Hoop It Up!

I love Bonnie Hunter. I so enjoy her blog Quiltville's Quips and Snips and the real and creative life she leads. It inspires me. She has been doing some hand quilting and showing it lately. Even though her business also involves a lot of long arm work, she still likes that cozy, slow stitch feeling too. It made me want to go back to my quilting roots.

Around 2010 I found the modern quilting movement on line. I learned how to machine quilt and I was hooked. It was so much faster, and the possibilities were endless. I pretty much gave up hand quilting. These days though, I find myself drawn back into the slower pace of hand work. I have been doing tons of embroidery and crochet. Now, I wanted to start hand quilting again. But not on a large quilt.

I am quilting along with Rachel at Stitched in Color on the Pas de Deux quilt this year. She showed a photo of some fabrics she had pulled for a project that included this Heather Ross print of the moths. I love that print and happened to have a little. I wanted to use it. So I chose several fabrics to go with it, wanting a spring colored vibe. I edited the colors and then pulled out my Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt Blocks, looking for ideas. I wanted that soft purple to be  focus of the piece, so I made 5 blocks identical. The other block I wanted to feature the supporting fabrics. But I didn't like this. Too much too much.

So I chose my favorite and settled on this. I added the green back in as a very narrow 1 inch border, and had just enough of the purple to make an outer border, which is wider at the top and bottom than the sides. I am very pleased with this.

Then pieced together a backing from some long held fabrics that weren't getting any use. I pulled out my old quilting hoop and hooped it up, after thread basting the layers. I had to kind of relearn that thread basting too. It's amazing what you forget.

And now, for however long it takes, I am going to hand quilt this piece. It is 24x27 inches, so not too big.

I am going to let it lead me, and show me how it wants to be quilted. I took the first few stitches yesterday, and let me tell you, my hand quilting needs work. But, the only way it gets better is to do it. Practice, practice, practice. So that's what I will be doing for awhile. And I couldn't be happier about it.

Talk to you soon.

Pink Checkerboard Scrap Quilt...Done

 When i was working on my tiny house project, I also worked on my pink string quilt. About halfway, or more, through that, I started another pink scrap quilt. I have lots of pink scraps, and I had cut a couple hundred into 2.5 inch squares. So I got some off white Kona  fabric and cut 2.5 inch strips and began sewing all those squares to them.

I had no idea how big this would be, but I thought the best way to do it was to sew 16 patch blocks and later, I could decide how many to make and how big I wanted it to be. I sewed a few 16 patch blocks almost every day for awhile.

I started putting them up on my design wall and I really fell in love! I took more scraps and cut more squares. I finally decided on a size that would cover the top of my bed with a wee bit of over hang. I planned to leave the larger quilt on underneath it.

This is the quilt with the quilting finished, but no binding on it. Blogger has once again re-ordered my pictures, so we'll just go with it. Okay?

Here is my label, sewn to a corner scrap on the back. You can see here, as well as the shot below, that I decided to go wild and bind the quilt with a bright spring green that I found in my stash.

I chose that color to deliberately stand out, like a stem on pink flowers. I found some of that green in one of my fabrics I used for the pink backing.

Here is a shot of the whole thing. It was almost too big for my husband tohold up, and the wind kept gusting while we were doing this.

This is the back of the quilt. Now you can really see where the green came from. It was either that, or turquoise. But alas, I had no turquoise. Bonnie Hunter makes some of her quilt backs like this. That's where I got the inspiration.

This was the day that I had to get down on the floor and pin baste. I have trouble with this, so I seldom make larger quilts any more. But this one was totally worth it.

The whole thing is quilted with organic horizontal lines of varying width apart. I am super happy with the look and texture of this quilt. And so glad to have a pink scrap quilt that is mine.

Thanks for stopping by.

My Good Fortune

I had never done a mystery quilt before. I had seen them all over the internet, but never was intrigued enough to participate. Until last year. Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville fame runs mystery quilt alongs every year apparently. For some mysterious reason, I decided to jump in and join up for the Good Fortune Mystery Quilt Along. According to my photos, we must have started last year in November. That is the date stamp on the first pictures of part one.

I kept up with the first three parts. This quilt was made from nothing but scraps and I did enjoy that aspect of the project immensely. When we got to the fourth part, I couldn't quite wrap my head around it for some reason and I became quite frustrated. So I quit. I put all the finished pieces in a project box and walked away from it. I did mountains of sewing and other projects for awhile after that.

In August, something tugged at me. I decided to pull it all out and give it another go. I had downloaded all the instructions to do the rest of the quilt and so I had that ready to go. I worked on it for a bit. I finished all of the components of the quilt finally. Then, I began to assemble the quilt.

I made it this far by the fall. I had the center of the quilt finished. It hung on my design wall for weeks, as I tried to get energized about it. I had some Christmas sewing to do, so I took it down and hung it over a hanger on the sewing room door. And there it stayed. Until this past week. I finally decided to get it finished. I had made my list of 2020 projects and it was near the top of the list.

