Catsup & Mustard Resurrected

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well and is surviving the hot summer! It's been pretty hot here, but nothing like what others have been experiencing! There have been some good rains in areas around me, but we've only been able to get some short sprinkles at my house. There's more rain in the forecast this week, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

This week I resurrected a quilt I started years ago called Catsup & Mustard. I designed the quilt myself specifically to use a set of fabric that my mom gave me for my birthday one year. Every inch of fabric went into the quilt top with nothing but little scraps left over! I started quitling it on my old HandiQuilter longarm, focusing on learing to quilt feathers on the longarm. This was the quilt that pushed me to make the decision to get rid of the longarm. This was an early, cheap version of the HandiQuilter and it had a cheap table and came with no support. There were no fine adjustments on the table so I had to deal with the longarm wanting to move down and towards the right on its own. This made it very difficult to quilt smooth curves! So I got frustrated and put the quilt aside and got rid of the longarm. It's been sitting around for a long time, so I decided to get it out and finish it. This week I finished the remaining feather motifs and added some rulerwork. The feathers on this quilt are large and, I have to admit, are the ugliest feathers I've ever quilted! I'm not good at making pretty feathers when they are large. I need to look at more pictures of other's nice feathers to see how you fill the large spaces elegantly! But it looks fine from a distance and it holds the layers together, so it's a win in my book!

Catsup & Mustard

Catsup & Mustard - Back

I decided to use a variegated thread for fun. It's not the best choice, but it's not too bad. I quilted feathered wreaths on each block and large feathers in each of the large rectangular border areas. The worst feathers are in the border areas, but I can't get a picture where you can see the quilting. 

Catsup & Mustard - Feathered Wreath

I had some trouble with the stitching on some of the feathered wreaths, so I'm going to have to pick those out and requilt them. I wanted to get the rulerwork done first so I don't have to pin those areas before quilting.

Catsup & Mustard - Thread Problems

Since I used up all of the fabric on the quilt top, I have to look for some fabric to use for the binding. This has turned out to be more difficult than I expected. In the photos above, it looks like the colors of teh backing fabric match the colors of the front pretty well, but the back is actually a lot brighter than the front. For some reason, my camera and my phone both brighten up the colors of the front so that they appear to match the colors of the back. I've tried playing around with the filters on the phone, but I can't get the colors right. The only way I've been able to get close is to photograph the front and the back together.

Catsup & Mustard - Quilt Colors

Isn't that weird? I bought some fabric that I thought would be perfect using a photo on the phone that I tried to color correct, but I got home and it matched the back instead of the front! It dawned on me that I can find a couple of spools of thread in my vast collection that match the front colors and take them to the store when looking for a binding fabric. That way I don't have to haul the quilt around!

I've also continued to work on my Winter Vespers needlepoint designed by Bernat. 

Winter Vespers

And I attended our monthly cross stitch group meeting, where I made some progress on my Flying Beauties kit. 

Flying Beauties

And, finally, I also made it to the weekly knitting group where I made some progress on my Kallara shawl designed by Ambah O'Brien.

Kallara

It was really nice to make it to knot group! They meet weekly, but I don't make it very often because it's an hour drive for me. It's a great group of ladies, so I'm going to try to get down there more often!

Nancy

Night Howler Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! I had an exciting morning. This morning I had a bird in the house. It must have come in through the broken screen on the sliding glass door in the bedroom. Grace ran through the screen some time ago and I haven't gotten it fixed since I don't know how I'll fit it in the car to take it down to town. Because I'm afraid of animals getting in the house, I only open the door at night to try to cool off the bedroom when I sleep. (It's the only window in the bedroom.). Otherwise, I keep the door closed. I figured no animals would come in at night since the door is only open about a foot, I have a fan in the opening to pull in the cooler air, I'm sleeping in my bed right by the door and I have a dog and a cat (some of the time) sleeping in the room. But there was a bird in the house this morning and that's the only way I can think that it could have gotten in here. Anyway, the bird was in the sewing room when I heard it. The sewing room has a vaulted ceiling and lots of windows and skylights that don't open. I opened the sliding glass door in that room for a while, but the bird never flew down low enough to find it. After thinking for a while, I realized that I have another window in the loft that doesn't have a screen (that I never open because it doesn't have a screen). The loft is up by the ceiling so I figured the bird would be more likely to find it. It must have found the window soon after I opened it because I haven't heard the bird since. I was really happy that it found its way out before the cat found it! Now all is well and we seem to be critter free! Anyway, on to the crafting.....

