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.

Jolly Jinny Jungle Quilt--A Finally Finish

It's almost the end of April and this is my first and maybe my only post for this month. April was not the month for time spent quilting but rather too much time spent on getting the taxes prepared and filed and having the pleasure of seeing my Granddaughter, Micah every weekend this month which was the first time this ever happened and I hope it won't be the last time.  There was only two finally finishes for April, this quilt, the Jolly Jinny Jungle (JJJ) quilt and another Chicago Cubs baby quilt which may be another post for another day.  I'm calling this a DrEAMi project even though the JJJ quilt was started almost a year ago last May. It was finally made possible when two quilting forces somehow collided: one being after many years of being gifted these wonderful fabrics (and feeling guilty) from my good quilting friend, Carol,  and the another, Sandra, who hosts the monthly DrEAMi linky party, and who I also refer to as the Master mmmEnabler, thought I could use some yardage of green batik fabrics she was selling for a friend who was destashing, which meant this quilt had to be made. Sandra now has a new title--mmmPetus--yep, she does make things happen.

Good quilting friend Carol and I have known each other for twenty years and we spent some wonderful years working together at a quilt shop and share some of the same tastes in fabrics.  Jinny Beyer fabrics was one of the first line of fabrics we both purchased and there was a time when my quilts always included one of her fabrics. Even though it has been years since Carol and I worked together, we still get together for lunch and even a class with Kaffe Fassett. When we travel, we always buy something for each other since our travels always include going to a quilt shop.  Carol visits her son and family in Virginia so she makes regular stops at Jinny Beyer's quilt shop and most of these fabrics shown above, some Jinny fabrics and some batiks or tone on tones, are from there.  Carol knows that I love green so most of the time my gift of fabric is green.  I've always kept my gifts from Carol in a separate bin in anticipation of one day making a quilt with them.  And if these green fabrics weren't enough, I've already accumulated a lot of green fabrics, in all shades, design, pattern, etc. and I used to always pick up some green when shopping but made myself stop because I have found that whenever I needed a "certain" green for a project, I never had it, so I figured I might as well wait until I needed that "certain" green.

This is a Jinny Beyer print which I had yardage of and I've included plain rectangles of it in the quilt since this ties in all of the different shades of green together.  This piece came with a kit for an ironing pad bag and much as I would have liked to have used it for its intended purpose I really needed to use it for the JJJ quilt.  Carol would understand and this isn't the first time I've raided a kit. I like to name my quilts and the only problem I had this time was choosing which one I came up with in the course of eleven months. Since starting this quilt, I've changed it several times; the first name that came into mind was Postcards from Carol, since at that time I was finishing up my Postcards from Sweden QAL quilt and then there was How Green Is My Quilt, since this is a very green quilt but I finally settled on Jolly Jinny Jungle.  The Jolly is for the Jolly Green Giant and all of the Ho, Ho, Ho, Green Quilt which my mind was saying/singing, Jinny because I just had to include her very cool name and Jungle just because I like alliteration in my quilt names and Tarzan wasn't going to work.

So to give a timeline as to the making of the JJJ quilt, after the backing was received was Sandra, I drew up a design of HRTs, since I like the look of HRTs and could die-cut them and rectangles on graph paper.  The design was helpful for me to determine the color combinations and how many HRTs to die cut and rectangles to rotary cut. The patches were sewn together from last May through June and then sat in the basket until November when the HRTs and rectangles were sewn together into 6" x 12"(f) blocks which may have gotten done because this was one of the projects I could sew while recuperating from last Fall's fractured knee.

After the blocks rested for another four months, I finally finished the top at the very end of March.  The quilt measures 54" x 72".  I ended up not following my design exactly and just letting the blocks decide where they wanted to go.

The machine quilting was organic, curvy waves approximately .75" apart and the thread was a bright Olive Green which is no longer available from Connecting Threads.  The binding is yardage from Gail Kessler's Dimple line and after looking through my four bins of green I was getting afraid of not having that "certain" green and glad I found something which went with the quilt.  I'm still not a big fan of scrappy binding as well as scrappy backing.

And this is the backing I pieced from the yardage purchased via Sandra.  I knew when I saw it that it would work with the other green fabrics.

In case, you noticed that there was too much fingers showing in the holding up of this quilt, it's because the Master Quilt Holder was busy barbequing and I wanted to take photos while the Sun was still out.  The Apprentice Quilt Holder, aka Demando, was asked to take the photos while I held up the quilt and it was not easy especially when the Apprentice is taking time doing selfies and photos of his sidekick, Duke.  I so appreciate the Master Quilt Holder now and understand his complaints that holding up quilts wasn't easy.  I also feel bad for the times I took my time taking photos because I wanted to drive my point of wanting a clothes line.  And if you're wondering why the Apprentice didn't hold up the quilt, as mentioned before, the Sun was still going strong at 6pm and if I had asked him to hold up the quilt, he would have complained until the Sun did go down, thus ruining the photo op. I don't think he's ever going to be a Master like his father so that's another reason for my needing a clothesline.

BTW: last year, Carol and I came to an agreement/understanding which may have been initiated by me not to buy each other any more "gifts" but leave it to her to already break it.  We're meeting for lunch soon and she mentioned that there was a little something from Jinny.  I hope it goes with the other fabrics I still have in my gift stash.

Sandra's newest QAL, Beothuk Stars, has just started and I'll need to do some catch-up when I return from my one-week visit with Micah who's doing a great job of grandparent sitting. I'm looking forward to making this quilt since I'm using Carrie Bloomston fabrics which I've been accumulating for awhile now--no Carol involvement this time, but yes for Sandra for being an mmmPetus.

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