Moving Things Along

 I'll be working on getting tops turned into quilts for some time!  There was more walking foot quilting over the long holiday weekend.  The APQ charity quilt got finished.  I first quilted around all the rows of mini charm squares. 

That left some gaps on the back. 

 

I decided I wanted all the vertical and horizontal lines quilted. The quilt did have to go in time out for a short time when the Sulky variegated thread refused to cooperate at the beginning of the stitching line. 

All done with quilting.  I need to decide on a binding color. 

More walking foot quilting started on the Meadowland quilt. 

I got most of the long diagonal lines ditch stitched. Pondering quilting ideas for the blocks themselves but haven't thought of anything brilliant!

There were lots of folks putting up holiday lights and decorations on the weekend. I'll get started on ours since I de-Fall decorated over the weekend too.  

Ventura County Fair 2022

Hi, I'm still here, just haven't had much to blog about sewing-wise, as I haven't turned on my machine in awhile. Hubby and I chose the last concert night to attend our local Fair.  Parking was awful as usual but I was smart and headed for the furthest rows, where the earlier attendees might have already exited, and was rewarded by a nice, close slot.  Hubby does not walk distances very well, due to chronic back issues, so we stopped frequently so he could sit down for a few minutes.  We headed to the Home Arts building after eating some fish tacos for dinner. I went inside while Grant enjoyed a beer.

It was a pretty sad showing overall for Home Arts for the first Fair after the pandemic, which I attribute mostly to the change in submitting entries to ONLY online, but lots of guild members won ribbons.  

Lots of variety.  As usual, the lighting in this building is terrible, and I wish they had hung more quilts from the ceiling where you could see the entire quilt. 

There was a good variety to enjoy, both modern and traditional.  

Judy got ribbons for all her entries.  She hand quilts most of her quilts. 

I like this pretty bee quilt. Love the pollen on the bee's leg :)

Cute embroidered pillow and knitting.

Christmas beauties.  Love the big star and cardinal quilt, and the cabin in the woods with Santa.

Chris is another guild member who did well.  First on this small geometric...

..and on a really large quilt.  We had a class for this a couple of years ago and mine remains unfinished.  I really like Chris's setting. 

More beachy items in a booth. The seagulls in the quilt on the floor are cute. 

There was plenty of cross-stitch and embroidery too. This is so pretty and obviously took many hours of needle and thread time. 

The Jar embroidery quilt caught my eye, as I had entered a quilt with the top left embroidery design a few years ago!

Cute Easter themed stitcheries. 

Loved the colors in this sweet heart wallhanging.

We had a little time to wander around before the concert.  The usual beautiful landscaping and garden and animal exhibits were thin and the whole place looked bare.  Hope next year is better.  We made our way to the Grandstand for the concert as the sun was setting. 

I captured not one, but TWO different sunflares in the clouds.  

The second was faint, but still visible. 

We were far away from the top fans at the foot of the concert stage, but had a great view on the large screen.  The sunset seemed to last forever. 

Wider scene showing the crowd.  Lots of great music and we enjoyed the 1 hour show, free with Fair Entry.  The rodeo took over the Grandstand Arena for the rest of the Fair Days. 

We enjoyed our time but missed a lot of our favorite vendors and exhibits that were absent.  Hopefully next year's Fair will be further recovered and more popular than ever.  I will definitely enter something next year!

Design Wall Monday--Double the Plus Quilt Finish

Design Wall Monday brings a finished quilt post. See more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

The short deadline quilt occupied most of last week.  I used the Hera marker to first mark diagonal lines through all the plus blocks.  

I liked the way the plus blocks looked with an X through the center, and completed all the lines in both directions.  But the lines were about 7 inches across, so after consulting with daughter Erica, divided that in half with stitching lines.  It took two long quilting sessions to get all the lines marked and sewn. 

I opted to quilt from the grey side, as I felt the cream thread would be less noticeable on the reverse white quilt side if I missed the exact centers. 

