A Friday Finish

I pulled my Pinwheel quilt top out of the closet this week to work on while I waited for a chance to get more fat quarters for the Magic Stars quilt and embroidery floss for my Charm Square Heart quilt. It's a smallish wall quilt so I was able to get it finished this week.

I only found two fat quarters for the Magic Stars quilt which made one block. It went together very quickly, so didn't take much time away from working on the Pinwheel quilt. I also found the embroidery floss I needed but I haven't worked on that just yet.

I used a new marking pen on the dark navy squares. Marking dark fabrics has always been a challenge for me. This new pen worked pretty well. It's a Clover white marking pen. I marked it prior to basting the quilt and found when I went to quilt it that the marks were not always visible enough for me to follow. I wound up marking a number of them over again. Next time I'll just wait until I'm ready to quilt before marking with this pen.

I'm glad to have the Pinwheel quilt finished for a couple of reasons. First, those little blue pinwheels were a UFO that hung around for about 18 years. Secondly, I've been wanting a quilt to replace a painting I had hanging in the hallway outside the master bedroom, and this quilt is the perfect size. We hung it up this morning and are very happy with the change.

It's difficult to see the colors in this picture, so I'll put in one below that I took yesterday afternoon out in the sunlight. It was HOT out there, it's a wonder the quilt didn't wilt!

I've always loved a blue and brown, or blue and tan color combination. So I had the other fabrics in the quilt boxed up with the pinwheels for quite a while knowing that I wanted to include them in whatever I came up with to do with the pinwheels. The design on the dark navy squares is a tan print that perfectly matches the tan corner triangles around the pinwheels. I think the white and blue fabric in the center give the quilt a little sparkle.

I hope you have a great weekend. I've got more projects to work on so better get with it. Stay safe and stay well.

I'm linking up with Alycia at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Finished Friday at http://alyciaquilts.blogspot.com/2020/06/cowboy-quilt-top-and-finished-friday.html?m=1

Magic Stars and Charm Squares

I have two current projects on the design wall today, both of which are at a standstill for the moment because I need fabric for one and embroidery thread for the other. So I'm about to pull out another project that is simply waiting to be layered and basted so I can start quilting. I will shop for the other projects this afternoon when I go to town for a dental appointment.

I will be shopping for fat quarters for the Magic Stars quilt pictured here. Each star begins with four ten inch squares, two of each contrasting fabric. I'm picking up two fat quarters that will look good together for each block I add, just from what my LQS has on hand while I'm there. I want each block to be unique, but plan for one of the fat quarters for each pair to be a purple fabric. Cutting two ten inch squares from each fat quarter leaves a fair amount of fabric left over for my stash, she said with a smile.

The blocks lend themselves to some drama if the fabrics have enough contrast. The red one in the top left corner doesn't have much and may have to be replaced. The blocks are simple and quick to make and will measure 17.25" finished. This won't be my final layout. It's nice to have a design wall large enough to really play with design options for a large quilt. If you are interested in more information on these blocks Joy from The Joyful Quilter has posted a tutorial for making these blocks on her blog and includes some different design options. You can find her tutorial here: https://thejoyfulquilter.blogspot.com/2020/03/magic-star-tutorial-with-tiffany.html

I will also be shopping for some deep pink embroidery thread for my Charm Squares Heart quilt pictured here. Again, there is a contrast problem with this quilt. The yellow heart doesn't stand out enough on the pale pink background fabric I used. So I'll blanket stitch around the edge of the heart with the pink thread so it will be more visible.

I read this morning on Julie's blog, at https://quiltdivajulie.blogspot.com that Creative Grids has come up with a template for making a mask, and they give a little video tutorial on how to use it and get the mask sewn. So I will also be looking to see if our LQS has those on hand, and some elastic if they do. If you follow the link to Julie's blog she has posted a link to Creative Grids where you can check out the new mask template.

One other thing I'll be looking for at my LQS today is more of the green fabric I used in the Magic Stars quilt (block in the top right corner). I wasn't at all sure about it when I purchased the fat quarter, but it works beautifully with the fabric from my stash. I've fallen in love with it and have another plan for it, a different quilt altogether. But I won't be talking about that for a while.

Okay, I guess that's it for today. I want to get busy layering that quilt.

I hope you have a lovely day. Stay safe and stay well.

I'm linking up with Judy at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com

Follow the link to see what other quilters are up to today.

Have a great week!

Slow Sunday

Happy Fathers Day.

