Fun with Leftovers!

I am still plugging away on my Perkiomen Daydreams blocks.  I have enough blocks completed for 7 full rows and 2/3 of an 8th row.  Just a couple more rows and I will be at the half way point.  By assembling rows as a go it breaks up the process, which is nice, and it also means that I won't have to lay out 400 blocks all at once.  Here is a pic of the first 6 rows with rows 1 & 2 joined and rows 3 & 4 joined.  I replaced and re-arranged the blocks in row 5 after getting row 7 completed in order to better disperse fabrics and colors.

Making all of these blocks generates a lot of leftovers, some of which are totally usable in my book, while others go in a bag for my quilting friend who makes art quilts.  I have two types of leftovers from these blocks - strings of a certain length and shorter pieced units that come from cutting the block segments.  I am piecing string blocks with the strings and coasters with the other leftovers.  The plan right now is to make the string blocks into potholders rather than put together in a quilt.  My latest idea is to piece the strings diagonally and use those blocks in a quilt.  Otherwise I will end up with about 50 potholders by the time I am done with this quilt :-).

Before I post the leftover pics, here is a pic with a bunch of block components spread out as I select which one to add to each block.  I try not to duplicate an individual fabric within a block, but it's happened a few times in spite of my efforts.

And here are the leftovers and what I am doing with them.

Quilting Retreat Weekend!

Quilting Retreats are always conducive for me getting things done and this past weekend was no exception.  I left on Friday for the drive back to Grand Forks for a day long quilting retreat the next day.  One of my quilting friends graciously offered me a warm bed for Friday and Saturday night so I could continue coming to these retreats, which are held every 2-3 months at a church in Grand Forks.  These particular retreats are so popular that once you make it on to the list, you want to stay on the list!  I haven't missed a retreat since I was lucky enough to get in to the first one I attended in March 2015 :-).

For this retreat I took along two small quilts to be quilted and two piecing projects.  I got both of the quilting projects done and made good progress on one of the piecing projects.  The other one never saw the light of day :-).

The first quilt I got quilted was this little strippy string quilt that I pieced last year.  I need to write up some instructions for it that I will share whenever I get them done.  No promises on when that will be :-).  It's not a difficult quilt to piece and you can probably figure it out from the picture and this write-up.  The starting point was leftover ATM machine paper (we used to fill ATMs for our BIL), which is 3 inches wide, and my tins of short strings.  I foundation pieced strings on to the ATM paper in segments of various lengths.  I added chunks of 3 inch strips from the strip bins between the string segments in order to break things up a bit.  Finally, I added narrow sashing between the vertical strips to add some stability to all of those small strings.  The strips were cut 1 inch wide.  Even WITH those stabilizing strips, the poor little quilt developed a leaning problem.  I was able to correct most of the lean with a good basting job and the quilting.  For the quilting I just did randomly placed straight lines.  I start with a drawing a longer line from somewhere in the upper left corner that goes somewhere in the neighborhood of the lower right corner.  I've included a couple of close-up pictures of the quilting below.

The other quilt that I got quilted was a small batik postage stamp quilt.  A second one the same size is in process.  They were supposed to be for our night stands, but I'm not sure they work with our bedroom at the new house, so I will finish them both up and decide then.  They were still fun to make and used up a lot of little batik scraps.  The individual squares finish at 1 inch.  One of the closeup pics has a quarter on the quilt to show the size of the squares.

Once the quilts were quilted I moved on to one of my piecing projects.  Long, long ago I participated in a swap of 2" wide strips of Christmas fabric.  I made the quilt we were supposed to make with the strips, which was a nine patch and hour glass.  But I still had so many strips left that I made a bunch more nine patches and they have been sitting in a plastic storage box just waiting to be used.  And waiting.  Enter Bonnie Hunter's Dancing Nine Patch pattern.  It was PERFECT for getting these blocks into a quilt.  And it's free!  Bonnie has tons of free patterns on her Quiltville website so be sure and check them out.  I didn't get all of the blocks pieced at the retreat, but I was able to finish them up yesterday except for the one I put together wrong which was un-sewn and re-sewn today along with the last block that I didn't think I needed yesterday.  So here they are all laid out and ready to sew into a top.  It looks like a square layout is the way to go.  The main border fabric will be the same as the constant used in the quilt center.

Finally, I finished the stitching on the cross stitch project I've been working on while I was hanging out with my friend I stayed with.  I got my initials and the date on the piece this morning and gave it a good pressing.  This piece is Christmas Zipper by Bent Creek.

