Finished!

 

Oh my goodness, I finished this quilt! It has been a long time in the making, so this feels like a huge accomplishment. 

 

First, a disclaimer: I don't have a good place to take good photos of a large quilt face on -- so this morning I tried some -- ahem -- alternative angles. So, these are pretty dreadful photos, but I am so excited to have this done that I am posting these anyway! 

This started as a "leaders and enders" scrap project. If you aren't familiar with "leaders and enders", Bonnie Hunter will explain it all here. Basically, you have pieces on hand and use them for the starting and stopping stitching scraps when you are sewing something else. I sewed scraps into four-patches for ages, as I was sewing on other projects, before I started thinking that I might have enough to put together into an actual quilt.

I'd seen a picture of a version of this quilt, then tracked down the magazine because I fell in love with it.  (It's American Patchwork & Quilting, April 2015 issue.) But I worked with the scraps I had on hand, which were 1 1/2 inch strips and 2 1/2 inch squares. Here's the basic block unit: 

 

 It's two four-patches and two neutral squares, sewn into another four patch. (Again, excuse the rotten photo.) I decided that I wasn't going to stress about how "neutral" the neutral square was -- if it was more white than color, I used it and didn't worry about where it landed. Laying them up on the all looked like this:

Then this. I really got excited when it got to this stage.

 And then it was a whole top! 

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I started machine quilting with an idea that seemed brilliant at the time -- but gosh, it took a lot of stitching and took forever. I wanted raised squares to show in the neutral squares between the colored rows, so I created them in the negative quilting space.

It's subtle but it really is visible on the actual quilt, and I'm glad I kept on. 

 

I used some rather fun sewing machine fabric on the back (thanks to good old 5 Bucks A Yard, where I get a lot of backing fabric), along with more scrap strips.  

 Here's another weird shot of the finished quilt. Now I need a name so I can label it. Any ideas? 

Snowball Stars

I was thinking recently  that it'll soon be time to bring out the holiday quilts, and that made me think about this quilt, which I made last year before Christmas.  I think I whipped up this quilt top on the day after Thanksgiving, in fact.  And, I realized, I never posted it here.

For Christmas quilts in my home, I prefer fabrics that aren't in-your-face Christmasy so I tend to choose geometric or wintery prints. I think this batch of fabrics was from a layer cake that I couldn't resist somewhere. This quilt looks great draped over the back of the red couch in my family room and makes a good holiday snuggle quilt.

The pattern is called Lollies and is by Camille Roskelly, aka Thimbleblossoms. She is the Camille of Bonnie & Camille, who design such happy fabrics. I'm always drawn to their fabric and their patterns. 

The blocks were fun and easy to sew. As I said, the print fabrics were from a layer cake and I added white. Piece of cake! Super easy. I skipped the fancy border on the pattern -- I just wanted simple.  And I had a good old time machine quilting it -- you can see that I did special patterns in the stars and in the snowballs with an overall pattern in the background.

Mermaid Dreams

 Look! It's another finished quilt! I know, I can hardly believe it myself.  I told you I was back at my machine with a vengeance, right? That's a happy vengeance, in case you wondered.  (But I do have to say that sewing my way through the evening political shows is helping me keep my sanity in these dire political times.)  At any rate, I've been having fun pulling fabric out of my stash and stitching up some simple but fun patterns.

Quite a while back I fell in love with a fabric line by Heather Ross called "Mendocino" -- charming (but not too cutsie) mermaids and other sea life, in an unusual set of colors. I have a good friend who loves mermaids, and loves that seaglass aqua color, and this seemed perfect for her.  So, I bought a fabric bundle and then tucked it away for a bit while I puzzled over how to use the fabric to make the most of those wonderful patterns. 

