Finish Report! ~~ Devon's Earth Monkeys

I *love* how this turned out!  

Finished stitching the binding on I-80 last Friday, just west of North Platte, as we drove to St. Louis to move Heather back for her senior year of college. That corn smelled SO TERRIFIC! I was fairly tempted to sneak some, but I didn't want to rob some unknown farmer. So we were good.  ;D

This is Devon's quilt top - her first, and very possibly her only. . . Oh, look! I have a photo of her on the computer from about that time, probably a year or so later.

And here she is last summer. She's gone short and dark-haired since then for fun - here's her current Facebook profile pic. I love this woman - she makes me smile!

So. . . back to her quilt. Didn't she do a delightful job of color placement? The pattern had stars that were all the same, but she wanted all 3 colors and decided herself how to do that. She was . . . 13?14 at the time. 

Way back in the summer of 2009, I decided I wanted the girls to have something to show for their summer, so I had them each piece a quilt top. Being inexperienced in teaching new quilters, I didn't know enough to limit their choices to very simple designs. This one wasn't too far of a stretch for Dev in itself, but what I *did* realize - but lost the battle in - was that she was not going to have fun at all working with the silk jacquards she insisted on buying for her quilt. Between her natural complete lack of patience and the frustrating job of working with that silk on her first project, it wouldn't surprise me if Devon never puts a quilt together again.

But aren't those silks so radiant?!  Beautiful. They made the most gorgeous quilt. She's had to wait a log time for this to get quilted, but back in 2009/10, I couldn't have done this justice. Backs are so fun to look at:

There were some minor issues with puffiness in the center - an on-point design isn't the best choice for a first quilt - so I chose dense meanders on the black spinners and dense bamboo leaves for the tan backgrounds. We wanted the silk stars to have great dimension, so I went with wool batting and did more open quilting on those. Worked like a charm for both objectives. Stars have perfect faux-trapunto dimension, and all the puffy spots successfully compressed without warping. I'm impressed with the wool's feel under the density of quilting - it's not super stiff.  :)

If you remember, I had trouble figuring out what to do for quilting the border area. The quilt seemed to hold a subtle Asian trait, so I ended up surfing Japanese motifs. The fans inside the black stop border and the pampas clamshells outside turned out to be the perfect pairing, don't you think? 

These little flowers kept popping up in sashiko surf sessions, so I used them in the corners where there was more meandering than I cared for. Love them there. (Too bad the photo flipped upside down. . .)

The monkeys seriously amuse me. This guy below is just on top of the world now that the quilt is finished, washed, and blocked.  :D

And this fella cares not a whit that he's got to carry the whole world. . . 

And check out this fun duo!

Haha!  I just realized - she can have monkeys jumping on her bed. . . 

(I think I need some sleep)

I'll be linking up at some finish parties, so grab a banana and a drink and have a great break surfing through the celebrations.  :D

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Linking up at

TGIFF hosted by Pippa this week

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

WIPs - Dear Jane FLIMSY!!, Earth Monkeys, Kelly's 1930s

Currently at my stations:

Piecing:

WHOOP! WHOOP!!  Rainbow Jane is fully assembled!!!  All 5139 pieces. >wah~!<  

 86" square.  Ready for marking the scallops and whatever I decide to quilt in the background triangles. 

I put in cornerstones on this one - went through all the colors I'd received for the blocks and found the one of each color that I liked best. Used that one for all the stones in each radiating color band. I think you can get the idea here:

Regarding earlier thoughts of quilting this in large sections, then joining them - SCRATCH THAT IDEA~!  There are far too many precision points in small measure to match up to ever get it to line up perfectly after quilting. You'd have waves that will never block out completely, or mismatched lines. Besides the whole challenge of the serious thicknesses that fight with the foot as you're sewing.

If you're assembling a Dear Jane, you'll find that the tiny 1/2" sashing places many thick, thick seam-allowance stretches that ride so close to the foot that it's often difficult to keep the edges perfectly lined up. I found pinning like this to be super helpful, because on most blocks, that top Baby likes to slide away from the foot with a strong pull:

I thought about putting on the zipper foot to see if that helped, but the sashing is so narrow that you need a really perfect 1/4" seam. I can't get that without using this particular foot.

GO SLOW. And it also helped to provide support/tension from 3 angles: front and side with my left hand, from the back with my right hand reaching through the machine's throat (absent here to do camera duty):

I have other things that require attention, and after the intensity of assembling her, I do need a Jane break. But I can't wait to give her some more attention next month!!  I plan on marking the scallops and the quilting I want in the blue cones, then I can pin-baste her. I think I will just SID the inside babies, quilt the background cones/scallops, and bind her. I do want quilting in the individual squares, but I'll leave that for "The Second Stage" at some further point in time. Maybe then I'll have an easier machine to heft a VERY HEAVY 85" quilt through.  :)   Because this flimsy is one heavy sucker!!!  

