The Beginning of October = The End of the Tomatoes

It’s the last, lingering bit of summer – that final tomato harvest. This has been a summer to remember. It seemed that every time I felt like I was catching up, something else happened to put me behind again. Add in earthquakes, hurricanes and flash floods and you have a summer that I’m not sure I really want to remember.

So we move on to Fall. The tomato plants have all been dug up, replaced with kale, Chinese broccoli and cabbage. The leeks and carrots are nearly ready for harvest. (Note the lone carrot in the picture. It went into the fresh tomato-rice soup with many of those wonderful yellow tomatoes.)

As usual, my quilting progress has been quite slow. I did manage to finish the runner that I began quilting in May. Here it is, in place. That’s one UFO down. Of course, my husband has put in a request for another runner like this for the TV stand. Here’s hoping I can actually complete that one a bit more quickly. At least I won’t be losing my sewing room again like I did for two months this summer while our daughter was home. (Technically my sewing/school room is also the guest bedroom.)

A Quilt Themed Birthday

Have I mentioned before what a gem my husband is? If not, I should have. He decided he wanted to build my birthday gifts around a theme that combines my two primary loves: quilting and books. So he got me an assortment of quilting-related books that I thought I’d share with you.

Simple Pleasures: Little Quilts from the Netherlands by Els Feteris-Stam is the only pattern book in the lot. For someone choosing blindly, I doubt he could have done better. I’ve been thinking I need to do more smaller projects so I can actually complete something now and again. This is a delightful mix of piecing and applique with some very attractive designs. Plus, the title evokes memories of our time living in Europe.

Quilt in Common and Nancy Crow: Cloth, Culture & Context is an exhibition catalog from the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Sadly, I can’t find a picture of the cover to link, but you can see more about the exhibit here: International Quilt Study Center Online Exhibit. This book goes beyond my love of quilting and books to tie in with my long-time interest in Art, Art History and museums. Did I mention that he’s really good?!?

The Cross-Country Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini Believe it or not, I’ve never read any of the books in this series. Several times I’ve had quilting friends ask me if I’ve read these books and tell me how great they are. But my To Be Read list is usually so long that I never think to add one of this series to it. I’m looking forward to finally being able to say, Yes I have read that.

American Patchwork, edited by Sonja Hakala bears the sub-title, True Stories from Quilters. This looks like a really fun book. There are 67 short, personal quilting stories. The multiple short sections will make this an ideal study break. I can stop, read one discrete section without getting completely caught up in a long narrative, as I am prone to do. I couldn’t resist looking at the section near the end, You know you’re a quilter if . . . I love this one: “You know you’re a quilter if . . . You’ve never used freezer paper in your freezer.” I have two rolls of freezer paper in the closet of the spare bedroom that is my sewing/school room. I have never used freezer paper in the kitchen.

Cassie’s Word Quilt by Faith Ringgold was a choice guaranteed to appeal to the trainee Children’s Librarian! I love the illustrations, complete with scrappy quilt borders as frames. This would be a great picture book to read aloud to a young child while they sit on your lap. We get to tour Cassie’s home in Tar Beach, matching the word with object. I can see lots of pointing going on and beginning readers learning more words. Much as I love this book, it may end up a donation to the library so it can be enjoyed by lots of families.

This was a fun post to write. Perhaps the Quilting Librarian should write more posts about books in her quilt library to help fill the gaps between actual quilting accomplishments.

UFO Update

Runner #1 ready to quilt!

Between training for my new job and keeping up with school work, I haven’t gotten much accomplished toward completing those dreaded UnFinished Objects. So today when I actually got a break in my schedule and could honestly say that I am ahead on my school projects, I decided I had to do some sewing. The result: the first of the runners my husband requested is ready to quilt. I had actually hoped to be able to add a dark blue border as well. But when I tried it out on the cabinet, there just wasn’t space for another border. I’m going to try for a contrasting binding. But I’m afraid that will look odd and I may have to settle for working more blue into the other runners I make.

Putting this together reminded me of why I no longer participate in any form of block swaps or round robin projects. I cut all of the pieces and wrote out careful directions for a 12 1/2 inch block (12 inch finished). The first three blocks I grabbed (out of 9) were all different sizes. One of them was only 12 inches – unfinished! I’m going to have to pick it apart and re-do it. The seams are not even close to 1/4 inch.

Now I just have to quilt it. Of course, I need to be sure I don’t get carried away with the quilting as I always seem to do. The goal is to have this finished quickly. I wonder if I’m capable of that. . . .