It took me a while to find a pattern that would show off those large mermaids.  And then I stumbled onto a pattern called Ribbon Box Quilt by Cloud 9 Fabrics. It's a free download, even, and you can get it here.  The ribbons are about 6 inches wide, and I really liked how the pattern allowed me to use an assortment of rather odd colors together in a way that worked. (Btw, my photographs make the oranges look a bit darker than they really are, and the red is more pink, and that that dark ribbon is a magenta-ish burgundy that doesn't look quite as dark in real life. You can get a sense of the true colors on the Quilted Castle link above, but for the life of me I couldn't balance these colors on the photograph to look true to life.)

If you are inclined to make the pattern, I'll tell you this: the cutting took some concentration but wasn't hard. I gave each ribbon a number, and laid it out on my design wall following the pattern's diagram. Once I got it laid out, I just assembled each horizontal row and it went together beautifully.
 

I decided it quilt it with straight lines -- easy walking foot sewing. Look at all these cute little critters -- octopusses! (Octopi?) Seahorses! fishies! 

I actually took these photos before the binding was on, but I pieced together all of the pale aqua leftover fabrics and used those for the binding. It looks great -- an edge but not too visible an edge, if you know what I mean. 

I'm sending this off to my friend this week -- she's an internet-free sort of woman so I know she won't see it here before she gets it in person. But I'm happy to have this done and posted. I figure it'll be a good quilt for snuggling and dreaming of the seashore!

Silly Goose!

 
Do you find that you go through art phases? I sure do.  And since some time in February, I've been in a serious quilting phase. I have no idea what re-ignited the spark, but I have sure appreciated the feeling of eagerness to get back to the sewing machine. And I've managed to start and finish a bunch of quilts! That hasn't happened in a long time.

I made this quilt for a polka dot challenge at my April quilt retreat. I'm always drawn to dots and have an embarrassing assortment of dotted fabric in my stash. So when the challenge topic was announced, I knew it'd be a piece of cake.

You may recall that I have a thing for flying geese quilts and have made a number of them. (You can see three of them here!) When I stumbled across an online tutorial for a fun flying geese variation, I knew I had to make it.  So, I'm considering this #4 in my Flying Geese series. Doesn't that sound more impressive than saying I have a weird obsession with flying geese quilts and can't seem to stop making them?!

The tutorial is from Jenny at the Missouri Star Quilt Company and is called Flying Home.  (Boy, do I love her tutorial videos.) I loved how the background behind the geese is divided with different fabrics. And this is a jelly roll quilt -- actually quite fast and easy. I really had fun with this.

It took me a bit of drawing to figure out how to quilt the geese block in a continuous line, but I played around for a while drawing blocks on my Ipad and came up with something that worked.  Gosh, I guess I should pick a detail shot that shows you that most of the geese points actually are sharp.

Are you noticing all of the polka dots?!  And because a polka dot challenge quilt needs a polka dotted back, I chose this wonderful Kaffe Fassett dot for the back. It is definitely a happy dot and the colors were perfect. 

Because of my crazy obsession with flying geese quilts I am working on a flying geese series, I have been collecting flying geese quilt ideas in a Flying Geese Quilts Pinterest board. Who knows which will be next?!

Have you found yourself repeating certain blocks or themes so that you've developed a series (or obsession!) without even planning it?

Camellia Stars

 
Well, I have surprised myself and finished TWO quilts in the last several weeks. It sure is good to have that "I need to feel fabric between my fingers!" feeling again, and so I've been sewing a bit every day.

I showed you last time the star blocks I'd been sewing -- and by the beginning of the week, I had finished the quilt! I've called it Camellia Stars, because right now the camellias in my garden are in bloom with gorgeous pinks and so this quilt will remind me of them.  I mentioned last time the quilt is from a pattern called Shine and it was very fun and fast to make.

It took me a while to figure out where to photograph this quilt -- I don't have many big walls in the house that a) aren't blocked by furniture, and/or b) allow for a clear straight-on shot of a big quilt. But this morning it occurred to me that if I closed a blind in my living room, I could hang the quilt in front of the window and get a full shot there.  I had to move a few things around, but it worked -- and now I know where I can get, at least, a clear shot.

In fact, for now, I've hung the quilt in the living room because it just makes me happy to see it there.

On to the next project!

