Hands2Help Finishes

When I decided to join the Hands2Help challenge hosted by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, I knew that I would use a group of charm packets I had "won" in a giveaway from Moda. (You can read that story here.) What I didn't realize until I started planning the first quilt was that I had plenty of charms to make two quilts--with more to spare. The charms were from a lot of different collections, but they coordinated well together with similar vintage-y looks and colors and a good spread of values. 

For the first quilt, I included charms with floral motifs and then filled in with other patterns. I did not pay much attention to color, but focused on dark, medium and light values, and I named the quilt Old Fashioned Values because--well, vintage and color values. The pattern is based on Flower Patch Quilt by Kathryn Ludowese.

Even a light breeze makes a quilt into a sail. I fought it with hangers attached to the bottom of the quilt. Not too classy, but they did the job. 

If you look closely at the back, you can see narrow strips of another fabric at the top and bottom of the backing. I wasn't planning on making pieced backs for these quilts because I knew that my time for making them would be limited, so I bought one length of fabric for the two quilts. I forgot to compensate for shrinkage when I pre-washed it, though, so it was about four inches too short. I happened to have some fabric in my stash that was a good match. So this backing got just a bit of unplanned piecing, but it all worked out fine in the end, and I was able to use up some stash. Always a good thing. I used a combination of walking foot quilting and FMQ. I even learned how to use the guide bar thingie that came with my walking foot to help space the lines. I really like how the alternating lines and meanders look together--and they show up nicely on the back, too.

For the second quilt, I bought a light print to use as a background for the remaining charms, then pieced them randomly. After I put them up willy nilly on the design wall, I decided to try a gradation of values from very dark in one corner to very light in the opposite corner. I spent a WHOLE DAY arranging and rearranging and generally driving myself crazy taking picture after picture to view in grayscale. In the end, I decided that I just didn't have a good variety of values left to make it work, so I went back to the random layout.  I'm calling this quilt Leftovers! After I made it, it occurred to me that the general design--especially the layout I was trying with the values--is similar to Pocketful of Sunshine by Sandra at mmm! quilts (the pattern that got so many downloads on Craftsy). I told her I was unwittingly channeling her! So, yeah. Sandra is my inspiration for this one. 

I worked really hard to make widely spaced meanders (not like my usual denser quilting). I like how soft the quilt feels with less quilting. I also confirmed with this quilt that I prefer quilting away from myself (pulling the quilt toward me) when I can. I can see what I've done, and I don't put as much drag on the quilt as I pull it around. 

Now, don't go away yet. There are more pictures to share. I usually take pictures of quilts on my neighbor's fence, but it slopes downhill a bit, which makes things a little wonky, and it's getting boring. So I am determined to find and use more attractive locations. This past week, I ventured out beyond the confines of my backyard to visit our neighborhood sledding hill for a photo shoot in nature. I'll show those pictures in a minute. But first the details for these quilts: 

Old Fashioned Values Quilt
Size: 68 by 54 1/2 inches before quilting 
         67 by 53 1/2 after quilting 
         63 7/8 by 51 7/8 after washing/drying

Batting: Warm and Natural
   
Leftovers! Quilt
Size: 69 by 57 inches before quilting 
         67 by 56 after quilting 
         64 1/4 by 53 1/4 after washing/drying

Batting: I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it was all cotton. I bought it off a bolt awhile ago thinking it was Quilter's Dream Select, but I'm not sure it was. It was harder to quilt than the Warm and Natural--my needle seemed to have some trouble piercing little "knobs" across the surface. It does have a good drape and feels a little spongy--in a good way. 

Sashing: 2 inch strips (1 1/2 inches finished), tan-on-white vine print from Joann (no info on selvage).
Borders: 2 1/4 inch strips (1 3/4 inches finished), same print from Joann.

Both Quilts  
Machines: Singer Featherweight for piecing; Singer 115 treadle for quilting

Thread: Superior Masterpiece in Granite for piecing. Superior King Tut in White Linen for quilting. 