I was able to finish Night Howler designed by Art East Quilting Co this week. I used straight line quilting and I marked every line because it bothers me when the lines are off and my lines tend to skew when I just line up the walking foot to quilt them. I'm really happy with the results!

Night Howler

Night Howler - Back

Night Howler - Quilting Close-Up

When I finished, I shared this quilt with some friends on a machine quilting forum. A couple of them pointed out that the pattern name might not be a good one for a baby quilt -- hopefully this baby won't be a night howler!! 😂 

This week I was also lucky enough to attend Susan Cleveland's Dynamic Dresdens quilt class. Susan spoke at our guild meeting and then provided a class the next day. I feel so lucky to have been able to take this class because Susan said she is retiring. I've always wanted to take a class from her but never had the opportunity before. It was wonderful! We worked on Susan's Seven Ringie Dingies pattern. I've completed one Dresden ring.

Seven Ringie Dingies - First Ring

Susan uses her precision piecing techniques along with a fabric foundation in order to keep her rings flat.

Seven Ringie Dingies - Back of Ring

She includes full-size patterns for the foundations in her book. She also uses her Prairie Point pressing tool to get good points on the Dresdens.

Seven Ringie Dingies - Pressing the Points

The class was so fun! Susan is an incredible teacher and her enthusiasm is contagious! I wish I could take more classes from her, but am so happy that I at least caught this one!

Finally, I came across a really old project when cleaning out one of my closets. It's a needlepoint/half cross stitch kit from Bernat called Winter Vespers. I can't believe I found one for sale on Etsy so I can share a picture of it! I started this sometime in the 1980's when I was living in Lawrence, KS.

Winter Vespers

I made some progress on this this week after pulling it out. I've been wanting to do some needlepoint, so this was a fun find. This kit is needlepoint, but it uses the floss that you use for cross stitch. I had kept everything organized, so was able to pick it up and get started again fairly easily. The masking tape around the outside edge has dried out and the canvas may have yellowed a bit with age, but I can easily replace the tape and the canvas will be covered by the floss when the piece is finished so no big deal.

Nancy

Started Quilting Night Howler

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. I've been busy and have been getting a lot done. The weather has been pleasant at my house. There have been storms down in Boulder and that area, but unfortunately not more than a few sprinkles up here.

This week I made some really good progress on Night Howler, designed by Art East Quilting Co. This is the quilt I'm making for my great nephew who is due in October. I started by preparing the binding. I always prepare the binding before making the backing to make sure I have the binding fabric that I want. Then I start using leftovers to create the backing.

Night Howler - Backing

This backing is more chaotic and took longer to make that most of my backings because of the pictorial nature of the quilt top. Because of the way the top was made, the leftovers were all odd sized pieces and half-square triangles. So a lot of time was spent adding small bits of fabric to other leftover bits to get pieces that would fit together. The result is pretty chaotic and not very pretty, but I think it's still a lot of fun. While making the backing, I also made progress on one of my leader/ender projects -- Sister's Nine Patch from More Adventures with Leaders and Enders by Bonnie Hunter.

Sister's Nine Patch - Progress Made This Week

It took me three days to piece the backing! Once the backing was done, I proceeded to pin baste the quilt and start the quilting. I decided to do straight-line quilting on this one. 