Quilt Mojo

Well, I am happy to report that my quilt mojo is back! It feels like ages since I've been in the mood to sew. It hasn't worried me much, really -- I know that my creative interests can wax and wane at times, and I've learned to just follow what excites me at the moment. So I've been playing with paper (making books and cards) and I've had some knitting projects going. But I wanted to make a quilt for a family member, and that pushed me to get back to the sewing machine.

This particular quilt was for my brother, and I wanted to make it entirely of flannel. After searching a bit, I found a collection of fabric by Maywood Studios, called "Woolies." The flannel looks like wool tweed and has a great assortment of jewel tone colors.

I found an appealing pattern, called Jubilee by Marlous Designs (thank you, Pinterest!) and away I went.

And look, here's what resulted:

It's very soft and will be the perfect snuggle and get well quilt. It's been delivered and hopefully is keeping my brother warm and cozy.

I was so inspired by actually finishing a quilt (starting and finishing in the same month, even!) that I started another.  This past weekend was wild and stormy here in Northern California. I didn't have pressing work, the house was clean, and Miss C was away for the weekend. So I set my sewing machine up on the kitchen table and gave myself a mini at-home quilt retreat.

I pulled out a fat quarter bundle I'd fallen in love with some time ago, in pinks and yellows --- happy, springy colors for a gray rainy weekend.  And I pulled a pattern out of my "make this someday" box -- "Shine" by A Quilting Life Designs:

I had  good old time making star blocks.

And by Monday afternoon, I had the whole top pieced and the backing sewn and ready to sandwich.
That was so satisfying that today, after making some good progress on a work project, I rewarded myself by pulling polka dotted fabric from my stash for a challenge coming due in April.

From delicate pastels to bright dots. It made me so happy to revisit some of these old fabrics, especially my Freddy Moran dots.  It feels very good to be playing with fabric again!

Seeing Stars

So here's what's on my design wall this morning.  Yep, that's a whole lot of stars!

I've been sewing these for years. Well, actually, I started cutting up scraps for stars about 3 years ago.  I made a few, then got distracted (surprise!) and the box of parts moved to the back of my closet.

So it's been -- marinating, shall we say? -- for all of that time. And recently, in a mood to make a bit of a dent in the UFO list, and looking for some mindless thing to take to my April quilt retreat, I unearthed it.  I have to confess that it took an evening of sorting of parts and trying to make sense of  various scraps of paper. I knew I'd planned it all out -- all I had to do was decipher the plans!  But I finally did, and made a bunch of the blocks on retreat.  Since then, I've had a few star sewing sessions and recently finished them up. 

I am looking forward to sewing them together and getting it quilted. Just in time for the Fourth of July!

What started me down this starry road was stumbling onto blog quilt-along some years back, called "Oh My Stars!" Sheila's blog, thoughtandfound.wordpress.com, looks like it's been on a long hiatus -- but if you like stars and want to get good tutorials for a bunch of different types, click on the link.  She has really good instructions.  The original Oh My Stars quilt had different types of stars, and her blog provides directions for all of them. 

Me, though, I just wanted to use up red and blue scraps, so I figured simple was the way to go.  I stuck with three sizes of sawtooth stars. I had so many scraps leftover from making this quilt, ages ago.

Looking for a photo of that quilt reminded me that I made another red and blue quilt a few years ago too.

 Apparently I now have a patriotic quilt collection and didn't even know it.

You'd think I'd have made a huge dent in the red fabrics in my stash, wouldn't you?  But, um... no. I still have loads.  But I think I'm done with stars for the time being.

Selvedge Star

Hi, friends!  And happy February to you!

What's this, you ask?  A new quilt?  Yes!  Some years ago (I don't even want to try to count), I started saving selvedges.  When I'd buy fabric, or I'd pull fabric out of my stash to use in something, I'd tear off the white printed selvedge and toss it into a tote bag that hung on the back of the door to my studio.  Before I knew it, I had a very full bag.

