Beothuk, Baby!

Today's little finish is Beothuk Baby, a gift for my nephew and niece-in-law. They are expecting their first child, a little boy, and the family is very excited!

This pattern is called Beothuk Star, and was designed by Sandra of Musings of a Menopausal Melon fame. She's the daughter of a famous Canadian, and her design honors the aboriginal people of Newfoundland. The family who will receive this quilt are also Canadian, which is a nice connection all around, don't you think?

Sandra published this pattern as a generous, free quilt along. I selected gray, teal and aqua as my colors since they are my niece's favorites. The four corner stars feature fabrics with balloons, birds, flowers, mushrooms, and pseudo-scientific scribbles. I knew a secondary pattern would produce the center star, so I chose a rich, dark teal batik so it would really pop.

The gray background fabric is Essex linen, a cotton blend with really nice texture. While it does tend to fray a bit, it quilts like a dream. 

For the backing, my DH Sean chose this super fun nautical print. It's rare to find power boats represented in fabric, much less submarines, so when I found 7 yards of this on sale, I snapped them up.

This little purple-hulled tug boat is the closest in shape and capability to our own boat, Vector. I like how the hook-swirl quilting motif looks like waves, especially in turquoise thread.

I took a variety of boaty glamour shots for this quilt, in keeping with that cool background fabric. Here is Beothuk Baby in front of our life raft and next to our dinghy.

And here it is hung over the back of the flybridge settee and in front of the EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radiobeacon.) We don't just sit around sipping cocktails in swimsuits here on Vector, you know. We do take our safety equipment seriously.

The binding fabric is a fun plaid in blues, greens and a bit of red. You can see a little of the binding in this shot of the quilt all rolled up and sitting on the seat of my scooter. That's Leopold, my new scooter mascot. He is named after Leopold Stokowski, who had similar wild, white hair.

Many thanks to Sandra for putting together such a great pattern! I had fun during the quilt along, and even got halfway though making a second quilt in the pattern with very different fabrics. That one will get finished eventually, but meanwhile I'm linking to the final Parade of Finishes. Go check out all the other fun interpretations of this pattern!

Long distance gifting

Another gifted finish to share today! This one was made for my dear friend M, who recently redecorated her family room. She asked for a medallion style quilt, and I made this 60" x 60" lap size to toss over the back of her sofa.

The design is based on a photo I found using a Google image search, which I printed out and pondered. I think it is an original design by Quiltmekiwi since she doesn't specify a pattern name or other designer. Hers is completely scrappy, which I love too!

The design is made entirely of HSTs and is quite symmetric, so once I decided on the color scheme, it was pretty straightforward. Just lots and lots and lots of HSTs in the aqua, burgundy, dusty pink and creams of M's room.

So how do you get just the right color mix to go with a room 3,000 miles away? With paint chips! While I was visiting M over Christmas, she and her daughter carefully matched paint chip strips to the rug and furniture. I took the chips back to Florida and dove into my stash. I think I got pretty close compared to the chips at the top of this photo. And as an added bonus, many of the fabrics that matched had a cat motif, and they are a kitty-loving family.

The backing is a big autumnal print with apples and flowers. I had used some of this same fabric on the back of some placemats I gave her last year, so I knew that she liked it. I didn't realized how much I had left!

The fabrics are fairly busy, so the quilting doesn't show much. I did big feathers

around the dark outer border, and a fairly tight stipple in the scrappy creams. Each aqua and dusty pink block has a geometric dot-to-dot motif stitched in variegated thread.

The overall effect is lots of nice texture, and I'm pleased with how it softened and crinkled in the wash. Most importantly, M reports that it matches perfectly and she loves it!

In other news, I was a guest blogger on the Wrap-A-Smile blog this week. Many thanks to Ann for inviting me!

And the painted ponies go up and down

Greetings from Nantucket Island! This quilt is made from a panel called "Painted Ponies," and it's a finish for Wrap a Smile.

I wanted to try a panel bordering technique that I saw on a free Benartex pattern called "Cool Cats." The octagon purple border is made of eight half rectangle triangles, and makes a neat frame for the floral horses. Everything inside that purple is part of the panel.

To round out the rest of the quilt, I pieced up four big hearts using Cluck Cluck Sew's free block pattern. So fast and easy. I used some fun novelty prints for the hearts, including balloons, rainbow trees and feathers. So I'm calling this one Horse Feathers.

I didn't manage to get a photo of the feather fabric heart, but here it is in one of the little border squares. You can also see the binding fabric, a multi colored butterfly print with a purple background. I usually cut my bindings 2.5" wide, but tried 2.25" this time for a tighter finish.

The back is pieced from a chunk of dark yellow and a groovy psychedelic star print.

Here's a closeup of the stars. Aren't they fun? And I was able to put one of the Wrap A Smile labels on this quilt myself. Now I'm an official "International Quilter," I guess!

The quilting is an all over stipple for cuddly softness. The lighting in Nantucket Harbor was briefly good enough to show the texture. We were anchored a loooooong way from shore, as you can see by all the tiny boats in the background. Mostly it was drizzly and foggy during our visit this week. I call that "Quiltin' Weather."

