododendron Trail

Every November, Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.com comes up with another amazing mystery quilt project.  How she manages to write a daily blog, host groups of quilters in her Quiltville Inn, write books and magazine columns, and still design, stitch, and quilt so many quilts is beyond me.  I'd completed two of her mystery quilts, but didn't embark on them until after the Reveal, so I knew what I'd be making.  In 2021, I threw caution to the winds and started right off when the mystery, called Rhododendron Trail, started.   I should have known I was in trouble when the second clue was to make 124 flying geese.  Eeek!

After all that, I didn't even use them until the very last step in the project!  But no worries, there were plenty more triangles to do.  There were triangles sewed to half-square triangles.

Which of these things is not like the others?

There were quarter-square triangles.

There were great, big triangles.

Of course, there were plenty of squares and rectangles, too.  And then there was the sashing that finished at 1/2". 

I found this quilt to be challenging, in the cutting as well as the sewing.  Normally I enjoy a challenge, but more than a year later, when I finally finished the quilt top, I didn't really like it.   Many of my friends did liked it, but not I.  I think it was the color combinations.  Maybe that's part of why I stopped blogging in 2023?).

Bonnie Hunter's patterns are very well written.  She is a teacher, and it shows in the details she gives in explaining not only how, but WHY, to do things.  And in this experience I did learn an important thing about reading the mystery directions.  In the introductory post, she shows the colors that she has used and how much yardage to buy if you are not doing the quilt scrappy.  I've done all 3 of her quilts scrappy, but the thing I hadn't considered was that by reading the yardage amounts, I'd have had an idea before beginning about the proportions of each color that will be in the quilt.  If I'd read the yardage directions, I'd have known that there was going to be a lot of pink and hardly any teal.   I think I would have liked this quilt a lot more if I'd altered how each color was used, and maybe even swapped some out.  Lesson learned.

More on Rhododendron Trail in the next post.

Ringo Lake, Finished at Last!

 Today's post was originally supposed to go out in the summer of 2021, when my Ringo Lake quilt top was finished and ready to go out for quilting.   However, I was busy accepting the Procrastinator of the Year award.

This photo was taken at the last meeting of our quilt group before Covid-19 hit the New York area and everything shut down.  When I returned home from an extended Covid-related stay in Florida (lucky me!), I just didn't have the heart to get back to finishing the quilt.  Finally, in the summer of 2021, the borders were added.  It required four borders to make it fit our bed, which has a very high mattress and box spring. z The quilt was finished by an excellent local long-arm quilter,  Joyce Austin. 

The outer border wasa a puzzle -- nothing I auditioned seemed to do the trick.  Then the owner of my LQS pulled what you see here, and I thought it was perfect.

This doesn't show the binding. I think I was auditioning the coral for the binding.  Instead I picked a gray-ish herringbone, not a color anywhere in the quilt, but it fits well with the outer border and makes a nice finish to the quilt.

The outer border is not something I'd ever hve thought of, but it is perfect for bringing the quilt together.

The backing is two fabrics that I got at a local quilt store that was going out of business.  😢  The coral and teal are from the same fabric line.  I bought all that the store had left, but I had to add a print from my stash to fill it out. 

The quilt is now on my bed, replacing the Civil War-themed quilt, whose colors I found increasingly depressing.  That quilt had a polyester batting, while the batting in this one is 100% cotton.  Interestingly, this quilt is much heavier, probably due mainly to the amount of fabric in the seams, but perhaps due to the cotton batting, too.  The quilt has a tendency to slde off to one side (a pain when it comes to making the bed, but a good upper body workout). Heresy alert:  I actually think I prefer the polyester for my bed quilt.  

 

 

How Hard Can it Be?

Years ago I spotted a Christmas quilt that I wanted to make in a catalog (Keepsake Quilting, I think).  I cut out the picture for future reference because I didn't want to spend $12 on a pattern made up entirely of squares and rectangles.  After all (she said), how hard can it be?  I can now tell you, if you ever hear me say that, tie me to a tree until I regain my senses!

This is the picture from the catalog.   It looks like a Nordic sweater.

First I tried to do the layout in EQ8.  But I haven't really gotten up to speed with it yet, and wasn't sure of the best approach to making several different blocks and aligning them in a quilt.  So I copied the picture and penciled in the rows and columns.  Judging from the size of the quilt, it looked to me like the squares were all about 1" finished, except for the smaller ones around the pointsettias and, of course, the ones needed to make the half square triangles.  As I look at it now, I can see that they vary in size, but the photo in the catalog was small, so it seemed straightforward.

