Adorla for the shore

My husband's family goes to the New Jersey shore every year.  As a thank you, I am making or have made  quilts for the house.  After seeing the Pacific Crest quilt in the room, I wish I would have made it with a whiter background color.  The chamois color is too yellow in the room although there is that shade in their decor as well.  It just isn't the dominant color.

The decor for the downstairs was more problematic in my mind.  The left was what was sent to me and the right is a pillow from Pottery Barn that reminds me a little of the color scheme, but would need to be a little less color and a little more of the neutral to fit in to the room.  (And wow, I did not realize how much a pillow costs from Pottery Barn.)



Now my color choices are not perfect for the room, but I decided that Carolyn Friedlander's fabrics might be a good starting point because they are fairly neutral heavy.  I didn't feel like I should make anything that outshines the ottoman or stands out in the room.  The curves on the print for the ottoman made me want to use curves on the quilt, but I didn't want to over-commit myself to difficult sewing that might take forever this summer.  I hadn't really sewn curves with precision (improv curves don't count).

Angela at Cut to Pieces, released her free pattern on the Robert Kaufmann website shortly before we left on vacation.  While we were there, I kept thinking about it.  Lots of negative space, not super busy pattern, shouldn't stand out too much in the decor.

So, after clearing an unfinished project or two off the plate, I started the quilt yesterday and finished today.  I did not have to use the seam ripper either.

 Directions for the pattern were pretty easy to follow.  I made templates as I do not have an Accuquilt.  I either did not cut my long strips accurately or had some other problem as I had to piece about an inch or so to both of the long strips to make them match the pieced part.  The colors of the crosshatch were chosen by the eldest child with symbolism narration included.  "This represents the color of the grasses.. the moon...the water...sand......" for each and every selection.  Each had it's own complete sentence said in a melodramatic tone.

  This is the background fabric from Doe.  Still not easy to tell which print it is.  The quilting choice was the mundane meandering stipple, but I really like it.  I should remove the negative value judgement that I am being lazy when I choose that for quilting.

No pictures of the back as it is simply some Kona Butter that I had on hand and more of the Doe fabric from the front.  Binding is also in the Doe fabric so it doesn't stand out.  The quilt is approximately 50x60" and I did not come up with a plan to make it any bigger than the pattern.

This was a fun and easy finish and now I should go back to completing some WIP quilts.

Arts Walk Quilt finished three months after the fact

Back in early March or late February, I finished this quilt top with the intention of finishing the whole quilt in time for the guild exhibit at the local Arts Walk in April.  The Coral pattern was a free download by Angela Walters.

But it sat, unfinished and untouched while I debated how to quilt it.  It seemed to need spiffy quilting and I just wasn't up for spiffy quilting.  And the deadline for the exhibit passed and I still didn't touch it.  Last month I finally basted it and then thought about how to quilt it.  Yesterday, I finally committed the time to quilt it.  Today it is machine bound and washed.

My quilting is only somewhat spiffy in my mind, just five wavy lines that follow the pattern of each block.  They are not so straight, but flow, like water.... It is a step above loops or meandering stipple.

The quilt came together relatively quickly and painlessly. The guild rules stated that we could add solids but only use the given Anna Maria Horner print.  I pulled coordinating solids from the print using Pink Chalk's What Goes with What feature and Hawthorne Thread's Field Study page.  I believe the main background is Kona Indigo.  FS Cosmic Blue, Purple and Cotton Candy, AG Crystal Pink and Parisian Blue, Kona Alegria and Lupine, Michael Miller Mint, Starfruit and Venus.    There might be one or two others but I am unsure at this point and my record keeping was not so good.

I deviated from the pattern just a bit by making it bigger.  I'm not sure if it is a problem that I have in wanting to make quilts large enough for beds and not just lap quilts.  This is approximately 64 x 88 I think.  Perhaps it also has to do with the size of most people in the family.  A 70 inch quilt really doesn't cover one's toes extremely well when one is 69.5 inches.  By then, it is close enough to being twin size, may as well make it a little bigger.

 The back is an American Made Brand solid, maybe dark aqua, paired with a print from Denyse Schmidt's Shelbourne Falls in Lilac.

I will keep working on sharing the backlog or projects that were completed between March and now.  Definitely not as many finishes as in the previous year.  It will get better.  

Look! Pillowcases and pouches!

I've sewn since March.  I've finished things since March.  I just haven't shared anything since then.  Work was much busier and I spent a lot of time weeding and attempting to remove invasive plant species from the yard.