The HRT bordering technique was pretty straightforward and should be easy to adapt to other panel sizes, so I'm glad to have this in my tool kit. These ponies are 10" finished, so the HRTs were 5" finished. The only slightly tricky part was wrapping my head around how the panel borders and heart blocks lined up with the cornerstones.

I also wanted to share this lovely box of goodies that I received from a quilty friend. A bright stack of fat quarters, tons of scraps including dogs, owls, and bears, oh my! Plus a fat eighth bundle of sea critters, so cute! And can you see the little styluses next to the bears? Rose makes those herself and they are so clever. One is a black cat and the other is a funny lady with wild hair. For my non-quilting readers, a stylus is used to guide fabric under the needle so your fingers don't have to get too close. Very useful. Thank you so much, Rose!

And finally, it's the annual parade of Pets on Quilts over at Lily Pad Quilting. Angel has been enjoying her hexagon quilt lately, after snubbing it for many months. Who knows why these preferences come and go with cats? I'm just glad that she's been feeling better. You can see where they shaved her tummy for the ultrasound. Her fur is growing back slowly but surely, and her appetite is good. We bought her one of those pet drinking fountains and she really likes it, so I think she's also drinking more water for better kidney health. Be sure to drop by Lily Pad to see lots more cute animals on quilts!

A finish and a tour

I cleaned up my studio last week and decided it was a good time to take a few photos and invite you in for a tour. A number of people have recently asked to see how I quilt on a boat. I wrote about my studio a couple of years ago here, but there have a been a few changes.



But first, the finish! This super scrappy string quilt top was pieced almost a year ago. I just recently decided to add navy borders to make it the right size for the double/full size bed in our guest stateroom. The mattress sits on a platform and is surrounded by a built in railing to keep it from moving while we are underway. I wanted the quilt to just fit inside the railing. I'm happy with how the bright yellow inner border shows along the edges.

The guest stateroom is also my quilting studio. It's pretty small, with about 2 feet on average around each side of the double bed. It's in the bow of the boat, so the room is a little triangular, narrowing significantly up near the head of the bed. I wish I could take better photos of the space, but the combination of dark wood walls, tiny (8" x 18") windows, and no way to step back for perspective makes taking pictures difficult.



The bed itself is my main work space. At the foot of the bed, it is about counter height. By adding a piece of thin plywood over the firm mattress, I have a good surface for my cutting mat and folding ironing board. I really like how I don't have to bend over to cut and iron. I also like having room for a 24"x36" mat. The iron is cordless, which is a good choice for a moving vessel. Less chance of getting tangled or caught if the boat lurches.



My Juki TL2010Q sewing machine sits on a small built in table on the starboard side of the room. The table is covered with dark brown vinyl so it's hard to see but easy to clean. It's wedged in tightly and bolted to the wall, and can be removed if we have guests. The surface of the bed acts like an extension of the table, supporting pieces as I quilt them. There's just enough room for me to sit on an adjustable stool in front of the machine, but not enough room for the stool to have a back. That's OK, I try to only spend about 20 minutes at a time sewing, then move to ironing or other activities.



Most of my tools are hanging on the wall next to the Juki for easy access. The rectangular brown basket holds the stuff I use the most often. The glass door to the right in this photo is the en suite shower, which is where I store batting in big plastic bags. There's another window in the shower, so I get a little extra light that way.



My stash is stored in every nook and cranny of the room, including inside the small attached bathroom. See the stainless steel sink? This is my scrap strings and crumbs storage area. Spray baste, starch and an extra iron are stored under the sink with the toilet paper and bottles of wine. No wasted space on a boat!



Here is the port side of the room. You can see some of the plastic storage boxes to keep out dust and salt air out of the fabric. There's a spring loaded curtain rod running between two shelves under the window to hold WIPs. More of those live on hangers behind the door and in my clothes closet. Because really, who needs more clothes?



Two of the four drawers under the bed contain ziplock bags with fabric sorted by color or theme. Equipment under the bed (the bow thruster) generates black graphite dust, so this fabric needs extra protection. Keep those ziplocks zipped!

These two larger bins on the floor next to the bed are all my yardage bigger than fat quarters. The woven basket crammed in behind that holds pieces large enough to use as backings.

 

The wall space is extremely limited because of all the doors and cabinets, but I hang up my frequently used rulers wherever there's a bit of room. 3M Command hooks work well and don't damage the woodwork. There's no way I can have a design wall, so I use the top of the queen size bed in the master stateroom.

So there you go, my little nautical studio! I love having all my quilting stuff close at hand and spend many happy hours here. It may be small and salty and constantly moving, but that gives me a built in excuse for any wobbly free motion stitching. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Postcards From Ikea finish

Ta da! Here is my finished quilt from Sandra's Quilt Along. I feel that I can post it guilt-free now that the QAL is ending. The truth is that I hung it on our bedroom wall on February 22nd. What can I say? I was really motivated to fill that dark wood wall with something bright and cheery.



