Doggone quilting

The quilting for C's Canines is finished. This is a design that I used on one of my earliest table toppers. The other day I was sitting at the salon table, looking at the topper, and thought about how much I liked the texture. I also remembered it being really easy to do.

It's a completely walking-foot design of straight lines interspersed with fairly uniform wavy lines. Not as organic as more random wavies, not as unforgiving as strictly straighties. Because this quilt is big square blocks, I first stitched the straight lines from corner to corner on each block. Then I measured one third the distance between the lines and marked two more in-between lines with my Hera marker. Then I visually divided those in half just by eyeball. After that, I did all the wavy lines in between, trying to make the waves match at the peaks and valleys.

I've found that my walking foot quilting is much more cooperative when traveling on the bias. All the stretchiness helps moosh things into place, I think. That's a technical explanation, yo. I don't love wrassling the corners of the quilt through the harp, but it's nice to have no puckers.

I was so pleased with the results of the quilting on the dog quilt that I also quilted a Christmas quilt the exact same way and finished that yesterday, too! Here's the back of that one; the front is still secret. I used a variegated thread on this rather plain cream fabric. More (and hopefully better lit) photos when I get them both bound.

Sunday stash

It's the 200th Sunday Stash over on Molli Sparkles, so I'm joining the party with my latest acquisition. I was browsing for chicken themed fabrics when this nice bundle popped up on eBay.

Aren't they cute? Not exactly what I was looking for in terms of bright kid-friendly fabric, but sweet nonetheless. But every once in a while I do make quilts for adults, and this group of pretty neutrals struck me as a good long term addition to the stash. The bare winter trees are my favorite in the bunch. 

Four final finishes

We decided to spend one night at a marina last night, so I had unlimited water and power to run the washer and dryer. To take advantage of the bounty, I scrambled to finish binding one more quilt.

My least favorite part of the whole quilting process is basting; more specifically, finding the right size batting to put between the front and back of the quilt. I typically buy king- or queen-sized pieces of pre-cut batting and cut them down to lap- or kid-sized quilts. That tends to leave odd sizes left over, which I label with a bit of tape. These pieces then get joined together into "Frankenbatting" with a zig zag stitch, or ironed together with a fusible tape. Either way, it's fiddly. 

I had finished piecing Let's Go To The Races back in June but didn't feel like farting around with batting pieces, so it slipped quietly into the back of the WIP pile. But in the last couple of days, I've had really good Batting Karma, and found pieces that were exactly the right size for this little quilt, and C's Canines. Basting went lickety split for them both, but I only had time to get Races actually quilted.

I did wavy, organic lines in a darker, almost bluish, gray. I thought it looked a little like zoomy tire tracks. The back is a single piece of a nice, medium blue with tiny leaves. A stripe with the same primary colors finished it off nicely. That stripe material is a shirting cotton, I think. It's only 36" wide and has a very different, smoother hand.

I washed Races it with three other quilts that were done except for the crinkling. Angular Jungle looks good; I don't think it needs more quilting on the animals.

I sewed this panel up quickly about 3 weeks ago to use up a piece of pink fleece on the back. I'm calling it Life Is Tweet because I think that's the name of the panel? It got nicely poofy in the wash and will join the other two as Project Linus donations.

Close up of one of the butterflies.

Poofy pink on the back, very snuggly.

And finally, Transformation happily emerged from the washing machine oil-spot free! Hooray! 

The crinkling helps the ghost blocks stand out and almost completely hides any inconsistencies in the way I stitched the design. The secret to decent looking FMQ is shrinkage and wrinkling. Wouldn't it be nice if wrinkling made us quilters look better? Sigh. All kidding aside, I try not to be overly critical of my quilting until after the dryer. 

I'm linking up to Finish It Up Friday because I can!

Angular Jungle almost finish

Angular Jungle, a quilt for Project Linus, is finished except for washing and drying. Still conserving water here on the boat, so I'll wash several newly finished quilts together next week.

I did easy, dot-to-dot style quilting in all the triangles and outlined the animal squares. I may need to go back and quilt the animals a bit more after washing; they seem a bit poofy to me.

The backing is this fun, bright button print that was given to me by Sue. It really hides the quilting wobbles and bobbles! I had all the right dark colors of thread to blend with the triangles, too, so the quilting pretty much disappears. The lighter line in the purple is a chalk mark to keep things moderately straight. Some fabric didn't mark as well with the Hera tool, so I used my chalk pen. 

The binding is a stripe that I bought recently at Spool in Chattanooga. My husband Sean says it reminds him of Beechnut Fruit Stripe gum. I like how the stripe contains white, to tie the white-backed animal squares together. This quilt is about 44" square, a good toddler size. 

