2016

     Writing here was not a priority for 2016.  We bought a new house for ourselves and set about fixing it, fixed the other house, moved ourselves and my parents as we just exchanged houses.  By golly both households own a ridiculous number of books.  It is a good thing but books are heavy.

    The sewer line from our house to the city connection ruptured and there were multiple opportunities for all of us to live together in one or the other of the two houses while various things got fixed.  We eventually need to get some other floors fixed, but we're waiting a few years and dealing with it until we feel like upending things again.  Love the additional space and the large yard to send  kids out into for outdoor recess when they bicker or are rambunctious.  

     The first five quilts shown were donated to Seattle Children's Hospital through Katie's Comforters Guild.  The first two started as potential quilts for a co-worker, but we decided they were not the style of the parents and went another direction.  The other three are using fabrics that I had on hand.  

This quilt went to a co-worker and used the blue and green solids I already acquired.  I don't seem to have a finished quilt picture so I am not sure what I put on the back.

 The co-worker I gave the other Parson Gray plus quilt to for her retirement asked for the second quilt and paid me for it.  I am happy that she likes them both and hopefully is enjoying her retirement snuggled up in them.

The blue Starburst quilt went to my sister in law when she got her AA degree.  Another example of using what I had.  The navy burst points and the blue solid came from stash.  The batiks were from the PNW Meetup in Seattle courtesy of Clothworks.

Cascadia started as part of a guild challenge for our local Artswalk.  On a sunny day, one can see two mountain ranges from various parts of town, the Cascades and the Olympics.  We had to use improv (I think) and the flowered fabric from V and Co.  I used leftover strings from the black, white and gray HST quilt that went to my nephew.

This quilt got finished as well.  Somewhere I have a finished picture but it is not easy to find at this moment.  So now, with 11.5 months in between posts, here's to some of the quilts I finished in 2016.  

Using the leftovers

Sometimes, I make more units that I should because I either didn't bother to count, miscounted, chose to cut out enough for an intended project that has yet to be started or decided that I wanted to have some layout choices.  I've attempted this month to finish a few of those up.

Two of those were in my Giving Tuesday post.  I cut out additional squares to make a second plus quilt and then used up all the extra "layout choice" units from my in-laws quilts.  This time around, I used the second set of charm squares from the Animal Party Charm Square Baby quilt that I made.

This is actually the original one that I gifted to a co-worker.  Apparently, I did not take a finished picture of the second version before I sent it up to get donated at the hospital.  Instead of white sashing, I used the remaining solid from the in-laws quilts and bound it in all the extra blue bindings I could find.

Next up in the leftover pile were blocks from the two Birthday Cake quilts that I made using Acacia.  Had I known how much I could have sold the raccoon prints from this line....I probably still would have made these quilts and donated them anyway.  Kind of like how I saw that one Tula print I had over a yard of sold for $14/ fat quarter and I chose to cut into it.

 So, I had maybe 24 leftover units from these two quilts.  I combined them with units from my first attempt at the Bizzy Kid pattern.  The first attempt had just involved way too many dark fabrics and not enough value contrast.  But, the colors did manage to coordinate really well with Acacia.  The solids of the leftovers and the sashing are not a perfect match, but it is close enough and I was happy to turn the leftovers into another baby quilt to send up.

When these two baby quilts (like the one above) were made for co-workers, I stitched the second line before cutting off the extra triangles.  This left me with 118 HST to press and trim.  I combined those with leftover hourglass blocks (probably from this hourglass quilt below ) and backed the quilt with a little more than  a yard of the blue superhero fabric from Ann Kelle.

Here is the new quilt.

It is backed in the blue superhero fabric and bound with Kona Pacific.  I decided to randomly sew the HST together into four patches.  I was a little more deliberate when I put the hourglass blocks in, but I did not over-analyze and just went with where they ended up with little rearranging.  Much better to get it done than paralysis by analysis.

Giving Tuesday

Today is Giving Tuesday.  I wasn't really aware of that until reading somebody else's post.  Figured I should perhaps showcase the quilts that were dropped off at Seattle Children's Hospital that I haven't talked about yet.

 First up is a stacked coins quilt using a variety of fabrics donated to me by Katie's Comforters Guild or my sister.

The second quilt was made from the leftovers of the two Pacific Crest quilts.  I overbought fabrics because of the wide variety of colors in the pictures my mother in law sent for her two quilts.  I made approximately 80 extra units so I could get the layouts and colors balanced the way I wanted to.  Rather than let the extras sit unused, waiting to be assembled, I threw together this quilt.  My normal layout assistant was a little distracted and chose to have identical units by each other.  I went with it rather than argue.  

The backing was made of other extra pieces from the quilt.  The fabric is from Laura Gunn's Edges collection.  

