October End-of-Month and NewFO Reports

Happy Halloween!

We've been having fun with party foods.  :D

 

 

Thanks to the folks who host these parties that greatly boost my motivation in my quest to finish up every UFO and NETY in my closets!

 

Linking to:

 

 

 I hope you had a good month with your quilting goals. Mine was better than I thought it was.  These are the colors I worked with the past 31 days:



UFOs -
 
✓  Piñata Pizzazz - Became one of the coolest quilts I've made, and will surely be liked by the flood-relief family it goes to.

 

✓  Kelly's 1930s - I got the rest of the feather motifs quilted. I love hand quilting, but my fingers don't yet love doing it.

•     Sea Breeze - Nothing. Poor Koo Koo Puff sat on the table all month. Maybe next time. . .



WIPs/NewFOs -

✓  25th, Baby! - I barely managed to get up to 55 rings completed and assembled minus the main seams that have to wait. This project's never-endingness honestly made me cry one day. It's gorgeous, and I know I will LOVE it, and I'm still determined to have this completely finished in time to go on our bed by our anniversary next summer, but geez - I am not at all wired to keep working on one main priority project for months at a time. It grates on me and makes me want to vomit its colors. Tell you what, though! I ain't 'fraid of no stinkin' curves no mo'!

•     Rainbow Jane - Yes and No.  I developed some super cool quilting options for those solid triangles in my border, made the necessary stencils, and got 5 triangles marked. It would be really cool. For another Dear Jane!  Because it doesn't go with the overall feel of this one. The fun frothiness jarred on me as I would walk by. So all that marking has been squirted out, and I've got new ideas emerging from the fog that will better match this modern-colored, vibrant rainbow quilt. I'll save the aborted plans for the romantic-themed Jane that'll be made some day for another daughter to inherit eventually. . .

✓  NewFO - 

I love Barbara's NewFO parties each month, and they're really helping me get these kits pulled out of stone-cold status and on their way to becoming quilts before my youngest is out of high school.  ;D  Lots of other fun projects emerging, so take a fun  stroll through the other links!






I got the Jovial Spinning Trees kit out, washed, pressed, cut - and I went so far as to get all the trees made.

I even got the 3D pinwheel pieces all folded and pressed. 196 of them.
That part was B O R I N G ! ! !   Even though I did this task as a sort of leader/ender project at the ironing board when I was pressing seams for the wedding rings.

I do love the 3D aspect of this quilt pattern: 

(Going to make for some interesting fmq times!)

But, man! What a fabric waster. The way you cut the pieces to make the trees with ease gives you first this big pile of large cast-offs:  (note the size)

See how big those are? 72 of them. And then you also get these piles of 72 smaller cast-offs:

Definitely enough here to figure out something, eh?  :D   since I already have enough fun fabric for the back of Jovial, I'm going to get a second quilt out of this kit!



BOMs -

✓  Stayed on schedule with Kelly's and Hello Moon

✓  Ruffled Roses - Finished border 4 and 3 cornerstones since my fingers were too sore to do additional quilting on Kelly's quilt.

✓  Selvages - finished top, and it's now renamed "A Barbeque with the Squadron."

 

 

And a bonus BOM week when I was waiting for the next Hello Moon block - Beachwalk was assembled as well.  :)

 

 

 

 

 

So there it is - I got good clumps done off my directional lists, did a good job of sticking to my priorities and totally killed on Community Sewing for the month.  I'm feeling a bit rebellious, though, so I'm interested to see what happens in November. . . My goals will be listed on tomorrow's post.

Blogger's Quilt Festival #2 - Run, Kitty, Run!

This is my second entry. Pop over and catch all the amazing works being shown at Amy's wonderful online quilt show!
 



I'm glad I found out in time that we can show two quilts in the Festival, because this one really deserves to be in a show as well.