Now, I think that if I had known there were four borders on this thing, I might not have started it in the first place. I am not a fan of borders, which is one reason I like the modern quilt movement so much. Borders are not mandatory. But there was nothing for it but to plow forward.

So this week I began sewing the borders on to the quilt top. To me, it seems a tedious process and each side seems longer than the last.

 But finally all the borders were on all the sides. This is a pretty large quilt too! I love the look of the design when I stand back and take it all in. Up close, I worried about some of my fabric scrap choices, but looking from a distance it all works.

In these two photos, you can see the four borders a bit closer. Two of them are quite narrow. The green and white HSTs are trimmings from the pinwheels. Bonnie calls them bonus blocks. It's not the type of thing I usually save to use.

One last picture of the whole beauty, hanging on the clothesline. I am so glad it is done, but seriously, I don't see me ever making another mystery quilt. I plan to quilt it in an all over swirl pattern, since there are so many small pieces and seams that I feel a need to secure. I may be back to show when that part gets done, but it may take a bit to get to it. The project list is long.

Happy new  year my friends. May your year be filled with Good Fortune.

Learning Something Surprising

So I was a bit surprised when I learned something about myself this week. Let's go back in time to the beginning of the year, shall we? I wanted to try something new, for the new year. I decided to try Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune Mystery Quilt. We were given one clue per week, and a week to make all the pieces. I wast using only stash fabrics, and mostly scraps at that. It started out well enough.

I made blocks, and joined the link ups every week, for the first 4 weeks. But after the first week, it became a struggle. I wasn't having much fun and it was stressing me out a bit, with the other projects I was working on. Week 5 did me in. I couldn't get the blocks to turn out the correct size and I didn't have Bonnie's special ruler, nor did I want to buy one just for this. So, I quit!

I dumped all my finished blocks into a project box and put the lid on it. I wasn't ready to toss it out just yet, but I was so angry and frustrated by it. I went ahead and downloaded all the rest of the weeks instructions so I would have them while they were offered for free. After a couple of weeks, I made the decision to just let it sit in the box for awhile. I decided that I would, eventually get back on it. Weeks went by, and then months. I would look at that box sitting there, mocking me. I put the mystery quilt on my 2019 project list, sort of a half assed commitment by me.

Then, finally last week, the time seemed to be right. I had few sewing commitments and I opened the project box. I pulled out the offending pieces and went to my computer for the directions. Reading them with clear eyes was so helpful. I was able to see what needed to be done here now. So I finished up week 5.

Next up was week 6 which was so much easier, to me. I had to make strip sets and sub-divide them. They were to be made from low volume fabrics. That is not something I have a ton of in my stash or scraps. I did a cursory search, and found only a few. I walked away for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. For me, this quilt had been, in part about not buying any fabrics.

I went back into my stash bins. I slowly and carefully went through all my scraps. They began piling up on the ironing board. By the time I was done, I was so surprised at what I had. I pressed everything flat and began cutting and sewing.

 This is what I had. I sub divided all the strip sets to the proper size, and stacked them in the project box. Now, you would think that I would be ready for step 7, but you would be wrong. While I was making these strip sets, something happened to me. I fell in love with the look of the low volume strips. I wanted to make more! So I did, and I must tell you I still didn't run out of low volume scraps.

      These are some of my newly sub divided strip sets that went into the project box.

I began joining the rest of the strip sets to make a table runner! I really had to work to figure out how to join these. I cut some and turned some around until the whole thing was done. It now sits, pin basted on my table. Today, I will begin quilting it.

My whole point to this post was how time and distance from a project taught me so much. Rushing to keep up was tough, but taking time to settle things made such a difference and I got a new table runner from the deal too. I will be back soon to show you the quilted finish. Have a great day.

Good Fortune

So I decided to play along with Bonnie Hunter and the Good Fortune Mystery. I have never done a mystery quilt along before, so I am looking forward to this. The first clue came out on Friday. You can find it here if you want to join us.
I decided to have a little extra fun with this so I pulled out my featherweight. I haven't sewn on it in quite a while, so I needed to anyway. It is an excellent machine for piecing.

This was my grandmother's machine. It was manufactured in 1948. My mother learned to sew on it, I learned to sew on it and my daughters learned to sew on it. Now that I have a granddaughter, I am hoping she will want to learn to sew, so I can pass it along to the next generation.

 I really want to try and make this a scrap busting quilt, so I began by pulling out my scrap bins to make these little beauties. They sew up really quickly, using Bonnie's tips for assembly. I have made four patches before, but I am always really happy to get new tips to try out for piecing. It's one of the best reasons to do a quilt along.

 Here is a stack, ready to be pressed open. I hope that I can get the rest of these done today or tomorrow. Christmas sewing is paused, waiting for some fabric to arrive.

And here is what I have done so far, almost half way there. I want to be ready when the next clue arrives. This is going to be so much fun to see where this goes. There is a link up every Monday so you can show off your work too, and see what others are doing. It is great inspiration.
So if you're looking, go to 
 https://quiltville.blogspot.com/2018/11/mystery-monday-link-up-and-cyber-monday.html
#quiltvillemystery
#goodfortunequilt


C'mon and join us!