Barn Star Sampler

 I started my annual purple quilt in the fall and finished the top in June.  It's a throw based on Shelley Cavanna's Barn Star Sampler, and it was machine quilted by Marie Gross who always does a wonderful job.  I chose this pattern because, since I became the president of the Green Mountain Quilters Guild, I've been busy encouraging people to paint and hang barn quilts so that we can create a barn quilt trail statewide.  We are well on our way due to the efforts of quilters in Franklin County and classes being held around the state.  I hang little quilts on my front door since we live in a condo and can't affix anything except the US flag to the building.

On to another UFO

I ended up adding a 4" border of scrappy, variable nine patch blocks to Lily of the West and putting it in time out (the closet) for a while.  I'll think about the next border(s) to finish it while I work on Green Beans and Sweet Tea which I started in September.   This is a Jen Kingwell pattern that I was attracted to due to the mix of applique and piecing.  It is really meant for hand sewing.   I have got stalled on this one which may be my last Kingwell design.  There are just too many other quilts I'd like to make, some easier, some more striking, although I do enjoy working on samplers over time.

I had really been struggling to sew the hexies together into an 8" x 12" block, even with my magnifying glasses on.  I finally just appliqued them by machine onto a piece of background fabric using a small zigzag stitch.  I don't think I'll be making anything with hexies any time soon (if ever!).  I like the blocks I've managed to put together, including the cute wool applique.

The piece now measures about 40" x 42", and I'm aiming for a small throw.  I could make a bigger checkerboard of 2.5" scraps around the whole quilt, but I'd also like to frame it all with a darker, more solid 6" (or so) pieced border.  I will play around with a few ideas today - piano keys? drunkard's path? rail fence?

After the morning fog clears, I will take the Barn Star Sampler outside for a photo shoot so I can list it on etsy.  My offerings need refreshing there, and with Christmas on the horizon, I need to make and add a few table runners soon.

The new quilt

I've been working on my Lily of the West quilt this week, using a bundle of fat quarters in the Riley Blake line called "Flora."  I love the fabric with its pink, yellow, periwinkle, green, and black colorways.  They called "Dresden Plate" to me, and the resulting plates worked out well.  I paper pieced (ugh!) some butterflies for the corners, and now the quilt is 30" square.  

My dilemma:  what to do around that 30" square?  Do I just finish it off with a couple more borders?  Do I piece around it?  How big do I want this quilt to be?  

Yesterday, after getting the center square all finished, I made one lily block using a pattern I found at the Fat Quarter Shop's website.  It finished at 14" square and wasn't that hard to make, but I do I really want to make a lot more?  Should I only make one for each corner?  If so, what should I put in between?   And do I really want to add 14" all around?  I'm not sure, but I do plan to applique the stem down.  Maybe it'll find a place on the back, and maybe I'll figure out how to work one in each corner with something in between.

Right now, I'm thinking about adding a 6" border using all of the colors in the bundle?    Visions of log cabin, card trick, rail fence, and other multicolored blocks woke me up at 3 am.   I will play around with those today, and most likely put the lily block on the back burner for now.   Stay tuned!

A great quilt show!

 

Yesterday, Paul and I met our friends Pauline and Bob in Woodstock (VT) where the Billings Farm and Museum is having a summer-long quilt exhibit.  There are 56 juried quilts and 14 commissioned barn quilts on display.  The barn quilts are on the farm buildings and it was fun to wander around looking at them.  

Of course, there are farm animals to pet and watch, too, but I was most excited to see my own Hankie Quilt #2 on display - in a perfect spot right by some glass doors.  I ran into the Curator and thanked him for putting my quilt in such a prominent and lovely spot.  He says the exhibit is going well and they plan to have one next year.

Following are a few other photos I took of the quilts - one was just amazing with very intricate quilting and embellished with over 4,000 beads!

This was my favorite, I think.  So simple, yet the color placement and the vertical quilting were spot on.

Each of the hexies was hand appliqued, and the fabrics are prints and solids.  It's another "wish I'd thought of that" quilt!

Binding is on!

