My calendar says it's winter, the temperatures outside say it's spring--trending toward summer (very strange in my part of the world; we had our bedroom window open last night)--and my quilting life has definitely been autumn this week. But that's okay. I've seen a lot of holiday quilting (looking at you, Lorna, and anyone quilting along with you) and summer quilting (at least for where I live--looking at you again, Lorna). Anyway, I have an autumn quilt finish!!
I started this quilt in late August 2015. I pieced it in just a few weeks but then decided to hand quilt it. It became my travel project, taking much longer than it needed to--and in recent weeks, my evening obsession.
I think I've done about 10 posts on this one in addition to some Instagrams. If you'd like to see the posts, click on the Fall Maple Quilt label on the right sidebar.
This quilt has seen a lot. It's traveled to northern Michigan at least once, maybe two or three times. It's been to daycare at the Grands (for naptime when I didn't fall asleep myself) and on several train trips, one to Colorado. It has a small smudge on the back from one of those train trips and has a tiny repair where I had to patch in a piece of fabric with some fusible web where fabric along a seam started to shred while I was quilting (but with the busy fabric and dense quilting, no one will know it's there except me--and even I have trouble finding it). Most glaring to me is the wonkiness of the quilting in the border. I started out with parallel lines about 1/4 inch apart. By the time I got to the end, the lines were 3/8 inch apart and nowhere near parallel to the edge. But I don't mind. The texture looks fine. And this quilt border represents a triumph for me since I worked on it while I was pretty much incapacitated in other ways with a broken shoulder.
The best thing I learned making this quilt is that if it's too hard to see what you are doing when you're quilting, you can quilt from the backside instead. I did that on all of the blue parts of the quilt. I was using a variegated blue thread (and often poor lighting in hotels or on the train), and quilting from the back just made more sense. This worked because I had already quilted around the leaves and borders so I could see exactly what needed to be filled in.
Here are a few close ups, then I'll give you the details.
Here are the details:
Pattern: From Ruth B. McDowell in her book Piecing Workshop
Technique: Freezer paper piecing, which I learned from Ruth's book, not to be confused with foundation paper piecing
Front Fabrics: All scraps from my stash.
Batting: Mountain Mist polyester
Backing: Moda Bella Solids in Feather
Quilting thread: Blue variegated (#570, Little Prince) Treasure Cotton Hand Quilting thread from Superior Threads; other various colors of random hand quilting threads from my stash
Binding: 1/4 inch batik (cut 2 inches wide) from my stash. I usually use 3/8 inch binding, but I didn't want this one to show much. I thought of using colorful scraps, but decided that I wanted the leaves to stay in the spotlight. My quilt edges are often just a bit ripply even though I really try to keep everything straight. This time I measured my binding each time I turned a corner and made sure that it matched the measurement for the length of the quilt side as determined by the diameter through the center of the quilt. I think I did better, and blocking may take out any irregularity that remains.
Embellishment: 5 ceramic buttons from a collection I bought a few years ago from Sandra Lance, a ceramic artist who was living in Vermont at the time. I love how they blend in with the fabrics but shine like little gems.
Size: 28 1/4 inches by 36 1/2 inches. I don't plan to wash this, so that's the finished size.
I'm looking forward to hanging this quilt next fall. Not that I want that time to come any time soon. I want to enjoy each day until then just as it comes. No wishing time away.
Oh no, I just realized that I have no hand project to work on now. I may need to do something about that. I do have 2 WIPs to finish--my hexies quilt and the ever-with-me Lake Michigan quilt. That lake quilt always gets pushed to the bottom of the WIPs for some reason--maybe it's a confidence problem? It's near the top now. No where else to go! I do have another quilt that's been muddling around in my mind. I suppose I should also call that a WIP because now there are fabric bits scattered all over the guest bed, too. The muddling is not just in my mind anymore. More on that next week.
Have a lovely weekend, no matter what season or pseudo-season you are in right now in this wonderful seasonal mash-up!
I'm linking up this week with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social, Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? and Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for Oh Scrap!
