Three Tops

Soooo, some progress has been made, if not in actual completed quilts, then at least in quilt tops, YAY! Here are the two quilt of valor tops that I made from this block set. Still have 12 blocks leftover, but I think I'll put them in a wall-hanging or on the pillowcases I'll make for the QOVs to go in after they are completed. I don't know whether I should really count both of these as done, since the one with the red border has a bit of border ripple. Apparently the numerous seams in the piano-key inner border caused some stretch and I may need to do some ripping and re-sewing on that one. I hate having to re-sew, so I'm going to put it away and not think about it!


This top is a baby quilt for a neighbor. I had the blocks tucked away from an experiment in designing my own rectilinear blocks. I think of them as log cabin pattern variations. I call this design "circuit boards," and I have a set with light backgrounds and one with dark backgrounds. The light ones went into this quilt, the dark ones are still in a stack in my quilt room. I was 4 blocks short, so I made more and put sashing and a couple of borders on when I realized that the baby shower was coming up soon. The mom-to-be told me she wanted to learn to quilt, so I don't intend to finish this one for her. I'll help her learn how to quilt it or tie it (and I'll even tell her about long-armers who will machine quilt it for you if you pay them, in case she chickens out).

Quilty Finish

I finished quilting and binding a simple diamond lap quilt. This pieced up quickly in diagonal rows. It was my first new project in several months, and I needed some instant gratification. I pieced it in about a week, which is about as instant as quilting gets. This kind of quilt is all about the colors and the fabric. Some rows contrast and other rows blend into each other. You can see the pieced backing of vertical stripes.


I quilted it in rows of spirals and squiggles and finished the binding while we were at the beach. I'm happy with the way this one turned out.

Machine Quilting Binge

It's that time of year again. . .time for the machine quilting binge! I always have several quilt projects in the works, and once I finish a quilt top, I'll piece a backing, baste it, fold it up, and tuck it away under my sewing table (or sometimes, I'll just put the top away and figure out a backing and baste it later). Once or twice a year, I pull out all the projects that are ready for quilting and binge. Usually one or two projects get put off until next time because I haven't figured out how I want to quilt them yet.

There is a reason for the save and binge. I free-motion quilt, which is a skill that has a kind of zen. You control the speed of the machine, the rate that you move the quilt, and the pattern you are sewing. It takes practice, and I quilt better if I do a lot at once. I usually use a small wallhanging or neonatal charity quilt to warm up on. I find that it is stressful at first and all the muscles in my shoulders tighten up, and then as I keep doing it, I start to relax and the quilting gets better. I find the zen of machine quilting.


Here are my warm-up projects.


And this is me, working on a lap-sized quilt, the first in the stack. It took me a couple of hours to find the zen this time, but I got more than half of this one quilted today. I have two more basted quilts in the stack, plus two more basted wallhangings. I also have two tops with already pieced backs ready for basting (I ran out of batting and safety pins for basting), and two or three lap-sized tops without backings. I usually piece my backings from fabric in my stash. I have a lot of fabric, but I tend to buy 1/2 or 1 yard cuts, so I rarely have enough for a quilt back. Pieced backs are more interesting anyway. Sometimes the back of the quilt is almost as interesting as the front. I'll post some quilt backs on here later as I complete the quilting on this stack of quilts.

Chevron Top Done, Auditioning Borders

I finished the Chevron quilt top, and am auditioning borders for it. I was originally planning a white inner border and light green outer border and medium/dark green binding, but I thought I'd try some pinks and purples for the inner border as an experiment. I think the pinks give it a little zip. There is a tiny bit of coral pink in the body of the quilt--thin stripes scattered in one of the fabrics--so I think I'm going to go with that one (shown in the second photo). I want the inner border to be fairly narrow. A little pink goes a long way.

Inspiration

Where does your quilt inspiration come from?

I am inspired by color, and I will sometimes take pictures or save pages from home dec magazines just because the colors make me happy. My sketchbook has tons of such pictures tucked into it.

I found this lichen outside my office building and borrowed a camera to take a photo of it. I love the colors. And I'm actually not sure if I could re-create this from my (extensive) stash. I don't have a lot of peachy colors in my fabric collection.



And here is a mushroom photo taken the same day. I like the way it is all neutrals except for a bit of green grass.



I love Andrew Wyeth's paintings and he often painted in neutral, earth tones with just a touch of some other color--blue or green or gold--to give it life. I have a hard time being that restrained in my quilts. Maybe I need to quiet down a little.

Chevron Quilt progress

I'm making slow but steady progress on what I am mentally calling my Chevron quilt (I wish I had a better name for it, that one reminds me too much of large oil companies and considering the Golf Coast Disaster, that is the last thing I want to be reminded of).

I did notice, though, that all the white-on-white strips somehow didn't make it into the quilt. I find it really difficult to use certain colors in my quilting. Black, white, and gray almost never show up in my quilts (I have some black and white fabric, and but almost no gray fabric at all in my stash). I'm not sure where the reluctance to use these colors comes from. I have no problem at all throwing yellow and orange into my quilts. Maybe I need to make a black, white, and gray quilt, or challenge myself to incorporate them into quilts with other colors.

Here is the crew, stitching away. At times like these, I realize how small my house is. We had to put the ironing board in the kitchen, and we were cutting fabric and trimming blocks on the countertop.





This is the other project I have been working on this past week. Sometimes ideas get together in weird ways to make a quilt. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a light green background fabric for the group quilt that Kelly, Barbara, and Geni are working on in the picture above. I bought small amounts of several choices to see which fabric worked best. I also found a couple of neutral taupe fabrics that I got just because I liked them. When I saw them next to each other, I knew I needed to make a green and neutral quilt. This is a bit of a change for me because I usually make quilts that use LOTS of different colors. I had this picture of a hot air balloon pinned to my sewing wall for months because I liked it, and I drew a couple of sketches of chevron quilt layouts. I made full-sized freezer paper templates and cut a lot of green and neutral strings from the ends of fabrics in my stash and I've been sewing the fabric to the templates for the past week.

First blog post.

These are colors for a group quilt I'm working on with some friends from my quilt guild. We have an informal sit-and-stitch group that meets now and again. We tried to establish a monthly meeting date, but that never seemed to work. We generally meet on Sunday afternoons when we do meet.

This is really just one of many projects I am working on. I'm hoping that over the next few months I will actually FINISH some of these projects rather than letting them stack up on most available surfaces in my sewing room. . .ahem, STUDIO.