PQ 16.1 - Cradled

I always look forward to the start of Project Quilting. It helps make January less unbearable. January has long been a hard month for me: spring and summer seem so far away and it is dark and cold. Letting my creativity bloom is a balm for my winter-weary soul. And let's just pause for a moment because seriously, winter in this furthest south part of Canada, Sandra, is pretty mild really. For example, I was looking for a photo last week and came across one of a wild crocus I'd taken on February 26 last year, so that's only six weeks away. I told the trees that same week on Lake Erie's shore at the end of the common path for lake access in my cul-de-sac to hold on, just six more weeks.

When Tricia of @quiltchicken put out the first prompt, Mythical Creatures, I was immediately excited. I have loved magic and witches my entire life, and fantasy is a genre I still love. I let that prompt percolate in my brain for Sunday and Monday, since I was deep into mountains and aurora borealis on my cousin's quilt, and found it difficult to just drop that train of thought/stitching.

TBT #19 My Winter Garden

Yikes! I was happily finishing up visiting DrEAMi! linkups on the deck, enjoying the breeze and birds, and MacGyver came to ask me if there was anything on July 9 as he was setting up lunch with a friend. I opened up my phone calendar, because that date rang a bell. Nada. Went to my dayplanner, which seems ridiculous when one is retired and only works 4.5 hours a week, but it is essential to my life and blog, and what do I see when I open the 2-page spread for the month of July? "TBT - me"
WHAT???

It's Thursday, the first Thursday of the month. I did remember my eldest daughter, Brianne's birthday, so that was the main thing. Incidentally, the ringing of a bell in the recesses of my brain? An afternoon sewing date with a couple of friends!

Anyhow, on with this month's TBT which is for those quilts we made pre-blogging. Mine is from 2005 and is named My Winter Garden.

Postcard Swap Finish

Welcome to TGIFF!

A little over a month ago, Patty of Elm Street Quilts decided to host a Postcard Swap. I decided to join in, because, well I wasn't very busy in the month of March....snort.😂 I quite like mini quilts, and wanted to push myself a little in the creativity department. I like challenges. You got one word from your partner, and you gave one word as a clue to what you'd like.

I won't tell you the word I got for my partner, nor who she is, because it just got mailed off today. Was it a fun project to do! I did a little detective work on her blog to get a feel for her personality and quilting style. We are similar in several ways, and although I'm not familiar with her blog, I will be following her from now on.😁

Here is my postcard!

Again, I wish the camera could capture the glint of light on the Sulky Holoshimmer thread I used on the ocean section.

What is amazing to me is that the scene I chose I drove right by in the summer of 2007, and I may have stopped for a photo surprisingly close to this breathtaking spot. These huge rocks rise up out of the Pacific all along the coast, so unusual. It took a little bit of digging, but in about 10 minutes, I located the photo album (pre-iPhone photos and all digital) of that trip! MacGyver's anonymity is preserved with some chunks of beach glass, LOL. (Yeah, I have yet another beach glass bowl in the works.)

August 2007

I used an image off Google as a starting point, and took a little artistic license with it, adding in the shorebirds and the evergreen tree on the side, typical of this region of North America which has stunning ocean scenery in front of you and forest vistas immediately behind. I am no artist, but if I have an image to look at, I can usually produce a fairly reasonable copy.

I used my drawing to make the pieces for the appliqué by tracing what I'd drawn.

I made the base by piecing the sky to the ocean and then doing a gentle improv cut and sewn curved seam to add the sand.

From there it was Crafted Appliqué for the rest, oh how I love this method. You can still get Lara's book on Amazon. I save my appliqué-ready scraps between wax paper and place them in a ziploc bag for future use...and I have actually used pieces in new projects, like this one!

The tree and one of the monoliths came from a scrap from testing blocks for a Canada's 150th birthday quilt for Cindy of Stitchin at Home, and the birds from scraps from the walleye potholder I made for my husband. I prepared some black pieces for the other monoliths.

I layered the piece with one layer of Thermore by Hobbs (great thin batting for mini quilts) stitched around the appliqué shapes and then FMQ-ed the entire piece. Those birds were TINY! Cindy knows I start to twitch when I have to appliqué tiny pieces. But it was worth it. I free-motion embroidered their feet, and, as the fabric was only 2-3 threads thick at the bills, I added free-motion embroidery there too, to stabilize and define them.