Collections of Moda charms: 
Collection for a Cause Mill Book Series circa 1889 by Howard Marcus
Garden House by Jan Patek Quilts
Larkspur by 3 Sisters
Lizzie's Legacy 1850-1880 by Betsy Chutchian
Songbird Gatherings by Primative Gatherings
Southern Exposure by Laundry Basket Quilts
The Potting Shed by  Holly Taylor
Ville Fleurie by French General

Backings: Mostly a vine print by Fabric Traditions, plus a little extra unknown print from my stash for the shortage on the Old Fashioned Values quilt.
Bindings: Unknown old print from my stash (leftover from a quilt I made for my son-in-law when he was in college).


Okay, more pictures. After all, they'll be all I have left after I give the quilts away.

It doesn't look like it, but that's quite a big hill for sledding.

Play structure at the top of another hill.

I'm still learning how to display the quilts, but it was a fun photo shoot, and now I know I'll be on the lookout for other places to record my quilts.

I am truly grateful to Moda for sending me these charms. At first I didn't think they were my style, but I really had fun sorting them by value and motif, and now that the quilts are done, I like them! A lot! I don't have much experience sewing with charms and wasn't sure I'd enjoy it. But I was impressed with how neat the tiny pinking on the edges stayed through a LOT of handling. I would definitely sew with charms again. 

These two quilts will be on their way to give comfort and hope to patients through Happy Chemo. 

I'm linking up today with the Hands2Help linky party at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and the rest of the week, with My Quilt Infatuation, TGIFF, Free Motion Mavericks, and Crazy Mom Quilts. I'll add the links as the week progresses. Buttons for most are also on the right sidebar.  

Have a lovely week, no matter who you are quilting for!

Quick H2H Update

Just realized there's an opportunity to show my progress on my Hands 2 Help donation for Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. So here's what I've got:

I decided to quilt the second quilt first since it's quick, simple meandering. Then I can get the binding put on this week and stitch it down in the evenings while I quilt the first quilt during the day. No florals in this one. Some vines though. Hopefully it will appeal to someone who doesn't care for florals or light/bright colors. (Okay, I admit it, I'm thinking "man," but that seems sexist, doesn't it?) I'll show the whole quilt at the final link-up party.

Have a good week, and be sure to check out Sarah's blog for the fun guest post from Joanne today. 

Basting!

I found myself with two quilts to baste this week. I usually baste them on a folding banquet table on risers. It takes me a long time, and I do a lot of re-positioning to get everything square and smooth. I really don't like basting part of a quilt and then shifting everything over to do the rest. Last year I had to baste a quilt that was way too big to do on my table. The only place I had room for it was on my basement floor. Crawling around on the floor was literally a pain, but that quilt was so smooth after basting that I had no trouble keeping it smooth while quilting it. It really helped to have the whole back secured at once.

I decided to do something to combine the quality of the floor basting with the comfort of standing up to baste. A few weeks ago there was a sale on banquet tables at a nearby big box store, so I bought another along with more risers. When it was time to baste this week, I set the tables up next to each other. 

My husband calls these Mickey Mouse legs.

Together, they are the perfect size for most of the quilts I make. And a bonus is that I can use the "seams" where the two tables come together and where they fold in half to center the quilt and keep it square. No more re-positioning and trying to smooth and square everything again. I clamped the backing on the sides and taped it on the ends (I need a few more clamps), quickly smoothed the batting and first quilt top over it, and finished the basting in a very short time. 

Oh, my. I still had time to baste the second quilt!  

Using two tables together means I have to baste in the basement, which is not the most attractive environment, but now I can boast that I have a three-story quilt studio. Ha!

And now I have two quilts to finish! I'm halfway through the first one. I'm trying really hard to do big meanders so that it stays nice and soft. Big meanders are a challenge for me. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I have to move the quilt around more than when I do little meanders. But it's going well, and I love the feel of the quilt with less quilting than I normally do. 

You might recognize this quilt as the top I made with the leftover charm squares from my Old Fashioned Values top. Well, here's another story about those charm squares. Awhile back when I was rummaging in the closet, I heard something fall, but I didn't know what it was and couldn't find it. As part of my closet clean-out a couple of weeks ago, I removed a bookcase so my husband could paint it. And there behind it was a charm pack! It turns out that the windfall of charms I "won" was 12 packs, not 11! So I sent the extra one on to Shelley to share more of the wealth. Good thing I moved that bookcase, or who knows when I would ever have found those extra charms?!

