finally, a finish

I promised that I would have a fast finish on my Q4QAL list and I do.  I bound the mini finally and it is complete:

This pattern is so old that there aren't even any pictures on the Moda Bake Shop post where I got it.  It was designed by Sheryl Johnson of Temecula Quilt Co. and there is a photo on their website as part of a collection of small quilt patterns available for purchase:

And here is mine:

Guild Round Robin

I had mentioned in my last post that I couldn't post photos of several of the things I'd been doing since they were part of our Guild's Round Robin.  Well, this past Monday night we finally had the great reveal and it was very exciting to see what had become of everyone's quilt blocks, including mine.

I had waited until the very last moment to decide to participate for two reasons:  1) I was uncertain about how my skills would hold up in this very talented and creative group of people, and 2) our upcoming move to Raleigh had no certain date as of the time I had to decide to join.  But my friend Kitty agreed to mail me anything back and forth and encouraged me to participate, so I did.  I threw in this block from my Quiltmaker testing, Pippa Armbrester's "Reflecting Cityscapes" block:

As with all blocks from Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, it measured 12.5" square unfinished.  I don't do a lot of modern quilting and so I just threw a note into the bag that told the ladies to have fun!  The finished product knocked my socks off:

(This photo is from Susan Kraterfield's blog as she put on the last border and documented her work on the three blocks she put borders on.)  Each added their own note to mine.  First, Kathy Wickham decided it was too early for borders and so she pulled a copy of the magazine and added a building on each end of my block. Victoria Person had it next and decided it looked somewhat art deco and put on the beveled border at the top right area of the block.  Susan worked on it last and built on Victoria's art deco theme.  I love how it turned out.

I don't know what I'll do with it next - it's about the size of a bed pillowcase now but I think I'll turn it into a wall hanging.

I have two quilt tops going to my long arm quilter next week and am working on a few other things so I'll try to post again next week.  Right now we're in a holding pattern - the house is on the market and our lease in Raleigh doesn't start until the end of September, so I'm just enjoying the time off and home alone, getting in as much sewing as I can before the move and my unavoidable return to work.

Long lost blogger here

Wow, it has been absolutely ages since I've posted.  I knew I would be a little challenged when I stopped working and sitting in front of a computer all day but I've actually been spending time doing all those things I think about doing while I sit in front of a computer all day!  First I had a great summer with my son and the rest of my family.  When the kids all went back to school I turned my attention to getting our house ready to go on the market, including replacing three bathroom sinks, touching up paint throughout the house, rewiring and patching drywall and installing seven different lighting fixtures, as well as steam cleaning every carpet in the house and goodness knows what other little jobs I can no longer remember.

After that it was only a week until I gave a presentation at quilt guild called "Charmed:  Five things to do with five inch squares."  I talked about the disappearing four patch (picture from the guild presentation) and divided nine patch blocks, templates, easy half square triangles, The Happy Zombie's hourglass technique, and flying geese with bonus triangles.  Some photos below.

Disappearing four patch

Divided nine patch

step-by-step flying geese

HSTs

hourglass option one

hourglass option two

Right after I finished the guild class I flew to Phoenix for a few days R&R as a corporate spouse and thoroughly enjoyed it.  That brought us into this week, when I've been strategizing my return to the workplace, finishing up all the things I wanted to do before returning to work (car service, doctor appointments, etc.) and finding time to sew in between showings of the house (four this week alone).

At the end of September I participated in a quilt class taught by Barbara Cline on one of her triangle-based patterns called, "Chinese Checkers."  Here is a photo of Barbara I took in class holding up her quilt:

And here is the top I finished in the wee hours of this morning in an alternate colorway:

It was not the first time I'd worked with 60° triangles but Barbara taught a great new way of using templates that made me more willing to use them again in the future.

I think I'll try to clear a few more unfinished tops off my to do list before I start sandwiching and quilting the smaller ones of them (and sending the larger ones to Star City Stitchery).  Soon it will be time to start Christmas gifts (only pillowcases and table runners this year, I think - no quilts) and my challenge quilt for the 2013 quilt show.  I have an idea, which is half the battle; I just need to figure out how to execute it.

Now, one of these days, I'll catch up on READING some quilt blogs!!

... and it's off!

I promised a pic of me showing off Gothic Windows at quilt guild this month when it was published, and it was up on the guild's site this morning.  It's a rather unflattering picture, between the lighting and me being in the middle of saying something, but it does show the size of the quilt well:

I put it in a priority mail envelope headed to Harrisonburg yesterday afternoon.  I almost didn't have time to think about it - it was gone before I knew it!  The color of the quilt in this pic is a bit truer.

