Country Threads 2020/2021 Dirty Dozen Challenge-COMPLETED!

Since July of last year, I have been a participant of this Challenge and I am quite proud of myself for having completed my June UFO which is my Flights of Fancy Happy Lappy Quilt, another one of the tops finished in 2014.

The fabric used is a 2012 Michael Miller fabric line designed by Paula Prass and the pattern is what I call the Happy Lappy Quilt which is one of my favorite patterns for making a quilt with just six fat quarters.

 I was planning on quilting my usual horizontal straight line quilting but at the last moment was inspired to do big wavey crosshatch instead which sort of mimics the pink/green tile print along with horizontal and vertical straight line quilting along each rectangle. I’m not sure if I liked how puffy it made the quilt look but it is cuddly.  I would have expected to have looked this way had I used fleece for the batting but I used Warm and Bright.

I used a Baby Pink Essential threads for the quilting and the binding was the stripe print. I loved the fabric so much that I bought both colorways and yardage for backing which I don’t normally do unless it’s on sale. The quilt measures 40”x 54”, approximately.

It should be no surprise that this quilt was bequeathed to the darling Granddaughter who will be using this as her porch quilt at the Grandparents House. I am surprised though as to how much she likes this quilt and is very receptive when I cover her with it. I don’t mind her using it outside since I found a small tea-like stain on one of the prints, of course, it had to be on the light print and must have already been there when I purchased the fabric and didn’t notice it when I made the flimsie.

After the Flights of Fancy quilt was a Finally Finished and sort of unhappy then with the finish I thought I would end the Dirty Dozen Challenge by turning it into a Bakers Dozen Challenge by quilting my Road 15 flimsie which was made in 2017. I made this as an alternative to my Moda Chef Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilt in case they turned down this pattern, but happily it wasn’t so the Road 15 never got quilted. I thought it would be apropos for it to be the final quilt for the Challenge since I purchased the fabric from Country Threads in 2013. It’s a good thing I waited to quilt it because I knew my quadrant quilting would be perfect using Smoke Grey Essential thread. The binding was the skinny burgundy red stripe which has been happily sitting in the binding drawer.

Funny story here; after I finished binding the Road 15 quilt and had leftover, I thought I would finally quilt a block which good quilt friend Dee sent me several years ago and bind it and have a cute mini quilt ready for the Christmas holiday. Now Dee has previously sent me a cute black crow mini quilt before and I thought she wanted me to finish this block myself. Of course, while I was quilting the block, I remember that she had sent me the pattern for a Gift Box quilt and this block was my starter block. It’s a shame for some reason I didn’t keep this pattern with the block and separated it by putting it in with my Christmas fabrics and double shame since I had more of the Road 15 fabric in my stash. Big Dang and sew sorry Dee but this is going to look cute hanging up at the Grandparents House.

Here is a collage of the quilts finished for the Dirty Dozen Challenge along with some stats. The oldest UFO was twenty years, Pipertown, and the newest UFO was two years old, Modern Puzzle; the average UFO age was 7 years.  Ten out of the twelve, were just tops waiting to be quilted,  one had the blocks sewn and one really wasn’t a real UFO but a Country Threads kit waiting to be made. I do feel very good with all of these finishes since I quilted them myself with my new machine quilting confidence of straight and wavey line quilting. Projects planned for the next Challenge is still being thought about but I know there will be more projects in the block stage and not as many waiting to be quilted. I may have another 20 year old quilt which is a log cabin quilt I started in maybe 1997 for my sister-in-law and all I can say is Calico is going to make a comeback. If you check out Country Threads details on the 2021/2022 Challenge, it’s not limited to quilts and could include gardening and household projects. Cleaning out my closet has been on my mind for the past several years but I have to give it a big No for adding this to my Challenge list. Like I’ve always said or thought before, I rather be quilting.

Follow Your Own Path/Celebrating a Famous Canadian’s Birthday QAL

June is a busy birthday month in my house being that we celebrate birthdays for myself, my oldest son affectionately known as Demando in Blogland, Granddoggie Daisy and for the past five years a Famous Canadian also affectionately known as Sandra’s Father. While the birthdays celebrated for my family involves cake, I celebrate the Famous Canadian’s birthday by participating in the annual QAL hosted by Sandra, mmm quilts.  Since this is a milestone anniversary of celebrating a Famous Canadian’s Birthday I thought I create a collage of the quilts I made in observance of this fun and important QAL. And talk about having ants in her pants waiting for June 15th, the first day of the Linky Party, so I can post about my Follow Your Own Path quilt which was a Finally Finished  for more than a week.

