Focus

Hi Everyone,

I know that I have not been blogging much lately.  This year seems so odd to me--I'm having difficulty sticking with projects.  I think I need to assign myself a "Word of the Year" and that word needs to be "Focus."  Or, instead, maybe I should give myself permission to be a bit flaky this year, and then start fresh next year.  At any rate, I feel like I'm not getting much done, but then this morning I looked through my phone pictures and there is quite a bit there that I could be sharing.

Despite feeling like I'm jumping into different projects, I have really been steadily working on Austin Bluebird.  I'm almost done with the largest applique block.  It is 30" finished and has lots of leaves and berries.  Once it is finished, I just have one other applique block to do and there is a little bit of the piecing left to do and then I can sew it all together!  I think I'm going to add a border to it, so that it is bed-sized versus a coverlet, so I've been considering just what to do there.  I know for sure that I'm going to "float" the center and put a wide border of the background fabric on first--I can see this cream border beautifully quilted with feathers!  Then I want to add a narrow dog-tooth or saw-tooth border.  I have a couple possibilities in mind.

 

(Sorry for the sideways picture)  This is the completed half, in case you were wondering what Austin Bluebird is.  It is a pattern by Minick and Simpson based on an antique coverlet.  

There is a space on the quilt to include the year and the maker's initials.  I embroidered those being VERY optimistic and dating it 2015.  That means I HAVE to finish the quilt this year, ha ha.

Something else that I made recently is this:

It's another Schnibble pattern by Carrie Nelson, Open Season.  I love making flying geese with the Fit to Be Geese ruler--they are made oversize and then trimmed to be perfect.  It takes a bit more work to do the trimming, but having no "wonky" geese is so worth it.  The fabric is the reason I made the quilt.  It is Barbara Brackman's latest collection, Union Blues.  I love the shades of blues and the browns that accompany them.  

Something else that distracted me was that I made another Kid's Quilt for our guild.  Every member is supposed to make one to donate to Camp Whatchawannado--a camp for kids who are cancer-survivors.  They want to have about 120-130 to pass out.  In our April Guild Newsletter, it sounded like we might not have enough, so I decided to make another.  I got on Pinterest to find some inspiration and came across this link.  The author, JJScraps, made a wonderful Star Wars quilt for her son.  

This is my version

She basically made a Jelly Roll Race quilt. (Also known as 1600 or lasagne, or other fun names.)  That is where you take a jelly roll (or 40 2.5" strips) and sew them together end to end so you have one seriously long strip.  (40 strips at about 40" long equals 1600 inches, hence the name: 1600.)  Then you fold it in half and sew a bottom to a top, then in half again, and again, and again until the piece is 32 strips tall.  

There are several variations you can do to "jazz it up."  I added darker gray 2.5" squares between all of my strips.  That fabric was from my stash and had stars on it.  The other gray fabrics I bought at JoAnn Fabrics. (I didn't use a jelly roll--I cut 2.5" strips from yardage.)  I need to add here that I had never made one of these quilts before.  They are a bit "too random" for me.  I will confess that I manipulated it the first time I folded the really long stip in half.  I didn't allow any of the gray squares to touch each other.  Once it was folded and sewn again, I couldn't control anything anymore and it was really hard to "let go" of the control, ha ha.  I do think the randomness really works in this version, though,  

 This project went quick.  I shopped on Friday, came home and prewashed, cut the strips, and began "the race."  I finished it on Saturday and then layered and began the quilting.  I didn't touch it on Sunday, but finished the quilting on Monday morning.  Then I added the appliques.  It was much, much easier to quilt it all-over before the shapes were added.

To get the ship shapes, I googled for "Star Wars Silhouettes" and found these.  I printed them out as large as possible, but still needed to go to the copy shop to enlarge them further.  I used black flannel and fused them on.  Once they were fused, I straight-stiched around the applique just inside the edge.  I used black flannel because I had some--the back of the quilt, which I forgot to photograph, was made of a black Star Wars flannel.  It wasn't wide enough, so I added a strip of plain black flannel.  

Once I had the appliques on, I machine binded it and it was finished.  That Monday was "Star Wars Day,"  May the 4th.  "May the fourth be with you--get it?"  Anyway, I just hope there is a Star Wars fan attending the camp.  I also have enough strips left over to make another one, maybe for next year.

