season switch

christmas is right around the corner and i can hear the christmas quilt projects calling me. i've ordered some new christmas fabrics with some new quilt ideas in mind, but really, what i want to do most is get some of these wips knocked off the naughty list. let's look at what i have to work on.

first, the christmas liberty log cabin (pictured at top above) is in the handquilting phase. this is a top contender for being an actual finish this year.

since i found more of the background fabric, the "jungle" peppered cotton, this spring, i can now proceed with the liberty "star hollow" blocks, as well. i do think i want to upsize the blocks to better utilize and showcase the liberty prints, but i can now get to work making decisions and blocks.

the "bright forest" christmas tree quilt only needs a few more trees done before it's a top. i may have found a backing i like for it, too. we'll see when my christmas fabric orders arrive. this project is from my mostly-on-insta-not-really-blogging era, so there's nothing posted here about it beyond a mention in an end-of-year round up for 2022. it's made from amy smart's "patchwork forest" pattern. 

the companion quilt, "shelter in place," a "serendipitous pile" quilt and my quarantine commemorative quilt, is in the same state. it's not a christmas quilt, but it goes along with the forest quilt, so i could see working on it once the christmas ones are done. maybe not until january? recently, i've had some ideas of how to improve it, so i might be getting back to this, too.

i still have fabric from that pile left to work with and have thought a wonky star quilt might be a nice addition, rounding it out to a trio rather than companionship. but that's also down the road. let's keep focused on whittling down the wip list to a reasonable dozen or so projects.

my final "stella grande" quilt, "frosted forest star" has been a completed top for a couple of years. i just haven't landed on an acceptable backing for it. i want something wintery and simple, but color-matching through online shopping is quite difficult and nothing has appealed to me enough yet. i did buy yardage of a basic white-on-grey swiss dot fabric to possibly use, but haven't been enthused enough to actually do it. however, i might have found an acceptable match in a snowflake fabric that's on its way to me now. we'll see. if it's a good fit, this is my other top contender for a finish this year. 

i would really like to see some of these finished for the holidays, but being the holidays are starting, i'm going to keep time with family first and let the quilting fill in the gaps where it may.

a third down, plus

wensleydale 14

the fall colored liberty prints have been making their way into the wensleydale blocks since i've had them out for "bathsheba" and "farmer oak's flocks." these first two here have a variation of "betsy" in them, and the other two have some liberty also. still loving the mini project of one block a day, although it's not exactly been every day.

wensleydale 15

fifteen blocks done means i'm a third the way through this quilt top. i can start reusing fabrics i've already used but i still have so many pulled that i haven't used i'm not sure i'm going to do that. i guess i could always use the leftover cut pieces i currently have set aside for another quilt? there are a couple from jolene's book i could use to make some more fall quilts from the scraps if i don't choose to use them again in this one. i'll think on it. some of the fabrics i will for sure be reusing - the ginghams and checks i want to include in most blocks. did i say i was trying to use a floral in each block and a gingham/check in most if not all too? well, i am. as my ginghams are limited, i'll be using those on repeat.

wensleydale 17

wensleydale 18

this block has a few repeats because i have some miscut triangles from the other blocks that i'm trying to use up. i do like the colors in this one, but i didn't realize i'd used the same print in two different colors until i got to the outer rectangle and it was too late to go back. ah, well. i suppose it will get lost in the overall quilt and no one's going to fault me for it.

my foundation papers i ordered for jen kingwell's "trentham" quilt have arrived, and i've ordered the book. i'm unsure when the book will arrive because it still seems to be uncertain when it will be available in america. i'm in no hurry to start the next fpp quilt but i am anxious to see the book in person.

i may have ordered the foundation papers for "lamingtons with tea" as well. seems fpp has got a hold of me. but i will be doing one at a time on these.

