Hollyhocks Finish

It's been a year since our last proper vacation. Sigh. I realized this yesterday because I have a long-awaited finish to share--my Hollyhocks quilt! 

I tried straight-on photos on the garage, but the breeze kept blowing the quilt, so the driveway will have to do.

I started this quilt back at the end of July in 2017. It took me a month to piece, and then I set it aside as my vacation hand quilting project. And my daycare trip quilting project. By March this year, we realized that it would probably be a long time before we would be traveling again, so I decided to try to finish this quilt in the evenings over the summer. Last night I went through my old blog posts about my progress and had a sweet armchair vacation as most of the posts show scenes of our vacations as well as some fun bike rides. If you feel the need of an armchair vacation (or want to see how this quilt came to be), just click on the Hollyhocks label on the right side bar or at the bottom of this post. For today, let's just enjoy the finish.

Work over the summer went slowly. For some reason, I had trouble getting my needle eye to pull through the batting. I don't remember that problem before. I tried all the types of needles I had on hand and ended up using a rubber band to pull it. In recent years, I had been using polyester batting for hand quilting, but I think this batting is cotton. Maybe that was my problem. It was annoying, but I kept at it. I also started to get tired of quilting on the busy fabrics on the front and discovered that quilting from the back side was much more satisfying. In fact, I love the modern back of this quilt in contrast to the cottage-y vintage look of the front.

I had some bright blue Grunge fabric that I wanted to use for the binding to represent a summer sky, but I didn't have enough. I found two cottage-y print blues in the drawer that fit nicely with the Grunge for a subtle scrappy binding. You can see them in some of my close ups.

Sorry about that loose thread. 

Okay, back to the front, and some stats:

Pattern: Hollyhocks blocks from Ruth B. McDowell's Pieced Flowers. Freezer Paper Piecing technique (like puzzle piecing).
Fabrics:  Scraps from my supply for the leaves, flower centers, scrappy border strip, and binding; 3 purchased Grunge fabrics for the flower petals; purchased background fabrics, and 6 fat quarters purchased from a sidewalk sale for the backing (one, a Kaffe Fassett, yes?). 

Batting: I'm pretty sure it's Quilter's Dream Cotton Select.

Thread: Superior Masterpiece in Granite for piecing. Several different threads to match the flowers, leaves and border. I used a hot pink Aurifil for the stipple quilting in the interior of the background, and a variegated blue Superior Treasure hand quilting thread for the border and hand stitching the binding. You really can't tell the difference in those colors unless your nose is a foot away from the quilt, but it was fun to use both. The overall quilting was meant to add texture without detracting from the flowers. 

Binding: 2 1/2 inches cut, double layer, machine sewn to front and hand stitched on back. 
Finished Size: 22 5/8 by 55 5/8 inches. Not washed.

Machines: Singer Featherweight for piecing; Singer Treadle 115 for the machine work on the binding.

The wind did that.

I don't grow hollyhocks. The impatiens will have to do.

This project went on way longer than I meant it to, but I am so happy it's finished. I plan to hang it in my living room in the summer, but I think it just might hang in my quilting room the rest of the year along with the floral theme in there and the antiques. Its cottage vibe will fit right in. When I complete a hand quilting project, I'm always a bit lost because I need more hand work for something to just pick up, but to get to that I need to think up and prepare another project. I'm toying with the idea of some hand piecing. We'll see...

This week I'm linking up with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday, Michelle at From Bolt to Beauty for Beauties Pageant, Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop and Wendy at Wendy's Quilts and More for Peacock Party. 

Have a good quilting week, and I hope you get a chance to do some handwork, too!

(Just a reminder: I'm not affiliated with any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores I'm just documenting what I used or liked.) 

 

Brown Bits, Etc.

The past month has been full of activities--so full that I haven't been on social media as much as usual, which is fine, except that I have not been good at responding to comments or at browsing blogs. So, if I haven't commented on your blog or acknowledged a comment from you, I am so very sorry. I haven't done much quilting either--so no squirrels or throwbacks. Oh, well. I do have a few things I can share. One of them happened this week! The color of the month for Rainbow Scrap Challenge is darks--browns, blacks, grays. I've been waiting for this month for so long. My butterflies needed bodies, and I knew my big stash of browns was ready to meet the challenge. I made 56 little bodies, which took longer than you might think because I had about 25 different pieces of fabric to cut into. They are done. And not only that, but I sewed them to the wings of my butterflies, AND I sewed the background triangles to complete the blocks. Here are just a few of them.

