Design Wall Monday--Star of the Show

 It's Design Wall Monday.  See more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

The situation of finished tops piled up on the corner of the cutting table having become untenable, I set about working on the smaller tops.  Star of the Show, a baby quilt from a British quilt magazine, Quilt Now, which I made last year, I intend to give to our daughter's friend.  

 I made a simple stripe backing out of the leftover fabrics, and decided to use the maker's "signature wavy diagonal lines".

Although the Silver Kona I used looks very yellow in this pic, I used a neutral gray thread and my walking foot to do the lines, just wiggling back and forth as I went.  Fun to quilt!  

 I was very pleased with the finished quilting, which took hardly any time at all.  I no longer use basting pins or spray baste since Dora Cary of Orange Dot Quilts came to our guild and showed how she layers, smooths and loosely folds the quilt sandwich, then sets it aside to rest for a short period before quilting.  It is such a time saver!  I do put one safety pin in each corner and recheck the layers periodically as I quilt. 

Having already made the binding, it went on immediately. 

The Silver Kona I again used for the binding. That green fabric is a hand-dyed Ricky Tims fabric I bought many years ago at one of his seminars--my sister and I had a great adventure going to Indiana for that.

The colors are a little truer in this daytime pic of the backing before quilting.  I'll get a label on it and give the quilt it's first bath before gifting.  Baby is due late this month, I believe. 

I quilted the Perkiomen Valley baby quilt the same way, but it still needs a binding.  This wavy diagonal quilting was so fun and easy!

I think it looks great with the straight lines of the blocks.  It has been over two years since our Ventura Modern Quilt Guild started making Perkiomen blocks and quilts for victims of the Thomas Fire and Montecito Mud/Flood disasters.  Recently there was a story about a cat that went missing in the disaster in Montecito and was recently found alive and well as a rescue cat!  Amazing and happy story!

What I'm Working on Wednesday--Multiple Projects

I seem to be unable to settle in to one project for very long currently.  Stalling on a major one usually produces this condition.  In this case, the Dreamweaver quilt and all its applique has been hogging the cutting table.  I've pulled out the table on the Hoosier cabinet for an additional cutting and auditioning area. 

My DIL was happy with the progress and agreed with adding more applique.  We decided some smaller circles over the larger solid ones would help them stand out less. I had already cut a lot of leaves from the Steam a Seam fusible but needed more sheets.  Also I wanted to pick up some floss for another embroidery project.  Happily, although limiting customer volume and requiring masks, the larger local fabric store in town is open. 

I was able to find all of the floss colors for this thrift store scored Blackbird Designs pattern, and then wandered about the rest of the store.  There were 20% off tags on many of the bolt tables.  I found a good option for the backing of the Dreamweaver quilt, then perused the fat quarters while waiting for the cutting table traffic to clear. 

Well I HAD to buy these $2.00 fat quarters, didn't I?  I always need neutrals and picked up the fun stripes and a couple of blues as I seldom buy blue fabric.  I could have bought a lot more FQ but had to consider how stuffed the FQ storage drawers are...and put some back, lol. I want to make some cloth napkins and fat quarters work well for that. 

While avoiding the applique, I worked on the Perkiomen Valley blocks from last post.  Trying to figure out how to nest seams when the blocks were going to be twisted and turned was impossible, so I pressed all the seams open after chain piecing the block pieces.  I got annoyed by trying to stick my scissors between the pieces to snip the chain thread while holding them in my hand, so did this instead:

I laid the joined rows  on the table, pulling down the just  added row to the limit of the chain thread, and snipped through the now visible chain. 

When laying out the first few sets of squares and HSTs before piecing, I noticed I was choosing a blue for the center, and went with that for the remainder. Above the blocks are looking good in a straight set layout....

...and here more dynamic in "The Stacey" layout, after a fellow guild member.  This is just a small corner of her layout, which I showed last time. The top is now complete. 

Another "squirrel" project jumped out when I was pulling charm squares for the Perkiomen Valley blocks.  I have acquired mini charm packs over the years, usually as freebies, but seldom use them.  A well aged Bubble Pop charm pack by Sandy Klop along with a sweet green and white background fabric pull from stash and I was on my way....