Here are the threads I used, lovely beautiful Sulky rayons, all 40 weight but one 30 weight, and one Holoshimmer.

I can't show you the back, because I wrote her a message, but it's a piece of plain white. There's a layer of stiff fusible batting between the Thermore and the white fabric, making a total of four layers. I statin-stitched around all four edges with the beautiful variegated turquoise rayon, once loosely to hold everything together, and then two more rounds at 0.5. My mmm! quilts label is on the postcard back.

So that's my second finish this week! My first was the Cat-eye-doscope Plus quilt for Cheryl and Paige's book release blog hop. This is SUCH a great hop, such a great book, two terrific quilter/authors.

Update Friday March 16:

I spoke with Preeti (by iMessage) yesterday and she asked me to do her a favour in memory of her sweet precious friend, Angel, who, so very sadly, passed away yesterday. In my haste to get the TGIFF post up before I went to bed on Thursday night, I forgot to do her small request, that has the power to become huge, much like Bernie's doll quilts...

First, please read Preeti's post from yesterday. I hope you will also read the link to Angel's quilt, either by clicking there or from Preeti's yesterday post. It is strange how The Universe puts things in our path... Preeti had reached out to Amy of AmyScrapSpot, wondering how her multiple-disabilities 3-month-old baby boy, Axel, was doing, but hadn't heard in some time. Yesterday, yes, yesterday, the very day Angel died, Amy emailed Preeti back about Axel. Are you seeing a triple A-team here?  Preeti's profound sadness over the loss of Angel has now been channelled into doing something good: helping Amy with Axel's medical expenses. Amy's sister started a Go Fund Me page, (I know how DEEPLY appreciated these pages are, where people donate, anonymously or not, whatever they feel appropriate, since one was set up for my own grandson after his too-young father died last June), and Preeti is asking if you would take a moment, read her post, read Amy's about little Axel, and donate a small amount. As she says, "If 300 people gave $10 each, we'd meet out goal." I know quilters have humongous hearts, and I know that my post will see a lot of traffic this weekend, since I'm not only hosting TGIFF (and leaving it open a wee bit longer, sorry guys, made an executive decision; don't fire me) but I'm linking up my postcard finish with the other big Friday finish parties. THANK YOU for keeping my belief that there is inherent good in this world that gets my spirit so down a lot of the time.

What have you finished this week? You may link up your blog post, Flickr or Instagram post using the link up below. Remember to visit a few blogs and spread some quilty love and encouragement. Please include a link to this blog post and/or the TGIFF button, so your followers can come here to view all the great finishes! You never know, you may have your quilter ADD kick in, and have to go DRop Everything And Make It, aka DREAMi! (Come back for that link up on the last Saturday of March; see sidebar for the button which will take you to the explanation post.)



Linking up to the Friday Finish parties in QBL:
Crazy Mom Quilts
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Busy Hands Quilts

An InLinkz Link-up

Stack 'n Whack TBT

I will always remember the utter excitement that gripped me when I watched, and then tried, Bethany Reynolds' ground-shaking, game-changing technique, Stack 'n Whack.  I saw her on the illustrious Alex Anderson's "Simply Quilts" on HGTV.  I took my discoveries to that month's guild meeting, 7 little flimsy hexagons made with the only somewhat-suitable fabric I had in the house at that moment.  I later turned them into a tablemat.

I will also always remember the gasps at another meeting as I held up a finished Stack 'n Whack throw quilt, and the comments, "That can't be all from one fabric!"

 Oh but it was/is.

This was my third quilt, no make that my fourth, using her hexagon pattern.  The first was the throw size using this farm fabric, and the motif was a bit too small for the triangles that make up the hexagons.  However it was dynamite for the triangles less than half that size!

So let's back up a bit, shall we?  Here is hexagon stack 'n whack quilt #2, the throw size in a larger, better-suited motif fabric which I bought at Lori's Country Cottage, my then LQS:

This measures 52 X 58"

You can see the original fabric in the border.  By the way, that is a real flange gold border! I'd forgotten that until I unrolled the quilt!  The quilt is kind of Christmassy but not exactly.  I quilted it as Bethany suggested, (YAY! she had quilting suggestions!) in a swoop-dee-swoop from one point of the triangle to the next, with a meander stipple in the green background.  I left the red star points unquilted, which, in this larger quilt, has led to them being a bit puffy.  I wouldn't do that today; they'd get some dot to dot work fo' sho'!  I used a beige and a green cotton for quilting, mostly likely Gütermann or perhaps Mettler.  It has Warm 'n Natural batting.

