Design Wall Monday--Quarantining and Sewing

It's a Covid-19 Quarantine Design Wall Monday--see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.

So, I have been sewing a lot these past days.  I was still working up until Thursday, when our County Public Health Department decreed a shelter in place order in addition to the one the Governor had imposed several days before.  The medical group where I work has two doctors with Master's degrees in Public Health--they are both women--as well as a number of other very smart and adaptable doctors and staff.  Telemedicine technology for our group was virtually invented overnight by one doctor and her husband.  I scribed with my doc for three days while he "saw" patients before the Public Health edict and most everyone but me got sent home with laptops. 

I took this pic on a break before being released to home.  A bit of snow on our TopaTopa Mountains, framed by orange and California Oak trees.

Since being called off work, I had plenty of time to add binding to the Chunky Churndash quilt that I got back superfast from Quilting by David.  Love the swirl pattern I chose, which they scaled wonderfully.  After briefly considering a scrappy binding from the leftovers drawer, I abandoned that idea for this perfect 1/2 yard dark navy print from stash.   

So satisfying to see it all finished.  There was a near disaster when I washed the quilt and forgot to change it to cold water setting--the binding had not been washed and bled with the warm water cycle.  After several more rounds of cold water soaks and washing with color catchers, most of the excess dye came out.  Some of the light fabrics in the blocks turned blue, but being so scrappy, that didn't matter a bit.  I sure didn't mention it to my Dad when I brought it over!

 I stood by the door to take photos, admonishing my parents not to get close!  Dad was very pleased with the quilt.  My artist Mom (one of her paintings is above the mantel) kept exclaiming about all the colors.  She took the quilt and spread it out on the floor to get up close and personal ...

Silly woman!  I received many dozen thanks and much praise from both of them, and a photo the next day of Dad napping on his couch with the quilt. Sweet.  I still have to finish a companion pillow but didn't want to delay delivery of the quilt since several other things have jumped ahead of it.

Not that I don't have a couple dozen UFOs I could work on, but I couldn't resist the Mystery Quiltalong by Laundry Basket Quilts.    She is working from one of her fabric bundles, but mine is all scrappy--with tans for the blues, and red for the pinks she is using, and lots of different light fabrics from stash.  Most of the fabrics are from a long hoarded fat quarter stack of a Minnick & Simpson line called Crazy for Red.

Love the primitive redwork print, and all the yummy creams and tans with the red prints.  I'm also pulling from the fat quarter drawers and scrap bins for variety.  I am caught up to the third block and looking forward to the next.

The blocks are in position but will be in the corners.  Total blocks in the quilt is 100!  Not sure how many days the quiltalong will last, but I plan to make at least a block or two of each release.

Lastly, our guild has learned of the need for protective masks that can be cleaned and reused and we are making as many as we can for the County hospital.  I have volunteered 10, with one finished and  several already cut out and marked.

Here I've made the pleats and am stitching them down. The pattern was made by a nurse and they requested ties rather than elastic as these will be cleansed in an Autoclave and need to withstand high heat.

The color is dreadful in this nighttime pic, but for a first attempt, I was pleased with the binding and pleats.  I'm sure the next 9 will be faster!  It looks like I'll have plenty of stitching time for the near future.  Glad I can do something useful in this awful time.  We have had 30 cases but only one death in our County so far.  Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home, everyone!

Design Wall Monday, 1/20/20

Several things on/off my design wall to share.  See more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog.  

In the interest of keeping quilts moving along in the process, I worked on quite a few different projects in the last week.  

Make the Connection baby/lap quilt got borders added.  This is destined for guild donation. I'll cobble a back together and probably quilt this myself.  The pattern is free on APQ website, designed by Jo Kramer and her daughter for charity makes.

Binding was attached to the Sliced Cake quilt (Canoe Ridge Creations blog).   I did finish the binding but don't have pic of that.  No one specific that this one is destined for as yet. 

I finally decided on borders for the Chunky Churndash for my dad (free pattern on Quiltville.com).  Bonnie's design had three borders and corner stones and I just didn't want to do that, so added only a 3" cut border.  The top is now 72x84, which is pretty big for a couch quilt!  I'll be ordering a wide backing for it, undecided if I want to quilt it myself on my home machine or not...will likely send this out as my sister's longarm is not working.

Here you can see the gray is not a solid but a small brown print on the slate gray; this is a print from Betsy Chutchian's line called Eliza's  Indigo.  Darn those stray threads.  I had such fun making all the chunky churndash blocks.  I'm sure I'll make more in the future. 

I made a bunch of 3" HSTs from the leftovers of the hourglass blocks and decided to make a companion pillow for the quilt.  I have always liked the Oklahoma Twister pattern and quickly cut some light squares and laid it out.

I'm going to add some borders and additional HSTs to fashion another sort of Churn Dash.  Hope it works like my sketched idea.

Also finished were the last four green star blocks for my version of Bonnie Hunter's My Blue Heaven quilt--another free pattern on her site.  I'll be laying those out this week sometime, hopefully.  Good to be making progress on multiple quilts--there are a lot more waiting for attention too!