I'll share the rest after I get the whole thing together. I love how they look with the green dotted background. I always think of brown as an old-fashioned color--the age of the scraps I used confirms that, I think. Many are from the mid-80's. But really, brown looks so neat with any bright color. I especially love it with turquoise. Maybe sometime I need to feature it more in a quilt. Anyway, these little blocks are done. Now I have to figure out why on earth I decided to make 56 of them. My original plan was to make 48 for a quilt about the size needed by my usual organization for quilt donations. Was I going to put some on the back? Should I cut them down smaller? (There's enough excess to do that.) Should I keep them big and donate to an organization that needs a bigger quilt? I just don't know. I will have to ponder this a bit while I make my other blocks for RSC this month. (Black crumbs!)

Meanwhile, I did a little quilting on my Hollyhocks quilt. 

This is a really long-term project that I pull out on vacations. It's the perfect take-along hand work project. I'm quilting texture into the background. 

The stitches aren't real visible, but the texture is luscious. And because it's just stipple quilting, there's no marking. I'm up to the border now, so I cut some scrap fabric that I pin onto the backing so it will fit into the hoop.

For the interior part of the quilt, I used hot pink thread because I had it and it is the same color as the hollyhocks. For the border, I'm using some leftover variegated blue to amuse myself. I don't know if I have enough, so I'm using it on the upper half or two thirds of the border--kind of like sky. These won't show that much, but it's fun to use up the thread. Actually, the back is looking pretty interesting because it's a more solid fabric so the stitches show a lot. Again, just amusing myself. This will never show on the wall.

I can't end without sharing a few photos of where this project went with us last week. We stayed in a little house in Rogers City along Lake Huron in northern Michigan. There is a gorgeous bike trail there that goes along the lake to a state park and a lighthouse. There is also a waterfall a few miles away, and two more lighthouses a short drive down the coast. Our house had a lake view (lots of ship watching) and was right on the bike trail. Here is a sampling of photos. Such a beautiful area.

40 Mile Point Lighthouse

Of course, I have to share a photo of one of the sewing machines there.

New Presque Isle Lighthouse (1870)

Old Presque Isle Lighthouse (1840) The cottage is not as old.

A peek at a quilt through the cottage window. (It was closed while we were there.)

Ocqueoc Falls. We went here three different times. There is a stone amphitheater to just enjoy the view. One day we saw salmon trying to jump the falls. 

So many natural wonders along the hiking trails. There is a tiny scallop along the edge of these mushroom tops.

A bit of color

And always the Lake...

So much inspiration.

Even though this post is short on scraps, I'm linking up this week with Angela, the host of RSC19, at So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap, just to keep you up-to-date on my scrap projects.

Just one more photo of my favorite season, now that we are back home. I hope you are having a beautiful month.

A Few More Quilts

Two quick quilts today for Throwback Thursday. I don't have much information about the first one. I think it might have been a kit quilt. 

Sometime in the 1980's, my sister-in-law asked if I could quilt it. I'm not sure if she made the top or if a relative of hers did or if they both worked on it. I just remember that I jumped at the chance to do the quilting. At that time I was a hand quilter. In fact, it was my favorite part of making a quilt, and I thought of making a top as a way to get to the quilting. So this was the perfect project for me. I do not remember whether I marked the designs or if the top was pre-marked. I've enlarged a bit of the photo so you can see it better. I know it's fuzzy,  but it does show the sort of spirograph style flowers, circles and outlining. Does anyone remember these kinds of quilts and any details about them?

And now, I don't even remember whether I did the binding or not. If so, it was my first (only?) scallop binding. Wow, for a Throwback Thursday quilt, this sure is short on memory. We'll just blame it on young motherhood and the fact that I didn't need to keep track of my work since it was for a family member, not for hire. I gave my quilting as a gift to my SIL that year, (Christmas? Birthday? I don't know). She put it on her oldest daughter's bed, which is the one in the photo. 

I was "hired" by my mother-in-law to make this second quilt. 

The churn dash pattern is one I made (or quilted) often during my tiny quilting career (which you can read about if you click on the "my tiny career" label on the right sidebar). This quilt was to be an anniversary gift for friends of my in-laws. My MIL wanted Delft colors to celebrate the couple's Dutch heritage. While I was making it, I decided to pep it up just a little bit with one red churn dash block, which led to the name of the quilt: Tulip in the Delft--one of the rare times I named my early quilts.The quilting is outlining in all the background fabrics except the red block so that one would poof out a bit. And then I did my signature leafy vine pattern in the border. Here's the back:

I made this quilt in September 1988. It measures 13 1/4 by 11 1/2 inches. 

Well, since this post is short on content, I'll include just one more quilt--one I made for our family room. It still hangs there. 

