Blogger's Quilt Festival 2017

It's time for the Fall Edition of the Blogger's Quilt Festival put on by Amy's Creative Side. So here is one more post about my Deconstructed Coins quilt. (I hope you can stand one more. It's the quilt I'm most excited about of the ones I've finished so far this year.)  

Here's the summary and some of my favorite pictures. Well, this isn't one of my favorite pictures, but it's a place to start--the whole front:

 And the back:

My inspiration for the quilt came from two sources. One was a set of three fabric sample panels from a giveaway from Hawthorne Threads. I wanted to use them in a quilt but wasn't sure how. Then Kaja from Sew Slowly and Ann from Fret Not Yourself presented a challenge to the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters to make an improvisational quilt based on the Chinese coin pattern. The fabric samples were already in the shape of coins, 

so I cut them apart, split some of them randomly with solid strips 

and sewed them back together with a navy edge. (The navy was a suggestion from Louise from My Quilt Odyssey. I'm thrilled because I don't think I would have thought of that myself, and it really was a significant design element in the success of the quilt.)

 Then I added improv-pieced sashing and borders. 

As you saw above, the back is made with mostly leftover solids from the front. I quilted the whole thing with loose waves with my walking foot.

This all seems pretty straight-forward, but it was a long process--intentionally long because I wanted the design to unfold bit by bit without frustration.

Now for my favorite pictures. Here are some of the details showing the fun, quirky prints:

And on location, in the back yard

and in a nearby town:

I hope you enjoyed revisiting my quilt (or seeing it for the first time). It really helped me discover what my improvisational piecing style is (structured) and taught me to slow down and enjoy the process. If you'd like to read all about it, click on the Deconstructed Coins label on the right sidebar or the label at the bottom of this post in the web version of this post.

Thanks to Amy for hosting this festival again. I know I'll enjoy seeing what everyone else has to share this week. I hope you have fun at the festival, too.

Coins Finish!

Ah, I love a finish. And this one's been a long time coming. Deconstructed Coins is officially a quilt. I've been working on this one off and on since February. If you want to read about how I made it, please check out the Deconstructed Coins label at the bottom of this post or on the right sidebar. It's quite different, I think, because it's made from fabric sample panels. Anyway, let's get to some pictures first and then I'll give you the details and a few thoughts. 
My favorite photos first, and then a whole bunch of the usual kinds:

This is Casseopeia, a bronze statue made by Nancy Leiserowitz. She sits on the sidewalk along the shops in East Lansing MI across from Michigan State University (notice the T- shirts in the window). I've been wanting to photograph a quilt here for a long time, and this seemed like the right one. She's a bit broody looking. Maybe this quilt will cheer her up. The setting doesn't do her justice, but I smile every time I walk by. Her daughter Andromeda dances in the median strip in the nearby street. Sometime I'll get a good photo of her, too. 

 And the obligatory fence pictures:

I tried to take these during the shadiest part of the day, but the sun still peeked through, making those faded looking spots in the middle. 

And some indoor views.

A few close-ups. I have a ton so I can remember all these little coins. I'll just show three:

Here are the details:
Dates constructed: Begun February 2017; finished July 2017
Pattern: Original design, inspired by fabric panels from Hawthorne Threads, a challenge by the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters (hosted by Kaja of Sew Slowly and Ann of Fret Not Yourself) to make an improvisational "coins" quilt, and with many thanks to Louise of My Quilt Odyssey for suggesting using a navy fabric to set off the coins from the sashing. 
Fabrics: Digitally printed fabric sample panels from Hawthorne Threads (Forest Fables, Roam and Norwegian Wood). I cut apart the 96 coin-shaped images and used them all.
Solid fabrics: Hawthorne Threads in Smoke; Kona in Tan (on back), Shale, Silver, Light Parfait, Dusty Peach, Medium Pink (on back), Primrose, Salmon, Curry, Aqua, and Prussian; Moda in Fog; one other medium blue fabric that is a mystery to me. Nearly all of the solid fabrics were from my stash. The printed panels were included in a giveaway from Hawthorne Threads last year. 
Batting: Hobbs Premium 80/20
Backing: Improv pieced from leftovers.
Thread: Superior Masterpiece cotton in Granite for piecing; Superior King Tut cotton in White Linen for quilting.
Binding: 2 1/2 inch wide Prussian, folded in half for scant 3/8 inch binding.
Quilting: Walking foot, straightish lines in dark blue areas, wavy in the rest of the quilt.
Size: 63 3/4 by 51 inches pieced; 62 1/4 by 49 1/2 quilted; 59 3/4 by 46 1/2 machine washed on cold, machine dried on low.
Machines: Singer Featherweight for piecing; Singer 115 Treadle for quilting.