Although I boycott WalMart these days, after finding out about their business practices that lead to small town businesses being out of business, I will confess that I did buy a fair amount of fabric from them back in the day.  This one was a terrific find, a Northcott fabric, marked down to around $3/metre.  I bought lots.

I made my own label!

Hmm, looks like it needs a bit of a touch-up

When you do a Stack 'n Whack quilt you always have enough left to make another quilt.  So I made another, a third version of Hexagon Star, the wallhanging.  I also taught the technique as a class more than once to my guild, and once at a local sewing machine dealer.  So I had to have demos, right?

This one measures 39.25 X 43.5"

I quilted this one the same way as the throw.  I used a gold Sulky metallic thread that still glimmers as beautifully today as it did in 1999.

I used the same David Textiles red fabric (why/how do I remember that? Probably because I ADORED this fabric) in both the throw and the wallhanging.  Interesting in that the throw has been used every Christmas, washed many times, and the gold flecks in the fabric are almost completely gone.  Not so, as you can see in the wallhanging.

The red hexagons were quilted with a Sulky gold rayon.  The quilt is lovely and straight, and has never been washed.  It was rolled up and stacked on the top shelf of my closet for more months than I care to think about; we aren't usually here for Christmas, and we don't have nearly as much wall space as our previous home.

Guess what I used on the back?

I did a little fancier quilting motif in the border, and I clearly remember using a dinner plate to mark the arcs!

Got it in one!

Here is the label; I am SO glad I am a label freak.

Clearly I wasn't that into naming my quilts then as I named them both Hexagon Star, which is Bethany's name to boot!  I did my bindings a little wider then too, and always hand-stitched them to the back of the quilt.

So remember how I said you always have leftovers, stacked perfectly of course because of the technique used to make these kaleidoscope-style quilts?  Well, I was pretty good with the 60-degree triangles by this time, hated to waste a perfectly good 2" stack of strips, so just for fun, I made the mini with farm fabric leftovers!  Each triangle finished at 1.5" tall.

It is quilted the exact same as the previous two, with gold Sulky rayon thread.  I was getting a little fancier with my border motifs, but couldn't always figure out how to make pretty corners. No matter; it adorns my sewing room wall just fine!  This one has never been washed either.  I think it has flannelette as batting; it is a lighter weight feel to it. It measures 20.25" wide by 23.75" in length.

Ooh, real creative with the name for the mini!

All three of these Hexagon Stars were stitched and quilted by me on my Elna Air Electronic, which I still have by the way.  Man I was ahead of my time, LOL, doing minis before the mini craze of today. Or is it that quilting, like fashion, is cyclical?

Linking up with
NTT at My Quilt Infatuation

Avril and I Aren't Speaking

So, please, any help or advice to help mend our rift is much appreciated.  Here's how it ended:

The cause: Sulky; the possible solution: Isacord and Coats and Clark

I have quilted on my Bernina, and before her, on my Elna, for 20 years.  For most of those years I have used a variety of cool threads, and as you know, I love love Sulky threads, Holoshimmer and Blendables in particular.

Apparently Avril does not.

Savannah

I was hoping to get this quilt done in a day or two...and I almost did.  I started quilting yesterday morning.  If I hadn't been fighting with thread breakage, I would have had this done in full daylight!

I took it off the frame at 5 pm and raced upstairs and outside for a couple of daylight twilight pics.  Yep, I haven't even trimmed it up, or trimmed off hanging threads!

Bella gave the back her stamp of approval:

I was short about 9" of the backing I'd bought but no problem:  I had some extra border fabric, a nice large label (exactly 9.5" high) and a few, no make that a TON of smaller pieces left from the front.

When I made this quilt last winter in Florida, (the post is here), I had no name for the quilt.  As I pieced the backing I let my mind free-associate, realizing that I have yet another floral quilt... I came up with Savannah because we stayed there for a night on our way back up north this past spring, and I fell in love with that city.  The floral fabrics are from the Shangri-Là line by 3 Sisters and they have an old-fashioned feel, so I thought the name "Savannah" à propos, seeing as I'd made it not long before the trip.