 

 

A stunned Christi  :)

 

 

This is "Run, Kitty, Run!", which I made especially for my friend back in Florida who has done so much to make my life healthier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You see, when our two oldest kids were graduating from high school 4 years ago, Christi decided enough was enough and she was finished being morbidly obese. I suspect she had a serious medical scare, and I know the doctor told her she'd never lose enough weight without surgery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boy, did she show them!!  Sheer determination, running every single day (usually more than once), and a complete overhaul of her diet empowered her to drop so much weight in one year she was literally half the woman that she started out as. And soooo much healthier.

 

 

 

 

 

She used her Facebook to keep herself going. Every. Single. Day. She never missed a day of at least something. If she was sick, or if she'd had to work 20 hours, she still did something, be it only 15 minutes. And seeing her report that day in and day out FINALLY goaded/encouraged/coaxed me into climbing onto her train at the end of that year. 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not as steady as she is - I'll do great for several days and then slip back, but you know what? Christi is always so encouraging and positive about it all, telling everyone constantly "Every Step Counts!", that you don't feel ashamed - you just start doing it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's what Christi did for me: The first day, we bought a treadmill and got it set up. I could *barely* wheeze out 20 minutes at 2.0 mph.  Now, if you're a walker/runner at all, you can understand just how pathetically out of shape that was!!  I honestly felt like I was going to have a heart attack. (As it turns out, I have Lupus, so it's tricky keeping my heart in shape, and judging by how pitiful I started out, I firmly believe I was on the straight line to a massive coronary sometime soon.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took me more than a year of slowly increasing the duration and the speed to get to where I could maintain 45 minutes of speed walking at 4.8 mph (which is a great clip). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These days I've got it to where I regularly pump out between 3.5 and 5 miles 4 times a week of running/speedwalk intervals and do a recovery powerwalk in between. I just have 20 more pounds I'd like to finish dropping off, and I will be ecstatic. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In any case, I chose every element of this quilt deliberately when I made it as a special "Thank you!" for Christi. Her favorite colors are blue and white. She's ape crazy over anything Hello Kitty or Marilyn Monroe, and I found the Hello Kitty fabric first. All the other top fabrics come from my stash. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had a hard time deciding on exactly how to execute the idea I had for the quilting. I wanted her running footprints on it, and I wanted to incorporate her now-famous line of encouragement. There was going to me no doubt in anyone's mind who knew her that this was Christi's very own quilt! I also wanted to pull the whimsy together with a traditional feel, though. I decided to get super -SUPER- brave and try to put feathers in on the blue bands. I was thrilled that they actually came out well!  My first decent feathers!!  ;D I'm pretty sure I used a dark blue Aurifil 50 wt on both the top and the bottom. I marked the spines only with a white chalk pen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for the white bands.  Without too much trouble I got Christi to scan in and email the treads of her favorite running shoes. As I'd hoped, she just wondered if it was something like I was trying to match her treads with my own shoe shopping. I ended up having to size the print down a wee bit to fit in the bands aesthetically. And I wanted them to show, not get lost in the cream, so I used a darker sandy variegated rayon thread that I had around that would show up without being garish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For all of this quilting, I used Golden Threads paper. Traced the reduced print of the treads onto one sheet, stapled that on a stack of sheets, and sewed through it all with an unloaded needle. Voila! 22 stich-through stencils.  For the words, I made a huge font on my computer and literally traced it right off the screen. 

 

 

 

 

 

You just pin the paper onto your sandwich, quilt through it, and pull the paper off. Love it for certain things!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And oh, man! Now I'm remembering the TWENTY-SIX pairs of tails I needed to tie and tuck on each one of those prints because I really wanted to keep the treads clean without trail lines from section to section.  So much work, but also entirely worth the effect here. I used the same thread to stitch in the words of her encouragement and a heart on each of the outer corners.

 

 

 

 

 

To fill in the rest of the white bands, I used the same creamy So Fine thread I'd been using in the bobbin with the rayon thread. This was all done free-hand with no marking.