And now a few thoughts on making this quilt (there are lots more thoughts on the process in my previous posts), and then one last photo:
1. I really enjoyed participating in this Improv challenge. It took me a long time to make the quilt, but I learned that going slowly kept me interested and not frustrated when I wasn't sure what to do next. I don't think the actual hands-on time was that long. I managed to make or finish at least 7 other completely different kinds of projects at the same time. The variety was a good thing. 
2. My Improv is more structured (less free form?) than many improv pieces I've seen, but that fits well with my usual quilt-making style and preferences. At first I thought I should try to free things up more, but that's not me--and this is still improv. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do when I started, but really didn't know where it would go. 
3. I relied on rotary cutting to square up sections as I put the pieces together and I usually cut strips of roughly similar sizes for the parts of the sashing. I also made bits and pieces, waiting to join them until I saw how they fit with what I had already made. 
4. I could not resist making little rules for myself as the design developed. I had to use all of the coins. I placed all of the coins directionally so that the images are "right side up" and the quilt layout is horizontal (it is meant to be used as a hug around the shoulders). I cut all of the little strips in the coins one inch wide. I made the sashing blocks with either rectangles split in half horizontally, rectangles with a horizontal strip down the middle with an imbedded rectangle, or squares. In the sashing, I limited use of the Smoke fabric to the tiny rectangles. 
5. This was my first time using digitally printed fabric. I was a little unsure of it at the beginning. It is a poplin with a high thread count and tight weave. But that made it easy to cut without fraying, and my sewing machines loved it for both piecing and quilting. After washing, it was just as soft as the rest of the fabrics. 

I have come to love this little quilt and it will be hard to let it go. I have taken lots more pictures so that I can remember every bit of it, and that will help. It's going to a wonderful cause--Margaret's Hope Chest, which provides quilts to women in the Mother and Baby Program at Pine Rest Hospital. It will serve as a hug around the shoulders of a mother during therapy sessions to recover from perinatal mood and anxiety disorder.  

Okay, one more look, in the gardens at the university:

I'm linking up today with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday. Tomorrow I'll also link up with Kathy at Kathy's Kwilts and More for TGIFF and with Ann at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop. On the 22nd I'll link up with Kaja and Ann for Ad Hoc Improv Quilters. And I suspect that in September I'll link up with Crazy Mom Quilts when she gets back from her blog time off. There are buttons for most of these on the side, but I'll update the links as they become active.

In the meantime, keep quilting, and I will, too!

Coins Back

I've been playing around with making a quilt back this week--to the point that it wasn't play anymore. But it's done! I was thinking of using yardage of one of the prints from the front of the Deconstructed Coins quilt to make the back, but then I considered how much that would cost and how much solid fabric I had left from the front of the quilt, and thriftiness won out. I decided to cobble together the solids. That's been kind of my thing for quilts, anyway, and I've usually enjoyed it. 

The first thing I did was even up the edges of all of my leftovers to make rectangles. I had run out of a few of the colors and had very little left of others, so the variety was kind of lacking. Depending on how much fabric I had left, I cut most of the pieces into two or four smaller rectangles so that I could distribute colors better. I really wanted to cut smaller pieces, but then I'd lose more fabric to seam allowance. First, I laid out the pieces on top of the quilt top to get an idea of how they might fit. My idea was to separate columns of colored blocks with narrow strips of Kona Silver (my biggest piece of leftover--15 by maybe 90 or so inches).

No matter how I laid them, I couldn't quite make it work. There wasn't quite enough of either colored blocks or the silver, even supplementing with some pieces from my stash that were close enough to blend in to with the other colors of the top. 

Next, I arranged the pieces in a more horizontal fashion with the largest piece across the middle. That seemed to work better, although I wasn't sold on the wide strip. 

 After playing working some more with my fabric pieces and taking pictures in grayscale, I came up with this:

(This is actually after I sewed most of it together)

And here it is in color:

Getting to this point was quite a challenge. I had to decide whether to lay pieces vertically or horizontally to have enough fabric in each direction to cover and overhang the top for quilting. I wasn't planning to line the pieces up so that the seams matched up, but that ended up being the easiest way to arrange them. I did add a bit of medium pink to the ends of the silver strip in the middle, and I like how it keeps that strip from taking over completely. This backing looks pretty planned for an improv back. If you look closely, you'll see that if you were to cut it in half diagonally, it would be two identical triangles. But I did not measure and plan the sizes of the blocks--I just let what I had left guide me to cut them into the rectangles, folding them in half or quarters to figure out where the cuts should be. When piecing I had to make more cuts to even up fabric after sewing pairs of blocks together. The sewing was a snap after I figured out the block placement. For me, the best way to distribute the fabrics was to use the grayscale photo--that was more reliable than my eye to determine what colors looked best next to each other. 

