Unitarian fans tutorial

A reader requested that I show how I do the Unitarian fans free motion motif. I'm sure I didn't invent this variation of Baptist fans, but I've never seen it demonstrated in exactly this way so I figured I earned the right to rename it.

The big difference between this and other variations I've seen is that the arches don't overlap or touch the previous stitching. I'm bad at following a previous stitch line, also called "travel stitching." I also do my share of ripping out and having a continuous line of quilting is MUCH easier to rip.

This is an edge to edge, overall filler design. What I like about it is that it requires very little thinking or planning. It's impossible to get stuck in a corner because you weren't thinking far enough ahead. You just work your way across the quilt in rough rows, then start again back on the other side. The end of a row makes a good stopping point to take a break. And my brain likes regular, repeating shapes.

Start in the lower right hand corner of the quilt, about two inches up, and sew straight down to the corner. Turn left and sew about two inches across the bottom. Turn up at a right angle and make the first arc back up to the right hand edge.

At the right edge, sew straight up about 1/2" to 3/4", which will be the spacing of the rest of the arcs. I just eyeball this spacing relative to my presser foot. The "Unitarian" part of these fans implies that they are rather liberal and not too straight laced. Wobbly is OK, organic is OK. Arc back down to the bottom, then left that same 1/2" to 3/4" spacing.

Sew six lines back and forth in roughly parallel arcs, ending at the bottom edge of the quilt. I've tried four arcs and eight arcs, but six works best for me in that it keeps the whole fan contained in an area small enough that I don't need to keep moving my hands to control the quilt.

Start the next fan by stitching about 2" along the bottom to the left, then arcing up about 2" until close to, but not touching, the last fan. How close I get varies a bit, but usually is about 1/8" to 1/4" away. Stitch parallel to the last fan up 1/2" to 3/4", then arc back to the bottom. Note that the first fan edges were parallel to the edge of the quilt, but subsequent fan edges are parallel to the previous fan.

Sew the six arcs and end at the bottom of the quilt. 

Repeat across the bottom of the quilt to the left edge. In my drawing, you can see that my fans aren't all exactly the same size, and that's fine with me. It will all tend to mush together after multiple rows and give a nice overall texture.

Start the next row about 2" to 2 1/2" inches above the top of the first fan. Sew straight down to within 1/8" to 1/4" of the first fan but not touching, then turn left. This time, instead of sewing directly to the left (parallel to the bottom of the quilt), stitch roughly parallel the top of the first fan about 2", then turn up to form the first arc.

Repeat the six arcs, ending each one close to but not touching another fan. You can see that this fills in the space nicely with no obvious gap between the rows.

Repeat across the width of the quilt. Because my fans are not identical or premarked, they vary a bit in width and height. That means when I get to the far left edge, I might be in the middle of an arc. Just treat the edge of the quilt like another line to sew right up to, but not touch, and continue the six arcs. The final fan might be wide, or it might be squished, but as long as the arc spacing is roughly the same, you get a consistent texture.

The bottom row of fans all have that nice, straight edge, but all the rest of them have curvy edges dictated by preexisting fans. At first, that threw me off from making consistently curved arcs, until I focused on trying to make the first few stitches of each arc roughly perpendicular to the previous fan.

This design scales really nicely. The numbers I give here are what work for me, but you could make this design super tiny or big and widely spaced. On the Scrappy Chili Peppers quilt, my initial arcs were about 3" and the arc spacing closer to 1". This gave a softer, looser feel to the finished quilt and sewed up quite a bit faster. But I couldn't stitch an entire fan without stopping to move my hands. I found that quite annoying, since The Little Kenmore That Could doesn't have a needle down feature. So I changed to this tighter spacing for Bright Bento.

Sarasota, FL

I finished quilting the gift quilt yesterday. Here is the back, trimmed. I haven't decided what fabric to use for the binding. Several rather large batches of fabric are waiting for me at our mail receiving company in Green Cove Springs. We will have a good address for deliveries next week while in the Tampa/St Pete area, so all my goodies will arrive at once. It's always like Christmas when that happens!

