New Finish, New Start

Easy Street is on the Bed

As some of you know, I am a fan of Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog.  I started Easy Street, one of her annual mystery quilts, several (!) years ago, right around the time my son got engaged.  Since then, he's gotten married and they now have three wonderful kids.   If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I've made my son and daughter-in-law a wedding quilt, quilts for each of the kids, plus quilts for several nieces and nephews, a Quiltville leader-and-ender project (more on which another time), and other miscellany.  But at last, Easy Street is done!!

I dropped this project several times, not just because of other priorities, but also because I because discouraged.  Nevertheless, I persisted.  Once the blocks were done, I was so excited to finish it.  Adding the first border was a challenge -- the quilt wasn't particularly square, and all of the edges -- **ALL** -- were the bias edges of triangles.    The quilt was too big to even try to do on my DSM.  The quilting was done by Clemencia Ramos in teal.   I am thrilled with the result.

 

Not having a clue about what I was getting myself into, I decided to make this quilt because of the colors.  For me, it wasn't "easy street," but I sure learned a lot!  The backing is a pretty print of violets in the same colors as the top, more modern than traditional, but a perfect complement

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On Ringo Lake

With Easy Street done, it was time to start a second Quiltville mystery.  Once again, I fell in love with the colors, never mind the pattern.  This time I got a little smarter and waited until the reveal to go ahead with selecting fabrics and diving in.  So far I've finished Clue #1 - 50 nine-patches in teal, brown, and white-to-beige neutrals.

 Some of the teals and neutrals are left over from Easy Street.  Sweet.   I'm looking forward to the next clue, in corals and peaches.  Yum!

Music and Love

Happy National Quilting Month!

... and National Quilting Day, too.  It was yesterday, but I didn't celebrate because I was away (enjoying the last day of a lovely, warm week in Florida).   But I do have a recent finish to share with you.

Music and Love

Music and Love was intended to be a housewarming gift for our dear friends Gordon and Diane, who moved last summer from Delaware to North Carolina.  I'd had the fabric for a long time, but now was time for it to see the light of day.

The fabric had a music theme, and the pattern was "Xs and Os" from Missouri Star Quilt Company.  Gordon and Diane were both musicians and teachers, and the kisses (Xs) and hugs (Os) were for their upcoming 54th wedding anniversary.

The pattern was quick and easy (as usual from MSQ).  Two charm packs of a print and one of a light neutral (I used a dotted cream).  The print I used was Perfect Pitch from RJR.  Check out the colors on that selvedge!

Snowball the 5" print squares by sewing 2-1/2" neutral squares to each corner.  

Press the neutrals out and trim back to a 5" square.   Voila!

Except that I decided to have a little extra fun!  I sewed a second seam 1/4" away from the main seam before trimming off the triangles.  

Please ignore the line to the left of the seam.  I put the square down backwards!  The second line of stitching will be to the outside of the first seam.

Voila again!  Handfuls of tiny half-square triangles.  Two charm packs = about 80 squares = 320 HSTs!  I was thinking of using them in a border, but decided against it in the interest of time.  I wonder what they will become?

Put 4 snowballed squares together and there's your block.

Sew up the rows and columns and you're done.  I fiddled with the layout to try to get the colors more-or-less evenly distributed.  And I pressed the seams open, since pressing them to the dark side posed nesting issues.

For the quilting, I sewed down the middle of each line of Xs, then a line around the inside of the neutral squares and one between the first two lines.  So three lines in the Xs and one in the middle of each block.  I used my walking foot, and turning the quilt in circles under my small-throated machine was a bit of a pain.  But I like the result.

The binding is made up of short (12" - 16") strips of one print in several different shades.

Sadly, Diane passed away last fall.  But her name on the quilt, as he requested, will be a sweet reminder for Gordon.

Back(s) to Quilting!

Hi, all!  Happy National Quilting Month!

I'm baaack!

It's been a long time.  I've been so busy quilting and just haven't made the time to post anything.  But this blog is really my Quilting Journal, the one place where I keep photos of my quilts and the process I went through to make them.  March is National Quilting Month, the perfect time to get back in the saddle and share the journey along A Quilter's Path.  This post is a composite of several unfinished posts from 2018...

What is your favorite part of quilting?

There are those who love the beginning -- discovering an inspiring view or idea or even a captivating pattern, or finding a beautiful fabric that cries, "Take me home!"  Some find relaxation in cutting and piecing.  For others is the quilting process itself, making lovely designs that please the eye in themselves and that add depth and movement to the quilt.  There are even people who enjoy just sitting in front of the TV, sewing on the binding, and feeling the satisfaction of a quilt COMPLETED!

I guess for most of us, it's the whole process.  Otherwise we'd probably never finish our quilts!  I don't much enjoy the actual quilting, probably because I still haven't become skilled at the kinds of quilt designs that I want to make.  Otherwise, I love it all.  But one of my favorite parts is rarely mentioned -- finding the perfect backing.

The back is part of the quilt, too!

We're all familiar with the photos of gorgeous quilts, draped over the corner of a door, over a fence or railing, wrapped around a young child.  Sometimes you get a peek at the back in these photos, or perhaps the quilter has folded back a corner for you to see it.  But think about it -- when you turn down the bed or toss a lap quilt over your knees, you always see the back!

I love finding the perfect backing for my quilts.  I made one quilt -- one very important to me, the one for my son and daughter-in-law for their wedding -- where I used a plain muslin backing.  Lots of people use muslin for the quilt back -- it never detracts from the top, shows the quilting, and is inexpensive.  But in the end I was disappointed.  If the top was so important, why didn't I bother to find a nice fabric for the back?

To me, the right backing material complements the top.  If the back has to be pieced, that's even more opportunity to have what is effectively a two-sided quilt.  Here are some of my favorites.

I made this panel quilt for a niece's baby boy in Ireland.  The African theme suggested warmth, something often lacking in Ireland!  

So I made the backing with a warm flannel in the same colors as the top.  It showed off the quilting nicely, too.  Aligning the back with the top so that the quilting aligned correctly on both the top and the back was something of an effort, but in the end, I was quite happy.

This lap quilt was for my best friend and her husband -- and their dogs!  The photo was taken before the quilting was done.  I stitched the names of all their dogs over the years in the horizontal sashings.

Of course, there was no shortage of dog-themed fabrics that could be used for the back.  The one I chose added a little pop of color that was missing in the brown and dark red top.

Sifting through old posts, you can find my *very* gradual progress on my Otsego quilts -- a pair of twin-sized quilts that in my earliest quilting days I optimistically designed, poorly cut, and struggled to sew.  Over the years I would pick one up to work on, usually during a retreat, when I forced myself to push on by taking only that project along.  But once I got home, back it went in the UFO bin.

This summer I finally finished both tops.  It took a while to find a backing fabric that I loved -- found it at Hobby Lobby in Gaylord, Michigan.  Perfect.

The last back I'll show you today was for another baby quilt.  I've made this one before -- just a couple of charm packs and some yardage.  

I wanted flannel for the backing, but when I saw these little guys, the deal was done.  So sweet!

That's it for now.  We'll be baaaack!