Quilting the day away

I can always tell when a non-quilter walks into my house; they never say boo about the various finished and unfinished tops and quilts I have draped over my quilt rack or my stairwell.  They never question why there are so many safety pins in that quilt (assuming it's part of the decor, I guess).

A quilter, on the other hand, would say "are you going to put a border on that" or "wow, that top you've been working on forever is looking good".

So on Worldwide Quilting Day, I'll show you a few things I've been working on.

A present for my friend for her birthday (a little late, but that's OK). Hope this table runner isn't too long for her table! Just needs a binding.

And the back:

A little free-motion quilting on a bigger quilt for my wall:

Then non-quilty related:

My over-wintered begonia is doing fine.

And it's still winter here,

in case you were wondering.

Yellow and Grey, Oh My!

A new secret group baby quilt in the making for a coworker.

A sampling of fabrics used.

Mom and dad don't want to know the baby's gender until it is born, and so mom decided on a yellow and grey color scheme. Of course, I couldn't leave that alone (plain grey and yellow? Boring...to me.)
I threw in some Kaffe prints that have the requisite grey and yellow, plus other fun colors.

I picked out the fabric, with 6 yellows and 6 greys.  Theses yellows and greys will be 6.5-inch blocks surrounded by 2.5 inch strips (grey strips on yellow, yellow strips on grey). I'm hoping it will look sparkly and fun.

We have 6 baby quilt sewers this time, including me, and a quilter (I hope). Not sure who's going to do the binding, now that Nancy has retired.  Everyone (except the vacationing Deb) got their assignments this morning at work.

Will show you some layout fun when I get the blocks back in 3 weeks.

Scrappy Tripping

I have been bitten by the Scrappy Trip Around the World bug! I first saw quilts made with this method on Bonnie Hunter's web site (tutorial here). Lately versions of this quilt are popping up all over quilt blog land.

Bonnie's tutorial has you sew six strips (2.5 inches wide by 16 inches long) together, pressing, sewing them into a tube, and cross-cutting the tube into six 2.5-inch cuts. Then you have to "unsew" a small seam in each crosscut section of the tube to get the above layout (look at the tutorial if I lost you; there's lots of pictures there to help you see the process).

I have a boatload of leftover 2.5-inch strips, cut the full width of fabric, and I didn't really want to cut the strips down to 16 inches, so I decided an experiment was in order. I did the sewing as in the tutorial, using the full 40 inches, then I sub cut twelve 2.5-inch cuts.  If you can see the difference above, I used a different "dark" fabric as the middle diagonal, so that the two blocks would not be identical. I think that is going to work.

Don't worry, there will be lots of variety when I'm done. I'm including various greens in each block as I have a garden theme in mind. But there is no rush to get this project going (and I have others that need to be completed first). I will save this sewing for those days when not a lot of thinking is required.

Works In Progress

Ready for binding. This is an oldie but goodie that I "found" recently.  The date on the back label says 1994, so that's when my bee did our brown bag trade. I put the red/blue plaid in the bag, and the bee member who chose my brown bag was to make a block and return it in about 8 months. Well, Jackie H. made me a small quilt!

I think this pattern was on the cover of American Patchwork and Quilting at some point (1993 or 94).  It's about time I bound it. Sheesh.

And this is a sneak peak of my wool circles appliqued on shirting. It's going to be a 20-inch pillow once I add borders and the back. And once I run to the quilt store for a 20-inch pillow (not today; it's too icy, so I'm staying put.)

Do-Overs

There are not many times in life that you are allowed a do-over. I bet the guy who drove into the Chinese take-out parking lot a little too fast on a slippery night and cracked our bumper would like a do-over.

"North Wind" pattern.

I should probably name this quilt "Do-Over" because there are many things that I did and had to undo because the results were less than pleasing. (The first thing I did was machine quilted the top with nylon thread, but the results were wretched; I picked out every last stitch and hand quilted it.) These do-overs really make a project drag on and on.

The left "stripe" is the original fabric color that was hidden in the seam line.

I had just gotten to the point of hand quilting the border, when I realized that the fabric color had changed. At first, I thought the border was dusty. But a few shakes later, there was no dust; just major fading, in a few month's time. I did not keep the top in the sun or even where a lamp light touched it.  This caused the project to go to the bottom of the pile while I stewed over what to do.

I finally found better fabric for the border, added red cornerstones, and finished quilting it. Binding should be done in the next couple of weeks. Whew!

Sunshine quilt

And the quilt is Buddy approved!

I received this quilt (shown above) from my quilting buddies. (We're loosely called the Girl Gang as we used to do Jan Patek's Girl Gang quilts each year). I must say I was completely surprised that they were so thoughtful, and very quick, as the quilt was started and finished in less than 3 weeks! They were trying to help me feel better as I go thru a rollercoaster of treatments the next few months.

And this bit of sunshine is an orchid on my co-worker's desk. It's funny that when people at work are given plants for gifts, they bring them to me to babysit (I have luck keeping them alive). And people bring their orchids from home, too (we have a great window with indirect west light).  We now have 5 orchids in our care. I always thought orchids were tricky to grow, but all I do is water them once a week and make sure they're not standing in water.

"Do Something" blocks 2012

Every year in early December at our bee's party, our most generous hostess, Sandy Z., gives willing participants a brown paper lunch bag containing one of her antique quilt blocks (she must have quite the collection, because she has done this for several years now).  The catch is that participants must make "something" from the block and return it to next year's party. If you aren't able to do something with the block, then the block must be returned to Sandy.

And here are the results shown at this year's party, from last year's block. It's amazing how similar some of the blocks look considering the making was all in secret.

Marie M. used antique fabrics and blocks to surround her basket.

Peggy S. did lots of piecing on hers (she gave her BlocLoc ruler a workout for the flying geese.)

Debbie S. did more with reddish-browns and some appliqué.

Meghan also had a plaid basket and used more reds and browns.

Carol T. is going to make  a needle case with her block  (this is the outside; inside not quite finished). 

Sorry for the blurriness...I couldn't get Linda G. to stand still for anything! The block she started with is on the lower left, and she made three more blocks to match.

And this one is mine. I was the only one with solid colors in the basket, so I went with more solids. I'm not sure what else I will be adding to the block -- maybe four different borders in the style of Gwen Marston?