On Perfection

This quilt has been a UFO for a very long time. I think I started it in about 2011. The pattern came from a magazine. No, I don't remember what magazine. No, I don't remember what the pattern was called, probably something like "thousand pyramids" or maybe "flatiron." I lost the pattern years ago, and I had to use existing triangles that I had already cut to make a new template when I was piecing it together since I was short on triangles. Often quilts become UFOs when they have problems. I started this quilt before I realized that starching fabric that you have pre-washed before you use it is A Good Thing. Tiny triangles, no starch, bias edges--and you get stretch. I could already tell by the way the triangles were going together when I was in the block-stage, that all was not well. These triangles were NOT going to go together smoothly. So I put it away. And let it sit. And sit.

I took it out again in fall of 2020. And I decided that I wasn't going to worry about the technical problems, I was just going to get it done. I put it up on my design wall, rearranged it a bit, cut some more triangles, rearranged it some more, sewed it into a quilt top, and basted it. I fudged where I could, and where I couldn't, I sewed through those triangle points without a regret. (And then I basted it and let it sit for a year while I coped with 2021.) I finally got it quilted and I am finishing the binding. And I realized that I love this quilt. I started it with the skills I had at the time. I'm finishing it with the skills I have now. And even knowing how imperfect it is, I still find it beautiful.

Springtime 2022

It's been over a year of radio silence on the blog, although not a year without quilting.

2020 had it's challenges, but I enjoyed working from home and adapted to social isolation just fine (sometimes being an introvert is actually a benefit). However, due to various factors, pretty much entirely work-related (I work full-time, quilting isn't my day job), 2021 was a complete dumpster fire. All of the work-related stuff eventually culminated in me joining the Great Resignation.

I stayed with one group, in a couple of roles, for nearly 20 years, and now I am starting over in a new group (same agency, completely different division). I think I'm still in shock a little. I am learning tons of new things, though, and doing work more related to what I went to school for. It's going to take a while to settle in, but I think it was the right choice for me.

Now that i look back, I probably stayed too long in my last job; maybe 20 years is too long to do anything. I would have grown more if I had sought different opportunities earlier. Now that it is over, I can maybe take a deep breath and get a little more quilting done.

During 2021 I continued to work on unfinished projects, and I also have been trying to use of some of the bags of leftover scraps from old projects.

I am down to six unfinished projects. I've done less quilting in the past few months as I have been doing background reading for my new job and exercising more. It's still nice enough to go for walks outside, but it won't be for much longer.

And Some Were Finished

I did a photo session in the yard (my neighbors driving by asked if I was doing a show) of the quilts I’ve finished this year so far.

I really like the way this Kentucky Crossroads quilt came together. I started it in 2019. It is based on a block from Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. I have been trying to use white and black in some of my quilts.

I started this Carpenter’s Star Variation wallhanging at the beginning of the pandemic. It feels quiet and ordered to me, and I’ve spent a lot of time in teleconferences looking at it on my design wall. I’ve been changing out the quilts on the design wall a lot this year, maybe in part because I’ve had a lot of time for quilting during the pandemic, and also because quilt studio is now my home office so I spend a lot of time looking at my design wall. I finally cleaned the windows in my studio because I spend so much time in there working and I kept noticing how dirty they were.

I finally finished this blue and white quilt that I call Twelve Crowns, I think I started it in 2016 or 2017. I designed it based on a couple of blocks I found in Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. I was very indecisive about the border and how to quilt it, so it took way longer than it should have.

This Tessellation wallhanging is from a pattern by Gyleen Fitzgerald. I started it in about 2009 in a class she taught at my local quilt guild. I didn’t use a walking foot when I sewed the border on the first time and it stretched and I didn’t feel like fixing it so it spent a long time in a box. And then I couldn’t decide how to quilt it. It’s finally finished and I’ve been using it to cover the TV, although it isn’t wide enough. I hate looking at a bank screen.

I started this Double Irish Chain quilt a couple of years ago to use up some of the 2-inch squares that I cut from my scraps.

The quilt is reversible. I put together some leftover blocks from another project to make the backing.