I believe one of my readers out there had expressed interest in also donating a quilt.  I remember emailing her about it but I was just searching for the messages and could not find them.  I'm so sorry!  At any rate, I do know that someone from the state of Missouri made and donated 2 beautiful quilts to the guild for the camp.  The organizers did not show the quilts to us, but did tell the guild about it.  If it is one of you, I hope you let me know.  How generous!

I guess that is all for now.  I hope to to be back very soon with more!

Have a great day,

JoAnne

Snow Day

Hi Everyone,

It's another "snow day" here, although it is more of an "ice day."  This time, both of my nieces are over.  They did their online  schoolwork and now are doing "art."  It's always easy and fun to do art projects here at my house.  They wanted to sew, but are settling for construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, markers, etc.

Now that my computer is free, I can write this post!  If you remember last week I was mentioning that a new project interrupted my work on my big, complicated quilt.  As I explained, every member of our guild is asked to provide a kid's quilt,  They are taken to Camp Watcha-Wanna-Do, which is a camp for children who have been diagnosed with cancer or brain tumors.  Each camper is given a quilt to use and then take home.

While going through all of my fabric, I had already "assigned" some to this cause.  One group was all of my leftover moose and bear, etc. fabrics that I collected and used while in Alaska.  I haven't made an Alaskan theme quilt since.  (Did that stop me from buying a plethora of Hawaii themed fabric while in that state?  No, but I'm sensing future kid's quilts from that stash, too.)  One day I pulled them all out and looked over what I had.  I had a piece that had sort of preprinted squares, etc. on it.  You could use it as is, or cut it up.  I wanted to fussy-cut some of the motifs.  I had another piece which was a panel, only with long-ish rectangle pieces.  There was another with fussy-cutting possibilities, and then a bunch of fabrics with all-over moose and bear, woodsy prints, etc.    I gathered up a bunch of them and took them to the local shop to try to find a fabric to use with all of them.  This was not easy as some had neutral backgrounds, and there were golds, browns, dark greens, and reds in the mix.  I ended up choosing a light green fabric that played well with all of the others.  Luckily it didn't have flowers on it as I wanted to make a quilt for a boy.  (It's so easy to make girl quilts!)  I didn't have any idea what quilt I was going to make, but since there was only about 2 yards on the bolt, I bought it all.

At that point, I didn't have a plan, so I set everything aside.  I knew what I wanted:  a quilt with different size squares and rectangles, all sashed, that would fit together a bit like a puzzle.  At various times, I looked through my books and then one day I was on Pinterest, and I found just what I wanted.  I set out sketching the quilt.  I began with the larger squares finishing at 6", but that was too small of a scale.  I wanted to try something larger, but it was time to go to bed, so I had to leave it.  I hate leaving something when I'm in the middle!

The next morning, I leaped out of bed after the alarm went off at 5.  I went back to my graph paper and tried 9" squares next, and that was a bit too large,  8"  anded up being perfect so I drew it all out on paper.  I would need *' and 3.5" squares and other sizes inbetween  I began wondering if my panels and pieces would fit the size squares and rectangles for the pattern  so I took my sketch upstairs to my quilt room.  I grabbed the fabrics and YES!  they were going to work great.  I got right to cutting.  It was fun seeing what I could fussy-cut to the needed sizes.  I cut shapes from the all-over fabrics, too.  Pretty soon, I realized I needed to lay it all out so I could see if I was getting a good color-balance.  I cleared off my design wall and started laying it all out and cutting some more.  With a start, I realized I was an hour away from needing to be to my quilting group and I was still in my pajamas!  "Curses," I thought, "I have to leave my quilting to go to quilting!"  Haha.

So I got ready and went to my bee.  When I got home from that, I had about an hour before I had to run another errand, so I ran back upstairs and kept at it.  I was liking what I was doing!

Finally, the next day, I got all the pieces positioned and next it was just a matter of sewing it all together with the green sashing.  It went quick, since it was all easy sewing--nothing is really pieced, so everything fit together great.  The sashing strips were cut 1.5."  Once all the row elements were together, I joined the rows with more sashing in between and surrounded the finished piece with 2.5" strips.  The two yards of sashing fabric was enough, with just a little left over.

Here is the finished top.  I have the backing and batting ready.  I just need to layer them and I can machine quilt it.

This quilt was lots of fun to make and I'm really glad that it will be finished.  As I mentioned in my last post, these sort of projects are fun for me when I have a plan and get excited.  If I'm stumped and not in the mood, they seem more tedious.

Have a great day!
JoAnne