Not much fall color here in Florence, AL. But plenty of color in this quilt!

99% finished

Transformation is finished except for a trip through the washer and dryer. This is my disappearing four patch design made entirely with dragonfly fabrics. When I finished piecing the colored fabrics, the quilt was a little too small. I added more white all around, but unevenly so the D4Ps would "float" in the white.

This is my favorite block, with purple and black backgrounds for the dragonflies. 

I quilted it by doing stitch in the ditch along all the white/color junctions, which left the larger four patches of all white or all colors as a single, unquilted piece. That made a grid that sort of looked like a plaid background. Then I did a four-lobed design in each of the larger white squares.

I also quilted the lobed design into the white negative space borders, but only where solid white squares would have been had the colors continued. I think of these as "ghost blocks."

The backing fabric is this tone on tone green with tiny, subtle dragonflies and some pretty metallic accents. The blue, purple and green binding also has a bit of metallic sparkle.

I had some bad luck with this quilt. Can you see the dark spots in this photo? Those are sewing machine oil mixed with some sort of black crud. My walking foot was squeaking, so I oiled everything in the middle of quilting this. Unfortunately, it looks like I didn't get it all wiped up and it must have dripped along one quilting pass. I noticed the spots several days later. So far, they haven't responded very well to spot cleaning with Dawn dishwashing soap which is supposed to cut any kind of grease. I'll treat the spots with a heavy duty prewash stick before machine washing it. We're in water conservation mode right now on the boat, so it may be a week or so before I run the washing machine. I'll take more photos after that to show that the spots have (hopefully!) washed out, and to show the post-dryer crinkle. The lighting is lousy in these photos, so I'll try to shoot some glamour poses later.

Dragonflies are a symbol of transformation. This quilt is a gift for a friend who is certainly going through some big transformations in her life. She was diagnosed with the beginnings of dementia this year, and retired from her career.  I hope this quilt gives her comfort and a quilty hug from me. I know she will forgive the oil spots if they don't completely wash out, but cross your fingers that they will fly away!

Spool, stash, show

A couple of weeks ago, I finally made it to Chattanooga's own modern quilt shop, Spool. Spool is home of the BadAss Quilter's Society. Unfortunately, the shop was going out of business and is completely closed now. Most of the merchandise was on deep discount and almost all of the fixtures were for sale.



While "deep discount" at a retail, bricks and mortar quilt shop is still 2-3 times more per yard than I prefer to pay, I still did a little shopping. There are certain types of fabric that are hard to find among the stash-stored, unsewn, clean fabrics that I usually find on eBay. One is modern, low volume pieces. Spool had a nice selection in their fat quarters so I bought six. I'm also always looking for bright stripes for bindings. This one is actually from a Christmas line, but it will work well with many of my Project Linus novelties. And the basket, sized perfectly for fat quarters, was only a dollar.



Speaking of those eBay fabrics, a couple more goodies made their way to me via the USPS. I've been looking for chicken fabric for a while, and this panel amused me. Each chicken has a name. I'll combine them with these fabrics for a fun quilt. And I couldn't resist the fancy kitties on furniture.



This bright stripe and lime green fruit fabric will both be very useful at some point. I'm always running out of greens, and the fruits make a polka dotty pattern with lots of movement. Wouldn't that be a fun background? I didn't realize when I bought it that the fruit fabric is actually a seersucker, so that will be interesting to work with.



I'm continuing to chug along on quilting Transformation. In my last post, I showed lots of blue tape marking my straight lines. That was working well on all the vertical lines in the grid. When I started stitching the horizontal ones, though, I noticed the tape was actually pulling the fabric into pleats at each crossing. Argh! After ripping and poking at the tape to try to loosen things up, it occurred to me to try my new Hera tool. What a difference! The tool made nice, clean, straight marks that didn't interfere with the stitching at all. I'm a convert!



And finally, here's a photo of Ocean Portal and Berbere on display in the background at the little art show in California. I think the ceramic pieces on the table are really neat. There were several ceramicists, painters, and photographers. I was so tickled to be invited. The organizers asked me to write up a biography and to make sure I included information about Project Linus to help get the word out about this great charity.

Frugal fabric for QOV?

I just saw this eBay listing for a big batch of red, white and blue patriotic fabrics. If I was currently sewing for Quilts of Valor, I'd probably grab this right up. But first, I'd ask the seller if the fabric was stored in a smoke-free environment.

However, I'm not going to bid on this, so if you're looking for a great price on patriotic prints, this one might be for you. Let me know if you win the auction!