I started this rectangular pattern during the pandemic. It is from a Bonnie Hunter pattern called Rectangle Wrangle, but I changed the border to one I found in a book on border patterns. Quilts with very simple patterns really benefit from pieced borders, they add a lot of interest. I bought more black and still ran out, I had to substitute some gray and brown in the binding. I quilted it with a clamshell design.

I started the Dresden Hexagon Star in 2017. We went on vacation in Michigan and I wanted an easy hand applique project to work on. This is the second of the two Dresden plate quilts I made from the blocks. In the first quilt I cut into squares based on a Missouri Star quilt tutorial Youtube video. I decided to try cutting the rest of the blocks into hexagons for the second quilt. I had this one longarmed by The Quilt Peddler because it was so big. I love the way it turned out.

This Quilt of Valor started from a bag of leftover X-blocks and scraps from the last one I made. I dug through my scraps for pieces to make more X-blocks and the red and white star blocks. I have been digging in my quilt studio and finding lots of Ziploc bags full of scraps that I am trying to use up. I made 5 backings from scraps. It is interesting improvising with what I have. Strips are pretty generic, but I also have orphan blocks, half-square triangle units, crumb blocks, string-pieced strips, and leftover triangles, Dresden wedges, and diamonds. If the fabric is already cut into something, it suggests a path forward, a quilt half-formed. Sometimes I will combine scraps from several old projects together, sometimes the scraps won’t mix and need to become something separate. I see more quilts and quilt backs coming from the scrap bags in the months to come.

Kittens and Quilting

We adopted a couple of kittens in June. They are cute and energetic and curious and I had to lock them out of my quilt studio (which has now also become my work-from-home office) due to an inability to sufficiently kitten-proof the room. They love to wrestle with each other. Here they are wrestling on a pandemic project.

I’ve never had kittens in the house before, only adult cats. They get into more things. I have to lock them in a bedroom to baste a quilt so they don’t burrow under it, wrestle on it, and try to eat the safety pins. They are pretty adorable, though. They are a brother and sister from the same litter, and after they finish wrestling, more often than not you find them sleeping in a pile together.

I am still working from home. I’ve been reading and quilting and going for walks around the neighborhood in my spare time, but still don’t get out much. We have actually been considering getting a camper so there is some chance we might get a vacation this year. We are also thinking about building a detached porch/shed in the backyard so there is somewhere to sit (socially distanced) in the backyard. I am such a mosquito-magnet, unless I am walking (moving target!) I pretty much can’t sit outside for most of the year.

On a quilty note, in a quest to tackle some of my many UFOs (unfinished objects), last year I finished 13 quilts. After finishing so many last year, I took a break from machine quilting for 7 months, so my finishes have slowed this year, though I did finally start machine quilting again this summer. I have been thinking about what my goal should be this year (last year it was to finish one UFO per month, on average). At first I thought I should try to finish at least two UFOs for every new quilt that I start, so even if I slowed down I’d still have fewer net projects in varying stages of completion. Now I think that my goal should just be to quilt my way through all the finished tops. I pretty much always have a backlog of several quilts waiting for quilting. I did finish this Kentucky Crossroads quilt, though.

I’ve been analyzing why it takes me so much longer to do machine quilting than piece quilt tops. It isn’t the actual hours spent. I have a vintage plug-in clock I use to measure how long it takes me to machine quilt a project, and it ranges from about an hour for a wallhanging to 14 hours for a densely quilted queen-sized project; most quilts are between 4 and 8 hours, which I usually do over 2 to 5 days. I think the biggest reason is that machine quilting has a high mental overhead. It takes a lot of concentration or focus to coordinate the machine speed and the motion of the quilt to obtain even stitches while free-hand doodling a pattern. I also have to prepare for quilting by clearing the tables of other projects so they aren’t swept off the tables by the quilt as it is being quilted, so I can pretty much only do machine quilting while I am set up for it. I usually will quilt 3 to 5 projects in a row, and then get fatigued and switch back to piecing for a few months. By the time I get back to machine quilting, I have pieced a few more quilt tops so the quilting backlog remains.

