Fireburst, Fundy and Strings

My final three finishes for 2018 are ready for their big reveal. The first is my Fireburst quilt, made during Tish's quilt along. 

Tish published clear, step by step instructions each month to make a quilt in one of two sizes. I chose the baby size, with a final block size of 32" x 32". I added a simple border to bring it up to 37" square.

It was really fun to watch my piles of navy, baby blue, and orange morph into this bursting star design!  So cool.

I used some wool batting scraps and a pieced backing, and quilted it up with floppy feathers. The result is a super light, but fat and poofy quilt.

I'll be donating this to Little Lambs, which is located in Utah and serves childen in the foster care system. I figure the wool will make it nice and warm for a small person who could use a quilty hug.

The second piece was made using the Fundy Skies pattern by Cannuck Quilter. Joanne asked me to be a pattern tester for the baby size, which is a single block. I pulled out some red, navy, gold and gray fabrics to play with. 

The pattern was really easy to follow, and I love this on-point square shape! However, the fabrics I chose didn't feel very baby-ish.  Hm, what to do? I had some small panel blocks in a lighthouse theme, so I added those to the top and bottom of the Fundy block to make the quilt a rectangle.

Fundy Lighthouses finishes at about 36" x 50", which is a great wheelchair quilt size. The narrow width keeps the quilt from getting caught in the wheels, but it is still long enough to warmly cover an adult's lap. I used the rest of more wool batting to keep is light and cozy, and quilted it with a medium stipple using variegated blue and white thread. 

The thread is really pretty on the spool, but I feel there was too much contrast between the darkest and lightest parts of the variegation. In the future I'll look for more subtle shading for that type of thread. 

With the nautical lighthouses and the patriotic colors, perhaps this quilt will appeal to a Navy vet.  I'll send it to my friend Doris, and her guild in Alabama will pass it along to a nursing home.

And here's the final finish for 2018. I've been making string blocks each month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I love them! It's so satisfying to turn a jumbled pile of miscellaneous strings into neat, tidy blocks. 

However, I used fabric foundations for the stitching, so the blocks turned out double thickness and quite heavy. Rather than make a complete, but heavy quilt, I decided to donate this 50" x 70" top to Victoria's Quilts. They will quilt it up with a warm flannel backing and give it to a person in Canada who is living with cancer. I figured it's cold enough up in the neighborly north for a super heavy quilt to be useful.

And here is an early glimpse into some things I've been playing with lately. I bought a mini Quick Curve Ruler to try some new curvy blocks. Isn't this a fun shape? It's supposed to be a Christmas ornament, but I used a charm pack of pretty metallic pastels and has a different feel. Sort of Moorish.

I also delved into my neutrals and brights string scraps and made some rectangular blocks using paper foundations. I don't want to end up with another set of double thick, heavy string blocks with fabric foundations. I really like  the wonky diamond shapes but the paper bits are annoying.  I was tickled to read that Diann of Little Penguin Quilts is also making rectangular/diamond string blocks, and hers look so great in red and cream. So interesting how an idea like this seems to pop up in multiple places at once!

Christmas 2018 finishes

Happy New Year! Everyone still has all their Christmas decorations up, right? Good, because I'm sharing my holiday finishes today.

For the first time in many years, we got on an airplane during the dreaded winter holiday travel season. But the reward for enduring crowded flights filled with sneezing travelers was getting to visit family and friends. I decided to make zipper pouches to give to the folks we were visiting. Nothing big, just small tokens of affection. It was fun to select fabric for each person and quilt up the bags. Sewing with zippers is definitely not my favorite thing, but I feel like I'm getting the hang of it now.

I added a few little suprises inside the bags. This one for my Dad has beer fabrics peeking through the zipper.

This horse bag was given to my Mom, and has music notes inside. She and her husband both sing in choirs, so I put the same fun fabric inside his gift.

A dear friend lost her beautiful tuxedo kitty a few months ago, so I made her a bag with holiday kitties to cheer her up. The little paw prints inside honor the prints our pets leave forever on our hearts.

And speaking of cats, I made this little holiday wall hanging for above our bed. It uses six panels of Debbie Hron fabric. 

The little contented Christmas cats have such sweet faces! The central square is all part of the panel, and I added borders to make a star shape.

My husband really likes this paisley print, so I used up all my scraps of it. The quilting is simple stipples in the borders, SITD around the stars and squares, and outlining of each cat.

The reason I needed a new wall hanging is because this is the first year we've had a Christmas quilt on our bed! Sorry for all the dark photos, but our bedroom is incredibly dark. Our windows are only 8"x18" and the walls are dark wood. Great for sleeping, but lousy for quilt photos.

The wall above the bed usually holds my Postcards from Ikea piece, which is rainbow bright. It didn't look right with Christmas red and green, so Contented Christmas Cats chased a squirrel (or maybe vice versa?) and a more coordinated look was born.

The bed quilt was actually finished months ago during Christmas in July, and put away until December. The flimsy dates back a whole year. I quilted the scrappy cream background with big feathers, and the darker red and green areas with a stipple.