As I said earlier, this quilt does not have any batting, just a cotton top and a fleece back. There are three reasons for that. One, this is a gift for fellow boaters, and we have found that our fleece blankets dry really quickly. Even when salty, they don't get that sticky, damp feeling as badly as cotton. So half cotton/half fleece seems like a good boat compromise. Two, while I've made two other fleece back quilts, I didn't do extensive FMQ (free motion quilting) on them and wanted to try that. Three, I was running low on batting anyway so this seemed like the right quilt to do my testing.

I'm pretty happy with the FMQ from the front. I had a nice selection of matching Aurifil 50 weight thread for each color cotton, so everything blends well. I tried a boxy spiral shape in the sashing that flowed well and gives good crinkly texture. 

I'm not as happy about the quilting on the back, though. In order to make sure the bobbin thread didn't show on the front, I matched it to the top thread in all instances. That worked well for the front, but makes each motif stand out quite starkly on the back, especially on the big cream rectangles.

It's not that the quilting is bad; in fact, the fleece does a fantastic job hiding some variations in stitch length. It's just that the shapes that make sense on the front look odd and out of context on the back. It looks...unfinished. I really wish I had started with enough of the red argyle for the entire back, because it did a much better job of blending into the quilting. 

The whole thing is very soft and cuddly, though, and I'm still stoked about the fabrics and the design. I just need to decide if my hesitations about the back are enough to knock it off the gift list. We'll see how I feel about it after binding and laundering. Once I make a final decision I'll be able to share the completed front with you.

One of the things that surprised me about using fleece on the back was how different it was to move the sandwich through the sewing machine. While sewing the pieces of fleece together to create the back, I kept thinking, "Wow, it's really easy to sew. Very forgiving." But I had read that it was hard on the needle and it did start to get what I call "thumpy." The machine sounded like it was working hard to punch through the cotton and then up to two layers of fleece at the seams. I kept checking to see if the needle felt dull, but it stabbed my finger just fine! I'll toss that needle out after binding, though, just in case.

The fleece was much harder to slide around on the machine bed during FMQ, even though it fed well when doing straight sewing with the feed dogs up. It's almost like the synthetic material got staticky rubbing against the plastic bed, although I never got "shocked." And of course, fleece is much stretchier than cotton so I had to be careful that I wasn't just pulling the backing around while the top stayed in one place. That happened several times, even with spray adhesive holding the layers together. The cream fleece was much stretchier than the argyle, so the whole sandwich moved and felt different as I moved from one section to another, with a really thick, "thumpy" transition across each fleece seam.

Lessons learned for using fleece backings: Look for less stretchy (thicker?) brands. Try to minimize seams in the fleece. Patterned fleece hides more quilting (that's true of cotton, too!) Try a different size or type of needle.

Today I started quilting this bright quilt top. What a difference and what a pleasure! The fabrics are mostly Kaffe Fassett/Rowan. They are very high quality, thin and smooth. Lovely to work with. These blocks were originally destined for our own bed quilt, but I didn't have enough of them for a queen size so I set them aside over a year ago. They are a sort of Bento Box design, so I'm calling this one Bright Bento.

The back is another quality brand, Studio E, and the line is an older one called "Tea Time," I think. It's a bit calico and traditional compared to the wild front, but that's okay. This quilt will most likely be a donation quilt for Hands2Help, so the recipient can flip it over as the mood strikes.

I'm quilting it with my "Unitarian Fans" motif that I first tried on Scrappy Chili Peppers. This time I'm making the fans tighter, almost half the spacing between the arcs, and I'm happier with it. It's taking twice as long, alas. It takes me about 20 minutes to quilt across one pass, about 55 inches wide by 8-10 inches tall. It's a meditative motion of gentle curves with almost no thinking or decisions to be made. 

I really wanted the quilting to blend in on this one, after my disappointment on the gift quilt. I also didn't want to keep changing thread colors and take a break from burying threads. The top thread is a bright aqua and the bobbin is a soft baby blue, close enough to each other that there's no obvious color show-through between top and bottom, but nicely blending on each side.

Whoop, whoop!

I was very excited to see a couple of my blocks today on Kat and Cat Quilts! Kat asked for adult-themed I-spy quilt blocks for the month of March, and I sent in several but forgot to take any pictures of them. 