The lines stayed pretty well lined up, thankfully.  The binding already prepared, I set about carefully pinning it 1/2" from the edge of the top, to avoid any places where the top quilt and reverse quilt edges didn't exactly match up.  The walking foot made pretty quick work of getting the binding all on, and I carefully trimmed the extra 1/4" off.  Before quitting for the night on Wednesday, I turned the binding to the white side and pinned/clipped it in place. 

I sewed during lunch break and finished the quilt after work, including a label, in time for daughter Erica to pick it up. We got to visit some as she stayed for dinner.

Double the Plus is an Emily Dennis pattern available on her website quiltylove.com

This quilt being intended as a wedding gift for Erica's boyfriend Ryan's best friend, I was happy to receive a call from Ryan effusive in his compliments on the quilt and appreciation for all the sewing involved :)  Ryan gave the quilt a tryout...

...accompanied by their kitties Zuzu and Bruce.  Thumbs up/paws up from all :)  I'll look forward to hearing how the recipient liked the quilt.  Erica said the wedding was fun and that Ryan--the best man--caught the garter, lol.  

Design Wall Monday--Double Plus and Lupine Heaven

This Design Wall Monday I have three finished tops to show.  See more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

The two-sided quilt with a deadline is moving along. Double the Plus is an Emily Dennis pattern. 

I had to move my sewing desk, lamp and chair out of the way to get this large throw size laid out.  I used spray baste on this part of the sandwiching, after doing a lot of cleanup of loose threads on the back--the white fabric frayed more easily than the grey. 

I'm hoping not too lose too much of the border when I have to even up the outer edge.  I tried hard to make all the sides match of this two sided monster!  That was a lot of pinning. Daughter Erica wanted  simple diagonal quilting  I decided to quilt through the crosses diagonally both ways. That should be plenty of stitching to hold it together.  

Ready to wrestle this monster through my domestic sewing machine!  I'll have sore arms by the end of this job for sure.  The binding has already been made and will be attached by machine.  I have until Thursday night to get this done before Erica and her boyfriend, who is the best man at the wedding, head up to Carmel. Wish me luck!

The other finished quilt top is my version of Bonnie Hunter's My Blue Heaven pattern (free pattern on Quiltville.com).  I took a class from her in 2017 with the Camarillo Quilt Guild and finally have a finished top.  When last seen, I was debating about the outer border hourglass blocks, to which I had added a lot of teal/aqua pieces and wasn't sure I liked them.  However, I had decided to finish the borders in progress and once I did, there was no turning back.  

Pardon my toes :)  Some of my favorite blocks are in this pic.  

The teal is less distracting, I think, now that it completely surrounds the center.  I'm happy with the finished top and glad it didn't get abandoned after all that cutting and sewing.  My Lupine Heaven is my version's name.  Hopefully it will rain sometime in California again and these greens and purples will return in Spring.  

Guild Projects

We had our first in-person guild meeting this month, and the call went out prior for turning in finished quilts for philanthropy.  I had two finished quilts taking up real estate on the cutting table, and two quilt tops ready to be sandwiched with batting I bought last month, after running out of the guild-provided batting with the others.  Now, that batting buy was an adventure.  I went to Walmart because the batting is fairly inexpensive there.  The fabric/notions department was deserted of staff in the mid-afternoon when I went.  I stood at the cutting counter for a bit, with the big bolt of batting; a staff member from another department came over to cut the yardage for me, but didn't know how to run the price tag printer.  Instead she found a scrap of paper and wrote down the SKU from the bolt and the price.  The cashier's reaction when I later brought up my items through the line and handed her the paper was pretty entertaining.  "WHAT is this?"  She rang it up after my explanation, shaking her head the whole time :) 

Anyway, I had two quilts with ready backings since February. Make the Connection, a free charity quilt pattern from APQ magazine using mini-charms, was quickly layered and machine quilted with my new favorite, fast wavy lines. My version used many fewer blocks than the pattern, but since it is block-based, adjustments are pretty simple. There are actually only two different blocks--they are just turned to make the stair-step effect.  Clever! 