And one day, in the mood to sew something mindless and soothing, I pulled out some muslin, cut it into 14-inch squares, and started sewing down the selvedges to create selvedge fabric.  I didn't know why, but it just seemed like something I could work into a project.  I found that sewing selvedges down, one after another, was remarkably fun. 

I'd bring my selvedge bag along on sewing get-togethers and retreats, and spend some time sewing more selvedge fabric.  Over the course of maybe 18 months, I'd sew selvedge fabric in odd moments.  I was accumulating a satisfying stack of selvedge squares.

And what to do?  I started without a plan, and made the basic Sawtooth Star you see in the center.  I was delighted.  And for a while I figured I'd make a bunch of those and have a star quilt.  I poked around to get selvedge quilt ideas.  I started a Pinterest Board of selvedge ideas.  But somewhere along the way, I decided that doing different things would be more fun, which led to a bunch of sketching and even setting up some medallion layouts with Electric Quilt.  So I had a plan.  And a stack of selvedge fabric.  And a whole lot of red scraps.

You see what resulted, finally.  This past week, I was off at a quilt retreat, and putting this all together was my #1 project.  It was the first time I'd laid out everything on a design wall, so it was exciting to see it go from a design on paper to the real design in fabric.  I so enjoyed putting it together.  It makes me happy -- all that red! All those words and selvedges to look at!

As luck would have it, the challenge theme for the next retreat is Words/Text/Fonts. I think I'm all set!  Now to get it sandwiched and quilted... and to decide what to do about the remaining selvedges I have in that tote bag...

Simply Outlandish

 Look!  It's another quilt, one I finished this very week. (Oops, did you fall of your chair in astonishment?)

Every April, the retreat that I attend features a challenge, and this year the challenge was to use plaid fabrics in some significant way.  I had a bundle of bright plaid fat quarters in my closet, from who knows where -- probably a quilt show some years back. (I have a hard time resisting a happy bundle of fat quarters charmingly tied up with a ribbon.  They're just so dang appealing!)

I cast around for something to do with the plaids, and remembered a pattern I'd pinned on Pinterest some time back.  It's called Suburbs, from Cluck Cluck Sew.  It felt just right -- and it was available for immediate download upon purchase. Perfect! (They have a paper version too, in case you're wondering.)

Upon reviewing the pattern, I realized that the pattern resulted in big houses -- something on the order of 8.5 x 11 blocks.  But I only had little fat quarters of fabric, and I'd been picturing little houses.  I pulled out my trusty graph paper and worked out a scaled down block, so my houses could be roughly 5x6 inches.

And away I went. It was fun making the houses and I liked using all of the plaids together.  And I'm calling it "Outlandish" because plaids make me think of Scottish tartan, which makes me think of kilts, which was connected to a weekend of binge-watching the "Outlander" series when cable tv provided the Starz network shows free for a week, which I was watching when I was in the midst of making this quilt.  Well, it makes sense to me.

I did a basic outlining with a few vertical lines to quilt the houses but toward the bottom I couldn't resist decorating a few a bit differently.

This is likely to be a donation quilt.  But I finished it in time to show it for the Plaid Challenge reveal, and several people asked where they could get the pattern so I sent them over to Cluck Cluck Sew.  Maybe there'll be a few more little villages at the next retreat!

UFO Sightings

Can we talk UFOs?

I was thinking recently about all of the UFOs in my closet, and I decided that it'd be good to list them and then work on getting them off that list into a "Finished in 2015" list. (That list has only 2 items on it so far but I am ever optimistic.) And I realized that I have different categories of UFOs, as you probably do too.  Here are my categories:

1.  Pieces cut but nothing sewn (you know, because I had this great idea and couldn't wait to get started...)
2.  Fabric cut and some parts sewn (because I had this great idea, couldn't wait to get started, and I DID get started, but then got interrupted...)
3.  Bunch of fabric blocks all sewn but not assembled in any fashion (Paused after I finished sewing blocks because I returned from retreat and set them aside and forgot about them, or needed time to lay them out on the design wall, or for some other completely excellent reason)
4.  Art quilts in some state of incompletion because they require decisions that I can't seem to make quite yet.  (They're "marinating." That's what I call it.)
5.  Quilt tops almost done, but requiring borders or further decisions about what (if anything) to do next.  (Clearly, the decision-making often stalls me.  Let's call this more marinating.)
6.   Fully completed quilt tops, needing to be sandwiched and quilted.  Because I just dread the sandwiching part.  It's never as bad as I think it's going to be, but still I dread it.

