Boston Common

Hi all! As I write this, it is 63 degrees outside! It rained like crazy last night, but now it's sunny, and the weekend is supposed to be moderately nice. I've even been outside to do some garden cleanup. There are little green shoots everywhere. Spring is definitely here!

This week I finished the charm square Boston Common quilt:

Yes! All those charms are out of the closet and used up in a quilt!

This quilt used 130 charm squares and is about 56 by 72. I had to cut a few extra 5-inch squares because there were only 120 in the charm packs, but I don't think anyone can tell. The important part is that I did not buy anything for this quilt--it all came from things I had on hand.

As great as it is to use up those charms, it's also quite gratifying to use the border fabric. This border is the extra fabric that I cut from a backing from a quilt I made in 2009. It's from a line called Sunshine by April Cornell, and it could have been my favorite fabric ever. I'm so happy to use it here!  There are just a few little bits left over, which will get cut up and used as scraps.

I always intended this to be a donation quilt, and wouldn't it be terrific for Sarah's Hands to Help drive? I think it would be quite a cheerful break for someone undergoing chemo, so I'm pretty sure that's where this one will go.

I'm blaming the great weather for taking up some of my sewing time and keeping me from finishing other things this week, so here are a couple of sneak peeks for next week:

Tuesday is the next block for the Classic Stitches row quilt, and here's a peek a part of it:

Also, Wednesday will be a very special day here at the Academic Quilter--one year of blogging! I suspect there will be a small celebration of some sort. Here's a peek so you'll be sure to come back and check it out:

Hope everyone has a great weekend. If you celebrate Easter, I wish you a blessed and happy holiday. If you don't celebrate, I wish you a warm and happy weekend as well. We will be spending some time at church this weekend, and having Easter brunch together. And then Monday is Opening Day for baseball as well as the basketball championship game. Lots to be happy about right now!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  Link a Finish Friday and also Finish it up Friday. Happy sewing!

 

Framed!

Hi all, and welcome to the last day of March! We're already having some April showers, so flowers and green grass can't be too far behind. It was raining against the windows on Sunday and I couldn't identify the sound. I thought it might be an animal scratching at the window, but no--just unfrozen water falling from the sky. It's been a long time!

In the sewing room so far this week, I've been playing with the sawtooth stars that have crumb centers. I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do with them now that I've made three of them. A plain sawtooth star quilt doesn't really appeal to me, so I came up with this:

This could work!

The frame around the sawtooth star block is adapted from the Moda Love pattern, available HERE in 3 sizes (pdf).  Using this pattern as a frame is not a completely original idea. There is a group at my local quilt shop doing something very similar, but I am using smaller pieces so it fits my block. (I also used this pattern before to make something completely different. See HERE.)

Here is the yellow block:

These blocks are 24 by 24 each. I don't know if I'll use any sashing or anything yet, but this is a great size to make up a nice-sized lap quilt. And I like that they're different and not the same old thing. I think it's going to look good!

I still have to make the frame for the blue block. I didn't have a blue that I liked with the block, so I'll have to go get something in medium blue. What a hardship, I know.

Short post, but I hope you have a great, creative sewing week. Since this is Holy Week for western Christians, we have a few days off later in the week. I think we may try to work outside for the first time this year. Just cleanup, but it's something!

Happy sewing!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social and WIP Wednesday, and also Angela at soscrappy.

Quilty experiment

Hi folks! How was your week? Hope you got tons of things done, with time left over for some stitching, and that you had lots of sunshine. We had a cold and gray week, but I did get many things done, including a really exciting thing for work. It feels great to have that done, though I'm probably going to keep on tweaking it for a little while longer. I also had some time to sew.

The big thing I accomplished this week was to quilt up the Birds in the Air quilt:

Back on the fence!

All quilted, but no binding yet.  This was quilted on the 1966 Pfaff 362, using the embroidery unit. I don't think the embroidery functions had ever really been used. Maybe tested, but not used for any length of time. Pretty sure that my mother-in-law only used it for hemming and mending, and not at all for a good 15 years. I followed the directions in the manual--and thank goodness I had that!--and oiled the heck out of it and it sewed like a dream. It took some work to get all the settings right, but I really love this machine, even if it is cast iron and a real workout to lift and move around. A cabinet would be useful, but even if I could find one I don't know where I'd put it.