Night Howler - Quilting Progress

Night Howler - Quilting Close-Up

I really like how the quilting is turning out! I'm not good at keeping my straight line quilting even and straight, even though I use my walking foot, so I'm drawing several lines using a ruler and a yellow chaco liner, then sewing the lines. I like the chaco liner for this because the "pen" uses a wheel to apply the chalk to the quilt so it doesn't push the fabric around like a pencil does when doing the marking. And I've never had trouble getting the chalk out of the quilt when the quilting is finished. The drawback of the chaco liner is that it is just dropping chalk on the fabric so it wipes off fairly easily so you can't mark too much of the quilt before quilting. Even with this, the quilting is going very quickly and I got over half of the quilting finished yesterday. I hope to get the rest of the quilting finished today and the binding sewn to the front of the quilt so I can take this project to my UFO group tomorrow to work on sewing the binding to the back.

I also made some more progress on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. I finished basting the pieces for the final round of the second rosette and started putting them together.

La Passacaglia - Current Progress

The progress is slow, but it's always fun to see the pieces!

Finally, I picked my knitting back up and made some progress on my Kallara shawl designed by Ambah O'Brien.

Kallara

This end of the shawl decreases more slowly than the increase portion of the shawl, so there's still a ways to go before I get this finished, but it's simple knitting so is a nice project for when I need to relax.

Nancy

Grand Illusion Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! I didn't do anything special for the 4th. We're always under high fire danger this time of year and, although people in our neighborhood are generally really responsible, I like to be home on the 4th so I can get the pets out if there's a problem. It was quiet around my house, but I did hear that someone else in the neighborhood heard someone shooting, which is prohibited under the current restrictions. And, of course, it's nice to relax and avoid any crowds!

I spent most of this week finishing my Grand Illusion quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter. This was Bonnie's 2014 mystery quilt. I did the piecing in 2014/15 and started quilting it some time ago, but got frustrated and put it away. I finally pulled it out a couple of weeks ago, determined to finish it. And now it's done!

Grand Illusion

"Grand Illusion" is a good name for this quilt because you can see the pattern from a distance, but up close it just looks like a jumble of shapes.

Grand Illusion - Close-Up of Front

It's so chaotic, it's hard to see the quilting on the front of the finished quilt. As usual, I used left-over units and fabric for the back. I love how it turned out!

Grand Illusion - Back

You can see the quilting on the back. I used what I'm calling "stream of consciousness" quilting. I saw this somewhere a long time ago, but can't remember the artist's name or what she called it so I have to just go with my name for it. I just quilted whatever motifs I felt like doing that I thought would look good. I ended up using a lot of common background fills and sprinkling in every flower shape I could think of. 

Grand Illusion - Quilting Close-Up 1

Grand Illusion - Quilting Close-Up 2

Grand Illusion - Quilting Close-Up 3

Some of the motifs aren't as smooth or pretty as I would have liked, but I think they look good in combination. It was really difficult wrangling the large quilt through my sewing machine, especially with the dense quilting and the puffy wool batting, but I got it done and I love the result! And the added bonus is that I get joy every time I look at all of the different fabrics that I used. 

When I was tired of quilting, I turned on the TV and worked on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. I'm trying to finish up my second large rosette for this quilt. I'm on the last round of the rosette, which is a partial round of star units. I picked the fabrics for this round and started preparing the pieces.

La Passacaglia - Second Rosette

I laid out some of the chosen fabrics so you can see how the unit goes together and how the colors look. I didn't get much done on this because I put the binding on Grand Illusion this week. I like to sew the binding to the front using the machine, then turn it to the back and hand stitch it. It takes a long time, but I really like the look and feel of this method. It took my all day Thursday and a couple of hours on Wednesday and Friday to finish the hand sewing. I had to stop before finishing on Thursday because the joint at the base of my thumb hurt too much to continue. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to continue on Friday morning since I haven't found anything that really relieves this type of pain, but I have some DMSO cream that was recommended by an online friend. I hadn't really had luck with this in the past, but I decided to try it again and this time wrap my hand in a microwave heating pad with it on. That really seemed to work for me. It felt pretty good right away and it seemed to be all better the next morning. I don't know if it was a fluke since this is the first time it has worked for me, but I thought I would share it with you guys just in case.