Looking back, it would have been much easier to pay to buy backing fabric, but learning how to make what I had work seems to have been a worthwhile challenge--and it pretty much used up all the fabric I had pulled for the quilt plus a little more.

Here's one more picture of the quilt top, just because I love to look at it (and I hope you do , too.) 

It's supposed to be really hot here the next few days. I think pressing and basting will be done in the basement where it's nice and cool. Then, on to the quilting. After that, there will be only one WIP to work on! Let's see if I get to it or give in to the idea I have for another quilt.

I'm linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social this week, and Ad Hoc Improv Quilters next week. Keep quilting! 

Quilt Finish and Top

A finish and a half today. First up: the Painted Daisy Quilt, or as I've also referred to it, Big Stitch Project. I wasn't sure if I was done, but some helpful comments on my last post said I was. Thank you. I never know when to quit. I still need to find a UV resisting spray for it so I can hang it on my front door for the rest of the summer, but here it is:

And the back:

The back and binding are from scraps.

Here are the details:
Pattern Daisy from Ruth B McDowell's book Pieced Flowers
Size Block:12 1/4 by 10 1/4 inches (width/height)
         Quilt: 18 1/2 by 17 1/4 inches (height/width)
Fabric Mostly BasicGray Grunge by Moda. I'm sorry, I didn't keep track of the color names. Thanks to Jayne at Twiggy and Opal, I will now try to keep track by taking pictures of bolt ends when I'm shopping. The flower center and binding are Free Spirit Joel Dewberry True Colors Woodgrain (that's a mouthful, isn't it?)
Batting Scrap. Your guess is as good as mine. 
Quilting Big Stitch (1/4-inch stitches) with DMC embroidery thread (four strands) in various colors. Cross hatching is at 1-inch intervals. I didn't use a hoop. If I did this again, I probably would to keep it smoother. I found that I still prefer tiny-stitch quilting, so I'm mulling over another quilt top to use that technique. After all, now that this is done, I need something else for a take-along project.
Binding Cut 3 inches wide and then folded in half for a 1/2-inch finished width. I wanted the binding to stand out well against the door, and I'm happy with how it turned out.  I used to use this width all the time when I learned to quilt. I might use it again, especially on quilts without borders (most of them these days). I know that it's popular to use narrow bindings, but I tend to stretch them too much (I think that's the problem), and they end up wavy. This is nice and flat, with much better corners than when I use narrow bindings. If I use it on quilts again, I'll have to remember to cut my backing and batting wider than the quilt top so that I don't cut off points. That wasn't an issue with this one.

Here are a few more pictures, then I'll show you the half-finish.

I did the hand sewing part of the binding at an outdoor summer carillon concert at our local university. The music agreed with me--I got 3/4 of the binding on. I'm not usually that fast. Those concerts are such fun. People spread out with picnic suppers on the lawn under the hundreds-of-years-old trees. It's a casual affair. This week there were crows, cicadas and a distant drum line (summer camp on campus) to accompany the carillon. Such a fun part of our summer.

Ah, and here's the half finish for the week. I got the top of the Deconstructed Coins quilt done. Yippee!!

I didn't spend a lot of time balancing colors, and it's not pressed or de-threaded, but it's done! After some dithering, I decided that instead of buying a piece of printed fabric for the back, I'm going to cobble together the leftover solids. It's more work but saves a lot of money and uses a good chunk of stash. And, let's face it, it's me. I did order a bit more Kona Prussian for the binding. I was going to go with a lighter color, but I feel like that border needs to be contained. I hope I like it. I already have a plan for simple wavy lines for the quilting. Hopefully, I'll have a true finish to share in the not-to-distant future. 

If you want to see previous posts of both of these quilts, click on the Painted Daisy and Deconstructed Coins labels on the sidebar or at the bottom of this post. 

I'm linking up today with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday and with JANDA Bend Quilts for TGIFF. I hope you are having fun with your finishes and half-finishes!

Summer Stitching

I have banished the squirrels and am back to my current projects. There are lots of fun non-sewing things to do in summer, but I made a surprising amount of progress in a short time on my Deconstructed Coins quilt. I made sashing rows and joined them with the coin rows this week.

