This block took a little time to play with. My quilt will have a whimsical tone to it. I have tried to tuck fun fabrics here and there that a child may delight in finding. Well maybe an adult as well.
I have 3 log cabin blocks to make and have begun sashing the blocks. There is still a fair amount of piecing left to finish this quilt as there are additions of rows of four patches and flying geese and then the border.
This quilt for all of the piecing involved only finishes around 65”s so I began to contemplate growing it. There is a quilt on Pinterest that was grown to be a queen. After mulling that over for a while I have decided to finish it at 65”. I hope to finish piecing it and maybe even quilting it this summer.
With so much of my quilting time taken up with Longarm Quilting for others…which I love by the way, it is very easy to neglect piecing time which is a major passion of mine.
I began piecing my Longtime Gone quilt a year ago last March! Being a very scrappy quilt I have loved the challenge but it also involves many bins of my scraps that can wreak havoc in my sewing room which often overflows with customer quilts and is also Liam’s favourite place to sleep when he is here.
The Color Collective also took front and centre stage this year taking up my precious piecing hours.
Well my scrappy quilt has been calling so I began puttering with it again.
Sometimes spending too much time planning a scrappy block isn’t a great thing… I was almost finished this block when I noticed too much of the same thing in the upper left of the block. I also should have made the outside geese scrappy.
I decided to leave the outside geese as they are at least for now but did make a change that I much prefer.
This block is the most subtle of the blocks…
I have more than half of the blocks finished for this quilt, and might just work on kitting up the rest of the blocks so that I can just pick up one as time permits and tuck the scrap bins away for another time.
Parchment has become a very popular pantograph for my quilters it seems. I have used it fairly often and I used it to finish this recent quilt. I used a baby blue thread colour that really popped against the black.
My pictures of the backing really didn’t do the actual colours justice. The backing is a beautiful blue batik that really showed off the perfect stitches.
Well another snowy day, we woke to another 5”s of very wet snow. While the trees did look pretty, we had a near miss of a snow laden tree leaning on our power line…thankfully with a little help from Erik with less snow it bounced up a bit.
And a little later in the morning…
I am normally a pretty patient person, but the snow is stretching me though there is not a thing I can do about it….we are also waiting for our newest grandchild to arrive any day…I am not feeling patient about that either.
There is also more snow predicted for next week!
I have finished quilting the half square triangle quilt I wrote about in my last blog and have the next ready to quilt. It always amazes me how even in 18 years of quilting for others there are rarely duplicates!
This quilt is spectacularly brilliant! Just what’s needed to work on a gray snowy day!
I am itching to start project three of the Color Collective! It’s called Stellar, designed by Tara Faughnan.
Do you ever find it hard to break up a bundle and start cutting it up, I do but I know that it will will be fun and once I start it will be hard to stop… that might be part of my hesitation.
Ok, it’s April 11th already and we are still getting snow?? It was snowing this morning when I woke up. It is supposed to rain a lot this week so hopefully that will help the snow melt.
I won’t complain too loudly as it sounds like west of us they are in for a pretty big spring snow storm this week…fingers crossed that we just get the rain!
Yesterday I put the last stitch into a very special quilt that I will be sharing more about very soon. My Longarm and I have been really busy and productive so look for more posts about that.
Next up is the second of three half square triangles I have been quilting for Marilyn. I always press tops and backs before loading them on the Longarm. Her piecing and workmanship is perfect and her fabric and colour/value skills are so inspiring!
Only many years of collecting could possibly build a stash that would make a total of 4 queen size quilts with such an array of fabrics. I wonder how close I am getting.
There are so many options out there for quilters compared to when I began. Tutorials abound on the internet and online shopping opens an incredible world of choice for new and experienced quilters. I personally have fun at times with a quickly pieced quilt but I also really enjoy the journey and challenges of different projects.
Sometimes, projects linger longer that I originally plan such as my Longtime Gone quilt and the collective projects that are waiting…when I start to feel a little guilty regarding what projects in the quilt world that are referred to as UFO’s (unfinished objects) I remind myself that I like to savour the journey. Some projects don’t require quick completions.
As a small child I was always delighted to be given scraps of fabric! I think they were probably my most favourite plaything, add to that scissors, thread and a needle and I was set.
The quilts on the tv show Little House on the Prairie is where I recall first seeing or maybe noticing scrap quilts! I know that I always questioned the colour rules and just loved the look of all kinds of colours together.
One of the most fun part of the Color Collective I am participating in is receiving a palette of colours that I may not have chosen myself for a quilt.
During the break out portion of our local guild meeting last night we were encouraged to talk about how we store our scraps. Of course there are new quilters who haven’t reached the what do I do with all these scraps, part of the quilting journey. There are probably quilters who make a quilt and have very little left overs…I am not sure that I know those quilters, are you one?
So back to the breakout room… I love scraps and I have a lot of them. I love to use them to try out new techniques and ideas. I love to save them to use in future projects and I sometimes just like to look through them and reminisce or sort through them.
Do I need all of them? Maybe not but then maybe I do…perhaps I will have a season in life where I can really dive in and play and I will be prepared.
My Longtime Gone quilt is a scrappy version, I have had hours of fun playing with scraps. This is a quilt that I am savouring the journey…sone things shouldn’t be rushed.
So many quilts come my way to be quilted…thank you thank you to everyone who allows me to be part of your quilting journey! I am constantly inspired.
This is one of 4 quilts that is made up entirely of 2” finished half square triangles. So many fabrics I recognize but many I don’t because this quilter has been collecting for more years than I have.
The view out the window this morning is a little drab, winter has a strong hold right now with a ton of snow and many chilly and today windy days….. My sewing and quilting rooms will be my bright sunny retreat today!
She has taken hers in a totally different direction, which I really like. Mine has been completed by my friend Florence and will one day be finished and hopefully loved by one of our daughters or granddaughters.
It is a pretty quilt, though I have clearly moved on from such a soft palette. Actually I am really enjoying working with the solid palettes.
I have really enjoyed curved piecing lately and have been a little intrigued by improv piecing. After reading Wendy’s above tutorial, I decided that I would play with some scraps after I finished longarming for the day.
The scraps are from a bundle of 6” strips of ombré that came from Craftsy back when it was a great site. I used many of the 40 strips in my flying geese quilt.
One of my goals for this year is to quilt using my domestic machine.
The fabric for the 3rd quilt in Season 4 of the Color Collective arrived this past week and oh are they pretty!! As I still have the design wall full with flock blocks, and a baby quilt to make Stellar is going to have to wait her turn. I may just make a practice block while I wait though.
It always amazes me how many different quilts there are, I so rarely see duplicates.
This week one of the quilts that I quilted was this queen size quilt, there was a backing challenge in that the maker sewed the backing with the selvages intact to stretch the fabric and also added side pieces (as in leader, enders only on the sides) in order for the backing to be big enough.
As the backing really wasn’t big enough to load with the seams horizontally it was very challenging to load and keep even with three seams rolled onto the bar. However, it worked!
The tension was perfect, on the perfect backing for this quilt!
There are times when by mere coincidence the same pantograph is chosen for a few customer quilts which I had also chosen for My Sunny quilt. I have been happily quilting with different ones once again.
Wendy’s Quilting and Life 