Project Finished!

Yes, after a quarter of the year is already past, I finally have my first completed project. I really am a slow-poke quilter. I did even break out the sewing machine to attach the binding. But everything else was done entirely by hand, including adding all of the sashing and the borders. Who knows how long it will be before I finish my next project!

Here are two pictures of it hanging in the entry to our house. That was a very large section of blank wall crying out for something dramatic!

View from the kitchen.

View from front door

 

 

 

 

 

I have a perpetual fascination with the actual quilting and its appearance on the back of quilts. for me, the quilting is as important a design element as the piecing or applique on the front. I’ve never bought into the argument that my hand quilting wasn’t going to be “good enough” to have visible until I’d quilted however many thousand hours. If I had, I would never have experimented with contrasting colors of thread or designing my own patterns. I think “My Quilt” would be a bit drab and boring without the contrasting quilting in the alternate blocks.

So, in the assumption that somebody else might be interested in the quilting and the back too, I’m including a picture of the entire back and some details. While I’m all too aware of the problems and mistakes, I refuse to let them take away from my satisfaction with the overall effect. I’ll just continue to learn from and improve. Meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy it every time I see this quilt hanging on my wall.

Crane block

Mountain View block

Fan and Lotus Flower blocks

When Not To Quilt

I’ve been pretty pleased with the progress I’ve made hand quilting this project over the last week. So, in spite of being tired and having a headache, I decided to press on and try to get another piece of sashing quilted. (I am really happy with my vine and leaf idea for the sashing.) The problem is that I am using two different colors of quilting thread for this quilt. The beige fabric, that is just visible on the left, the gold and the brown get quilted with cream-colored thread. The solid and patterned black fabrics are quilted in black thread. As I think you can see from the photo, I spent a fair bit of time quilting this black print with the cream thread. Time to go pick it all out and redo it. Here’s hoping I can get the stitches out without ruining the Press and Seal on which I’ve drawn the quilting pattern. Maybe this will teach me that there are times when it is better to just put the project aside and surrender to the headache because the progress I appear to make really isn’t progress at all.

On a lighter note, the end is in sight for this term’s courses. The group project that has given me so much stress the last 4 weeks is basically finished, needing only some proofreading before submitting it. Tomorrow I start my new, once-a-week volunteer position with the Central Rappahannock Regional Library system and I’m really excited about that. The sun is out here in Eastern Virginia and I’m thinking I may actually get some writing and some quilting done this week. I’m shamefully behind in book reviews!

Quilting – Take Me Away

For anyone wondering why I haven’t posted any quilting progress in a long time, this view of my work table might give you a hint. My quilting room doubles as my work space for school (not to mention being a guest bedroom). At the moment, the pile of school work leaves no space or time for much quilting. It’s week 8 of a 10 week term and the fourth week of a major group project. Add to that a trip to Pittsburgh to visit our son and it equals practically no progress on my sewing projects.

There was one other delay in the quilting process on my Scenes of the Orient quilt. I kept putting it off because I wasn’t happy with the quilting pattern I’d decided on. I don’t want strong linear designs in the background to compete with the applique. I also think the sashing needs more than just “quarter-inching.”

I chose to use a polyester batting to minimize the weight of the finished quilt, since I want to hang it in our entryway. But the batting I had on hand needs to be quilted fairly close together. You can just see in the bottom of this picture that after outlining the applique, I’m filling the large spaces in with motifs from the applique, in this case, flowers and leaves. (This is the cherry blossom block  with the bird perching on a branch at the bottom left of the quilt.) Above that, you can see the vine pattern I created using just a wavy line and the outline of some of the applique leaves. In this section, the sashing on the front is gold, so I’m using cream-colored quilting thread to blend better. I’m using black thread on the dark sections of the quilt. My goal is that the quilting won’t be especially noticeable from a distance, but upon closer inspection it will enhance the design rather than compete.

Now, back to my statistics assignment. If only my opening wish worked as well as in those Calgon commercials. But the deadlines won’t go away with wishes.

Planning the next big project

The beginning of January saw the resumption of my library school classes, and a consequent drop in the amount of free time I have for quilting. But I can’t resist beginning to plan my next major project, since this is the first time I haven’t had a full-sized quilt underway in years. This quilt will be for my son and he chose the pattern from Nancy Smith and Lynda Mulligan’s Simple to Sensational Batiks. It’s actually the design featured on the cover, but here is a picture of the full quilt:

The pattern is for a 50 x 50 inch quilt to be paper pieced. But I want a larger quilt, so I’m increasing the pattern size by 25% and I plan to hand piece it. Once I’ve got it mostly pieced, I’ll decide if this will be big enough or if I want to add an extra border. The color scheme my son chose is blues and greens. I like a scrappy effect with lots of different fabrics, so my next step was to choose the main fabrics that will tie it all together and then start to dig through my stash to find fabrics to work with them.