I used a green Aurifil thread and the walking foot.  The leftover binding box turned up some striped bias binding that matched the solid green, and I cut more strips from the same fabric in the fat quarter drawers.  It took way longer than I imagined to sew all the short pieces together, so I was regretting my choice for a bit. 

The nighttime shot grays out the solid green.  Can you see where my binding stripes changed direction?  I could not figure out how I did that, but I liked it!

Pieced backing and quilting.  Nighttime photo so the colors are dull.  Anyway, I was able to turn in three donation quilts at the meeting.  One top is still awaiting quilting, as I ran out of time, but it is sandwiched and ready to go:  

This was our Round Robin guild challenge.  The blocks are 12" finished so I chose to quilt the smaller charity quilt and get it turned in first!  There is also another finished top and backing for a baby quilt to get sandwiched and finished before next meeting.  Hopefully we will have more attendees next month, though some folks joined the meeting through Zoom. It was good to get to visit in person. There were snacks--and I won one of the raffle prizes! The 2021 Quilter's Run starts next weekend.  Only one of the shops is close by--Cotton and Chocolate--but I may run to it!

Design Wall Monday--10/12/2020

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

The 50 Shades of Brown quiltalong by Lori of Humble Quilts had the final clue release for the borders  last week.  I wanted to use up more CW scraps and dug around in my bins for pieces that added the colors and quirkiness of the original antique Lori copied.  

This Judy Rothermel fabric has been in the stash a long time!  It felt good to give a strip to the 50 shades little quilt. 

The other border pieces were also pulled from the scraps.  I chose the single corner square fabric to highlight the pink in the center.  This was a quick and fun quiltalong--my outer borders are 2.5" wide.  It is not quilted yet but I'm considering doing some big stitch quilting with perle cotton.  

Still playing in the scraps, I got all the blocks for the Plaid-ish quilt laid out and moved around (free pattern and tutorial on Kitchen Table Quilting).  There was more switcheroo as I sewed the rows; my brilliant plan for pressing for nesting seams didn't quite work out, mostly due to the "medium" blocks being turned in every other row per the pattern layout. 

The quilt is so scrappy that it didn't really matter much, as long as I could space out the fabric repeats enough.

I completely assembled the top half of the quilt; the bottom four rows await final joining.  What a fun method for scrap play.  Erica of Kitchen Table Quilting has made a second version of the free Plaid-ish quilt I'd love to make too!  

My "to be quilted" projects are really piling up.  I have one out to the quilter (Twilight Hopscotch by Kim Diehl) and keep watching for pics of it on their feed (Quilting by David).  Hopefully it will make it to the top of the list soon--tracking shows it arrived in MO on 9/17.   It's a short work week for me as I'm taking a couple of vacation days.  Unfortunately my husband decided to schedule a carpet cleaning so that means I have to disassemble large portions of the family room I use as my sewing room to reveal the floor.  I'll definitely get a lot of steps on the FitBit that day!

New Projects Everywhere

Startitis seems to strike on a daily basis these days.  There is no end to leftovers which I try to turn into "real" quilted items!  I showed the start of a small tablerunner the other day, and since the walking foot was still on the machine, decided to get it quilted.  The deep raspberry Dimples fat quarter backing was not quite big enough to make a traditional binding and I decided to make a flanged binding instead.  The scrap drawers produced a suitable length of a green linen string and I got cutting and sewing.  Due to shortage of the raspberry print to allow joining the final seam,  I found a chunk of a close colored print to add.  I got as far as stitching the binding to the back, turning it to the front and affixing binding clips before closing down for the night.

Next morning it was soon finished off by stitching down the flange with green thread.  I was happy with the way it turned out on the front....

...and the back.  The free-motion quilting looks a little like hieroglyphics on this side, haha.  No destination for this one either so it's resting on the bookshelf in the living room for now. 