The binding is a black and white stripe, and the quilting in the red border is simple straight lines. After all those feathers, I was kinda done with the quilting to be honest. I should probably do borders first before I run out of steam.

 

The back is solid green fleece, and I used no batting in this piece. We are usually somewhere warm for the winter, so this weight is just right for us.

The fleece shows the shape of quilting really, really well. But it completely hides the individual stitches. The bobbin thread is off white, and you can't see any white at all on the back! Gotta love that thick, forgiving fleece. 

When we return to the boat this week, it will be time to pack up and put away our Christmas decor until next year. Meanwhile, we're enjoying everyone else's holiday lights and trees. I hope you all had a wonderful season. Onward to 2019!

Caged Samurai

I'm a bit behind in posting some of my final finishes for 2018. We're currently traveling away from the boat, helping again with family medical issues and fitting in a few visits with friends here and there. Today I have a little free time to blog and show you Caged Samurai, a finish from late November/early December.

This UFO was pieced over the course of many months. The central panel is an odd, almost tattoo-like graphic fabric. It was part of some big batch of scraps that I bought on eBay several years ago. The warrior wields a sword and strikes a fierce pose! I immediately knew I wanted to set him behind thin strips, as if being seen through vertical bars. The purple bars and frame were stitched on, and then he sat for a long time. What do you do with this kind of piece? It certainly wasn't meant to be a charity quilt for a toddler!

At some other point, I was playing with some Asian-inspired fabric scraps and used Anita Grossman Solomon's technique to make square-in-a-squares. The little squares piled up, then ended up in a baggie in a drawer. Then some other scraps got stitched together into long columns of coins, and ended up in a different baggie.

One day, all those parts told me they would probably work together, with a little help. I added the panels of fabric on the left and right of Mr. Samurai to improve the proportions and stitched on the Anita squares. That seemed a bit dark, so I added a frame and border of bright white to contain the coin strips. Getting closer to just right!

He then waited quietly on a hanger as a UFO for quite a while. One day last month, he told me to use a purple binding as a final frame, and I knew Caged Samurai was ready to be quilted. After a bit of stitch in the ditch to stabilize and define the different areas, I enjoyed playing with several different motifs.

In the coins, I quilted easy wishbones. In the squares, I did a simple dot-to-dot design in the outer triangles, and a curvy orange peel inside the squares. I was inspired by Vicki's use of the latter motif, and used her technique of chanting "fat skinny fat skinny" to keep track of which way to curve next!

The side panels are too busy to see any quilting, so I cheated with stippling using dark purple thread. I think. I couldn't see a dang thing as I stitched, so I might have drawn the Mona Lisa in there for all I know.



Inside the "cage," I used this serpentine design just to add texture without obscuring the face. The bronze colored thread looks just right in here among all the metallic gold accents.



In the white column next to the Anita squares, I mimicked the shape with more dot-to-dot stitching. It's a little wonky, but I'm OK with that.



The outer borders required just a little marking. The motif is sinusoidal waves filled with serpentine echoing, which takes longer to type than it does to stitch!



I marked the curves lightly to make sure that they ended the way I wanted in the corners.



The transition around the corner from the thin side borders to the wider top and bottom borders took a little head scratching, but I'm happy with how it turned out. White thread on white fabric, plus a trip through the washer and dryer to crinkle up, hides a multitude of "creative" stitches.



The backing is this gray quasi-Asian newspaper fabric, plus chunks of other Asian inspired fabrics. I call it "quasi" because there seems to be nothing readable among all those characters. I have an app on my phone that can look at images and pick out words and numbers in any language, but it found nothing but a few numbers in this. So it seems to be just scribbles, which I suppose is better than rude words. The big advantage of this backing is it hides EVERYTHING. Highly recommended for trying new quilting motifs!

Many of these metallic fabrics were quite stiff, and I worried that the quilt would be uncomfortable. But it washed beautifully and became wonderfully drapey. In spite of his fierce appearance, Caged Samurai is quite a softy.

A few days after I finished the quilt, I learned that a friend was really struggling to recover from a car accident. Charles is a quirky, irreverent, funny guy and I knew immediately that Caged Samurai had found his forever home. I am happy to report that Charles loves this piece and tells me that not only has he always adored homemade quilts, but purple is his favorite color! I hope it brings him comfort and healing.

Linking up with Tish's UFO Busting party.

The Secret Life of Juice

It's a finish! This UFO is at least a year old, and I don't think I ever blogged about it. 

It's made with big triangles of science and math-themed fabrics, plus some greens, blues, and black and white polka dots. After my goddaughter was accepted into UCLA for their engineering PhD program, I decided this top must be for her. This week, she happened to be visiting Boston while we are here, so I pulled it out and finished it so I could give it to her in person. 

Here is The Secret Life of Juice in front of the historic lightship "Nantucket," as seen from our back deck.

The backing is bright lime green with fun atom symbols, plus a few scrappy chunks to bring it up to size. 

The binding is a metallic silver polka dot on black, and the quilting is a big stipple for softness and a fast finish.