If you noticed the little addition to my side bar, you might already have seen the pictures above. Yes, I finally joined Instagram and made an account just for my quilting projects. I couldn't use Instagram before because I didn't have a smartphone. My previous phone was this one: 

You laugh, but it was a really good phone--it got reception everywhere!! And at the time, all I needed was something to make calls and text on. But after more than 12 1/2 years (!) it finally lost its ability to keep a charge, so I made the scary move (for a technophobe like me) to upgrade in a major way. Now that I'm catching up with the social media world, I'll be sharing pictures when I'm not posting on the blog. (And as I get used to this format, I hope the pictures will mostly be different from the ones I show here.) Fun! I would love to put my Instagram pictures on the sidebar, but apparently with the platform I use for blogging, that would require going through an intermediate website, and I don't want to do that--at least for the time being. So if you'd like to see the pictures, you can just click on the link to follow me. 

Okay, that's it for new stuff this week. Tomorrow I'll post something from my quilting past for Throwback Thursday. 

Oh, one more picture. Our front yard Spring Snow crabapple is pretty much at peak today. Love Spring! But it's supposed to rain, and I'm afraid the petals will be washed off by tomorrow.

I'm linking up today with Sew Fresh Quilts. Have a great quilting week, and I hope you have something fun to baste!

Leftovers! Quilt

Val over at Val's Quilting Studio asked us to share what's on our design wall this week. My design wall is a bargain bin window curtain hung on a rod with leftover seam binding. (I thought I could hang it with the grommets, but it was too wavy.) I keep meaning to get some clips, but I just never get around to it. I basted some quilt batting to the curtain with big hand stitches. I've been meaning to stitch lines to make a nice grid, but I just never get around to it. (Is there a theme here?) Oh well, the curtain wall works fine for me, and I can take it down quickly when I need to use the guest room.

So here's what's on it this week:

The squares are leftovers of the Old Fashion Values top I was working on last week with just a few pieces thrown in from my stash. Do you see where two sashing strips fell off before I took the picture? I didn't even notice them until I posted this. There will be sashing strips going the other way, too, and a strip around the outer edge. This quilt will be donated with its partner when I'm done. I'm hoping it will appeal to a man who doesn't care for florals. But now that I'm looking at this picture, I might rearrange the squares with the values more in mind. I have an idea. Stay tuned. Oh, and there's another funny little story attached to these charms. I can't tell you about it yet, but I will next week. 

Meanwhile the great closet clean-up continues. I can't even bring myself to take a picture. I took out the bookcase so my husband could paint it. I've been calling him Eldin the Painter after a sit-com character on the Murphy Brown show in the '80's and '90's who worked for years on a never-ending house painting project. Of course, I had to pile up all the stuff from the bookcase. (I know. I need to sort it.) Then I decided to have him paint a small chest, so all the stuff from that is piled up, too. Someone did comment recently that it gets worse before it gets better when you reorganize your sewing space, and boy, does it ever!. I have managed to sort some files out, so that's good. I also ordered some pretty storage bins, so I'm slowly getting there. Oh, and Eldin has painted my piano stool turned sewing stool, but I'll wait to show that until I get a new cushion cover made. 

Meanwhile, spring has sprung. 

And remember those silly ducks I mentioned awhile back that were thinking of building a nest by our neighbor's pool? Well, they did eventually build a nest in another neighbor's yard behind us. Eleven eggs!

Unfortunately, the nest was raided the other night, and we have found the eggs scattered around our two yards. Such is spring in the animal kingdom. But what pretty eggs! New paint color name idea: Mallard Egg Green.

And on that cheery thought, I'll get this posted on Val's site as well as Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social. I hope you are enjoying your design wall, or curtain or floor or whatever this week. 

Old Fashion Values Top

Well, here it is less than a week since my last post, and I have a new top to share. Wow, did this go fast!

Last week I shared this pile of charm squares. 

There's a little story that goes with them. Back in October I got an email from Shelley over at The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts. She had noticed on Facebook that the Moda company was trying to locate someone named Janine Marie for a giveaway. She thought that person might be me. I enter a lot of giveaways, and I can't always remember what ones I've entered, so I contacted Moda and told them my name and that I didn't know if I was the person they were looking for and that I honestly couldn't remember entering their giveaway. But I jokingly said that if they wanted to give me their fabric bundles, I'd happily take them They said my profile picture didn't match their information, and I figured that was that. But then they contacted me and said that since they couldn't find the winner, they'd send me the bundles. 11 charm packs!! That's a lot of fabric squares!!

