Wednesday, October 13, 2021

What's Up

What have I been up to besides working on my 94 Quilt? Well, a few things, though none of them have given me any finishes for a while.

You know that I've decided to hop on Leanne's @devotedquilter Instagram bandwagon of finishing WIPs during the final 100 days of 2021.

I started with the biggest most time-consuming goal of the three, but tbh, all three are pretty big, time-consuming goals. In for a penny...

Leanne has divided the 100 days into four quarters, the first quarter being September 23 - October 18. The three goals I have are:

Finishing my 7-year-old quilt, fleurs which was a guild executive-directed, self round robin. That means that the guild executive gave us the criteria for each monthly round, but participants worked solely on their own quilts, no passing happened. Here are a couple of shots of quilting progress as posted on Instagram. This is one of my PHD quilts, the one, in fact, that I had planned to finish by the end of September... gulp.  I loaded it on September 11! And it is still on the frame a month later. In my defence, the weather has been absolutely glorious, so I've been outside a lot, and yes, in the pool, yesterday (I would have gone in today but for an appointment and errands between teaching two yoga classes), and reading outside, just soaking it all in. 
Here is a side-on view of the top edge of the quilt. The green is my final border, the trellis was the final round, the 4-patches the second last round, and so on.
Quilting a round robin quilt this large is strange: I can do the horizontal round, and then a bit of the vertical portion of that same round, but then I have to do the horizontal section of the round that came before it...very confusing I know, both that sentence and the doing of it on the frame. It involves a lot of back and forth rolling, going a bit ahead, and then backing up to bring the previous round up to the same place...

The back and forth rolling is especially frequent for the appliqué rounds of which there are two, the third round, which you see in the first photo, and my centre.

The requirement for the centre was that it had to be an orphan block. Mine was also an appliquéd block, though it was done by hand.

I cannot believe, well, maybe I can, how much time this is taking. I am not working on it every day, but there have been days of several hours worth of quilting. 

Starting off with that quilt means that my other goal, finishing the rainbow 9-patch pixel quilt has to wait until fleurs is off the frame. So other than starting to prep the backing, it has had no progress. I know it will be an all-over meander, so I can whip it up and off the frame in a few hours.

Finally the third goal was accomplished on Sunday of the Thanksgiving weekend, adding at least two of the piano key borders to my 150 Canadian Women quilt. I think part of why I stalled on this border was because I knew it would be pretty time-consuming.

I wanted it to be mainly reds with a few pinks, and only those fabrics that I'd used within the quilt. I didn't strip piece WOF strips because a lot of them only had small bits left, so it involved a lot of cutting strips in multiples of four because the width of this border is 4" unfinished. I got the two long vertical borders made and applied, and I have a pretty good start (strips and some strips sets pieced) for the top and bottom borders. This quilt is bigger than fleurs! It doesn't fit on my design wall height-wise. Those side piano key borders are 91.5". The top and bottom are now 93.5". I plan to put a 2-3" wide final cream border on the quilt and call it done. It will go on our bed because I do not have a wall this huge for it. It is a very special quilt; I learned so much about important, strong, brave, intelligent women who shaped my country, and outside of one red, or maybe two, can't recall, all of these fabrics are scraps and stash.

My temperature quilt is up to date:
Don't mind the 94 Quilt and the baby quilt underneath!

And here is the beginning of this glorious month of October. Look at all that orange! The lowest high was 20C on the 6th, with it rising to 26 on the 11th. Outside of Oct 1 where it dipped to 9C, overnight lows have been in the mid to upper teens. This isn't uncommon to have balmy summer-like days in October, but to have them for this length of time is pretty amazing, but also sobering, as it is above average. We've been enjoying our pool all month, but will probably close it this coming weekend when highs go back to average of mid to upper teens.


I made my orange blocks for my project #1 String Bowties. I now have enough to put the top together. I'm not doing lime green since I incorporate some in my green blocks from the other green month.


Well, I had better get in some serious quilting today as not a lot of progress was made on Tuesday. Not sure just how much, since it's shaping up to be another pool day!



13 comments:

  1. Where did my comment go? I'll try again, Fleurs is gorgeous and you always do such amazing quilting. You will be so pleased to have this beauty completed and get to use, or maybe display it.

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  2. Love the top quilt, that green is gorgeous, and such intricate quilting. Those projects, I'm sure, will all get done before the New Year chimes in.

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  3. You are one amazing lady with those quilts. I can't manage "humongous" quilts these days, but I'm looking forward to seeing all the finished articles. I understand about the rolling back & forth and occasionally I reload a quilt to do the side borders. Take care & hugs.

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  4. I love the Fleurs quilt, the quilting may be taking awhile to do but it is gorgeous! And will be so worth the effort! I agree the weather has been wonderful.

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  5. I was just wondering yesterday what you've been up to, and you've been busy. Glad you are enjoying the outdoors while you can, since we know what's coming, right? We just won't talk about that right now (wink). Love all the quilts you have in the works!

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  6. Fleurs is beautiful! As is everything I see on this page. Nice work!

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  7. I think you've been making a lot of progress when I factor in good weather. I hope you have a great day; whether it's inside quilting, outside enjoying the weather, or a bit of both. I look forward to seeing more!

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  8. Big Wow for all of your projects. You know the Canadian Women quilt will always be special for me since it reminded me of the time I misread one of your block descriptions and thought you used to be a Bronco rider in a rodeo and I said out loud, “What?” and reread it which led to tears in my laughter and letting you know which led to more laughter and tears—1:00am laughter is the best

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  9. All of these quilts are beautiful and I love the quilting you've showed on the first quilt. The larger they are the longer it takes to complete them. I'd be out in the pool too (if I had one) if the weather was like you are having. But darn, 23F Tuesday AM and 49 in the afternoon. Leaves are starting to fall and next week will be time to start raking. In the meantime, I did pull out some of the dead flowers and then came in and started on donation quilts. We did a next to final count on placemats yesterday...439! Truly awesome outpouring.

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  10. Fleurs is as gorgeous as this weather has been. I am behind…always. I love what you are doing with the quilting and then there is your gorgeous Canada quilt…what a lot of work in this post!

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  11. I am loving seeing your quilting updates about Fleurs! I hadn't thought about the difficulties of longarm quilting a quilt like that, but it does make sense. All of your time will certainly be worth it in the end. I'm glad you're enjoying all that beautiful weather. We've had days upon days of cloudy, drizzly or outright raining, so it was wonderful when the sun broke through briefly yesterday afternoon.

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  12. Fleurs is gorgeous - you are doing such a lovely quilting job on her too. I love how you've done the applique block. Your orange bow ties are super cute as well. And I enjoyed seeing your Temperature quilt - it looks like it's been a hot summer.

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  13. This post was a feast for the eyes. The Fleurs quilt is stunning— especially that trellis border. I know your quilting will be spectacular and make the tedious rolling/unrolling all worth it in the end. I like the idea of a stay-at-home round robin. I think some groups did this during lockdown, so you were way ahead of your time. The temperature quilt will be a good memory of a crazy weather year (hopefully not a trend-setting year, though). At least you could enjoy the pool a long while. I think our autumn may be a short one. (The heat has been turned on today.)

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