What Was Once Old Is Now New

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' “ Isaac Asimov

A few years before my grandmother passed away she began making quilt tops—lots of quilt tops.  At the time I was just learning to machine quilt so I practiced my quilting techniques on her tops.  That was over 15 years ago and I still have a few of her tops that haven’t been quilted.  This one was in my April UFO Parade and I’m happy to say that it is now finished.  This is the second finish on my list—only nine more to go!  Of course that’s just one stack of UFO’s.  There are many, many more stacks!!

As I was editing the photograph, I thought, “that’s funny” this quilt almost looks like a “modern quilt”.  It has a simple, clean design, lots of white background and includes a taupe-y gray fabric.  When my grandmother made it dark, country colors were popular and this looked very dated.  Now I think it’s current again.  I still have some dusty pink and blue UFO as well as a peach and green one.  They may need to age a bit more before they look “modern.”  Haha!!

Charm Square Winner Update:  This morning the random generator picked #14 as the winner in Marmalade Charm Square giveaway.  The #14 comment from Monday’s post was Lea.  There isn’t an email address in her profile, so Lea, please email your address to me and I’ll get your charm squares in the mail right away.

Design Wall Monday-Charm School and Giveaway!

Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.  Kathleen Winsor

When I was a kid my sent one of my sisters and me to charm school.  I don’t know if she thought we were uncouth or if she was just trying to turn us into ladies.  It was held at Adler’s, a nice girls’ and women’s clothing store at Antioch mall and we learned social etiquette, manners, wardrobe tips and posture.  At the end of the class we had a fashion show and tea.  It’s been years  since I’ve heard of charm schools so I  just did a quick google search and there are still some around if you need some lessons in social graces.  I’m pretty sure my daughter would have just laughed at me if I’d suggested something like that to her.

What conjured up that old memory was that I spent a good part of the week working with charm squares—packs and packs of charm squares.  There were several of them in the box of stuff I’m trying to use up and I finally figured out quilts I could make from each of them. 

On Thursday’s post I showed the blocks made from Christmas charms made from a Nancy Halvorson line of fabric called Tidings.  I found a great border fabric, finished the top, layered it up and it’s now on the frame being quilted.  I’m using a pantograph on it so it’s a little slow going.

The second charm quilt is made from Marmalade fabric by Bonnie and Camille.  I used a pattern from the book Quilts from Sweet Jane.  I quilted this with vertical lines.  It’s the first time I’ve done that and I’m not sure I’ll do it again very soon.  It was hard to keep the lines straight and the fabric wanted to shift.  I stitched them random widths apart so it wouldn’t look funny if the lines weren’t the same width apart.

Next I pieced a top from a pack of charms called Baby Geniuses Grow Up. This is a pattern from Villa Rosa called La France.  I like this pattern because you can make a baby quilt with just one charm pack and 1-1/2 yards of fabric for borders and binding. And you can piece the top in under two hours!

Now I’m working on another quilt made from the pattern in the Sweet Jane book.  I don’t usually make the same quilt twice in one week but this is another one using Benartex charms.  Unlike Moda charm packs, which always have 42 charms, the number in these varies.  As it turned out, I had just enough squares to make this quilt.  Hopefully I can get them finished this week, then move on to something else—like jelly rolls!  Just kidding—I need to work on UFO’s.

Since this is charm week and I have an abundance of them, I’m giving away two Moda Marmalade charm packs to one lucky reader.  If you’d like to win these just leave a comment in the remarks.  I’ll use a random generator to pick a name on Friday and email the winner to get an address so I can send them on their way!

If you need a little inspiration this week, be sure to check out the other Design Wall Monday links at Patchwork Times.

Week 16, 2013 Recap and Stash Report

This week I finished the fat quarter baby quilt and pieced some charm square tops (more about that tomorrow when I’m a little further along).  The best finish, though, is this little four patch quilt that has been waiting about two years for a binding.  Now it is finally finished and ready to be shipped to Quilts for Kids!



