Row E

My new Dear Jane variation will be called Accepting My Limitations.   When I worked on The Quilt years ago, my fingers were nimble and allowed me to applique some tiny pieces.  Now I feel I'm all thumbs and have had to resort to using fusibles for some parts of the small blocks.  When I put my mind to it, I can make a row of 13 blocks in a week, which I did last week.  Here's Row E.

The next to the last block (purple with fruit) will receive a little embroidery rather than a fusible bit in its center.  Then I'll put the blocks away for a while as I quilt the Birch Street collage and head south for a few weeks.

Yesterday, I basted the collage together using Misty Fuse, a product I'd never used before.   The muslin back is wrinkly but, since it's a wall hanging, shouldn't be all that noticeable.  The quilting, in straight vertical lines is going pretty well so far. 

 I'm using polyester thread, and Paul helped me move my machine out from the wall in order to allow the stiff collage to drape onto my ironing board behind the machine.  

A few small pieces popped up while handling, so I'm sticking them back down with a little bit of glue.  I hope that after quilting, that problem will be eliminated.  I worried a bit about marking, but I have been making vertical lines with a water-soluble pen every 6" across to make sure that I keep the quilting fairly as I go across the quilt.  I'm actually liking the piece more with the quilting.  That will be what I do most of the next few days.

Farewell, my lovely

I was surprised yesterday by a message from Etsy telling me that I had sold a quilt.  I made this quilt years ago, sold it last year, and had it returned to me.  The buyer said the person she'd bought it for didn't want it.  Imagine my disappointment.  I loved making this twin-sized curved log cabin with a bundle of florals!  And Marie's quilting couldn't be beat.

Finding a mailing box wasn't easy, but I settled on one in the basement.  I will need to find a large sized priority box, just in case I sell something else this year.  Luckily, the parking lot at the post office was clean(ish) so I had no trouble walking.  Otherwise, I would have recruited Paul to carry the box.  

I'm happy to have reduced the inventory by one good sized quilt, and hope this buyer will love it as much as I do.

Round robin

I enjoy working on round robins and organized one for our quilt guild this year.   Six people, including me, signed up, and so far I've worked on four quilts started by guild members.  Now that the quilts are bigger, we have two months to work on the last two rounds.  I have Soni's quilt to work on now, and it's gorgeous so far.  She said she would prefer that we make our borders no wider than 3", and I love the variety of batiks she included.  

I used a Seminole technique for my round and love the result.  Hope she does, too!   Years ago, I had a wonderful book on Seminole patchwork that I loaned to someone who never gave it back.  I bought another one and stupidly loaned it to someone who also never returned it.  Mr. Google came to the rescue yesterday!  

It wasn't as hard as it looks, but I'm really glad it's finished.  Each of those little squares was just 1" and the resulting strip is very stretchy.  The border ended up at 2" unfinished, and I'm going to leave it as is for the next person to deal with.  I like the way it looks on Soni's quilt.  

And I wonder how my quilt is!  I pulled the Christmas Dresden plate block out of my UFO box and added some fabric back in September, and now I hardly remember what it looked like.  The big reveal will be at the May meeting. Hope I can get a few more UFOs finished before it comes home to add to the pile.

Last year's purple quilt

I seem to make at least one purple quilt each year.  Last year, I won the guild Blocks of the Month, a purple floating star, and finally finished it in a few weeks ago.   I love purple, but I will be finding a charity to give this twin-sized quilt to.  Here I am showing and telling at Monday night's guild meeting.

I now have a stack of Christmas ribbon star blocks that I won at the December guild meeting to put together sometime this year.  I'll probably set them in a similar manner.

Also at Monday's guild meeting, I did a little demo of disappearing four patch blocks.  In preparing for the demo, I discovered an alternative that occurs when you cut the four patch block on the diagonal.  I really like it, so I may try making a whole multi-colored quilt of this pattern sometime.  Here I am showing the two methods.  

I had thought to use the disappearing four patch to make a baby quilt for my niece Susan in the Netherlands.  She and her husband Arjan are expecting in June and are big Disney fans, having been to Disney World at least 3 times and to Disney Paris, too.  

