New Quilt

This quilt is going to be a big one because in my head I was thinking each block was 10" rather than 12" square. So 98"x98" it will be. That said, I'm totally ok with that since I'm a big fan of all the fabric in it. The inspiration came from a snippet of a photo on pinterest, where this quilt was in the background, but it was easy to discern the pattern.

The original fabric that made me choose the others were from Riley Blake's Madhuri line then I added in Kate Spain Garden Party, Thomas Knauer Frippery, and Terra Australis.

The quilty math where I realized it was 12" rather than 10" that'd I'd had in my head (which is the size before the second sashing with colored rectangles). 

 All the center squares plus sashing rectangles. 

 The first two blocks done. I made these with regular piecing, the rest will be chain pieced, but I wanted to make a couple samples to ensure that they'd finish to 12.5" (and they do, perfectly!)

And Pippa because she was climbing all over while I was cutting and assembling. 

All petals ironed

As a follow up to the first post about the MQG Fabric Challenge, I finished ironing down all the petals to the background fabric. There were a good number of extra petals since I couldn't make more full circles in either direction due do space limitations so I added a border all the way around.

 Pippa then decided she wanted to help me as I was working on my next project of the weekend.

 The innerds of another Sew Together Bag and Pippa who monitored my progress.

 The completed bag with binding and external zipper.

 And the full exterior - patchwork fun. The colors aren't showing up perfectly here, but the swirly pattern is green which is why I added the green polka dot as the binding.

Michael Miller Challenge

The Modern Quilt Guild (MQG) parent organization of the DCMQG, has fabric challenges to highlight certain designers several times a year, and currently it's Michael Miller. Each participant is given a stack of fat eighths and one can add any solids and any other Michael Miller prints to their quilted piece - it can be a bag or a quilt or really anything as long as it's quilted. Based on one of the fabrics which is the orange peel design, I decided to make a petal applique quilt. Since I just switched back to night shift, I have a decent amount of time available for sewing since the rest of the world isn't really awake on my off days (nights).

Several months ago during one of the bigger JoAnn coupons/sales periods, I got an entire bolt of WonderUnder. This evening, I ironed that onto the fat eighths and then cut out the petals and started arranging. Based on the picture, that background looks black, but it's really a deep brown. I didn't add any extras beyond the prints from what were given out. 

Pippa kept trying to get in on the action and was standing around my feet most of the time while I was ironing, and then she finally jumped up once I finished adding the second row of rings. There will be a few more rings. I think I will quilt it with a light colored thread to really make it pop on the dark background. I'm also thinking that I will only quilt the background and leave the rings to puff up a little bit with the battings. 

Done but for the binding

Dots dots dots and pebbles pebbles pebbles. I felt that the appropriate quilting for the dots quilt was large pebbles. And I definitely think I made the right decision. So the top is fully quilted and trimmed just waiting for binding, but as things typically go with my quilts that'll take several months since it's my least favorite part of the quilting process. Also pictured is my new way of basting. I got 2x4's and wrapped the quilt top and back around them with the batting floated between the two. Those and pinmoors let me baste this quilt which is just shy of 70 inches square in under 45 minutes (one episode of House). It was quilted on my home machine, a Pfaff Ambition with 50wt Aurifil thread.

 While quilting:

 Fully quilted and trimmed:

 The back:

 It's easier to see the pebbles on the solid parts of the back.

Back at it... slowly.

Have you ever gone to the doctor or emergency room for something you thought was going to be an annoyance, but turned into something far more serious? I had that happen on March 20th. I went to the ED for one of my fingers being swollen and not bending properly thinking they'd set up me with antibiotics and a little finger splint. Instead, I was in the OR about 3 hours after being seen by a provider (we'll ignore that 4 hour waiting room time since the triage staff didn't recognize what was actually going on). I had flexor tenosynovitis which is an infection of the flexor tendon which runs up from the wrist to control the first and middle fingers. I was in the hospital for 6 days with another surgery that happened about 36 hours after the first one. From there it was another 4 days of IV antibiotics.

Photos are pre-surgery while I was waiting in the ED.

I've been going to OT 3x/week to ensure that I keep full mobility in my hand/finger. I still have 6 more days off for convalescent leave (con leave is one of the greatest things, your doc says you need a couple week off, and boom you get a couple weeks off).

Over the last few days I've finally been able to get back to sewing and I've been working on my dots top. It's almost fully pieced.

 This is the dots quilt up on the design wall with all the blocks made - each block consists of three narrow strips and three squares width wise. There are three columns of 12 rows.

 There was one little bit of rearranging as I put all the blocks together (excepting the bottom left section). I swapped the top two blocks on the left so that there wouldn't be two pink squares side by side, which I only noticed after taking the last picture. The blocks are being turned into big blocks which are each 4 segments turning it into a giant 9 patch for final assembly. As well the left blocks get an extra narrow strip to complete the top. 

Polka Dots - Lots and Lots of Dots!

I like polka dots, always have. And the Ta Dot line decided it wanted to be one of my quilts. On Sunday, I went down to Becky's house (@SarcasticQuilter on Instagram) to finally meet her and quilt together. We've been Instagram friends since I lived in Boston, but in the year since I've lived here we've managed to miss each other at DC Modern events going to opposite meetings and other little timing snafus. She also had Karie in town (@Karietkq on Instagram). I cut all my fabric and started sewing down there, and now am about 1/2 of the way through piecing.

The fabrics which just called to be put together. That bigger gray dot in the background is a 108" wide backing fabric. But I think I'll actually use it for a different project. 

Here it is so far on my design wall. The only placement considerations are that the same color blocks don't end up directly next to or on top of one and other. I'm constructing them in groups of 3 squares with three rectangles. Just makes them easier to work with. Looking forward to piecing the remaining blocks over the rest of this week. 

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.