There was a single block Swoon quilt that I did not snap an additional picture of.

I got to choose a block for my guild's charity quilt bee.  I chose the Birch Tree quilt pattern by Amanda Jean Nyberg.  I made a couple blocks, pieced the guild blocks, made the backing and quilted it.  Binding was hand attached by another guild member.  This quilt got dropped off for Children's as well.

And finally, since the spirit of today would be giving, here are two that I finished up this weekend but did not make it in time to travel to my sister's house so she could drop them off before their appointment yesterday.  Hopefully I will get these to the hospital before the end of the year.

The purples joined the club

The purple blocks joined the club today.  I started later in the day so I didn't get as many done as I wanted.  Five is nothing to sneeze though.  It was a rainy weekend.  I'm thinking that perhaps these will get sashed in a gray solid and trimmed to 15" square with the gray around it.  But, I have a long time to make that decision.  Right now they are getting trimmed to rectangles as large as they can be.  Why make uniform sized blocks?  

I made very little progress last weekend on the quarter log cabin scrap quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts.  The main parts of these larger blocks have been sitting untouched for over a year in a visible location.  This is not my favorite form of scrap quilting.  It just takes me too long and I have to think too much to try to keep it square.  I think this will become some other slab scrap quilt with multicolored blocks.  A string quilt with my string scraps will probably happen instead because I like making those and they are fast for me.

 And here are two random bits of improv scrap quilt block making from leftovers of the Birch Tree quilt blocks I made for the guild charity blocks of the month.  I will develop this idea later.

And here is the stacked coin quilt for Katie's Comforters Guild.  I chose the binding fabric, but have made no effort to go beyond that today.

Until next time....

Some scrap sewing

It is that time of year where I really wish I was independently wealthy.  Work has been pretty emotionally draining and staying up past 8 pm seems really late.  The weather has been beautiful for weeks, my yard has lots that needs to be done, and I wish I could be at home once in awhile without the two kids so that I can stare at a clean house for more than 2 minutes before it is covered in Lego pieces.  But I also really do love Lego sets at the moment because they have been wonderful to help with the imagination of the kids with minimal adult intervention needed.  Sometimes, the room needs to be divided in half so they can each have their spaces where the other one can't touch their stuff.  

Here are some of the current sewing projects.  The scrap bins are pretty full so I started making slab blocks from the different colors.  My current projects include sewing monochromatic slab blocks, 

binding this quilt,

and needing to baste and quilt this one.  I think it would look better with spiffy quilting and I haven't quite managed to wrap my mind around that yet.  It should be done in about 2 weeks time to make the guild deadline, but the schedule right now does not have enough uninterrupted time in it to do what I want unless I start staying up later on work nights.  So I will need to make a choice between making the deadline and spiffy quilting.  

I also have a stacked coins quilt made from fabric given to me by Katie's Comforters Guild that I need to attach the binding to and take a picture.  The kids decided that I should make slabs from the entire rainbow, so today I will start on the cool color bins.  I am trying to just use small pieces and not cut pieces off of larger scraps.  That might not work for green, but it should work way too well for blue.  Sewing scraps into slabs is much easier for me than making quarter log cabin blocks with scraps.  I think I might try some mixed color ones next.

Warm HST quilt

 Back in June I found out that I would be leading the July guild meeting.  I came up with some stations as standing up and talking for long periods of time is not one of my favorite things to do.  One of the stations involved pre-made HST.  I asked people to design a block using a 4x4 grid, take a picture, and place the squares into a bag.  I assembled the blocks from the pictures (I think just one was not assembled by me).

      As this has been lingering in the background as something in progress that I need to finish, I finished it up this weekend.  Turns out that finding the missing camera battery charger was not necessary for completion because the pictures were on the other camera instead.  Oops.  Part of my delay was not being able to access the pictures on the camera with the dead battery. But now both battery chargers are where they are supposed to be.

      The backing is made up of larger scrap pieces that reasonably coordinate with the front.  Binding was chosen by the 7 year old and is Kona Coral.  I wasn't sure if I would manage to attach the binding before the sun went down but I did manage to do so.  Quilt holder didn't want to go outside in 30 degree weather a second time and actually the lighting in the back room is much better.  Who knew.

     Two designs ended up with two blocks each.  I put them in opposite corners.  I think I could have increased the sashing size from 2.5" to something a little bit bigger to help blocks stand out.  Or, I guess I could have added borders around the outside or used a different color.  It only stands out in the pictures and I didn't notice that in person.  

      I had eight guild members design a block which allowed me to design one.  Instead of doing so myself, I let my oldest have fun with the squares and made her choose.  She chose to copy the block on the floor next to her.