But the charm squares I got show very small motifs, so I will most likely just make a very colorful square inside a square for her baby quilt.  I will probably start that when we get back from Alabama in early March.

Starting a new BOM

I can't resist Aby Dolinger's Blocks of the Month.  Her instructions are just so clear, and I always like the way the end result looks.  

This year, she's using Shelley Cavanna's Barn Star Sampler as the basis for the BOM because she's teaching a class in her area (NC).  My version this year is designed to reduce my collection of purples.  I keep buying purples, and people give them to me, too.  It's next to impossible to close the tub now! 

I'm planning to make the throw sized quilt, but one never knows where one's whims will take me.  I may say "small" in January and change my mind in October!  

The first three blocks. #10 and 11, were fairly easy, and I enjoyed making them.  We are also supposed to make a start on a more complex, bigger star block, #2, but I will probably hold off until I finish a few other things this month.

There were quite a few cut-offs from the corners of the flying geese, so I sewed half square triangles together in hopes of using them as fillers down the line.  I'm varying the backgrounds a bit although I have quite a bit of white on white I can use here and there.  I especially like the background by Victoria Findlay Wolfe in the block at the upper left.

Ready to quilt

I got so involved finishing up the Birch Street collage yesterday that I forgot I had clothes in the washer.  They never got put into the dryer, so now I'm running a quick wash before doing so.  Such is the way of the quilter:  when we get really involved, all signs of "life" fall away.

After talking with Marie at the quilt shop on Thursday, I decided it was time to put pedal to the metal and finish up.  She made me feel better by saying that it took her 6 months to finish one of her collages.  And here I had been complaining that I started mine in October.  But the collage UFO took up most of the guest bed, and that's where I lay out quilts to be put together and/or quilted.  It was impeding my progress.

Yesterday, I added the "grass," the road in front, a few embellishments (including the tiny bicycles), and the border, and I ironed everything down with steam.  It is now ready for simple quilting which I will attempt to do with my Elna.  I've ordered some Mistyfuse to help me sandwich it with muslin backing and a pieced batt I've been saving.  

Big question:  how to "mark" the beginning center line?  I'm afraid to use painters tape for fear it will remove pieces (a window already fell off while I was putting the border on - glue to the rescue!).

Meanwhile, I will work on blocks for Dear Jane and Green Tea and Sweet Beans.  I want to get a few kits made up to take on our trip south in February.

Rows Parade

I'm a little slow in showing this new quilt which I bound last week.  I had to find two tall people to hold it up so I could take a full photo.  Luckily, Soni and Mary were willing at quilt guild on Saturday, and here Rows Parade is!  It was a row of the month designed by Aby Dolinger, and all the rows were made with scraps I already had.  I did buy the sashing and border fabric as well as the binding and backing.  It was fun to make, and I especially enjoyed the hearts row made in February.  Most of those blocks were hand appliqued.

I started out choosing colors from the Rainbow Scrap Challenge but then veered off the page a bit.  And somehow it grew to be full sized - not my initial intention!

A productive day

I had no reason to leave the house yesterday, so I stayed home and got a lot done.   A quilt got bound and 8 placemats got quilted.  First I had to create some "Frankenbatting" for the placemats.  My bin of scraps was overflowing, but now it isn't, and I still have a couple of queen-sized batts in plastic bags waiting to be used.  I wish I could buy batting by the roll, but I just don't have space to store one. 

Quilting the placemats was fairly quick because I used a very simple 2.5" grid on each one.  I only had to mark two with washout ink; the rest I merely cross-hatched through squares by eye.  I can't really machine quilt in a straight line, but it isn't all that noticeable.  The stiff backing, a Waverly upholstery print, made it very easy.

I have some binding cut out for four of the placemats and ordered some more for the others.  While I was in a binding mood, I got out one of the quilts Marie quilted for me and got that ready.  Not having anything else that needed to be done, I started binding and finished after lunch.  The quilt is Rows Parade, a row of the month quilt I worked on in 2023.   

