May’s Makes

Before the start of May, I already had plans to work on two of the above finishes and it was serendipitous when the project number for the Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge was announced since I already began working on it. As for the other two, I’ll provide the details later in this Post which give you an idea why these Finally Finishes gave me a mixed bag of feelings.

The first quilt, American Jane Wheels, is the one Finally Finished which has the most “splaining” was started in 2014 and was my #4 for the UFO Challenge. I saw a Wheel Block on Pinterest and thought this would be a good road project since I just retired and planning to do a lot of traveling by car. My favorite road project is EPP and maybe knitting. At that time, I had a lot of American Jane fabrics in my stash which weren’t being used so I thought these fabrics would be perfect. I first purchased a package of Coffin paper pieces which I thought were more interesting than Dresden Plate blades and ended up making my own from index cards which were the same size and just needed the corners trimmed. My plan for this quilt was to make it with all wheels but I must have lost interest soon after I made only five Wheels which measure approximately 15”.

This project has been on my UFO lists for the past several years; the Wheels have been stored in a new pizza box carton which a friend purchased from a restaurant supply store on top of a shelf marked as “AJ Wheels”. It bugged me every time I passed under it which would be every time I was in my studio and let’s say the Studio Squirrels finally threw it down. I hated to waste the Wheels and finally decided on a  quick and easy finish just using four out of the five wheels appliquéd on a plain square and cutting 3.5” squares from the American Jane stash for the alternate block.

As simple as this quilt looks, there was a lot of preparation for the appliquéd blocks which is why I started working on this quilt before it was announced as the one I would work on in May. First, I had to remove all of the paper pieces from the five Wheels. Then I had to decide on how to make the circle for the center in which I made a simple block with a center square which would fit underneath the Wheels and then appliqué was ready to sew. BTW, this is the one block that I did not use for the quilt. At first, my intention was to trim these squares down to 18” but didn’t like the empty areas and decided to trim them down to 15” to make a 45” square quilt instead. Also in my plan, was to use all five Wheels, with one being in the center but thought I wanted this quilt to be easy machine quilting and didn’t want to machine quilt over the appliquéd blocks so four Wheels are only on the outside edges.

For the centers of the Wheels and the binding, I used a recently purchased yard of a current American Jane print navy blue plaid and glad I had it in my stash to finish this quilt. I like to mention that one of the problems with making 45” square quilt is having to make the backing which is a wee bit larger than 44/45” width of fabric. I used a blue Debbie Mumm print from the backing vault along with a leftover strip from the American Jane scraps. I have mixed feelings about this quilt as to the machine quilting and whether I should have not trimmed the appliquéd blocks to 15” as it looks a little too close to the alternate blocks. For now it’s a wall hanging but later can be a table topper or maybe a floor quilt once the newness wears away. I am just glad that there is no more danger of a pizza box being thrown at me and I have a new road project with the leftover Coffin paper pieces; I think there maybe at least a hundred. Coincidentally, before I found the leftover pieces, I saw a quilt on Pinterest using these pieces and didn’t realize I had the makings. It seems like an American Jane year with the Wheels quilt being the third quilt made this year with her fabrics. No worries about running out of American Jane fabrics because several years ago, Mary Etherington gifted me with all of her leftover American Jane fabrics, some of which appears in the alternative blocks.

Speaking of Mary, I had plans to finally finish my Fresh Air quilt; the flimsie was made almost a year ago. The reason why the American Jane Wheel Quilt wasn’t made a 54” square to hang in the Kitchen dining area because I wanted Fresh Air to a hang there instead.

A little background on my Fresh Air quilt which is a pattern from Mary Etherington and ConnieTesene’s Fresh Start Quilt book published in 2022. I briefly mentioned the Flimsy in this Post and can now provide a few more details. Twenty-five pieced blocks were made using mostly Amanda Herring’s Ardently Austen fabric line and Brenda Ratlif’s One Room Schoolhouse and Pie-Making Day fabric lines along with various low volume prints from my stash. I pre-cut all of the blocks and packaged them individually. It was my favorite flimsy finish from June/2025 and I was so looking forward to quilting it with straight horizontal lines like Mary did.

