Irish Chain

The Irish Chain quilt is now quilted and just waiting for its binding. It is backed with minky - surprise, surprise - and quilted with serpentine lines. It's the first time I've done line quilting on anything bigger than a placemat, and it's definitely a little boring, but I do like how it looks. I chose that because it seemed like a nice echo of the streamer pattern. In each 3" square I did two lines of quilting which means the lines are all approximately 1.5" apart, but nothing was measured exactly. I'm planning to bind this with the black streamers which are the corner blocks, and which I chose not to use in the body of the quilt.

The other new thing with this quilt is that I'm now a Pinmoor convert. They are little silicon nubs that slide over the end of regular pins. Regular pins slide through fabric better than safety pins and these are about 1000x nicer to your fingers while placing them and for removal. I was able to pin the entire top in just over half an hour. For reference it's 55" square, and I used 100 pinmoors approximately every 6". I didn't have any spray baste and I could do this on my dining room table, which I would never do with spray baste anyway. 

 Detail shot of the quilting:

 The fully quilted top over the the back of my couch. I didn't have to remove all the pins during the quilting process if they weren't in the path of the lines, so those are the ones you see there.

 My favorite backing of minky, and this one has batting, so it's warm.

 Another detail shot of the quilting in natural sunlight.

Pillow and Gallery Opening

Would you believe this is the first time I've made a pillow since I was about 6? That one has been sitting on my grandparents couch for the last 20 years, not that it matched any of their styles, but it was made by me, and that's what grandparents do.

I've had the scraps from my wonky asterisk quilt sitting separated from my other scraps knowing that I wanted to make pillows to coordinate, but until last week, I just didn't have the spark of inspiration/motivation. On instagram, I saw a simple lattice pattern that just called to be turned into a pillow because making a full quilt of that would be, "Holy thousands of tiny pieces, Batman!"

 

This pillow has an all over stipple which you can see (somewhat) in the close up from while I was quilting. And there there it is on the couch with the quilt to which is coordinates. 

The other big news of the week was the gallery opening of Stitched DC. The Anacostia Art Center worked with the DC Modern Quilt Guild to host a juried show. 36 quilters submitted work (I submitted 3), 24 quilts were chosen with one work selected from each artist. It was entirely the AAC staff who chose quilts, so no influence from any of the DCMQG members. The quilt they selected of mine was Simply Colored Style. It's one of the front quilts in the gallery when you walk in, so that made me do a little happy dance in my head when I got there. This is the first quilt I've ever put up for sale, and there is interest in it already.

Snow Day WIP

Unless you're under a rock, or perhaps not in the United States, then you'll probably know that the East Coast got hammered with winter weather last night into today. My apartment was no different and when I ventured out at around 9:30 this morning because I realized I didn't have the required cheese for making quesadillas, there was about 12-14" on the ground. And right now at 10pm, there's another band that came in this afternoon that's finally making its way out.

I worked on several things, but only took a picture of one. I sewed the Irish Chain together and cut the strips that will form the border - it's the only thing I took pictures of. I also cleaned up my sewing room and pieced what will be the front of a 16" pillow. It's from the scraps of the wonky asterisk which has been on my couch since I lived in Boston. Tomorrow I will quilt it to batting and add the envelope back, then it will get pictures.

Beyond Neutral COVER!

For those of you who were readers last spring, you'll know that right after I moved to Maryland, I was piecing a mystery quilt for John Adams, aka Quilt Dad. Well, today he tweeted that the book was now available for pre-order on Amazon. With that tweet, I learned that the quilt I pieced is ON THE COVER!!!!

Here is a screen shot of the cover and the quilt on my floor before I stitched it together (yes the one block that was facing the wrong way on the floor was corrected before the rows were connected).

Ratoon Hiding...

So the title of this blog post is a family thing, but it's all I could keep thinking to myself as I was pattern testing this Raccoon for Kristy @ QuietPlay's woodland critter. When my aunt was very little, there was a raccoon that lived behind my grandparents' house (there were small woods that separated their backyard from neighbors). When it wasn't there, my aunt would say, "Ratoon hiding," or so I've been told.

This was super fun to make and took me the length of Primary Colors, the movie, from start to finish (about an hour and a half). The blue on the left where it's just the head is a more accurate showing than the finished block - it's brighter than it shows. I think I'm going to get the rest of the set and make myself a little woodland critter collage, or perhaps make mini quilts out of all of them and make a wall hanging gallery. I have one wall in my living room which is BIG and BLANK, and I still haven't figured out exactly what I want to hang, but I've been thinking that a mini-quilt gallery would be fun.

And just for fun, here are puppy pictures because I was in Atlanta this past weekend and got to hang with my aunt's new dog. All of us kept referring to him by the previous dog's name, and since he's from the same breeder and bloodline as his predecessor, he's likely to grow up looking just like him, too.

              






   

Month 1 of Fabric Diet Done: Quilt in a Day and Borders

Yesterday I made all the blocks for an Irish Chain. It's a pattern that is very simple and traditional, but it was spiced up by using Alison Glass streamers. I cut all the squares, and I put them in a paper bag pulling them out at random to make the blocks. I've already figured out what I want to do for borders, but those will have to wait a week or so since I'm going out of town this weekend.

I added the first ring of red and then an 8" white border to the hexagons (forgive the wrinkles, I didn't attempt any smoothing after laying it down). I'm going to put another ring of red, and maybe another narrower ring of white to then bind with red.

This finishes the first month of the 6 month fabric diet that many of us bloggers have put ourselves on. The only fabric I purchased came from The Great Fabric Destash on Instagram where I was able to get 4 yards of my favorite color of oval elements for $5/yard. I sold over $100 worth (after paying for my purchase), so I'm taking a pass on that one. I'm going to keep working from my stash through June with the only upcoming purchases being solids since I'm going to need another bolt of white soon, and backing fabrics. 

Back!

After being casted, splinted, then casted again with full arm immobilization, I'm in a splint that gives me decent use of my right hand. My wrist is locked into a neutral position, but I can quilt again. Over the last week I've pieced and quilted a 60" square and over the last couple of days made a set in hexagon flimsy that needs borders.

I named this Simply Colored Style since I used charms from Simply Color and Simply Style by V and Co.

A zoomed in shot of the quilting, and yes this is a screen shot from my phone, but it shows the detail well.

Set in hexagons at the beginning. This was my first time doing a set in shape, and it was far easier than I had expected, despite knowing that it was simple, the 1/4 inch lined up perfectly every time.

And here they are as the center of what will have borders. The first border has already been added and now I'm debating what I want the second and third borders to be and if I want to piece them or have solid strips wrapping around.