grellow garden geese, a finish

"grellow garden geese," my second fall quilt finish is washed, stocked in the family quilt basket, and in use. i've been waiting for the fall colors to come in around here for a nice outdoor photo, which would show it to best advantage. but those colors are not here yet and i've settled for a basic bedroom photo set.

this quilt was a chance for me to practice flying geese and use some fabrics i wasn't so chuffed about. it's low-stakes, for sure. early on in my quilting, i bought a half yard set of these "origins" fabrics by basic grey for moda after seeing a quilt made from them that i liked well enough, but did not love. a decade later i decided to mix in some solids and coordinating fabrics to see if i could make something i liked. the verdict: meh. kind of. it's fine. but other people around here like it a lot. i think i just need to reconcile myself to the mellow color palette. it's not what i would normally choose to make but it does have it's pleasant aspects.

i split the fabric collection in two, separating the cool-toned fabrics from the warmer ones. this is the warmer collection. i used the multi-colored floral in the photo above as a guide for what other colors to add in the mix. it was feeling a little drab with just the yellows and grellows, so i added some of the brown tones from the floral for more warmth and contrast. i left out the aloe colors because they are in the other set. i hoped the yellows, grellows, and browns would do well together.

in the floral, the browns are small touches of accent color. in the quilt, they are of equal size to the other pieces and cast quite a different effect on the whole. i called the quilt "grellow garden geese" because, originally, the grellow was the strongest color. and i like the alliteration. but with the warm browns added in such quantities, its more like "spiced grellow garden geese" in the end. ah, well. i did lean heavily grellow on the back trying to redeem the name and it's sticking.

the quilting is wide-spaced, horizontal, straight-line quilting in a golden yellow color.

the binding is another fabric from my early quilting days, the popular and pretty "henna garden" from sandi henderson. i was liking the browns in the quilt when it came time to bind it and thought it would make a nice edge to the quilt. i think working on the quilt during the fall season heavily influenced this leaning towards the browns.

somewhere along the way in my making of all the geese, i made two different sizes. the smaller ones were 1/2" smaller than the others. i simplified things by putting the two sizes in separate rows. this resulted in rows that don't match across the seams, but it's not distracting at all. quilters just make do, right?

everyone else in the house seems to like this one and i'm satisfied with it. some of our makes we really love and some we just like. that's okay. i think i do like this quilt better than if i had used the whole collection together. it taught me more about what i like and don't, and it gave me a lot of practice making flying geese. that's not wasted.

upsizing

somebody is waiting for me to come party. 

actually, this is how i found my flimsy shoddily stored up off the floor, 25th birthday party balloon for s1 inexplicably partnered with it.

this looks inviting to me!

last saturday, i entered the blue doors with the intention of finishing off the "farmer oak's flocks" top and, if i was lucky, basting and echo quilting it before the day was out. there was only one row left to attach, which would be easy enough.

that was quickly done, but i found when it was all put together it was entirely too small. it looked like a little baby quilt at something like 42" x 48", which doesn't sound so small but looked it. i was disappointed. i knew all along after i miscut the cornerstone blocks and sashing in the beginning that the quilt wasn't going to be the "cuddle size" lap quilt i intended it to be, but seeing it all put together confirmed that it was, indeed, too small.

what to do?

another row and column of blocks would upsize the quilt satisfactorily. that would equate to 12 more blocks added. originally, i made the nine patches from pairings of fabrics, one set of pairings each. i liked the symmetry of that and was loathe to change up my plan. i get irrationally attached to ideas like this. but i didn't know another way around it if i was going to add that many blocks. 

i knew i hadn't used a couple of the fabrics in my fall stash, so i decided to start there, make some pairings, and then decide which other original blocks to make extras of. i took out my fall-colored liberty box, the one i used as my fabric pull for "bathsheba" to see what else was in there. i found i'd only left three unused, which surprised and confounded me. (well, i hadn't used the "sea blossom" print either, but i was sick to death of it and refused to put it in this quilt.)