I purchased the fabrics at Cotton Patch Quilt Shop on their New Year's Day Fat Quarter Sale a few years ago.  I wanted a large quilt for our bed.  I'm not a fan of how much brown there is in this quilt; I would have preferred a focus fabric leaning to either more green or more blue.  (Hmm, I see after finding the link for the Turning Twenty post that I wrote (January) that I wasn't a fan of the quilt at that point, with a flimsy finish.) Uh, which might be a reason as to why the fabric has sat on my stash shelves for oh, about five years...  I'm liking it a little more now that I've quilted it, but I still don't have a "wow-I-love-this-quilt" feeling.  I bought the backing from Cotton Patch's sale section (love that) at the time I bought the fat quarters for the front.  It is Jacobean Joyeux/Provence by Benartex.

You may recall I had issues with tension on the Watercolour Steps quilt I recently quilted on Avril, my Avanté.  I am worried that I might have messed up the timing or something on my machine when I hit my blue ruler while quilting Summer Breeze.  I thought I would test the tension by using a basic cotton thread for this quilt.  I had nearly a full spool of Aurifil variegated cotton left over from Brady's quilt, and I thought it would blend in nicely with the multi-coloured fabrics in this quilt.  I just wanted a flowing, fairly large-scale overall design for this quilt as the fabrics all blend.  The Aurifil sewed quite nicely once I played with the top and bobbin tension for a while.  I really am liking Aurifil more and more...and man, there's a LOT of thread on those 1300 metre spools!!  This quilt took 2.5 bobbins so about 500 yards of thread.

For the rectangles set on their long side, I quilted a figure 8 design

And for the rectangles set on their short side, I did a woven design

I did have trouble with the Sulky Blendables thread I used, which is not normal for me.  I ended up stitching with the stitch regulator on, and sewing very slowly.  Even so, it broke fairly frequently, seeming to get pulled down beneath the quilt.  I still blame hitting the ruler...did I mention I hit it again during the quilting of this quilt?  It was while I was quilting the border 1/4" from the edge.  The hopping foot hopped over the ruler, probably because of me holding the ruler against the wrong side of the foot, or just the trickiness of quilting the very edges of a quilt...anyhow, chunk #2 flew out, a small one, which I have yet to find to Krazy Glue back in...might have a new ruler in my future here.  Sigh.  And Avril has a trip in her future to the doctor to get checked out.

Anyhow, it is just the perfect thread for the feathers I did in the borders, so I persevered.  Sorry for the hasty pictures, and rumpled quilt...

Swirls and hooks, a teardrop shape echoed, and a leaf design, echoed again, are what I used for the centre of the quilt

This is a shot of how I need to leave quilts overnight when they are in the middle of being quilted.  A certain feline has left trademark fur blobs on in-progress quilts, and created a little more sag on the quilt than how it was left...  And yes that is an open jar of Bath & Bodyworks body butter; she detests lotion smells, so I figured that would be a sure-fire way to keep her off!

Note, Angela Walters' new book!

I plan to sew the binding on tonight or tomorrow, and then hand-stitch it to the back as we travel down to Florida...oh YEAH!  It's official:  we have bought a house--EEEEEK!-- and we are leaving this weekend to move our stuff out of storage and into our new abode.  I've kept that under wraps for some time...anyhow, it's been a tad hectic this last month and especially this past week as we switch gears to head south with the birds!

 Next pic of Savannah will be with her binding on and in Florida!  Linking up with Freshly Pieced.

Snowflake Project

I had hoped to have two pillows for this post, but, ya, life jumped into my day.... AGAIN!

So this is Snowflake #4, version 4, of Joanne's Snowalong on her blog, Canuck Quilter.  I took the block and made it into a non-traditional colourway, yet still festive, cushion.

