Oh Sanada!, The Mission mmmPossible Quilt

I'm linking this quilt up with Sandra's (mmm! Quilts) monthly DrEAMi (Drop Everything and Make it) monthly party even though I now realize that this quilt may not meet all of the criteria since I made this quilt in stages rather than all at once like a true DrEAMi project is.  But I figured since Sandra was the main mmmPetus for this quilt being made since it involved sending me Squirrel Mail I'm sure she won't mind.

Since we became Blog Buddies back in 2017, Sandra and I have exchanged emails which included much laughter, Squirrel Talk and, of course, some fabric exchanges, which meant using the Drop-off Point Dayna because International postage rates are just so outrageous.  Last February, I received this brown paper envelope from Sandra which reminded me of the ones that Mr. Briggs or Mr. Phelps received their instructions in the beginning of each episode of the Mission Impossible TV series.  To protect the innocent, which would be me, I've covered up the addresses.  

Although there was no taped message in the envelope, I heard the Squirrel tell me that my  mission was to make a quilt with this lovely stack of Island Batik's Dear William 10" squares and the eight 2.5" strips of another collection which are on the left of this photo.  I immediately found some other batiks in my stash, which are on the right, some of which I received earlier from Sandra, so I could make a lap size quilt. After that, I didn't start making this quilt until the beginning of May because I wanted to finish some quilts the other Squirrels already put on my plate. I like to modify the DrEAMi criteria to include a quillt/project which wasn't planned but not made right away because sometimes you are surprisingly focused. One of the projects which preceded the Oh Sanada! quilt, was my Jolly Jinny Jungle quilt (you can read about it here) which was also a quilt made with mostly batiks and Sandra was also involved in my making of it.  It's funny that I don't work with batiks much and this year, I now have made two, both involving batik fabrics being given to me and both involving Sandra, the Master mmm-Nabler.

I purchased yardage of a Hoffman batik, black with sage green lines (lower right) to go with these fabrics since I knew this quilt was going to involve some rail fence blocks because of the 2.5" strips.

Based on the colors and the amount of fabric on hand, I came up with making four different 8"  blocks: Rail Fence blocks made with the black with sage green lines with the 2.5" strips and some of the 10" squares which went with these strips, Eight-Patch blocks made with the gold and navy prints, Boxed Squares made with either green or navy frames and Four-Patch blocks made with the gold and fuchsia prints.  I also made Eight-patch blocks with the black batik I had in my stash and gold prints but decided not to include them in the quilt since they look so stark next to the other blocks.

My original layout was to use a random layout of the different blocks but decided to do a controlled layout instead with the blocks which had gold placed in the center of the quilt surrounded by the green blocks.  I thought I need to contain the Four Patch blocks in one area since they did not look good when they were randomly placed throughout the quilt. You can see Oh Sanada! has an inner glow with the gold and fuchsia blocks which radiates softly towards the outside with the green blocks which has a touch of fuchsia in it. Surprisingly, I made enough of each blocks needed for this layout.

One of the nice thing about sewing with batik fabrics is that there's very little thread shedding which makes getting the top ready for quilting go fast. In order to back the quilt and there was no batik yardage in the backing vault, I had to buy yardage of a batik print which I found at Joann's.  It had most of the same colors in the top and best of all I had a 40% off coupon.  I quilted it with wavy lines around 1" apart and some of the wavy lines intersected along the seam lines. I used a thread from Connecting Threads in Cornsilk. The binding was machine bound with the black with sage green lines print. Oh Sanada! measures approximately 56" x 72" before quilting and I'm sure it's a little bit shorter now with all of the machine quilting I did.

If you're wondering about how I came up with the name "Sanada", it's the name I use when I have conversations with my Hubby involving Sandra and it's a combination of her name and Canada. It really is a lot quicker to say this rather than Sandra from Canada.  (Some of my other blog buddies had combo names also like Wendy, Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting, who lives in Minnesota so she is called Wendy-sota.  Believe me, these names help Hubby know whom I'm talking about.)  I included the "Oh" in the name of the quilt since I like to hum "Oh Canada" long before it was heard a lot lately thanks to the NBA Finals.

