Another UFO Finish: Indigo Tiles Quilt

We've been experiencing wonderful Spring-like weather here in the Midwest and I couldn't resist taking a photo of my Indigo Tiles Quilt outside with some of my wooden birds as props for a seaside vibe or am I channeling a scene from the Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds"?

I made the Indigo Tiles Quilt top back in the summer of 2014 and I used Janet Clare's Hearty Good Wishes, Moda Indigo Collection and other Japanese Indigo prints I had in my stash.  I've been wanting to machine quilt this top for so long and thought I was ready to do it last week but somehow at the last minute decided to take a pause.  I'm glad I did because originally I had planned to do organic vertical straight line quilting and realized several days ago that my quilting should be horizontal instead and then I was ready.

This is the first quilt that I've done an entire quilt with organic straight lines.  I just love how the quilting turned out; the fluid movement of the horizontal organic lines really accentuates the prints from Hearty Good Wishes. Before I started to machine quit,  I read two great tutorials on organic straight line quilting:

• A Quilter's Table (here)
• Bella Online (here)

The key to doing organic straight line quilting is making sure you mark registration lines or have seam lines which can help you guide your stitching so that it ends at the same height as it began.  You don't want to create an uphill or downhill movement on one side of your quilt.  I used my walking foot, set my stitch length at 5.0 stitch line and used a blue denim variegated thread.  Again, I really loved how the quilting turned out and will do it again on the right quilt.

Indigo Tiles measures 48" x 64" and the blocks are 16" finished.  I based this block on something I saw on Pinterest which used 2-1/2" strips and thought I could make it using my 4-1/2" x 8-1/2" rectangle die.  This is such an easy block made with eight of the same size rectangles.  I thought I could find a link for this block but couldn't so I'm providing a hand-drawn diagram to show how simple this block is.  This block design can be used for other strip sizes as you can see on the diagram.

When I bought the Hearty Good Wishes and Moda Indigo fabrics back in 2014, I immediately made a bag from Missouri Star Quilt Co.'s pattern The Everything Bag (here) and it's a big bag.  I use it to pack the quilts we take on our vacations/road trips and I now have a matching quilt to go with this bag.  I can see taking my new combo on vacations to Michigan, the Oregon Coast or anywhere there is a deep blue ocean or lake.

In other sew-doings, I finished #5 Smitten Block this week and ready to start the next set of hexagons which means choosing and preparing fabrics and watching more Gilmore Girls.

I consider myself to be a modern-traditional quilter and like to use my traditional fabrics in a modern setting.  Since I've been doing a lot of quilts lately with my modern fabric stash, I thought I should spend some time with my traditional stash by sewing the rest of the blocks I made with my Barbara Brackman fabrics over four years ago.  It's one of those projects that I saw a pattern, thought it would use up a lot of the BB stash, cut all the pieces (before I had a die-cutter) and then decided I couldn't bear to sew all those 1" HST and came up with another pattern.  BTW, I still have a lot of BB stash.  I'm hoping to have a quilt top done this weekend.

The fabric fast continues and the month of February is almost over and I still have not purchased any fabric.  I'm really looking forward to receiving my FQS Sew Sampler Box this week.

Minus 100 Yard Challenge YTD Total - 37.875

Burp Cloths: A Boo-Boo and A Re-Do

Lots of Life happening this week:  Baby Shower II Preparation, Income Tax preparation, celebrating Valentines Day, attending the monthly Senior Luncheon, Volunteer Ministry Commitment and traveling in addition to watching the Westminster Dog Show on TV for two nights which means very little time to work on one of the many quilt projects on my list.

The second baby shower for my youngest son and his wife is this weekend and will be a little bit more relaxing for me since I don't have any hosting responsibilities.  Nevertheless, I didn't want to come empty-handed, so I thought I would make a bundle of burp cloths which would allow me to use up some up more stash.  I thought making twelve of them (two of the same print) would be a nice number to make and of course they have to be gender neutral.  I decided that I would make six with a flannel backing and six with white toweling fabric which I had in my stash and had bought when I was thinking about making reuseable paper towels.