How good it feels to finish!  I have no idea what I'll do with this quilt, but I'll take it to guild for show and tell and maybe list it on etsy eventually.  I have another, smaller quilt waiting to be bound.  Getting it ready will be today's project, but I'm not sure how far I'll get.

This morning we're heading to yoga and, after a quick nap, we'll go to Burlington to have dinner with Pauline and see Come From Away at the Flynn Theater.  Hoping the weather improves so the drive over is OK and that tomorrow morning's return home is without snow, ice, what-have-you.

Barn Star Sampler BOM

I have followed Aby Dolinger's blog for a number of years and enjoy working on blocks of the month projects she designs.   Her directions are always very clear.  This year, she's leading a BOM using Shelley Cavanna's Barn Star Sampler.  I got the book in the fall and, since I am involved in fostering a barn quilt trail all over Vermont, I thought this was a perfect project for me this year.  This will be 2024's purple quilt because my stash of purples continues to grow.

Here are Aby's first two block choices which look pretty simple to me.  I don't think I'll get to them today but hope to sometime this week.  At least I'll try to cut them out.  In my attempt to be more realistic about projects I start, I'm shooting for a throw this time.  I have yet to put the binding on the queen-sized BOM I did with Aby in 2023.

Today's project will be sandwiching and beginning the quilting on the placemats I'm making for Pauline.   I have lots of leftover batting scraps which should see me through this project.  I don't want to venture out of the house because the roads don't look too good yet.  The news reported that we had 13.5" of snow yesterday, and it will take a little time to clean that up.  Thank goodness we shopped for groceries on Saturday!

Catching up

I wrote the following on New Year's Eve...

This morning I made a few blocks for a swap, and yesterday I finished working on a brick for Studio Place Arts, our local arts center.  

SPA was flooded like every other building along N. Main St. this summer, with quite a bit of water in the basement.  As they pumped it out, several bricks fell out of the foundation, too.  Those were replaced, and the "bad" bricks stacked up in the back yard.   The folks at SPA decided to offer them to local artists to create items that will be raffled off this winter some time.  I volunteered and here's what I made with the brick I got.  

It was dirty but in good shape.   When I picked it up, I thought I'd applique a small version of the building which is full of large windows and has turquoise doors on the first floor.  In summer, there's an easy chair carved out of granite out front, and tourists take their pictures there.

But time passed far too quickly, and now it's due in a couple of weeks.   I decided to dip into my extensive collection of selvages.  Some of them have great sayings.  I added the ricrac just to be a little different.  I didn't cut out all the holes, just the ones on the top to make the brick visible.  And sewing the thing shut was a real pain.  But it's done and ready to deliver.

And now for today, a week later...

The snow is streaming down, probably at the rate of an inch an hour.  Winter is seriously here.  I have been baking rolls because we were going to have company for dinner.  I don't think they're coming now, so I'll put the rolls in the freezer to take to Pauline's on Wednesday.  We're going to Burlington to see Come from Away, the traveling Broadway show.  Just as we did last year when the three of us saw Book of Mormon, we'll spend the night at Pauline and Bob's (he has to work, poor guy).   I've been working on some placemats for Pauline lately, but I won't finish them before Wednesday.  I'll take them over later in the month.

Earlier this week, I worked on a few blocks of the month and also some samples for an online swap I've organized.  It's a traditional log cabin very similar to the Manx blocks I'm making.  Those end up at 9" and these swap blocks end up at 8" finished.  

I have tons of blue and actually bought another piece at the local quilt shop which is closing January 20.  Mary has long had an online shop but thought she'd try the bricks-and-mortar one a couple of years ago.  I don't think her selection was a good fit for our town and the hours were a bit erratic.  But I will miss going to Quilt Bingo there every once in a while.  Maybe we can continue that somehow.

Our Christmas tree and most of our decorations have been put away.  Our wreaths are still up but will come down this week or next.   Lots of neighbors have their lights up still, which does make the evenings cheery.  I do enjoy the peacefulness of a snowy day - I'll knit, watch a little TV, and read.  A perfect Sunday!