Design Wall Monday--Binding Extravaganza

Design Wall Monday is here again.-- on Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.  On my to-do list has been large quilt binding.  I have had a king sized quilt awaiting binding for many months, with an almost-enough pile of binding awaiting final measuring before applying to the quilt.  I don't know why I let these jobs linger for so long! 

Looking back in my files, I got it back from the quilter almost a year ago.  Shameful!  So yesterday the binding--all 400 inches--got stitched on. This is a Bonnie Hunter pattern, I think it's called Rick Rack Nines.

Now that the binding is on, I'm trying to decide if I am crazy enough to hand stitch it to the back, or if machine binding will be fine--I'm leaning towards machine!  It's a quilt for our bed.  

More miles of binding were cut and sewn for two donation quilts.  We are still giving quilts to victims of the Thomas Fire and Montecito mudslide disasters.  

Isn't this one pretty?  These are Perkiomen Valley blocks, which can be laid out so many ways.  I only added the green binding.  We have been stitching bindings to the back and bringing to the front to machine finish. The next Perkiomen Valley quilt I worked on looked so familiar, but it wasn't until I took a final picture that I realized why. 

It is so amazing that this one came back to me for binding, as I originally laid out all the blocks months ago at a sew-in, from a pile of  "mostly go together" disparate blocks.  You can see that the lights and darks are a bit muddy in some places but there is still enough contrast in most.  It needs a label and then is ready for our next pop-up giveaway next month.

I also ventured out over the weekend to find binding choices for the Tea Time placemats I was working on--they are all quilted now.  I had a lovely time breathing in quilt shop fabric fumes and being in the company of other makers.  A number of fabrics jumped in my basket but here are the top two binding choices:

The mini-dot is actually navy that reads purple.  The gray crackle finish looks good too.  Maybe I'll make two of each color binding since I love both, lol. The four placemats will take far less time to bind than all those huge quilts!

Squirrel #2 of the Week, and Blogger Email Notifications

Squirrel #2 of the week is a project that was already started--Bonus points for that squirrel!  I think I bought this kit at Road to CA last year.  The company is Pineapple Fabrics and they had kits made up of different projects in the yummiest fabric, with original patterns and lots of color combinations.  I must have spent 20 minutes circling the display before I finally selected one for placemats.  Last month I got all the pieces cut, but made a decision to change the final construction after I had assembled the center fronts and the back pieces.  I made mine scrappier, no surprise there! 

While I liked the hourglass center and the fabric variety, I changed the matching side borders (as shown in the pattern photo) and decided to make mine quilt-as-you-go rather than stitch and turn.  I like a binding on my placemats. Needing some mindless stitching last night, I set to work on the sandwiching and quilting. 

Stripes, polka dots, birdies, and raindrops--aren't these fabrics cute!  After sandwiching the centers to the backs, I stitched on the side pieces and pressed them in place. I played around with some specialty stitches, selecting the maximum size stitch in the program, and with the walking foot got to quilting.  I made the quilting lines about 3/4" inch apart, but didn't mark the top.  

 ...Scrappier Front making me happy!

I was able to fussy cut the row of houses on the fabric.  I managed to get two placemats quilted before running out of steam last night.  A trip to the fabric store will be necessary for some binding fabric options, but I'm not mad :)

Blogger has announced a change to hopefully fix the comments not coming to email.  However, I don't think this is working perfectly, judging from posts I am seeing on Instagram. I'll try leaving myself a comment on this post to check, but will not hold my breath!  That "noreply" email address must have millions of emails in it by now.

A Decision and a Squirrel Project

I hope all the dads had a great Father's Day.  We went to a BBQ at my Mom and Dad's and all my siblings were there, lots of nieces and nephews, for about 30 guests.  Boy does it take a lot of set up and clean up, but we sure had fun.  The grandsons had a great time being spoiled with attention as they were the youngest in the crowd.

Now that Narragansett Browns is a finished top, I need a new leader-ender project.  A few years ago, American Patchwork and Quilting magazine had a sew along they called Go Four It, based on four patches.  I fell in love with Edyta Sitar's design, a bar quilt with braids of four patches.  However, her design called for 1.25" pieces for the four patches and I don't save pieces that small, so resized ito utilize my 1.5" and 2.5" precut strips and squares.  These I have used as leader-enders for quite some time and I have made hundreds of four patches.  Last year I showed a possible alternate layout , and have made lots more of the 3.5" square-in-squares. I revised my plan to make a larger quilt and did the MATH again.  I now only need 70 each of light and dark square-in-squares. 