My Fresh Air quilt is my saddest finish for May as the machine quilting did not go as planned. I ended up machine quilting wavey horizontal lines and had several problems doing this for reasons entirely my fault, I forgot to check the bobbin tension and remove the walking foot guide once I decided not to sew horizontal straight lines. This caused some distortion and  I ended up removing twenty-five lines of machine quilting but should have removed all of them. Lesson learned; you may not want to machine quilt horizontal lines if the quilt has sashing and just stop once a problem is first notices as it doesn’t quilt away. I ended up purchasing a new walking foot after this quilt was finished. I did hang it up even though I was sad looking at it first but  now have accepted the wonkiness. It’s what a call an “Izzy”, it is what it is and can make me happy or sad. My Fresh Air quilt measures 64” and like the American Jane Wheels quilt may someday grace the floor or ground.

To save the month of May’s mixed feelings was the unexpected Finally Finished of my Simple Smitten quilt which were leftover paper pieces of my Smitten Quilt started and finished in 2017. I started sewing the leftover papers as a road project for our Yosemite vacation in September, 2024 and made only a few blocks. I resumed this project in March of this year, pieced thirty-two blocks and fourteen side blocks and finished the flimsy several weeks ago. I can’t believe I made this within two months and it just proves that I watch a lot of TV or worked on it while at the GP House.

My plan for Simple Smitten was as the name suggested, to make a simpler version of Smitten with just simple hexagon blocks made with diamonds and equilateral triangle and a scrap vortex layout. If I wasn’t set on naming this quilt Simple Smitten, Smitten Skelter would have been  appropriate  The other blocks were leftovers from Smitten. I did not want to make another Smitten quilt which is what I call fancy with the hand quilting but a functional quilt with vertical machine quilting and I am so glad this went as planned.

I knew I could make Simple Smitten a Finally Finish sooner than later with finding the perfect backing of a red/dark pink and navy blue ticking stripe in the backing vault. Better yet, was finding the navy dot print used for the binding in the Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society stash. Vertical straight line machine  quilting, 1” apart with an Aurifil silver thread went smooth, especially with the brand new walking foot. Simple Smitten measures 52” x 76”, a nice size throw to snuggle with no worries.

I have to show the leftover block from the Smitten quilt which I thought best represented my long friendship with good Quilt Friend Carol and thought of making a small wall hanging commemorating this but instead used it in Simple Smitten. Would you believe in no less than 48 hours after I put away the paper pieces and fabrics, I am starting another quilt which I’m calling Smitten Says. I will be using some of the leftover diamond pieces from Simple Smitten and maybe making only hexagon blocks using three diamonds. I am cutting new Damond patches from Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society scraps. I’ve grown fond of EPP and hand piecing while watching TV plus we’ll be on a road trip in September.

All of the three quilts were finished with still ten days remaining in May and I thought I could  sewqueeze another Finally Finished and made the ginormous backing but then decided to take it easy since I had to prepare for leaving to the GP House. I know upon my return I have to get ready for the mmm quilts Lyra QAL parade and need to finish my two Lyra Quilts. I have one flimsy done and the second one, which is Lyra pattern #2 and commemorates Artemis Moon Mission still needed to be sewn. I decided it would be less stressful if the flimsy was finished before I left. I just love this version and look forward to finishing it. I’m going to be busy in June with my upcoming Parade Post plus the revealing of last year’s secret sewing project.

I’m ready to call May a month now with a FB PosI saw: “I just realized why this month is called May; It may rain, it my snow, it may be 70 degrees  or it may be 20 degrees.”  I still haven’t switched over to my Spring/Summer bed quilts and decor yet. Maybe I can finally switch over when we return from the GP house; it’ll be June and this is the longest I ever had to wait for the warm weather to arrive.