Finally, after putting in the last bits of quilting on Grand Illusion yesterday, I was motivated to work on my Tulips Are Blooming quilt. This quilt is based on the Floral Bouquet pattern in Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam & Nicky Lintott. I used the pattern for the center of the quilt, but changed the borders to something I like better. Last time I worked on the quilt, I had added a squares-on-point border, but was thinking that I might want to add another narrow white border to add some space between the squares-on-point and the binding. This additional border would make it easier to keep the points in the squares from being cut off. And, if I use the flower fabrics for the binding creates a separation between the squares and the binding. I looked at it some more and decided that I did want to add that border.

Tulips Are Blooming

I think this space looks good whether I use a white or colored binding, but I'm leaning towards the colored binding. I think the colored binding will look better and will be more practical since the binding is where you're most likely to get dirt on the quilt since that's where you touch it the most.

Well, that's it for this week....

Nancy

Great Retreat

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. The weather is nice, but it's really smokey here. I feel really bad for those people dealing with the fires in Utah, New Mexico and western Colorado! I was looking at the map on my fire app (Watch Duty -- I highly recommend this app) and it's amazing and scary how much is burning now! I hope everyone stays safe!!

I attended a really good quilting retreat last week. It was put on by our local sewing center, Twisted Stitches. It's a great center with great lighting, plenty of irons and power outlets on each table. And if I get there early and can get a table where it's not in the way, I can bring my little portable sewing table so I can sew with my machine sunk in the table. I started by working on the baby quilt I'm making for my great nephew who is due in October. I'm making him Night Howler designed by Art East Quilting Co.

Night Howler

I did all of the cutting before the retreat, so was able to dig right in with the piecing and finished the top on the second morning of the retreat. It was made with all stash fabric and I love how it turned out! This is made using the stitch and flip technique like Elizabeth Hartman uses. I created additional half square triangles from every corner that was large enough and will use those on the back of the quilt. I decided to not piece the backing at the retreat because I like to be in my own space when I'm doing improvisational piecing.

When I finished Night Howler, I moved on to Lilah, which I had started piecing at a guild sew day.

Lilah - Progress From Retreat

I had started the star blocks at the sew day. At the retreat, I was able to finish the star blocks and then make a start on the other blocks. These blocks took quite a while to make because all of the flying geese, half square triangle and square in a square units had to be trimmed after sewing. But I made some good progress at the retreat! After the retreat, I decided to finish up the blocks.

Lilah - Finished Blocks

Now I can start assembling the quilt at another sew day.

While I was working on the Lilah blocks, I also pulled out one of my leader/ender projects. I had forgotten to bring this project the first day so didn't make any progress on it while working on Night Howler, but I made some progress while working on Lilah.

Leader/Ender Progress During Retreat

When I got home, I made more progress on these blocks while finishing up the Lilah blocks.

Leader/Ender Finished Blocsk

With this project, I generally try to have all completed blocks before I put it away. These blocks are quick to make and it's easier to organize things in the project box if I don't have to store partial blocks.

The last project I worked on at the retreat was my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues quilt designed by Karen K. Stone. At around 2:00 on the second day of the retreat, we lost power. The area around the retreat center was affected, including all of the traffic lights. Not knowing how long the outage would last, I first ate my lunch and then pulled in my had project from the car. The outage ended up lasting only a little over an hour so I was only able to get one block finished during that time.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues -- Retreat Block

The power went out again on the third day at about the same time, but that day we were only going until 5:00 so I decided to just make it a short day and head home. The power actually came back while I was putting the sewing machine in the car, but it wasn't worth the effort to bring everything back in and get set up again. I don't know what was going on with the power, but hopefully the power company gets it figured out!!

At home I went back to working on my Grand Illusion quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter. 

Grand Illusion - Some Quilting Designs

Grand Illusion - More Quilting Designs

This is a large quilt so there's a lot of space to fill with quilting!

Finally, I finished the next round of my current rosette for my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. 

La Passacaglia

This is my second of four large rosettes for this quilt and I just have a partial round of star units to do to finish it. I generally work on this quilt at our English Paper Piecing (EPP) group meetings, but this rosette has gotten too big to fit in my regular project bag without folding, so I want to finish it up at home so I can move on to the next rosette. I hope to get those added next week.