I wanted the quilt to be "controlled scrappy," so there are several colors in the poinsettias, both reds and whites.  I did these first, because I'd already made one block a few years ago as a small hanging quilt.  Funny, it was too big for my little quilt hanger.  That should have set off an alarm.

I made each of the rows according to my (incorrect) calculations.  When it came to putting the rows together -- whoops!!  The upshot was that I had to add blocks to each row until they were nearly equal in width.  The poinsettias were unchanged, as were the reindeer.  I had to add several tree blocks and fiddle with the checkerboards.  I also had to add some filler strips to even things out.  Here's how it turned out:

Two 1" strips (finished) on either side of the poinsettias did the trick.  I didn't have have more of the green that I'd used in the blocks, but found one that fit in well.  The reindeer row required 3 extra strips.  Apologies for the grayed-out photos below.  I guess the afternoon caught up with me!

It took some quilty math to figure out how many additional tree blocks were needed for the rows, but they came out great.  I was able to use up a bundle of Christmas fabrics that I'd picked up at Jo-Ann years ago.

So here's (most of) the final product.  I wish the poinsettias had been smaller in scale compared to the other blocks, but it still looks OK.  And it was good to use the various Christmas fabrics that were killing time in my stash.  It was intended to be a wall hanging, but now it's a good-size lap quilt.

Spending the $12 on the pattern would have made so much sense.  But I learned a lot, and in the end it was rather fun.  Now to quilt it.  I think I need to complete a course on free-motion quilting in order to tackle this.  There's time...

At Long Last, a Return

Unbelievable!  It's been nearly a year and a half since I posted to this blog.  There are numerous drafts waiting in line to be completed, but somehow it hasn't happened.  To get the ball rolling, I'll share with you some beautiful quilts made by a new friend.  Talking with her this week and seeing her quilts has been such an inspiration!  So rather than hitting the rewind button, let's start with Linda and her beautiful quilts.

Linda lives in Pinehurst, NC.  She's been making quilts since the 1990's and has a Gammill longarm ensconced in one of her two bedrooms.  She has shown her quilts at several prestigious juried shows (Paducah, Houston) and has won many prizes.  She had a quilting business for some years, but is now closing that down to spend more time travelling in her beloved RV and making art quilts.  

She recently finished this blue beauty.  Believe it or not, it's a Block of the Month.  There are enough flying geese to make my heart stop!  The entire quilt is custom-quilted, even the borders.  So much texture!

The half-rings of flying geese were paper-pieced, but Linda said it was still difficult to make everything work out exactly right.  She's making the same quilt for someone else, but she's going to use a single strip of fabric in place of the pieced rings.  Also note how she's used dense quilting to make the flowers and star blocks really pop.

Another traditionally-patterned quilt she made using stencilled fabric (unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of the whole quilt).  Of course, like most of us, she had to make it her way!  The blocks between the square-in-square blocks bordering the panels were all the same (booorrring!) so she used all different blocks instead.  She embroidered the panels but her quilting really brings each one to life.  Do you see all the different snowflake designs in the squares?

... and the furrowed fields, snow-filled clouds and frozen creek?

The quilt reminded her of Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," so she decided to add the first lines to the border.  She searched the web for just the right font, used it to print the words on fabric, and appliqued them to the border.

She had the quilt in a local quilt show, and a man named Robert Frost contacted her and asked if he could buy the quilt.  She didn't know if he just liked the quilt, or if he was a relative of the poet, checking to make sure she didn't violate the poem's copyright by selling it.  She said No, but she'd wanted to keep it for herself anyway.

Now for her art quilts!  Maybe this one doesn't exactly count as an art quilt, but it's definitely fiber art.  The quilt is not very big, so you have to look closely to appreciate the handwork.

The bird is thread-painted, copying a photo.  She said it was much easier than she'd expected (!).

Some leaves were made with crochet (must have been a 0000 crochet hook!), beading and thread-painting with heavy thread.  The blue centers of the coneflowers are made of dozens of French knots.   And there is a lot of hand embroidery.

 The circle around the bird's picture is crocheted, too. 

This beautiful quilt is the view out the kitchen window in her previous home.  The squirrel sign was giving her trouble (she said), so she went outside and took a photo of it, then printed it on fabric and appliqued it onto the quilt.  Ingenious.

I love the way she created the texture and depth of the birdbath by using different fabrics.