That's my little plover in the navy blue square, and my artichoke surrounded by kitchen appliances. You should go look at the entire quilt at the link above; it turned out beautifully!

If you're unfamiliar with the term "I-spy" or "eye-spy," it comes from a children's game of the same name. One person says, "I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with the letter B." The other people playing the game looks around and tries to guess: Boat? Box? Oh, that bicycle! Whoever guesses correctly gets to spy the next object. I-spy quilts are very popular for children, and I made this one last year. 

When Kat asked for the blocks, she specified "novelty prints that would make adults smile." Hence the kitchen appliances, French horns, and Alexander Hamilton blocks. And speaking of adult fabrics, here's a bit more of the gift quilt I've been working on. Hmm, seems to be a definite theme here. 

I stitched red hearts all along the red border, and outlined each cup in dark brown. Once again, the blending threads hardly show on the front, but are quite visible on the back. The hearts look very heart-like on the back, but the cups are strange blobs! Today I'm doing a fill pattern on all the oval shapes...can you guess what they are supposed to be?

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for the Friday "Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop!"

Cabbage Key, FL

Today I did a little free motion quilting (FMQ) on a gift quilt. The center of this quilt is large, pieced hearts in five different fabrics: a green, a gold, a dark brown, a medium brown, and a rusty red.

I wanted each fabric to have its own FMQ motif, so I sketched a number of ideas. Because the hearts are squared off, it was a real challenge for me to come up with five different designs. Ones that look good on my sketch paper didn't always work the way I wanted them to on the large heart. I use a piece of clear plastic and a dry-erase pen to test the designs.

The blue tape around the edge of the plastic keeps me from drawing right off the edge onto the fabric! I need to write something like "draw only on this side" on the tape, too. Even after wiping off the pen, there is still some that lingers so I try to draw on the same side of the plastic each time, keeping the pristine side down. The plastic is 8.5" x 11", so you can see how big these hearts are.

Ready to stitch the first red heart. I wear Wonder Grip gardening gloves to keep a good solid hold on the fabric as I guide it under the needle. There are specialty quilting gloves for this, but garden gloves work just as well and are cheap. I like this brand because they are nice and tight on my small hands.

The first time Sean saw the gloves, he read the brand as Wonder Girl and commented that it was a bit grandiose! Harrumph! I may not be very good at FMQ, but I'm getting better all the time.

By the way, for my non-quilting readers, the "free motion" part of this technique means that instead of letting the sewing machine pull the fabric through in a straight line, the feed mechanism is disengaged so the fabric can be pushed and pulled around in any direction. The direction and stitch length is completely controlled by various body parts, with stitch speed controlled by the foot pedal. At first, this feels a lot like patting your head while rubbing your stomach while writing cursive in a mirror.

Anyway, the FMQ design that I chose for the red hearts is a simple, angular set of triangles and diamonds that fill up most of the space. I used Angela Walter's "dot to dot" method, and finished quilting those today. That's the good news. The bad news is that because I used red thread, the motif is very difficult to photograph on the red fabric. But here it is on the back. If you look closely you can see the squared off heart outlined in cream thread.

 

The backing fabric for this quilt is fleece, and I used no batting. I had this great red, cream and tan argyle fleece, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the entire back. So I pieced it with some cream fleece in a big checkerboard. Fleece is interesting to work with: it doesn't fray, but it also doesn't iron flat. So I finished the seams by sewing them down on the back (the inside of the quilt.) Fleece is also quite stretchy, which is a mixed blessing.

On the green hearts, I chose a FMQ motif that makes the heart look like a giant hosta leaf. It ended up right between two sections of fleece.

I'll share more bits and pieces of this quilt as I work on it, but the big final reveal won't happen until after the recipient has it safely on his/her lap.

Sanibel Island, FL

Time for another big quilt round-up post. One of the major reasons I wanted to spin off this new blog is that it's kind of a pain to write huge summaries like this one. I've been thinking it would be simpler if I wrote shorter posts more often so that blogging wasn't such a Major Event.

But what seems more interesting to me to write about each day is much more of the nitty gritty of the quilting process, and I know that our travel blog readers probably aren't the target audience for that. So if you're checking in from Our Odyssey, where you've come to love an obsessive level of detail about boat repair projects, this is your last quilt summary post. After today, it's going to be nonstop musings on fabric selection, block design, free motion quilting motifs, and stitching blooper reels.

