Two More Baby Quilts

The next two quilts I finished for my cousin were a smaller version of my Hole In The Barn Door quilt from last year and a smaller version of the Chain Linked quilt.  (Click those links if you want to see the full-size versions.)

She had seen those two quilts on my Facebook page when they were for sale in December as part of my "make room in the quilt closet" efforts.  As with the Ship Shape quilt mentioned in the previous post, the overall designs of these quilts appealed to her, so she asked me to make something like them, but smaller, for her newest grandchildren.  

Here is the Hole in the Barn Door quilt that I made for her.  It measured about 43 x 55 inches before quilting.  I forgot to measure it again after quilting.

This is where I will give the block construction details, because, yes, you may be interested, but also because otherwise I will forget.  I've often had to refer back to the blog for the specifics on how I did something, and I will probably keep having to do that.  I'm sure keeping a written quilt journal would be a helpful and handy reference, but I can't seem to be bothered to be that organized on paper.  I tend to scribble things down on whatever is handy and then toss it aside, or worse, jam it into a "safe place."  Unfortunately, experience indicates that after a couple of months, those "safe places" are indeed quite safe from even me!

So here are the details.  For each 10-1/2-inch block, cut:

• Two 4.5-inch squares of solid color fabric (for HSTs) - trim HSTs to 4 inches*
  
• Two 4.5-inch squares of background (i.e. white) fabric (for HSTs) - trim HSTs to 4 inches*
  
• One 4-inch square of solid fabric (for center)
• Four 2.25 x 4-inch rectangles from background (white) fabric
• Four 2.25 x 4-inch string-pieced rectangles
  

*OR cut these squares 4-3/8" if you are careful about your scant 1/4-inch seam.  I actually ended up doing that, and there was no trimming necessary to make a 4-inch HST.

I just love the brightness of this quilt.  It has such a happy vibe!

Next, here is the smaller version of Chain Linked, which came in around 44 x 54 inches before quilting.

I followed the Chain Linked quilt pattern cutting instructions but decreased the number of blocks required, laying it out 5 blocks across by 7 down (20 tan bordered and 12 white bordered in my quilt).

Funny thing, as I finished sewing the last seam of this quilt top, I won the game of bobbin chicken!  That three-inch piece of thread was all that was left in the bobbin.  Because my Juki bobbin is hidden from view, I didn't even know I was playing, but I'm happy I won!

(Like my mug?  My brother can make one for you HERE!)

These quilts, along with the smaller version of Ship Shape, were mailed off to my cousin earlier this month.  She called me after she got them and said she absolutely loved them.  That's always so nice to hear!

To be honest, I wasn't sure about this quilt at first.  I had a fat quarter bundle of various graphic prints in the stash that were calling me, so once I landed on a combination of solids that would tie everything together reasonably well, I just started cutting.  

By the time the quilt was done, it had totally won me over.  Sometimes it's good to get out of your own way and just do the thing!

Linking to:  Finished or Not Friday! at Alycia Quilts and Can I Get a Whoop-Whoop?

~Paulette

A Triple Finish

While I love the whole process of making quilts, there's just something wonderful about getting them D-O-N-E, done!  

Maybe it's the space it opens for other ideas to enter, or maybe it's the sense of accomplishment, that I shepherded something through to completion, that I followed through with an intention.

You've seen these quilts in various stages in prior posts.  The first two were sent to the longarm quilter a few months ago and returned several weeks ago, and have waited patiently to be trimmed and bound.  I finally finished them last week.

This is a scrappy, stringy Hole In The Barn Door (or Churn Dash) quilt.  I was inspired by the blocks Chantal was making last fall.

I'm glad I went for the scrappy inset border rather than settling for just the gray.

The backing was a vintage cotton sheet found at the thrift store.  It adds such a nice softness to the feel of the quilt.  You can see Sandy's pretty quilting from the back side.

The second finish was this scrappy Trip Around the World quilt that was fun to put together with an eclectic mix of strips.

I love the riotous look of this one.  The backing is one I found at an estate sale of a quilter, yards and yards of a perfume bottle print.

This will be my new fall TV-watching quilt.  Bring on the popcorn and Netflix!

Last, but not least, is my Positivity 2022 quilt.  I raided the box of batik scraps for this one, and I really like how it turned out.  