so i made a desperate dig through my entire liberty shelf to see if anything else at all filed under a different category would work. 

to my great surprise and pleasure, i found another ten acceptably colored prints in the correct color palette. most of them were colorways of my favorite classic prints and one or two were hiding in recent orders i'd made that hadn't been properly put away yet. shame on me because they would have been really nice in "bathsheba," too. then again, i do rather like when companion quilts have mostly the same elements as each other, but some fabrics unique to each. 

either way, i now have this nice thick stack of leftover 2.5" strips that will probably make an entire other quilt when paired with a crossweave or woven. my brain is already working on a setting for them as my third fall liberty lap quilt. maybe some sort of scrappy trip around the world? at this point, it'll be filed away for next fall because the season is nearly over and i have one finish left in me before getting out the christmas fabrics.

i found a dark green "capel," a monotone gold "betsy," a deep green and a navy blue "betsy," each with gold and brown tones in them, a dusty purple and a steel gray "mitsi," an "ianthe," and two fall-toned "wiltshire" prints i hadn't included.

i mixed and matched them several times before being satisfied. then i got sewing.

the very last pairing was the green "betsy" with a "wiltshire," that i loved separately, but no so much together. however, it's okay in a quilt to have some less-attractive parts because the whole makes up the difference, so i was willing to put these together so that the other pairings looked their best.

but more than halfway through the block set, i recalled some of the mostly-blue ditsy prints i used in the original blocks and wondered if there wasn't another such fabric i'd overlooked. i looked through my red-white-and-blue liberty box and found a print with blues and browns in it that would work. sold!

i unpicked all the pieces i'd sewn, put the beautiful green "betsy" squares aside for another project, and worked the blue "empress" pieces into the nine patches with the dark "wiltshire" squares.

yes, it all took extra time, but i might as well get it right. i recently read an interesting post about "perfectionism vs. integrity" in sewing. this was one of those "integrity" moments for me and effort well expended.

here are the new pairings.

i'm quite happy with them. the bottom left block is a little brighter than the rest, but i believe it blends well with the rest of the blocks in the quilt overall.

i pushed through getting all the block sets made and the sashing and cornerstone pieces cut. that was my days work. i didn't have a basted quilt ready for handquilting at the end of the day, but i was well on my way to the project being in a state which well pleased me.

since the rest of the top is already put together, my plan was to add the new blocks along the perimeter. this goes against my normal "mix it up well" way of laying out quilt blocks, but i wasn't going to be unpicking all those delicate fabrics and resewing everything. i spent quite a while deciding on the layout of the new blocks before walking away from it for the evening.

the next morning, i was enjoying a morning cuppa on the stairs and looking over the pieces all still laid out on the floor when i decided to move just two blocks from the perimeter so i could mix things up just a little. it was a good compromise although it would require some nasty unpicking and some y-seam style repairs to put the new blocks in where i was taking the original ones out.

in the end, it'll be worth it. no one else was probably ever going to look at this quilt and say, 'hey, all these blocks along these two sides of the quilt are only on the outsides and were probably added on after the rest were put together. that's not good mixing! what a fabric sudoku fail." but it's going to please me that i did it.

the quilt is now properly sized and (mostly) well mixed/balanced in block layout.

at the end of the day, it's myself i have to please.

slow busy

 i've been busy with life stuff and busy with slow stitching.

life stuff: a nephew's wedding and extended family in town, a friend's 50th birthday, a seester's birthday, d5's birthday with a shopping day and a trip to disneyland to celebrate, d2 moved home from tokyo after two years of language school, a nephew home from church mission in korea, helping put up christmas lights at the temple, a mud run with all 5 of my girls. lots of fun and exhausting stuff.

slow stitching: i've been handbinding "grellow garden geese" and the liberty courthouse steps quilt.

blogging: not so much.