2016 Finishes

I started the year strong thanks to classes and retreats, but then summer hit with gardening and spending time outside and then suddenly we were unexpectedly moving.  The good news is that I did get a lot of quilt tops completed last year even if they didn't ultimately turn into completed quilts.  I already had a pile of unquilted tops, so I guess we know what needs to be the priority in 2017!  Of course, I also just packed and unpacked my personal stash and it's very obvious that a lot more tops need to be pieced as well if I have any hope of making a dent.  At least with all of the projects at the new house and the money required to complete them, I am not even remotely tempted to add anymore fabric to my already huge stash lol.

So on to my 2016 finishes.  January 2016 was pretty productive.  I taught a class for our Guild with my 2 Hour Table Runner pattern and completed a red, black and white version while demo-ing the steps for the class.  I got it quilted a few months later and binding completed in September.  I also got the binding sewn down for the two Floating Four Patch quilts that I had quilted in 2015, so those two little quilts are done, done.

In February I attended a retreat, which is always conducive for getting things done.  I actually got my Black & White Bargello top completed before the retreat so I would have it for Show & Tell.  As a bonus, I also was able to take my Bargello top to a Quilting Cocoon I attended in Naperville in April and get a picture of the quilt top with Bonnie Hunter, the designer of the pattern I used.  It's a free pattern and you can find it here.  During the retreat I pieced my Prairie Stroll top using a collection of fabrics I had purchased when I started quilting in 2001, so I was happy to finally have them into a completed quilt top.  This was a pattern from an issue of Quiltmaker magazine from 2001.  Also at retreat, I pieced a quick little table runner that is a free pattern on the Timeless Treasures Reef Charm Pack.

In March I finished my Mysterious top from a class I took with Doug Leko in February.  This was a great quilt to make!  It's one of those blocks that can result in a multitude of layout possibilities that all look very different.  I also finished a couple of trivets made from orphan blocks.  I like to practice my machine quilting on orphan blocks and turn them into trivets or potholders.

April brought the previously mentioned Quilting Cocoon held in Naperville, IL.  This was a great event set up by Craftours and featured classes with four national/international instructors.  Bonnie Hunter was one of them and while I haven't made any real progress on the class I took from her in April, I did manage to get my Texas Tumbleweeds top completed during the Cocoon and got a picture of the top with Bonnie and myself.  Texas Tumbleweeds was the class I had taken on a Quilting Cruise in November 2014.  The pattern can be found in her More Adventures with Leaders and Enders book and you can purchase it directly from Bonnie here. 

I also completed this little strippy strings top that will be donated once it's completed.  I had short strings I wanted to use so I sewed them onto leftover rolls of paper from the ATMs we used to fill.  I do plan to write up the instructions at some point, but haven't gotten to that yet.  Perhaps that will be a blog post when I finally get this top quilted and bound.  The top does have a bit of a left leaning problem, but I think I will be able to remedy that with a the quilting.

Finally, I finished  sewing down the binding on another of my 2 Hour Table Runners in April.  I call this one the "Caribbean" runner.

The next few months of quilting time were filled with a special project for which I got the top completed in July.  My FIL passed away in 2014 and I am using his shirts to make quilts for my husband and his sister.  I finished his sister's quilt top in July.  It is a combination of string pieced blocks and applique.  I used the quilt Angel Kisses from the Strips and Strings book by Evelyn Sloppy as inspiration for the quilt and for the applique patterns.

While in the throes of buying a house, selling a house and packing to move, I needed some mindless sewing to keep my sanity.  I had received some free strips with my Island Batik orders, so some 16 patch blocks using matching pairs of the strips was just what I needed.  I trimmed the strips to 2 1/2 inches wide for my blocks.  A quick tutorial on piecing 16 patch blocks will likely be one of my future blog posts although there are plenty such tutorials already out there :-).  So here is my 16 patch top.  It's a small top that will be great for a child.  Once I get it quilted and bound it will be donated.

And the final finish for 2016 happened on December 31, 2016 at about 11 p.m. as I put the final stitches in the binding of my Jingle Table Runner.  This was a free pattern on the Jingle charm pack from Timeless Treasures.  I added borders because I wanted a wider runner.  The piecing was super easy.

Cutting Corners...

No, not as in short cutting.  But rather as adding the final piece to each of the cute little batik string blocks I have been making.  As part of my batik stash, I have stack of 5 inch charm squares that I have purchased over the years.  They aren't die cut so they need to be trimmed in some manner prior to using them.  Which makes them perfect for my project. 

When I got to the final corner pieces for my string blocks, if the corner was too large to use one of my short strings, I found a coordinating charm square and whacked a triangle off the corner.  And soon I had a pile that looked like this:

Shortly thereafter, I had 28 more finished blocks.  Only a bazillion more to go lol.

