In record time, Lupine is back and ready to bind. I took the quilt to her in mid-March. Colleen did a great job quilting it. I am pleased.
I’ll be glad to get this off my list. I have enough time to enter it in the Fair, but I am limited to two quilts quilted by another, so I’ll have to wait until next year. 🙁
The only thing I have left to do is bind it. I started the other day, but have to actually sit down to bind and I haven’t had a chance. I also need to get DH to hold it up so I can take a photo.
I finished the Patchwork Palooza top in January and now the whole quilt is complete: top, back, quilting, binding, sleeve. Done.
I am pleased with how I finished the edges. I think completing the diagonals looks nice.
There are blocks that I wish I had moved, but that will probably always be the case.
DH actually commented that he really liked this quilt. Maybe it will be a gift for him?
I will be entering this quilt into the Fair.
It must be some kind of record! I started this quilt on about September 6, 2025. Here it is, 6 months later finished. I am really happy and kind of stunned as well.
I found a tutorial for hourglass blocks. The Quilting Daily site also has a 3 color quarter square triangle (hourglass) block tutorial. I found these while reading the Love of Quilting magazine. They have a lot of basic tutorials. I decided to try it for my Bay Area Modern Block of the Month for March blocks.
The tutorial includes a 1.5 minute video with jaunty music.
I made two first just to see what I thought of the technique. I thought it was fine and something different, so I cut some squares and went to work. I went a little crazy and made quite a few QSTs!
BAM BOM March QSTs
As I was laying them out I realized that I could make pinwheels since I used the lime green in all of the blocks. I don’t know that I’ll do that in the final layout of the quilt, but it was kind of fun to see what such a layout would look like.
I just got a Technique Sheet from Studio 180 Designs for the Split Recs Ruler**. I love that ruler and may make some Elongated Hourglass units. Stay tuned.
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Lupine is ready to go to Colleen for quilting. Not a great photo, but the quilt is large and doesn’t fit well on my design wall.
I am really pleased with how it came out. It is a but pink and purple, but doesn’t scream ‘little girl’ to me. I think the black really helps give it a good over all feel.
In addition, black can be depressing. It did make my workroom a little dark, but overall the pink, purple and Carousel blue keep the black from creating a look that is too depressing.
Lupine back finished
I also finished the back. Mom said it looked a little brown, but I definitely used colored dots on black for the most part. One of the prints, a large-ish piece, middle bottom, does have dots that have more brown in them than I would normally use.
This project used up most of my dots on black fabrics.
I am waiting for a black solid in order to make the binding. I was going to use a pink that matched the border (AGF Cherry Lipgloss), but Lil Sissy pointed out that a black (AGF Caviar) would contain the piece. I think she is right.
Lil Sissy was in town last week for 12 hours on her way to a sun, sand and scuba diving adventure. She called me a few days before and I cut her in on my day’s plans: museum, GF Chinese food lunch. Then we did some things she wanted, namely getting supplies for some jackets she plans to embellish.
Once we were back and my house she saw my BAM BOM blocks and I let her play with them. We used the ‘design floor’ (LOL) since the design wall was full to bursting.
BAM BOM Flying Geese -Lil Sissy arrangement
It is always interesting to have an artist who uses a different medium play around with quilt blocks. I laid them out in a more or less conventional way. She immediately saw diagonals in places I hadn’t noticed.
She wanted me to make a bunch more Flying Geese so I can really lean into the diagonals. I’ll think about that.
BAM BOM HSTs -Lil Sissy arrangement
She also played with the Half Square Triangles (triangle squares) a bit. Again, she leaned into the diagonals. This arrangement has good possibilities even if I do have to make more HSTs. I think it would look cool to weave the diagonals behind the other blocks.
BAM BOM Friendship Star Wreath
Finally, we talked about my big Friendship Star Wreath and whether I should re-make it with a dark background. She said no, but I might still do it. That white shrieks at me.
This block (for Month 3) took me a long time and I had some detours along the way. Finally, I finished it.
I am not 100% happy with it. I would have liked to use the grey Pearl Bracelets, but I didn’t have enough.
Using the white Pearl Bracelets as the background introduces another color of background into the piece and I had hoped to avoid using white for the blocks. Since I have not used white in any of the other blocks I have to figure out how to make it work.
First step: go see if I can find more grey Pearl Bracelets. Doubtful, but you never know.
The directions were to assemble two Flying Geese so it looks like the above. The look was ok, but didn’t grab my attention.
