Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
Along with the Octagon 9 Patch, the BAMaQG Color Round Robin came back from my quilter. I really like the quilting. There are different motifs in most of the non-background areas. I have to sew down the binding and then send it off to its new owner.
I don’t dislike this quilt, however it is not a favorite. I do really like the quilting that Colleen did.
The bits in each of the areas with printed fabric look great.
Gerre brought her blocks to the meeting last month and laid them out. I talked about this process earlier in the week (better late than never!). During that process, I realized that my shard was not among the ones she brought. I looked up all the Color My Quilt posts and don’t think I ever made her a piece. I was really sad about that, so I got busy.
This one isn’t as long as I thought it would be and is more buttoned up than the other shards, but I hope she will be able to use it.
Marty tried to torture me this month with her request.
Brown.
Yep. Brown.
I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Fortunately, I didn’t have go to the indignity of beige or baby poop brown. I had a chocolate fabric with the most fabulous lime, turquoise and orange dots. Haha!
The shard is a little bit of an odd shape, but that is ok. Marty will just have to deal. I hope she likes it.
I had made some fabric using browns sometime ago. I can’t remember for what reason, so I just decided to toss that into the pile for Marty as well. Despite my best intentions, I am not going to make a journal cover from browns. I might have been thinking of making another Henry, but that can wait. I want to make a white one first.
Last month, Gerre brought her shards to we could all look at them. Gerre has left her handbag at home, so didn’t have her phone and couldn’t take photos. I volunteered and texted her photos as I took them. There are a lot of photos!
Being the opinionated ladies that we are, we all had opinions about placement. It was kind of fun to work with other people moving shards around. I think Gerre was kind of excited, too, as it gave her ideas about placement.
I had issues with the plum (see upper part of first photo, left). I thought the plum should be dispersed throughout the quilt.
We also tried to move the white around so it wasn’t all clustered in one place (see bottom two rows).
There was advice about putting the pieces together into chunks and cutting pieces up. I think it got people excited about layout.
I have plans to cut up scraps with my Accuquilt Go! on Monday. I figured that I had to have somewhere to put all the schnibbles, so I made a pet bed.
In the past, I have put the schnibbles into the bag I keep clipped to the side of my cutting table. It is, however, nearly full, and why take that interim step? I will probably have enough scraps after my Go! session to fill the whole pet bed. Yay! More comfy pets.
The other day, at Sew Day, I saw Mary’s GREAT quilt and it made me think of some of the tea towels and such that I have that are nicely embroidered.
Yes, we had the Boxy Bag class, but there was plenty of time to work on other projects. I started cutting out the All Rolled Up Tote, as mentioned.
Mary C, a great member of the group, brought a quilt she had made with embroidered tea towels. I have tea towels, pillowcases and a few other things from the matriarchal side of the family. I talked about the parakeet dresser scarf (or similar) in a previous post.
Mary said that she used a jelly roll of 1930s fabrics. I really like the fabrics she chose and think they are a little different than the Aunt Grace style of 1930s fabrics.
This is the first quilt that I have really liked that uses tea towels. She backed the embroideries with ShapeFlex after trimming them. We advised her to just quilt around the embroidery designs and not over them.
I took a class on Saturday at Sew Day. We don’t usually have classes during Sew Day, but we had this one. People were still allowed to come to Sew Day if they weren’t taking the class. They could listen in, but I didn’t see any of them trying to horn in on the class. We just aren’t that kind of group.
I did some of the home work during the week. I pulled the two fabrics off my ironing board and the pattern called for pieces almost the size of the fat quarters. This means I won’t have slivers of them in my FOTY 2018 quilt. 🙁 C’est la vie!
Lynette taught the class and she is a great teacher. Here handouts were stellar. Her teaching was really clear. The project wasn’t complicated, but a little tricky in places. She did a great job explaining the tricky parts even when two sets of students diverged when a group went and had lunch while the other group kept working.
I like the way this project came out. It is fully lined and very nicely finished. I immediately wanted to make a bunch of them. I think I’ll finish the aprons first.
More donation blocks. I keep making them.
Not as many as last month, but each one counts.
I can’t believe I forgot to show you the pillow I received in the BAM Pillow Swap.
Rhonda made this pillow for me and I know she chose the fabric be cause I adore Philip Jacobs prints.
Thanks, Rhonda!
I found a pile of squares the other week and decided, Sunday, that I would quickly sew them together for another donation quilt. Fortunately, I had 42 and a 6×7 layout is a great size.
I got more than half sewed. It is super easy sewing, so I might get a few seams in here and there during the week.
I hope I don’t remember why I cut these and kick myself for sewing them together in another project. Fortunately there is no shortage of dots on white at my house.
Mary put out her Color My Quilt directions at the last meeting and I was able to get it done while I was working on Who Am I? a couple of weekends ago.
I am still going with long thin pieces as I think they help people put the quilts together, though most don’t know it yet since only two finished pieces have been sewn.
I totally forgot to post the finished version of my merit hexie pillow. The last time I posted about this was on April 4!
I don’t know exactly when I finished it, but it was not long after April 4.
I had to take all the papers out before appli-quilting them on to the background.
I also forgot to show it at the guild meeting. I’ll bring it with the Walking Foot WOW pillow (another thing I forgot to bring to show and tell) to the next meeting.
Outside of the Sisters Retreat, I have had very little time to sew. We have a lot of house stuff to do and we can only do it all on the weekends. None of it involves a sewing machine. :(.
Saturday, we had a party to attend, but I a had time between a haircut and making food for the party to sew a little. I also had almost all day on Sunday, so I got a bit of work done. It was awesome.
I worked on finishing the Ends Donation Quilt n.5, but I also worked on some donation blocks. Since I haven’t had much time to sew I also haven’t had much time to make donation blocks. I’ll have some time before the next meeting to get a few more finished.
I made the black with the leftover black scraps from the back of the Ends n.5 Donation back. I used the greys as the alternate and I know that isn’t very popular, but it is a good way to make some other people push their own envelopes.
I think I’ll use the aqua block for part of another Spiky Stars donation quilt.
I finally finished the Ends Donation Quilt n.5. It seemed to take me forever, but as I said yesterday, I haven’t had much time to sew. I spent time arranging the yardage on Saturday. I did a bit of sewing, but mostly just arranging. That helped me finish relatively quickly on Sunday.
I think the borders made this piece look better. It looks more like a picture with a frame. It is so hard to tell when one of these quilts needs a border and when no border is required.
On the back I used some leftover black yardage, some of which is black-multi. Some of these blacks had never been cut into, so it was time to use them for something. Then, I used some of the leftovers from the border.
I haven’t done a leftover batting project yet. We’ll see if I have the time. Whoever quilts it at the guild may only get a back and a top. There might be enough of the back to make a straight of grain binding.
This process is going painfully slowly, but I took some time during the week to sew on the last two borders. I think the addition of borders looks good for this quilt. It kind of frames the strips and makes them look like a picture.
As I have said before, I am kind of thrilled that the leavings from backs can become something useful. Yes, I added some half yards of fabric to the dark grey and black leavings. I was going to donate that fabric anyway, so it is a win overall.
I can’t believe I have done five of these quilts so far. There are probably more in my future. You can see them all: