Road Trip and Quilting Progress

Yesterday I needed to go on a road trip to Sandpoint, ID, 7 hours of round trip driving, but it was a beautiful day, with beautiful scenery. As a reward I stopped at Bear Paw Quilting in Coeur d'Alene.  It is a gorgeous shop with so much variety!  From 30's to wool to Kaffe to modern to batiks and everything in between.  I have no business EVER buying more fabric, but I get bored sometimes.  I have so many projects to work on.  Both daughters want certain quilts, my granddaughter a needs a big girl quilt (she will be 2 in May) neighbor "kid" needs a wedding quilt July 2nd, and lets not mention those 40ish quilts that need quilted.

Don't laugh (I have one friend that will laugh!) but this is SOME of my fabric storage.  Yes, it is exploding!

We won't mention strings and strips.  I did make two cute blocks as leader enders when I was piecing the backing for Fire Island Hosta.  I will continue with this project but if Judy D. thought she had a lot of strings, she hasn't seen mine yet.  I'm afraid to put them all in one place because they will NOT fit in one big bin.

So back to my trip, I have been wanting to find fabric to make Tula Pink's City Sampler, 100 Modern Quilt Blocks.

I am not a green fan, never have been, BUT I was drawn to black, gray and lime green.  I bought the bottom 8 fabrics at Bear Paw and then stopped at Stitches and Petals in Moscow.  I bought the two fabrics on the top row left side.  Amazingly I found the next four from the left already in my stash in a FQ grouping from the Wild Hare in Orofino.  I then picked the final 4 fabrics on the top row right from my stash.  The most amazing find was 5 yards of this Kona gray for background already in my stash!

Now back to fun things, like defrosting my freezer and cleaning house! I did make a bit of machine quilting progress on Fire Island Hosta.

Spring Break and Machine Quilting

I am on spring break this week!  I started my vacation by finishing machine quilting and getting the binding sewn on by machine on my Folk Art Album wallhanging Thursday night.  It looks ruffly, the binding and sleeve are not stitched down.  I did a lot of texture quilting, which is not really visible but I showed a block in my last post.  I still haven't tacked down the binding. This is such a special quilt to me!

Friday I had major oral surgery.  I must say the relaxation drugs worked well, and I don't remember much of Friday.  By Saturday I was up, although in pain and decided to machine quilt instead of stitching binding down. I was supposed to "take it easy" and what's easier than machine quilting!  I know it stresses some people.  I had this quilt basted and ready for quilting.  I have someone who wants to purchase it, it's a row robin from the Pat Sloan group around 2000.  It also needs its binding stitched down now.  I did some different texture quilting in the rows and border, I will get a better picture when the binding is finished.

I want to get started machine quilting my Fire Island Hosta and needed a backing.  One of my goals this year is to not buy backing.  I had to for the Folk Art Album quilt as I wanted a nice flannel.  Other than that I have a huge amount of fabric I need to use!  I took all the leftovers and figured out to cut them in multiples of 4" finished and then started laying them out.  Some pieces were a full 20 1/2" so that was my goal block size for assembly.  The backing is 104 X 104.

This is another quilt I may have shown before.  It's simply straight line quilted and it's from leftovers of another project.  It needs binding stitched down too and will be for a donation.

Our oldest daughter and two grandkids are coming for a visit late in the week. We haven't seen them since Christmas.  We are very excited to see them. Nicole will be two next month and Jared is 4 1/2.  His vacation from preschool is next week.  He called yesterday with plans for he and grandpa.  He loves our farm trucks!

Check out Patchwork Times and Cooking up Quilts

Machine Quilting and Wondering

My design wall was empty so I put up some 9 patches made from leftover Kaffe fabrics and the black mini dot fabric that is my new favorite background.  I had been sewing them as leaders and enders.  I have no clue what I am going to do them, so they will marinate on the wall, waiting and wondering what they will be, until I need the space again!

I started machine quilting my Folk Art Album, quilt yesterday.  I found a post about this quilt from 2014 hoping to have the quilt done by the end of that month.  I'm only about a year and a half off!   I'm getting closer now!  

Here is one of the blocks quilted.  The color is more true in the above photo.  I am just doing a stipple in the background after free motion quilting around all the shapes.  I am doing a continuous line in the sawtooth sashing.

Linking up to Patchwork Times.

National Quilting Day

Today is National Quilting Day.  I came down with a nasty virus yesterday, courtesy of students at school I'm sure, but I persevered and did some sewing.   
I finally finished the top of my QM Bitty Blocks.  It's still longer and skinnier than I wanted, but it's okay.  It now measures 56 X 89.  I struggled with border ideas and finally just used the same black mini dot fabric that is used in the sashing.  I will bind it with a scrappy multi color binding.