The back is a pretty floral cotton shower curtain I found at the thrift store, brand new in the package.  I want to say it was $2.99 or something like that, which is fantastic for four yards of fabric. 

I quilted it in an overall meander and made the binding from leftover batik strips.  This will be on its way to Mercyful Quilts this week.

Whew, that feels good!  Three quilts done...now what's next?  For starters, I might make some fall crafty stuff with a kit a friend gifted me earlier in the year.  How about you?

~Paulette

What I Did When I Wasn't Blogging - Part 1

I made progress on a few things during my March and April blogging hiatus.  I finished a couple of quilt tops I'd been working on.  Here is my Scrappy Trip Around the World.

I usually got a better sense of this quilt from a side view as I was putting it together.  Not sure why that is, maybe just the greater distance as I stood in the laundry room door versus straight in front of it.

And here's the Hole in the Barn Door quilt top.  I love the colorful scrappiness of both of these.

I wasn't sure how to border this quilt at first, but it seemed to be asking for more color beyond the blocks themselves, so I sandwiched a strip of scraps between an inner and outer gray border.

I've sent these to local longarm quilter Sandy and I'll probably see them back in a few months for binding.  There's no rush as I will probably be keeping these, at least for the time being.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago, I sent some quilts to Rachael and Becky of Quilted Twins.  Becky has been  heading up a massive relief effort for Ukranian refugees in Poland.  She and her husband and team of helpers have been doing great work providing supplies and other essentials to Ukranians displaced and otherwise affected by the war.  Her sister Rachael in Florida was gathering quilt donations to be shipped to Becky through the end of April.

* * * * *

The hubs and I enjoyed some nice nature walks, even though winter seemed to be taking her sweet time leaving.  We caught some early spring migration as we walked the marsh trail one cold but sunny March day.  It was fun to see and hear gorgeous trumpeter swans, as well as other swan species, geese, and red wing blackbirds.

A pair of trumpeters flew so low over our heads we could hear the "zizz-zizz" of their wing feathers vibrating.  Who knew their beating wings made such a neat sound!  Their trumpeting sounded like the honking of an antique car horn to me, but that was really cool too!  (Click the link to listen to a sample.)

* * * * *

I read and/or listened to some interesting biographies and memoirs, including the audiobook versions of Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by Anderson Cooper, The Boys by Ron Howard and Clint Howard, and Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci.  Two thumbs up on all of them!  

The audiobook versions were narrated by the authors, which I enjoyed.  I will say that on Vanderbilt, though, I also got the hard copy of the book from the library to read some of the chapters myself.  While Anderson Cooper does a fine job overall, he read a little too fast for my liking on some of the more descriptive chapters about Gilded Age parties and opulent decor and who wore what, etc.  I needed to imagine those scenes at a more leisurely pace.  (I also found it a bit odd, to be honest, that he pronounced "satin" like "sadden"—and there was a whole lot of satin in one chapter in particular, which, incidentally, did not sadden me one bit!)

* * * * *

My sister came over to sew with me, and we made some throw pillows together.  Probably 10 or more years ago, she gave me some Debbie Mumm Christmas fabric of six different Santa panels.  She'd bought it for herself in the 1990s but didn't make anything with it.  I didn't do anything with it either after she gave it to me, just put it away in a drawer.  When I was decluttering the sewing room in the beginning of the year, I showed it to her again and we decided to make a day of it and sew the panels up as pillows for her.  This fabric was truly "old enough to vote," as my dad used to say.  (I say: Can we procrastinate or what!)

As it happened, I had some nice coordinating fabrics in my stash for an assortment of different borders and pillow backs, so we sewed up all six pillows over the course of what ended up being couple afternoons together.  It was fun to have a sewing partner and to finally get them done—months before next Christmas, I might add!  ;)

I'm going to break this catch-up post into two parts.  Stay tuned!

~Paulette

Declutter Challenge 2022 - Days 4 through 16

I've been plugging along on the daily sewing room Declutter Challenge and making good progress.  Here's a little catch-up of how it's been going.

Day 4 was books.  Like most quilters, I have quite a few, but they're fairly organized and contained.  Still, it was good to take stock and see if there was anything that could be moved along.  I ended up with a cutting table full of titles, one of which (Mark Making) I thought might be of interest to a friend.  It's been passed on to her and is now living a good life in Idaho.  The rest of these got a free ride to Goodwill.