You can see one of the extra fabrics on the back, and the line of stitching from using my machine to sew down the binding from the front. It blends quite well on the green, but shows a bit on the black. That's fine with me.

And why is this quilt called The Secret Life of Juice? My goddaughter has a orange tabby cat named Juice (like orange juice, get it?) and Juice is...slow. On the scale of cat IQs, Juice is not the brightest bulb in the string. Not the sharpest knife in the block. Dumb as a box of rocks. Or so we all thought, until I found this fabric:

Turns out Juice has been a mad scientist all along! He's hiding on the back of this quilt, dreaming up new inventions and conducting groundbreaking research. Who knew?? 

I'm so glad this UFO was far enough along that I was able to pull it out and finish it in a day and present it to her. UFOs get a bad rap, but they can be so convenient when you need a fast finish! I'll actually be mailing it to her in California, since she's traveling through the Northeast with just a backpack right now. No need to schlep a quilt around on your summer vacation when the USPS can handle all the transport.

I ain ga lie...

...my blogging mojo has been lacking. But I have been sewing. The title of this post is a nod to the local Turks and Caicos beer. The lager is called I-Ain-Ga-Lie ("I ain't gonna lie") which is delicious. We enjoyed a couple of cold ones on the deck of a restaurant on the island of Middle Caicos. You can see both shallow, turquoise water and deep, marine blue water in the background. Lovely!

A stack of long quarters in sherbet colored homespuns has been kicking around my studio, getting in the way, so I cut them up and pieced this top. I was inspired by Rose's Ernie quilt for the combo of solids and stripes, and wanted to try a little bit of transparency play. I offset the solid and pattern rows by a half block, which was a bit fiddly and tedious to keep track of. I think this quilt is one of those that will look a lot better quilted and I'm planning to play with some fun long skinny FMQ motifs when I get around to it.

And speaking of transparency, I pieced up this Five Alarm Chili top using Sandra's Playtime Plus pattern. She's having a quilt along that just started so feel free to jump in! The piecing went really fast so I got ahead of the QAL even faster than usual. I chose mostly hot chile pepper fabrics for the small pluses, with a few other veggies and blenders for variety. The cream and red solid backgrounds make another ginormous red cross, a nod to our years as volunteers for the American Red Cross. Or possibly it refers to the medical attention you'll need if you eat cousin Christopher's homemade hot salsa.

While taking photos, the wind gusted up quite strongly and I ended up hanging onto the corner of the chiles while it flapped noisily. I didn't notice until later that all the motion had actually started to disintegrate the fabric! Good thing I have more of this cream so I can replace this frayed corner.

This little piece isn't a quilt, technically. There isn't any batting between the top and the backing, so I'll call it a blankie. The fabrics are the fun, fish-themed scraps from Hugs and Kishes Covered with Fishes that I made for my newest baby cousin. I actually pieced the top at the same time as H&KCwF, so it's nice to move this UFO along. The backing is a thick cotton corduroy in similar colors, and I used pre-packaged satin blanket binding. It is quilted using wavy lines of stitching about 2" apart. The corduroy didn't slide well along my machine bed, so I ended up quilting most of it with the corduroy on the top, using my walking foot. I'm calling it Through the Reef and we'll see how it washes up. I'm hoping the corduroy will shrink up and add some crinkle.

Similarly, this piece is just the top with a flannel backing, no batting, and purple satin binding. Streak of Lightning was pieced ages ago with the scraps from our bed quilt, which is the big checkerboard one in my blog header photo. It's been languishing as a UFO for several years but now it's a finish! Woot!

Here's the backing, a cute blue giraffe flannel with a bit of green to make it big enough. The quilting on this one is kind of a FMQ sampler with 8 different motifs in the 16 rows. Without the batting thickness, the fabric moved much more smoothly/quickly under my quilting foot, which led to some distorted shapes. It's funny how my hands are so used to the drag and resistance of a regular quilt sandwich! I think all the cottons will shrink in the wash and hide any little oopsies. Again, I decided to use satin binding to give it a little extra pizzazz to make up for no batting.

I had to pull out my other sewing machine to put on the satin bindings because that requires a zig zag stitch. Once I had The Little Kenmore That Could set up, I figured I might as well use up the rest of my stash of satin binding. I had nice big pieces of this pink giraffe flannel and a coordinating cotton pique, and put them together as a whole cloth blankie. Kind of like a receiving blanket, but big enough for a toddler who really, REALLY likes pink. 

These blankies will be donated to Little Lambs as part of the Hands2Help challenge. Little Lambs provides a backpack full of hygiene and comfort items to kids who are in transition from temporary places like hospitals, emergency shelters, and foster care. These children can be any age from newborn to teens and often have no way to carry their few belongings. I got to thinking that the really little kids might struggle to fold and pack a bulky quilt into their new backpack, so I decided that these thinner blankies might be a good alternative. The flannel and corduroy are soft and fuzzy and the satin bindings feel smooth and soft against little fingers and faces. Although I prefer making quilts with batting, it was interesting to try these alternatives and I think they will still wrap three little ones in warmth and comfort.