I'll lay out all the little blocks individually in diagonal rows and then use 3.5" setting squares of a print or solid.  My design eliminates one bazillion setting triangles, which I am happy about!  It feels good to see this leader-ender closer to becoming a quilt top.  

A squirrel jumped out of a box while I was looking for something else in the Hoosier cabinet that houses my precuts, project boxes, and pattern books.  Oh, they are sneaky, those squirrels! 

Some Broken Dishes blocks made from a Turnover of Frolic fabric I won on Sandy Gervais' blog years ago.  I trimmed all the HSTs to 5.5" inches.  Some Grunge fabric would look great as a border, I think.  There are still MORE pieces left of the Turnover to do something with.  I need to sew faster!

Design Wall Monday--June 11, 2018

Same old, same old from this design floor!  But Narragansett Blues (in Browns) is a finished top at last.

Since I simplified the border of Bonnie Hunter's design by using strips, the corners worked out differently, but I'm not too fussed about it in this very busy quilt.

I chose to highlight the dark/light of the patchwork by making the center square a light in the 9 patches that made up the corners of the outer border. I don't think anyone will notice the break in the alternate design...do you?

Keeping up the momentum, I immediately set about constructing a backing.  The top came out 64x88" unfinished and I pulled more brown yardage to cobble together.  

Both of these fabrics have lingered in the stash for too long.  The Thimbleberries print on the right I have had for more than 5 years.  The brown in the background never matched anything I tried to put it with before, and the block print on the left I couldn't make work into something sizable enough to complement the print since I only had a yard of it.  No matter, they joined another bunch of leftovers to make themselves useful!

Scrappy and make-do are the name of the game for this quilt.  My sister has got her long-arm machine working but still is having some tension problems.  I'm hoping to put this big quilt on it and do a simple design.  The binding fabric I also picked out and will get that together soon. 

See more Design Walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts. 

DH Grant was on vacation last week and we marked his final morning off  Sunday with breakfast out with our daughters, son-in-law, and grandsons.  

 Hunter (2) tried on Papa's sunglasses.  They matched his Tshirt saying well, I think!

Cove (4) drew a picture of Papa and was concentrating on copying Papa's name on the drawing, as his mama had written.  The next generations headed off to Target and the beach after breakfast and I got a few pics later on Instagram of the beautiful day they were having.  This week should be perfect summer weather--it is the last week of school for our district, many other cities in the County have already had their graduation ceremonies.  The ocean still looks full, despite our severe drought status!

Slow Sunday Stitching--June 3

Progress has been made on a stitchery I started a month or two ago, and I have enjoyed working on it some mornings before work.  Our bedroom gets lots of morning light and the sun sure comes up early these days. 

Home Grown Gerber Daisy Love, by AdornIT

Since I last shared a photo, I've completed all the flower petals and almost all of the Mason jar glass aqua color.  The aqua and a gray for the jar lid were purchased for this stitchery, as neither color was present in my thread stash in the right shade.  See more slow stitching on Kathy's blog. There is a stray thread on the stitchery in this picture, from the other project consuming my time, a version Narragansett Blues (Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville pattern).

The plain border was added today and two of the pieced borders assembled and added.  It is now too big for my sewing room so I had to lay it out in the living room to take the photo.  The brown floor isn't the best complement for the shot :)

I am happy with the way the corners look before the border, they really are straight!  This tan print has been hoarded in my stash for a few years and, since every other piece of fabric for this quilt came from scraps and stash, I didn't feel too badly about cutting into it!

The changes Blogger has been making so far have resulted in a lot of alarm by Blogger users--we are not getting any comments emailed to us.  Similarly, it is now impossible to directly reply to a comment on a post, and if the commenter doesn't have an attached email, it's a dead end.  Blogger has eliminated Open ID and is working on changes to permission for third party apps--commenters would all be changed to "Anonymous" and we would have to change settings to allow anonymous commenters.  Many of us who use the Blogger platform restrict Anonymous commenters to keep spammers at bay.  I'm not sure if this is being done so that everyone who wants to read Blogger blogs has to get a Google account or what.  I'm going to try a suggestion another blogger used, which is to make the first comment on my own post and click the "notify me of follow up comments" to see if I get them emailed to me that way.  After nine years of blogging, I'm not sure what the future brings with this platform!