The Moda Love Quilt I have made in layer cake and charm pack size, but this is the first mini charm pack one I attempted.  These squares and HSTs are little!  This is a free pattern from Moda. 

Pen for size reference.  Since I used my Bloc-Loc trimmer for all of the HSTs, the rows went together pretty smoothly.  I did have to restitch a few seam allowances that got skewed, but it wasn't too painful.  This will likely become a pillow cover with the addition of more of the background print and leftover mini charms. 

...now back to applique pieces for Dreamweaver....

Bouncing Around

There are a lot of different new projects swirling around in my brain, making it easy to ignore the several dozen (cough) already in progress. Generally new ideas barge in when I am looking for something else, or am trying to use up leftovers. I'm still on a baby quilt kick and while cleaning up the cutting table after the houndstooth baby quilt, I got to thinking about using up all the bonus HSTs from that quilt. Several years ago, during the Thomas Fire disaster in our county, we made quilts from 12" finished Perkiomen Valley blocks, many of which were donated from all over the continent--and overseas.  The shaded blocks can be laid out many different ways. One of our guild members set hers in a pattern that came to be known as "The Stacy".  It's a very dynamic setting.

I decided to crop just a corner of the layout for a 4x4 setting to use up the odd sized leftover HSTs that are 4" unfinished.   I chose solids and graphic prints from stash in many colors for the dark half of the block, and light solids and a few prints for the light half.

Many scraps and 5" charms got cut for the 16 blocks needed for this setting.  I also sketched a Drunkard's path block substituting for the HST.  That would be fun to play with too.  The ideas never stop coming!

I quickly wrote up my plan on an index card, as lately I have come across too many baggies of parts that were specifically grouped but without any idea what I thought they were going to become!

While waiting for Telemedicine visits to commence during the work-from-home hours, I like to have some stitching to pick up.  Last week I finished the Lizzie Kate Summer Sampler remix ...

...and think it turned out cute.  This was from a $.95 thrift store find of a couple of years ago, a design from the 90s.  Rummaging around in the tub of embroidery stuff today, I came across an even older item to stitch.  I did have some floss with it so at some point it had escaped the bin for a time, though nary a stitch was yet made.

The packaging says it was printed in 1987!  There were some long lags between patients today so the rind of the watermelon was finished.  Red floss is at the ready for tomorrow's lags.  I'll need to pull out some black floss for the seeds as well. 

I have a few pics from our Father's Day gathering to show next post.

St Patrick's Day, National Quilting Day, Thomas Fire Quilts

Happy St. Patrick's Day, a little late. I barely set out my decorations two days ago, but will let the greens and golds linger for a while.  I parked these two sweet vintage "lucky" postcards on the sideboard. (Ruffle edged plate is from World Market)

I found these at my favorite vintage mall downtown.  It's fascinating to me that these have survived intact, both are over 100 years old.

The top one was postmarked in 1912, and the lower one 1910.  The addresses are a marvel, not even a street name or number.  The top one I think is a rural delivery route in Havelock, Nebraska (near Lincoln), but the bottom one just gives the town, which with a little snooping on Google is Dresser Junction, Wisconsin, a tiny town NE of Minneapolis, now called Dresser.  I love these embossed postcards and always pick up a couple when I find them.  

As today is National Quilting Day, I spent it working on quilts--Thomas Fire quilts.  Our guild has received masses of blocks, over 600 came in one week alone, so we are no longer collecting blocks or making blocks.  The focus is on getting the blocks into quilt tops and those tops made into quilts.  Guild members at QuiltCon were gifted all of Hobbs Batting booth's leftovers that they didn't want to ship--incredible generosity!   It will be quickly used up, though, by the hundreds of quilts still in process. Sew-ins are going on every weekend and we are working as fast as we can to get finished quilts to victims of the fire and mudslide.

Today I laid out our Perkiomen Valley blocks and sewed two tops.  It is fun to  play with this block, so many different layouts are possible. 

