New Year's Resolution Quilts 1 & 2

I finished two bad luck quilts. The first one is called "If You Hand Someone Scissors, You Will Argue With Them Later". In my family, if someone needs a pair of scissors, you lay them on the table for them to pick up. It is bad luck to hand someone a pair of scissors. The background is foundation pieced. The scissors are needle turn applique. It is machine quilted. That bead in the middle of the scissors is actually a brad from the scrap book section. I punched a hole in the quilt and placed an eyelet there for the brad. This quilt is 100% from my stash. The big lesson I learned here is once you trim a quilt, you can't untrim it.

The second quilt is called, "Don't Spill the Salt". I think most people know that it is bad luck to spill salt. The background is hand pieced and the salt shaker is needle turn applique. The quilt is machine and hand quilted. And it is hand beaded. The big lesson I learned here is that you don't have to take things so literally. Actually, I think I may have known that. But I was reminded of that lesson in the quest for beads that look like salt. I had white beads that were too clear, or too big, or the wrong shape. I couldn't get them to work. I tried the pink beads just to see if they were the size I wanted, and really liked the effect. So I used them. There was no reason to use white beads. The only thing I bought for this quilt was the black thread for the salt shaker. The embroidery is too tiny for you to see how bad I am at french knots. I really like the back of this one. It has that whole "book of shadows" effect I was going for. Maybe I've seen one too many episodes of "Charmed".


On baby blanket front, I have 8 panels down and one to go. The only panel left is the center popcorn stitch panel. Yippee.

Autumn Sun Through The Gingko Leaves

I finished my husband Kevin's quilt. And I managed to do it with that thingee of perle cotton I swore was going to run out. The quilt is called "Autumn Sun Through The Gingko Leaves". The colors remind me of fall, which is Kevin's favorite season. And there are gingko leaves quilted on the center blocks. Did you know that the gingko tree is considered a living fossil? Now you know.

I decided not to use the pattern from the rug in the borders. It just wasn't working. I quilted some simple straight lines which were much more effective with the overall design. And easier.

This is the first quilt I've made for my husband. The funny thing is that I don't collect Asian themed fabric, so there was none in my stash. Kevin wanted an Asian theme to go with his office, so I had to to do some shopping. Maybe two pieces of fabric in the quilt come from my stash. Not funny ha, ha. Just funny weird.

As much as I enjoy the New York Beauty Block, I think I'm done for awhile. The "Weeping" quilt features NY Beauties and log cabin blocks. And I just finished the spikey bits for that one too. So I'm feeling done with them for now. I need to see what else I can do with foundation piecing.

Here are my lessons learned:
1. There is more thread on the spool than you think.
2. You don't know what you're going to do until you do it. My plan was to machine quilt the whole thing and do some fancy stuff in the borders. I ended up hand quilting most of it and doing plain borders.
3. You carry a theme on color and style as much as pattern. Not all of the fabrics are so-called Asian prints. But all of the fabrics contain colors and textures that reflect the theme when placed next to Asian prints.

Quilting 'Aint Always Pretty

Whew. I completed the foundation piecing for the weeping quilt. And I came “this” close to running out of medium yellow fabric. Now all I have to do is the curved piecing. I do all my curved piecing by hand. I feel like I have more control of the fabric that way. I also think it might be faster. I would image that you would have to take the curves slowly on the machine. I’ll be putting this in line behind Kevin’s quilt. I’m pretty close to finishing the quilting on that one too.

So here is the shrapnel left from the foundation piecing. I love this technique. Not just because you get awesome pointy bits and curves. But because there’s no accurate cutting involved. I tear the strips of fabric, sew them to the block, trim the block, fling the fabric and keep going. Now I know some of you are thinking, “look at all that waste.” Many see this as a drawback of foundation piecing. However, I see a pile of delicious scraps. Mmmm, scraps. Imagine the possibilities for a moment. I could do some string piecing, some crazy quilting, or fuse it and make wicked new fabric. Right now I’m pondering whether or not I will try to incorporate these yummy fibers into the weeping quilt, or add them to my scrap bin. Perhaps mixing them with some green scraps or something.


Of course there is one negative consequence of my reckless foundation piecing. Now someone has to clean the floor. And I’m pretty sure it’s going to have to be me.

