Kaffe Circles Backing/Binding Prepared

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! I'm having a good time visiting family in Kansas City right now. It's been very hot and humid, but we're supposed to have a cooler stretch now. It's certainly a switch from the dry air at my house! I haven't been working on any of my projects while I'm here. I've been having a lot of pain at the base of my thumb, so I'm giving it a break. It feels a lot better already!

Before I left, I was able to prepare the backing and binding for my Kaffe Circles quilt. I usually incorporate my scraps into the backing of my quilts. This time, the only scraps I have are circles.

Kaffe Circles - Leftover Scraps

My first thought was to make a backing with a large piece of the solid and a couple of large pieces of Kaffe fabric, then scatter the circles on those. That would be a fun backing, but it would be a lot of work. I would probably have to applique the circles since it would be really hard to wrangle the larger pieces of fabric for inset circles. Especially since the leftover circles are smaller than the circles on the front. In the end, I decided to save the circles for another project and just use a single Kaffe fabric for the backing. I had a couple of fabrics in my stash with enough yardage to create the backing and I ended up choosing this blue pansy fabric.

Kaffe Circles - Backing Fabric

I really like this fabric (which is probably why I had so much yardage) and the little bits of background color that peek out between the flowers matches my solid fabric pretty well.

Kaffe Circles - Backing Background Color

Using the single fabric, I was able to get the backing prepared in just an hour or two. What a nice change from my usual backings! I also prepared the binding for this quilt.

Kaffe Circles - Binding

I'm trying to be better about preparing the backing and binding when I finish a quilt top so I don't have to store a pile of fabric scraps with the quilt while it waits to be quilted.

I was also able to make a little progress on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. 

La Passacaglia

I started attaching the units for the final partial round of the second large rosette. I had hoped to get this rosette finished, but my thumb was hurting too much to get very far on this. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this up when I get back!

And I continue to plug away at my Winter Vespers from Bernat. 

Winter Vespers

I still have to hold a needle to work on this, but it's not as painful as hand sewing so I can make progress on this when I get home if my thumb acts up again. 

Finally, I visited a new-to-me quilt shop here in Kansas City. It's called KC Maker Studio & Fabrics. I wanted to look for binding fabric for my Catsup & Mustard quilt, which has colors that I was having difficulty matching. I had heard that this was a large quilt shop and I was not disappointed! It was huge! And it was beautifully organized. They had fabrics galore, patterns everywhere, a huge selection of bag making supplies and everything you could think of in a quilt shop. I had brought a couple of spools of thread that matched the colors in my quilt pretty well and used those to find several fabrics that I thought would work for the binding. I purchased two possibilities and have my fingres crossed that one will work for me. I will definitely be visiting this shop again!

Nancy

Kaffe Circles Quilt Top Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. Although it continues to be hot and dry, we have luckily not had any fires close by. My heart goes out to all of the people who are dealing with the fires and with the flooding. It's certainly sobering when I look at my Watch Duty app and see all of the fires affecting the western states!

This week I pulled out my Kaffe Circles quilt top. This quilt is made with Kaffe Fassett fabrics along with a solid. I wanted to get this top finished because I'm using all different Kaffe fabrics in the blocks so I had piles of my Kaffe fabric around my sewing room so I could keep track of which fabrics had been used and which hadn't. I started this quilt top in a Linda Reinhert workshop at my quilt guild and have made a few blocks here and there since. I had some time this week, so I made the final push and finished the quilt top. The blocks in this quilt are made up of inset pieced circles.

Kaffe Circles - Sample Block

The instructor had us sewing the inset circles using only 8 pins evenly spaced around the circle, but I found that I needed 16 pins. I guess I'm a control freak! It dawned on me this week that it might be easier to use clips instead of pins when sewing the circles because the clips are easier to use and they hold the fabric together only at the seam line, which is the only place on the pieces that you are sewing where the pieces are the same size.