    The block layout chosen by the 7 year old.  She is quite proud of it.  I do have over 150 more squares so perhaps she'll keep making designs and I'll make more blocks until we use up all the prepared HST.  I do like that she also knows that this is going to be donated through Katie's Comforters Guild.  She's starting to ask if it is a hospital quilt that I'm making.

   

Fabrics: Kona White, Charm squares from Color Wheel Charm Swaps
Binding:  Kona Coral
Backing:  Waterfront Park Reflections in Black and Yellow, Dear Stella Naroibi Gray, Orange Dot from RJR
Size:  52 x 52"
Quilted in a meandering stitch by me
Designed by various members of SSMQG

     Another WIP finished and ready to go.  Three more main quilt projects to finish before a fairly clean slate and not a feeling of quilt guilt as I walk past the bins.  The other three projects are Blue HST, Blue hourglasses and the Purple Crazy Pieced quilt (of which I apparently have no picture.  As I looked for pictures I also noticed that there are quite a few projects that I have not posted here.  Oops).  This doesn't manage to include all my intended projects or some of the projects I started cutting for, but just the main ones that are really bothering me that they aren't done and are keeping me from starting on some projects I want to do.

 

Riley Blake scraps

 Scraps from the Flying Darts guild project (and the extras from the MQG Riley Blake Challenge) needed to be put to good use.  This weekend, I assembled the geese into a quilt top and added a few larger geese just for fun.  The background fabric mostly came from my bag of white scraps that I pieced together.  Other than the larger geese (and all the white I used to make the small geese), I did not need to cut additional white for the layout.  That makes me happy.

 The binding is from Peacock Lane and was the closest I could get to a match of the color for the yellow dots.  The 7 year old color consultant chose yellow for the binding.  Quilting simply is a functional meandering stitch.

 The back uses just a few of the larger pieces and a Dear Stella print that I had in a reasonable quantity.  This quilt will also end up at Seattle Children's in a few weeks through Katie's Comforters Guild.

     This one has been staring at me for a few weeks.  The geese have been living in a bag since May.  I am perfectly happy that most of the scraps are nearly gone and I can move beyond them.  They are no longer staring at me whispering that I should really make them into something.  I really have been feeling like I have too many projects going on and not managing to accomplish anything because I don't know which one to start working on again.

Fabrics:  Riley Blake Modern Quilt Guild Challenge Fabrics and Kona White
Size 41 x 47"
Quilted by me with a meandering stitch
Binding by machine with Peacock Lane Falling Leaves

Birthday Cakes

Last weekend I finished quilting and binding both Birthday Cake quilts.  Both of them (and the plus quilt) should be delivered this week to Children's Hospital through Katie's Comforters Guild.  Usually my sister drops them off when she is there for appointments, but we'll be up this time around and it will be my first time dropping them off.

     Both quilts are backed with flannel leftover from other projects.  Flannel is usually my go to backing for quilts so it almost seems strange when I choose to bind a project in plain quilting cotton.  The pattern was pretty simple and I was grateful for the opportunity to trim blocks down to size.  I wish I had reversed the stripe orientation on the pink quilt so it would seem brighter but it works reasonably well.  

Birthday Cake quilts
Fabric: Tula Pink's Acacia and Birds and the Bees
Size:  Approximately 46x46"
Quilted with loops by me

Blue Plus QDAD

Not too long ago, I was impressed by a design made by Michelle Wilkie (Factotum of Arts) as part of the Quilt Design a Day project.  Specifically the plus quilt week on this post QDAD week 13.  I loved the simplicity of the design and the negative space.  Knowing that I had a plethora of blue 5 inch squares cut to make a HST blue quilt, I chose to sacrifice some of those squares to make this quilt. 

I am unsure what all of the solids are.  I know that there is Kona Alegria (the background blue) and the 7 year old's favorites Kona Ocean and Pacific.  The plus is probably Kona Azure.

I quilted it with the standard, negative space and row filling wishbone design.  Usually I try to quilt in only one direction as it is faster for me that way, but this time I quilted both right to left and left to right.  Although it may seem insignificant, when I've tried that previously, I usually mess up going the opposite direction.

The backing fabric was Premier Lord Daisy Turquoise by Dan Bennett.  This quilt, and the two birthday cake quilts, will go to Seattle Children's at the end of the month (as long as I get the other two quilted and bound) donated through Katie's Comforters Guild.

Blue Plus Quilt
Designed by Michelle Wilkie @ Factotum of Arts
Fabric: Kona Pacific, Alegria, Ocean and three other blue fabrics
Binding: Kona Alegria
Backing: Premier Lord Daisy Turquoise
Quilting: wishbone rows by me
Approximately 54" x 60"