Oh, and since I've upgraded to Leopard, Blogger rocks. You Mac users know what I mean.

A Trip to My Happy Place

So I’m elbow deep in foundation piecing. I’m making the spiky bits for the weeping quilt. After a couple of false starts, it is going swimmingly. Then, I ran out of yellow fabric. I know what you’re going to say. And really, don’t you think I know that? The thing is, I’m sort of making it up as I go along. I originally thought the spiky bits would be scrappy. I don’t know why, since I don't really do scrappy. I try, but I’m always compelled to make scrappy orderly. When I actually started sewing the blocks, I decided to make all of the outer spikes light yellow, while the inner spikes will be different shades of orange or pink. And this is what led to me running out of yellow fabric. And since yellow is one of my least favorite colors, I don't have a whole lot of it in my stash.

I like to look at running out of fabric as an opportunity to go to my happy place, Intown Quilters. So, after we took our pumpkin to the pumpkin patch, I headed to my favorite quilt shop. Actually, I went to the store where I bought the fabric first. They were practically cleaned out of tone on tones which was weird because they are never out of anything. Then I went to Intown. I found yellow that is not quite an exact match but close enough. And since I can’t go into Intown and just get what’s on my list, I got a couple of other goodies too.

First, this funky Alexander Henry fabric. I really like this theme. Doesn't it just scream "city girl"? I used the fabulous fashionista fabric that came out a couple of years ago in a wall quilt for my closet. I was pretty excited to see a new variation on the theme. I want to panel a wall in this stuff, but my husband is straight so that is not going to happen. This is going in the stash. I also got a bag of 10 ½ inch batik squares. Lest you think I’m adding to my stash willy nilly, I already know what I’m going to do with this fabric. In fact, I went into the store knowing what I was going to do with this fabric AND a name for the quilt. Impressed? I planned the whole thing in my head on the way to the store. I just had to find the right fabric. Stay tuned. I think it’s going to be a cool quilt. Oh, and I got a panel to make an advent calendar for the baby. I got so excited about the batiks I almost forgot.

I love Intown Quilters. If they put a Starbucks in there, I would never leave.

New Year's Resolution 1

Around February or March, I made a New Year's resolution regarding my quilt work. I made a list of all of the techniques I would like to learn or improve and resolved to make a series of small quilts that used the different techniques. The quilts have to be based on my favorite fruits and vegetables and have to use at least one new technique and one technique that I need to practice. So far, this has been a pretty good resolution. Picking a theme frees me from worrying about a design. The small size makes the quilts easier to actually get finished. I guess that's the trick to resolutions. You have to set yourself up for success by setting small goals you can actually achieve. So here is the first quilt. It is called Dawn of the Kiwifruit. Yes, those are my son's hands in the picture. It is machine paper pieced and the curved piecing is done by hand. I do all of my curved piecing by hand. It is machine quilted and hand quilted with this funky metallic floss. It is hand beaded and bejewelled. The new skills I tried were drafting my own New York Beauty Block, using a metallic thread, and using the bejewler. The skills I practiced were free motion quilting and binding. I also got in some practice in on the foundation piecing.

So what did I learn? First, I really dig that bejewler. I would bejewel EVERYTHING if it was socially acceptable. You have to be careful to put the jewels where you want them though. If you slip and put them in the wrong place, it is next to impossible to pry them up and put them back in the right spot. Ask me how I know. I also liked drafting the wonky New York Beauty Block. I really like NY Beauties. I was also pretty happy with the machine quilting. I have a long way to go, but this one is light years better than the last thing I tried to machine quilt. The back of my last machine quilted piece looked like a nest built by a drunken, near sighted bird. There were NO threads tangles on the back of the kiwifruit quilt. Woo hoo! I have to give Alex Anderson props for that. I could actually understand her book on machine quilting and the pictures were great too. Maybe it clicked this time because she is a lefty hand quilter like me. The quilting on the kiwi is not going to win any awards, but I was jazzed at how the meander quilting came out since this was the first time I tried meander quilting.

I still hate binding.

And if you're wondering why it took me until March to made a New Year's resolution, I think the subhead tells you everything you need to know.