So, I finally am getting around to using them. This week I laid out and sewed a quilt top for the Hands2Help Charity Challenge hosted by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I thought it might be hard to do. You see, these fabrics are not really my current style, but I am committed to using them. And someone else might like them a lot--maybe someone who is really into historic looking fabrics or antiques. 

First, I looked around for ideas for sewing charms. I found the Flower Patch Quilt by Kathryn Ludowese at the Moda Bake Shop, which seems appropriate since I'm working with Moda fabrics. The quilt was made with a layer cake (10-inch squares) and 7-inch squares, but I knew I could scale it back to use the charms. That pattern became my inspiration, although I constructed it differently, as you'll see below.

All of the packs-even though they were from different fabric collections--coordinated quite well with each other. So here's what I decided to do. I ignored the colors and patterns for the most part and divided them into values. First, I put the darks and mediums on the wall in columns:

Then I took my lighter fabrics to make triangles in the corners of the dark squares. The pattern called for a Stitch and Flip (sometimes called Flip and Sew) technique--sewing across a smaller square diagonally in the corner of each larger square and then flipping it to make a triangle. If I had done that, I would have wasted a big part of the smaller square and run out of my light charms, so instead I cut each light charm in half diagonally. Here's how they looked laid out to get an idea of placement: 

And here's what I did to sew them together. (I still sewed with the Stitch and Flip technique, but with a triangle instead of a square.)

Dark charm with half light charm

Triangle marked off on a ruler--forgot about seam allowance so my finished light triangle turned out a bit bigger than planned, but it looked fine.

Triangle pinned in place

Quick mark of the quarter inch line with a pencil since my machine doesn't have a quarter inch foot

Ready to chain piece

Zipping along, and then I discovered...

that if I turned the patches around, the other side of my foot is a scant quarter inch. Who knew?? Could have saved myself a step marking the seam allowance. 

 After sewing all of the triangles, I flipped them and trimmed them up even with the base square. (Forgot to take a picture). By doing the triangles this way, I could get two triangles for each light charm (with very little waste) and had just enough light squares for the quilt. The rest of the construction was just squares--so easy!! Here's how everything came together, super fast:

I don't know if you can tell, but I tried to put most of the lightest values of triangles along the edges and down the center with more tannish ones in the other two columns. The finished top is 54-1/2 by 68 inches.

As I was working, a name for the quilt came to me: Old Fashioned Values--not as a political, religious or cultural statement or anything, but because the fabrics seemed old fashioned to me and I was working with values. Quilt names aren't important to me--I never named my quilts until I started writing about them--and then it became convenient as a way to reference them on the blog. Anyway, this quilt pretty much named itself. It was really good practice in working with values. I only made a few changes in fabric placement after putting the patches on the wall, using my trusty old binoculars to reduce the quilt and compare the values. 

I used part of 8 charm packs to make this, and I have enough charms left to make another quilt. What about the other 3 packs? I set them aside and plan to send them to Shelley as a thank you gift for helping me "win" this windfall of charms. In a later post I'll tell you the names of the charm packs.

I'm linking up today with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social, and on the 17th I'll link up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for the Hands2Help Linky.

Finish for a Big Girl Bed

The Quilt for a Big Girl Bed is finished. Yippee! I thought this would be such a simple quilt when I started it at the beginning of September! I never dreamed it would take me this long. There were some bumps along the way, but overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out. I'm especially glad that I took the time to redo part of the back.

My husband took pictures in the backyard on Wednesday afternoon. It was dark and there were flurries in the air, but that was the best we could do this week. Yesterday, it wasn't much lighter and the flurries were a little bigger. I'm trying to use better settings for my quilt pictures. That's a little hard to do in our yard with the leaves off the trees now. I "borrowed" the neighbor's fence, clamped on some coaxial cable, and then clothes pinned the quilt. Better than a headless quilt with legs, I guess. So here it is (in between gusts of wind) to get the documentation of the full quilt:

All of the colorful fabrics except the yellow/white print are from the City Weekend collection by oliver + s for Moda. The yellow/white is Garden Trellis from Michael Miller. These fabrics are the ones my daughter used to decorate my granddaughter L's nursery. I also used them in the baby quilt I made for L. (I think I'll do a separate post about that quilt next week for Throwback Thursday.) The five white/gray prints are from a collection called Get Back! (I don't know the designer or manufacturer, but they're super soft.) I used them on the back, too. The binding is a little stripe from the City Weekend fabric. It's kind of quiet, but it was the only fabric I had enough of to make the binding. 