I had to include another photo of Oh Sanada! since the weather was so co-operative the morning I took photos.  Now that this quilt is finished or should I say mission completed, I think I'm hearing the Squirrel tell me that Sandra's beloved cat Bella should be my reward.  Doing this quilt, along with the Jolly Jinny Jungle Quilt and the Beothuk Star QAL so far this year, as well as the three other QALs Sandra hosted, I think my Get Bella Card has enough punches. With that being said, I'm sure I'm going to be receiving some lively email exchange from Sandra.  I'm sure if Bella had her way, she would be sending me Rufus, the dog, who may still be tormenting her.  Now that would be one big brown paper envelope for Drop-Off Point Dayna to handle. Seriously now, I would like to donate this quilt to a Canadian Charity/Cause so Sandra and I need to discuss options and to give Drop-Off Point Dayna a heads-up.

After I finished the top, Sandra posted her Luminous Layer which she made with, yep, a stack of Island Batik 10" squares.  And if she decides to do a QAL of this pattern, I most definitely will buy my own Island Batik fabrics, this time yardage would be nice.

Lastly, beware of Squirrel Mail!

Linking up with MMMiQuilts DrEAMi

Interference the Quilt is a Finally Finish

I'm having a pretty good year of making quilts with fabrics that I've been longingly wanting to use.  It helps that I put myself on a Fabric Fast and so far I am minus 58.5 yards from my minus 100 yard goal.  It was the Hand Maker fabric by Natalie Barnes which I paired with the most perfect pattern Interference turn to be used.

Interference by My Quilt Infatuation is the fourth My Quilt Infatuation pattern I've done. I just love patterns which are simple but look complicated and showcases the fabrics, especially large focus prints which is what Kelly's patterns are.  Also, it's nice that I can use my die-cutter for most of the cuts. If you check out her website, Kelly has free tutorials and her patterns are available thru bluprint (Craftsy). (This is not an affiliate link, I just like to share where I get my inspiration and resources.)

If you're wondering which patterns I've done, they are the Purse String Block (left, free tutorial),  Unruly (center two) and the Classic Meets Modern (right).

My Hand Maker fat quarter bundle was purchased first back in April, 2017 and when I saw the Interference pattern several months later, I knew the two together would be perfect. It's too bad that I have more projects than time and it took over two years to finally put it all together.  Once the patches were finally cut in May, the sewing was simple and fast, no matching seams. I just love putting together the combination of three different prints for each block.  There were 26 different prints in this group and I added another black and white print from another collection since I thought it needed another black print to offset the one lone black print in the Hand Maker collection.

The blocks were finishes the first week of June and were not sewn together until this past Tuesday. There were birthdays, celebrations and a QAL which "interfered" with the finish.

My normal hang-up in finishing a quilt because I can't decide on a backing did not happen this time. I had yardage of this multi-color print with the same colors as the top in my backing vault which I bought while on vacation several years ago.  The quilt was machine quilted with vertical wavy lines with a gray Connecting Threads variegated thread and was bound with the black and white print which was not part of the Hand Maker fabric line.  This quilt measures 55" x 66" which is a nice size for a lap quilt.

The Weather once again played Interference with photo taking.  It was cloudy when I hung this quilt up on my front porch with green Frog Tape. Sure enough, after taking photos and removing the tape from the siding, the Sun decided to make an appearance.  

Not to let the sunshine go to waste, I thought the quilt would look nice against the retaining wall in the back yard and fortunately the grass was not wet nor were there any mosquitos lurking around.  I just love the colors in this quilt which is perfect for this time of year, Supposedly Summer.

Normally, you think of interference as being a negative experience--either visually, physical or hearing.  Interference the Quilt is a positive experience, it looks lovely, sewed nicely and you just have to hum Interference like a celebratory chorus of  Hallelujah while machine quilting. And if that sounded like interference then it's because I'm a quilter and no Lady GaGa.

Linking up with:  My Quilt Infatuation, NTT

Beothuk Star QAL-Celebrating a Famous Canadian's Birthday

If there isn't already enough birthday and holiday celebrations this month at my house with my birthday on the 14th, Father's Day on the 16th, Demando's birthday on the 18th and Granddoggie Daisy's on the 20th (it's like cake every other day-yum!), I also have a famous Canadian's Birthday, aka, Sandra, mmmi Quilts' father,  to celebrate on the 15th.  And there's no better way than to do this is by finally finishing my Beothuk Star Quilt in time for the celebration/Linky Party.