Kaffe Circles - Using Pins

Kaffe Circles - Using Clips Instead of Pins

I found that the problem with using clips is that you have to stop sewing and remove the clip in front of the clip, about 1/2" before the needle, because the foot can't go over the clip. With pins I could sew right up to the needle so the fabrics were held in place better. So I discarded this idea and went back to using pins. After sewing, I pressed all of the seams towards the solid fabric.

Kaffe Circles - Pressing Towards Solid Fabric

I did this because I wanted the solid circles to be in the foreground. It's subtle, but this does make a difference. I wanted the quilt to have 30 blocks and had already finished 17 blocks, so I had 13 blocks left to complete this week.

Kaffe Circles - New Blocks

The blocks were slow to complete (again, I'm a control freak), but once they were finished it was quick work to put them together into a quilt top!

Kaffe Circles

It's nice to have this top finished so I can put away my Kaffe fabrics! I still need to prepare the binding and start thinking about the backing.

I've also made some progress on my Sisters Nine Patch leader/ender project designed by Bonnie Hunter. I made a bunch of progress on these blocks week before last when working on the backing for my Prickly Pear quilt, but forgot to include that in my blog post. This week I couldn't use leaders/enders when piecing the circles, but was able to make a little more progress on the leader/ender project while sewing the circle blocks together.

Sisters Nine Patch - Progress

I now have 112 of the 169 blocks finished and have a start on the remaining 57 blocks. I need to cut some more green squares for this quilt and can use some of the leftovers from my Kaffe Circles fabrics.

In the evenings, I made some progress on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. I'm almost finished with the second large rosette and I really wanted to get it finished. This week I was able to finish four of the units for the final round of the rosette.

La Passacaglia - Units

I only have one more of these units to put together, then I can add these to the rosette.

Finally, I also made some more progress on my Winter Vespers needlepoint kit from Bernat. 

Winter Vespers

I'm not sure what I'll do with this when it's finished, but I'm really enjoying working on it!

Before I go, I wanted to share a little tidbit. A couple of weeks ago when preparing fabric for the Susan Cleveland workshop, my iron got really dirty. I starched the fabric, which I don't usually do but it was part of the instructions for the workshop. I used my backup iron, just in case, and I was happy that I did because the iron was coated with cooked starch when I finished. It was terrible and I was glad I used a backup iron! I tried cleaning the iron with the old Faultless iron cleaner that I've had for years (decades??), but it had no effect on the starch. Sorry, I didn't think to get a picture of the dirty iron but it was terrible and I was afraid I wasn't going to get it off. I looked for some iron cleaners on Amazon to try and found Mr. Iron and got some to try. 

Mr. Iron

This stuff was amazing! I barely touched it to the hot iron and the starch just disappeared!

Clean Iron

I wanted to share this because it was so incredible!

Nancy

Prickly Pear Ready To Be Basted

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! It was a nice week here. The temperatures cooled down a bit and we had some rain. As you know, I love rain! We're back to a pretty hot and dry forecast, but I'll still cross my fingers for more moisture!

This week I concentrated on getting my Prickly Pear quilt, designed by Cozy Quilt Designs, ready to be basted. This is going to be the first quilt that I send to a longarmer to baste for me rather than pin basting it myself on the floor. At the beginning of the week I just had the finished quilt top and a pile of leftover scraps. I started by preparing the binding so I could use any leftover binding fabric in the backing. Then it was on to the backing. My backings take a while since I try to use as much of the leftover fabric as possible. Since this is a fairly large quilt (74"x102") and it was a kit, I also had to dig through my stash to find some other fabrics that could also be used. Here is what I ended up with:

Prickly Pear - Backing

It's a bit wild and chaotic, but it'll work. I stay stitched around the outside of the backing and the quilt top, measured out the batting (I have a large roll of batting) and folded it all up and put it in a bag. I've left a message for the longarmer and will wait for a reply. I told her there is no rush on this so it might be a while before I can start quilting this.

I did also make some progress this week on my Winter Vespers needlepoint designed by Bernat. 

Winter Vespers

I like how this is filling in! 

Sorry I don't have many pictures this week. The Prickly Pear backing really took a long time to put together! I'll hopefully have more interesting stuff next week...

Nancy