Finishing books and projects

Now that the collage is finished and hanging on the wall, what should I work on next?  I always have to take a little break after finishing an intense project or after reading an intense book.  Both happened yesterday.  I finished quilting Birch Street and hung it up in the front hall.    It's a narrow space and difficult for photography, but perhaps today I'll take the quilt outside for a photo shoot.  I folded and sewed the outer border over to the back as a facing and made a thin hanging sleeve which I sewed on by hand.   I think that will be "it" for collage quilting for me.  

I spent most of yesterday reading Go As A River, by Shelley Read.  It's set in Colorado, between 1949 and 1970.  Victoria meets a charismatic young man on a street in her small town, falls in love, and bears the consequences.  It's an adventure with coming-of-age, very exciting in parts, and also quite heartwarming at the end.  Beautifully written with very strong characters, it's a book I will remember for a long time.  I enjoyed Victoria's love of nurturing the peaches her family grew.  Colorado peaches are delicious.  

Feeling the void of a project and a book finished, today I'll work on getting some projects together for our trip and start a cozy mystery - palate cleansers!  Tomorrow we are heading to Bellows Falls on an errand for the historical society, and Tuesday I'll have a pedicure and go to Burlington to give Pauline her placemats.  I'd like to get my taxes done before we leave next week, too.

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.