fabricologist

fabricologist

Friday, August 26, 2016

Summer Solstice Progress

The Summer Solstice QAL is progressing quite nicely from here. I still have one week to go and only one block left to assemble and it's almost finished!

 These are the 40 inch blocks. I am making 4 of them to make a queen size quilt for my bed. I love that they are so big and show the prints so well. I have never done big blocks before.

This one is on the design wall still. Partially assembled, but it will be finished by the end of the day, I'm sure. So glad I joined Melissa at Happy Quilting for this.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Pets on Quilts

I have never gotten around to participating in the Pets on Quilts blog hop that Snoodles does every year, although I have gone and looked at all those adorable pets and their quilts. Such talent in these quilts and the animals are adorable. I have a quilt inspector named Omalley, after Omalley the alley cat in the Disney movie Aristocats. He is an old man now. He is 16 years old. He has been a part of our family since my daughter adopted him as a baby. Here are some pictures of him doing his job:
 This is my favorite place to sleep, especially in the winter. Lots of pillows and quilts and mom even puts a heating pad under the quilt to keep me warm. These old bones get quite chilled in the winter, you know.
                 I know mom wants to get this quilted, but it is already pretty cozy.
                           What? You need me to move? Now?
 When she won't let me lie on the work in progress, I sit here in her quilting room on the sewing machine cover. It's quilted too.
 I love the bed in winter. It usually has several layers of quilts on it for  extra coziness.
                       And now I lay me down to sleep...
Thanks to Snoodles and Dragondrop and Padsworth. This was fun. Lily Pad Quilting

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Summer Sunday

I have a couple of finishes today and an update on the Summer Solstice QAL I am participating in. First, the finishes.

 This is a wedding gift for some friends that I couldn't show until I was finally able to deliver it to them. I know it is hard to see, but it is a tree, stitched on Kona snow. I added the butterflies because my friend loves butterflies.
 I went back over the white stitching with a light grey to enhance it a bit and added this sweet little heart to the trunk of the tree.
 I love the blue butterflies. I didn't have any kind of fabric to make them more iridescent.
 Needless to say it was very well received, so I am pretty happy about it too.
 Then I had another secret project. After my sister's quilt went missing, I decided to make version 2.0 in a mini to give to my other sister. These are all the tiny leaves I cut out for it.
And this is the finished top hanging on my design wall. I have since quilted it and gifted it, but apparently I forgot to take any more pictures of it. It is roughly 38 inches square.
 These are the pictures of my Drunkards path blocks for the Quilt Along. I am so happy I am making the 40 inch square blocks. I can't imagine how much longer it would have taken me to finish.
 Plus, these are bigger and I suspect the curves easier to sew together. I did one practice block and then tackled the rest over two days after work. I starte a week late on this installation due to vacation.
 But I am all caught up and looking forward to beginning the assembly of the blocks. This is going to be a great quilt I think. Talk to you soon.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Eight Years Later...A Finish

Well, this quilt certainly has a story to go with it. I started it about 8 years ago, when I had a denim couch. I have always been a blue jeans girl, and I loved this denim couch. It was great for having with kids and grand kids. The covers all came off and went into the wash, going back tight and great fitting as jeans do. So I wanted to make a quilt that matched it as soon as I found the perfect fabric at my LQS.

 They are all batiks, which I don't use much even though there are so many beautiful ones out there. I pieced it fairly quickly, but got hung up on the quilting. I started out hand quilting it. I used to do a lot of my quilts that way. But it is slow. And it went to the back of the line.
 This is the part that got machine quilted a few weeks ago just so I could get this thing done.
 There were a few centers that were hand quilted like this, but I couldn't find the stencil I used back when I started. So I made a choice to go in another direction.
 All the small squares are hand quilted and the stitches are of varying lengths. My abilities have changed some over the years.
 The back I love. It is an older Heather Baily print that I bought because the colors matched the front pretty well. The outside borders are a dark blue marbled fabric.
 I love that it is done. The colors are just so delicious. I still love them after all this time.
 This quilt would have looked great on that denim couch. But alas, the couch is no more. One of the kids took it and has since gotten rid of it. I love my new couch, but I will never forget the old denim couch.
                        This quilt will always remind me.
And one more small miracle, while wondering what to bind it with, and searching for something else at the time, I found about a yard of the coral batik. Perfect. Just perfect.
And it looks pretty good on the new couch too. Another happy ending for one of my quilts. Talk to you soon.