It’s kind of hard to see but the black fabric is a nice skateboard print.  This will make a nice boy’s quilt.



The weekly stash report:
Used this week:  10 yards
Used year to date:  125 yards
Purchased this week:  0
Purchased year to date: 21 yards
Net year to date:  104 yards used

I’m really happy to see the net yardage go down over 100 yards this year so far.  I’m trying to sew one mile of fabric (1,760 yards) from stash so that puts a dent in it! 

Be sure to check out other stash reports using the links at Patchwork Times.

Come back tomorrow--I'll have a fun giveaway!!

Week 15 Recap and Stash Report

“Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather.”  Ilka Chase

I just finished the binding on the Bundle of 12 and gathered my stuff to go outside to take pictures of it but it’s snowing AGAIN.  This is just a little ridiculous.  It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon so I just took the photos inside.  The color is not as good as outdoor shots so the quilt doesn’t look quite as nice as it does “in person.”

This is the third thing I’ve finished from the fabric in the “Box of Stuff” I found awhile back.  I’m really trying to use up all the fabric in the box.  This quilt was made from a pattern by Amelie Scott Designs that I purchased on Craftsy.  You can find the pattern here.  It was fast and easy to make and I like how it turned out. It will be a donation to our local emergency shelter
Here is a close-up of the quilting.  I used an overall freehand feather and swirl design.

 

Recapping the week, I finished this quilt and the disappearing four patch.  I pieced another baby quilt and it’s on the frame about half quilted.  There were several charm packs in the box of stuff I’m trying to use up so I found patterns for them and cut the background fabric for three quilts.  I’d like to get those tops pieced this week but I have book club and according to my Kindle I’m only 28% through the book.  Looks like lots of reading on the schedule!

The weekly stash report:
Used this week:  16 yards
Used year to date:  115 yards
Purchased this week:  0
Purchased year to date: 21 yards
Net year to date:  94 yards used

Be sure to visit Judy's blog at Patchwork Times to see how others are doing with their stash this year.

I’ve Got Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and the sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.  Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

Yesterday we had ice and freezing rain.  The weather has gotten so depressing around here and there’s no relief in the entire 10 day forecast.  Living in Wisconsin we expect long, hard winters but right now most of us are beginning to lose hope of seeing spring.  Today, though, was the monthly meeting for our small quilting group.  We’ve been meeting for about nine years now and have all become very good friends.  These women are are very accomplished quilters and they always motivate me to get things done for show and tell.  It is such a blessing to have this meeting on the calendar each month.  It does my heart good to laugh and connect with such good friends.

Pineapple Blossom Quilted

I loaded the Pineapple Blossom quilt on the frame but couldn’t decide how to quilt it.  Lots of people have made this quilt so I did a Google image search to see if I could get any ideas on how to quilt it. I thought I might try a new freehand technique but it looked like most people quilted an overall meander or a pantograph.   I’m not very good at using pantographs.  I think it is hard to follow the lines with the laser light and my curves aren’t as smooth as they could be.  I’m pretty sure this would improve with practice but I’ll often go months between panto quilts. 

I bit the bullet though and ended up using Deb's Swirls on this quilt.  It’s an easy design but very pretty and I thought the curves would soften the sharp points of the design.  It’s also scary to use light thread on dark fabric because every mistake shows up.  It turned out pretty nice.  Here’s a close up of the quilting.  I’m hoping to get the binding on right away so I can hand stitch it down while watching basketball this weekend.



While quilting this quilt I listened to The Red Thread on my Ipod.  It really helps to have a little distraction so I’m not thinking so hard about staying on the lines of the pantograph.  This book was somewhat predictable and melodramatic but was great for quilting since I could follow the story without having to concentrate too much.  It is a novel that follows several American families as they go through the process to adopt Chinese babies and several Chinese mothers who give up their daughters for American adoption.  Overall it was pretty good--I would give it 4 out of 5 stars!  I really like listening to books while I quilt.  My local library offers them free through Overdrive Media.  It's simple to download them and you can catch up on your "reading" while quilting.