Option 2:
Zigzag Lupine border
I saw a zigzag border that someone made and tried that with my fabrics. This option looked more cohesive to me.
Option 3:
Alternating chevrons Lupine border
Just to see if another configuration would be better, I tried alternating chevrons. This wasn’t terrible and created a lot of movement, but I thought it was a little confusing for the viewer.
I went for option 2 and started sewing long rows of Flying Geese together.
I started a project at the guild called Creative Play. This was loosely based on a concept I had during COVID that kind of petered out. It was also inspired by a quote I read in Libs Elliott’s newsletter. The quote is “I have made a promise to myself that I will make time for creative play in 2026. Because, when work gets overwhelming, I find joy in taking even just a bit of time for myself to experiment and try something different without an end goal in mind.”
I am determined to have it take off this time and so far, so good.
I started out by handing out the rectangles in the center. Cyndi took it and added the orange border. That is an amazing choice. I don’t think I would have thought of it, but I love it. The orange has an interesting texture as well.
I handed the piece to Sue next and she added the half square triangles. I am really pleased with the work so far.
I had to stop chunking when I realized I had to fix a couple of block mistakes in Lupine. I fixed those quickly and got back to chunking, which is easier than putting a quilt together in rows, but still tedious. It seemed to take me forever. Finally, I got all of the blocks together! Yay!
I was worried about the density of the dots in some of the black background, but looking at the quilt in the photo, I think it looks ok. I can see a couple of places where the dots are really dense, but the background pieces don’t make the blocks look wrong.
Lupine with spacer border
After the blocks were together I put the spacer border on. Also, tedious, but necessary.
I really like that Melody Miller Carousel blue. I am glad I bought more of it so I have enough for the borders.
Now I am on to the Flying Geese border.
I noticed that Bonnie has taken down the directions on her blog for this quilt. I almost had a heart attack when I clicked on the link to look at the border directions and it was broken. Fortunately, I had saved the PDFs.
It’s a dreary day here as I write this. We are waiting for rain which seems poised to pour down any minute, but hasn’t gotten around to it yet. This means that my workroom is a little dark and grey. It makes me really happy that the life-sucking beige is gone.
Fixed Lupine block
I ripped them out while I watched TV one night and then re-sewed at them at a Sew Day I had with SueS, Lee Ann and SueG. I spent a bit of time over a couple of days doing random quilt tasks and this was one of them.
Now I am ready to continue chunking the center of the quilt.
I slowly worked on chunking the Lupine top together. I had to do it before putting on the border, because Bonnie has us put on spacer border, which prevents me from chunking the border. C’est la vie.
Lupine Alternate: wrong!
As I was working away I saw one block where I put the corners on wrong. The purple needs to be on the outside.
🙁
I looked at the blocks on the design wall for awhile to decide if I could stand the mistake and decided it had to come out. I ripped out the corners, flipped them and re-sewed them.
Yay! No problem. Stuff happens. I was done and could move on.
Lupine blocks: wrong!
Then I noticed another one. And another. 🙁 I have indicated the wrong blocks with arrows, but you’ll have to make the image (right) larger to see the arrows.
Now I have all the blocks that are wrong unsewn from the chunks. Next step: rip out the corners and re-sew them.
Without putting the blocks on the wall, I added sashing to my white strips blocks. I don’t have any design wall space and just had to go for it. I have a few donation quilts I need to make and this one will help me free up some design wall space.
As you can see, not having the design hampers my process. Somehow I missed adding top sashing to 6 blocks.
Yes, I used red. Dangerous, I know, but all my fabric is washed.
Finishing the Pandora Charisma was great! It freed me up to work on other projects. I made my BAM BOM units, worked on the last Four Patch Fun blocks, made a donation block, got back to my normal leaders and enders system and FINISHED the last of Lupine blocks. YAY!
The quilt isn’t done by any stretch, but this is a huge achievement IMO. I am really pleased about it. Now I get to sew all of these blocks together and then start work on the border.
In between trying to finish the Pandora Charisma and working on other bits and bobs, I am sewing blocks together as well. I have about 5 more of each of the blocks to make before I can start on the border.
This is a really dramatic color scheme and I LOVE it.
I spent most of the day on Sunday making blocks for the Lupine quilt instead of working on the Pandora Charisma. The white strips blocks have been on my mind and I wanted to sew some sashing on to them, so I worked on the Lupine blocks and made the white strip blocks my leaders and enders.
I am quite ready to sew this quilt together. Though I am nearing the end of block making I still have some to sew.