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Or I could say "Slow Fall Stitching" or "Slow Stitching Fall." And any of them could be appropriate. It is the season of fall--well, almost. In my state, anything after Labor Day is pretty much fall. And the stitching I'm doing is fall, as in a fall wall hanging. And I am stitching. Barely. (More on that in a moment.) And I am slow. Oh, am I so slow.
You see, fall has special meaning for me right now. About 10 days ago, I took a fall. It was a case of distracted bicycling. I was looking at a billboard while taking a ride on a path near our home. Then suddenly, I realized that I was headed right for one of those posts that they put in the middle of paths for I don't know what reason. Maybe for caution, or to keep cars off the path? Who knows? I overcorrected, and in a hot second that lasted forever, I fell over. My shoulder took the full force of the fall. My bike is fine, but me? Not so much.
I broke the ball at the top of my upper left arm bone. I'm told that's the humerus bone, but there's nothing humorous about it. (Yup, had to throw that in there.) Anyway, there are a couple of fractures there as well as some splintering. The usual treatment for this kind of injury is about 6 weeks of wearing a sling followed by therapy, but those splinters are something of a concern. So now I am waiting for review of results of a CT scan to determine if some surgery is needed. I'll find out late tomorrow (I hope).
I am mostly right handed, but I write with my left hand, not that actual penmanship figures highly in my life right now. But really, most of what we do is two-handed or at least two-sided--even getting up from a chair or sitting down. So this has me in a pickle. I can't do two of my favorite activities right now: biking or quilting. A third activity is quickly zooming to the top of the list, too: washing myself. Instant road to insanity.
But I do have a fall quilt I've been slow stitching on for quite awhile. It's pretty small, and I'm working on the outer edges. So, determined quilter that I am (aren't we all?), I've been figuring out a work-around subbing in lots of pillows for my left arm. I'm using a very small, square hoop (no, I guess, it's technically a frame, not a hoop), and if I keep the part I'm quilting only a hand's width from the bottom of the frame. I can get my left hand under it supported by the pillows and quilt normally with my right.
Here's a picture to prove it.
And here's one that shows the border better.
I'm doing this pretty much free hand, and it's going to be slightly wonky anyway, so if I get a little off track, I'll just remember that I was doing this when I thought I'd have to lay off quilting for 6 weeks or more.
I've only quilted about 8 inches this way so far, but I'm determined to do it so, so slowly or not.
Meanwhile, I've downloaded the Quiltography app for my ipad, and have been happily doing virtual quilt making with my index finger. I had read about this app from Bernie at Needle and Foot. You can read her post about it here. If I hadn't broken my shoulder I might never have downloaded it, because I'm a technophobe, so there's that silver lining. It's remarkably easy to use, and fun! And I'm not getting paid to say this.
I'm really hoping I get semi-good news tomorrow, and that I'll be able to avoid surgery because I'd hate to lose the progress I've made these ten days, but I have to focus on what will ultimately bring the best outcome. My blog posts might become more irregular than they already are, but please hang in there with me. I'll try to put something up sometime each week.
If you'd like to see the rest of this quilt, click on the Fall Maple Quilt label at either the bottom of this post or on the sidebar. Oh, and just so you know, I think from now on I'll be referring to fall the season as autumn. Don't need any more reminders of falling this fall--er, autumn.
I'm linking up today with Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts. I won't take time to put her button on my site yet. I'm having a hard enough time keyboarding with one hand on this post (I keep mixing up the Shift and Enter keys), but I'll put one up when I can. Just click on her link.
Have a good week everybody, and if you bike, don't bike distracted!
This post should be called "A Whole Lot of Fun and a Bit of Progress." Right after I finished my last post, I found out that two of my grandkiddies (and their mommy) were coming for the weekend and into this week. Yippee!! We had a blast playing with balls, books and Barbies, taking walks, and playing in our backyard water park aka the sprinkler. That sprinkler hasn't been out in years--we don't water our lawn--but it was perfect for a fun evening of cooling off, and I think our poor dry grass appreciated it, too. Our grandson's favorite word right now is "basketball," and we discovered on our walks that there are LOTS of basketball hoops in our neighborhood. Our granddaughter learned how to play "Sorry," and of course, won her first game. (It sure was fun to send Mommy and Gramma back to "start.")