I have done some slow stitching this week, but in honor of Father's Day I want to share the quilt I made for my Dad for his 75th birthday. Well, the top was done by his 75th, it took me another year to get it hand quilted. He is now 91, so it's been a few years. I took this picture the day I delivered it to him and my nieces Hannah and Abby were with him. Lots of things have changed since then, those girls have grown up! I did get to talk to my Dad on the phone today but it was hard not to be able to go spend time with him. The Covid virus has been so disruptive, and worse than disruptive for so many.

The quilt is a paper pieced kaleidoscope in blue and white. The pattern came from Paper Piecing with Alex Anderson. Her pattern was for 4" blocks but my husband Dan enlarged the pattern to 6" for me. As with most of my quilts I didn't start this one with a specific plan, except for the colors. I gathered fabrics along the way, from local quilt shops and shops we visited while we were on vacation. Finding fabrics was a challenge, I wound up with quite a few medium tone prints that just didn't work in the quilt because there wasn't enough contrast. It was a bit of a stash builder that way.

Here it is on my bed all basted and ready to quilt. I quilted it on my Q Snap frame, doing simple stitch in the ditch, but gave up on the hand stitching when I finally got out to the border and did piano key stitching on my machine to finish it. I'm sorry I can't find a picture of it all finished. I know I had one, and spent a good part of the morning looking for it but can't find it. Well that was a long time ago and I've not hand quilted much since then. I have begun quilting a queen size log cabin quilt but it's in my closet now waiting for me to get it back on the frame and get on with it, but it's for me so it can wait.

I did a little applique this week. I'm not very good at hand turn applique and not much practiced at any other form of applique, so don't do much of it. I'd much rather piece, but sometimes applique is the way to go. I appliqued this yellow heart to that pale pink background fabric but there isn't enough contrast and I will be blanket stitching around the edges of the heart with a deep pink embroidery thread. That was the hand stitching I had in mind for today, but when I went to my thread stash last night to find some thread I found I didn't have enough of any one thread in the right tone to help the heart stand out from the background. So that will have to wait too, at least until I can get my hands on some more thread. It's not a high priority piece right now so that's okay. I do have other things that I could be hand stitching today and maybe that's what I'll do this evening. There is a story for this little quilt too, so if I haven't worn you out writing about the quilt for my Dad you can read about this quilt in yesterday's post In the Pink.

I'm linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching at https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/

Follow the link on over there and you can see lots of great projects that others are working on too.

Be safe and stay well. Thanks for reading!

In the Pink

Pink is the RSC color for the month of June and I've had so many other projects to work on that I've failed to get to my pink scraps, of which I have many. I do have a plan for them however, but don't know if I will even begin to get to that this month. All I've done using pink scraps this month is to add a few pieces to my Charm Square Heart Quilt.

I began this project about 5 years ago and only had a little of it done when we put our property on the market and I had to completely clear out the studio to have Flo's house staged for showing. It got boxed up with everything else and dragged off to storage. It was stored in the same project box as the ladybug quilt which I had also barely started at the time. I didn't realize what the pieces were for, or that I had a plan for them when I saw them in the box and when the ladybug quilt was done I just stored the box away with all the pieces in it.

Then I ran across this photo while looking for something else in my picture library and it jogged my memory about what all the pieces I found in the project box were for. So once I was done with Abby's quilt and hadn't yet begun Dan's quilt I pulled this out and began making a new plan for it. Sorry the photo isn't very good, must have been taken at night when I was in a hurry. Maybe you can see some big changes have happened to the quilt. I had that yellow heart on a darker pink, but didn't have enough of it to make it work. Sadly the yellow heart doesn't show up very well on the much lighter pink that I had available when this came back out. So though the top is sewn together, I'm not done. I see from this photo that I have fabric for a border, I will have to do some measuring to see if I have enough of it to use on the quilt now that I've enlarged it. There is also the issue of making the yellow heart stand out a little better. A yellow heart on a pink background might seem to be a little backwards too, but there is a reason.

Many, many years ago I started another quilt using this heart motif. It was intended as a baby quilt for my nephew's daughter Sadie. The project got away from me and took on a life of it's own. Has that ever happened to you? I wasn't using a pattern, just making it up as I went along, but I had a specific thing I wanted to accomplish and, well it just kept growing and growing. It was really quite out of control. And as you might expect, all the while Sadie kept growing and growing too. Oh dear, she wasn't going to get her baby quilt. Which was sad because the colors I had chosen for the quilt were the colors of her room. This picture was taken in my room once the quilt was finally finished.