Day 5 was patterns.  I took this to mean quilting patterns for purposes of this challenge.  I do have a ton of garment sewing patterns to weed through, but that's a job for another time.

Lordy mama, there was a lot to sort through!  I had printed out so many tutorials for quilts I wanted to make "sometime," but it had gotten out of hand.  When it was all said and done, I had about a ream and a half's worth of paper to recycle (see upper right stack with blank sides up in photo below) and other patterns to organize (lower right), which I did the next day.  I set up a better filing system for those, so at least I'll know better where to find them without riffling through the entire bunch.

Day 6's task was to address the archives.  That is, the notes and journals of patterns made or work done that you want to keep, valuable memories or mementos.  My quilt archives got whittled down to what fits in a divided binder (lower left blue binder in photo above). 

A couple of old-old quilt patterns went into the archives, including my grandmother's paper templates for a Dahlia quilt (the construction of which I can't quite wrap my head around yet), as well as a 1961 letter from my mother to her aunt, which was never mailed.  That letter included paper templates and a drawing of the setting for a Sunflower quilt (a type of Dresden plate) that Mom had made.  

I remember my sister and I each had a Sunflower quilt on our twin beds, and one of them is still in the family.  I had it out last fall to photograph.

I don't know why the letter was never mailed, but I'm glad to still have it.  I had to smile at the paragraph on top of the second page of the letter where Mom writes, "The baby talks already and tries to say everything..."  That baby was me at 14 months!

Day 7 was a catch-up or a rest day.  I did a little catching up and then worked on a squirrel project that I had started during the decluttering process, a Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt.

I had happened to pull out my leftover bindings drawer and thought, hmm...all those 2-1/2 inch binding strips could be sewn into a Scrappy Trip block.  I've never made one but have wanted to for a while.  Let's try a block or two with these scraps and see how it goes...

Well, you can imagine how hard it was to stop at a block or two.  That became the go-to project between decluttering sessions for the next several days. 

Day 8 was pins and needles.  Karen of Just Get It Done Quilts talks about inherited stuff on her video for Day 8, "The things that aren't your legacy, they belonged to another person.  You don't need to take on legacy stuff.  You do you.  Keep what YOU use."  I'm paraphrasing, of course, but I definitely needed to hear that!  So I said goodbye to the group above, largely from my mom's sewing collection.

Day 9 was thread.  My threads were in fairly decent shape.  I got rid of a couple spools of hand quilting thread and old-old buttonhole twist because they were duplicates or more inherited-but-unused stuff.  I honestly don't do a lot of hand quilting so one spool was plenty to keep around.  I did put my vintage threads, which were gathering dust in an open container, into a vintage cut glass loaf dish that belonged to my grandma.  They're just for display, I don't use them, but now they're protected and look pretty on the shelf.

Day 10 was rulers and mats.  I gathered them from all their various hidey-holes and put the most used ones on the ruler rack I got for Christmas, and the rest went onto a large open spot on the pegboard in the workshop next door to the sewing room.

Day 11 - Scissors and cutters.  Again, I just gathered together what I had and then let go of a pair of rusty hair scissors (?!) and a dull and unwieldy pinking shears that were my mom's (top row, horizontal items).  The rest are still sharp and useful.  Job done.

Day 12 - Appliances and devices.  This included "anything with a cord," which could be old sewing machines, cameras, electronics and tech, etc., together with accessories and manuals. A whole bagful  of extra and/or no longer used cords, cables, and appliances went bye-bye.

Then I took a look at the old Singer 600 that my daughter returned to me in 2020.  She said the needle position was no longer straight and was sewing wonky.  I had picked up this machine at a thrift store several years earlier and then (after a trip to the spa for general maintenance) gave it to her to use.  

It's an all metal geared machine, unlike some later Touch and Sew models, so I felt it was worth taking a look at before giving up on it completely.  Luckily, it seemed that simply moving one of the levers fixed the issue, and after a thorough cleaning and oiling, it was sewing like a champ once again.  Since I don't need another machine (have five already, plus a serger), and my daughter now has a new machine, I'm giving it to my sister.  First, though, I got out the hot glue gun and fixed up the thread holder with some new felt, since the original cushioning material that held the thread spool in place was disintegrating into fine bits of powder.