I had a box arrive from joann.com yesterday.  I've never ordered from them online before but they had great prices on the quilt stencil spray (I bought two cans - the store was out) and Mary Ellen's Best Press, which I love to use.  They had flat-head pins on sale and none in the store, and I also bought some Machinger's gloves for machine quilting.  They definitely have a more extensive selection online than in the store and if you can add a deal for a discount or free shipping it's a good route to go.  I just wish the order-to-receipt process had been faster since it took well over a week and Amazon has spoiled me!

I cut the last of my border pieces for Spanish Treasure last night and might have some time to do some piecing tonight.  I really, really want to cut Sunday short and be home in time to sew this weekend, but whether I will return to machine quilting Jacob's Ladder or piecing top and borders of Spanish Treasure will be the predicament!

Finally, I'm very excited that I will be testing blocks for a future Quiltmaker 100 Blocks volume!  Requests for volunteers went out on Facebook yesterday, I shot a few emails agreeing to terms, and now will just wait to see what comes to me.  I know I complain about being overloaded, but two weeks to test and evaluate some block patterns is not unreasonable, and will be more fun than some of the other things I have going on.  I'm very excited since these magazines are a must have and I'm in on the ground floor!

a finish

I have been feeling overwhelmed lately.  We have too many weekends on the road to see the kids or other things (wedding celebrations, including two of our own) and not enough time at home during the week to get stuff done.  Luckily my Honey is excellent about picking up the domestic slack with cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping so that I can get some feeling of accomplishment in my sewing room at night.

I did finally completely finish the Gothic Windows small quilt for the Virginia Quilt Museum fundraiser in time for their first of several deadlines.  It measures 16.5" on each side.

There seem to be only two ways to photograph - with flash and color distortion, or without flash but with shadows. Again, the tutorial to make these super easy blocks from jelly roll strips is here at Happy Quilting, even though credit goes to Pat at Color Me Quilty for writing it!

I finished piecing the last of the 88 Spanish Treasure blocks last night and began cutting and piecing the pieced second border.  The fabric I bought for the third border and the backing is en route.  If we were home this weekend I might have a second finish for the week, but then again, it will take a while to lay out these blocks.  I also need to take some time to prepare my giveaway for the Quilting Bloggers Blog Hop Party and Giveaway.  The prize will be a lucky 7 fat quarters of Terrain and M'Liss Rae Hawley's classic book, "Fat Quarter Quilts," published in 1999, so that the winner can select six favorites from the array and, with one coordinate, make a quilt!  Remember to come back to comment on the giveaway post after noon on Friday before the party starts so you can get a bonus entry!

After I have Spanish Treasure pieced it must get put aside so that I can piece the border for my Civil War Chronicles BOM quilt.  I'll take both together to my longarm quilter and have her quilt Spanish Treasure but baste Civil War Chronicles for hand quilting.

After that I need to refocus on finishing a charity quilt and a few foundation paper pieced projects.  I seem to lose interest in those most quickly.

I've heard that spring has arrived here in southwestern Virginia but, being holed up in a climate-controlled office between 8 AM and at least 5 PM but usually closer to 6:30, I wouldn't know.  Maybe one of these days I will try to get out of the building for lunch but it won't be today.  Those of you who can at least see the outdoors, not to mention open a window or walk out the door during daylight hours, have my envy.

An older quilt

It occurs to me that I have lots of older quilts which have never seen this blog, including this wallhanging I have hanging in my cube here at work that I look at every day.

This was made with a fat quarter bundle (I think) ages and ages ago.  In the 90's, at least, since I remember the house I lived in when I made it.  I did all my own machine quilting, and I remember using a tracing paper design over the star centers and borders that I tore away later; much of the rest is an eyeballed 1/4" from seams.  One part of it I particularly love is the plaid border cut on the bias.  I actually think the border print was something I found separately which just happened to match and was not intended to coordinate with the rest.

Guild is tonight and I will be showing off the finished (okay, no label or hanging sleeve yet) Gothic Windows donation.  I'll post the photo that the guild takes as part of Show & Tell once they put it on their site.  Over the weekend I did more quilting on Jacob's Ladder and more piecing of Spanish Treasure but have nothing really to show beyond what you've already seen.

Spanish Treasure

First, I finished up my fourth and last Gothic Windows block on Tuesday night and last night I got them put together and basted (so easy and simple with a scrap of batting and a fat quarter as backing!) to be quilted.  I thought I'd use a red thread to do some hand quilting on the purple background, so we'll see how that turns out.  I'm on the road this weekend so I should be able to make considerable progress on this when I'm not near a machine.

I also got out my other new-to-the-blog project last night.  I began working on it around the holidays when I was too busy to do much blogging.  It's from the book "Nickel Quilts" by Pat Speth and the design is called "Tillie's Treasure." 

(This is just the picture of the cover from amazon.com - I don't think clicking here will help you see inside!)

