Quilts! Finished ones!

It's been awhile!

I got a new job at work, and it's a lot busier. And since I only have computer+Internet access at work, I haven't updated this for months.

Holidays and travel (both planned and unplanned) happened, and lots of sewing.

I did little projects, which I'm just realizing now that I didn't photograph. Boo.

But I have finished TWO quilts so far this year!



Maybe my favorite quilt photo ever.

It's a values quilt. For Tim. Since I started quilting, he's said that his favorite kind of quilt is scrappy patchwork. So that's what I did, for his birthday.

I took ALL my scraps and cut them into 1.75-inch strips, and then sorted them into dark and light piles.

I followed the Bright Furrows quilt pattern from Modern Log Cabin Quilting , but did the chain piecing a bit differently. Instead of working through four blocks at a time with each block in a different place to facilitate randomness, I worked on six blocks at a time with each block in the same stage but used different fabric strips.

Does that make sense? No? Maybe this does:



OK.

The finished blocks are 9 inches, and the quilt is 9 blocks by 8 blocks. It's bound with a small black dot on a white background, and backed with a sheet! It's held up very well through several washings, and the best part is that it was only $4 at Target. Boom!



Up close, you can't see the pattern at all.



First time free-motioning.









OK, one more. Of a cute helper puppy.



:::

And then I finished another quilt! The top had been almost done for months.



Dense quilting:



So dense that I ended up cutting the quilt top down a bit. I planned on it being a wall-hanging anyway ...



:::

And now, I'm working on my first ... paying quilt job!



It's a baby quilt for someone to give as a gift!

:::

We also moved recently, and Chowder is having a hard time with it.



And Tom is still Tom.

Baby quilt done!

I finished this last week, but am just getting around to the photos now.


We love us some gas in Billings. Seriously. There are three refineries.


Back.


Here are the details:

It's 45 inches square
The grey is Quilter's Linen in grey, but the wrong side.
The binding and back strip (dots) are from Momo's It's a Hoot, as are some of the prints in the log-cabin blocks. The binding is by hand and took about 90 minutes.
The elephants are Japanese and the sashing is Essex Linen.
The rest of the fabric came from random fat quarters, but I know the wood grain is Joel Dewberry and the blue herringbone is also Joel Dewberry, one of my favorites.
The blocks are wonky log-cabin style, and finish at 10 inches.
The sashing is Essex Linen in PFD (prepared for dye) 3 inches finished. I used PFD a) because it's what I could find in stock and b) it wasn't as harsh as white or as cream-colored as ivory.
The batting is bamboo.
The quilting is an easy free-motion pattern, and I think technically stippling, since nothing overlaps (except one tiny mistake that only I'll ever notice).


Here's more of the piecing.

And here's a closer shot.






I really loved using the Essex Linen with this quilt and think it'll become a regular for sashing in the future. As long as I can find it in stock.

We snagged those photos right before heading to the horses races.





He almost broke even. Basically.






And, continuing the theme of running animals, we hit up the Reed Point Sheep Drive on Sunday.









It was a very American event.


There was Miller Light, after all. And these pants, which I'll post about next.








So that was a massive amount of photos. Speaking of massive...





This desk. It's in my, ahem, new sewing room!

All I have are cellphone photos right now. But you get the idea.






The desk was Tim's parent's. They bought it in New York a long, long time ago. It's called a partners desk. It's meant to have two people on each side, hence the double drawers. And ridiculous size.


It's solid oak. I can lie diagonally on it, reach my arms over my head as far as I can and still not touch both ends. I love it.


And, to wrap things up , adorable dogs. And a Tim.

Bound up

The Seattle quilt is done!

Done!

Done!

Done!

LOOK!


Front

To clarify: It's not MY late. It belongs to someone else.


Back


Hand-sewn binding!


Quilting detail (that corner is on the back of the quilt)


Back detail.

This was my first time hand-binding a quilt (thanks, mom, for the tutorial!). I prefer how it looks compared to machine binding and think I'll stick with it.

It didn't take anywhere near as long as I thought it would. The quilt is 50 by 50 inches and I spent about 3 hours sewing the binding on.

Now all I have to do is wash and send it off to its new home!

Quilting done (!)

Exactly.



Binding will come on the road trip.



Maybe later I'll explain what a pain the last night of quilting this was.

I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

Actually, I'm at work. But, more later.

KBYE

Bah

I say seam ripper, Tom says whatever.



I decided to leave the quilt as-is, got a little creative with getting enough fabric together for the backing and assembled the quilt sandwich last night after work.

I should have stopped there.

But I didn't.

I was all gung-ho about charging through this thing. To my credit, I did take the time to make a tiny sample quilt and test out the aesthetics of my proposed straight-line quilting approach. Yesterday I lamented my lack of free-motion skills, but I honestly thought the straight lines would look good here.

They looked good on the little sample. Really.

So I jumped in. And it looked OK. And then bad. And then awful. I figured that was just because it was late and I was tired. This normally happens (I think something stinks, go to bed and wake up in love with it all over).

Not this morning.

So I made the call. "Screw it," I declared to the dogs. We're going to start over.

I've never ripped quilting out of a quilt before. It sucks. It's slow.

But I am VERY glad I did.

Here's where we're at now.



These are the lines. They look awfuler in person.



I made the switch for several reasons.

1) I feel like the lines forced you to follow the motion of the quilt, instead of just letting it exist. I think this quilt top has enough motion all by itself and needs a quilting pattern that is evenly distributed. That makes sense, right?

2) There is so much piecing, and I wanted to quilt over as much of it as possible for a solid construction.

3) The strip piecing is wonky, and the lines, which I tried to keep as straight as possible, looked horribly off.

4) It looked wrinkly, and like it would not wrinkle in a nice way when washed.

I tore out one line of quilting this morning, and it look about 15 minutes. So, uh, tonight's going to be long.

First, I'm going to fix myself a gin and tonic. Then I'm going to finish zigzagging the half I started this morning.

Then it's seam ripping until my eyes cross.

A real seam ripper

@#!%&*# -- I've used all my swears on this quilt.

I'll explain why later, because I'm at work right now.

But... PHOTOS!



It's from the Block Party book! Well, sort of. I ordered the book but it hasn't arrived yet. But I couldn't wait that long to get started.

The strip off to the side is for the backing.

I have NO idea how I'll quilt it. I bought painter's tape today in anticipation of some straight-lined sumthin-sumthin.

I wish I knew how to do free-motion meandering, because that'd come in handy here. It's a skill I wish I had a lot. I've tried, but I always end up overlapping after just a few inches. Some day. But not today. That would mean more swears.

Which would be bad, because I might pull out the seam ripper again when I get home tonight.

Here's the deal: When I was piecing the last row of this guy, I thought I was short a block. But I really wasn't. Instead of a complicated explanation, I present you with this:



It's embarrassing to admit how long it took me to figure this out. Like overnight plus a few hours. I was almost out the door, fabric-store bound to buy more Kona Ash (the lighter grey) to fix the problem and THAT was when I realized it wasn't a problem.

So it all worked out. Except it made the darker blocks dominant. And I'm not so sure I like that.

The quilt on the left doesn't exist yet (thanks, Microsoft Paint. I swear I'm way better when Photoshop is available), but I think I like it more than the one that does.



Bring it, seam ripper.