Mini Spring Scrappy

I prepared the top for this mini quilt last fall.  I had planned on sewing down the appliques as part of the quilting, and it turned out great, although I wouldn’t recommend it for anything much bigger than this top, about 20 x 20 inches.  I’m glad I have a new, bright, spring wallhanging to look at!  I’m pretty sure its a Kim Diehl pattern, but i’m not sure from which of her books.

I ordered some fabric for the binding on the Tiger Lily quilt – the same line as the inner points and borders are, but a bit darker.  I’m hoping it will finish off the quilt just right, and I’ll start to like it again :)

Quilter’s Block

I am fortunate to have two sewing machines – one a longer arm Saphhire 870 that I use mostly to quilt, and another Husqvarana that I use for piecing and machine applique.  My sewing room is small, so my second machine is kept in the dining room.  This works  out really well, as I don’t have to disturb a quilt in progress in order to do some other sewing or piecing….this also works out not so well when I need motivation to finish a quilt!

I think the Tiger Lily quilt has been sitting with the centre quilted, for about two weeks, under the needle and set up to quilt the borders.  But I was stuck, I just didn’t know what to do about those borders.  So I was able to ignore it, except for a guilty glance or an exasperated sigh aimed at the quilt when I was working in the room at the cutting board or worktable.  All along I knew I wanted it hung for the first day of Spring, and all of sudden here it is.

  Today was not the day to get started again, I have a bad shoulder and a major headache, but I plunged ahead and I think it turned out fine – in fact, it took less than a couple of hours all together to finish it – hopefully, it doesn’t look that way.  But I don’t like it!  I really don’t like it!  I just want to roll it up in a corner and stuff it away.  I think many of us feel this way about our quilts at some point, and I’m hoping this is a temporary feeling – but there is just something wrong with the colours or design of the top that bother me. 

Now that I’m ready for binding I cannot find the piece of green border fabric that I am sure I put away….I don’t have any other large pieces of the other fabrics in the quilt…so I think I’ll have to use something all together different.  Yet another excuse to bury this quilt :)

Well I try out some binding fabrics, and finish it, and maybe hang it where I can’t see it too often….if I can’t easily find a binding fabric, well its going away somewhere!

Lots of sewing done!

I had a great few days of piecing and machine applique – I had a great time and there was hardly a hitch!

These are 16 cottages from the book Fig Tree Quilts Houses.  I’ll be putting in black sashings, two scrappy borders on either side of a pinwheel block border.  This will be a happy quilt for me – I’ve have always wanted a house quilt but never got this far.

 

Then I got crazy with machine applique, and got caught up on Sindy Rodenmayer’s Fat Cat Patterns Summer Pond.  I had a few already done, and got four more sewn.  I am looking forward to seeing the whole quilt, and it sure is a different theme than my usual flowers and piecing!

Blocks of the month

Blocks of the month offered by some wonderful quilt designers, for free, and those by paid subscription, are a great solution for me to feel like I’m getting a lot done without a lot of effort!

I cannot sew for long periods of time, and I can’t cut or press for long periods of time.  The idea of making a quilt in a weekend, or even a week, would be a goal that would just frustrate me.

By following the patterns offered on a monthly basis, I can pretty quickly cut and sew the block, and feel like I got something accomplished that day.  I enjoy seeing the quilt grow, and using my stash for making up the blocks.  Here’s a pic of the blocks done in January and February -

The two on the left column are from My Quilt Village, and will be a wallhanging.  The star in the upper middle column is from Women of Influence, the Kansas City Star 2009 block of the month (This one does cost $3 for each month as a pdf download, and comes with a little history about a “woman of influence” in the later 1800s.  Below the star are the first two blocks of Beth Ferrier’s b.o.m. Now and Forever.  The upper right corner is a Pearl P. Perrera mystery quilt (register or sign in to the message board to access the blocks), and the baskets are from Anne Sutton’s Bunny Hill Designs called A Tisket A Tasket.

Coincidences

Sometimes I wonder if my subsconscious knows things before I do.  Here’s what happened over the course of a few days the weekend before last.  On Sunday, I had a thought, coming from nowehere, that I don’t like the blue and tan fusible applique quilt I’m doing – I should stop and put the pattern away for another time when I’m prepared to do it as a needleturn projecT.  Later in the day, I thought about making it up as a “redwork” project, and asked dh to copy and shrink the block patterns to 9”.

Two days later, I start to ponder Bether Ferrier’s new b.o.m., which I very much wanted to do but had given up as I couldn’t get the fabrics together in my stash.  Oh!  The blue and tan would be perfect – with green and maybe pink accents in the flowers!

And then the next day – I’m working on one of the Rachel’s Reels blocks and get frustrated at my dog who is jumping all over dh who is beside me the couch – I should have stopped sewing but I didn’t and the result was a very messy inside corner.

Dinner came and went, and I’ve suddenly got the idea to use those applique/redwork patterns on this quilt!  How come it all works out so neatly?