Fixing the disaster

When I realized there were two blocks turned in my friend’s quilt as I was sewing on the binding my heart sank.  It was such a hard decision whether to just leave it or try to fix it.  I ended up fixing it.  It wasn’t hard, but was time consuming because I wanted the repair to be as inconspicuous as possible.  Here’s how I did it.
I started by carefully removing the quilting stitches from the two blocks and about 1 inch into the surrounding blocks.  Then I “unsewed” the blocks, turned them the right way and sewed them back together.  Because I didn’t want to remove any more quilting than absolutely necessary, I had to hand stitch a 1/2 inch area that I couldn’t turn.  You can see the stitches in the close-up but they are really almost invisible.



Remove the quilting stitches to the seam (this will make it easier to bury the knot), leaving tails long enough to knot.  Usually I would do this from the back of the quilt, not the front but the back was a solid gray fabric and I knew it would be easier to hide the repair in the print fabric on the front.



After the tails were tied in a knot I used a self-threading needle to bury the threads.  I love these needles for this purpose because they can be threaded with short tails.  You just slip the thread through a slot in the top of the needle.  If you can’t find them locally they are available from Amazon (who knew?) here.



Insert the tip of the needle a stitch length away from the stitching line and bring it up an inch or so away. 



Pull the thread through.



Then clip off the threads.



Re-quilt the area.  When you start, leave the tails on so you can tie them off and bury them like you did when you removed the stitching.



Repeat this process for every start and stop you have to do in the repair.  I had four.  In the end though, you couldn’t even tell on the solid backing fabric.



Like I said, it wasn’t really hard to do, it just took a lot of time.  My friend picked up the quilt on Monday and she was very happy with it.  It did turn out well, especially since she is a beginning quilter.  It is queen size and since my quilt stand broke I had to fold it over this drying rack to photograph it.  This is about 1/4 of the quilt.  You can see that from this though that the turned blocks would have really stood out.  And I really wonder why we didn’t catch it earlier???

Finish #2 from the “box of stuff”

This quilt started out as a jelly roll of strips.  I’m not sure where I picked this up but it was during my road trip last fall. I got a couple of these rolls and some fat quarter packs to use for donation quilts.  They were a bargain, but don’t have the variety of fabrics that most jelly rolls have.  I wanted to make this twin size so I added a few strips from stash and added extra border on the top and bottom to make it a little longer.  Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.



Most of the blocks are rail fence blocks but I didn’t want to waste any fabric (or have any leftover) so I used the ends of the strip set to make some 16-patch blocks to mix in.  I quilted it in an overall swirl and crescent design.  I used Signature thread in Latte and I love how it looks on the brown sashing—like caramel on chocolate!



When finishing quilts for Quilts Beyond Borders they request that binding be completely sewn by machine (front and back).  I had only done this a couple of times before but since doing it several times now I’m happy with the results and plan to do this on all my donation quilts from now on.  I can finish them faster and they will be more durable for heavy use and laundering.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how I make the binding.

First, trim the extra batting and binding close to the edge of the quilt.  I leave about 1/8” extra all the way around the quilt.

After preparing the binding strips, sew the binding to the BACK of the quilt using a 1/4” seam from the edge of the binding.



When you get to the corner, miter the same as you would if you were sewing it to the front.



After the binding is sewn completely around the quilt, turn the quilt over and bring the binding around to the front.  Match the top thread to the binding and the bobbin to the back.  Top stitch the binding on the front of the quilt.  I pull it around so it’s slightly to the left of the seam line.  Sew slowly so you catch the binding and can hold it in place while you stitch.  I use a stiletto to hold it down all the way to the needle.  That way it stays nice and straight!



When you get to the corner, pull the bottom up first, then fold the right side over to make the miter.  Then hold it in place with the stiletto until you sew it down.