Charity Quilts

First up is the most recent Project Linus quilt I've finished. It's called "Cat Family Portrait." 

Those cat faces are just so cute and friendly! I think they will charm any kid with their funny little whiskery smiles. The triangles were leftover from the Pinkly Purply Hearts quilt, cut off from the corners of the heart shapes. I went looking through my stash to find something else in those colors and found the cat faces. They were part of a larger panel that I will use in a different quilt. The faces were arranged randomly around the large panel, but I tried to cut them out as squarely as possible to match the size of the arrays of 3x3 triangle blocks.

The striped border is sewn with mitered corners, the first time I attempted that. Turns out that a wide, super busy stripe is kinda tricky, so the little scallops and doohickeys don't line up very well. However, the overall effect is nice, and I though it looked like a big, fancy picture frame. 

Here's the back, a couple of semi-matching flannel pieces for fuzzy softness. It's a small quilt so I figured it would end up with a small person. I did a combination of walking foot straight line quilting on the borders and free motion quilting in the main section. The triangles have back and forth squiggles, and the cats are simply outlined. You can also see the nice labels that Project Linus provides for us to attach. Very professional!

Next up is "Scrappy Chili Peppers," which I have made for the Hands2Help charity challenge. It was made with a variety of green fabrics from my stash, plus red, yellow, green and black scrap 2.5" strips. Many of them feature fun, bright chili peppers, which came with a large group of novelty fabric samples I bought on eBay. I'll write more about that purchase in another post.

I quilted this one in a free motion pattern based on the traditional Baptist Fan motif. I modified it so that there would be no travel stitching, but just one long, continuous line of stitching. I'm calling this more liberal version "Unitarian Fans" and will definitely be sewing it again. It was fast and easy.

I used a vareigated Aurifil thread in green, yellow and red. It seemed like a good choice with these fabrics. Vareigated threads are gorgeous on the spool, but I think they are tricky to implement well. You never know when you'll end up with a really high contrast area, but it's usually when I make a sewing wobble. Hey, the boat moved right then! That's my excuse.

The back of this quilt is one of my favorites. I had a large piece of this striped fabric that is just perfect. Gotta love that kind of serendipity. I don't plan my backings or bindings in advance; there's a whole lot of "winging it from the old stash-a-roonie" here on Vector.

This is a small, wheelchair sized quilt made in an attic windows type pattern. I'm not sure yet where I'll donate it, possibly to a charity that supports ALS patients. I just love this bird fabric and thought it looked nice in the "windows."

Here's a closer view of the birds before I did much quilting. Each little feathered friend is outlined and I loosely followed the swirling branches. I did a wood grain free motion motif in the dark blue, which was fun and new.

Selfish Sewing

That's the term in the quilting world for projects you sew for yourself.

This piece is made of silk dupioni. I bought a book of small, discontinued sample swatches from an upholstery or drapery company. Each 6"x9" piece was backed with paper and stapled into a cardboard book binding. The eBay seller reassured me that the paper backings would come off easily when heated with a medium-hot iron.

Wrong. The first sample I ironed scorched into a brown mess. The second piece melted the glue into a sticky morass that bonded permanently to the silk. After doing some internet research, I soaked the third piece in water, then soapy water, then rubbing alcohol, then acetone. Each bath softened another angstrom-thick layer of paper but none of the glue. Arghhh! 

Fortunately, the paper only covered half of each piece of fabric, so I sent photos of my science experiment failures to the seller, who graciously refunded half my money, and I set my sights on a smaller quilt. As you can see, it's an odd size: too big for the salon table, but definitely not big enough to be a lap quilt.

But it fits nicely over the master stateroom bed, even if the colors of the silk are a bit muted compared to the bed quilt. 

The silk was easy to sew. I think the dupioni samples were treated with something that made them a bit stiff. I cut most of the edges with pinking shears to keep them from fraying, and that worked well. The few unpinked edges did fray aggressively.