Here is my quilt for this year’s Follow Your Own Path QAL, a theme that, a QAL rebel like myself, could be inspired to go off course. Surprisingly, I behaved myself by sewing somewhat on schedule and did not deviate much from the pattern which I will mention later in this post.

I love participating in Sandra’s QALs; her patterns are fun, quick and easy and I always seem to have just the right fabrics in my stash. I have to confess, though, that this year’s Follow Your Own Path (FYOP) QAL was a challenge to find the right fabrics in my stash. Part of the fun in participating in a QAL is to make the pattern your own and I was having problems because I kept seeing Sandra’s version of the one she made for Modern By The Yard Ezine. I knew that I would have problems finding eight fabrics in four colors with two shades and with the right patterns/scales in my stash.

After several days and hours of pulling out fabrics and coming up with numerous combinations, these are the fabrics I finally decided upon and was resigned to using.  To tell you the truth, I was not in love with this choice, partly because the colors were similar to Sandra’s quilt and I could foresee how this quilt would look. Part of the fun of participating in a QAL is making the quilt your own.

While putting away the piles of fabrics I had pulled in my quest to find the perfect fabric combinations, I passed my bins containing new fabric purchases.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this fabric neatly folded, tucked under some other fabrics, but enough for me to see that this was the fabric I wanted for my background. I thought I could exert QAL Rebel privilege by using the same black fabric which was going to be my background for the shadow arrows. Combined with using Basic Grey Grunge fabric of which I have a nice colorful collection in my stash, this would work and this combination definitely made my heart sing. Unfortunately I only had a 3/4 yard remnant of this background and I needed more. I purchased this remnant online and the selvedge didn’t show the maker or the name of the fabric line. Thanks to some sleuthing of past online purchases, I was able to determine that it was from Dear Stella and after typing a search for Dear Stella Graffiti fabric I had a name for this fabric line: Pour Some Sugar On Me which I think was inspired by a 1987 song by Def Leppard which may explain why this fabric line had a rock music theme. I was able to purchase yardage of this fabric, on sale, from Hancocks of Paducah.

So, Grunge and Graffiti makes my FYOP quilt and is fitting of my usual QAL Rebel-ness and the theme. On a side note, as for using the same black fabric for the shadows, not being a rebel, because Sandra in her   

April 4th post confirmed that you can use black fabric for all of the shadows which was a “YES or fist pumping moment for me. The only thing that concerned me was that I had to wait several weeks for the fabric delivery which postponed my “follow the schedule” mantra for this QAL. I should mention that I had intended to make the smaller version of FYOP but chose to make the throw size so I could showcase more of the cool fabrics.

Once the fabric was received, cutting the fabric was smooth sailing, thanks to some of the patches were die cut and being able to cut the larger patch sizes with my Stripology ruler. (I should mention there are no affiliate links in this post.)

Like all of Sandra’s previous QAL patterns, these arrow blocks were a snap to make despite having to pay close attention to the arrow orientation. Really these arrows could have been made at one time but someone was following her mantra. Leave it to Sandra, the Shadow Master, so named by Kathleen McMusing, to figure out a shadow can be created with just three patches of fabric. I see from posts on Instagram and on Blogland, there were a lot of participants who finished their quilts early, probably, I think, because the pattern was just that fun and quick to sew.

Once the flimsie was sewn, I decided to add a 2/-1/2” border with the background fabric so some of the shadow arrows would not be next to the binding which was going to be the same fabric as the shadow arrow. This is my only deviation from the pattern.

This black and white paint splatter print by Springs Creative was perfect for the backing and a nice alternative for wanting to preserve the remaining yardage of the background fabric. I found this fabric at Walmart and purchased a whole bolt of it since this print would work so well with some of the modern quilts waiting to be quilted. I found this bolt on the very top shelf which involved some climbing on my part since hubby was shopping elsewhere in the store. If you’ve seen the YouTube video of a huge Monitor Lizard inside a store climbing up a shelf, that’s what I looked like, but not as graceful.