I first added a 1/2" finished white frame around the 9 1/2" block.  Then I added a 2 1/2" pink frame to make a 15" square.  Next, I made a quilt sandwich, layering a square of muslin with a square of batting, and topping it with the block.  The muslin will be on the inside of the cushion, so it won't show.  I quilted it using Sulky Holoshimmer threads...how I LOVE them.  Seriously.  I didn't realize how much I missed them, as I haven't tried them on the Avanté yet.  My Bernina loves them too, as long as I back off the top tension, and feed the spool à la toilet paper roll style, over my stand-alone thread holder and guide which I usually use for cones of thread, and from there into the machine.

I zipped outside last night to get some fast-fading light on it to show off some of the glitz.  I did all of the quilting with my walking foot except for the 4 corner snowflakes, which I FMQ-ed.  The snowflake is a design I love, and which I've used before, from Kathy Sandbach's first book.

Tried stuffing one edge between the bricks to hold it on the wall for more light...sort of...  I used an iridescent and a hot pink Holoshimmer.  Did I mention how much I love that thread?  Well, Sulky, period.  Not getting anything for saying that.  It's just a fact:  I love their threads.

Close-up of the corner FMQ snowflakes in sparkly hot pink thread:

For the pillow back, I cut two rectangles, 10.5" X 15".  I finished one 15" edge on each rectangle with a 1/2" seam.

Then I placed one of the now 10X15" rectangles wrong sides together, on top of the front quilt sandwich piece.

Add the second, still wrong side of pillow back to wrong side of quilt sandwich.  The seamed edges will overlap by about 5".

 

From this point, I pinned, and then stitched 1/4" around all 4 sides.  For the binding, I cut a piece of pink batik 2 1/4" wide that would go around the quilt pillow sandwich.  Machine-stitched it down from the front, turned it to the back of the pillow and hand-stitched it down.

I slipped in a 14" cushion form and voilà!  Christmas gift ready to be given!  I've written on the muslin inside the cushion cover, but I can't show that or I'll ruin a surprise...

Note that the elephant ears plants are not so happy anymore, after that 28-degree night and cold north gale-force winds on the weekend.  Here's one last outdoor shot close-up.  I'm really happy with this gift!

 Linking up with Anything Goes Mondays, guest host today is Helen of Till We Quilt Again!

Blast From the Past

I brought a couple of quilts home from Dayna's last week to wash in our front-loading, large capacity washing machine.  Hers needed a little repair: four places, each about 2" long, had come undone in the hand-stitched binding.  So, after washing it, putting it in the dryer for 10 minutes to dry a bit, and then laying it out flat to finish drying, I repaired those places.  Only one outside pic today as it's raining.

This is the second quilt I have made her, and it has been well-loved over the years.  Our dogs and cats have slept on it, (she has slept with an animal since she was 3, maybe less!) and now her two cats sleep on it every night.  One corner got a little extra loving by one of her cats and is a tad chewed. . .

but thankfully, that has stopped.

I finished this quilt in March 2005, but spent the majority of 2004 working on it.  It's from WedgeWorks II, by Cheryl Phillips.  Our guild bought the book, a friend of mine came over one day, and we each made a block.  It is a way to make a 3-D Mariner's Compass block using folded wedges of fabric.  I still have that original block, ahem, yep another UFO, or orphan block!

Dayna has always loved purple.  I knew I wanted to use the pansy fabric as a focal fabric.  On a guild bus trip shop hop, I got some of the purple as well as the black.  The backing is a gorgeous brushed cotton.

SO much texture, love, love, love it

I quilted this quilt in thirds, see my post on that here, and I used a quilt basting spray.

I wanted some bling on the stars, so used Sulky metallics and holoshimmer threads.  I used Sulky rayon for the purple and the black areas.  My Bernina Artista 180, relatively new to me then, (bought on Grey Cup day, 2003) handled them all wonderfully.  It's quite heavily quilted.  I edge-stitch quilted the floral star, and then did a wavy line down the points of all 16 so the edges of the two purple star points "float" and can be lifted a bit.

A flower design of my own!!  Way back then!

I have loved feathers pretty much all my quilting life...

Trapunto would have helped the motif to "pop" more

Although I have not named all my quilts, I have labelled every one.  This one shows how long I have been piecing in the label as a part of the backing!! 

I did a fairly loose flower with some random leaves meander in the black border areas of the quilt.  I saw it in American Patchwork & Quilting magazine, can't recall what issue, but around 2004!

Ahh, quilty lushness.

I've loved looking after this quilt for a week, but it will go back home to Dayna tomorrow.