Fly High!

I am so pleased to have this long-awaited UFO done and checked off the FAL List. It's been on that list for over two years!

The block is one by Deb Tucker, called Migrating Geese. I followed this tutorial, making it as one of my RSC 2017 projects, but doing my own layout. Each month I made one row of the geese.

TBT #23 Slip Into Autumn

Welcome to TBT for November! I have an absolutely favourite autumn quilt to write up today. From its name to its fabric (controlled scrappy, my fave) to its vibe and soft hand, I love it.

This is a Joanna Figueroa pattern from American Patchwork & Quilting in the naughts of 2000. Maybe 05 or 06? I finished it in September 2007 according to my label. I could comb through my collection to find the exact issue, but...renovations, sigh....magazines are packed up in some box somewhere.

Fallen Sky

If I were a James Bond aficionado, I guess I would have changed the name of my quilt to Skyfall. But I'm not, and he doesn't put me in mind of a piece of sky, which this quilt, along with the gemstone turquoise, both do. Funnily enough, when searching the gemstone for quilt name ideas, I came across a few references to a piece of the sky fallen to earth, but this one, "carved from an azure heaven and slipped to earth," I particularly love, as it's so eloquent.

This is the October challenge for us ambassadors for Island Batik. We were to make a quilt using a paper-piecing technique, either English paper-piecing or foundation paper-piecing. This one is made using the latter. All the fabrics (except the backing) were supplied by Island Batik. All of the threads except the purple was supplied by Aurifil, and the batting is Hobbs Batting, though I purchased it myself!

July Challenge Progress

Thought I'd pop in with a quick update here and a little quilting motif to show you too. The challenge for July is to make a quilt that has a secondary pattern. Totally up my alley! This is one of the things that drew me in to quilting in the first place. I'm using fabrics from three different groups, which is something I love about Island Batik fabrics, who supplied all the fabric, is that very thing, how different lines play well with each other. I got the blocks all done and laid them out on the kitchen floor...

and discovered my secondary pattern was Bella! But of course, she thinks she looks good with this quilt too.

A Quilting Motif and A Longarm Technique

As you know, I'm working on quilting the Cows quilt. I have four heifers left, a few churn dashes and the barn. Well, I also have to finish the other half, or two-thirds more like it, of the border.  As is usually the case when I quilt a quilt, I have a very, I mean very, vague quilting plan in my head.  Once the quilt is loaded, it starts to talk to, sometimes whisper to, sometimes cajole, me.  Such was the case with this one.  I had no idea how I was going to quilt the churn dash blocks, also known by several other names, including Hole in the Barn Door. Most à propos for this bovine bedcover. Once loaded on the frame, I had an idea...

"What the heck?"  you're probably thinking, or maybe, "Ooh, love that fabric," or even, as Tish said when I sent her the yellow cow all quilted, "Those swirls are awesome!"

Here is how you quilt this block in one pass, ditch stitching and all! AND this can be done on either a longarm or a domestic machine! Use a ruler or your walking foot.

1. Start here. ('well duh')
2. Stitch to point 2 (probably still, 'well, duh,' but just in case...) the centre of the inner 'box'
3. Stitch a square in the centre of the purple rectangles, which in my case, for this 12" block, is 1" in from the seam line. Go all the way around until you wind up back at point 2.
4.  Stitch out to point 4.
5. From point 4 stitch another elongated 'v' shape (we're doing dot to dot à la Angela Walters in case you haven't noticed) ending at point 5.  Which is really point 1. 😉
6. Stitch in the ditch (aka SID) over to point 6. Note my attempt at dotted lines to indicate SID!
7. Stitch in to point 7, which is the top right corner of the box you stitched in step 3.  Repeat from step 4 for all four corners of the block, ending back at point 1!

Then I SID along a floral seam line to an inside corner, stitched in the ditch all the way around the inner square, and did the swirl filler in there, then went back out again and continued the swirl filler for the background around the outside. I'm using Superior Threads So Fine colour 403 which blends nicely with both background and all the churn dash blocks.

A LongarmTechnique for Continuous Quilting

About a year, maybe more, ago, a reader asked if I could explain how I advance, then back up, then advance a quilt on the longarm. This was when I was doing Dayna's quilt, Shoot for the Moon, and trying to get as long a pass as I could at some of the intricate designs on her quilt.  I found myself doing this for the outer border design for this quilt.  I am self-taught, other than watching online videos and Craftsy classes by Leah Day, Angela Walters, and Natalia Bonner, oh and Jamie Wallen Youtube too, and none of them talk about this, so it's just me. If you think that "GASP! This is just not done!" well, I do it, and it works fine. 😁

For the top section of border, it was easy to start on the left side of the quilt, about 15" down from the top left corner, quilt up to the corner, across the top border, and down to the same starting point on the right side of the quilt. I did the border after I'd quilted the first row of cows and churn dash blocks, so I advanced the quilt and continued down the border for another 15" or so (I have an 18" Avanté). This meant I could quilt longer without breaking thread.

1. So now I am at the point where I have quilted two more rows of cows and churn dashes and I want to do more of the border. First stitch in the ditch between the border and the background of the quilt. Also stitch 1/4" in from the outside.

2. Next, advance the quilt, and SID as you just did. You can see I was able to stitch all along the red churn dash and about half way into the barn block. Do this SID on the border on the opposite side of the quilt as well.

3.  Then, back up to where you started the ditch stitching (first pic).  At first when I wound the quilt backwards, I freaked because the quilt sandwich, in its entirety: top, batting and now backing, got wound up on the belly bar!