I can't hang it in my Quilting Needed Closet - 

It'll just fall off the hanger. So it sits on top of my treasured quilts armoir stack.

No fears of forgetting her quilting, though! After two years of working on her, she's a very good friend, indeed.

P.S. -  Men. . .  ::shaking my head::  Mr. Caulkins: "This is what it would look like if a quilt farted:"

And after that intense load the past couple of weeks, I'm taking a break from that station.  ;D

Hand Work:

Kelly's 1930s is actually in progress now. 

I'm having a slow climb up the learning curve for the spoon-ma-bob, 

but I can tell I'm really going to like it a LOT. I need to get a leather "thimble" for my upper thumb, though.  

I've stitched in one sashing feather motif and a portion of a corner wreath.

Too bad Clara didn't let me snap this shot in time for my Pets on Quilts post. She's such a pretty girl - and is Selma's daughter (the calico that was on the last post).

FMQ:

This station is mostly occupied by Heather, who is fully engaged in quilting her Dragons.

 I just love this original work of hers. A couple of my favorite panels (still in progress):

For my own FMQ work, I tried out my Sewline ceramic pencil for the first time - yes, the one I've had for about 2 years now.  I LOVE IT!!  Love, love, love.  

And when Heather's not around, I can change the thread at the Sapphire machine and work on Devon's Earth Monkeys. I've got a single layer of Tuscany wool batting in this. Really loving the sashiko pampas grass motif on it. . . So, apparently, are the monkeys!

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Linking up at

Anything Goes

Lee's WIP

Esther's WOW

Whoop! Whoop!

Link a Finish Friday

TGIFF

WIPs - Sail, Jane, 1930s, Monkeys

Changes at my stations:

Piecing:

Finished the entire inside of "Set Sail" and got the first border attached to protect all those seam ends:

And now it's safely hanging with the other flimsies until I pull it back out to make all those flying geese for the next border.

So the undercarriage is thoroughly cleaned, thread changed, and "Rainbow Jane" is well on her way to being assembled:

Hand Work:

Kelly only had about 18 inches left to hand quilt on her 1930s project. She'd had it on a big frame, which I don't have. I needed to problem-solve how to keep it at the same "tightness" she'd had and be able to use a lap hoop during evening TV times. 

So I secured the backing to the floor and pin basted the remaining looseness. 

I'm thinking I'll remove the ones that get in the way of the hoop rim when I put it in. Hopefully this will let me finish the quilt for her without a huge show of style/set-up difference. The busy print in the border will be hugely forgiving, I know.  :)

FMQ:

And now that Heather's into the free-motion portion of her Dragons and the Sapphire is set up the same way I need it, I can get back to finishing up Devon's Earth Monkeys when Heather's not at the machine. Have to settle on the plan to do that, though.  I pulled out some of my acrylic boards and played with sashiko motifs. Dev and I still don't know which we like best, so it's all sitting out on the pool table for a couple days while we get different looks at it all and make up our minds.  

Check out the difference in appearance when you make the guide grid just 1/4" smaller!

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Linking up at

Lee's WIP

Esther's WOW

WIPs - 10 July - Earth Monkeys, Dragons, and a binding

Been a while since I did a WIP post - here are the current priorities:


FMQ station - 

Started in on Devon's Earth Monkeys quilt. This is the UFO of the month, and has been waiting to be quilted for a shamefully long time! When the girls got out of school in 2009, I didn't want them to blow away an entire summer with nothing to show for it. At 17, 15, and 11, they were old enough to make their first quilts. This was Devon's. Truthfully, though, until this year I wouldn't have been comfortable doing the quilting - either with the FMQ or with the issues of the silks in the spinners and the tad extra fullness of the on-point center sewn by a 15yo. So the wait is all good in the end!

That's my plan for the central part. It's meant to flatten down the fullness around the spinners so they'll each stand out. I'd considered trying out some trapunto on them, but I worried that the basting lines would mar the jacquard fabric. So I'm letting quilting density and wool batting do a sort of faux trapunto - hopefully that's what'll happen.  ;D The leaves around the spinners coordinate with the bamboo leaves in the silk weaves. Still have no idea what I'll do in the borders. Scratching my head some more on that.


Piecing Station - 

Heather's had full use of that machine for a good month. She's been working hard doing the stitching and threadpainting on her dragons, which she can only do on college breaks. Just one last dragon to do and she'll be ready to start the quilting process. This will be the second quilt top she's made, and the first to go beyond the piecing stage. It's also entirely designed and drawn out by her! She's going to trapunto each of the dragons. This whole project fascinates me. :D


Hand Work Station - 

Stitching down the binding on Run, Kitty, Run. Can't wait for this finish so I can send it to its person! This binding is taking much longer than usual both because it's harder to stitch on the minky, and - well, you can see for yourself. Lots of joins to invisibly stitch in addition to the corners. Why do I do such things to myself?? ha!

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Linking up at

Lee's WIP

Esther's WOW