Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge—First Quarter Catch-up of Finally Finished

I’ve been keeping up with my participation in CountryThreads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge with the exception of January in which I was a week late but otherwise February and March I was done before the end of the month. January’s UFO finish is one project from last year, blocks were made and the top needed to be assembled and quilted and February and March were UFOs, flimsies, from 2013, the year I retired. Here are the deets:

Modern Puzzle Pattern by Christa Watson 

I originally was planning on making Pat Sloan’s Stoplight pattern and had all of the 2.5” strips done but the squares still needed to be cut. I switched patterns when I saw Janine’s Quilts From the Little House Modern Puzzle Quilt which only uses strips and no squares.

Size: 54” x 72”, 8” blocks, fabrics used were mostly from Pat Sloan collections with some Bonnie and Camille and Crazy/Mom Good Neighbor fabrics.

Quilting was vertical wavey lines using variegated threads of primary colors.

The backing was pieced using leftover blocks, several decade old dark blue print with a Connecting Threads stripe print. It still wasn’t long enough so I had to several inches of a denim print leftover from the backing from the I Love London quilt. My yardage of Pat Sloan fabrics is dwindling and had to scrounge to find the red tone on tone print which there was enough for the binding.

Fig Tree Square

I retired in 2013 and one of my goals was to use some of the bundles purchased from the Fat Quarter Shop. I remember my subscription to the Moda Fabric of the Month Club which I received twelve fat quarters from different Moda designers. I designed this quilt top based on the fat quarters of the Butterscotch and Roses fabric line designed by Fig Tree; I used the floral fat quarters for the plain blocks in a controlled layout and the smaller prints for the rail blocks along with yardage of the rick rack and gingham from other Fig Tree fabric lines. Again the layout for the rail blocks was controlled.

This quilt measures approximately 52” square and quilted in diagonal wavey lines and straight grid lines using a Connecting Threads’ apricot/peach thread.

The backing was purchased online after the bundle was received and have been patiently waiting in the backing vault. And once again the gingham print which was used for some of the rail blocks was used for the binding which was safely tucked away in the binding drawer for almost eight years.

Dominique Square

This was another flimsie made in 2013 and I’m pretty sure if involved buying a Dominique Charm Pack along with yardage. This fabric line was designed by Sentimental Studios and has the most gorgeous Rose print. There aren’t too many Rose prints that I don’t like and justify buying rose prints because it has my name on it. I just love quilts mixed with pretty florals, toile, plaids, stripes and ticking. The pattern was again based on what I had and I’m pretty sure the plaids, stripes and ticking was from other Moda collections like Three Sisters.

This quilt measures 56” squares and was quilted with straight horizontal lines spaced 3/4” apart.  I’ve always admired this type of quilting done by Mary Etherington, Country Threads, and was determined to do this with the Dominique quilt  and resisted doing cross-hatching.  I love how modern quilting looks on traditional quilts.

A golden khaki tan thread from Star Machine Quilt Thread was used and blended nicely with all of the prints.

The tan backing was found in the backing vault and fortunately had enough even though it involved some piecing. The binding was the floral print used in the top and bottom borders and I was tempted to use the red ticking on the side borders but it’s the floral print which was saved in the binding drawer.

The next three UFOs remaining in the Challenge involves the last remaining square quilt top made in 2013 and used Lori Holt’s first fabric line. And of course, one of the other two was one I really was anxious to finally finish since I want to hang it up at the GP house. Joining this UFO Challenge was a great way for me to finally finish some very old projects and I’m looking forward to doing a recap post in July.

For someone who doesn’t like making square quilts, I made one as a bystander in the SAHRR (Stay at Home Round Robin) QAL since I liked the idea of making a quilt from an orphan block leftover in a Pat Sloan BOM and some Granny Blocks made last year with my Bee Sistas.  I didn’t do all of the rounds and wanted to keep it a small 40” square. The top is ready to be quilted and bound and had to scrounge once again for binding in my Pat Sloan stash.  