 

Those black and white squares pop out at you, don't they?  I liked making them asymmetrical in this 30 block quilt. 

The next kit had 8 blocks the same so I decided to feature them together.  Another asymmetric setting of 30 blocks.  I have one more set to sew up and think I will do them how I originally laid out the above set, in pinwheels.  

This would be really effective if all the blocks were the same, but we deal with what we're given.  

I also want to share a special quilt which was made by Preeti, of Sew Preeti Quilts blog.  She called her gorgeous green and blue Perkiomen blocks quilt Savanna, the charming story is in this post.  I luckily was able to find her quilt in our packed storage office and had another guild member take a photo of me with it.

This is for you, Preeti, with many thanks!  Her straight set layout really emphasizes the diagonal and the fabrics and patterns just shine.  We have a gallery of Thomas Fire Quilts on our guild website and Preeti's is there.  It was claimed last week, no doubt, when half the shelves in our storage office were cleared for a pop-up giveaway at a local church. 

I hope to get the remaining block kit into a top tomorrow, get a kids quilt package quilted, and finish the binding on a huge quilt I took home from our regular guild meeting.  Then it will be more of the same until there are no more applicants to receive a quilt.  Many of the burned homes' lots are now cleared and graded and rebuilding will soon begin.  Lots are for sale all over the hills, a lot of the older homeowners will not be rebuilding.  I've seen a couple of view lots that are priced in the $500K range, can you imagine?  We will remain flatlanders forever!

Thomas Fire Quilts Being Finished

Our little Ventura Modern Quilt Guild has been busy collecting blocks and making tops, quilting and binding them, labeling and assigning to different recipients.  We were lucky to secure an empty office in a building with rent charged of only $1, where we can store all the quilts and fabric and give members their cars and homes  back, including mine!  Our Communications chair is a longarm quilter and my sister Kathy jumped at the chance to play during  a sew in  at her house recently.  We are just beginning to get quilts made from the Perikomen Valley blocks and this is one of them.  

Isn't it pretty?  Kathy turned out to be "a natural", and I received a message that she is "hooked". I wish that either one of us had the money and space for a longarm machine!  I worked at home on two quilts that just needed binding sewn down.  These were donated tops, I believe, that other guild members quilted and attached binding to. 

So very pretty and modern.  It is about 50-60", a nice lap size.  The other one was a behemoth queen size and not nearly so modern, but very nicely pieced.

Someone did some beautiful quilting on this very brown quilt.  Lots of feathers and crosshatching.  It took me awhile to do the binding by machine as I had to trim about 1/8th of an inch off the sandwich to pull the binding far enough over to cover the seam line.  A few places where I missed were hand stitched closed.  I dropped these off Saturday and picked up another kit of blocks to sew into a top.  I have another set of blocks and two quilts I made backings for that need to be quilted.  Hoping to get one basted tomorrow after work.  We are having sew-ins every weekend this month, except for the dates of QuiltCon in a couple of weeks, where the generous folks have let us have a booth.  So many people are helping that makes the job go faster and easier.  Looking forward to our next guild meeting and the handing out of Thomas Fire Quilts.  

Weekends Are Too Short

Another weekend has flown by.  I did get some sewing in, saw my grandsons, cleaned up some areas, and did a bit of shopping.  It felt good to get some things done after last weekend when I was sick.  Amazing how quickly your energy level falls when you don't eat or move around much.   That weight I lost? It came right back :(.  But my husband and I are working on adding exercise to our week, he at the gym and me with walking, eating fewer carbs, more fruits and veggies, and just generally less of everything, especially added sugar. 

I got two more rows put together of Perkiomen blocks for  a Thomas Fire quilt.  Imagine please that these two sections were joined...

But alas, the last row is still incomplete.  I'll work on these tonight and get the top finished, as there are only these three rows to add.  Our guild efforts have been so successful in receiving donations that we are overwhelmed and looking for someplace to store it all!  What a wonderful problem to have.  We have another sew in next weekend and I'll be attending that.  I hope to have a quilt to bind by then.  