One of the reason why the background fabric is important for me when I do a mmmquilt pattern is that I need it to hide or camouflage my lackluster quilting.  I had wanted to do quadrant quilting but I couldn’t line up the arrow points with the quilting lines so I did horizontal straight line quilting, 3/4” apart.  Inspired by the Follow Your Own Path theme, my quilting lines were not always straight, sometimes I couldn’t see the guide lines, especially on the background fabric and were in some places, downright wonky. I used an Essential Thread in gray for the machine quilting. FYOP measures 58”x64”.

Kathleen McMusing already posted her FYOP quilt last month and threw the gauntlet down as to finding a cool place to photograph your quilt. Knowing of some of the other participants in this QAL, like Diann who lives near a sculpture park and Wendysota (Wendy from Minnesota) who wouldn’t surprise me if she captured a Bear to hold up her quilt, I created a collage of where my FYOP quilt would look great thanks to some photo dropping via PicMonkey.

This one is my favorite taken when we were visiting South Carolina several years ago.

After hanging around all of these photos, my FYOP quilt deserves a rest on the porch steps at the Grandparent house. I’m not sure of this quilt’s final resting stop but I did offer it to Demando to hang in his bedroom since it would go well with the other graphic art he has hanging around but he declined. Surprisingly, he does not like the background. Demando did mentioned, though, that he would like a new quilt for his bed, the nerve.

Again, for the fifth year in a row, I would like to thank Sandra for designing this wonderful pattern and hosting, as usual, a fun QAL, “ton père strait fier”. Be sure to check out the Linky Party to see the other FYOP quilts and don’t be surprised if you see a Bear holding up Wendy’s quilt. As for suggesting future QALs like I’ve done in previous posts, I thought I mention that I would not have a problem with using my graffiti background fabric again. Also, still hoping for Bella to be one of the prizes.

Linking up with MMMquilts Celebrating a Famous Canadian’s Birthday Linky Party

Zingy Zinky is a Finally Finished

It’s a great way to start off a new month with a Finally Finish although I was hoping that my Zingy Zinky would have been finished yesterday for an end of the month finish but had a quilting snafu which I will mention later in this post.

Zingy Zinky was one of the flimsies finished last year and I wrote about it briefly in my Flimsy Frenzy February post which I had at that time named it Zingy Zebra. I decided to rename it Zingy Zinky since this is a version of the Slinky, Pinky and Blinky Bill Blankie quilts and I had to keep the “inky” as a reference to this series of quilts made up of rectangle strips and squares.

Like the previous quilts in the “inky” series, the strips and squares were cut 4-1/2” from mostly Art Gallery prints in shades of pinks, teals, golds/oranges, black&white and low volume prints.  There are almost forty different prints used in the squares. Instead of using one print for the setting strips, I alternated two prints, an Art Gallery multi-color stripe with a Cotton+Steel Netorious in black which is the reason why Zebra was in the original name for this quilt.

Zingy Zinky measures 56”x76”. The backing is an Alexander Henry print from 2011 which I bought last year from Hobby Lobby and been sitting in the backing vault to be paired with the right top— I think it’s perfect for Zingy Zinky, or should I say the ZZ Top. I used the black Netorious print for the binding.

As mentioned in the beginning of this post about my quilting mishap which I have now filed as “what not to do ever again for machine quilting” is never changed your presser foot setting in the middle of quilting unless you want big time puckering nor does 50 wt. Auril in black give quilting stitches enough definition—I should have used the 40 wt.  I had to rip out 15 rows of quilting just for the presser foot setting mishap and decided to keep using the black Aurifil thread because it would have involved ripping out another 25 rows.

You always have to include a photo of your quilt blowing in the wind.

One last photo before I end this post—Zingy Zinky hanging on the garage door since the Master Quilter was unavailable since he was busy planting his vegetable garden. I just love this pattern, it’s simple and a great way to use up scraps, charm packs or a favorite fabric collection.  I already have another one planned but will have to wait since I don’t want to start any new quilts until I finally finish a few more of the eleven flimsies left over from 2020. Plus, my quilt for the Follow Your Own Path QAL need to be ready for the June 15th Celebration of a Famous Canadian’s Birthday.  This month already seems to be going by fast.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, NTT and From Bolt to Beauty, Brag About Your Beauties