Since this wasn't an heirloom quilt or anything like that, I kept playing with the settings and stitch length and such and got some really fun wavy lines:

They're all different, but I don't care. It was an experiment to play with those stitches. I think it came out fine. Lots of texture! It will get a scrappy binding, probably this weekend. That uses up all that fabric! There's a win for sure.

One side effect of working on this was that now I want to make a "real" Birds in the Air quilt. I have pictures of some floors in the Vatican that look like quilt blocks, and one of them looks like a Birds quiltin dark jewel tones. Time to break out the list again!

I only finished quilting up the one top, but I did baste three of them, including the elephant quilt and the baby quilt sampler, and started stitching the pink baby quilt. I forgot how much time the actual quilting takes! I love having a room where I can just leave it and come back to it later. The elephants also got eyes and other details:

 

Nobody wants blind elephants! I don't know how anyone else did it, but these are just satin stitches using the regular machine. I put two layers of tear-away stabilizer behind the eyes because the first attempt without it turned out really awful. I wonder if I've ever made a quilt where I didn't have to rip out something. Have you?

Finally, one of the best things to happen to me this week: 

Those are day lily shoots! (And a few really hardy weeds. What will ever get rid of those things?) They're only about an inch high, so I nearly stepped on these on my way to pin the quilt to the fence. I am so, so excited to see these, even if we will have temperatures in the teens again this weekend. There will be flowers at some point!

Hope everyone has a great weekend. I expect to have time to quilt up those other two small quilts because there will be basketball again. And more basketball. And I'm pretty sure more basketball after that. Ah, well! It's only a few weeks a year! (And, whew! Wisconsin won Thursday.) Sunday is Palm Sunday, which means Easter is right around the corner. Can the end of the tournament be far behind?

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and  Link a Finish Friday. Happy sewing!

Tournament stitching

Hi folks! Has everyone had enough basketball yet? In case you hadn't noticed, there is a really big basketball tournament going on and it has taken over my television set. I swear that's all that's on it right now. Sorry--I'm informed that there are two tournaments--one for men and one for women. With 64 teams each, it's no wonder there's always a game going on.

While my husband has been glued to the tournaments, I've been upstairs sewing and streaming Netflix. (Netflix is just one of the many reasons I love the 21st century. Whoever thought this up is seriously a genius.)  I'm still actively avoiding my major projects right now, but I did get a LOT of cutting done, and some stitching, too. First, I finished up the bag made with the Noah fabric from 1987:

As you can see, we've had a little bit of spring snow. Heavy, wet, and gross, but it makes a pretty backdrop. This bag turned out to be about the size of a brown paper grocery bag, which is a great size for shopping.

The only thing I would change is that I should have made the handles a little longer. These wrap all around the bag for stability, which is good, but they're a little short on top. I tested the bag size and it will hold three cereal boxes, so this will probably live in the car and get used for groceries. (It will also hold a ton of fabric, so maybe it won't be limited to groceries!)

I also made up the yellow Paper Dolls:

I love the little hair ornament! And I'm so happy to use up that strawberry scrap. It makes a great dress!

I think I'm getting better at the hairstyles. Once I have a nice stack of them, I'll applique stitch the hair down and put in some details. The doll on the left is supposed to look like braids, and I think stitching in some details will really add some depth to it. And some detail stitching could also help the grandma in the middle there look less like she has a cupcake on her head.

While I was at it, I cut a bunch of sets of skin tones for future dolls, and also cut up some backgrounds for later too. That's going to save a lot of time next month, since the cutting is the most time-consuming part of these dolls.

The last thing I did was make some progress on the sort-of Boston Common quilt, which is being made from three sets of charm squares:

All that's left are two rounds of blues, which may or may not get done this week. I made a big mistake with this quilt by not cutting the charms all down to 4-1/2 inches so that they were all the same size. There are some big variations in size in these charms and that's made some of the seam matching difficult. But it's just a little relaxing quilt that will be donated, so it doesn't matter much, and the fabric is quite busy and hides a lot of fudging in those seams.

Other than that, I basted a couple of quilts this weekend and they are ready to quilt up. There is a lot of basketball coming later this week, so I'm pretty sure there will be some time for that after dinner every night!

Hope you get some stitching time in this week too. Or basketball watching--whatever floats your boat. May both your seams and your tournament brackets be perfect!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social and WIP Wednesday, and also Angela at soscrappy.