Holiday Stars

Thirteen hours later, my quilt for a guild show in October is finally done. This is also the quilt I will take with me to the HQ retreat in 2 weeks. Some of you may recognize these blocks from last year from the Row Robin swap. I think I have used maybe half of the blocks from that swap. The others were ones I made from the same fabrics.
I wanted to custom quilt this top as nicely and as creatively as I could. I made it a goal that my sashings would not be quilted in an ordinary or boring fashion. I guess you could say I really wanted to think outside the box a little bit. In the end, I absolutely LOVE how the sashing quilting brings another dimension to the quilt of otherwise ordinary star blocks.

There is a proverbial ton of pebbling in this quilt...more than a mile's worth of thread went into the pebbling (and other quilting). I think that the pebbling and circles in the sashings pulls the quilt together.

This was the first time (I think) that I have pebbled down the spines of the feathers. I am considering doing this for a much larger border soon (10"), so I thought I'd try it out on something of mine first. First off, I just LOVE these feathers too. Secondly, I have feathered so much on this quilt and the last one I did that I am starting to see definite improvements in my backtracking accuracy. Having 2 batts helps that as well. I added a layer of cheapo-Joann's thinnest polybatt over my usual 80/20 batting. I do notice that this quilt is not a lofty as the last one, which had wool as the top layer instead of the poly. But the added layer makes all of the quilting that much more visible. Here's some closer looks at the blocks...

There are several repeated blocks on the top, and I tried to quilt them the same to be a bit more cohesive on the sampler. Still, the quilting does vary a lot.

The lighter green fabric is very pretty on this one - it has a slight metallic sheen. I wish I had more of this fabric throughout.

These friendship star variants were made by me. Quick, easy and not too boring.

I like the look of the curved cross-hatching. I quilted that on several blocks like this.

Here's another block I made several of (I think most of them went into the table runners last year though!). I love the touch of magenta, and the quilting too is very pretty.

I actually nearly forgot about a horrible near-disaster I had on this quilt. I was stitching along, doing the circles using a template when all of a sudden plexi-glass went all over the place. Aw crap! I actually hit the template with the needle! Now I have inadvertently hit the hopper foot on the templates a time or two and chipped the edge of the templates, but this was a mess. My needle immediately broke in half and kept on stitching for about an inch and a half before my brain registered what was happening and I could stop the machine. After removing the well jammed needle half, I realized the gross damage that stitching with half a needle causes. Thank goodness this quilt is actually mine and not a customer's. It damaged both sides of the fabric. It is along a seamline, thankfully, and is much less visible because of that. I treated the area with "no fray" and will probably forget about it! It will just go down into my chronicles of Longarm Quilting Adventures.

Here's my favorite view...notice how the circle quilting forms the stars at the point where there might be a stone in the sashing? I love when motifs are hidden and unplanned, and then discovered when the quilt comes off the frame.

And lastly, a few pictures from the back...

I must get it bound in the next 2 weeks. UGH. So many things on my plate right now. Before my trip...I must quilt at least 3 customer quilts, two table runners and if time permits, one of my aunt's quilts too. AND...do a little fixit job to Primavera before it gets sent off next week. First though, dinner and the kitchen are calling me.

Go sew and have a good weekend.

Making the Best of Things

After receiving my rows of 9" star blocks from a Row Robin swap, I promptly set to work repairing and resizing the ones that were in need. There were a few that just "did not play well" with the others, mostly because they were either not a star or the greens were too forest green and not enough of the olive.

I pulled out these blocks and last weekend put two table runners together. These will be for my sons teachers for Christmas. This first one, I actually made two additional stars. The center block was 10" not 9.5" and I just didn't know how to make it work easily with all of the other smaller blocks. The stars I made are simple 8-point stars but they have a gorgeous deep red Fairy Frost to make them more festive. Those of you who visit here know how much I love the Fairies.
Lisa sent me too many fantastic Christmas prints last month, and I got to use some of them here. It's such a simple pattern for a runner, but it turned out to be very simple and effective. So much so that I did another one just like it.