And now for a slightly more artsy shot:

There is snow on this deck today.

And some inside ones to show it on a bed and close up for the quilting:

Purposely dark pictures to show the quilting

Okay, enough pictures.

I machine pieced the quilt on my Singer featherweight and machine quilted it on my Singer 115-1 treadle using Superior King Tut thread in White Linen. The flower pattern in the colored squares is my own design inspired by one of the white/gray fabric prints, and the rest of the quilting is meandering. The batting is Quilters Dream Cotton White in Select loft. I machine sewed the binding. It's narrower on the back than the front--I pulled it over the front a little more than I needed to. 

So what did I learn making this quilt? I think the biggest thing I learned (besides how to unsew parts of a backing and how to quilt through a paper pattern) was about sizing. When I first started quilting many years ago, I decided that it was much more fun than clothing construction because I didn't have to make anything fit (and I eventually stopped sewing clothing). Usually, I haven't had to fit my quilts to anything. Most of them are baby or throw size or wall quilts. And the ones I did make in the past for beds had polyester batting and were either hand quilted (one huge one, and that was enough!) or tied, so I didn't worry too much about shrinkage. This quilt is intended for my granddaughter's new daybed. The bed will have drawers under it so I didn't want the quilt to hang too far over the side and get in the way. But I didn't want to skimp, either. As designed, the finished top was 62 by 94 inches--an odd size, but I figured we'd tuck it under the mattress at the back and on the foot end of the bed if needed. By the time I finished quilting, the quilt had lost about 2 inches in both width and length and by the time I washed it, it was 57 3/4 by about 88 inches, so an overall loss of 4 1/4 inches in width and 6 in length. That's a little more than I thought it would lose, but it will still fit nicely over the mattress with clearance for the drawers. 

Another thing I learned has to do with the batting. I ordered it because I wanted white and couldn't get it at my local quilt stores. When I got the batting, it was more of an off-white than white. I was concerned that maybe I was sent the natural color by mistake, so I contacted the company to ask about it. The customer service rep told me that Quilters Dream White is treated with peroxide, not bleach, so it does not turn a bright white. Also, an easy way to tell the difference between the two colors of batting is to look for little flecks in the natural batting. It wasn't a big problem that the batting wasn't bright white for this quilt because the furnishings in the room are what I think of as IKEA white--just a little off white. If the batting "yellows" the quilt a bit, it's okay. But if I do another quilt that has bright whites in the fabric, I'll probably use a different batting, such as Warm and White. I do love the feel of the Quilters Dream batting though--so soft and drapey! And it truly was dreamy to quilt. 

One last thing I learned--for anyone who is a treadle quilter: Always make sure the bobbin winder is disengaged before quilting. One day I treadled hard for two hours. I thought my legs were just tired from a bike ride I had taken earlier in the day, but then when I went to reload my bobbins, I found that the winder was engaged, putting lots of drag on the belt. The sad thing? That is not the first time that has happened to me. I need to make a sign so I'll remember to check it.  

Well, for anyone still with me on this post, this has gone on way too long. If this is your first time here, you can read about the progress (and set back) on this quilt here, here, and here...and here.

I'm linking up today with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop and Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing for Free Motion Mavericks.

My Big News

Just a quick post today. I've been working away at the Quilt for a Big Girl Bed. I finished the quilting, and have been working on the binding.

But my big news this week is I won!!! 

My entry #1 into the Bloggers Quilt Festival won in the Art Quilt category. I was so surprised and honored. I have never entered a festival (of any kind) before, so this was a Big Deal to me. Thank you so much to everyone who voted for my quilt. And thanks to Amy's Creative Side for hosting the Festival. I spent way too much time admiring all the wonderful quilts. And now I get to use my prize to buy more fabric (!!!!) at the Fat Quarter Shop thanks to their sponsorship. What fun!

I'll definitely have a finish to share on Friday. (I hope the weather cooperates this week for some pictures. It's been so dark here.)

I'm linking up today with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social..