Yikes! I thought something bad would happen...but it didn't!  So starting at the point where I was in photo 1, I switch now to my mauve thread, and continue the border motif over the course of that length of the border, advance the quilt to photo 2 spot, and continue doing the border up to being level with the barn.  I'll stop there.

4. Then I go over to the opposite side, in this case the left, back up the quilt again to the photo 1 spot, but on the left side of the quilt, and pick up where I'd left off on that border, quilting down until I'm level with the barn block.

The barn block is in the bottom right corner, so once I've finished quilting the last two rows of the quilt, I'll be able to pick up the border motif about the level of the bottom of the barn roof, quilt down to the bottom right corner and across the bottom, and back up to meet where I left off on the left side of the quilt!

It's not as wonderful as doing the border in one continuous pass like you can with a DSM or sit-down quilt machine, but you can get fairly lengthy passes.  And it is wonderful not to have the weight of the quilt to manipulate through the machine.

Having a dedicated quilting machine means I can still piece if I feel the urge...

Blocks 103-105. Clockwise from top left: 103: Helen Smith Grant - Captain of her husband's ship when he took ill, she navigated rom China to Montreal in the mid-1880s, as well as taking care of her children. The family settled in Victoria, BC, where, in 1895, Helen became the first and only school board trustee in Canada. 104 - Lois Irene Smith - Canada's first and foremost ballerina, idolized by Karen Kain, she established the Lois Smith Dance School in Toronto. 105: Helen Irene Battle - first woman in Canada to earn a PhD in marine biology. I used a fish print for one of the centre background triangles and a shell motif embossed on an ivory fabric for another.

I made block 106 this morning, so as of writing this post, I am only two blocks behind in the 150 Canadian Women QAL!  I aimed for one block a day this past week, and I've done it, so if I can keep that up this coming week, I should be all caught up by next weekend. Yay! I also worked on a couple of my RSC 2017 projects, which I'll show you in another post.

Linking Up
Cooking Up Quilts
Free Motion by the River

Sharing

Happy First Day of Spring! Happy International Day of Happiness!

So sharing is a rather à propos topic for this day, and for this week for those of you who read Sew Fresh Quilts on Wednesday.  Most quilters share.  They share fabric, sources for fabric, patterns, quilting tools, tips, advice, designs, photos of our projects, the list goes on.  I have benefited from this sharing so many many times. I hope I have reciprocated as much in return.

I gave you a sneak peek at a cow muzzle a few days ago.  I have two entire cows done now! These are January (blue) and February (pink) blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge at SoScrappy. Yellow is March, so she will have to wait until we are back home in Kingsville to be made.

Hidden in Plaid Sight

He's all done!

Here's how it started:
A gorgeous pack of charm squares plus 2 extra sets of 8, that I bought about 5 years ago at Sew Worth It in Sarasota.  They came in a tin, so cute, along with a pattern for a cute little 12 3/4" square quilt.  This line is "Follow Your Heart" by Kathy Schmitz.

The problem was that I didn't want to have all these pretty fabrics reduced to such a small quilt!  So there they sat, flipped through and admired, pattern looked at, and lid snapped shut again.  In this winter of finish up some of these old projects, I had to face all 3 sets of charm square packs and do something with them.  This one was the second one.  See here for the first.

I am so proud that I designed this lap quilt.  No pattern, just gut instinct and creativity.  It was fun!

What if...
I kept the same colours together, and graduated them from dark to light on the diagonal?  Hmmm...

I liked it, but it wasn't very big.  I had leftover light fabric from "Winter Night", so wondered what would happen if I used rectangles as spacers.  I didn't have enough for light sashing, so decided to go with my stash of Kona black cotton.  Hmmm, again. It just might work.

Laid out a few rows to get the effect

It DID work!

Framed in black.

I had bought the Craftsy class, Dot to Dot Quilting, with Angela Walters, back at the end of November.  Prior to beginning to quilt this quilt, I decided to watch some of the lessons to see if I could use any of the techniques here.  Well, it turned out that this was the perfect quilt on which to try the designs, and techniques to create my own quilting designs!

In the two lower right corner black squares diagonal from each other you see a wedge design, which is basically a quarter of her starburst design, expanded.  Also, in the black with red hearts square and going up diagonally in the other two black blocks is my own dot to dot design, created thanks to the principles learned in class.

In the top row, middle red square, is a nod to Angela's Free Motion Feathers class I took and used extensively on Seaside Rose.  Also I wanted to see what would happen if I combined the wedge designs with their points going inwards.  That example is the red square on the bottom right.  It ended up making a central diamond pattern!

Her diamond design is in the top left tan square, and the others have various combinations of her designs.  The bottom right square is my own design again.

I tried to get some back light on the quilt to show off the quilting.

Here is the border design, showing the corner.  I used the wedge triangle shape combined with half diamond designs.

I used Sulky rayons on the top and The Bottom Line and Gutermann cotton in the bobbin.  I decided to go with the burgundy through the cream and black lattice to emphasize the plaid look. I was a little concerned at first, especially about using it on the cream, but I think it looks good.

A glimpse of the backing.

The label, again as an integral part of the backing.

Against the flowering shrubbery.

Ahh!  Feels good, in more ways than one!

Quilt details:
Name:  Hidden in Plaid Sight
Size:  46 X 51.25"
Pattern:  by moi, Sandra Jane Walker
Fabric:  Moda and Kona cotton, 100% cotton
Backing: Moda "Renewal" by Brannock & Patek (purchased this at Quilts n' More! in Port Charlotte, FL)
Machine-pieced and machine-quilted on my Bernina Artista 180 using Sulky rayons with The Bottom Line and Gutermann cotton in the bobbin