Well, I chose to use all Kate Spain fabrics from both her Terrain and Good Fortune lines, so I'm calling it "Spanish Treasure."  I just love working with these fabrics, and there are SO many of them with such gorgeous color and variety that it was a joy to cut and to piece.

At first I thought some of the prints would be too large scale for this design, but I stood on my chair and took this photo of the blocks laid out on my folding table, and I love the way it looks.  I know the colors will blend and soften a lot when it's all pieced, quilted and washed.

It's been a long time since I made a quilt purely for the joy of the process.  There's something about Kate Spain's fabric that makes that possible for me.

There's a lot of chatter in the blogosphere lately about housekeeping items like what people like to see on a blog and technical items like word verification.  I have a blogiquette question ... what is the proper way to deal with comments?  When I began with blogger almost nine years ago - although it was not a quilt-related blog - it was commonplace to reply to comments with your own comment and continue the post discussion with readers in the comment area.  These days, I see many more bloggers hit reply to comments I leave and take the discussion offline ... which is good, because I rarely go back to read other comments after I've left one.  Is there a proper blogging comment etiquette?  Do you expect a reply when you leave a comment, or feel disappointed if you don't get one?  If you keep a blog, do you reply to every comment?  Do you ever return to the post to see if a reply was posted there, or reply if it's at your own blog?  I'm curious about whether I'm doing this "right" so thanks in advance for answering!

My latest projects

I've been remiss with blogging about what I've been working on for some time, beyond the Jacob's Ladder UFO I had prioritized for the Quilting is Murder challenge.  However, I've been hinting about this for ages ... as long ago as Christmas, when I wrote about one of them, "It occurs to me that it's one of those things that happens when you give a gift and find that you've inadvertently received one in return."  Let me explain ...

... in December, I participated in the Quilting Gallery Blog Hop Party and gave away a jelly roll of Moda's Fruitcake line.  Well, Fruitcake had pretty much been retired by that point and it wasn't easy to find images of the fabrics which I could post on the blog, so I went to Moda's website.  Which reminds me, if you have not spent a good deal of time at Moda's fabric collections website, you should.  They list EVERY one of their fabric lines and then what freebies they offer for each: 

Swatch Page Print out for an instant Shopping List to take into your favorite quilt or specialty store.

JPG Images Upload our images into your favorite quilt program.

Group Description Learn more about the collection and include in your newsletters, blog posts, and more!

Marketing Tools Print on cardstock and tag your fabrics and gifts to identify the collection.

Free Pattern Download a free pattern to use with the selected collection.

The "Free Pattern" is a goldmine since these patterns are designed to work with ONE fabric line and often using one form of precuts (from fat quarters to charm squares).    When I was looking up Fruitcake, I clicked on the "Free Pattern" link for the line and found just what I had been looking for.

I'll back up a bit.  Last summer, we took the kids tubing down the New River in Radford, and we all had a great time.  It was a gorgeous morning and there were dragonflies everywhere, landing on us and the tubes.  I wanted to try to capture that memory with a quilt, and I ordered a fat eighth bundle of Moda's line, "Dragonfly Summer." 

I didn't know what to do with it, but the free pattern for Fruitcake was a pattern which looked just like the innertubes, and called for a collection of fat eighths ... how perfect!  I cut and pieced all of the circles in one long night, and since then have been working on appliqueing them to sand-colored backgrounds.  Contrary to the instructions, I am not doing raw-edge applique but needle-turn applique.  Each evening I have some handwork to do on the sofa now.  Here are a couple of the blocks:

They actually work out to be pretty large - about 20" background squares.  But they go fast.

I have another project that I worked on a bit last night but couldn't take pictures before my phone battery died.  However, between working on all these other projects, I squeezed in one more.  I was so inspired by Pat at Color me Quilty and her Gothic Windows tutorial posted at Happy Quilting that I had to find a way to work a few of those into my quilting queue.  Coincidentally enough, I had also recently received email from the guild asking for donations of small quilts for the Virginia Quilt Museum's silent auction fundraiser.  I put two and two together and rifled through my stash of 2.5" strips for some arresting colors.  I have three of the four finished and the fourth, in the bottom right, ready to be tacked down:

The only deviation I have made from Pat's instructions is that I am sewing down the windows by hand rather than machine.  I love Cathedral windows squares - I have made three various CW projects so far, including one in silk - and I love the handwork.  I like the striking contrast of the deep purple and bright red with white accents, and luckily I don't need a border since there is a size limit of 72" perimeter on submissions.  Keep an eye on the auction - it could be yours!  But if you don't want to bid, it is easy enough to make your own from Pat's great instructions.  Go check it out!

So these are just a few of the projects I've been working on now that I've let the Jacob's Ladder rest a bit.  There is one more as well - a biggish one - that I'll blog about another time.