I've shown lots of mini quilts on my blog over the years, but aside from a couple of tiny pictorial quilts, I've never made a really tiny quilt for us except for this one. It's from a pattern I bought. The folder says it's from Mary Herschleb Designs in Hudson, Wisconsin. The copyright date is 1995, which makes sense, because that is the year we moved to a new house, and my daughter and I set to work painting birdhouses for decoration. It was a fun little quilt to make--paper foundation pieced, with tiny black buttons used to "quilt" it. I used all scraps. Even the background is a variety of prints. I used black embroidery thread to attach the buttons and tied it in bows on the back. Not sure why I did it that way, but there you have it.

Now that I look at it more closely, I guess I did a bit of actual quilting around the yellow border. The birdhouses have long since been packed away (first step toward donation), but the little quilt still hangs on the side of an antique china cabinet in our family room. The quilt measures 13 1/4 by 11 1/4 inches.

Well, that's almost it for my Throwback Thursday posts of my pre-blog quilts. I guess you can tell I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for content about these last ones, but it is good to have them all documented. I have just one more quilt (as far as I can tell) to post about, but I don't have a photo of it, which seems really odd to me, because it's a big quilt. Since the quilt is owned by my daughter and son-in-law, it will not be a problem to remedy that. 

I'm linking up today with Sandra at mmm! quilts for Throwback Thursday. Go there to read her always interesting and delightful post about her own pre-blog quilts and post some of your own if you have any.
                                         

TBT: More Wedding Gifts

I was looking through some old quilt photos for Throwback Thursday and came across this one, and then as I was searching for some notes about it, I found a printout of an email exchange dated July 1 and July 5 of the year I made it. So, of course, 18 years later, I have to share it.

Breezy, not crooked quilt!

This is a quilt I made for my niece K and her husband C for their wedding at the end of July 2001. As you can see from the dates of the emails, I was really cutting it close. I had just finished up a school year. The emails were between my sister-in-law and me about whether a quilt was a good idea, and colors, style, etc. According to the emails, the couple had registered for a particular bedspread, and my SIL thought a blue and white wall quilt to go with it would be a good idea. The only problem was that I could not find a photo of the bedspread, so I had to just go with my gut and make something I thought they might like. I had made a quilt for myself in 1996 (you can see it here) that I enjoyed, so I decided to make something with a similar design. I still have the graph paper plan, but it's kind of a mess, so I'll spare you the sight of it. But thanks to that, I know that the quilt is about 29 by 34 inches. I had to mess with the sizes of the sashes to make the on-point squares fit as a border.

I recall that it was fun collecting the blues, although I'm embarrassed to say that there are still snippets (and even a bit of yardage) left after all these years. In fact, some of them recently found themselves in my June blue crumb and butterfly blocks for Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I can't find a photo of the back, but it is an interesting medium blue with a large navy floral design. It showed up again in this heating pad and on the back of this quilt here. Back when I made this quilt I was still hand quilting, which explains why it is a small wall quilt. If it was larger, they might still be waiting for it.) I outline quilted the geese and other patches, and then because I had centered the floral motif in the borders, I quilted around all of the flowers and leaves, which was a whole lot easier than marking and quilting something else. I do not think I finished this in time to send for the wedding (we were not able to go), but I'm pretty sure I sent it by the time they got back from their honeymoon. Here's the funny thing: they did not get the bedspread they had registered for. It was no longer available. So, they ended up designing their room around the quilt I had sent. I always wonder what that bedspread would have looked like. 

Since, I'm on the subject of wedding gift quilts, here are a couple more. I made this first one for my cousin and her husband for their wedding in September 1984. And yes, I still have snippets of some of these fabrics, too. 

This one is about 30 inches square.The Kaleidoscope blocks are 6 inches square set 3 by 3 with a wedge inner border. I still have some scribbled notes in a file. As usual, they are almost completely incomprehensible. 

You can see that I tried to carefully plan for how much fabric I needed of each color. I still do that. So, why do I always have so many scraps??

Templates! I still wasn't rotary cutting when I made this. Looks like I needed to work on my spelling skills, too.

A quilting plan.

And a more detailed quilting plan, along with more notes on cutting fabrics. As you can see, I "named" fabrics to help me keep them separate. I still do that. 

Here's the back, with one of my favorite low volume prints ever. I don't think I have any of that one left.
I'm not sure why I laid it sideways on the ground. 

And one more quilt. This one was for my niece J and her husband S in June 2003. I had made a different colorway of that quilt earlier that year for the wedding of a nephew and his wife. You can see that one here.

This one was also to match a bedspread. As with the other quilt of the same design, I have no notes. It is probably about 30 inches square. Again, hand quilted with outlining and my own vine design zigzagging in the stripped triangles and straight around the borders. I must have really enjoyed making it if I made two in one year. I'm sure it went together very fast, which was probably a factor. 