My plan was to add one more sashing row to the top and the bottom. But that will make the quilt an awkward almost-but-not-quite square. So I'm thinking now of adding a narrow dark blue strip to each end and then put sashing down the sides as well: the same three patterns of three stripes with a tiny rectangle, two stripes, and squares. It doesn't seem like a lot to do, but really, it's almost as many sashing pieces as I've already made. Oh, well, the fabric supply doesn't seem to have diminished much except the aqua. I'll just keep sprinkling that in. 

So here's the basic plan, minus the details:

Meanwhile, I've been having fun with the big stitch quilting on my little door quilt. And I mean BIG stitch. I figured that since my usual hand quilting is with tiny stitches, I had to make it really different. So these stitches are about a quarter inch--maybe even a smidge more. It's a relaxing take-along project, or deck project, or sit and watch TV project, but I think I prefer tiny quilting stitches. And I'm having trouble deciding if I'm finished. Does it need more? More lines in the petals? More lines in the crosshatching? I don't know. So I think I'll do the binding next and then decide. It might just be time to hang it up and be done. Of course, then I'll have to piece another little something because I'll be out of take-along projects for the rest of the summer and fall. What a problem to have, huh? (I won't call that a squirrel because take-along projects are essential.)

So, what else besides summer stitching? Yesterday we celebrated Independence Day with a lovely rails-to-trails bike ride between two towns a little northwest of where we live. It was a gorgeous ride--much of it through a recreation area where there are no roads to cross. It alternated between well-packed crushed limestone and asphalt, so an easy ride. Both towns have old rail stations. One has been turned into a hair salon. The other is a museum run by the town's historical society. The museum was closed when we parked our car there at the beginning of the ride, but by the time we got back it was opening. The members of the historical society were eager to take us on a tour to share the station's story as well as all the local items they have collected over the years. And at the end, there was ice cream!! What a fun way to end our ride. I love tiny towns and exploring their history. 

Here are some pictures of our ride:

Lots of bridges and views of the river that meanders near the trail. 

And tiny details we saw along the way:

And the train stations:

The station on the top left is the one that is now a hair salon. I peeked in the window. It looks pretty much as it probably always did inside--except for simple cabinets with salon chairs. I'm glad they haven't modernized it. Glary picture through the glass, but look at that floor. Hexie inspiration, anyone?

The caboose was parked at the station turned historical museum. Look, a barn caboose quilt!

Railroad Crossing block, of course! It turns out there is a barn quilt trail in the three counties nearby. I had no idea, but the historical society had a brochure with a map to find them. (Of course!)

I'm linking up today with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social. Happy summer quilting, everyone, if you live in my hemisphere, and cozy winter quilting for the rest of you! 

Sashing Progress

Oh my, it's time for the link-up for the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters. How did that happen? These months go so fast!! I did a post last week about my Deconstructed Coins quilt. I was dithering about how to go about making the sashings. Yes, I'm still working on the first challenge quilt for this year. But maybe I can squeak in on the second challenge, too--the two-block challenge--because I am making my sashings distinctly different from the rows of vertical coins. (Maybe they aren't sashings after all, but alternate rows?)

This week I cut some long wide strips of most of the quilt's solid colors and threw them up on the design wall without much thought. Then I started chopping them up adding narrower strips here and there as well as some squares/rectangles. 

My main objective is to introduce long horizontal lines to contrast with the short vertical lines of the rows of printed coins without overpowering the printed rows. I'm taking a lesson from Kaja's style of piecing by making small sections without joining them all together at once. For example, the row I chopped up has 7 sections. I'll wait to join them until I have the other rows laid out so that I can tweak placement if I need to. I'm a little uncertain about that area with the pink/salmon strip and curry square. I might lengthen the pink/salmon strip and put the curry square somewhere else (or maybe reverse them), but we'll see how they look after I get a few more rows made. I think the dark brown will play just a small role--a tiny square/rectangle here and there. It is so much darker than the other fabrics that it tends to want to take over when it's cut bigger, but I do like how it keeps my eye moving around. 

Meanwhile, I'll keep putting this puzzle together without a guide, or maybe I should say, model. I do have a guide in my general objective. I'm using a ruler and keeping those little inserted strips about the same width, but otherwise my ruler is merely a straight-edge, not a strict measuring tool. It's really quite fun! 

I still want to make a few changes to the outer edges of some of the printed rows to balance them out a bit, but I'll wait until I have more of the sashing done before I do that.

I'm linking up with Kaja at Sew Slowly and Ann at Fret Not Yourself. Either link will take you to the party. Go check them out, and see what fun other quilters are having with improv. I'm going to do the same, even though there are two squirrels of the quilty variety jumping up and down in front of me. I doubt I'll resist them for much longer. More on those later...