Another Floral Finish

Yippee, skippy!

72" x 91" (I've since cleaned off the smudge that makes that vertical strip look faded and blurry.)

Glitterati ii

I was this close to having a quilt done today. How close, you ask? This close:

Two-inch binding strips cut and ready to be sewn together.

But today is Dreadful Tuesday, and another project took its rightful place at the head of the line.

Another finish!

Wow! I'm impressed, even if nobody else is. This is Elaine Adair's Rebuilt Log Cabin, a pattern I had an itch to try, and this satisfied it.

71" x 91"

Críochnaithe

The Irish Chain flimsy made back in 2019 is finally finished (the Irish word in this post's title). Another finish in the space of 8 days? Inconceivable!

"I do not think it means what you think it means."

A Third Pinning, and a Finish

After a few days my back agreed to coöperate and I got a third top pinned.

By this point I was fast running out of my bendy basting pins and had to scrounge through all the other sizes I've collected over the years. I eked them out and didn't have to resort to the diaper pins (or those equivalent in size) that I also have.

Crumby Finish

Yay! 

91" x 70" Construction story at this link

Radio Silence

I hadn't meant to stay quiet for so long, but although I've been busy, I haven't had much to point to and exclaim, "TA-DA!"

This morning I put the final quilting stitch into Sugar Skull. I'd decided on diamonds in the white strips, which meant straight-line quilting, which meant my Brother 1500 on the "dinner" table.

Friday, MyDay

What did I want to do for ME, today? Tuesdays are devoted to The Dreadfuls, but Fridays are just for me. So how did I want to splurge?

My first choice was mundane in the extreme: I needed to mend my favorite sheets, probably for the last time. I found the last excess piece from this project and used it to mend the latest threadbare spot. After this, I'm going to have to look for another set of sheets.

After that was accomplished, I ironed my lastest flimsy: Angry Birds (Ugh!)

Binding thoughts

I've quilted the sandwich featured in the Gemischt post (I am LOVING my new weightlifting system!) and am in the process of sewing down the binding. I decided to use up ALL my 1.75" binding scraps, acknowledging that would mean having to sew the binding down by hand, but also relishing the fact that those scraps would be GONE, never to be replenished. I figured out some time ago that 1.75" was just a little too narrow for comfort, double-fold-binding-wise, and have been cutting bindings at 2" for several years now. Yesterday I simply decided I'd use up the narrow ones, once and for all.

There were some long strips but LOTS more short strips. I briefly worried about and wondered how to avoid seams in the corners, what with all the connecting of the itty-bitty pieces. Well, DUH Carolyn: plan the corners and put the long pieces there! And as long as I'm planning the corners, I might as well use the dark scraps so the mitered pattern would shine without competition.

Gemischt

Yesterday (Friday, my day "off") and this morning were quite productive. I expect Fridays will be my 'mainly me' days going forward, as I've gone back to the Dreadful Tuesday mindset from my working days. I was at a point in my job that I could take a paid day off each week and I chose Tuesdays because it usually took me hours to wind down from Monday night's chorus rehearsals. To give focus to those days, I started designating them for those tasks I'd been dreading (for days, weeks, months), steeling myself mentally for the hard slog ahead and dedicating the day to plowing through whatever onerous black cloud had been hanging over my psyche.

These days the dreadful trifecta is: clean the litter boxes, take my blood pressure, catch up on chorus and/or Mom's finances. Other tasks pop up occasionally; I'm certainly not looking forward to dealing with Mom's 1099s again, but that's what Tuesdays are for!

Back to the present. This happened yesterday.

I've received many compliments on the 'acid wash' of my denim coat. That's not acid wash--that's 30 years of legitimate wear and tear!

A finish

Yay!

 

This is roughly 70"x88". I added the stripe border to build it out to closer meet the Twin guideline of 70"x90".