a little help

two-thirds the way there on this little fall nine patch, which i'm calling "farmer oak's flocks." since the companion quilt is "bathsheba," the single girl quilt, named after the heroine in "far from the madding crowd," this one made me think it should have something to do with farmer oak, maybe it's his sheep in their pens.

my oldest daughter and grandchildren were visiting the other day when my grandson suddenly said, "oh, granna, we need to sew!" so we did. he helped me put together another couple of rows of these nine patch blocks. this time he ran the pedal until we got to the parts that needed pinning and he was all about the pins. he likes the glass head pins, which i don't like to use for patchwork because they don't lie flat. i'm not sure how these ones even ended up in my pincushion, but he always manages to find them and wants to use them. i indulge him. whenever i sew with him, everything slows down to his pace and preferences so that he enjoys the process.

there was an alligator involved, too.

and then a little sister.

i let them practice sticking pins in a section of patchwork while i was seam ripping a row i'd put on backards, they had a grand time. when d5 saw that i was letting the kiddos pin things, she freaked out, but granna knew better. they were supervised and they did just fine. that's how kids learn - you show them how to do things properly, watch them do it, and let them do it themselves. being the youngest, she doesn't always realize how capable children are at an early age, which is ironic for such an independent gal. her older sister laughed at her saying she'd been the least supervised of them all, she just doesn't remember.

the grandchildren weren't much help with most of the real pinning, but they were enthusiastic about being involved, which is what counts to me. the more i let them practice like this, the better their motor skills will get and the more they'll actually be of help later on. they especially liked using the magnetic pin wristlet d5 gave me for christmas a few years ago. gadgets are fun!

 that's the next two rows put together with just two more left to go.

11, 12, 13

wensleydale was once a daily occurrence around here before "bathsheba" and some quilt batching interrupted. it was a fun little project to play with fabric pairing every day.

now "bathseba" is complete and my batch processing of the other quilts are also done, i'm back on my daily "wensleydale" train.

 i'm still on track to get it done by the end of fall. it's nice to be back!

i just saw that jen kingwell's new book "gathered" is out now. i thought i'd preordered it on amazon, but it's not even on amazon. i don't know if the tarrif/shipping to the US mess changed something there or if that was never a thing. i already ordered the FPP papers for the "trentham" quilt from it and am trying to figure out the best place to get my hands on the book. so when "wensleydale" is done, i'll have another FPP project waiting.

bathsheba bound

binding on "bathsheba" is complete. i suppose she's finished; she's in use. i do plan to add some handstitching, but she's essentially finished.

traditionally, i use a herringbone flannel to bind my liberty + chambray/crossweave quilts. i found some lovely woolies flannels by bonnie sullivan for maywood studios in various colors at fat quarter shop, which is what i used for this quilt.

d4 and i had a pleasant crafting afternoon on saturday, she making bows for christmas presents and i handbinding, while we watched a series of disney movies i like to sing along with: coco, encanto, and moana.

 i love the slightly masculine touch it adds to this quilt, yet it's soft at the same time. 

after all that quilting and machine binding i did recently, i have several more handbinding projects in the works, which means some more finishes coming up!

sweet sashing

i get up far earlier than anyone else in this house and in this season, even the sun. when i come home from my workouts, the sun has risen but no one else in the house. that's usually when i crack open the blue sewing room doors and quietly get to work.

when i opened up the doors this morning, i saw these pieces laid out and they looked so pretty in that sun-just-up light. 

 i made up my mind about the sashing for the nine patch blocks a few weeks ago, but i had to do all those other quilty chores before i could begin assembly of this top.

those pretty pieces gave me all kinds of trouble because of sizing difference from the pieces i cut and the nine patch blocks. i think my compensation foot doesn't sew a scant 1/4", or maybe it's something about the liberty pieces. either way, the blocks are about 1/8" smaller than they should be, which caused all kinds of problems for seam matching. and i changed the width for the sashing along the way, but forgot to trim some of the pieces. i did it to myself. 