Nancy

Back To Grand Illusion

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! It's a weekend of holidays (Juneteenth, Father's Day, Summer Solstice) and I hope everyone is having fun celebrating something, or nothing if that is your thing....

This week I pulled out my Grand Illusion quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter.  Bonnie shares a free mystery quilt pattern every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas and this was  her pattern for 2015. Although I save the pattern each year, this is the only one that I've actually worked on. I finished piecing mine quite a while ago. 

Grand Illusion

Then, several years ago, I took it to a place where you can rent a longarm and I basted it by quilting vertical lines using water soluable thread. This quilt pattern ended up being a little chaotic for my taste so I decided I could experiment on it with the basting and the quilting. I decided to try what I call "stream of consciousness" quilting on it. Sorry, I don't remember the artist that I saw using this or what she called it. Basically, you just keep changing quilt motifs, using whatever motif you feel like sewing. Well, unplanned quilting is very uncomfortable for me and this was amplified by the puffy wool batting I used which made it difficult to avoid tucks in the quilting, so I ended up putting this quilt aside. I've been organizing my works-in-progress (WIPs) and decided it was time to resurrect this quilt. I looked it over to see what I was doing and to figure out where I ended, and picked up where I left off. 

Grand Illusion - Front Partially Quilted

Grand Illusion - Back Partially Quilted

Because of the chaotic piecing, you can see the quilting much better on the back than on the front.

Grand Illusion - Front Quilting Close-Up

Grand Illusion - Back Quilting Close-Up

I'll try to muscle through this project until I get it finished. I'll work on it when I have time at home since it's a large quilt and I'd rather quilt it on my home machine. At least I know I'll love it in the end because I love the colors and have really enjoyed looking at the fabrics as I've done the quilting. And I already have a prepared binding using a fun green cat fabric that is one of my favorites.

I've also continued to work on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. The is the English paper piecing (EPP) project that I generally work on at our monthly EPP group meeting. In the pattern, there are four large rosettes and then a bunch of small rosettes. I'm starting with the large rosettes to get them out of the way, then will work on the smaller ones. I've finished one large rosette and am working on my second one now. This rosette has gotten too large to fit into my normal project bag that I carry to our group meeting, so I'm trying to finish this rosette at home, then will start the next rosette at our meeting next month. So, this week I finished the round that I had started last week.

La Passacaglia - Second Rosette Finished Round

Then I had to pick fabrics for my next round. This is always the hardest part for me! I decided to go with fussy cut flamingos and a bright pink fabric. Here are the basted pieces set in place to see how they will look:

La Passacaglia - Auditioning Next Round

While I was picking fabric, I also selected some fabrics for starting the next large rosette.

La Passacaglia - Beginning Fabrics for Third Rosette

I'll surround this with the same black fabric I used in the first and second rosettes. After all of the preparation, I was also able to start sewing the next round on the second rosette.

La Passacaglia - Full Progress on Second Rosette

This round is going pretty quickly, then I'll have to pick fabrics for the final round of this rosette. The final round is a partial round of star motifs.

Finally, I did some more preparation for the three-day daytime-only retreat I'm attending next week. We will be sewing 9am-7pm on Monday and Tuesday (although I'll have to leave a little early to pick up Grace from doggie daycare) and 9am-5pm on Wednesday. I decided to do the cutting for my Night Howler quilt designed by Art East Quilting Co ahead of time because there are a lot of small pieces for this quilt and I find it easier to stay organized and cut carefully at home. I was glad I did this because I found out that I really screwed up when choosing my fabrics. I somehow didn't choose all of the fabrics that I needed and I also chose a background fabric that was too small. So, I rectified my choices and got everything cut out, ready for the retreat.