My starting point - I love these colors!

Possible choices from my stash

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, I leave the fabrics out together on the table and “live” with them for a while. I see what they look like in different lighting conditions. I rearrange them, add to them, take some away, until I’m happy with the choices I’ve made. In this case, I decided it was important to include some browns, golds and slightly duller fabrics to contrast with the intensity of many of these fabrics. I’m pretty happy with my fabric choices now. My next step is going to be scanning the picture of the quilt in gray scale and printing lightly. Then I’ll pull out my colored pencils and plan the color and fabric layout before I start cutting or sewing. I’m leaning toward using some of the dark greens for the blues in the original design. I think some of my blues are bright enough to work in place of some of the golds. But it will be a process of trial and error to work out the balance. I’m really excited to see how this quilt turns out, though it will probably be a couple of years before I actually get it done. Thank goodness my family is patient!

On UFOs and New Year’s Resolutions

Our recent move reminded me how many UFOs (unfinished objects) I have sitting around. Two of these stalled quilts were ones I wanted to make for myself, but they kept getting put aside so I could do a project for somebody else. Well now it’s my turn. So, I think it’s time for my quilting New Year’s Resolution:

To finish these four projects!

Blue and White Reverse Applique

I absolutely love blue and white patterns. So when I found the book Dutch Treat by Judy Garden, with 196 blocks inspired by Delft Designs, I decided it was time to learn a new applique technique! I found that I really enjoy doing reverse applique. I chose blocks and a layout planning to come back and add sashing and a border in a rich blue. As you can see, I still have 2 and a half large side panels to applique. But I also have a perfect space on the wall in my sewing room to hang this. So this project gets pushed high up on the To Sew List!

Blue & Yellow Group Project

For a while, I belonged to a quilting group where members took turns handing out cut pieces for the others to assemble into blocks. The idea was that each member got one complete quilt top each year and everyone got together once a month to quilt on one of these projects. Well, my turn came around and I was in the middle of making Jack’s Quilt. So I quickly chose one of my favorite fabrics, the iris pattern in the center of 5 of these blocks, and planned these blue and yellow blocks. But because the project was prompted by the group’s schedule and not my choice, I never assembled the quilt, in spite of really liking the way the blocks came out. Since we’ve moved, my husband has decided he’d like me to make some runners for our living room. These colors are perfect for that room. So these blocks will help me make my husband happy by getting the runners done fairly quickly (for me)!

Stained Glass Nativity Wall Hanging

I’m kind of surprised that this project got stalled, because I’m nearly finished fusing the pieces onto the backing. Then it’s just a matter of adding the black bias tape and layering it. Quilting will be simple, just sewing over the edges of the bias tape. So, I resolve that this will be finished to be part of our Christmas decorations next year!

 

 

Valentine’s Heart Block Exchange

As an extra project one year, the group I mentioned earlier decided to do a heart block exchange. We each made 9 identical blocks and swapped. Mine is the one with two appliqued hearts in the center of the photo. I could never quite decide what to do with them, especially since I don’t usually decorate for Valentine’s Day. I’m still not sure what I will do with them. But in the interest of clearing out the closet of UFOs, I’ll add this to the bottom of the list. Maybe by the time I finish the others, along with my current projects, I’ll come up with a brilliant idea. Or maybe this will make next year’s list of resolutions. . . .

A wonderful Christmas gift!

My quilting corner

When we moved back the U.S. from Belgium, one of the things I had to leave behind was my wonderful, goose-neck halogen lamp. Sadly, there was no way to make it work on the different voltage here. I’ve been looking for a new one since September. My wonderful husband found me one for Christmas and it arrived today. Not one, but two adjustable heads and bright enough even for my eyes.

So, now my comfy corner is complete and I’m not limited to stitching only when getting lots of daylight! Thank you, dearest!

Merry Christmas!

In the Christmas spirit, here’s a quilt I made a few years ago as a gift for my Mom. I actually machine pieced this quilt in an effort to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. The center is quilted in an all-over diamond pattern the border is quilted in a holly pattern using red and green thread.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Happy Quilting everyone!