 

 

 

 

 

This was a heavy throw quilt  with the minky backing, Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting, and dense quilting. But it came out feeling nice! It wasn't too stiff at all. (And Christi HATES the cold, which is why she just had to have that backing.)  It finished up at 59 x 59 after all the quilting.

 

 

 

 

 

And because it wasn't crazy enough already to tie and tuck all those individual tread components, I went nuts with the binding and changed the color out for each band point around the perimeter. . .   But, man, I love it!!

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for letting me share this second quilt with you. There are a lot of real beauties linked up at the Festival, so make sure you check it out! 

BOMs Away - Oct 28 - Hello, Moon; Ruffled Roses & a Tip for Applique Panel Trimming

Welcome to the Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays!

We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.
This week's link-up is at the bottom of this post.

 

 

I just finished trimming the latest Hello, Moon blocks. There were 2 this time around since April Mae caught us up to October. I love this BOM and appreciate her graciousness in sharing it for free.  :D

 

 

 

 

 

I also managed to keep my Ruffled Roses up-to-date with my goal for this month since I moved it into my evening sewing slot the past week. I finished all the hand quilting I'd hoped to accomplish for Kelly's quilt this month, and a cut on my finger was making it painful to keep quilting past that point. Worked out fine this way, because I'm out of October Sundays!  ;D

 

The last side border piece and 3 of the cornerstones:

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a tip for trimming applique panels:

 

These cornerstone backgrounds were originally cut about 1 inch too large to allow for any shrinkage during the stitching process. Once they were finished and pressed well, I wasn't sure how to make sure I cut them exactly as they were supposed to be - until I remembered this tip that I think I saw at Erin's blog once. 

 

I lined two sides of my square ruler up on the pattern and traced the outlines with a dry-erase marker right onto my ruler.

 

 

Then all I needed to do was lay the outlines down on the block, and voila! Perfect alignment to do the trimming.  I'm a happy woman.  ;D

 

 

 

 

And erasing the marks on the ruler is easy - just grab some quilting shrapnel and wipe it off!  (But I'm saving this until I finished the last one.)

 

 

 

 

 

So, what BOM work have you been able to get finished lately?

 

 

~*~*~*~*~

 Any projects broken into weekly or monthly units are welcome in addition to true BOMs.   Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there.

 

Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2013 - Piñata Pizzazz

It's time again for the Blogger's Quilt Festival!



My most significant quilt from the later half of this year is Piñata Pizzazz:

 

 

It turned out so very awesome, and is a donation quilt for the Colorado flood relief through the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. It's finished at 84 x 84 inches.

The funny thing is that this wasn't slated to be finished any time soon at all. As in: not for a year or 2 or 3 (it was low on my "Kill the UFOs" list).  I pieced the main part way back in 2008 and for some reason fell entirely out of love with it. So it sat for FIVE YEARS in a box with its border fabric, tucked far back in the Deep Storage of kits and UFOs.

My UFO list started at 49, and now I'm down to something like 21. Translated, that means all the easiest, most-loved, or closest to being finished projects have been done. So when I was making my October list of goals and needed 3 UFOs to get to the next stage, I found this one convenient to pull out since I could "just" add the border to get credit for a step forward.

Shortly after that post came the call for bed-size quilts.

And then the government shut itself down and froze our pay. For who-knew-how-long. And our savings account was already wiped out due to 18 months of insanity with pay issues.

So I wanted to drop all my other priorities and quilt something up for the relief drive. I wanted something cool but not something that my heart was particularly attached to. I chose this mostly-finished flimsy.  The pattern is "Rachel's Joy" from Plum Creek Quilts and it's mostly done in Jinny Beyer fabrics.

