Finish Report, a Flimsy Alert, and a 17 in 2017

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. We we enjoyed a traditional feast day at home with all the kids except Devon, and of course, I ate far too much. I still feel sluggish from that! I don't have much energy right now, but I'm Whooping it up, because I have three things to report this week. :)  

~*~*~  Finish Report!  "Thankfulness 3"

Here is the final of the three "Thankfulness" quilts! This one is ours. It was the first to be quilted, so that I could try out the longarm diagonal ruler work and feathers on it before moving to the ones that were gifted. It was the last to be finished, though. 

My first longarm feathers. I'm not unhappy.  :)
Diagonal SID, though. . . needs practice!

These were 47 x 56 inches as flimsies, 46 x 55.5 after quilting, and 44.75 x 53.5 after washing in cold and a low-heat dryer. Perfect lap size. That's with pre-washed fabrics and batting. I wonder how much more they would have shrunk with un-treated materials? I can't believe how soft the Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 washed up in these, though. It has a really super nice feel.

Karen's Thankfulness quilt was shared last week. It arrived in Florida on Tuesday, and I got a slew of exuberant texts. My daughter reports that she loves showing it off. 

Lisa and Jeff got their Thankfulness quilt on Sunday, and she was tickled to death to have a handmade quilt. They live across the street from us, and always do more than anyone else to clear snow and coordinate the resurfacing needs we have to attend to for our cul-de-sac. I said something about wishing I'd been able to finish it several weeks ago so that it wouldn't be "out-seasoned" so quickly, and she said, "Are you kidding me? This is mountain Colorado land! We will use it all year!" 

Our Thankfulness quilt got its binding and label two days ago, barely in time to be out for Thanksgiving Day use. I was tempted to put it on the table, but decided I didn't want it getting that dirty right away.  :)  

The diamond and sashing fabrics are the same in all of them, while the accent colors, borders, and backings are each different.

All of them have the faux-piped binding, and all of them have leafy labels. I really love how these turned out, first-time longarm ruler bobbles and all!

~*~*~
Flimsy Alert: "It's a Silky Wool Flannel Kind of Autumn Day"

. . . because sometimes you just need a funky quilt name!

Yesterday evening when everyone was crashed for some quiet time, I did all the "race" seams for my jelly roll. This flannel collection, "Woollies Flannel" from Maywood, is so plush and nice, I want to buy several of the prints to make jammies from!

A really weird photo of a flannel top in gorgeous fall-jewel tones.

Boy, oh boy, do I love this flimsy with the spots of gold Silk Radiance! Night-time shots are tricky to get the colors right, and this full shot is really horrid for that. Contrast is all messed up and won't play nice in filters, colors are weird. . . you know how it goes.

Taken upstairs under an incandescent bulb, this next photo shows a better balance, although the colors are still a little richer in life.

With the flannel, I pressed the seams open instead of to one side. I sewed this up "race" style, but took the time to press the seam after Lap 1 and Lap 2. Laps 3, 4, and 5, I left the pressing until I was finished. I'm really glad I pressed those first two laps before sewing the next lap. It would have been a royal pain to have all the seams to press open at once without a decent space already lying down for the rest of the laps going at once. It also made it infinitely easier to line up the fabric to stitch laps 3 and 4.

It'll be January, probably, before this goes on the longarm. I have a customer quilt, a QOV gift for my father-in-law, and some Christmas quilts that have first pick on frame time.


~*~*~
17 in 2017 - "Mermaid Fantasy" 

On another vein, I've been able to check off a stage on one of my 17-in-2017 projects. 

Heather's "Mermaid Fantasy" now has its detail trapunto work finished on the five vignettes, and it's ready for its final quilting. That's a task for the 2018 list.  :)

That was a weird movie
(The Whole Nine Yards provided snipping entertainment)

I did this the same way I did my Sea Breeze mini quilts - I've put in all the detail quilting for each of the five vignettes. I didn't do the dissolving thread approach, as I like the way the detail quilting gives definition to the area, but doesn't get flattened too much when layered over the quilt's full batting and outline-quilted. For very large areas, like the central mermaid, there are some inner lines that will be followed through both layers of batting, but the details will stay quilted only in the trapunto layer.  I did all this at my domestic machine. There's no way I can do that level of detail at my longarm yet.

~*~*~

Linking up: 

TGIFF at Myra's this week

Sarah's Whoop, Whoop Linkup

Meridithe's 17 in 2017

TGIFF is Here Today, and It's About Thankfulness :)

Hello from Colorado, USA! Welcome to this week's TGIFF link-up!

Have you finished something lately that you'd like to share? Link up at the bottom of this post, and be sure to visit some of the other links to find some great eye candy and help your fellow bloggers celebrate. :D

This quilt's story is one of Thankfulness and progress. I have a very special friend, Karen, who has been more like family over the years. 

She took our young-adult daughter, Devon, in several months ago when her life took a rough turn and she wanted to try a fresh start down in Florida. Karen's that kind of friend, and this quilter's mama heart needed to make her a Thanksgiving throw quilt as a bit of a Thank You.

It's one of a trio, as there was enough fabric to do up three of these diamond-lattice throws. One is for our neighbors, the Heinz's, because they do so very much for all of us on the cul-de-sac, contributing more than anyone to keeping the snow cleared on our hill (we don't get winter service from the county).