Continue all the way around the quilt, then celebrate a finished quilt!!
Here’s what it looks like on the front when you’re finished:



And here’s the back.


It looks pretty good!  I enjoy hand stitching the binding down, but this is a real time saver when trying to get quilts ready for donation.

Ta Da! QBB Quilts Finished

It took a little longer than I thought but this batch of six quilts for Quilts Beyond Borders will go out in tomorrow’s mail.  I finished quilting and binding the last three this week and am on the list to receive six more so I’ll get plenty of quilting practice!  With this program, the quilter received the quilt tops, backing fabric and binding fabric so we don’t know what the quilts look like until they arrive.  There is always a wide variety of styles and colors.  This batch was no exception.  Overall, I think they are very nice and will be well-loved by their recipients.

This one is a cute little panel—no piecing involved!

I quilted it in a simple allover meander.

This one has alternating blocks of blue rectangles with a red, white and blue star fabric.  There were several different blue prints used in the quilt and to be honest, this created a bit of a challenge to quilt.  I’m not sure if it was the different textures of fabrics or something else, but my thread kept breaking.  My machine really didn’t like the seam in the back and would skip stitches every time I went over it.  After it was finished though, I liked the way it turned out.

Fortunately, I didn’t try anything fancier than an overall meander.  It would have driven me crazy with all the problems I had with it.

The last one I worked on turned out really pretty.  It had a focal print in the center surrounded by a pink border and a tropical fish print. 

I quilted this in an allover water pattern.

Tomorrow I hope to have some time to get back to my projects.  I’m ready to put the borders on the Pineapple Blossom quilt.  The bonus triangle top is also ready to piece and I have the blocks cut out for the quilt I’m making with the extra flying geese from the Buffalo Ridge quilt.  Always lots of projects in the sewing room and not enough time to finish them!

Two more quilts finished

A couple of days ago I was looking through a pile of quilts and I found these two.  They were finished except for a little binding.  So I sat down, turned on the TV and finished hand stitching the bindings.  It took about an hour and a half and who knows how long those had been in the unfinished pile!  Sometimes I forget what’s in there. I didn’t make either one for a specific purpose so I think I’ll list them on Etsy later in the week and see what happens.  Both are bright, fun quilts that seem to be popular right now.
This one is made from an Atkinson Designs pattern called Shadow Song.  I used a lot of prints from a line of fabric called “Happy.”

I love the blue fabric that’s in the churn dash variation blocks.  It’s a subtle stripe that adds interesting texture to the block.  I quilted it with a pantograph called “Love Doodle” by Urban Elementz.  I don’t use a lot of pantos since they take longer than just freehand quilting and it seems like I’m always in a hurry to finish quilts but it sure looks nice when I take the time.  Maybe this one will inspire me to use them more frequently.

The second quilt is called “Shortcake” by Cluck Cluck Sew. This quilt I was auditioning to see if I wanted to use it for a beginning quilting class.  I didn’t use it but still think it has potential for that class.  A lot of the fabrics in this one are from Me and My Sister lines by Moda.

It was a really easy quilt to piece and I quilted it in an overall meander.  It was really sunny today when I took the pictures so the quilting doesn’t show up very well here.

Not as much accomplished today as I’d hoped but I had to do laundry and some cleaning so sewing took a back seat. Since it was so sunny I took a walk outside.  It was still cold and there’s lots of snow but it was SO nice to get outside for a change.  When I walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes it seems like an eternity but when I get outside the minutes just fly by and I could walk forever.  I can’t wait for spring.
Late this afternoon I did manage to get the rail fence donation quilt loaded on the frame and one pass quilted before Jen called and wanted me to go over some answers she wrote for an application for a summer internship.  I hadn’t talked to her in awhile so we had a nice long Skype visit.  Jim and the cat joined it so it was a lot of fun!  I’ll get back to it in the morning and try to get a couple more passes completed before work.