Yesterday I did a few errands in the morning - bank, grocery store - and also some housekeeping.  No laundry for once!  We took a walk in filtered sunshine.  It has been a bit cloudy these last few days, and I discovered it is due to wildfires somewhere up in Canada.  

I managed to cut, sew, iron, and sew on a binding for the purple Barn Star Sampler.   Today I'll start the laborious hand sewing to the back.  Most of my quilts are given to charity so I machine sew both sides.  But this one will be for sale on etsy as my stock there is a bit thin and needs a boost.  I'll do its photoshoot when I'm done.  

It was a block of the month I started in January, but as usual I got impatient this summer and decided to work ahead.  My friend Marie also worked on one but made hers bigger.  The quilt finishes to an odd size - long and skinny - so I made the throw size and added a border.  I can't wait to see hers.

I wanted to make something different and easy for dinner, so I cut up strips of chicken breast, browned it in olive oil, sprinkled a little garlic powder and minced onion over top, and poured a jar of Newman's Own Mango Salso over it all.  I let that simmer for 45 minutes and served it over rice.  Paul said it was a keeper, and we have some leftover for Thursday's dinner.  Tonight I'll make some salmon patties early, and we'll head downtown for the last summer author talk at the library.  We are both reading Gather by last week's author, Ken Cadow, a finalist for the National Book Award. 

Testing out a pattern

My friend Debbie in Indiana is always up for a block swap.  Last spring, she suggested a bow tie block swap, so we narrowed the size down to 8" squares because two fit neatly into an envelope with a first class postage stamp.  She and I exchanged ten blocks each and mailed two to each other participant.  Yesterday I laid the blocks I had out and sewed a few rows together. The swap doesn't end until September, and I'm waiting for one or two blocks from one person.  So I put it on a hanger in the closet for a while.  I may also make a few more to get a twin-sized quilt.

Meanwhile, Debbie and I are testing possibilities for another swap.  More people signed up for the bowties because they were easy.  I saw a very nice scrap buster this week which she and I each made.  I'm not sure the other folks in our swap group will be interested, so maybe it will be a project for just Debbie and me.  But this modern looking block is really easy and addictive to make.

The "Butterflies are Free" pattern includes 6 plain 3.5" background squares and 10 background squares with 2.5" squares sewn on the diagonal for a 12" square.  I had a lot of leftover gray pieces and a growing box of precut 2.5" squares to use and ended up making three blocks in a short time.  These made a table runner with some Tula Pink zebra fabric for the back.  It has a modern feel to it and may just catch the eye of someone at the florist shop.   I'll take it down to sell this coming week along with the blue star table runner I made a few weeks ago.

Debbie also made a very pretty block using a cream background and bright blue and yellow batiks.  We will check soon with the swap group to see if they want to swap these blocks in the next few months.   Postage has been a problem for some, yet we still have active participants from London and Ontario, along with members from the US.  If they aren't interested, Debbie and I may swap all by ourselves, or we may do something else.

I made one more 12" block, and now I'm out of larger scraps of gray except the solid gray.   I'll turn my attention to a few other projects for a while.   Yesterday at the Calico County Quilters sewing session, I applique a couple of half Dresden Plates and almost finished a whole one for the Lily of the West small quilt I'm making using the Flora line by Riley Blake.  Today I'll be paper piecing some butterflies to go with the plates, and I'll probably make some oatmeal blueberry muffins, too.  Hope you're having a nice Sunday!

Another orphan block quilt

I finished the last small quilt in a series using orphan blocks yesterday and feel I have license to work on a few other UFOs.  Whoopee!   I haven't made any Dear Jane or Green Tea and Sweet Beans blocks in several months, and of course, there's the Lily of the West quilt I just started last week.  I also have a couple of scrappy leaders/enders going, too, along with the bow tie block swap blocks.  I always chuckle when people ask me what I'm working on.  They are often surprised to hear that usually I have 10 or 12 quilts going at once.  That's not untypical for a devoted quilter.