And a closeup:

Batiks and strings are two of my favorite things, so I am love, love, loving working on these blocks!





 

New Project!

I have had a bag of bright batik strings saved for quite some time to use to make 5 inch string blocks.  I had fifteen foundations cut and ready to go, so I finally pulled out the strings to get started.  Unfortunately, they had been in the bag so long that they all needed to be pressed before I could even start with the sewing.  Sassy helped with the pressing lol.

Finally the sewing commenced and it didn't take long before I had fifteen cute little blocks pieced and trimmed.

And below are the trimmings from those blocks.  Which I didn't save for pet bed stuffing, or for any other reason.  Go me!  I didn't even pull out the "big" pieces that would have been perfect for crumb blocks lol.  Maybe I have finally been reformed from trying to use every little piece and can now throw away trimmings like these with no guilt.  I'm thinking the prospect of moving in less than six months is probably helping in that regard lol.



After making these blocks, I decided that a  bed sized quilt made with these little blocks would look fabulous, so now I only need about 273 more blocks by my calculations lol.  I've cut more foundations and strings, all from my batik stash, so I'm ready to go as soon as I can get back to my sewing machine.





Strings from Stash is Done!!

I put the last stitches in the binding of Strings from Stash on Friday night.  Woo hoo!  I love, love, love this quilt.  It was so much fun to make from start to finish.  The story of this quilt is this post and this post.  The second post also includes a tutorial on how to make string blocks if anyone is interested in making a quilt like this themselves.  It's really quite easy.

Here is the finished quilt:

And here's the back:

So far this weekend I have been like a quilter possessed working on Indian Summer.  I made the backing yesterday morning, got the quilt layered and basted and I am half done with the quilting.  I'm hoping to finish up the quilting today.

Oh, and as a side note, Echo has received no less then 2 more baths from Maya since I posted about the first one on Thursday.  He seems to like it, so whatever floats his boat I guess LOL.

Playtime is Finished!

As I mentioned yesterday, I finished sewing the purple squares on the Playtime quilt last night.  Here is the final finished quilt.  The story of how this quilt came about is in this post.

A closeup of the purple squares, which were quilted on with a raw edge:

A closeup of the rest of the quilting:

The back, as well as a closeup of the quilting on the back:

The threads I used were YLI Jewel in the bobbin and Coats & Clark #'s 810 (purple variegated) and 826 (yellow variegated) on the top.

On a pet note, Maya decided that Echo needed a bath this weekend.  He allowed her to thoroughly wash him from front to back and even rubbed his head on hers and moved closer when she took a break.  He's such a kook.  He looked like he had a really bad hairdo for quite awhile afterwards and he was also a bit crunchy.

Option #2 it is!

Thank you to everyone who voted for the options for finishing my Playtime quilt that I wrote about in this post.  The clear cut winner was Option #2, the purple squares set on point. 

That was my original plan for finishing the quilt, which was why the squares were cut and the quilting was done the way it was in the yellow squares.  After I pinned the purple squares on, I started questioning my plan, so I figured I'd throw it out to the blogging world and see if I was way off base or not.  Glad to know that I wasn't :-).

I finally got the squares quilted on tonight, but don't have time to write a detailed post with pictures of the quilting, etc., so look for that at a later date.  Right now I am off to work on health insurance applications with DH.  Fun, fun.  NOT.  I also realized when I pulled this picture back up, how much I liked my floors in Texas for taking pictures.  They are really nice for setting off the quilts, unlike the light colored tile that I have here in Phoenix.

Almost Finished Quilt - Need Opinions Please

I finished up the binding on my Playtime quilt a couple of days ago, but technically it’s not quite done. I still need to put something in the large yellow squares, or at least I think I do. That’s where you all come in. I’ve got three choices of what I can do and I’d like to know what you all think.

Option 1 is to simply quilt the rest of the yellow squares. Right now there is an open square space in the middle and the rest is quilted with matching yellow thread.  I could quilt the remaining space with the same thread, or remove the yellow thread and re-quilt that area with a colored thread to tone down the large squares.  Here’s the picture of this option:

Option 2 is larger purple squares, set on point, and quilted on with raw edges:



Option 3 is small purple squares, set straight, and quilted on with raw edges. The squares in this picture aren’t actually cut. I just folded some fabric and laid them on the quilt. The square on the left is a bit larger than the one on the right. If you choose this option, let me know which size square you like the best (i.e. the smaller square on the right or the slightly bigger square on the left).



I’m looking forward to the opinions on this quilt. I think I know which option I prefer, and I know it’s ultimately my decision, but I still want to see what you all think.