after unpicking and resewing all the seams at least twice, i completed the first row. it was so sweet looking and easy to sew (once i got the cutting straightened out), and everyone else was still asleep, so i went ahead and assembled the second row, too. 

 i'm very happy with how it's looking. it's going to be a wee bit smaller than i original planned because of the width changes i made (for a reason i no longer remember), but that's okay. on the one hand, it's very traditional looking and not the kind of quilt i make at all. then i look at it how comfy, cozy, and sweet it is and feel like it's perfect for fall and exactly what i want to be snuggling right now. 

foot made for walking

the quilt batching continues. that group of quilts i got backed and basted went right on through to the quilting stage. my walking foot came out and had a big two day workout. i'm not generally a fan of my walking foot and straightline quilting, but there is a time and place for it. 

recently, i've been reading and rereading jolene's "a year of quilts" and "scrap quilt diary" at bedtime a lot. like many quilters, jolene has a go-to quilting preference: she most often, if she's doing it herself, will straightline quilt 1" apart, vertically. i've had that at the back of my mind lately since i've been looking at so many of her quilts. and she's right - it's pretty effective all the time.

so when i needed to make some quilting decisions, i thought about jolene's straight lines. the first quilt i was quilting was "bathsheba," my single girl quilt. i wanted to handquilt this one like all my other liberty + chambray quilts, but the slightly wobbly top needed some help. in the end i decided to do a combination: wide straightline quilting for stability and handquilting for decoration.

since i needed evenly-spaced quilt lines, i dug out the guide bar that attaches to my walking foot. i don't recall every using it before because i don't think i've ever actually done evenly spaced straightline quilting before. i've only every done echo quilting, stitch-in-the-ditch, or marked lines to follow.

this foot contraption is a beast! just look at all the parts and screws. i was lucky i found all the pieces and figured out how they went together (thank you manual). the guide foot can go on either side of the walking foot and has an adjustable bar, which is part of the reason it's so big and awkward. but it sure works for all those parts and things hanging out everywhere.

my quilt lines ended up being something like 1 3/4" apart simply because that was the smallest distance achievable with the guide foot to the left of the walking foot, which is where it made sense to me to have it when sewing.

that's not "bathsheba" in the photos of the foot - that's "grellow garden geese." after i completed "bathsheba," it felt logical to leave the same foot and thread on, and do the straightline all over again for this quilt. i did mean to do it vertically, not horizontally, this time, but i started out with the quilt turned horizontally, so just did it that way again. 

i considered doing vertical lines down the middle of each row of geese, right through their points. but once i was done with the horizontal lines, it was bedtime, so i called it a day and called the quilting done. it's a low-stakes quilt and i didn't feel the need to add anything else after all. plus, trying to do a straight line through all the geese tips might reveal more misalignments in the quilt top. the horizontal wobbles are already revealed this way, best to leave that alone.
 

when "sunny crossroads" came up for quilting, i thought for a while before committing. there is this great handquilting pattern i've seen for the crossroads pattern, which i've wanted to do for a while now. but i also know i have a lot of handquilting already in the queue. so i decided to do the same echo quilting i did on my previous crossroads quilts (here and here). that was still done with a walking foot and i could leave the gold thread on the machine because it would work with this yellow quilt, too.

don't the gathers in the quilt after it's passed through the foot look so pretty? i think so.

i got quilting away with my movie going on my phone nearby. after a few rows i realized i was only echo-quilting the joining seams and not echoing the roads like i intended too. i was not in a mood to go back and add the missed lines. so, i decided to keep going like i was and if i decided to add handquilting later on, this was a good compromise for stabilizing the quilt. it'll be another hybrid and that's great. it's not a fall quilt, so it's not like i'm in a hurry to get it completed and in service. maybe it can be my new spring break handstitching project? probably should finish the other one first, haha.

can you tell which side of the sashing i stitched on? it's pretty hidden this time.