That was the fun part. Now they've gone back home, and it's kind of quiet here. But here's the progress part (also fun, but I do miss those little kids). While I was waiting for the grandkids to arrive on Saturday, I pulled out my Fall Maple quilt to work on. It's usually my travel project, but we haven't been travelling lately, so I think it should be my "sit on the deck in the evenings" project. Anyway, I got quite a bit done.
(Remember, I'm quilting this one from the back so I can see what I'm doing. If you want to see the front, click on the Fall Maple Quilt label in the column on the right.)
Today, I'm cutting out blocks for a rainbow colored Quilt for Pulse (Orlando Modern Quilt Guild). I've got the biggest block parts and some of the background cut:
Some of the blocks are paper pieced, some will be a slice and insert technique and the rest will be the large heart blocks from Cluck Cluck Sew. I'm also making some words. I was just going to make the big blocks, but a variation on the design came to me as I started thinking about making the quilt. Here's the paper pieced pattern:
I'm almost done with my wedding gift quilt--just need to hand stitch the binding to the last two sides. Woohoo! And I've put the Lake Michigan quilt back up on the design wall.
Looks like I might be working on three quilts at once for a little while. So maybe a little bit of progress will turn into a lot of progress one of these days.
I'm linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation for their linky parties this week. Click on the buttons on the sidebar to see lots of awesome quilt projects.
I hope you're having a whole lot of fun and making a little bit (or a lot) of quilt progress this week.
Having just finished a project, I'm getting back into other things, so I have some randoms to share today.
First some cool pictures. We recently took a trip from Chicago to Colorado by train--my favorite way to travel. I didn't take any pictures on the train (much of our travel was during the night), but I have some indelible images in my mind of two breathtaking sunrises--one against the mountains turning the snow pink and a neon orange and gold one over the plains on the way home--and a nighttime view of the landscape in the plains illuminated by a full moon. I did take some pictures at Union Station in Denver while we were waiting for our return trip. The station was restored a few years ago. The lobby, surrounded by restaurants and hotel rooms, is a delightful place to while away an afternoon; my husband found access to the hotel's Wi-Fi and I was content to quilt.
Here's the station's exterior. (I was too close to get the whole thing in one picture, so imagine these three stacked as one):
Lots of quilty inspiration here!! And here's the inside:
Delightful! (No other word for it.) It's hard to get good pictures in such an open space. There were little seating areas all around (I should have got pictures of them), but I just wanted to keep looking up at all of the beautiful moldings and light fixtures.
When I packed for the trip, one of my top priorities was leaving room in my luggage for a small quilt and a collapsible PVC quilt frame so I could do some hand quilting on the train and in our hotel during the evenings.) So here's what I was working on:
Most of my quilting on the background of this quilt is from the back. It's stippling and doesn't really show on the front, so it's much easier to do it from the back where I can see what I'm doing.
Oh, and while we were on our trip, I got an email from Hawthorne Threads letting me know that I had won a bundle of fabric!! Yea! I have been entering their giveaways for a long time, but this was my first win. By the time I got home, my package had arrived.
Here's my bundle:
Paperie by Amy Sinibaldi for Art Gallery Fabrics. Silky smooth and delicious! They also sent me three of their digital fabric sample strips (Roam, Forest Fables and Norwegian Wood):
Aren't they great?! I don't think it will be long before they find their way into some special quilts.
So this week, I'm back working on other projects that are waiting for a finish. Our weather's the same as it was last week. Schools were off yesterday and again today. I didn't take any pictures this time. Just look at my ones from last week. They look the same. The weird thing, though, is that between last week's post and this week's, the snow melted almost completely. (Actually, that's kind of typical for this time of year.) Perfect weather for quilting. And painting. After days weeks months years of dithering about paint colors for our bedroom, I finally picked one (and even bought the paint). I forced the issue by painting splotches on the walls to audition them. Good plan, don't you think? So sometime in the next few days there will be more painting than quilting.
In the meantime, I added some beach bits to my Lake Michigan quilt.