I should probably start piecing more complex quilt backs in order to make up for the fact that I piece faster than I quilt, two projects for the price of one. I’ve always liked pieced backs but tend to go with simple patterns like wide stripes that come together fairly quickly, but I have experimented with sewing leftover blocks into the back. I found a bunch of blue and white scraps that I am piecing into a quilt back. I have enough green scraps to make another back and other odds and ends that could be put to good use in a quilt back. I have at least 3 finished tops in the closet that don’t have a back. But the kitties think I should just relax.

Everything From Home

This year keeps getting more surreal. They have reopened most businesses in my state, only to close down bars again as coronavirus cases increase by thousands per day. I think they gave up. They decided it was too costly to close everything down so they are opening up regardless of the consequences. The protests against police brutality continue, and people are tearing down monuments to white supremacy as businesses reconsider racist branding. My office hasn't reopened, we are all still working from home. I expected none of this.

Instead of working on UFOs, I started 3 new quilts. I finished piecing this Carpenter's Star variation wall-hanging, but I haven't basted or quilted it yet.



I am still piecing a zigzag border for this Bonnie Hunter pattern ('Rectangle Wrangle'). I decided it needed a double zigzag, so I still have a lot more work to do on it. Pieced borders take a lot of extra time, but they add so much to a simple pattern like this one.



I don't have any photos of the third quilt I started. I'll post some later; I am still working on a pieced border for it. I need to start machine quilting again.

Life as we know it

My county is under a stay-at-home directive (city parks are still open and walking in neighborhoods is still permitted, as are essential shopping trips, although the 6-foot rule is in place; no gatherings of more than 10 people and an 11 pm-5 am curfew). I've been working from home for the past week. Most of the other employees in my office are also. At first I thought it might be a good opportunity to take a little leave--maybe only work half-days, and get some good uninterrupted time in on a few work projects that need 3-4 hours straight of good concentration time to make progress. Yeah, not so much. I managed to "only" work 37.5 hours this week (but I am still over my scheduled hours for the month so far), and was on the phone or in various teleconferences several hours every day, so no dedicated project-time. I rotate between a portable laptop desk on casters in my quilt studio and the living room sofa. No time to get to special home projects (everyone on social media seems to be cleaning the attic and/or tearing every shrub out of their yard). No extra quilting time, although I did cut the background diamonds and triangles and get my String Star quilt up on the design wall last weekend (I am not scheduled to work weekends, so I try not to).



I cut the freezer paper foundation patterns in January 2019 and sewed the strings to them over the course of 2019 and early 2020--I got most of them sewn over the holidays and in January of this year. All that is left is the final quit top assembly, since all the blocks have been made. I got 4 rows sewn together last weekend and 4 rows sewn in the evenings during the week.

And no, this hasn't even made a dent in my scrap collection.

Corona Quilting

In the midst of all the uncertainty surrounding the Coronavirus, I've been doing much more reading than quilting. Not that there's really any connection, but that is just what I'm up to lately. I have had the same scrappy quilt up on the design wall for the past five months, and progress has been slow. I built some string blocks of 60-degree diamonds and triangles, but I can't start laying that one out until I finish the top on the design wall. I finally got inspired to pull some fabrics for a new quilt, but haven't settled on a pattern yet. I've been in a very neutral-color mood. So here is some virtual quilting inspired by the Coronavirus craziness.

Coronaviruses get their name from the club-shaped protein spikes that cover the surface of the virus particles. The Latin root of corona means "crown" or "halo" or "wreath." So I've been searching through Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns for blocks with a crown theme and drafting blocks in EQ7. The quilt above includes block '2048-Memory Wreath/Crown of Thorns' and block '2169-Coronation/Free Trade.'

I went to the grocery store today. The shelves in the toilet paper aisle were bare. They have cancelled all work-related travel for the next 30 days. We are reviewing employees' digital needs in case we all need to work from home (who doesn't have a work laptop? Who doesn't have wifi access at home?) and three people in our workgroup are already working from home due to having traveled internationally or having a family member that traveled somewhere or had contact with someone who traveled to a city where people had the virus. We don't know if it will mostly pass us by, or get worse. So in the meantime, I am designing digital quilts.

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.