Why quilt with silk at all? Look at that sheen! This is gorgeous, gorgeous material. It catches the light beautifully, and rustles like a Southern belle's petticoats when you touch it. I chose a triangular quilting motif, using Angela Walter's "dot to dot" technique, which was fun and pretty straightforward. That being said, I won't be doing much else in silk. It's very expensive, which is why I started with the used drapery sample book. By the yard it can be four to five times more than cotton, and in order to get this much color variety I'd have to purchase a small fortune of fabric.

On the back I used a nice Asian vase patterned quilting cotton and tried a binding technique called "facing." The facing is wrapped completely on the back so that none shows on the front of the quilt. It is often used for quilts that are entered into shows, la di da! I didn't want a plain cotton binding to show against the fancy silk, so this worked well. It isn't harder or easier than regular binding; just different.

Gift Quilts

My final finished project to share today is "Brewskis."

I found out a couple weeks ago that my stepmom's nephew, Will, had been very, very badly injured in an explosion at his work. He faces multiple surgeries and many weeks of rehabilitation. It is a scary time for our extended family. 

I had only met Will once, many years ago, when he was a child. So I asked my stepmom Kay what he liked to do as an adult, and she told me he was a quintessential Western Guy: a fishing, hunting, outdoorsy fellow who appreciated a cold beer at the end of a long day. So I made him a beer quilt to brighten up his hospital stay, and this week I'll mail it off to him.

I had this fun beer themed panel that I cut up for the centers of the blocks. They have cheeky sayings on them: "I never met a beer I didn't like," and "A well balanced diet is a beer in each hand," and about seven or eight others.

These were part of the same set of novelty fabrics as the chili peppers. There are bottles of beer, and mugs of beer. And glasses of wine, because there's always someone who doesn't like beer but will drink the wine. And tortilla chips, because who doesn't like a few munchies to go with your brewskis?

I think the colors are rather manly, quite different from my usual rainbow hued kids quilts. This green leafy piece was left over from the Star Surround quilt I made for Kay and my Dad, for a bit of family connection.

All the remaining bits and scraps got integrated into the back, along with larger pieces in the same blue/brown/green/sand color scheme. I figured I probably wouldn't be able to use beer stein scraps in my Project Linus quilts. Scrappy backings can be fun to look at, too.

Brewskis is about 54" x 54": not huge, but also not overwhelming for a small hospital bed. As I made it, I concentrated on sewing loving, healing thoughts for Will into each stitch. I hope it provides a bit of cheer and amusement for him and helps to speed his recovery.

A blog of my own

Well, looky here! I've whipped up a brand new blog, just to talk about quilting. The online quilt world seems to be quite large and I'm getting more involved in it. There are block drives, bees, link up parties, contests and more, and having a dedicated blog makes participating in those a lot easier.

So welcome to my Quilt Odyssey, a journey (by boat, of course) from beginner to something slightly more than a beginner. I've moved all my previous quilt-related posts from our travel blog, Our Odyssey, over here to have them all in one place. If you've been following along over there, everything below this post is old material (Ha! Get it? Quilts, cotton, material!)

If you're a new reader, here's the story in a nutshell. I live full time aboard a boat named "Vector" with my husband, Sean, and our cat, Angel. We are currently traveling up the western coast of Florida. About two years ago, I got the quilting bug and started sewing in our second stateroom, now called The Quilt Room. It's a pretty big room for a boat, but a pretty small room for a sewing studio, so I am concentrating on smaller projects like lap- and child-sized quilts.

I have made one large quilt, though: a queen sized cover for our bed. It seems huge to me, and it certainly is difficult to take photos of something that size on a 52-foot long boat. You know how other bloggers spread their quilts on the lawn or drape them artfully from a tree in the backyard? Yeah, that's not happening for me. Since forgot to take a picture of the back of when I originally documented it, today Sean fixed that omission. The photo at the top of this post shows the back of Exuberant Color, and the front is on the far right in the blog header picture. We took a number of photos to get the blog header and it was nerve wracking to have all my hard work hanging precariously over the water from spring loaded clamps. The boat is salty and dirty, too, so I didn't want to drape anything freshly washed over the side. I won't be setting up many more "side of the boat" photo shoots.

In the meantime, watch this space for more frequent quilting updates, and thanks for following along. If you leave me a comment and aren't a "no-reply" blogger, I'll write back.