I found a free pattern on Pinterest and printed it and I swear I checked to make sure it was set to print at 100%  Fortunately for me, I did a test run of the pattern and could tell that it was way too small.  Also, I didn't like that I had to basically cut the pieces by hand because of the curves, so I came up with an alternative pattern which can be entirely cut with a rotary cutter.

I cut two pieces, 9" x 20", one for the front and one for the back.  Folding the two pieces together, RST, along the long edge, I rounded the corners using Sharon Hultgren's Easy Circle Cut Ruler and then unfolded, found the center and then cut the neck notch using the 7" circle mark  (it's not a complete 7" half circle, I lined it up at the top of the blue masking tape which is approx. 2" under the 7" mark to create a more rounded oval cut).  I sewed with a 1/4" seam all around,  leaving a 2-3" opening on the straight side, clipped around all the curve areas, turned right side out, press and then top-stitched all the way around to close the opening.  This was a quick and easy pattern. fat quarter friendly and I'm sure I would have enjoyed making them more if I hadn't decided to make twelve at one time.

When both of my boys were babies, I used cloth diapers for burp cloths and I can say these burp cloths are way cuter.  I'll be sure to mention to my son at the Shower that his baby will have better burp cloths than he did.  That's what happens when your mama didn't sew back then.

I know I'm going to have to make more of these once the baby is born and the gender finally revealed and I'm thinking of doing them without the neck notch to make them even faster.  Also, I love how the toweling fabric feels which is similar to the old-time rotating cloth towel dispensers that were around when I was young, so I'm thinking of making hand towels with it using some more stash.  I'll first make a few to test to see how well they launder and also to train the men in the house that these are not disposable.

Looking forward to resuming my quilt projects and hopefully I will have something finish for next week.  And still another week of no fabric purchases.

Minus 100 Yards Challenge YTD Total : - 34.375 yards

The Kingwell Sew Alongs: Flutterby Quilt Finished and Still Smitten-ing

I previously posted about doing two sew alongs this year both involving a Kingwell:  Flutterby by Jen Kingwell and Smitten by Lucy Carson Kingwell (you can read the post here) which is sort of ironic since I barely recovered from my Gypsy Wife experience and never thought I would do another  pattern by Jen Kingwell.  Though Flutterby is much more simpler than Gypsy Wife, ( I changed the dimensions so I could use my die-cutter 😊) it still was head spinning which could be due to each of the thirty blocks having 36 patches and trying to make sure that each one of the prints were different in each block.  I also had to be careful that the HRT patches were sewn in the correct orientation which  for an angle-challenge person makes the sewing slow.  And then there's the quilt layout where I wanted to make sure the same print weren't in the same vicinity and that's when I finally began to feel dizzy and decided then that there is so much movement in this quilt, it's wasn't going to be too noticeable if the same print is right next to each other.

If that wasn't challenging enough for me to make a quilt with over a thousand patches, I decided I wanted to do 1/2" skinny straight line quilting which there were problems in the beginning, my fault and not my Juki's, and it turned out pretty well despite a few puckers in the backing.  Flutterby measures 60" x 72" and I didn't use any of my much-loved Cotton + Steel fabrics because I felt I've been ignoring the other wonderful prints in my stash. Fabrics were from Zen Chic which was given to me from an exchange with Connie Tesene, several Allison Glass charm packs and other modern and low volume prints.  The Flutterby pattern is from Jen Kingwell's Quilt Lovely book and there are other patterns I may want to do now with Cotton + Steel and my die-cutter but will give my head a much needed rest before  I do.

