Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
I finally sat down on Friday afternoon and worked to finish this top. I really wanted to get it ready for quilting and it had been hanging around for too long. I am pleased with how it came out and look forward to seeing how it gets quilted.
I am going to show it to Tim, then send it on to another guild member for quilting.
I tried to use as much of the Pop Parade fabric for the back as I could.
I was amazed and thrilled that Tim had bound the small Kaffe donation quilt he quilted a few weeks ago. He put a binding on it sometime last week! He almost never does that, but wanted something quick after cleaning his studio all day.
He machine bound it, but that was a good choice since the quilt will go who knows where.
I love the quilting – spirals. They look so great.
I was thrilled and amazed by the largess I received this week from my team of Door Prize people.
First, Cheri gave me a full year’s set of coasters and bags. She had given it to me last year, but I told her to hold on the gifts until the next month, then we stopped meeting. Tim picked up the items from her house and I picked the items up from him.
Next, SueG brought me fabric and some zipper pouches. I am all set on zipper pouches and have some good fabric to include with future bags.
The purple and blue paper airplane pouch was actually made and donated by Tim. It goes well with Sue’s contribution, though.
Finally, Carrie made some cut little bubble bags and sent me needles, needle threaders and WonderClips to include in future bags.
I really have a great team!
I moved the HST top in progress to my large design wall so I could try out different layouts. One thing I definitely wanted to see was how it would look with space between the columns.
Compared to how the blocks look right next to each other, this version is a poor substitute. Still, I needed to try it out.
I realized, after posting yesterday, that I should have showed the whole bag, prizes and everything.
There are a variety of little prizes and a couple of books. I hope the recipient likes everything.
Last weekend I made a bag for the door prize at today’s meeting. I used the Jane Market Tote for the pattern again. This is a practical pattern that isn’t too big and goes together relatively quickly. I spent about 3 hours from finding the pattern to clipping the last thread.
It is scrappy green. I chose green for St. Patrick’s Day. I thought it would be fun to have green/St. Patrick’s Day as a theme.
I chose to make it scrappy so I could use up some smaller pieces of green.
As I mentioned, Tim was working on the plaid donation quilt when I left him the other day. He sent me a picture of the finished top and a detail (left).
I like what he did with the designs in the piecing. He has a good eye for quilting designs.
I also like this design quite a bit and plan to make another donation quilt using the Block Party pattern.
I put together the latest door prize. It was given away at the meeting last week and Alison won. I need to send it off, which means, finding a box, addressing it…. You know, the usual mailing tasks.
I really like the tote bag, which is from a pattern by Aneela Hoey, the Kit Supply Tote. It was made by Angela.
Last year, I made a plaid donation top and back with the leftovers from my cousin’s quilt. As you might remember, I was glad to be done with all the plaids.
Wednesday, I helped Tim put the piece on his longarm and he started to quilt it.
He is quilting a combination of squares/rectangles and swirls. He is not doing an all over pattern, but is quilting in the piecing, which I like.
He and I have talked a lot about our tastes in quilting, so he knows I like my piecing to shine. He does all over patterns for some community quilts, but he often does custom for the quilts I have made.
For donation quilts I do not tell him how to quilt them. I let them go after I am done piecing and let him decide the best design. Like Colleen, longarming is really his jam and he is good at it. It is also something he enjoys. I leave him to it. In this case, he focused on the blocks and did a couple of different motifs in the various patches. He combined spirals and rectangles, which I thought looked really good.
I went to have lunch with Tim. I ended up helping him put two small baby quilts on his longarm. One of these was picked up from the guild community quilt project dropoff/pickup time the other day. He thought since the quilts were the same size they could be loaded on the machine and quilted at the same time.
It didn’t quite work out. We still got both quilts on the machine and he was able to finish quilting Patti S’s quilt. The plaid donation top I made was half quilted when I left.
I was impressed with his work on one quilt. I thought he might get two done, but quilting is tiring.
