Row by Row and Mini

I have completed 16 rows for the Row by Row.  I am in the process of assembling them so I roughly threw them out on the floor with colored strips.  The bottom right shows how it will look with a spacer fabric.  I think it helps calm down the scrappiness.  I am not a huge fan of random scrap quilts so this is a bit much for me, but I think in the end I will be happy with the quilt.  I hope to get it assembled soon, but we have grandkids here and we have a bunch of family things going on when their parents get back.

I joined a quilted pillow cover swap on instagram and showed the fabrics in my last post.  I made 9 blocks finishing at 3" X 4" each.  This is what I had at that point.

I decided I had to make 3 more blocks and added sashing and borders.  It will finish at 16".  I realized my muzzle fabrics don't have a high enough contrast but they look better in person.

Last week I spent a couple days in the lovely town of McCall for my annual huckleberry picking trip with my sisters.  The berries weren't quite as plentiful, but we had fun and went swimming in the COLD lake and took a drive around the lake and saw things we had never seen before.  We also had dinner with our cousin who had arranged for a house for us to stay in again.  These pictures were taken from the north end of the lake, where we had never been before.  The town is at the far end of the lake in the lower picture.

Making Progress

I have not totally finished anything in the last week, but I have been sewing!  I mentioned in my last post about a contest to guess the number of quilts in my linen closet and instead of picking a quilt out of there for Chelsea, I found a top in my stash and quilted it.  Chelsea said she liked outdoor things, but also purple and teal and bright colors.  Years ago (more than 10, less than 20!) my guild had a block exchange where you picked the pattern and could provide fabrics and other members made blocks.  I chose a tree, but not in your typical greens, I chose turquoise.  I call it Blue Spruce.  I had the top together, but it was in my massive pile of unquilted tops.  I found some flannels for the backing in my stash (I will get a photo of those for my next post).  I have it quilted, and the binding stitched on, it just needs stitched down.   The interesting thing is that Chelsea's great grandmother was in my quilt guild for many, many years and recently passed away at age 95.  She made a block in this quilt!

I have been a charter member of a local quilt guild since 1993.  The guild has changed and lost a lot of members due to various reasons and they also moved the meetings to daytime.  I cannot attend with my work schedule except for two months out of the year.  Over the years we have done several quilt shows and I have been involved in several of the fundraiser quilts.  

A few years ago as a challenge we were each given a piece of fabric and asked to make something outdoor themed for a raffle quilt.  We didn't have a lot of members and didn't get a large amount of blocks back and the blocks have sat for a few years.  I made the larger center block with my challenge fabric.  This year the members made some 18" finished log cabin blocks  to try to extend the size of the quilt.  The idea was that the quilt could be finished and given to the recipient of a Habitat for Humanity house.  

I was asked to assemble the quilt as putting together odd size blocks is one of my specialties and I have given guild programs on this.  I played with the blocks for a while and finally came up with this arrangement.  I had to make 5 more log cabin blocks and adjust some others.  I am very finicky and blocks should measure the correct size at each step of the process as you are making log cabins and they didn't.  I square mine up after each round.  The quilt top now measures 90 X 108 and the last I heard the group was going to have it machine quilted and then raffle it off afterall and donate the proceeds.

Clearwater Quilters Opportunity quilt top assembled by me

closeup of my block based on a book I can't find right now!

There were 4 leftover disappearing 4 patch blocks and one applique block that didn't work in the quilt.  I made 6 more disappearing 4 patch blocks and assembled this top.  It is 38 X 48 and  might be used on the back or as a quilt for a care center resident.