These quilts all have something in common. I wanted to make quilts for family as gifts, but I had to work within the time constraints at that time of my life. So they are all wall quilts, planned to fit the decor of the homes of the recipients. I still like to make quilts to complement decor when I can. My quilts don't have a lot of symbolism, although I do like to make them to fit the tastes of recipients. But in recent years, I like to make quilts for the cuddle quality--mostly throw quilts, and occasionally, bed quilts. I can do that because of machine quilting and a lot more flexibility in my time, and for that, I am grateful.. 

These quilts were all pieced on my Singer Featherweight, layered with polyester batting for ease of quilting, and quilted with several different fairly hefty cotton hand quilting threads. 

I'm linking up with Sandra at mmm! quilts for Throwback Thursday. Please go there and see the fun quilts from our quilty past. And add some yourself if you have them. 

Now it's time to celebrate a certain birthday. I hear there will be fireworks. My celebration will be muted this year. I love my country, but not the current state of affairs, which is a big cause for concern. 


 

Whoop Whoop Indeed!

Just before we left on vacation last week, a package arrived in the mail--my treat from  Sarah and the sponsors of the Hands2Help giveaway. It was a batch of sewing goodies from Clover. I just had to share this one. I immediately popped it into my take-along bag for vacation quilting. A Desk Needle Threader!

How did they know I needed this so much? I've had a really tough time threading needles in the last few years. I bought some of those little wire threaders--you know, the ones with the foil handle--but you have to be able to see the needle eye to use them, which is exactly my problem when trying to thread. I just sort of stab at the needle hoping the thread will go in, and I had to do that with the wire threader, too. Well, this little tool changed all of that! I can't tell you how much more quilting I got done because I wasn't spending all my time stabbing my thread in the general direction of the needle. So a big Whoop Whoop for Sarah and Clover! Thank you so much!

I did make some headway on my hand quilting project. It's been awhile since I shared this ongoing project because I usually only work on it when I'm away from home, but if you want to see more of it, you can click on the Hollyhocks label on the right sidebar or at the end of this post. Now that summer is here, I'll probably work on it more consistently because the lighting is perfect on our deck for hand quilting on summer evenings, and I do want to finish it.  

So that was my quilting for last week, but there is more to share. We vacationed in an adorable little apartment on the coast of Lake Michigan. In the closet were a few extra blankets in case we needed them. We didn't, but something caught my eye--a pretty floral patterned fabric with hand stitches. So of course, I had to snoop and pull it out for a closer look. 

Isn't that sweet? At first I thought it was pieced, but then I realized that those were neatly printed panels, with coordinated sashing and borders added. It was hand quilted with black and off-white threads "in the ditch" so that it truly looked pieced. The batting was thin, which made for a light, airy quilt. 

Isn't it adorable? After one last look, I folded it up and put it back in the closet for someone else to discover.

I later asked our host about the quilt. It was made by her mother, who had made a quilt for each of her (11) children. So sweet!

Our apartment also had a little pieced wall hanging of decorator fabrics and corduroy made by a friend of our hosts.There was just a little quilting on it around the border.

There was also a cute pillow and a crocheted afghan, so I guess you could say I felt quite at home there. 

But wait, there's more. One day, we visited a small town nearby, home of Ann Loveless, winner of Artprize in Grand Rapids in 2013 for her quilt of Sleeping Bear Dune Lakeshore (You can see my photos of that quilt, which hangs in the Visitor Center at Sleeping Bear, in this post). She and her husband Steve won Artprize again in 2015 with their multi-media project, Northern Awakenings. It's a 60 by 300 inch piece that morphs from photo to quilt across it's surface. It hangs in a restaurant near Steve's photo gallery. Very hard to photograph because of its size, but I gave it a try. It is breathtaking. This end is mostly photo:

This section is mostly quilt (tiny batik and landscape-y snippets of fabric):

 And a close-up:

And a shaky attempt at a panoramic photo. You just have to see this in person. 

The word to describe our vacation is BLISS. So I'll end with a few of my favorite photos of Pure Michigan:

The sweet doe that accompanied us every evening to watch the sunset.

Good night, Sun. Hello, Moon.

Oh, and a couple more because sewing related. This is the historical museum in the town we stayed in (it was not yet open for the season):

But here is what was in that second floor window (the cabinet is the same as mine, I think):

(And one more note--the stained glass insets in the window were made by our vacation host!)

Oh, and for the record, I saw three antique sewing machines in shops. One was not for sale but belonged to the family that owned a gift shop (I was able to date it for her). Two were Singer 99s. One had gorgeous decals. Both needed electrical work. I stayed strong and passed them up, but I hope someone else will give them the love they need.

So Whoop Whoop--for Sarah and H2H, for gadgets from Clover, for quilted discoveries, for lovely vacations, and always for Pure Michigan. I'm linking up today with Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I have a Whoop Whoop. Of course!

Ok, back to "regular" life.