It's a slow process. I think I need to add a little "dry" sand between the wet sand and the dune. (Seam ripper time, but that's okay)
Have a great week. And if you've never taken a train trip before, do consider it. If you're in the US, it's a great way to see America's backyard and to get some perspective of the vastness of our country. There are lots of little stories I could tell you about the microcosm of a coach car, but you just have to experience it for yourself. (And don't forget to take a little quilt project with for some slow stitching.)
I'm linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts today for Let's Bee Social.
Yippee!! I have a finish. But I can't show you quite yet. Soon, though. Grandbaby's due anytime in the next week or so.
I also finished hand quilting the leaves on the Fall Maple Quilt and started working on the background.
I was going to do the background in a tight little stipple by machine. But I've enjoyed the hand quilting so much in the evenings that I'm going to do it by hand instead. I'm not in a hurry to have it done (I have another fall quilt already hanging up that I finished about a year ago), and I've decided that I'd like to always have something available to work on by hand, at home or away. This is a good project for that.
If you look at where the yellow and orange come together, you can see a tiny bit of quilting in the blue triangle below them. I started that last night. It was kind of a slow process because I couldn't see where I was going. I kept turning the quilt over to check it on the back. And then I had an inspiration. I can quilt the background from the back side! Because the leaves are all finished, I can see exactly where I need to go. Genius, right? I can save my eyesight and get the texture I want on the front.
See those squiggles? Now I'm so glad I used the pale gray on the back.
Tomorrow I'll get out the Big Quilt to work on again. But today I got started on a new project. And I got out the fabrics I needed before I blocked my fabric drawers. (Remember what happened here?) My daughter has asked me to make her a new quilt for her office. She loves Lake Michigan, so it was an easy decision to make a landscape quilt. I made a tiny one as a Christmas ornament for her family last year.
I usually make these quilts (based on Accidental Landscapes by Karen Eckmeier) quite small, but I'm going to try one approximately 30 inches tall. Today I threw some fabric up on the wall to audition.
There will be lots of rearranging and viewing in grayscale before I start cutting and pinning the layered curves. And I'm sure there will be some embroidery, too. The rulers are there to help me visualize straight edges. I'm considering some foliage-looking fabrics as sort of side borders to give the scene some depth. I'll have to figure out how to do that.
And now I'll leave you with a picture of my granddaughter coloring. (The grandkiddies were here with their parents over the weekend.) I don't usually put photos of the grands on my blog, but I thought this was so cute, and it protects her privacy. She found this old straw hat on my treadle and thought it made the perfect accessory. As she colored, she explained color mixing. Did you know that red and blue make purple? Hmmm, maybe someday she'll want to mix some fabric colors.
I'm linking up this week with Freemotion by the River, Freshly Pieced, Sew Fresh Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation for their linky parties. Buttons are on the right.
Have a good week. And have fun with your take-along projects.
I got back to the Big Quilt this past week. I figure it's now about a third of the way quilted. Here's a quick picture:
I also got my grandbaby quilt all basted and ready to quilt, so I'll have to take another break on the Big Quilt. Baby's due in 3 to 4 weeks.
On Sunday, we left for a few days of vacation "Up North" in Michigan. I even did some quilting there--hand quilting on my Fall Maple Quilt. I did some of the work on the balcony of our hotel room, but yesterday it was a little too cool and windy, so I positioned my easy chair in front of the door so I could still enjoy the bay through the window.
Now, on to the vacation part of this post. If you visited just to see quilt pictures/progress, you can stop reading here. But we had a great time, and I'm going to post some lots of pictures, not only because I like to share my beautiful state, but because what we saw was amazing and inspiring. Quilt-spiration?
We planned this trip earlier this summer and were eager to bike ride the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail, which runs about 18 miles through forests and along dunes by Lake Michigan between Empire and Port Oneida. Seven new miles have been added since we rode the trail a year ago.
