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.

Redwork Baskets

Last week I put together a donation quilt top from some beautiful redwork embroidery blocks by Evelyn (Evie) in California.  You may recall she also embroidered the animal themed blocks in this quilt.  Her work is meticulous! 

This time it was 12 basket blocks that I worked with, each one a little different, but all very beautifully done.  

I'm still trying to use my stash whenever possible, and sometimes that leads to interesting fabric combinations.  I went back and forth between some of the options I was considering, but hopefully I've done her blocks justice in the end.

I wanted to make this lap quilt size, so I needed to add as wide a border as I could eke out of that outer red print fabric.  With a little creativity, I was able to cut an 8-inch border.  The top measures around 49x59, which seems like a good size.

As far as the quilting goes, that will have to wait until my hand is a bit further along in its recovery.  Or I may send it off to be quilted and donated.  We'll see.

I'm four weeks out from surgery as of tomorrow.  I'm supposed to start squeezing exercises, beginning with a sponge and progressing to a stress ball.

The bruising on the tip of the finger is almost gone.  The scar is healing, but still a little scabby especially at the crease of the joint.  The finger still tends to swell during the day, so I wrap it when it gets too sausage-y.  The therapist gave me a sample of a support tube (think compression stocking type thing) for the swelling, but it doesn't fit well so I just use the stretchy wrap.  

I can make a loose fist, and I'm typing this post with all 10 fingers, so there continues to be steady progress.  Hopefully by next month, I'll be able to squeeze the brakes on my bike so I can go for a ride!

Fabric and Finishes

As mentioned in the previous post, my daughter recently brought me two big bags full to the brim with fabric from her coworker.  Here it is on my cutting table after I took it out of the bags and grouped it by colors and thus loads that I could prewash together.

I am allergic to cats and dust (not that you'd know it by the usual state of my housekeeping), so I  prewash everything before incorporating it on my shelves.  Time consuming, yes, but I actually enjoy the opportunity to pet each fabric individually as I take it out of the washing machine (and cut apart the mess of strings), dry the load, and then press each piece one by one.

It took about 10 days to get all of this new-to-me fabric sorted.  Here is everything afterwards, stacked on the cutting table.  There's some great fabric here!  The biggest piece is 3 yards of a Christmas print, but many yard and half-yard cuts, and a whole lot of fat quarter sized pieces.

I am so grateful to this person who wondered what to do with the fabric left from mask making in 2020 and passed it along my way.  I will certainly use it!  

Now for the finishes.  Several months ago, Jo of Jo's Country Junction connected me with a woman named Evelyn in California, who had a flannel quilt kit and a some other UFOs to be finished.  I agreed to finish them for donation.  You may have seen this pretty flannel quilt finish recently on Jo's blog (HERE and HERE).  

After I had pieced it, I sent it to Ray in Florida, a longarm quilter who finishes many donation quilts that come to him through Jo.  It was larger in size than I normally feel able to handle quilting on my regular sewing machine, so I asked Ray if he would be willing to longarm quilt it, and he agreed.  He did a beautiful job!  You can read more about this quilt in the links above, but here is a closeup he sent me of the quilting.

Then this weekend, I finally finished the second UFO from Evelyn.  She had sent some beautiful, neat-as-a-pin redwork embroidery blocks of cute animals, along with the instruction sheet to complete the red and white quilt and fabric to do so.  

Her blocks were so well done!  I really wanted to do her handiwork justice in finishing this quilt.  Here it is pieced together and on the design wall in mid-March.

I did use a different "white" when piecing the borders of the quilt (Kona Snow), as it matched the background of the redwork better than a true white did.  I pieced the backing from some of the other red and white fabric she'd sent, plus added a bit of my own to make the backing big enough.

Then it was time for me to quilt it.  The size was ideal for me to handle, at about 45 x 55, but how was I going to quilt the embroidered blocks?  I had a couple vague ideas, but no concrete plan, so I put the basted quilt aside for several weeks to allow my trepidation to settle.

Last week, having procrastinated long enough, I started in on the ditch quilting.  I still didn't really know what I was going to do around the embroidery, but I know that when I finally get over myself and take the first baby steps, momentum usually takes over. 

And so it did.  Ultimately, I just went with the flow and let the spirit and needle lead the way, block by block.  Over the course of a couple days, it was quilted!

Some blocks may be a little more inspired than others, quilting-wise, but overall I think it turned out well.

I used some red fabric from the new influx of scraps mentioned above in binding the quilt.  There was a long red scrap on the lengthwise straight of grain, which was perfect for this quilt.  

Having quilted more densely in the center than the borders, they threatened to become a bit wavy.  The lengthwise-cut binding helped corral it and made for a nice straight edge.

I will be donating this quilt to Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo as part of the Hands2Help Comfort Quilt Challenge 2021.  I hope whoever receives it will be uplifted by the playful, whimsical critters in this pretty red and white quilt.  Thanks again to Evelyn for entrusting a few of her projects to me to be finished, and to Jo and Sarah for connecting a community of charitable quilters!