Winter 2016 quilt roundup

Happy First Day of Spring! Seems like a great time to play Show and Tell on the quilting and sewing front. 

First up are four blocks sewn for Covered in Love, a charity in Texas that gives quilts to families of patients who pass away in the hospital. The quilts warm up the room of the loved one in their final hours, and give grieving families something to focus on and take home. Covered in Love is coordinated by RN Kat Drinkwater, of Kat and Cat Quilts. Each month, Kat asks for specific blocks to be made in certain colors, then she sews them together into beautiful quilts. 

The December block request was for these spinning diamonds in peacock colors (gold, purple, green, and turquoise) surrounded by warm brown. 

I had never made this block before, but it was fun and easy with Kat's excellent tutorial. She received enough blocks of this design to make three (maybe four?) complete quilts. From Kat's blog, here is one of the finished quilts with a couple of my blocks in it: 

Isn't that pretty? I love how scrappy and warm these group effort quilts turn out, so I'm planning to contribute more blocks in the future. 

This quilt was made as a house-warming gift for Sean's cousins who recently moved from California to New Hampshire. I couldn't remember their color scheme, so I enlisted the help of Sean's aunt for some photos. She sent me the link to their California house's real estate listing and voila! Well lit, professional photos of their living room. I had the perfect fabric in my stash, these beautiful reds, pinks, creams and aquas from the Lario fabric line.

You know your quilt is a success when the teenage boy of the house immediately claims it as his own. 

On my side of the family, we welcomed a brand new cousin: baby Luke Tallis Wolcott. Of course, there needed to be a quilt to celebrate the new arrival. I found this darling panel by M'Liss, featuring a sunken ship surrounded by sea creatures and being explored by three cats and two dogs. Check out the dachshund in the scuba helmet!

Panels are a great canvas for free motion quilting, so I went to town. I outlined most of the critters and plants, and filled in the water with a swirly background that I learned from my friend Stephanie. 

The backing fabric is a pretty geometric with the same aquas, oranges and blues in it. It was big enough to wrap around to the front as the binding, my first time trying that technique. I was careful to fold it such that there were two layers of fabric on the edge of the quilt for strength and durability. Baby quilts get washed a lot!

And here's the handsome little squeaker on his very own "Scuba Dog" quilt. 

The very first quilt I made, "Dive Plan," was created for Luke's big sister Lyndy. I think they will be sharing a nursery for a while, so I tried to keep the same colors in their quilts. Here's a nostalgic flashback to Lyndy's quilt. I had no idea when I stitched it up how much I'd come to love this hobby! 

And speaking of quilts for little people, here are my latest Project Linus charity projects. This one was made using the heart block tutorial from Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew. I used a variety of purple and pink fabrics as part of the Purple Sewing Challenge on Instagram. The focus fabric is a gorgeous multi color butterfly print by Laurel Burch, and I love how the bits of orange and yellow in that one keep the whole thing from being too saccharine. The binding is a random stripe that I had in my stash.

The back uses a big scrap of another bright butterfly fabric, plus one of the purple paisleys from the front. The butterflies were printed on a slightly thicker cotton; I think it is supposed to be used to cut into pieces for applique. I learned that thicker is NOT better when it comes to quilt backings. This one fought me tooth and nail during the quilting process. I'm glad that a run through the hottest cycles of the washer and dryer added enough crinkliness to hide some quilting boo-boos! 

How about polar bears in brightly colored sweaters? Except the two that are, you know, naked. 

I outlined each bear to make him/her pop out from the white background a bit. In the large yellow squares, I tried a technique called "dot to dot" quilting. It's a way to stitch geometric shapes quickly and easily without marking any lines on the quilt top. You can see the diamond shapes stitched in this close up. You can also see why Sean named this quilt "Polar Bears with Old Man Hairs."

The back is a single piece of bright blue with little hot air balloons. Not really a polar bear theme, but the colors were right. I used the "wrap the backing around to the front for the binding" technique again. Fast and easy, but requires some planning ahead to make it work.

"Go, Dog, Go!" features bright arrows pointing this way and that on a scrappy cream/beige background.