I'm calling my version of the Postcards from Sweden pattern Postcards From Ikea: enough like Sweden for the average American. The original pattern uses Kona solid fabrics, but I chose similar colors from my stash. Most of them are blenders, so the look is a bit different. I also reduced the size of the blocks so the final quilt would fit the wall space.



The backing is this super fun, big dinosaur print. It was part of a very large and generous batch of fabrics given to me by DH's aunt. It's a bit thicker and stiffer than quilting cotton, so it works well for a wall hanging like this.

PFI is quilted in straight lines using my walking foot. I chose several places to start quilting a small square, then echoed out with a spacing of roughly an inch. When the echoes encountered each other, I veered out toward the edge. The result is nicely geometric, but not terribly rigid. Because the quilting lines cross all those 45 degree triangles, the lack of consistent spacing is lost in all the angles and colors. That's how I like my quilting: lookin' good without workin' hard.



Occasionally, a patch of sun comes in our small portlights and moves across the quilt. The texture is really yummy, even though the piece has not been washed and dried.



The binding is one of the darker colors from the piecing, a deep burgundy that I used as the pattern's color #23, Cerise. Did anyone get to the point where you just knew the colors based on their numbers? "Oh, another #10, my cross hatched peach. 31 is the pink with big polka dots..."



I like this outtake photo that shows our ensign blowing straight out in the wind. You can see why I use the strong clip on the left to hold the quilt onto the chair. Sean just took our long handled net back to the restaurant where we ate last night, to recover his sunglasses that blew off the table into the water. I really don't want to do that with a quilt! The water might be a gorgeous color, but it isn't very clean in the marina.

I really enjoyed making this quilt and love seeing it every day. A big thank you to Sandra for hosting the quilt along! She has forgiven me for turning it into a Quilt Ahead At Breakneck Speed, and I truly appreciate that. I've already started on her next one!

Free fabric and a finish

Look at all this super cute ocean themed fabric! My friend Karen, who blogs over at KaHolly, sent all these pieces to me last week. Wasn't that sweet? She thought I would get around to stitching them up into a quilt long before she would, since it's been marinating in her stash for about five years. I couldn't resist working with them right away.

It's a series of 12 squarish panels that can be sewn into a soft book or a toddler quilt, plus some nice coordinating scraps in bright colors. I used the scraps for cornerstones, added some mottled yellow sashing and pieced this up into a simple 3x4 layout top. The bold, happy fish designs do the heavy lifting to make this fun, so I think simple piecing was all it needed. 

Fabric panels are notoriously uneven in size, and these were as much as 3/8" different in height and width from each other. However, there is a curvy, squiggly darker blue printed on the edges of the blocks, making an easy transition to the yellow sashing, no matter what the overall size. The top is about 36"x46", a good toddler quilt size. I'm going to donate this one to Little Lambs, which is one of the charities for Hands2Help this year. Sarah announced the challenge today; go take a look if you're interested. The quilts aren't due to be shipped until June, so I have plenty of time to quilt up these fishies. Thanks so much, Karen, for sending this packet of fun!

Meanwhile, I completely finished this quilt, called Olympic I-Spy. The Sunshine Online Quilt Guild had a little challenge during the winter Olympics games to stitch something up in the colors of the Olympic flag: red, blue, yellow, green and black. 

I used those colors to border little I-spy blocks in contrasting colors. It was fun and fast and the colors are bright and cheerful.

I sandwiched the top up with this happy red and white heart fabric and Warm and Natural batting. It's fairly thin, so the whole quilt is sort of a lightweight summer piece. The binding is a bright stripe in all the Olympic colors plus orange, but it works fine. 

I did big, soft floppy feather quilting to keep it snuggly. This motif is fast, fun and forgiving of a bit of lumpiness and asymmetry. Being personally both lumpy and asymmetric, this works well for me. My feathers are getting better in the middle of the quilt, but edges are still a challenge. I also managed to catch a big fold in the backing all along one edge, so a bit of frog stitching needed to happen (rip-it! rip-it!) Quilting will keep you humble, folks.

Here is the quilt being inspected by Number 17. It passed with flying (Olympic) colors, and then took a spin through the washer to get rid of cat hairs and other impurities. The cursing I did during the stitch ripping washes out, right?

Olympic I-Spy has already been shipped off to one of the coordinators for the Wrap A Smile quilt charity. You can read more about WAS here if you're interested. I didn't think I'd have time to mail any more quilts while we were still in the US, but we've been sitting in Key West for over a week waiting for a good weather window. Please note that this is NOT a complaint!

We use maps like this to help us decide when to leave on longer passages. The trip to the closest Bahamian island, Bimini, from here will take us about 24 hours. So we're looking for the map to be white and the lightest blue along our route during that time. That medium blue means the waves could be as high as 6 feet, which can be uncomfortable (but not dangerous.) Given the choice of enjoying another few days in Key West vs. getting bounced around on passage, we'll most likely keep waiting for smoother seas. Like quilting, boating is supposed to be fun!