Another set of those green star point pieces were still left to deal with, so I pulled another leftover small pieced item out of my "small projects" box.  This was a trial for the Dreamweaver quilt, making Disappearing 9 patch blocks as per the original pattern, with larger squares.  I used some pretty fabrics for the mockup so it wouldn't go to waste.  Ultimately I went with plain squares for the Dreamweaver quilt to simplify. 

Fiddling with the green and cream star points pieces, I ended up cutting them down to 3" wide and after sewing them together, sliver trimmed the D9P section to match the length.  The tablemat has not been paired with a backing or binding choice yet but is looking cheerful.

Our next grandson is due in four weeks and although I made him a small playmat a couple of months ago, I wanted to make a regular sized baby quilt and pulled out the Churn Dash blocks from one of Barb's swaps from a few years back; I was in the modern swap of 6" finished blocks of solids with low volume background. Last year I made this quilt for my grand-nephew Elliott from the blue blocks with black/gray and white backgrounds.

Well this is just the top, but shows the secondary pattern formed by the alternate 9 patches; this setting I first saw on Kathy's Quilts blog in traditional fabrics.  Since our nephew Matt and our son Nick were so close growing up, I wanted to make a similar but different modern quilt for Nick's son.  The cousins will be only 8 months apart in age and I hope will be close as well.

Graph paper and pencil are my friends!  I originally had a much grander plan in mind, using Drunkard's Path blocks for the diagonals, but simplified to the the HSTs.  

A suitable low volume print and gray-blue crackle print from stash were cut with Bonnie's Essential Triangle tool from 6.5" strips.  Initially, I laid out the chosen Churn Dash blocks in color groups, and ended up making a couple more blue blocks from stash.  Next morning, though, it seemed too formal and static for a baby's quilt.  After Switcheroo, stitching commenced.

I think it looks much more fun this way.  The colors remind me of sunsets and sea colors, and being the child of two adventurers, our grandson will no doubt see plenty of water and sky as he grows up. Currently, though, he's being bratty by not being turned head down yet...

Design Wall Monday--7/20/2020

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

I am happy to say that the Dreamweaver quilt for our son and daughter-in-law has now been quilted.  Man, I have had such a time with this quilt--trouble of my own making, for sure!  Again, this is a Jen Kingwell design that I greatly enlarged; my background squares are 3" finished.

Last post, I mentioned that I had added quilting pins to the quilt sandwich after stippling the top third of the background...well, due to the significant problems with skipped stitches while trying to buttonhole stitch the appliques and quilt at the same time, I ended up removing all the quilting pins so I could fold the backing and batting out of the way, and stitch the appliques only through the quilt top. 

These specialty needles were allegedly nonstick, but the Steam-A-Seam continually gummed up the needle anyway.  Lots more skipped stitches...

I'm sure the white on white print and seam allowance contributed to the stitches completely skipping here, but in other places there was skipping for no good reason. Lengthening and widening the stitch after this attempt did help some. I persevered, stopping frequently to remove gunk from the needle with an alcohol prep pad.  Finally all the applique was finished and I could fold down the batting and backing and finish the quilting with a regular size 14 needle.  It was tedious to quilt between the appliques with the stipple and I began to wish I'd just stitched in the ditch in the patchwork.   It was far too late to turn back at that point, however!

The medallion took a couple of tries and some unpicking, separated by backyard breaktime, in order to get it all right.  The bobbles and imperfections  of my free motion quilting will hopefully be less noticeable once the quilt is bound, labeled, and washed.  Those tasks are scheduled for this week.  I'd love to get some glamour shots of the quilt at the beach by the end of the week. 

Our soon-to-be-born grandson has not turned head down yet and their OB doctor has discussed performing an external version to turn him.  Our third baby was the same, three weeks before her due date; but once threatened with the procedure, she turned herself head down one night while I was sleeping and I never had to bear that trial!  We got a long email from our son and daughter-in-law regarding getting TDAP and flu vaccines and COVID-19 testing, self-quarantining before seeing the baby.  So scary to have a baby during a pandemic with no treatment in sight.  We will at least get to socially distance visit in the backyard, we're told :)