Anyway, the quilt I just finished combines various guild blocks of the month with some string blocks.  I usually make my string blocks on an 8" paper foundation.  This time, after removing the paper, I cut each one in half diagonally and sewed four sections together.  Unfortunately, the result didn't measure the 12" of the BOM blocks so I had to border them in order for the blocks to fit together.  

I'll take this 50" x 50" quilt to Bags of Love for kids going into foster care as soon as I finish the little hat I've been knitting for them.  I have a bunch of leftover yarn to make a few more hats this fall and winter.  I decided not to buy any more yarn (I can't resist the lush colors of wool) until I use up some of my miscellaneous yarn.

The monthly guild "teams" decide the colorways for the blocks we bring for the monthly drawings.  I have been making two blocks the same and keeping one.  But this year, I've decided to try and make all of the blocks of the month I keep for myself in the same colorway.  I'm not sure what that will be yet, but I'm leaning toward blue and white to use some of the many blue scraps in my stash.

I am sure that Marie, the long arm quilter, will be letting me know soon that my Barn Star Sampler is ready because when I saw her last week, it was on the frame.  I'll try to cut a binding out for it in the coming week and pick it up next Thurs.  But today Deb and I are scheduled for our monthly pedicure and gabfest in the morning, and, in the afternoon, I'm going to the library to help clean up the booksale room with Pam and Martha-Jean.  By the time I get home I'll be thinking about what to make for dinner.   Black bean bowls?

The Christmas round robin

This year I participated in another round robin with five other members of the Heart of Vermont guild.  I have participated in several over the years and find it fun and challenging.  This time around, I had a nice Dresden Plate orphan block waiting to be used as well as a variety of holiday fabrics.  With six people and nine months to finish, we were able to take two months for the last few rounds.  This was great because, as the quilts grow, we often need more time to work on those rounds.  

I am always amazed at the work people put into these projects, and I enjoy getting to know different quilters through their work on the quilt tops.  While I certainly would not have added the borders group members added, I like the way my quilt turned out.  It measures about 50" x 50" and will look nice on our dining room table during the holidays.

One of the group members, Tammy, owns a long arm machine and generously offered to quilt everyone's quilts for free.  But I wanted to quilt mine myself, using my walking foot.  I find medallion quilts fairly easy to handle because I can anchor the rounds in the ditches and then go back and fill the borders in with quilting.

I especially enjoyed quilting around the "ornaments" border although I didn't go around the smaller cathedral windows.  I just quilted those 4" blocks in the ditch because of their bulk.  There was one green and white "ornament" left over which I turned into a signature block on the back, adding all the names of the participants.  This was a successful group which I'd love to work with on another quilt in the coming year.  We'll see how they all feel about it in September.

Although we had a reveal of all of the tops at our last guild meeting before the summer break, we will be showing our finished quilts at the September meeting.  Mine's all set to go, and now I'm quilting another UFO that's been waiting patiently in the closet.  It's been hot and humid, so the quilting room is the place to be.

Another trip around the sun

I had a very nice birthday yesterday although I did nothing very special.  We went out for groceries quite early, and then I got busy making a blueberry pie.  Paul was picking berries as I was working on it, but we still have plenty left.  He thinks we'll get another quart or so tomorrow.  What neighbor will I "gift" them to?  We've already given some away.  

I used the recipe for Triple Berry Pie that's available at Sally's Baking Addiction, my go-to site for all things baking.   I wish I'd put in a little more corn starch because the all-blueberry filling was still a bit runny, even though I didn't remove the pie from the oven until it reached the 200 degree temperature in the recipe.  But it was delicious!  Not too sweet with a nice crust, albeit made from a box.

We had planned to go to the Asian Gourmet restaurant with Chris for dinner, but in the afternoon we had off and on torrential rain.  The city was preparing sandbags for businesses to use in case Main Street flooded (it didn't), and, since the restaurant is right downtown, we decided to postpone our dinner to tonight.  That was OK with me as we had leftover curry chicken salad and, of course, the pie with some vanilla gelato on top.

I did a little reading and some more quilting on the Christmas round robin quilt, which I will continue with today.  I talked with Mom and enjoyed lots of emails, text messages, and Facebook well wishes throughout the day.  Just a nice way to greet age 76!