Day 13 - Notions.  I was dreading this, but as it turned out, it wasn't bad.  I got rid of a bunch of "legacy" ribbons from mom's stash, along with some elastic and a few other doodads.  I tossed some old interfacing, reorganized some of the drawers to consolidate things, and that was about it.  I kept more buttons than I'll ever need or use in my lifetime, but buttons are small and they're fun to look at and don't take up much space.  I also kept all the zippers I've collected (mostly from thrift stores), because I do use them for little makeup bags and pouches.

Day 14 - Another catch-up or rest day, and/or to remove excess furniture from the sewing room.  I don't have excess furniture so I worked on an idea for a table runner from scraps.  I'll talk about that more in the January Table Scraps Challenge link-up this coming weekend.  It was fun to play around!

Day 15 - UFOs.  Okay, don't hate me but I don't have many UFOs.  I've got a quilt pin basted and waiting to be quilted, if that counts.  Otherwise, there's the scrappy string Hole In the Barn Door (Churn Dash) quilt that I sashed together a week or so ago.  I think it may need another border, but I'm percolating on that.  So that's two things.  

The third and truly oldest UFO is one I've had for 10 or 12 years.  It's a little attic windows quilt with a vintage bird fabric I thought was so cool to find at the time.  But I'm really "meh" on this thing.  I don't love it, and maybe it just needs to be finished—or cut apart and reworked.  Something.  I just don't feel compelled to finish it now (ever?), but for the purposes of this challenge, I dug it out of the drawer and took a picture of it.

Day 16 - Kits.  What's a kit?  It's a fabric bundle (or fabric pull) and pattern or idea for a quilt.  I don't have any kits, currently, so I worked on my scrappy table runner instead.

And that brings me up to today, Day 17 - Scrap Management, which I haven't yet started.  It sounds like it may get messy—or at least interesting!

~Paulette

Finishes and Starts

I visited a new-to-me quilt store with my daughter recently called Blue Bar Quilts.  What a neat place!  So many beautiful fabrics, I was a bit overwhelmed by it all but in a really good way.  I should've taken more pictures of the store, but at least I got one right when we came in, before I went into full ooh-ahh mode as I wandered among the pretty bolts.

I can show you what I came home with, though.  Most of this is for Christmas and other secret sewing, so I won't be elaborating more until those projects are done and gifted.  Fun stuff, though!

What I am happy to reveal is that I finally quilted the redwork baskets quilt top that I had finished a few months back.  You can read more about that HERE.  Evie had sent me the beautiful embroidered blocks to put together into a quilt to be donated.  While I rehabbed from finger surgery (and then procrastinated some more), it patiently waited for me to figure out how to quilt it.

Ultimately, I decided that simple straight-line quilting inside the embroidered spaces was the way to go, but I didn't want to make tracks all over that pretty stitching.  Just enough to keep the layers together and not detract from the embroidery.

The baskets of flowers seemed to have a somewhat overall V shape, so I did some doodling on paper and finally went with a V overlaid with an inverted V within the embroidered blocks.  Above you can see the painter's tape, which I used as a quilting guide, marking some V's.  I'd quilt a couple areas at a time and then rotate the quilt 180 degrees and repeat the process.

I did end up going back and making a horizontal line through the center to make sure it didn't puff out too much in the resultant diamond shape.  Hence the V's turned into A's, but whatever, it worked.  You can see the quilting better in the back view.

Now it's been mailed off to Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo.  Yay, I'm doing the finished quilt happy dance!

While I was at it with the quilting foot yet on the machine, I quilted the streak-of-lightning baby quilt made with Star Wars fabric scraps.  

Both that and the "Little Farmer" baby quilt will be donated to Project Linus.  I'll drop them off this week at the local collection spot.

Here is what's currently on the design wall.  These are the scrappy string Hole in the Barn Door blocks to date.  I like them a lot!

I'm considering how (or whether) to sash and border them, and whether I want to make a few more blocks or call it quits with these.  I'm leaning toward just stopping with what I currently have done, but we'll see.

The weather has turned cold and we had our first snow of the season this weekend.  Our silver maple tree in the back yard is always the last to drop its leaves, and when it finally decides to do it, it's over in just a couple days.  It was beautiful to watch the snowflakes and the green-gold leaves swirling through the air at the same time in a race with each other to the ground.