The area is incredibly beautiful, but about two months ago, a devastating storm passed through, destroying large areas of forest. (Even the hotel we stayed at 25 miles away did not escape damage, with sections of siding torn off.) For a little while we were afraid that the trail would not be open for our vacation. It is on National Park land, and the general policy is to let nature take its course rather than clearing away damage after a natural event. However, volunteer crews were allowed to move trees that were obstructing the trail, and they worked quickly to clear them despite many of the workers being without power in their own homes for a week.
Monday, a gorgeous day with temperatures in the 70s F, we rode the trail, not knowing what we would find. This is what most of the trail looked like when we rode it a year ago:
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Now, although much of the trail is still beautiful, miles of it are heavily damaged. On our ride, we first came upon this:
And then, later, this:
The destruction went on for miles. In Glen Arbor, a resort town along the way, cottages that were hidden in the forest are now exposed with acres of stumps around them. As we rode through the town, we could hear chain saws and heavy equipment removing toppled trees--and this was nearly two months after the storm. It was heartbreaking to see such a loss of beauty, but at the same time, we were amazed at the small amount of damage to buildings. And, as far as I know, no human life was lost. The area is changed forever, but tourists have returned, and the communities that were affected are once again in business getting ready for the fall color season. The trail is still beautiful, hauntingly so now, and I know that over time, nature will grow up and cover the scars. It will be beautiful in a different way, and I look forward to visiting often to see how it changes.
Here are a few other scenes along the way:
Color is just beginning Up North, but we came upon this little area of marsala-colored trees. The colors in this remind me of my coleus--I still think there is a quilt calling to me in this color scheme.
This is a restored fruit cannery building in a little "ghost" town along Lake Michigan. I never get tired of looking at it against the brilliant blue water. Definitely more inspiration for a quilt. I have a zillion pictures of it, but am restraining myself and only showing one.
Yesterday, a cold front came through with some rain and a 20 degree drop in temperatures. We spent the day antiquing. Then, this morning, more sunshine and a feeling of fall in the air, so we took a hike at Empire Bluff on Lake Michigan before heading home.
The sky and water were so many shades of turquoise and blue--I kept trying to assign Kona color names to them. Always the quilter!
If you're still with me, I hope you enjoyed my little travelogue. Thanks to my husband for taking the pictures. (We have a LOT--thanks to the digital age!)
I'm hurrying to link up today with Freshly Pieced and with Sew Fresh Quilts. Buttons are on the right.
I hope you're having a great week and finding quilty inspiration in whatever you do.
I know that for many of you today is the first day of spring, but where I live it is the first day of fall (or maybe I should say autumn--a more elegant word, perhaps). And we've had a glorious day: clear blue skies, temperature in the 60's F in the shade but warmer in the sun, and just a hint of color in the tops of some of the trees.
To celebrate, here's the beginning of my quilting on the Fall Maple Quilt:
I'm hand quilting the leaves, stitching first along the edges and then putting in some veins. I know that using perle cotton is common in today's quilts, but I'm using threads from my stash that are probably about #30 weight. I really do enjoy quilting with them. I'm still considering quilting the background by machine with tiny stipples to really make the leaves stand out if my machine likes quilting through the batting. I'm using Mountain Mist polyester batting, regular loft. It's a little thicker than I've used on wall hangings, but it's what I had on hand left over from another project. I forgot how easy it is to hand quilt polyester!
Here's a close up of the leaf:
And from the back:
I'm using some fabric that I ordered for another project awhile back. It's a very light gray, but tends to look like recycled white paper, and I decided that I wouldn't care for it on the front of a quilt--it tends to look dingy. But it's perfect for a back, right?
I'm using several colors of thread, with no real plan for what goes where. (So freeing.) One more picture, just because. The light was perfect for showing off quilting.
And then, I walked around to check out the late summer flowers. Oh, my.
No quilting to show on the Big Quilt this week, but I got a lot done on the baby quilt I can't show you yet. The back is all pieced. This is a bit of a problem. I now have three quilts at the quilting stage. I ran out of basting pins, so I had to buy some more. So much for multi-quilting. Does this mean I have to start a fourth project?? Oh, no...
I'm linking up this week with Freemotion by the River, Freshly Pieced, Sew Fresh Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation for their linky parties. Buttons are on the right.
I hope the new season brings you lots of good quilty fun.