The other is for us to keep, largely because I'd only done 6 quilts ahead of these on my new longarm machine, and I hadn't tried diagonal work or feathers on it yet. The one for us provided a foil to figure things out on first.

Good thing, too - I got a little ahead of myself with this design! If you don't have a longarm, you need to know that diagonal lines are not easy. It takes ruler work to keep them not-wobbly, and I hadn't tried that out yet. Naive braveness on my part for these quilts, but it's gone well enough to gift to a friend. 

Quilts 7 & 8 on my longarm - APQS Millie, hand guided

My 12-foot frame was just large enough to sew two backings together top-to-bottom, so I could load two up simultaneously. 

(I found that I *greatly* prefer to float the top so I have full control over any shifting that may need to happen, I can double-check the flatness of the back and batting (and presence of dark run-away threads behind very light fabrics in the top) with each advance. I use painter's tape lines on the quilt-top bar of my APQS frame to give myself marks for the vertical lines. This keeps the top square from side to side. I use the channel lock feature on my machine to make sure horizontal lines are square, and you can see the pins I've used beyond the working area to make sure the top stays in square for that section of work.)

Diagonal work went fairly well - if I were doing this for a high school term project, I'd give it a "C-" for the wobbles that I couldn't avoid (which show quite well since my thread was dark. (Affinity 40-wt variegated "Satin")  

Early bobbles in diagonal ditchwork

Feather work went better. I would give those bump-backs and free-hand shaping in the diamonds a C- on the early ones, but a B+ on the later ones, and quite a few stretches in the borders would get an A. I'd also give myself an A on keeping the quilts perfectly square and having no tucks in the backs or problems with the tension. So something is going well already. :)

Early bump-backs

Later bump-backs

Still feeling like I had to concentrate at a calculus homework level just to shape things and watch the fabric play, I wasn't confident enough to free-hand the border work. So I made templates of feather sections and chalked them onto the quilts. Worked great, although it made me sneeze a lot!

I also wasn't up to trying the feathers on the vertical, even with templates. So I rotated the quilts to do the final borders. 

NOTE: If you think you might be rotating a quilt (which is really quite easy with a squared-up backing), make sure you don't start the quilt top right close to the take-up bar. Otherwise, you have to work with hyper-care slowness at the edge against the clamp!

I can tell that my precision control will improve steadily with more practice, and look forward to my machine and I becoming really great friends. As I do each new quilt on my Milli, I tend to do the grading game in my mind - not to criticize myself, but to mark my progress in terms of attaining the professional excellence I got to on my domestic. As that initial development took a good eight years, I'm quite pleased to find that the learning curve is shorter than that to transfer it to this new way of working. 

The Heinz's will go on the frame this afternoon

Each quilt has its own border and backing fabrics. Ours won't get its binding until the Heinz's is quilted and gifted.

The first one to be quilted will be the last fully finished

I am super happy with these quilts, imperfections and all, and I know that Karen will love hers. 

I'm giving these quilts a faux-piped binding. My favorite approach to this is to cut the outer color at 1-3/8" width, and the accent color at 1-5/8" width (I normally use a 2-1/4" double-fold binding - if you use 2-1/2", add 1/8" inch to each of these figures). 

I press the joining seam toward the accent color, which isn't the easiest. You have to go SLOWLY, finger press first, and be super precise both with this seam press and when you press the double-fold into the created binding to get a nice piping line. Pressing toward the accent color will make the faux piping have substance, and after the final topstitching, it will look like real piping instead of a flat flange. (I attach this binding to the back of the quilt with a 1/4" seam. Orient it so that the accent color is shown, then when you fold it over to the front, you see the main color and the piping line.) Do your corners exactly the same way you do for normal binding.

Anyone who lets a friend's daughter live with them, helps her get her car fixed (more than once!) and borrow a vehicle while it's in shop, gives her rides and support for a bicycle century, and just loves on her in general definitely deserves a quilt, and who has time to wait until skills get perfected?  :)  

Love you, Karen. Happy Thanksgiving!

~*~*~

Now it's your turn to share a finish. We love to see your accomplishments, and hope you'll visit a few of the fellow link-ups.
Also, per link-up etiquette, please include a link to TGIFF on your post.

WIP - Feathers and Sleds

I needed a break from the machine, where I'm super happy with how well my first feather work has been going on the longarm. 

Two almost-identical quilts have been loaded on my machine, and I'm on the last of the border work. This shot is after I rotated them, because I wasn't comfortable doing the feathers vertically. I need to put a practice piece on the frame to work on that. 

I also need to work on free-handing my feathers instead of chalking them in first with templates that I made. The chalk works just fine on these quilts that will go straight into the wash after binding, but WOW, does it make me sneeze! And there's nothing wrong with using templates, but it sure will be a LOT faster to get them in my system without the templates.

I'm pushing for a full finish in time to post for Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday. (By the way, TGIFF is hosted here this week, so if you're close to a finish, get it whipped up so you can share!)

The other priority project I've got going is a set of cute little ornaments for a family crafted exchange. Basic construction is complete, and now the fun dressing-up can begin.  

Hope you're having a good week!

Thanks to Lorna for hosting Let's Bee Social.  :)