The quilting on this first one was done all on the longarm, even all of the ditch stitching. I am slowly forcing myself to do more and more outlining/ruler work.

Here's the second runner. This is a great thing to use that tree block on. I don't know how this could be seen as a star, but it is perfect on a holiday quilt, especially with the pinwheels, which I just didn't care for the green background of with the other blocks. With the tree, they look like they were made for eachother. I longarm quilted most of this runner, but took it to my home machine for the outline stitching (before I got brave enough to do it on the LA)

The quilting is essentially the same on the two pieces...feather leaves, ribbon curls in the red sashings, and stippling around the stars.

...and the back of one...

I love how they turned out so much that I am seriously considering making runners from the entire stash of these blocks, or at least one for my holiday table.

Have a good weekend (PS, we are getting SNOW!

The first stitches...

Houston, we have liftoff. Finally. My LA is functional. I have a minor thing of finding out why I cannot determine where the laser pointer goes, but that is simple compared to not having a rail to place the carriage onto. Last night I figured out to thread the thing and how to make a bobbin. I loaded on some cheap muslin and tested a few stitches before I crashed in bed. I have done a little bit more today, but still have plenty of practicing to go.

In case you are thinking I have a sewing cave...You are right. It's a modified basement space. Not gorgeous, but 800 square feet all for me, and my 4 machines, iron, fabric stash. I have an electrician coming later this week to install overhead lights across the length of the longarm. I can't wait!

A peek at some of last night's doodling...Don't scrutinize too harshly. I know I have a ways to go before I am competent enough to quilt for hire. I ordered a few "tools" today (1/4" guides in various shapes) and 4 pantographs to practise on. My damn batting has not arrived yet and the stinking company has not returned my call either. That's my largest holdup in practising more - I hate to go buy more when I have 60 yards of 96" wide coming, allegedly. Must be coming via camel. I really want to make decent feathers so I think I have to invest in a book or two to show me some technique. Suggestions??

And real work from the weekend... I have made 5 more blocks for my row robin quilt. These are red & green stars. Hopefully I will get usable blocks from all partners, but I guess it's nice to have a few more. At least I know I like them!
...and a close up look.

I'll show more soon when I feel it is interesting!

Happy Labor Day Weekend

I guess it's about time to face the music...Summer's a coming to a close soon. It's pretty warm today, but with school back in session and me back at work teaching, the long and lazy days of summer are ending. It's time to move onto new ventures and make new plans - plans to carry me through the winter.

A couple weeks ago I showed the blocks I made for the flickr Quilt Block Exchange. Here are the ones that I received. One's not shown because it is the wrong size. And I actually made two of these so as to have 12. Sadly, I have run out of batting and am holding off buying more right now, so this (what would be my 52nd Linus quilt for this year AND the last of my goal for 2009!!), will have to wait to be finished. I have an offer from Dawn-Marie to use her Millinium Long Arm, and I think that this is the quilt I will play with on it. Surprisingly, she signed up for the 4SQS Holiday swap, and lives at most 5 miles from me! It is fun to see the assortment of colors, fabrics and patterns that come when all you specify is "pink and orange" blocks!
I have made this row for the Row Robin swap I am doing. The owner of the quilt has specified "In the forest, at night" as her theme. I have found this to be limitting. Perhaps it is just my lack of design mojo right now. The other four rows that have been done are here. I couldn't think of an animal that is out at night, given that the owl was already done. I hope that Harley thinks it is OK - I just aimed for a variety of trees with semi-dark backgrounds.

On my other front...

I am going next weekend to an APQS seminar for 3 hours to learn about their long arm machines, aspects of a LA business, etc. They also said we'd be able to play on some machines. I do not know yet about any trade show "discounts", but hopefully I will be prepared at that point to make a purchasing decision. The APQS was my least favorite LA that I played on at the Maine Quilt show in July, but I have heard from enough others that have them and like them. I thought it was worth another look.

I have been making flimsies over the last few weeks which will be quilted once I do get my long arm. Here are a couple that are completed...