More Pieces and Parts to Ponder

Oh, the trouble that follows when I attempt to clean up the cutting table and put things away!  I came across a baggie of Churn Dash blocks from Barb's swap and remembered an idea I saved for an alternate block.  I have another grandnephew due later this year and thought it would make a good baby quilt.  

The curves that appear with the alternate nine patch block really attracted me.  I pulled a modern white and gray print and solid black and cut the needed squares. 

Lots of different blues with low volume backgrounds.

Not the greatest layout attempt on the nine patches--but enough to show the goal.  These blocks will make good leader-enders as I sew together  some of the 520 3.5" squares the newlyweds helped me layout last weekend.  I failed to get a photo of the layout before we stacked up and labeled the rows.

The Churn Dash theme continued when I got the last three seams sewn for my dad's Chunky Churn Dash quilt--the pic is the before shot...it went together easily and I'm very happy with it.

 Dad was too!  Here's a pic of us working on a jigsaw puzzle last week of a harbor scene painting by Claude Monet.

Very serious work!  My engineer dad sorts all the pieces into groups by type, "one pin", "four pin", "no pin", etc.  Once he shared his secret with me, it made picking out the right piece a lot quicker!  Mom's art studio always has a table set up for puzzles.

Pondering if I want to add borders to Chunky Churndash  or not--a mockup will be necessary for final options. Again, this is a free pattern by Bonnie Hunter on her Quiltville website...which leads to another free Bonnie pattern, My Blue Heaven.  I took Bonnie's class last year with the Camarillo Quilt Guild and called my version My Lupine Heaven, using two colors instead of one. In class I only completed one star block and one puss in the corner block, but cut many pieces.  Here and there I've cut and sewn pieces and parts to use as leader-enders, and finally got to a point where I had enough to construct a bunch of blocks.  The star blocks have 24 pieces each, which makes for a lot of sewing!

Oh my, that is a busy bunch of blocks.  I'm not exactly happy with these, some seem very muddy and the star doesn't really stand out.  Sigh.   My plan calls for a 6x8 layout so there is still a lot of sewing to do.  Perhaps choosing more light backgrounds with fewer prints will help the star blocks.  The neverending scraps will feed the kitty forever, it seems :)

Cutting, Sewing, Painting

Things are getting done, in fits and starts, as is the norm with the projects I get myself into. I'm continuing to work on the Chunky Churndash quilt I'm making for my dad to replace the now tattered Turning Twenty quilt I made for him 10+ years ago. 

This photo shows the slate blue background pretty well in the darker print.  I'm enlarging the free pattern from Bonnie of Quiltville.com to an 11x13 block layout, eliminating a couple of borders.  Using her Essential Triangle tool to cut the triangles from matched strips is working well.  I am cutting bonus triangles from the start of the strips--maybe I'll make Dad a coordinating pillow.  30 hourglass blocks done, 41 to go for my setting.  These are 6" blocks so it takes a lot to make a good sized quilt.

Cupboard doors and the vanity base have been painted with three coats!  I want to change out the shelf liner before reinstalling the doors, but haven't found one I like very much.  I saw a post on Pinterest where someone used oilcloth and sticky tape in the corners, but I'm not sure that would work for my builder-installed vanity  which is particle board.  I surely don't want clear liner :)

I'm taking my mom to the Fair this morning to check out more of the Home Arts displays (hubby was not interested!), a bit of the photography building, probably wander by the livestock and horse barns, the gardens and floral, and perhaps the Gem and Mineral Building.  I'll be taking more photos for sure!

Chunky Churn Dash

I previously posted about my Dad needing a replacement for the Turning Twenty Quilt I made him in 2007 HERE.  I'm just getting around to sewing up pieces and parts I've since collected and cut for the Chunky Churn Dash quilt (free pattern by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville).  This is my favorite kind of quiltmaking--piecing, sewing, cutting, and more sewing :)

The stacks on the left are the four rail pieced and cut sections--all made from scraps and stash from 1.5" strips.  I cut a bunch of 2.5" neutral center squares and some colored center squares for variety--as well as sets of 4  2.5" print squares for the corners of the churn dash blocks. 

I played with a few block layouts before heading to work this afternoon.  It will be fun to mix and match as I go.  There are lots more 2.5" squares to pull for the number of blocks I plan to make.  Today when I was at my parents' house, I told my Dad that I was making him a new quilt and he was very happy.  He said, "I miss my old quilt", and I asked what happened to it, and he said he didn't know where it was.     Mom and I went on a search and it turned up on the guest bed under the down comforter.  Although a bit threadbare, it was still functional.  I have a feeling he will steal it back to use until I get the new one made!

Meanwhile, final preparations are being made for the wedding reception this weekend for our son Nick and his bride, Ashley, who exchanged rings in a private ceremony performed by my brother last Sunday.  We are all crossing our fingers that the rain and cold wind now predicted will be much less forceful when the day arrives.  The couple and I went shopping at Superbuzzy for fabric for their quilt and I've ordered the Jen Kingwell pattern, Dreamweaver (designed by Michelle McKillop).  It's an advanced pattern with a pieced background and a medallion and streamers appliqued on top.  I'm excited to get started on that one too.  Never a dull moment around here!