The cries of joy heard all over Santa Barbara  and Ventura County were because they reopened Highway 101 in Montecito this afternoon, after hundreds of truckloads of mud and debris were scooped up and carted off day and night for at least 10 days.  A lot of the mud was dumped on the beach and will be absorbed by the surf.  Many more truckloads ended up at our Fairgrounds to be combed through.  There are still two people missing, though a third missing was found, a 21 year old girl who died in the mudslide.  All the offramps in Montecito are still closed, and the mudslide areas forbidden to lookyloos as search and recovery goes on.  We hope the bodies of the last two missing, a 2 year old girl and a 17 year old boy, will be found soon.  No big rainstorms are predicted in the near future, thankfully.   Our guild will keep making quilts, as many as we can as fast as we can, to try to give some comfort to survivors. 

I watched my grandsons last night for a few hours. So great to be able to do that often. 

This is their Christmas card pic, Hunter on the left, big brother Cove on the right.  Boy, Cove sure knows how to stretch out bedtime.  After a long book, and his traditional bedtime song, he had a question about "why some dinosaurs didn't die in the mass extinction".  He actually said that, at not even 4 years old!  So we explored various scenarios as to why some "feathered" dinosaurs made it, and also mammals.  I think it was after 9 o'clock by then.  Then he came out of his room 3 minutes later to ask Mimi "why sometimes you have bad dreams and sometimes you have good ones"...deep thoughts from the great staller.  Finally all was quiet.  Too funny.  

Here's the (not too terrific) photo I promised of my mantel with the Nesting House Set from the new Magnolia collection at Target.  The little white house and smallest black house are actually a set of salt and pepper shakers, but I like them here.  The large vintage painted metal tray I found years ago at a resale shop downtown.  I love it.  Okay, off to fix dinner...

Flood after the Fire

The Thomas Fire disaster has been increased to include flood, as many will be aware from the horrendous news video and photos shown of the Montecito area of Santa Barbara, 20+ miles to the north of my city.  Torrential rains on the night of January 8-9 caused mudslides and a creek to overflow its banks, sweeping tons of mud, huge boulders, trees, and water into houses and businesses, sweeping them off their foundations and filling them many feet deep in an instant.  It is a sad truth that the firefighters kept  these houses from burning a few weeks prior, only to have them destroyed by flood.  So many lives lost and many more to be found buried in the mud, likely up to dozens, though so far 17 deaths have been confirmed. Our son's girlfriend lives in Santa Barbara, a short distance from the devastation, but luckily she and her brother are safe.  

The main 101 freeway along the coast is impassable for many miles due to massive swaths of debris and mud.  This pic above from the internet shows how the pavement is not even visible.  Those bushes in the center divider are about 8-10 feet tall.  This heavily traveled road and rail service closures have resulted in a sea shuttle, with boats leaving Ventura Harbor three times a day and making the two hour boat trip up to Santa Barbara Harbor  Others are flying out of nearby airports to Santa Barbara; once again generous folks have offered free or reduced cost services everywhere to help survivors and residents.  I traveled this road daily myself for a year and a half when I worked in Santa Barbara a few years ago.   A multi-hour detour is now required to enter the city if driving from the south, with all trucking re-routed.

At our Ventura Modern Quilt Guild meeting the night the rains started, we discussed that any flood victims would by extension be Thomas Fire victims and we will distribute quilts to them as well,  never wishing such to come, or so soon.  Hundreds of Perkiomen Valley quilt blocks have been made and more donations are coming in.  We were set to donate our first set of quilts that night but the person who was to pick them up stayed home due to the rain.  Our guild president was tearful when telling us that the generous folks managing the Road to California quilt show this month donated a free booth and electricity so that we can collect any blocks/donations there. Amazing!  I brought home blocks and a quilt top/finishing kit to make, and donated a couple of blocks of my own, above. My car is full of an entire roll of batting, two huge tubs full of fabric ready to be made into quilts.  Multiple other local guilds have donated to our little guild, so generously, and we thank them sincerely, including Simi Valley Quilt Guild, Camarillo Quilters Association, and Valley MQG. We hope the rain, as much as we need it to end the drought, stays away for now.