 

 

I've been working on stepping my quilting up a few notches, so I used this as a growth piece. I quilt on a Sapphire 875Q, table-top machine. It handled this queen size quilt very well with the black Hobbs 80/20 batting. Which is good, since I have a king size coming up in January to start working on. . .

Anyway, to make the back I took the leftover pieces from the border strips and shopped my stash for coordinating fabrics.

 

Without any intention at all, the center square on the back matched the front's center square size exactly.

So when we pin-basted this quilt, I carefully stuck pins up through the corners as I taped the backing onto the floor, meticulously stuck them up through the batting layer, and then through the corners of the front's square when that was laid on top. It worked well!!  (But if I ever need to do this again, I'll also put pins mid-way on each side.)

As we pin-basted the quilt, the central star shape started leaping out at me and made me think of those 4-armed piñatas. With the bold, happy colors, this gave the quilt its name and inspired the quilting theme. I wanted something with a Mexican flavor, something that let me be a little artful, but still open enough for a bed quilt to have nice draping.

I played with my acrylic overlay sheets to get a design I liked in the center, offset by the double lines and then a round of stylized roses that are a theme I've seen in several Mexican quilts.

 

 

I made plastic templates of a quadrant for the middle and the general outlines of the rosy triangles so I could blue-pen some guidelines down.

The arms have sparser quilting to let them stay poofier than the background fields.

 

When I looked at the top, I saw two "layers" of background fields, so I put in a double-outline track between those and used a different fill for each layer - a swirly-hook thing in the closer one, and a pinky's-width meander in the outer one. I think that worked quite well.

The border was super easy - just follow some lines of the print!

I used smoke Invisifil on the top, which is invisible on the darks and non-intrusive on the lightest values. I did wish I could have spent the money on some nice, thicker metallic silver thread for the piñata area - that would have been spectacular on this quilt! I had a great 50wt gray Aurifil sitting around, so I used that on the back. I had zero tension issues and not one single thread break.

For the binding, I tried out the faux-piping method. I'd bookmarked a tutorial for this a couple of years ago, but just now got to using it. It was perfect for this quilt and the situation. I did not have enough of any single fabric to make the whole binding, but I didn't want a patchwork binding since there's so much going on geometrically with this quilt. The outer edge needed unity all the way around. But I did have enough of two perfect coordinating colors if I used this method. And it's the best binding choice design-wise, I think! Couldn't be more perfect.

 

And before I was finished with the quilting, I had fallen completely head-over-heels in love with this quilt. Its bold colors, the quilting that turned out nicely (not always confident in myself!), the back that I love as much as the front. . . it's all there. And didn't want to give it away. And everyone else in the family loved it, too. And that's what I get for choosing something "meh" from my stash for a community service project.  ;D  But I'm glad I fell so much in love with it. It wouldn't feel the same to give away something I didn't really like.

And what goes around comes around. The other day, we took our German short-term exchange student to try out a sushi restaurant in the Springs. Scott had to come straight from work, so he was in his Air Force ABUs. When it came time to check out, the server informed us that a gentleman had already paid our bill. It made me cry. Seriously, right there in the restaurant - in front of everybody - I cried. Driving home, Sophie asked me what had happened. So I explained that sometimes here in the States somebody will do something to make strangers' lives better that day, and that once in a great while someone will pay for a military person's meal or drinks or movie ticket just to say "Thank You for your service."  She observed that in this month here, she's been able to see the worst and the best of the U.S.:  from 4 school and work-place shootings and the gov't insanity that almost kept them from seeing the national parks they had traveled here from Germany to see and had put our family in duress, to the great random kindness of strangers.

She also got to see this random dude waving at folks
in Manitou Springs on the 3rd day of the government shut-down.

So, it's all good.  :)   Go make someone's day a little brighter today in whatever way you can. It's the only thing that makes this world make sense right now.

And then go check out all the wonderful quilts folks are showcasing in Blogger's Quilt Festival! Amy's worked hard on this event, and it's organized nicely into categories.