Quilting practice

Hello all, and welcome to the weekend! Where did this week go?

I spent most of the week outside, cleaning up in the garden, planting some annuals, and trying to get ahead of the weeds. We went from bare earth to uncontrollable jungle in about two weeks, so right now I'm afraid the weeds are winning. Those suckers have amazing survival skills to have come up again after the winter we had.

When I wasn't outside, I was working on quilting up the small pieces I had piled up. It was fun, for the most part.  The first thing you should know is that I am a total and complete amateur at this. I am constantly amazed that anything that I attempt comes out of the machine looking acceptable at all. To make sure I get a decent result, I use stencils, quarter-inch tape, quilting paper, and anything else that can help me get a decent design stitched in.  Here is the first project to show you what I mean:

This is a little quilt made out of extra half-square triangles. To get ready to quilt it, I basted it and then traced a leaf pattern into very thin quilting paper, which I pinned to the center with straight pins. I also traced a stencil in the border, which doesn't show up in the picture too well. Here's a close-up of the quilting paper:

Then it's just a matter of stitching along the lines and tearing away the paper. Here is the result:

And here is a close-up of the quilting of the same corner shown above:

 Success! I even put the binding on it. This is my happy finish for the week.

Another piece that got quilted was the bright child's quilt that I showed earlier this week.

I don't mind telling you that I went to battle with this one. I just did channel quilting on it, and if I had tried anything else I would have given up completely. It was just too big for me to comfortably handle. We wrestled, but I won! It turned out pretty well. The lines here are about an inch apart and took forever. Plus a LOT of thread. This was done with a walking foot. I drew the first line so that it was straight, but the others were done with the little spacing bar that attaches to the foot.

This one is just outline quilted:

This is from a Kim Schaefer calendar quilts pattern and has been hanging around waiting since last year. Oops. As you can see, I started to draw in some feathers to practice quilting those, but I chickened out. I probably will find a design to trace for the feathers and then quilt those in. It looks pretty good with just outlines, but I could use the practice.

The last one is partially done:

This little banner is made of orphan blocks from a quilt I started but gave up on. It was a block of the month at a shop near here a couple of years ago. I hated the fabric, so I never made the rest of the blocks and eventually gave the rest of it away. If you look closely, you can see that I just did some meandering and put in a few details on the houses. My bobbin ran out partway through the right side, so I quit for a while and will go back and finish that.

That was my quilting week! It was fun, but I am ready to get back to piecing. I plan to finish the Fiesta pinwheels quilt next week so I am looking forward to that. One more picture to send everyone into the weekend:

The irises are blooming! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Linking up with Sarah and Amanda and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday. By the way, while you are at Sarah's blog, scroll down and look for her posting of the Tennessee block for the AMB blog tour. It's awesome!

Basting and prepping

(Today's post is a bit late because we're having "Internet connectivity issues." You'd think they would have figured most of this stuff out by now.)

Have you ever taken any hand sewing out with you and worked on it in public? This weekend we went to the ballpark and I took a hexie project with me to stitch on during the game. I really like baseball, but four hours sitting at the park? That's a LOT. I got pretty far along on this project:

I had the rosettes made and joined them up with the white hexies during the game.  As you can see, I worked on it in two pieces because the bigger one just got too big to handle in that tiny seat. People kept making comments (mostly nice comments), and the only real problem I had was that it got all wrinkly and a little dirty because I was crazy enough to take white to a baseball game. I should know better.

In case you ever want to take your sewing somewhere, here is the best tip I ever got: thread a bunch of needles on to a full bobbin, like this:

This way you don't have to try to see to thread a needle and can just pull off a length and the needle is already threaded. This and a pair of tiny scissors and you're all set! You can tape the thread end to the bobbin, but I just wound my thread back on and it stayed just fine. A zip lock bag is a good idea, though.

Today is basting and prepping day because later today and tomorrow I plan to quilt up all the little projects that I have laying around waiting to be quilted. This weekend I cleaned up in the sewing room (I even vacuumed!) and there were more than I thought, so it's time to get those finished up. I don't have a fancy quilting machine, but I do have this:

 

This was my mother-in-law's machine that I inherited when she passed away last year. She bought it new in 1968. We miss her terribly, but this machine is a fantastic gift that she left for me. This is the best machine I have ever sewn on. Really. It has a perfect stitch and is a joy to use. And 8 inches of throat space! This is a lot of space in comparison with my more modern machines. The only thing that I don't like about it is that it weighs about a thousand pounds. Okay, only 33 pounds. It's all cast iron and not really what I would call "portable." But the great sewing on it more than makes up for that one problem.

This is one of the quilts I'll be finishing up:

(Ironing board shadow in the corner!)

 It's about 45 inches square. To get it ready, I am basting it to the backing and batting. I only pin-baste when I have very small (less than 12 inches square) things to stitch, and I never use basting spray. I don't want glue in my quilt. The pins are. . .well, I just find them a mess to work with. They're hard for me to put in and harder to take out while sewing. I just don't like them, so I hand-baste using a big needle and hand-quilting thread to make big stitches, like this:

I think you can see those. It's a big running stitch made about every 5 or 6 inches across the quilt. The hand-quilting thread is easy to take out and you can sew right over it. Hand basting is easy, but it does take some time. I think it's completely worth it, though.