Lest you think I never finish anything (hi, Mom!), I'd like to remind you that I do get back to these and finish some from time to time.  Even if it's a few (ahem) years later... like here, and here, for example.

But yesterday I was thinking in particular about how many quilt tops I have that need to be sandwiched and quilted.  I decided to pull them out and count them.  And the total is..... 25.  Oh dear.

Some of them (five, to be exact) are ones I made for myself or for specific people who will receive them, eventually.

Some of them are ones I made with the idea of selling them at some point.  At this rate, I'll be able to list them as "vintage" quilts.

Some I made to use up scraps from other projects, and they will probably be donation quilts once I get around to quilting them.

(And by the way, there used to be another quilt in this pile, but I was having company one day, wanted just the right look for the table, and I decided to hem the edges of the quilt top and use it as a table cloth.  It's now in the linen cupboard!)

And then there's this beast:

It is a king-sized pineapple quilt top that I made when I was in the throes of my obsession with Freddy Moran.  I love it, I really do, but it's so HUGE.  At the time I envisioned using it as a bedspread.  But it became clear that it was too bright and crazy and chaotic.  I either need to take it apart so it'll be two smaller quilts, or send it off to a long-arm quilter because I don't want to wrestle with a king-sized quilt under my home machine.

Okay, 'fess up.  How many quilt tops do you have stacked up?  Can you beat my total?! 

Seeing all of these tops makes me want to get a long-arm quilting machine, an urge that resurfaces at least once a year.  Because the fastest way to get all of these done is to go buy a big new machine with a long learning curve, don't you think?!

May Day! Baskets o' Fun

 

Hey look!  It's a quilt!  Yep, made by me, started and finished in the last few months!  I know. I can hardly believe it myself.

I've been a stalker groupie fan of Freddy Moran for many years. When I discovered her and (for a while there) took every class she taught), her approach to color and pattern resonated with me and totally changed the whole quilting game for me.  But it'd been ages since I'd seen her.  So when I learned she was teaching her basket class at a shop in my area, I rustled up a few friends and away we went.

In the class, Freddy demonstrated her approach to making a few different types of wonky baskets.  And by the end of the day, I'd made most of the crazy baskets you see up there in the center of the quilt.  It was a totally fun day and I was so happy to see Freddy in fine form.

I've been in a "using up the stash" mode for a while now, so in the spirit of Freddy and Gwen Marston's "parts department" approach to quilting with scraps, I pulled out blocks I'd done with scraps, and away I went.

I can't remember when I made a pieced quilt by just doing once thing and then deciding "what next" without a big plan.  It was very fun. I don't know how I managed to make all of these blocks without making a visible dent in the scrap bags -- do they multiply, or something?  Ah well, I guess that means there are more "parts department" quilts like this ahead.

I now have this hanging on a wall in my upstairs hallway, so it faces me when I come upstairs. It makes me smile although the teen critic in the house thinks it's too jumbly.  I figure if she can live with the mess in her room, she can handle a bit of jumble on the wall.

Here's a little detail shot, in case you wanted to see up close:

 

Feeling Goosey

My friend Jenny and I were talking quilts the other day, and she was trying to decide on what to do for a wedding quilt she wants to make. "I'm thinking about flying geese," she said, "Have you ever done one?"  

Hah.  As a matter of fact, most of the quilts I've made in the last year or two have involved flying geese.  And Jenny's comments made me get them out and get photos of them -- which was no small feat as they are big quilts and I don't have a great way to photograph such large quilts.  But with some ribbon and pins and command hooks, I rigged something and here you go.  Please take my word for it that these all have straight edges and square corners -- really, they do! 