Depending on how you look at this, I've either completed the Trifecta or the Quadalupe of QALs hosted by Sandra, mmm! Quilts; nevertheless I've done them all and finally finished all them on time.  What I love about participating in Sandra's QAL is that I always used fabric from my stash plus her patterns make great use of my die cutter.  Also adding to the mmm-merriment are the wonderful sponsors she lines up. There's always ample time to construct the quilt but I've found that once you start the quilt you just can't stop, just like a good snack.

When the Beothuk Star QAL started back on April 3rd, I initially chose the fabric on the left but decided the fabric on the right would be better because of the stronger contrast.  Both fabric choices are Carrie Bloomston fabric lines.  With the exception of the Postcard from Sweden QAL, I once again improvised my background fabric by adding another print since I didn't have enough of the one print.  You can see that I added the khaki tan newsprint to go with the white newsprint which I think helped define the stars nicely.  It wasn't until the top was sewn that I saw my colors well represented the theme of the Beothuk Star being the red was for the Beothuk or Red Indian Tribe, blue for their spirit, yellow for their strength/hope, tan for the land/Earth and newsprint for the words that always need to be said or read to keep their memory/history alive albeit how painful it may be.  You can read Sandra's backstory of the Beothuk Star here.

I've already confessed to Sandra that I did not construct my quilt according to her thorough instructions since I used my die-cutter. So 3"x6" finished flying geese were made in place of some of the 3" half triangles and my quilt was constructed row by row but you wouldn't know it if I haven't mentioned it.   You can see that I was rather the daredevil by basting the quilt with straight pins and only having maybe one inch of batting/backing on all four sides.  I survived the numerous pricks on the fingers and hated it when the pins snagged against my legs. But the quilting was done under two hours.

One of the reasons why I chose to use the newsprint, besides it being very interesting, is that I could do KISS (Keep It Simple Sunshine) quilting by just doing quilting in the ditch and some diagonal quilting.  The Newsprint fabric is one of my favorite and I was very stingy in not wanting to use it for the backing so I used a tone on tone tan print which I won't bore you with a photo.  Really, I just forgot to take a photo of the back.  The binding was the tan newsprint though I thought of using the yellow fabric but it would have detracted the center star.

When I finished the Beothuk Star quilt Wednesday night, I knew the next day was supposed to be cloudy and rainy so I was thinking my photos for this post were not going to be so great.  Imagine my surprise when the Sun woke me up this morning so I quickly changed and went downstairs to take photos outside.  Since this quilt only measures 42" square, I knew there was no way the Master Quilt Holder was going to be able to crouch down to hide himself behind the quilt.  Thankfully, this past weekend he bought a new power washer for his Father's Day Gift, (yes, we buy our own gifts to avoid disappointment) and I knew the siding outside the front door was just cleaned with his new toy.  Also, I was fortunate enough to have green Frog Tape which I bought after reading Laura's Slice of Pi post about using it to hang up quilts outside on brick or siding, you can read about it here.  So, the quilt was photographed on the siding and it looked so nice.  Even when the wind blew, the green tape still held the quilt up. You can see some of it where the red arrow is pointing.  I think this wall is going to be my new favorite place to hang up my quilts for photographing.

Not to worry, the Master Quilt Holder won't be replaced by this roll of green Frog Tape.  I still going to need him to keep the siding clean with his new favorite friend, the power washer.  We're going have to give it a name.  It's funny that the power washer is the same color as the green tape.

I'm looking forward to joining the other Beothuk Quilts on the birthday of a famous Canadian.  Sandra did a great job with this QAL and I'm looking forward to her next one.  I already put my vote in for her to do one with her Luminous Layers Quilt, you can see it here.  I can tell you right now I'm going to have to find some pretty interesting fabrics to make up for the beautiful quilting that I know I won't be able to do.

Linking up with mmmi Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation, NTT.