I have not named them, although this reminds me of the beach surf and driftwood because of it's colors. It mostly from the Marcus Alfresco line, which is really pretty. Best of all, I bought the fabrics from Whittles for under $4 per yard too! It measures about 55"x60".

I didn't buy many of the fabrics for this flimsy (#2) recently - earlier this spring I think - so they were mostly full price or $7-9 per yard. I have mixed the Freespirit Annabella and Treetop Fancy lines. Both sets of fabrics are outta this world, if you asked me!! There are also touches of two tones of pink Fairy Frosts in the framing. These fabrics were more challenging to work with because I found myself fussy cutting much of it, but not wanting to waste the remainder. This flimsy is 53"x61".

Here is a closer look... (or dbl click above). The birds and butterflies and flowers are lovely together. Hopefully, when I get my Etsy shop up and functional, someone will want to buy this :-)

And lastly, I have a 4th flimsy in the works. It is based on this pattern below that I saw in a quilting magazine. I coincidentally had many of the fabrics, and even the chevron border fabric. The center of the quilt is done, but this morning I was assembling the border and made a critical mistake. Sadly, I had to order more chevron fabric before I can finish it :-(( It is really pretty, though, all done in Carla Miller and Kaffe Fasset prints.
Maybe next week I can show this!

Swap Pieces - Good and Not so Good

Swaps are a fun, and often interesting way to see and work in a style (or fabrics) that you might not otherwise chose on your own. Generally speaking, I enjoy them. Generally, anyhow.

Here are some pics of a row robin quilt in the works for Diane. I did the aqua row. I wanted to show how it will look with the other rows. There's 2 rows remaining on this quilt. Despite kind of cruddy lighting, the blues and greens are radiant and very saturated. She chose a simple theme: Monochromatic-Big & Little. So every row is constructed of a big and a small block of the same pattern.
another peek...

I showed closeups of a few blocks last week, but here are the others. My goal was to select/design unique blocks that had not yet been done, to choose something with some curves and more intricate piecing, and to frame out the lovely Asian flowers & butterflies in that darker teak material.

I hope Diane likes the row :-)

Now, that's a swap I "Like" (and I say that, because I haven't seen too much of what's being done on my personal quilt, but in general I like the works I have been sent to work on). Here's one that I wish I hadn't wasted my time on. Any person can make a 9-patch, or so I thought. I figured this swap would be a simple way to get a nice assortment of 9-patches without having to cut all of those individual pieces myself. I'll rethink this logic next time. Turns out there are way too many people out there that don't understand a 1/4" seam allowance, or trimming to 6.5" for a 6" finished block, or even that a 6" finished block ought to be 6.5" raw!

Here's my 1st set of 16 blocks received. They're OK in terms of color. Maybe I'm not nuts for the neon one, but that's OK for a donation quilt. Problem is that one block is only 6" square, and 3 more are under 6-1/4" !! Do I toss them? Do I pick them apart? I chose to complain to the host, which may have been my downfall.

So yesterday, my second set of 16 arrived. The hostess assured me she was measuring blocks and not accepting undersized blocks. Then 2 days before the mailing date she admitted to not checking ANY of them. My set arrived with FIVE that did not measure 6-1/4"! That is 30% of what was sent. Un-freakin' believable. I am quite certain that I got the butt of the selection because many of these are really unattractive in person. To piss me off further, I sent her my last set of 16 yesterday! If these had come first, I'd probably have sent 5 of them back! What luck.

I know that there are always varying degrees of ability and taste, but a hostess has to have better quality controls. I spend a fair bit of time on my block swap checking block sizes. I understand that there are always ones that slip through the crack, but her crack is a wide open door that says "Whatever!"

Not Really Making Quilts

If you have been following Emma's blog lately, you'll notice that she has great blog titles, as well as fantastic quilts to see. There's been Inspiration, Speculation, Celebration, Obsession, Anticipation, just to name a few. In keeping with this simple thought, here's my take on why you haven't been seeing finished quilts here lately...