So here's my "Christmas Geese," one I finished in December after having the geese units floating around my sewing room for a year or two.  Most of the fabrics were from a bundle of geometric prints I fell in love with somewhere along the way -- if you recognize the collection of fabric, do let me know in the comments because I sure don't remember!  It's a fun Christmas quilt.  It's quilted with an overall swirly design.

 

And then there's the Polka dotted Geese quilt I made a year or so ago, which I mentioned here.  At a quilt show a few years ago, I'd bought a luscious bundle of polka dotted fabric, which I'd had out on a shelf in my sewing room because they looks so happy together.  And during my one and only trip to Festival of Quilts in the UK a few years ago, I bought a bundle of assorted Oakshott cottons which I also had out because the colors were so beautiful.  I was rummaging through my shelves, looking for a particular book, when I happened to put the Oakshott bundle next to the polka dot fabric bundle.  And suddenly they needed to be geese.  I loved making this quilt!  (And truly, the edges are straight!)

The quilt that marked the start of my obsession with fly geese is this huge red and white geese quilt.  I have a TON of red fabric in my stash, a lot of which I collected when I was working on red and white house blocks for another massive quilt.  I started making geese with red scraps and solid white fabric, and I just kept going.  And going.  And this resulted.  I love it, and it lives on the back of the red couch in the family room where it looks happy and is great for movie-time snuggling.

This is a bit fuzzy, but you can get a sense of all of the different prints.  I arranged the geese into blocks of pairs, and was pleased when a secondary star pattern emerged.

I just put a flying geese border on my current project -- and I'm not tired of making them yet!

Azalea Encore

So here is where I am with this piece.  I'm still listening for the quilt to tell me whether it is done or not.  Apparently it's speaking too quietly or I'm not paying attention closely enough -- so for now, this is where it sits.

If you click on the photo, you can see that I added a lot of machine quilting.  My friend Loretta commented on how painterly this looks, which was gratifying as I'd been thinking of that fabric texture as impressionistic paint strokes.  I'd sketched and doodled and tried to figure out how to add stitch to emphasize that.  My conclusion was that it'd be best to suggest flowers and leaves and let the fabric texture create the brushstrokes.

But once I got the quilting on, it just sat there on all of that texture and seemed to compete in a confused sort of way.  So I pulled out my new Inktense pencils and started highlighting petals and leaves with more color.  I tried to add color while flowing with the direction of the fabric texture, again to use the fabric but also define the shapes more.

I think I'm venturing into the "Stop torturing this poor fabric" territory so I will put this away for a bit.  I tend to like it more when I first see it walking into the room -- and maybe that sense of jumbled color and the suggestion of flowers and foliage is the best this can do.  I'm not sure.

I still feel like it NEEDS something.  But it won't tell me what just yet.

Dotty

I should be spending my fabric time figuring out what I am going to do for the upcoming 12x12 challenge which requires that we use a "spice color" palette.  So far I've not had any appealing ideas come to mind, so I'm just letting it be, hoping something good will float to the surface of my distracted mind.

But meanwhile, I've been continuing my mission to use up fabric in the closet.  And that explains this quilt, which I made from a bundle of Moda "layer cake" squares I found on sale a few years ago.  I do love polka dots and these fabrics are so bright and cheerful!  This ended up almost twin-bed sized, to my surprise, but as my goal was just to use up the fabric I'm glad it did.  This is destined for the Valley of the Moon Children's Shelter, my favorite place for donating quilts.

By the way, I always have a hard time figuring out how to photograph large quilts -- my design wall isn't nearly big enough. So this morning I pinned the quilt to a big roller shade that comes off of the patio arbor outside and gave that a try.  Hardly what the Quilt Photography experts would recommend but it got the job done.  (I have heard of people using their garage doors.  Perhaps I'll try that next.) 