A Blessed Finally Finish: Women of the Bible Quilt

Even with the absence of a Project list for 2019 and deciding that I would have a take it easy year, I'm still surprisingly have been staying focused on finishing last year projects and making new quilts with the once new fabrics which have been waiting for the right projects.  I'm thinking that the ever present squirrels in my studio have a good quilting conscience who are prompting me to sew the right thing.  In March, after finishing one of the "haf-to-do" quilts on my mental plate, I thought some fun with something new was in order.  But then the mood for me to finally finish the Women of the Bible Quilt hit me, or maybe in this case was divine intervention, and I knew the time was right to sew it all together.

The Women of the Bible Quilt (or I renamed the Bible Quilt) was started at the beginning of 2016 with my good quilting friend Dee and we decided to join a QAL on Facebook hosted by Crafty Threads.  Each week, we received a free online pattern for either a 15" or 10" block which was inspired by one of the women in the Bible. There were forty blocks and the goal was to finish all of the blocks by mid October and to put the top together by the end of the year.  

I chose to make my quilt with bright fabrics since I had purchased a large stash of Crazy Mom's Good Neighbor fabric when it came out in 2015 and also had a fat quarter collection of Emily Herrick's Technicolor fabrics.  I also included some other fabrics from Riley Blake, Moda and Connecting Thread. Since the quilt was all about the Women of the Bible, I wanted to make sure the quilt had a feminine feel and was able to find some multi-color floral prints which tied in all of the other colors.

There were twelve 15" blocks and twenty-eight 10" blocks.  I started the QAL with good intentions but did not finish all of the blocks until the end of 2016. Once again, I did a QAL Escape Artist thing by modifying three of the last blocks just to get them done.  You can read about the finishing of the blocks then here and surprisingly some of my hesitation had to do with Gypsy Wife. An interesting note is that the Bible Quilt was started before my blog and there were name calling for some of these blocks between Dee and I.

I decided to set the blocks, sampler style, most likely inspired by my then recently finished Classic Meets Modern Quilt and laid out the blocks in four quadrants.  In order to do this, I had to sew an additional 10" block.

After adding the 8" borders and cornerstones which made a very large quilt, 85" x 95", my plan was to send this quilt to Nancy of Grace and Peace Quilting in Minnesota.  The top was finished the first week in March but I waited until last week to send it to her because I was waiting for the snow to end which in the Midwest did not stop until early May.  I thought it would be safe but then we had all those tornadoes and my fear of my quilt strewned across the highway from an overturned truck was still very real.  My prayers were answered when my quilt arrived safely both to and from.

Nancy did a wonderful job with the machine quilting, it's either Figure Eight or Wishbone using the perfect shade of pink thread which matched the pink stripe binding. (You can read Nancy's post about this quilt here).  The turnaround from sending and receiving the quilt was just eight days and once I received the quilt back this past Thursday, the binding was hand sewn by that evening.  I haven't hand sewn binding in quite awhile and I thought it was going to take at least eight hours but was surprised that it took less than four hours. The 108" wide backing is also from the Good Neighbor line and I'm glad I purchased it when I bought the other fabrics. 

I was thinking that I was going to have to rely on Nancy's photos of my quilt since she always takes nice photos of quilts hanging from her deck since I was worried that I wouldn't be able to take a full photo of  the quilt because of its size and would have been too much for the Master and Apprentice Quilt Holder to handle. But then I remember hanging the Slinky Quilt from the screen room gutters.  The Master Quilt Holder appreciated that he didn't have to hold up this quilt and listen to my being Quiltzilla and boy did those nine boot clips do the job.  I also had an epiphany while the Master Quilt Holder was standing on the step ladder hanging up the quilt and realized that I don't need a clothes line after all; good news for him since he's been resisting my request, aka whining, for the past few years.

After a little more than three years from the start of this quilt, the Bible Quilt is a wonderful, finally finish. It's seems like it took forever and am glad there's a little less guilt in the studio now. My original intention was to give it to my son and his wife but I've since changed my mind; it's going to be for my beloved and very quilt-spoiled granddaughter's bed when she visits. This amazing technicolor quilt is just perfect for a little girl.  BTW, before posting, I did an online search to see if anyone is offering a QAL or free Women of the Bible block patterns but could only find ones available for purchase.

It seems that more often than not I'm going to mention something about the weather, it's still crazy with lots of rain, warm and days of sunshine are few and far between.  Today, we finally switched our bedding to the Summer quilts and this is the latest we've ever did this.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation NTT and Meadow Mist Designs, Favorite Finish