I have been spending most of my time working on the row by row quilt.  I have 11 rows done and plan to do 5 more.  I actually went to all 16 of these shops!  I am making this quilt queen size.  This is not the arrangement I will use and it will have sashing.  I have more one more vertical row and the others are horizontal.  This is my third year and next year slap me if I decide to do this.  The instructions are generally quite awful and to support the shops I purchased kits and I was short fabric on more than one.  I do have another bright  row that I hope will offset the one bright one.  There was one that was all pastels and I redid it.

pastel row that doesn't fit in the row by row quilt

Fancy Fox is the pattern my daughter brought me in April to tell me she was pregnant and that was the pattern for her baby quilt.  I have not yet purchased fabrics, I will go visit in a couple weeks and do that, but for her I get to make two quilts, yes twins!!!!!!!   The fabrics pictured are for a quilted pillow cover swap on instagram.  I am making a small version of the Fancy Foxes with these fabrics.

Linking up for design wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.

A Quick Quilt and a Finish

For those that were curious there are 199 quilts of all sizes in that closet in my last post!  I posed an impromptu guessing game on Facebook but didn't tell people I was giving away a quilt!  My son's classmate Chelsea guessed 198 and is thrilled to get a quilt.  I still have to pick one out for her.  They were co-valedictorians in high school and friends.

On Monday there was a request for 8 teen boy quilts for Camp Erin, a grief camp that will be held in mid July in Washington.  They have more campers than usual and were short some quilts.  I dug into my stash and came up with 8 fabrics and made this disappearing 4 patch quilt.  I had a flannel for the backing on hand and have it ready for delivery tomorrow.  I quilted it with an allover leaf and loop design.  The quilting took about 30 minutes!  I volunteered for this camp last summer and it was a very rewarding experience and wanted to be able to help out.  I am not going this year.  I took advantage of the hay bales in the field in front of our house, but the 100 degree heat is a bit much!

I quilted this strip quilt at the retreat last month, but finally got the binding on.  I love this one and it is mostly leftover jelly strip pieces.  I named it Leftover Salmon.

I took this picture on July 4th.  This is one of my patriotic quilts.  It was a block robin from 13 or 14 years ago.  I made the very center vase/flag block and the rest of the blocks were made by others.  I love this one!  I didn't take any block closeups.  I was involved with MANY round robins/row robins/blocks robins with this particular group fo women and the hand applique blocks are stunning!

                       

Quilt Explosion

I will preface this by saying I have been quilting for 30 years.  I am completely obsessed with quilting.  I used to have more hobbies, but they don't get much time dedicated to them.  Now onto my quilts!  I have friends that have joked they could come take quilts out of my house and I would never miss them.  Those same friends were coming to my house Saturday night.  Plus we are having out of town guests this coming weekend who have never been here.

One of my summer projects was to straighten my quilt closet.  Saturday morning I decided to straighten the closet to make it easier for those friends to take quilts out (joking of course).  This is what the closet looked like when I started, I had to shove quilts back on the floor to get the door open. I have been a slob at putting them away!

After several hours this is the finished closet.  Guess how many quilts are in there?   Seriously, guess! Keep in mind I went through a mini phase and I have MANY wallhangings.  The floor is holding mostly larger quilts with Heart themed quilted on the far right (short pile).  The next shelf up holds 2 1/2 piles of Christmas quilts and 2 piles of fallish quilts.  The next shelf up is mostly wallhanging and smaller with some throw size quilts including Easter.  My patriotic quilts are out right now.  I will say in addition to the quilts in the closet I counted all the quilts in my house not in the closet.  There are 69 more!!!  YIKES!  I give away a LOT of quilts too!

I finally got all my Canyon Dance blocks squared up.  My design wall isn't big enough!  I didn't get a picture before I started auditioning possible sashing strips (or not), see below for options.  I just put a few pieces of each color on the wall.  They will finish at 1" IF I decide to use sashing!

 Option 1 - turquoise

 Option 2 - purple

 Option 3 - navy

 Option 4 - no sashing

Which is your favorite?  This is the original one I made. If I use sashing I will have 20 extra blocks and can make a quilt for a Care Center resident.

 
Linking up with Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday.