Holiday Quilting. Or Not.

Life got in the way over the past couple of months so I haven't actually completed anything since Halloween. My Halloween finish is a variation of a traditional 'Tree Everlasting' pattern in autumn colors. These are the leftovers from my McCord Vine UFO (UnFinished Object).



In the midst of finishing old projects earlier this year, I started a few new ones (and this is why I always have too many UFOs). I was skimming through Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns earlier this year and playing around in EQ7 to see how different patterns looked together when I designed this one. I call it 'Noughts and Crosses.'



I don't often use whites/creams as a background, but I did with in this one. I think the colors are unusual, but they work.



As a geologist, I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually make a quilt in the traditional 'Rolling Stone' pattern.



I like the deep gray background and the color fade from yellow to orange to green in the blocks.



I had some leftover blocks that I didn't want to turn into another UFO, so they went on the back.



I pulled out a string quilting project to work on over the holidays. Maybe I can get a little momentum going. I set up an old black Singer 15-91 from 1951 in the cabinet that I painted last January; it is oiled up and ready to go.

UFO Recap

I finished the UFO challenge, but not all of my UFOs! I still have a stack of unquilted quilts awaiting machine quilting. But here are a few that did get quilted this year.


'Backgammon Diamonds' was a way to use a very orange focal fabric while incorporating string quilting and large shapes. This one spent several years in an unfinished state. I like that it doesn't have a traditional block-based design.


'Modern Bones' is an experiment in using solids and limiting the number of fabrics used. I quilted pebbles and trilobites on 'Modern Bones' because it reminded me of skeletal remains.


The back of 'Modern Bones' has some nice color-blocking.


I designed the block in 'Circuit Boards' several years ago; I was short two blocks so it spent a long time as a stack of pieced blocks under my sewing table. I decided to design a new block rather than make extras of the existing blocks.


Detail of the blocks in 'Circuit Boards.'


The 'McCord Vine' quilt turned out awesome.


All those hours of hand applique were worth it. The wool batting made the leaves puff up nicely.


This quilt was begun in 2015 or 2016 as part of my efforts to use up some of my fabric scraps. I sorted out pieces that were about 2 inches or smaller. Then I sorted the small scraps by color and randomly sewed them into blocks.


Detail views of the '< 2-inch Scraps' quilt.

I am still working on piecing a quilt top from the neutral scraps that I didn't include in the '< 2-inch Scraps' quilt. It is on my design wall but I haven't made a lot of progress in the past few weeks. I am also midway through machine-quilting a blue and white UFO that I should have completed a year ago.

Machine Quilting Again

I've begun machine quilting again, and Baby Groot is running much quieter after his tune-up. I tried to continue on the quilt that I stopped quilting in March, but after about 4 1/2 hours, I ran out of thread! I didn't have any thread that was a good match, so I put that one away unfinished (again!). Rather than stop quilting, I switched to another project and have finished quilting two other quilts in the time it took for a new thread cone to arrive (about a week).

In the midst of all this work on unfinished projects I have been contemplating why I don't finish some projects. I finish a lot of quilts, but over a couple of decades, the unfinished ones can add up. Here is the breakdown:

1) I wasn't sure how I want to quilt it. So rather than going through books and Pinterest until I could settle on a quilting design, I folded it up and moved on to a different project.

2) I had a technical problem that I didn't feel like fixing just then. Triangles that got distorted and lost their points, pieced borders that don't fit, plain borders that ripple, a machine quilting pattern that I decided I didn't like, etc. It wasn't that I don't know how to fix it--at this point I know how to fix most quilty problems--I just didn't want to fix it.

3) I didn't like the way the design was working. Design issues can be difficult to troubleshoot, and even if you know what is wrong you have to weigh the effort of the solution. An example is a set of Dresden plate blocks that I made with a light gray solid background (all those modern quilters with their stylish grays influenced me). I put them up on the design wall with some other Dresden plate blocks that I'd intended to mix them with. And I didn't like the way they mixed. The gray made the blocks positively dreary. So I pulled out all the gray ones. I made a nice quilt with the other blocks, and now I am left with 19 (why such a weird number, I do not recall) dull Dresdens. I hand appliqued these blocks. I do not want to rip them off their backgrounds. I want to find a way to make them work with the gray.

So here are some (sightly out of focus) experiments at my sit and stitch group of how to salvage the Dresdens:



So far I am leaning towards adding black sashing. Maybe.

Baby Groot takes a holiday

I have been continuing my UFO (unfinished object) challenge. This 1/4-log cabin quilt was made from a set of blocks I sewed in an effort to reduce the amount of scraps in my collection. There have been a few other quilts in different settings from this set of blocks but this is the last.



This scrap quilt was designed to use up the smallest of my scraps, leftovers 2 inches or smaller. I sorted the scraps by color and sewed them into blocks. I had a hard time deciding how to quilt this one, so it spent some time as a UFO.



I also finished a Quilt of Valor this spring. It had wavy borders and I didn't feel like fixing them, so I put it away for several years. It is now quilted and ready to go.