The center stripes have these super cute dogs in cars. They have their heads hanging out the windows, of course. The fabric is from Makower UK, an out of print line called "Woof!" I have more of it, so you'll see these dogs again. I quilted it with an overall meander or stipple pattern. It basically looks like squiggles all over the quilt. 

This little doll quilt is only about 20" square, and it was made for a teddy bear! It uses the same heart block as the purple quilt, but the hearts are much smaller. I love these pure blues with bright white; so classic.

The back is a lovely fabric that looks like hand painted Mexican tiles. I didn't want to cut it up, so using it on the back is a good way to enjoy the design.

"St. Louis Sixteen Patch" is the name of this pattern, and it is sewn from long strips that are then arranged into the groups of 16. No one seems to know what the connection to St. Louis might be. The way the pieces are ironed makes the assembly go together very smoothly, and this is my favorite pattern yet. Something about the symmetry is just so appealing to me. I quilted it diagonally through each small square.

After making the quilt above (which will be a gift) with the gorgeous muted colors of the "Vienna Garden" fabric line, I was inspired to finally cover our own bed using a 16 patch design. I've been collecting fabrics in our colors for a while, but no pattern had called my name loud enough.

I named it "Exuberant Color" after one of my favorite quilting blogs. It features bright fabrics in cool blues, greens and purples. This is my biggest quilt to date, and I used a "quilt as you go" technique that allowed me to sew it in four manageable sections. The navy blue sashing is part of how the sections are held together: the dark color hides those beefier seams. It also gives a nice stained glass effect that I like.

This is a queen sized quilt, about 87" square. It is a 7x7 grid of blocks, so the four subsections were either 3x3, 3x4 or 4x4. (To compare: "Polar Bears with Old Man Hairs" is about the size of the 3x3 section.) Keeping track of which section attached where kept me hopping, but I'm happy with how it can lay on the bed in any orientation because it's square.

The back is a mix of more muted navy blue fabrics. I'll take a photo of that another time, when I'm willing to wrassle the whole thing back up to the fly bridge for pictures. The only place on the boat where there is enough room to hang this and then get far enough away to fit the whole thing in the camera viewfinder is hanging from the canvas bimini structure. Needless to say, I won't be making another queen sized quilt anytime soon.

And finally, a few non-quilting projects got checked off my to-do list this quarter. 

During TrawlerFest back in January, we had a family with five very young (ages 3 to 9) children aboard Vector for a tour. We had heard that several of the vendors at the show refused to let this young family board their display boats. I didn't want them to leave the show thinking all boaters were kid-phobic jerks, so we went out of our way to invite them over and show them around. I made these little velcro-closure pouches with ribbon handles for each child so they would have a fun souvenir from the show. 

The pattern is actually intended to be a business card case, so I slipped one of our boat cards in each one (and kept the sixth for myself.) I told the kids that living on a boat means you don't have as much room as in a house. They listened to my explanation that the pouches were for tiny treasures with wide eyes and each one said thank you in turn. They were very, very well behaved and delightful kids so I send a big fat raspberry to the vendors who turned them away!

A big part of quilting is ironing each seam before moving on to the next step. Many quilters set up their ironing boards right next to the sewing machine so they can pivot in their chairs to go back and forth between the two machines. That's not practical in my tiny space, but I don't mind the opportunity to get up and stretch regularly. However, my ironing board was UGLY! It's a little tabletop model that sits on the bed, and it came with the boat. (Seriously, John, that thing was uuuuuuuuuugly.) After living with it for three years, and ironing on it daily for almost two years, I finally realized I could recover it! With fabric! Pretty fabric that I own by the boatload!

So I did. I recovered my ironing board with this fabulous bird print and now I'm a happy camper, um, boater.

I also sewed up a simple canvas cover for the fly bridge Furuno radar display. I promised Sean I'd make this for him many, many months ago. I'm not usually a big procrastinator, but sewing canvas is not fun at all. It's thick and unwieldy, requires a special UV resistant thread that is very slippery, and needs a heavy duty needle to penetrate it. The Little Kenmore That Could struggles a bit to get through the thick layers. Before I started quilting, that didn't bother me. But now I worry that my one and only machine will go on the fritz over something as trivial and unimportant as protecting the boat's navigation instruments.

Fortunately, the cover went together without incident and I can relax. Back to quilting!