Night Howler - All Pieces Cut and Organized

This is now in a bin, ready to start piecing tomorrow. I also did some more organizing of my WIPs, making sure everything was in separate plastic bins and labeled, and making a list of some of the projects that are good choices for retreats and sew days. I decided that the extra projects I'll take with me tomorrow will be Lilah, which I started at a previous sew day, and Wild Women Don't Get the Blues, which I worked on at our last unfinished object (UFO) group meeting. These projects will definitely be enough to keep me busy all day. At the end of each day, I'll pick more projects to bring along based on my progress that day. That's the advantage of daytime-only retreats -- you can add more projects and pick up other things you might need each evening. Hopefully, I'll have a lot of progress to share next week!

Nancy

Pink and Gray Quilt Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We're having a nice, somewhat rainy day here. It's nice when Mother Nature waters my flower pots for me!

This week I was able to finish the quilting on my pink and gray quilt. Since I'd already applied the binding, this quilt is now finished!

Pink and Gray Quilt - Front

Pink and Gray Quilt - Back

For quilting, I first did stitch-in-the-ditch (SID) between each of the blocks. I was able to do this with my walking foot, so that was quick and easy. Then I did SID quilting inside the frame of each block using dark gray thread for the dark gray frames and light gray thread for the light gray frames. I started doing this using a ruler to keep my lines straight, but I had a lot of trouble keeping the stitching on the seam so I switched to doing that stitching free motion and was much happier with that result. Finally, I stitched a motif inside each square using a curved ruler and pink thread.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Quilting Motif

Pink and Gray Quilt - Curved Ruler

The length of this ruler made it very difficult to align things under the sewing machine and then to maneuver the quilt, but I got it done. It's not perfect, but I think it still looks good!

We had our monthly UFO small group meeting this week. A lot of people were able to make it so I decided to do handwork there to leave more room for others using sewing machines. This was a good opportunity to start doing the hand embroidery on my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues blocks designed by Karen K. Stone.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues - Hand Applique

I'm randomly chosing the colors and the stitches. Originally, I was going to have some blocks with circles and some without (so with grids or scattered stitches), but after embroidering these four blocks I think I will have a circle motif in each block. I think it adds a nice coherence. But I will be varying the size of the circle in the blocks. I'm going to lightly embroider all of the blocks, then decide if more embroidery is needed. I'm guessing I'll want to keep the embroidery light, but we'll see....

We also had our monthly English Paper Piecing (EPP) small group meeting this week. It was a fun meeting, as usual, but a little more fun this month because we celebrated the birthday of one of the group members. She has celiac disease so our host's husband made a gluten-free chocolate cake. He used a King Arthur cake mix and I wanted to share it because it was incredible. Nobody, myself included, would have guessed that it was gluten-free! It was moist and tasty -- the perfect chocolate cake. I'm guessing it was the mix here, but only know that it was King Arthur and was gluten-free. I highly recommend this cake mix! Anyway, I continued to work on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein.  Since I usually just work on this quilt at the monthly meeting, the progress is slow but I'm loving the results! This week I finished the yellow round and started the blue and gray round.

La Passacaglia

This is the second large rosette in the quilt. I haven't started any of the small rosettes yet. This one is now too big to fit in my project bag without folding, so I think I'll try to finish it at home and then start the next large rosette at our next meeting. That way I don't have to carry around my huge project bag that I made large enough to hold the large rosettes without folding. It's a nice bag for storing the project, but not very convenient for travel.

I also pulled fabric for my great nephew's quilt this week. He is due in September or October so I have plenty of time. I found a pattern I liked at the quilt shop when we met there for our cross-stitch group a couple of weeks ago. (I'm going to try to buy something from the shop every time we meet to thank them for letting us meet there for free.) So I went through my stash this week and pulled fabrics for the top. I'll be making Night Howler designed by Art East Quilting Co. 

Night Howler

I like the color scheme that they used in the pattern, but decided to use patterned fabrics rather than solids. I looked through my stash and found fabrics that I think will work well. Week after next I'll be attending a three-day daytime-only retreat. I'll probably piece this quilt there. Then I'll have plenty of time to think about the quilting.

Finally, I also made more progress on my Kallara shawl designed by Ambah O'Brien. 

Kallara

I've made it past the widest part of the shawl and am now starting the decreases. It decreases more slowly than it increased so I'm probably about a third finished with this shawl.

Nancy