Patti S’s quilt was made from Kaffe Fassett fabrics, perhaps a jelly roll (or Free Spirit equivalent). I know she is trying to clear out her fabric closet, so this might be an older group of fabrics. It is a fun quilt and I thought the quilting would just sink right into it, but the quilting sparked up the top even more.
I like the swirls that Tim used to quilt the piece. I always enjoy watching him work on the longarm. He is so careful and knows so much about how the machine works. It makes me want to try it out, under his guidance, sometime. Shocking after my bad experiences longarming before.
Yes, we wore masks the whole time we were together and both of us are really careful otherwise. We are about the same age so we have awhile to wait for our vaccines. We have, however, kind of ended up in the same bubble and it has helped to relieve the tedium.
Alison also quilted Ends n.9. It is an appropriate quilt to post on Valentine’s Day because of the colors.
Like Blue Strips n.2, this will be donated to the Project Linus project near where Alison lives.
I forgot about this one even though it was the last one that I made. It makes me think that I need to look and see if I have some more ends that need making into a quilt.
Alison sent me some photos of Blue Strips #2 after she finished quilting it. Since Alison is in Oregon now and the guild doesn’t want to incur the costs of shipping the quilts back for donation. Alison found a good Project Linus group who is getting the quilts she quilts. I am pretty pleased that she was able to quilt this one. I’d like it to be used as soon as possible. She was kind enough to send a bunch of detail shots as well.
I finally finished the first two Double Spiky 16 Patches. It turned out to be 32″ square and I think I will leave it this size. I just don’t feel like adding anything to it.
I am pretty pleased with the way it came out and I had a lot of fun making the second row of larger HRTs.
After writing the Spiky 16 Patch Tutorial I decided to try adding another round of HRTs to my regular block to see what would happen.
I am still using the Split Rects ruler** (By Deb Tucker) from Studio180 Designs for this project, so you will still need to review the how to use video.
The photo looks like a bit of a mess because the pieces are all overlapping and I need two more HRTs for each block.
I have a lot going on and this has been my leaders and enders project, so I haven’t worked on it in a week or so.
I like the look of the double row of HRTs. The outer HRTs are pretty large!
I am not sure if I will make more of these blocks for this project, whatever it is. If it is a donation quilt, I have to make it larger
**I use affiliate links and may be paid for your purchase of an item when you click on an item link in my post. There is no additional cost to you for clicking or purchasing items I recommend. I appreciate your clicks and purchases as it helps support this blog.
Last Saturday was the first guild meeting of the year. Traditionally, we have given the officers appreciation gifts at this meeting. COVID-19 or no COVID-19, 2021 was no exception.
Mary C was kind enough to be the drop-off point. Her house is more centrally located in the county than mine and she has a good porch. With county rules on sheltering-in-place and ‘travel’ because of COVID-19, this year was a little harder to organize. People had to mail their gifts, or drop them off, as allowed. Also, I tried to be sensitive about costs and encouraged people to write notes instead of buying a gift. I also offered up notepaper, etc for people who were really struggling.
Last week I went over to Mary C’s house and we assembled the bags, physically distancing and wearing masks. Mary C has a wonderful backyard and I am always happy to spend time there.
Members of the guild came through magnificently! A few members made bags so we could contain the other gifts. I couldn’t believe the effort that people took with the small gifts. If last year was good, this year was better. We got an amazing array of gifts. I don’t know how we will match it next year.
Mary C went out at the last moment and got the gift bags (large pink bag in the above photo) so we could ‘wrap’ them. We had to drop the bags off at officer’s houses and we wanted it to be less easy for them to peek before the meeting.
Lots of zipper bags, but also supplies like needles, Iron Off, and Quilt Soap. Embellishments, gift cards and fabric were also in evidence.
I was so pleased and the officers were very happy. It wasn’t as good as doing the whole thing in person. however, it meant we got to spend more time organizing the bags so they looked pretty.