What had started out as a quilt with one pink scrappy heart became big enough for my queen size bed. I said it got away from me. Sadie finally got her "baby" quilt a few years ago when she was in high school. She graduated in May. Congratulations Sadie!

Well, back to the current project. The rather large pink hearts on Sadie's quilt are appliqued onto a sweet yellow background. I went in and cut away the majority of the yellow from behind the hearts so I was only dealing with one layer of fabric except for the seams where they were sewn down. Thus I have four somewhat smaller yellow hearts leftover. Sadie's quilt also holds the solution to the problem of a yellow heart that doesn't stand out very well from it's pale pink background. I blanket stitched around each of those scrappy hearts with a deep pink embroidery thread. That's what I plan to do with this quilt as well. So I will have some Slow Sunday Stitching to do and will link this post up with Kathy's Quilts tomorrow.

This is Suzette trying to get me to keep Sadie's quilt. It was tempting because I was quite embarrassed that it had taken me so very long and she just wasn't a little girl any more. I gave it to her at a baby shower we both attended, though not inside where the mom to be was opening gifts. I took her out to my car and gave it to her. She was quite surprised, and a little delighted, I think. I hope she is taking it off to college with her.

I'm linking up with SoScrappy for the RSC2020 challenge at http://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Monthly Goals for May and June

I've been concentrating on getting Abby's quilt finished so haven't made any posts in a couple of weeks. Some things about the marking process didn't work out well and really slowed me down. I had hoped to have it finished by the end of the month since finishing it was my one monthly goal for May. I missed it by about a week. I finished it on Friday but was too tired to make a post at the time. Saturday I drove up to Abby's place to give it to her, just in time for her birthday. I don't think I've ever completed a project on time before, especially a few days early.

I hadn't seen Abby since January so was very glad that I could deliver it in person and share in her excitement as she opened her gift and realized it was the quilt we had started together when she was 10 or 11 years old. It grew significantly since that early beginning, but she had chosen the fabrics she wanted from my stash so I knew her desired colors and was able to add fabrics that stayed within that scheme.

I miss seeing it on my design wall but I have other projects waiting for my attention so my design wall will soon be full again. Today I finished a crib size Ladybug quilt top. It's been hanging around on my design wall waiting for me to finish Abby's quilt. Yesterday I sewed the four patch units together and then sewed the rows together. Today I finished sewing together the blocks for the border and got the borders sewn on.  I don't have anyone in mind to gift this to. I had originally planned on making it for my great niece Blaire, but her Mom had other ideas about the colors and fabrics she wanted for the quilt.

That was five years ago, I was working in Flo's studio at the time and was reveling in having so much space to work in. I completed several quilts that year, this one for Blaire included. I have no idea now how I got those prairie points onto the outer edge of the quilt. As you can see, it's very different from the idea I had in mind for her quilt. But I think it turned out to be a very sweet quilt.

Choosing one goal for the month is hard when I have so many projects in mind and quite a number of them in various stages of completion, like the Ladybug quilt. There is the boot quilt, which I want to have ready for Christmas. I found the perfect fabrics (shown here) for the background, sashing, and cornerstone blocks for that quilt this week. I'm pretty excited about it, it's going to be a fun quilt to make. And I have quilt tops done for two tablecloths, my Christmas tablecloth that I had hoped to be my One Monthly Goal for July, and my Spring tablecloth, that I had thought of quilting this month. But all this will have to wait.

My one monthly goal for June is to begin a quilt for my husband that I promised to make for him long ago. Not just begin the quilt but get as much done as possible on it in the coming weeks. I want to have the blocks cut and at least begin sewing them together this month. If they are simple enough, then I'd like to have all the blocks made by the end of the month. Here are the fabrics I got for Dan's quilt, they've been sitting in this project box for far too long. Purple is his favorite color, I added the teal. My original idea for the quilt was a two block pattern but I decided I didn't really like that pattern so I will be using the Magic Stars pattern that Joy from The Joyful Quilter posted on her blog in March. Joy also posted a tutorial for how to make the blocks. They look great and not too difficult, and I hope will work well for a two color quilt.  You can find pictures of the blocks and the tutorial here:  https://thejoyfulquilter.blogspot.com/2020/03/magic-star-tutorial-with-tiffany.html 

I'm linking up with Patty at Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal at https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/06/one-monthly-goal-june-link-up.html

I'm linking up with Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com

I'm linking up with Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt at https://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com

I hope you have a lovely week. Stay safe and well.