then it was time for the last basted quilt - "groovy liberty." it's going to be another handquilted liberty + chambray quilt, but it needed some stabilizing stitches. i don't want to see these machine stitches, so it was stitching-in-the-ditch on this one. and i finally had to change my thread color. gold wasn't going to blend here so i switched to a neutral grey i used for piecing most of these quilts. but the walking foot stayed. i was really happy not to change that foot.

found a little oopsy while i was quilting! i'll have to topstitch it or something.

i generally avoid stitch-in-the-ditch because i have a hard time keeping the stitches in the ditch and the whole point is that you don't see the stitches, they hide in the ditch. however, i was taking my time, sewing slow on that turtle, and was pretty shocked how invisible most of my stitching was, right up to the last line or two when i must have been a little tired. i think the thread blended really well, too, so the stitches that didn't make it actually in the ditch just don't show. 

i'm pretty shocked at myself for getting so much done recently. i'll say this in favor of straightline quilting - it's fast. really, really fast. i got most of these done within the span of one movie each. that's quite satisfying when you don't care so much about the quilt design, which i didn't for these quilt. as much as i like my modern loops fmq and orange peel design, this straightline thing has grown on me and will be making appearances again, i'm sure.

batching

do you know what this means? basting party!

while i was at it with basting "bathsheba," my single girl quilt, i pulled out the other tops ready to go and had a basting party.

"grellow garden geese" was next in line. i'm excited to get this one done and in use this season.

i didn't fuss too much about the backing on this one, but i'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. i stayed truer to the name and original vision for the quilt on the back - there's more grellow and less other colors here. there was inexplicably a large piece of the perfect grellow colored solid in my stash, which i used for the bulk of the back. i added a strip of pieced leftovers and a strip of a very old grellow-colored kate spain dandelion print, circa 2012, to the top. but that wasn't quite enough, so i added this mushroom-colored "henna garden" to the bottom, and that completed the back. I do like a nice, neat pieced backing.

moving on to "sunny crossroads" and i'm actually going to miss seeing how this one nests together so nicely on the back. because i made opposite paired blocks from each fabric pairing, there were an even number of low-volume and yellow blocks, which alternated throughout the top. i always pressed to the yellow prints, which made nesting these seams a cinch. and it looks nice, too!

i'm so very pleased with this backing. i had a false start a few weeks ago when deciding on a backing, then landed on the perfect selections, which got put together during this party. i was able to include the selvages from the two prints in the backing. i'm also happy to say i have plenty of that sunny "katie jump rope" print left for something else.

i put this photo in my instagram stories with the two designers tagged on the photo. denyse schmidt comment on it and reposted it to her stories! big fan girl moment for me. denyse is the sweetest. i met her at quiltcon in the spring and have interacted with her several times since online. she's as lovely as her fabrics.

i cut it close on this one - the backing was barely wide enough for the "groovy liberty" top. and i didn't do a good job cutting the batting, either. fortunately, it spread spread a little when i smoothed it out after spraying the backing.

i wore my basting socks so my feet didn't get all gunky and dirty. once i basted a couple of quilts barefoot just before i had to go to pilates class. i found out just before leaving for class just how dirty my feet were and they wouldn't wash clean. at my studio, pilates is done with your feet in toeless socks or barefoot, with your feet on the equipment a lot of the time. my feet were so stubbornly sticky and dirty that time that i had to cancel the class last minute. my teacher said it was the most unique reason for cancellation she'd every heard. so now i always wear my basting socks to keep my feet clean.

my basting station - the central hallway in my house. that tile is ugly and has been ever since we moved in here 22 years ago.(maybe you can see my wood samples because we're finally going to change it out?) but it's a good place to baste quilts.

 and some of these to keep me going. it's a party, right?

next up will be the quilting party and then the binding party.

so much quilty partying going on here.

i do enjoy batching my quilts this way.