While on vacation, my mother in law requested pillowcases to match the quilt I made her many years ago.  The quilt was made with Eva by Basic Grey.

Luckily, a quilt shop nearby had some of the prints left.  Most of them were the dark purple prints but there was one green one.  She also requested two twin sized quilts sometime before next year when we see them again.  The colors should match artwork she has on the wall and be muted.  I can understand people's reluctance to take on commissioned quilts.

It was also difficult to distinguish the colors from the photo she sent of the artwork.  I recommended that she look at fat quarter bundles and see which ones strike her fancy so I may choose one.

Fearful that she would not like the purple band on the bottom quilt after her request for muted colors, I bought some green grunge fabric and used the leftovers to make the upper pillowcase.  They are now sent and she has two options to use, or she can purchase some off white pillowcases that would coordinate with the Kona Snow used on the quilt.  

And way back during Teacher Appreciation Week, I chose to make pouches for the kids' teachers and assistants.  I let the kids have limited choice for fabric selections that coordinated with the zippers I had on hand.  

I am looking forward to a year or two in which the kids don't have 3 or more teachers or assistants for each of them.  Or, I need to start now for next 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.

Blue HST finish

     And now for another installment of....I finally took pictures of a finished quilt from last month.  The Blue HST quilt was finished a few days after the new year.  I think I last posted pictures before it was basted but wrote about it after it was basted.  

      A not so happy quilt holder did not work today and managed to survive standing for a few minutes on his swollen ankle to let me get some pictures.  Originally I thought of donating this to the elementary school auction, but I like it too much.  I love that it was put together pretty randomly and I still love how it looks.  It should not have taken me two years to put it together.  Oops.

      And in no way am I trying to gloat about our weather.  I wish it were a little bit colder, although not as cold as everywhere else.  I'm just concerned about the lack of snow pack and the water supply for the summer months.  The local mountains should be snow covered right now, not bare.  Snow covered mountains are good.  No snow pack is bad.....But I am doing a fairly good job of starting to weed the yard and clean it up and mowing the lawn. And I survived outside today wearing a light fleece and shorts although not for an extended period of time.

      The blues are a wide selection of random solids.  Kona, Art Gallery, and quite a few Free Spirit solids from when Fat Quarter Shop cleared out their inventory a few years ago.  

      Here is the quilt through the lens of the 4 year old photographer.  His stated goal was to focus on the bottom of the quilt, blurry fingers, and close ups of the quilting.  Maybe not so much.

     I pieced the leftover HST into the backing.  Dark flannel backing is not the best idea I've discovered.  Too many things cling to it like that thread in the lower left.  Lesson learned.  This ended up about 64 x 72.  It is just a touch short for my liking and I keep pulling it off my toes when I try to use it.  But I still like it very much and plan to keep it.

     I still have one more finished quilt to blog, one quilt top, one quilt that needs binding (and a charged battery in the camera to allow for uploading of pictures) and a few other random projects.  I'll get to them soon...

Freebird Stars

     Soon after returning from winter break, it was abundantly clear that a co-worker needed a bit of extra assurance that she had a large group of us who cared.  This work in progress at the time quickly became a quilt for her.

      Way back in 2010, I really liked Freebird by MoMo and bought a complete fat quarter bundle.  Then it sat in my stash untouched but with the intention of becoming quite a few patterns.  Last year, I used up the large scale prints on 2 St. Louis 16 patch quilts.  My intention was to use the small scale prints for Jaybird's Firecracker pattern.  When I re-read the directions, I changed my mind.

     Instead, I used Julie's White Stars pattern (I'm not sure if that is the real name) from her book.  I devised my own measurements to use nearly all of the fat quarter and make a 60 x 80 quilt.  If I were to make this again, I probably would use some other fabric instead of just white for the stars, but I still like it.

     Quilt holder is working overtime on weekends so good pictures are harder to come by.  This also has been finished and gifted for over a month so daylight definitely was a bit of an issue.  Constant rain was also a problem at the time.
     As I wanted this done quickly to give it to her as soon as possible, I quilted it with a meandering stitch all over.  It is bound in the purple eggs print from the line.  I did not have enough of the brown eggs to make it all the way around, but I did have enough purple.

     To continue the theme of caring and support, I used one of the heart flannels from Pretty Potent as well as a flannel scrap that was nearly perfect to fit the backing.  The white patch at the bottom has signatures from many of her friends from work with a line modified from Llama, Llama, Red Pajama,   "We're always near, even if we're not right here."

     It is gifted and she appreciated it.  Hopefully it will help her remember that there are a lot of people thinking about her.