I've now finished four out of the twenty-seven full hexagons (these measure 10" x 12") needed for the Smitten Quilt and am still friends with Carol who got me started on this project.  I like how these blocks turned out and enjoy sewing them while binge watching Gilmore Girls.  I've now watched 30 episodes and it looks like it's taking me an average of almost eight episodes to complete one block which is pretty slow since each episode is 45 minutes long.  I am finding that I'm getting faster and it's easier for me if I baste through the paper and not tacking down at the corners.  I have one more block left to make of this hexagon type and these might be the easiest out of all the other hexagons.  There's only five and half seasons left of Gilmore Girls for me to watch so in the event I'm not done with Smitten by the end of the series, I have another TV series lined up to watch:  Blue Bloods.  I used to be smitten with Tom Selleck.

Minus 100 Yard Challenge YTD Total:  - 31.375 yards

I still haven't bought any new fabric and we're past the first week of February.  Thankfully, I just received my monthly Cotton + Steel fabric package from Pink Cast Fabric and enjoyed oogling over the twelve fat quarters.  But best of all, I just received a wonderful gift of feedsack squares from a fellow blogger who is also a feedsack lover and am amazed that all of the prints were those I don't have.  As I said in an earlier post, feedsack fabrics and friends go together.  I think I'm going to make it through the end of February because by then I will be receiving my FQS Sew Sampler box.

Sew Strong!

The Grandpa Quilt and More

The much anticipated arrival of our first grandchild in late March has really put my creative energy into high gear.  I thought I was done after finishing the baby shower favors, the Woodland baby quilt and the Valentine, a.k.a. Grandma quilt last week but divine inspiration hit me after I posted last week.  I realized, or common sense came knocking, that the Grandma quilt which I was planning on bringing to the hospital for the pending arrival was meant for a photo opportunity with a new granddaughter and since we don't know the gender, there is a 50% chance we may have a grandson so I was going to need to make a Grandpa quilt.

Fortunately, it didn't take me long to find the fabrics or the pattern for the Grandpa quilt since I already had a grouping of fabrics I put together to go with the motorcycle fabric you see in this quilt which I was going to make ten years ago but never did.  (I'm beginning to wonder if something happened ten years ago since I made the Grandma quilt top ten years and never quilted it.)  I added the music fabrics, car and fish fabric to the mix because these are a few of my hubby's favorite activities and I had the perfect backing fabric of vintage Chevys (also a hubby favorite) which I found in the stash and probably was for a quilt that I never gotten around to making.  I love big blocks especially for novelty prints.  The blocks are 20" and I used a simple framed block for the large novelty prints and the alternate pieced block is from the Quilting Jet Girl Bundle Buster Quilt pattern which I purchased from Craftsy: Bundle Buster Pattern.

The Grandpa quilt measures 40"x60" and is the same size as the Grandma Quilt. They're now both ready to take to the hospital once we receive the call.   I'm pretty sure my hubby loves the quilt because he already asked when he could start using it and confirming that this quilt will not be left with the grandbaby.

Another finish for the week and interrupted the making of the Grandpa quilt, was a new mini quilt for the front door to celebrate the first day of February or because I happened to come across the red heart fabric and had to make something with it.  The Heart Quilt measures 18" square and I found the pattern on Pinterest: Heart Block.   I used 3" finished cuts for the blocks and HST.  I started and finished it in an afternoon and delighted that I made it time for Valentines Day.  I love the combination of red and aqua and am amazed to see this color combination being used for Xmas and Fourth of July quilts.

I've already thought of more sewing projects for the new grand baby and should have them done in time for the next Shower in two weeks.  I always love being busy when it involves fabric.

Minus 100 Yard Challenge YTD Total:  -19.375 yards

Also worth noting is the fact that I did not buy any fabric during the entire month of January, breaking my previous record of acquiescing  by the third week of January!  😇  Susan Snooks (PatchworknPlay) and I have made a pact to continue this trend for February which if I succeed, I am pretty sure UPS, Federal Express and the  USPS are going to stop by for a well being check.