Finally, you know how much I love a pretty quilt back!  To combine her loves, Linda made a quilt for her RV.  It's a panel, pretty but not terribly original.  But check out this quilting!  You don't really notice it from the front, but she found the perfect pantograph!

Next time, in about a week, I'll turn to the projects I've finished, those under the needle, and some yet to come.  Thanks for visiting.

Another One Bites the Dust!

You might remember from my last post that I had tried to free-motion an all-flannel baby quilt without success.  It was just too heavy.  But now it's done!  

This one is a disappearing 9-patch made from a charm pack I'd bought on line back in 2013.  Mistake #1.  I didn't like the fabrics , except for the alphabet print.  I still don't.  Mistake #2.  These fabrics really didn't work in this quilt pattern.  I had them all cut, but stuffed them in a bag for the next nearly 8 years.  I found them again a few weeks ago in the bottom of a bin.  Time to get this puppy out of here!

This pic looks out of focus, but it's really just the flannel.  Cozy!  Is that Nikola Tesla in the corner?

Once it was stitched up, I found some flannel for the backing and made the quilt sandwhich.  Mistake #3.  I marked the top with a clamshell template AFTER sandwiching the quilt.  I know better, really, but there you go.  Needless to say, the quilting lines are a bit funky in places.  

Mistake #4 (but really, who's counting?).  I chose the clamshell because I figured it would be a relatively easy motif to FMQ for a novice FMQer (is that a word?).  It took only about 1-1/2 clamshells to figure out that it wasn't going to work.  Back into the UFO pile while I worked on the autumn lap quilt.  When that was done, I finished this one with my walking foot.

You know how I love my quilt backs.  Aren't these guys the cutest things!  Flannel on sale at Jo-Ann!  If I were keeping this, I'd use the back as the front.  I used a silver thread in the bobbin.  You can barely see the quilting, even in the white areas.

 This one will go to Quilts for Kids.  

I've got another UFO all lined up for quilting, but I've also awarded myself the privilege of starting a new quilt.  It's been months since I did this, and it's so much fun, pulling fabrics and visiting my LQS to fill in others that I needed.  Time to set up my other machine so that I can quilt or piece as I wish.  Stay tuned!

One Down, Nine to Go!

Happy Autumn and Happy National Sewing Month!

 

  
Believe it or not, a quite a bit of sewing has been going on, but I haven't had anything  to share.  After years of fits and starts, I finally bit the bullet and dived into free-motion quilting on a REAL quilt!   I have FMQed some borders, but that doesn't present the size and weight of an entire quilt.  I had 10 (ten!) quilt tops finished, some even sandwiched and basted. Do I want to pay to have all of these quilted?  NO!!

I picked a clamshell motif for which I have a template and that I thought would be relatively easy.  I practiced, practiced, practiced on a 24" quilt sandwich and got...um...less bad.  Then I marked a baby quilt.  It's for Quilts for Kids, one of those "get the fabric out of here" projects, so I figured perfection wasn't required.  Unfortunately, the quilt is flannel on both sides, and it was so heavy, I felt I was dragging it through the mud!  Back on the quilt rack it went, and I was ready to give up.

But for once I was determined.  I pulled a quilt top that was completed 7 years ago.  It's a one-block wonder, and while I loved the process, I didn't really like the fabric and it got lost in the shuffle.  You can see previous posts here and here.  It has lots of good points for this project:

• The batting is quite thin (not what I'd buy today) and the quilt is a manageable size (about 50" x 56"), especially with my new Janome.  
• The top is so busy, no one will ever see the quilting.
• The quilting is red on the top, green on the back, so if anyone does turn it over, I can pretend that the places where the red popped through are on purpose and it's a Christmas quilt!  😉

There was one drawback.  With 6 triangles coming together in the center of each block, the machine foot sometimes had trouble negotiating the bump.

Instead of the clamshell, I free-handed (no template) a motif that is similar to one that I have used several times before, but just not FMQ.  It's just a flower, of no particular sort, centered in each block. 

If you look real hard, you can make out the flower.  But as I'd hoped, you can't really see how goofy some of the stitching is.  All according to plan...

I used an oakleaf-like motif in the border.  The quilting thread is actually a fairly dark gold, but it sure doesn't look like that on the fabric.  I do like using nature themes -- no two flowers or leaves are exactly the same in nature, likewise in my quilting!

So, one down nine to go!  Several almost demand straight-line quilting, but I'll definitely continue working on my free-motion skills.  One in the line-up is a king-size quilt.  I'm still thinking will go to the long-armer just because of the size.  We'll see...