I’m trying to be good by not starting any new projects when I’m home which sometimes is only three to four days a week, and want to quilt some flimsies from last year but I keep finding wonderful fabrics and know the squirrels are calling. Plus, my left arm is pretty sore from receiving my second vaccination on Monday so not sure if I could handle doing machine quilting right now. I am working on projects involving small quilts and slow stitching when I’m at the GP House and I will share by the end of the month.

Hope all is well and if you’re experiencing snow still like we are, I am so looking forward to Spring.

I Think I May Have A Feedsack Fairy Godmother

I’ve been meaning to post about my spending time during the month of February with my Feedsack fabric scraps which I haven’t played with for awhile. I’ve written several posts in the past about my infatuation with Feedsack fabrics, how my stash was acquired and the quilts made. Since we were spending a lot of time at the Grandparent House, I thought one of the projects I could do with the Feedsack scraps was to resurrect a project started over five years ago when traveling to Yosemite on a family vacation.

I always like to have a create-on-the-go project to do in a car and thought handpiecing feedsack scraps onto a flour sack would keep me busy and was doable since I had the entire back seat as my sewing studio. Here’s a photo of the start where I started sewing strips and can’t remember if I eyeballed the 1/4” sewing line or if I marked it. You can see the wooden stick used for pressing the seams down.

And this is where the project was left, still a lot of pieces to be sewn down to fill the flour sack foundation.

Here the top is finally finished and I decided this would make a nice size cushion since it’s the size of a standard pillowcase.  This would look so lovely sitting on a back of a wicker bench, wouldn’t it? Sad, I only have a chair and rocker.

Another reason for working on this project is that I’ve been seeing a lot of quilters online sharing their Kawandi, Kantha, Boro, Sashiko, etc. quilts and loved the idea of doing some big stitch quilting on this future feedsack cushion.  If you look closely, you can see my big black stitches which I’m using embroidery thread and hoping it won’t take another five years to finish. I’m also working on other projects inspired by the aforementioned quilts which will be another post for another day.

When I needed to take a break from the handquilting, I sewed some string blocks which measures 7” finished.  It’s a good way to use up the string scraps and the newsprint paper from old financial reports.  After making around twenty of these blocks I had to stop because I was running out of long enough strips and variety which made me sad because I am fond of so many of these prints.

Now to explain the title of this post and the photo at the top - I was going through my bins of Sandy Gervais fabrics today and didn’t find what I was looking for so in the process of putting the bins back on the top of the shelf, I came across a very long shoebox, 14” long, tied with a ribbon, which I don’t remember why this box was with the Sandy Gervais fabric.  I was really afraid to open it since my studio is in the basement and didn’t want to find anything creepy crawly in the box and much to my surprise and amazement, it contained lovely big chunks and strings of feedsack fabric, many of them my favorite prints. I don’t remember putting these scraps in this box nor why they would be separated from my feedsack stash which is on the other side of the studio. I do know the shoebox was mine since my feet are that big. So, as I was telling my Hubby of my lovely discovery and not knowing how the box was put in that corner of the studio, I decided I must have a Feedsack Fairy Godmother which makes sense to me since most of my Feedsack stash was given to me.  I’ve already separated the strings from the chunks and will be taking them with me the next time we visit the Grandparent House.

I’ve not posted since the first week of January and have been only writing a monthly post which I clearly missed February.  I can see why some bloggers write daily or several posts during the week since a lot of things can happen. So fearing that my next post might be as long as a novel, I thought finding the box of Feedsack Scraps was an impetus to finally write a post so I can keep track of what’s sewing around in my studio. I still have other posts to write about, especially my Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge finishes which I hope to finally write about at the end of March. I’m glad I finally am biting the Blog Bullet and getting back on the Post saddle despite my problems of my posts not being picked up Bloglovin’. You might read me sooner than later.