Comfort Quilts for Japan

Quilters Newsletter Magazine and the Japanese publisher of Patchwork Tsushin are collecting comfort quilts for those impacted by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  Those of us in the US can send quilts to Quilters Newsletter, which will them forward them to Japan for distribution by the folks at Patchwork Tsushin.  Quilters who live outside of the US and want to contribute can email Dana Jones, the editor of QN, to receive instructions on how to send quilts directly to Patchwork Tsushin.

Here’s how you can be part of this important worldwide response:
•    Send quilts of any size from baby to adult to:

Dana Jones
Quilters Newsletter
741 Corporate Circle, Suite A
Golden, CO 80401

•    Mark your box: “Quilts for Japan.”
•    Send quilts as soon as possible and no later than April 30, 2011.
•    Enclose your name, address, phone number, and email address with the quilts.

Surprise! It's That Quilt again! Win the Pattern!

Hey!  I like this again!  See, what'd I tell you about the blocking?  Between adding more quilting and blocking this, it's all flat and pretty. 

Leave a comment here if you'd like the chance to have me send you the pattern and I'll pick a random winner on Thursday, March 17!

UPDATE:  The pattern has been given away.  If you want to make this, the pattern is Charmed Circles by A Graceful Stitch, and you can get your very own here!

Amazing what a little quilting will fix...

Remember this?  I've been quilting today.  And if I ever doubted that having an even amount of quilting on a quilt makes a difference, I sure don't now.

After I quilted in those leafy centers, I had a big bubbly, ripply mess.  I was hoping that blocking would fix it, but I knew that what this really needed was more machine quilting to make the density even.

So, today I put Pandora Radio on (have you tried it?  You plug in a few of your favorite artists and then it plays a personalized assortment of songs and artists like the ones you've picked.  It's GREAT) and I buzzed along.

It's finally all quilted.  So I just need to finish sewing on the binding and block it and it'll be DONE!

Check back for a blog giveaway -- I'm giving away this lovely Charmed Circles quilt pattern (because having done this once, I'm never gonna do this again.  :-)

Feeling Mod

My "Flight Path" quilt is featured today on the "Modern Day Quilts" blog.  I'm honored -- thanks, Heather!

If you've not seen the blog, go take a look -- there are some delightfully fresh and original quilts there.

Why am I doing this, again?

Some time ago (a year ago, maybe?) I started this "Charmed Circles" quilt.  I'm not even sure why.  Well, really, I do know... my friend Nancy made it and showed it at retreat and I really loved the modern wedding-ringish thing, and I wanted to make something in the aqua/brown palette.  So I ordered the pattern and away I went.  I had a bit of a struggle with the machine quilting concepts, so I thought I'd share my process with you.

I spent one quilt retreat piecing it all together (which, with all those curved seams and corners meeting up, wasn't QUITE as simple as I thought it'd be, but it wasn't bad).  And I had this plan for how to quilt it.

(Ignore the rumply part. I am.  :-)  )  I had some great fabric for the back.  I stitched around all of the arcs.  I thought I'd leave the seed shapes plain (or maybe stitch the strips within them) and then, for the in between pointy-squares, I planned to do a loose sort of stitching, from the back, to follow the pattern of the back fabric.  Wonderful thought, yes?  But it looked dreadful.  Tight and too much quilting and just messy.  I concluded that after sewing four of those squares.  So I ripped and ripped.  Ugh.

And then it sat while I pondered what to do.  Finally, I spent a quiet half hour at Starbucks one afternoon between errands, and I doodled possibilities.  I'm not big on marking quilts and following lines, so I knew I wanted something I could free-motion and have fun with.

I wasn't kidding when I said I doodled.  And I doodled some more.

I started liking the leaf shape.  And to make it a little clearer, I put some clear vinyl down on top of the actual quilt top, and used a dry-erase marker to test out possibilities:

And then I decided to go for it:

I can hardly wait until I'm done with this thing. (And, oh goodie, bias binding and scalloped edges are what are still to come!) I know I will like it again some day but for now I'm just tired of the darn thing! 

By the way, at present it's sort of rumply but I have confidence that blocking it will even it all out.  Really, it's amazing what blocking will fix.  Trust me.

Only 7 more squares to quilt...