After finishing the quilting on these quilts, I started a third one when I started to notice my machine beginning to growl. I checked the stitch count (yes, my machine counts how many stitches it has made) and I am at about 2.3 million. According to the internet, after about 2 million it should be serviced. Baby Groot (as I named my industrial quilting machine) needs to be lubricated, so he took a holiday until I could get him to the shop. I checked my records, and Baby Groot has quilted 32 quilts since 2015. Wow. In the meantime, I quilted and finished a couple of small wall-hanging quilts that could be quilted on the Megasaurus (my other quilting machine, which is smaller and not so industrial).



I also did some hand applique and I have been making progress on some of my UFOs that are still in the piecing stage and not ready for quilting. I have already worked on unfinished projects that I didn’t think I would get to this year; so far I have completed 7 UFOs.

UFO Challenge

My quilt guild is doing a UFO (unfinished objects) challenge this year. I have a few of those! So I wrote a list of projects. There are 27 of them. I included pretty much everything, even a quilt that I cut paper foundation templates for but haven’t sewn a stitch on (does it count as a UFO if it hasn’t really begun?), and a charity quilt that I didn’t make but agreed to machine quilt (I don’t even have to finish it, just quilt it). I’m not sure if all of them are technically UFOs, I know some quilters consider it only a UFO if it has been put away for a period of time (ie, it was started but is not an active project). Whatever, I just included everything. I won’t count a finish on those iffy projects for the guild, just for my personal list.



Really I think this may mostly be a ‘quilt and finish the quilt tops in the closet’ challenge. I doubt I will have enough time to finish a lot of quilts that are still in the piecing stage, but I have many unquilted tops that could be finished with a couple of weeks’ work (each). I’m going to try to finish at least one UFO each month this year. I like to have projects at different stages in the construction process because it gives me flexibility to change tasks and work on a variety of quilts, but I don't really need to have 9 quilts ready for quilting.

For January, I finished adding a hanging sleeve and label to a quilt I finished binding last month (I didn’t count this one for the guild—the quilt was almost done before this challenge). Then I pulled out some strips of Seminole-style patchwork that I made at a class in 2017. I cut some more strips and add interfacing, lining, and straps to make them into a tote bag. UFO # 1 done!





I also pulled out some tree blocks that I started a couple of years ago. I finished piecing the blocks in and tried playing with layouts, and decided to make it into a medallion quilt. I want to make an applique center block, and an undecided number of borders. Somehow I don’t think I will get the tree quilt finished this year, since I am still working on the hand applique for my version of the McCord leafy vine quilt and I’ll be doing a lot of hand stitching on bindings.

For February, I began machine quilting. I quilted the charity quilt that I promised I would do. Then I quilted two more quilts and basted three quilt tops that were waiting in the closet. Progress is being made. My February UFO finish is from a Bonnie Hunter pattern called ‘Scrappy Trips’. I added a pieced border because the pattern is simple and quilted it in a traditional wineglass pattern.

Tackling Some Applique

So, someone in my sit-and-stitch group offered up some books from her collection to anyone who wanted them. I found a book from Fons and Porter called Quilts from the Henry Ford. I love looking at historical quilts for inspiration, so it went home with me. The book had an entire section on Susan McCord's quilts, which were based on traditional patterns and techniques, but with her own unique spin. My favorite was the McCord Vine quilt (circa 1850). It is one of several McCord quilts in the Henry Ford museum collection. The quilt is covered with vines and tiny string-pieced leaves.



I wanted to adapt the McCord quilt, but on a reasonable scale (the original quilt has 13 vines and several thousand leaves).



I decided to keep with my goal of not starting any more new projects in 2018 by finding a way to work the vines into an existing unfinished project. I had an unfinished quilt based on a traditional pattern called ‘Tree Everlasting’ under the sewing table. I started it in 2015, sewed some, unsewed most of it, got frustrated with it and put it away. The tree everlasting pattern is sewn in vertical columns, so I knew it would go well with the columns of leafy vines in the McCord quilt. I decided to pull it out and add three columns of vines with string-pieced leaves to the quilt.

I spent a Saturday at an open-sew session sponsored by my local quilt guild, sewing tree everlasting pieces into columns. One of the ladies at the open-sew did a tutorial on how to make bias binding at the open sew, and I knew I could use that technique to make bias stems for the vines. I got advice from another woman who has done a lot of applique. She was very encouraging, and offered some tips but looked at me like I was crazy when she saw the pattern. This was a clue. Those string-pieced leaves are tiny. Very, very tiny.



When I tried to trace templates for the very tiny leaves, I realized why I was getting ‘you are crazy' looks. I was not planning on using fusible applique but instead turning the edges under and sewing the leaves down either by hand or by sewing machine. Turning under raw edges on very tiny pieces is not easy. After basting the main vines in place and pinning up a small vine as in the original pattern, I decided to eliminate the little vines that came off the main vines; doing that allowed me to increase the size of the leaves. However, I had already made several bias applique strips for the little vines. I decided to use these for curly spirals that come off the main vine but don’t have any leaves on them.



Rather than string-piecing individual leaves, I cut very narrow strips of fabric and sewed them together into panels.



I cut my own leaf templates freehand from paper in several sizes, glued them to an old file folder, cut them out, and traced them onto freezer paper (I used 2 layers of freezer paper for more stability). I pressed the freezer paper leaf shapes to the fabric panels, and cut the leaves out. I turned the seam allowances under by painting them with starch and pressing them under with a small iron. Then I pulled the freezer paper off and basted the leaves to the vines. I will hand-applique the leafy vines down over the next few weeks. Or possibly months...