So, that's what I'm doing today. I have at least 7 projects to prep, so I better get started! Hope you're having fun, either in the sewing room or out in the sunshine!

Linking with Connie at Freemotion by the River and Judy at Patchwork Times again. Come on over and take a look!

Cleaning up

It's been a very busy cleaning week here. Just how does everything get so dirty, and how do I not notice it all winter long? I'm blaming the sunshine. It just brightens everything so that I can see the dirt. Even in the corners!

As part of my cleanup, I finally put the bindings on these two quilts, so now they are finally completely finished. The first is this one:

(I always wondered why bloggers put their quilts out on the grass. Now I know--there's no place else that's big enough!)

This quilt is made from traditional Lady of the Lake blocks in various batiks that I had laying around. The border kind of blends into the grass, but it's a batik as well. Those fabrics and some triangle paper made this super easy. The block pattern was in one of Judy Martin's block books, and it was super easy as well. I am really pleased with how it turned out.

This next one was a block-of-the-month from 2010 (!), which I just finished this week.

I sewed most of the blocks in 2010, and then hit a snag and put it away. (I'm sure that no one else has ever done that.) I pulled it out again earlier this year and just finished the binding, only four years later. I wasn't sure about the dark green block frames and inner border, but it works. I used that same dark green as the binding. I'm pretty pleased with this one too!

For anyone who's been following along, I am STILL working on Celtic Solstice, a tiny bit at a time. I am actually making progress, so I have high hopes of finishing it soon.  The pattern calls for a border that I won't be using in my quilt, but I had already made the units, so yesterday I found something else to do with them.

These are tri-recs units put together to make these pinwheel-type blocks. (I've been calling them "kick" blocks, because they look to me like they're kicking.) When they're all together like this, I think they look like flowers. I'm thinking of a pink sashing and a floral border:

Won't this be a cute quilt for a little girl? I have enough of the tri-recs units for 24 blocks, but I have more cut, so I may end up making a few more to make it bigger since these finish at 6 inches. I think this counts as using up green scraps, don't you?

I've also started cutting for the Fiesta Pinwheels quilt. I chose this color distribution, with the red center:

I think it's going to be very festive! And it's certainly cheerful to work on, no doubt about that.

Hope everyone has a lovely Memorial Day weekend! We are supposed to have terrific weather, and we'll be spending Memorial Day at the ballpark. It should be fun!

Linking up with Sarah and Amanda and Angela again. It's a holiday weekend, so lots of time for you to check out everyone's projects!

See you on Tuesday!

Fiesta pinwheels

It should not surprise anyone that it is raining here yet again. Just showers, not a storm, but I can't be the only one who's tired of it all. The good news is that it did not rain on commencement, so it was a great day for our graduates and their families. I end this school year grateful for my colleagues, my friends, and my students. I don't know how I got lucky enough to work at a job I love with people I really respect.

The rain has also made the garden EXPLODE, mostly with weeds, so we spent a bunch of time cutting grass, pulling weeds, seeding bare patches, and yanking out the tiny trees that have grown from chestnuts and such that the squirrels buried and forgot. It was a good, though tiring, weekend.

So now it's back to sewing! I am taking the rest of May to recover from the semester, so I will have some extra time to sew. (And clean. And maybe paint the family room.) I was looking around the sewing room this weekend (no, I wasn't cleaning! don't be silly!) and I pulled out this book:

This book is by Amy Ellis, who I just found out also blogs over at Amy's Creative Side. (I must be the last to know this.) This is a fantastic book! I love every pattern in here, in spite of my very mixed feelings about "modern" quilts. The quilts in this book are very creative and done mostly with simple shapes and easy sewing. No set-in seams or anything like that. I have a plan to make the cover quilt, but for now I am drawn to this one:

Digital pinwheels! A great pattern that will make a very nice quilt.

So. . .I love the patterns, but I am not much of a neutrals person. Making 30 beige and tan pinwheels would put me straight to sleep. So I dug out these fun fabrics:

Wow, that will wake you up, won't it? I have enough of the yellow for the background, and made some sample blocks to determine how to use the other colors. This is option 1:

Looks good! Here is option 2:

Hmmm. Could be a better picture, but I like the block. Option 3:

I like them all! I don't know if I can choose a color scheme; they're all so good. What if I put them all together?

Whoa. Party in the sewing room! About as far from neutrals as I can get, I think.

The yellow makes a great background color for this quilt. At first I was sure that I liked the turquoise center best, but now I'm leaning toward the red center. Or maybe all three colors together, because there are 30 blocks and that would allow for an even distribution of colors. I'm not sure! If you'd like to help me out, please leave me a comment.

I may not be sure about the exact color scheme, but I know that I'm planning to call this Fiesta Pinwheels. I think that name says it all. It kind of reminds me of Fiesta ware, the very colorful dishes that I wish I owned.

That's what I'm working on this week! Hope you are working on something festive as well!

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times and  Linky Tuesday and Show and tell Tuesday! Stop by and join the fun!