Friday, January 19, 2024

Always Leftovers

 These two tops are recent finishes. The Broken Dishes was inspired by an antique quilt I saw with 8" blocks. I've done this in 6" and I prefer that but I like these bigger pieces too because they cover alot of area fast. And a bunch of the triangles were leftover from another quilt top recently finished. It's buried upstairs so I haven't shown that yet. I did not plan for this to look Christmassy so I don't look at it that way. I still hope to find something for the border. 


The crumb quilt is one of two I've been working on at Studio 3. Lois was asking for scraps to make a courthouse steps style string quilt. She'd just finished one and enjoyed it so much she wanted to do more. So I pulled out a tub of scrapstrips and I joined her. We each made 2. This one started with strip set ends I collected from several years. Little pieces were joined to make a row. It's very freeing because there are no seams or points to match. The navy/black sashing I used was donated precut at 9" long. I think someone cut the wrong size or decided on a different color. There are enough to make another quilt. Some other day. 

I started this small quilt when a small baggie of 1 1/2" squares were donated. I like this variation of a 9-patch, but if I do it again I'll make bigger blocks. I quilted it with a simple meander.

I've got several more that are almost together. Not sure if I will quilt them soon or just add them to the pile. I'm kind of interested in getting some of the old tops moved out. 


I 

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Sunday, January 14, 2024

And It's Quilted

The quilting is done a day later than planned on the string quilt the church group put together with strip set ends. I quilted swirls freehand. I need to change that swirl design a bit to go faster and use less thread, less backtracking. I'll doodle on a whiteboard after I look at pantos online. Pantos slow me down so I need to find something I can do without messing up freehand. Often I have a problem with the size and or space of my motifs not being the same size from beginning to end. I know the tricks to help prevent them. I guess I need to focus on that. I will pass this one on to someone else to bind.




 I quilted another one this afternoon. This is a smaller version of the quilt "Midnight Madness", a pattern in my book Twin Peaks. It could be a 15 year old UFO. This one I called "Good Enough". It seemed I was saying that a bunch after we moved mom and dad to be closer to us. She said that often. I was never sure if she was pleased with whatever she deemed good enough. 
Quilted freehand flowers in the pinwheels and leaves and loops in the borders. I used a continuous curves treatment in the small triangles. Fast and Fun! I will add it to my binding pile.
 

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Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Some I Quilted

 To continue updating here this post will show pictures of some quilts I quilted in 2023. 

In May we moved my longarm up out of the basement and into my main floor sewing room. Its a little bit crowded but preferable to the cold cellar. When I bought my longarm in 2008 I had 120 tops or flimsies waiting to get quilted. I never intended to quilt them all. Many I used in my lectures as is. Since then I've quilted about 24 per year on average but apparently most of them are donation quilts for the church quilt group I belong to. I have continued to piece tops and quilt some of my own too. I now have about 130 tops waiting to be quilted. I plan to quilt more of them, whittling away the pile slowly.

This is a top here but it's quilted. The blocks were made from 4" four-patch blocks. 
I didn't rememer what pattern I planned to use them in. Now they are out of the house. text-align: center;">

The name of this pattern is Delectable Mountains. A variation made from
authentic vintage fabrics. I pieced the top about 10 years ago. Sue my SIL loved it and
its the quilt she picked out when she heard that I was gifting a quilt to some in the family.
Sue is a quilter too. I've got a top from her to quilt someday too. 

Prairie Wife pieced perhaps 20 years ago. I always liked it and often hung it as a top over an open door
just to display it. 

6" Ohio Stars if you double click on the photo you should be able to see a close up
and check out the quilting. I thought if draping it on the chair  the light would hilight
the quilting better. Well, maybe. I think I finished this last week, I've been quilting up a storm.


Many of the quilts I make now begin from leftovers from previous quilts, mine or donated pieces.
No doubt the twin-peak triangle units were in my collection of scraps. 

These Monkey Wrench were the other half that Dorinda made. A quilt sure goes
together fast when the blocks are already made and they're alternated with
a plain square. No complaints from me.

I made these little pinwheels at Studio 3 and finished up the top 
a year or 2 ago. I never thought I'd have it quilted already. The binding will be 
done later. I think I will start building a pile to bind. 


No doubt there are a few more I missed. I think I have the camera figured out now and glad to see they didn't change Blogger much. If I can get a decent picture I'd like to post more often. No promises. 

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Monday, January 8, 2024

SURPRISE

 WHOA, I didn't realize that I never posted last year. That was not intentional. I kept quilting though. I managed to quilt 30 quilts, mostly donation quilts for our church group. I did not take pictures of it all. But I do have some pictures I will share. I will show the tops first in no particular order.

I drew this up several years ago and kept coming  back to it so I decided that meant I should make it. Since I had enough fabric it became  bedsize. Might just quilt and use this one. 

This was another fast fun one to put together. Strips already cut I
just trimmed them to random but similar lengths.

cute farm fabric for a fast donation quilt


My charm quilt using reproduction 1800's fabrics.  I think I have almost1200 different fabrics. I never realized it would end up so big. I could have quit collecting earlier. I didn't want to start assembly till 
I had enough cause it was easier to watch for duplicates if all the same color was in one pile. I think I do have 1 or 2 that was used twice. Plenty of other duplicates that were cut will go into a smaller one some day,





Dorinda made the Monkey Wrench blocks. Our group received a box or 35 quilt tops and miscellaneous
scraps and ufos from her estate. This is from half the pile. The other half had light backgrounds. Together the quilt would have been too big for our use. Most were already stitched to an alternate plain block.

These two I made at retreat this fall up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Above is a Shoo Fly variation. Fast and fun. Below is Amish Pavers.I have quite a collection of solids and have more planned with
them, I made a third but no picture yet. All 3 were cut before the 3 days of sewing. It felt good to sew that long.


This was a joint effort of the ladies at church. We had sewn strip sets for
a different quilt. The strip set ends we put together to make a bigger triangle and added the light. I will be quilting this one later today.



Thats it for this post. I made more but didn't get a photo. I'll check past posts and pile of tops for any I missed. It looks like my plan mostly worked to only piece across the street at Studio 3. And to quilt when I'm at home. I use my new machine mostly for piecing backs and bindings. More soon.

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