1. Loneliness - I had proposed to my mom to jointly make a donation quilt. I thought she'd love it. I had a bunch of fishy novelties I wanted used up too. I made my 6-12" blocks. Turns out she doesn't really want to make "fish", sigh. I think she just doesn't want to sew. Oh well, here's 3 of my 6 brightly colored fish blocks. I will gather the fabrics I gave her this week and make my other 6 blocks for this Linus quilt myself.
2. Meticulation (is this a word??)- I spent time last week doing bullion embroidery on the front of Sophie's birthday dress. Very time consuming, but well worth it! The roses blend a bit, but are quite pretty.

3. Perfection - A lovely bodice/neck is done. The "Coin" Fairy Frost is absolutely perfect with this fairy material. It shimmers perfectly. I also used it on some sleeve and bodice piping, and the bottom of the dress will have a band of it. She'll ring in her 3rd year next month in high toddler style.

4. Obligation - I'm working on blocks for the row robin I am doing. Diane has selected "Monochromatic, Big-Small" as her theme. We are making a one color row with a larger and smaller block. Here's a couple of my blocks. The blocks are now done and need assembling into a 60" row. I love the aquas, and my styles for blocks turned out nicely I think. Of course I did one of these blocks (like I haven't seen enough of them lately in the 4SQS summer block swap!). I did 4 different blocks - I'll post the finished row soon so you may see the others too.

5. Exhaustion - I am just tired of this quilt. It's Sophie's dress quilt and this Saturday is the day it's being turned in for the Maine Quilt Show. The longer it is around, the more I find to do on it. It needed a label, but I did more hand quilting too. It needs a cloth bag made and it is DONE. The picture on the label is hard to really see well, but it's a shot I took recently of her wearing a dress I started kindergarten in. It was a cute profile shot, or so I thought. The inscription reads:

"My sweetest little girl, My only little girl, and my favorite reason for making pretty dresses".

Seemed appropriate~

6. Pandemonium - As if sorting nearly 1100 blocks to over 50 recipients is not enough, the 1st mailing of the 4SQS summer block swap left me with other things to do/worry about. I discovered one person should have gotten 40 blocks not 20, but I discovered this after all the "choices" of blocks were expired. I had 4 different blocks left when I realized it! She'll get her blocks at the next mailing. I also discovered over a dozen blocks with errors when I was sorting the packages. I pulled these aside and used my personal blocks. I had no way of knowing who to send them back to at that point. Talk about more Frustration. So, yesterday I took each of these apart and resewed them so that they could eventually be used. Not fun, but productive.

.

7. Procrastination - Procrastination sewing because our summer weather finally arrived. It rained much of June, sew or so I chose to sew at naptime. Last week the rain stopped. There are few things that I love as much as sewing/quilting - few places that I get absolute peace and serenity. My gardens are one of them. Here are a few pictures I added to my other blog last night of the glorious colors that surround my house. It's a magnificent spectacle of color!! As all of you Australians are suffering with the middle of your winter, let this bring you some warmth :-)

Progress on the little things

1. Row Robin Swap - Here's my row for Lori. She sent me this as her first row. It has flappy 3D geese and pinwheels. I'm not really sure how she's going to quilt it, but that's not my problem to figure out. She wants rows that are blue, yellow and white, with a clean feeling and/or some movement. I used mostly all batiks, since she had also used batiks. I designed this ebb-flow ocean wave design using EQ6. I hope she likes it because the paper piecing took about 5-6 hours for this 48" row!

2. Here's one of my April birthday block swap offerings. Cheryl wants this diamond pattern with Asian prints - I had quite a few on hand to play with!

I still have another April block to do for the bday swap, and it is a vacation themed block. I have this one in the planning stages, but no further. It will be about my favorite place on earth (Paris!).

3. Progress on those pesky little bows...12 of 16 are hand sewn on. They are very cute. And then I must go back and confirm that I have in fact completed the quilting in all areas.

4. SFRR3 - a sneek peek at my 1st border...a little hand work and a little curved piecing.

Now, I am nearly free to start on something new (once that PP mess is cleaned up downstairs).