Double the Pleasure

These were made (made), sandwiched (sandwiched), and quilted back-to-back (time-wise, not fabric-wise), then finished (= washed, dried, photographed) yesterday:

Tuesday, Do-sday

I went to bed last night with the following To-Do list on my mind for my "day off":

1: take pictures of the completed baby quilt

2: figure out which block to add to Celia's starting 6

3: measure and sew the borders on two N1C (Not 100% Cotton) flimsies

4: complete more Frankenbatts, if there's time left in the day

To address #1:

The End is Near

That's not as apocalyptic as it sounds. I'm nearing the finish line of my brother's quilt, at long last!

In the last 20 days I've been cross-hatching the borders, working around all the appliqued pieces which resulted in as much time burying ends as creating them. Once that was done, the edges were trimmed and the label made and basted to a corner on the back.

The hanging sleeves--I made two so there'd be a space in the top center where an additional hook or nail could be placed to prevent bowing--were basted to the top then the bottom edges sewn down. Finally, I attempted to determine a finished length for all the sides.

A Finish

I've shown plenty of shots of the front side of my T-shirt lap quilt, so here's the back after its wash and dry.

Cat because...cat!

This is the thread I used in the bobbins for my quilting: King Tut "Joseph's Coat". On the top side I matched the thread to the T-shirt color.

The keyboard fabric that wasn't quite dark and wasn't quite light in my hubris project was just right cut into 2" strips for a bias binding. I cut hand-sewn bindings at 1-3/4", but I knew I'd be machine sewing this one down. The extra width is just enough to comfortably fold over the seam line, and with the matching teal thread in the bobbin, the stitching barely shows in the top border.

I'm so looking forward to Winter when I can pull this lap quilt out and enjoy the snuggle!

Strips from Stripes

Two years ago in July the Magpies flocked in Maine (wherein I was put to work within an hour of my arrival).

My first experience at a pick-your-own farm.

One of the many hot spots we visited that week was the much-talked-of Marden's. This place seems to be a Mecca for those wanting quilt-store-quality fabrics at bargain-basement prices (and you'll find exactly that here!) From what I understand, they buy up outdated or 'out-of-fashion' fabrics from local quilt stores trying to clear their stock to make room for the latest lines.

Binding with planned corners

My intent was to extend a long (but not long enough) hunk of the brown stripe binding by cutting up the last triangle of that fabric as far as I could. I didn't pay attention to direction, my personality won't allow a join of incorrect stripe directions, and it turns out there wasn't enough to go around the quilt anyway. I was still short by several inches.

So this cutting error gave inspiration for an elegant and easy solution: make the corners from a different fabric, effectively separating each side's binding so the "wrong" stripe will never be noticed, and extending the overall length of the binding so there'd be enough of the original hunk to go around the remaining 3 sides. There's a bit more stop-'n'-go sewing using this method, but it's worth it.

Nearly flimsied

Sunday I double- and triple-checked all my math, then finally took rotary cutter to fabric and cut eight 2.75" strips from the remaining 23"x35" piece of the "Zen Chic" moda. This would be the next border after the Sairey Strip egg fabric.

Most of the writing is about a coffee order. Zen?

The main trouble with using the "wrong" side of a fabric is that the default is to sew "right" sides together. I was 5 strips into the eight, joining them end-to-end for one long strip, when I realized I was sewing them together incorrectly. I had this problem with the egg borders too--sewing the egg blocks onto the "right" side of the fabric as I inserted the filler pieces. What a frustrating waste of time and thread!

20 years later

At a family get-together last year, hosted by my sister Mary and her husband Jim, she pulled their wedding quilt out of its storage box (it was the middle of summer--the quilt was put away until needed) and explained it was their favorite cuddle-up quilt. I was delighted to hear that! But the years of love had taken their toll on the binding.

This is the main reason I prefer doubled bias bindings. There are plenty of layers.

When I knew I'd be returning the next month for an extended period, to help my folks take care of themselves after some health issues, I grabbed all I had remaining of the original binding fabric, plus likely candidates if there wasn't enough of the first fabric.