Log Cabin Loonies--Julie's quilt along

Well I didn't mean to disappear for so long, there was a lull in the sewing room after the Fair frenzy and a secret home improvement project I'll share next.  

But first, sweet Julie of  Julie K Quilts is having a sewalong making Log Cabin blocks, she calls it Log Cabin Loonies.  I decided to jump into the fun, but upsize the block to suit the size of scraps I trim down and save.  She is using 1" strips and mine are 1.5".  I started out making a test block, as she suggested, before I cut the logs to size in abundance. 

I'm really glad I did that because my original numbers were way off--I was figuring on paper adding only .5 inch to each round but needed to add 1"due to my larger width strip.  I made a cheat sheet for cutting the rounds from 1.5" strips, starting with a 2" center block. 

Julie's measurements using 1" strips are HERE.  I'm linking to her Log Cabin Loonies linkup.  

It has been a long time since I made any Log Cabin blocks, though they are one of my favorite old blocks and can be set so many different ways.  Looking back in my photos, the last Log Cabin blocks I made were for a Quiltbuddies swap way back in 2007.  This was for a Yahoo Group I belonged to for some years.  We made 12" finished black and white blocks and from mine I made a quilt for my Mom and Dad's guest room--Mom was calling it her Paris Room then.

I accidentally matched the quilt--this pic makes me want to buy another red jacket, I loved that one.  The blocks came from many states and a few countries and it was amazing how many different prints there are in that color combo.  The barn raising setting is also a favorite of mine, I've used it many times for different blocks. 

Some sweet prints accompanied leftover blocks on the back.  As I remember, I bought the toile bird print from a shop in Bakersfield when we were visiting family.

I recently inspected the quilt I made my Dad, also in 2007, and it needs replacement.  He uses it every day so it gets a lot of wear.

This was during the Turning Twenty craze.  Some of the fat quarters Mom and Dad bought while traveling in Montana/Wyoming and Yellowstone Park area.  Now the flannel binding is worn, and the thin fabric that shows as pink but is actually a rusty red is shredding.  I've got another scrap project  going from the 1.5 and 2.5" bins, a Bonnie Hunter design called Chunky Churndash.  

I think these would make a great scrappy quilt for my Dad.  They finish at 6" but are set with an alternate hourglass block that sews up quick.  Pattern is free on Bonnie's Quiltville site under the Free Patterns tab.  Back to sewing!

What I've been up to

Secret projects make for boring blogging weeks!  But since today is the event for which the projects were made, I can safely post these photos now.  First up, the gift bags, the raw materials of which I showed on my previous post.

I made 12 bags from one yard of fabric and then had to have the shower hostess get more, once all the RSVPs were in, to make an additional three bags.

I had fun being creative with my photo subject :)   At the same time as more gift bag fabric was delivered, another project came along with it--two banners.  Printed flags were all ready to be inserted into the yards and yards of "string" I made from various prints the hostess, Shasta, purchased. 

I cut the strips 2" wide and sewed them together with diagonal seams, a la binding, and pressed them in half.  Then I opened up the strip and brought one edge to  the center and the other to about 3/8".  I inserted the paper flag, using a ruler and spacing them as I went, and stitched.  I used a larger needle to help with this (size 14).  The flags were about 8" across at their tops.

It went pretty quickly once I started sewing--the prep took the longest amount of time, of course!

Turned out pretty cute!  The other banner is about four times as long as this and reads "Elaine Loves Chris".  I hope to get a photo of it at the shower. 

On Monday I picked up my fair entries and ribbons--plus a check for $4.00 for winning the two second place prizes.  My dad wanted me to put them on my sewing machine as "campaign ribbons".  This photo is for you, Dad!

Bowtie Madness

I spent a great deal of time yesterday machine quilting on the Bowties quilt for my brother's 50th birthday next week. 

For the 4 patches I just eyeballed across the 1" squares but used quarter inch masking tape as a guide for the bowties and larger open spaces. 

The patchwork borders also were completed, grid style.  The last thing I did last night was move the rest of the pins for finishing the channel quilting one direction. I had to move almost every single darn safety pin Mom and I placed in order to do the machine quilting!  Not having a plan when you pin is a *P.I.T.A.  Lesson learned.    The quilting lines are 2" apart so I won't need any pins once all the same-direction quilting is completed. Then I'll start the cross hatch the other direction.  Still have to come up with something for the spacer band but it will be something simple for sure!  *Pain in The Arse.

Finally, a shout out to my dad, who celebrated a birthday last week.  He doesn't usually like most photos of himself, but this one he did.  I like it too!  Taken in 2008 at Rosslyn Chapel on a once in a lifetime trip my folks took to Ireland and Scotland.  He even rented a car and braved driving the narrow lanes of Ireland.  Happy Birthday, Dad!