Quiltmaker Bitty Blocks Row Quilt

I also pieced a backing for Fair and Square I posted last week.  I had LOTS of strips left over and they were all sewn end to end as that is how the quilt was made.  I started sewing them together like the jelly roll race quilt (aka 1600) and then decided I should really have a plan and see how much I needed.  I have only scraps leftover!  The blue was in my stash but needed to be bigger.

backing for Fair and Square

Now I need to make the backing for my Fire Island Hosta.

Recap of my year on the Quiltmaker Scrap Squad

I have shown my versions of these quilts over the last year but as a recap, in January, 2015 I was selected as one of six members to join the Quiltmaker magazine blog as part of the Scrap Squad.  We were assigned quilts from an upcoming issue to make in scrappy colors.  I was delighted to be a part of this group, hoping to diminish my scrap collection.  That didn't really work as they keep multiplying, but I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge.  I invite you to go to the Quilty Pleasures blog and type Scrap Squad in the search and go back to February 20, 2015 and peruse all the quilts forward from there.  I only included the ones in this post that were from the same pattern I made to see the differences.  Other group members made another choice from some of the issues.

My first assignment was based on Pointed Prisms.  

Original Pointed Prisms designed by Kari Ramsey

Here is my version I named Gemstones and Kathy and Pam's quilts.

Julie's Gemstones

Kathy Wagner's Pointed Prisms

Pam Snow's @ the Circus

My next quilt was based on Chop Suey by Scott Flanagan.

Original Chop Suey by Scott Flanagan

Keri Blankenship Under the Northern Lights

My Chop Suey in Batiks

I loved the movement of our next assignment.  I played with ideas in EQ7 on changing the colors.  I made two versions of this one. Hero's Homecoming was designed by Janice Averill.

Original by Janice Averill

Donna Hanna

Emily Klaczak Hamptom Court

Kathy Wagner

My Dogwood Blooms

My Hero's Homecoming

Next up was Boxing Match by Nancy Mahoney.

Original Boxing Match by Nancy Mahoney

Emily Klaczak Colors of Summer

My version Deb's Oriental Garden

Pam Snow Summer Breeze

Quilt number five was based on Candy Cane Crush by Sandra Clemons.

Original Candy Cane Crush Sandra Clemons

Kathy Wagner Cool Hues

Donna Hanna

Keri Blankenship Quilt as You Go

My version Violets

I posted my last quilt yesterday!  Check it out at this link.

A Bright Finish and Quiltmaker Scrap Squad

Last week I showed the start of a very bright quilt top.  I was able to finish the piecing this weekend and I'm happy to share a photo!  I love how this turned out and seem to have drastically overcut the strips so I can play with more of them.  I was making a throw size pattern called Fair and Square into a queen size and kept cutting without planning ahead! My sister will be the recipient of this quilt eventually.  Sorry for the crooked photo.  

My year with the Quiltmaker Scrap Squad has come to a close.  This past year has been such a rewarding experience, using a provided pattern and making it scrappy.  For the last quilt we were allowed to choose any quilt Quiltmaker had published.  That was a hard decision, but one kept calling me, Vintage Sunburst.  This was the original photo:

Here is my version that I named Pie in the Night Sky.

Pie in the NIght Sky

In front of our old barn

I will be doing a complete Scrap Squad recap of my quilts later in the week so be sure and check back!

I am working on finishing the top of the Quiltmaker Bitty Blocks that were a year long monthly row quilt on their blog last year.  I decided to take my quilt apart and make the sashing a bit narrower.  I still have to get the last two rows down.  Here is the photo before I started taking it apart.  I have shown it before.  It was going to be too long and skinny.

Linking up with Main Crush Monday and Patchwork Times.

Quilt Camp Progress

I had a wonderful quilt camp (aka retreat) at Palouse Divide Lodge.  I didn't get any pictures taken this time, it was pretty rainy and there was a lot of slushy snow to walk to the top of the mountain.  It was a great group of women and the food was wonderful.  I was pretty intent on piecing my Fire Island Hosta and it turned out very well I think!  I think my colors are more intense than this but it was hard to get them adjusted correctly.  It is 100 X 100, bigger than my design wall, hence the bend at the bottom!

queen size Fire Island Hosta

I took my Pfaff Grand Quilter with me to machine quilt the top mentioned in my last post, but didn't have the urge to do that after wrestling this huge top while finishing the piecing.

My sisters went to quilt shops for me last summer and neither of them quilt.  It was pretty funny when they came to visit and brought all the goodies they accumulated for me!  One sister bought a quilt pattern she loved at Quilt Expressions in Boise called Fair and Square.  She told me when I made the quilt, entered it in the fair and won ribbons and couldn't find room in my closet for it, she would take it off my hands.  I took that as a challenge to make her a new quilt!  It seems a bit wild but it really grabbed a lot of attention at quilt camp!  Black sashing will go between the blocks and there will be 20 blocks altogether for a queen size quilt.

Fair and Square, first six blocks

Linking up with Patchwork Times and Main Crush Monday.