First February Finish-The Granddaughter Quilt #1

The Granddaughter Quilt #1 is my February finish for Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge. Leave it to Eunice to escape from the time-out corner to let me know that it was time to finally finished the Granddaughter Quilt #1 which has been a UFO since 1999. I started quilting in 1996 and after I have made both of my sons’ bed quilts plus starting to accumulate a nice collection of fabric especially after getting a job at the local quilt shop, I had visions of making quilts for my future granddaughters and grandsons. Never mind that my boys were only in middle school and high school back then and definitely weren’t dating, but it was something I felt a quilter should make.

Although the flimsy was finished in 1999, I’m pretty sure I purchased the Jennifer Sampou’s Sweet Rose fabrics before I started working at the quilt shop. I remember seeing Sweet Rose advertised in a quilt magazine and went to Joann’s to look for it. One of the first things I learned as a new quilter was the difference between buying from a chain fabric store and a quilt shop. And another thing to remember was that if you really loved a fabric, and I thought Sweet Rose was the most beautiful fabric with roses, to purchase yardage which I did along with the blue stripe. I didn’t have a pattern in mind until after I started working at the quilt shop and one of the patterns to make with a large focus print was a simple Irish Chain made with plain squares and nine patches. It still is one of my favorite patterns. The red and white fabrics in the nine patches were not from the Sweet Rose collection but from Robert Kaufman and Moda.

I have wanted to finally finish the Granddaughter Quilt #1 (GD#1) since 2022 after the Grandson Quilt #2 and  the Granddaughter Quilt #2 were finished. I had listed all three quilts for the 2022/23 UFO Challenge but didn’t feel like quilting another twin size quilt when it was GD#1’s turn. I committed to finishing it for this year’s Challenge when the number came up so that’s how the GD#1 was finally finished with Eunice, my quilt alter-ego who always sew the right thing in my Studio, reminding me. Ironically, I did purchase the light blue backing fabric from Joann’s in 2022. I machine quilted with CT Essential Thread in a light blue with horizontal and vertical straight line quilting with crosshatch diagonal quilting. After the horizontal and vertical straight line quilting was done and while I was quilting  the diagonal lines, I was thinking that the quilting was going well, better than the Granddaughter Quilt #2, and  I thought too soon. After two rounds of the diagonal lines, the quilting felt too tight and some of the stitches were popping when I ran my hand over it.  There could be several reasons why this happened; it was Quilt Karma for finishing Granddaughter #2 quilt first, the bobbin thread was too tight or quilting with ricochet diagonal lines which is when you quilt the first diagonal line until the end of the row and then pivot the quilt to quilt the next diagonal line until the end again and so on until there’s no more space left to quilt. I spent several hours removing all of the diagonal quilting lines and redid the diagonal lines but with no ricocheting and quilting one row at a time. I also made sure whenever I started a new bobbin to check the tension to make sure the thread wasn’t tight. I did a combination meander and straight line quilting for the border. The binding was always going to be the blue stripe and has been sitting in the binding drawer for all these years. I hand stitch the binding down which is what I would have done if the quilt was finished earlier. I did check the Granddaughter Quilt #2 to make sure the binding was hand stitched also and it was. The Granddaughter Quilt #1 measures 63”x86” and is the smallest out of the four quilts by a few inches.

I am pretty sure this is going to be my biggest finish this year even though there are a lot of month left to sew. It was pretty ambitious of me, as a 20th Century new quilter to want to make four twin size quilts for future 21st Century grandkids. Two of the quilts were made from Jennifer Sampou fabrics and all were simple makes which is still my favorite way for quilting. One thing I very rarely do now is making quilts with borders. When Julie Herman’s book Skip the Borders came out in 2012, I fully embraced  this modern concept. It’s so much easier for machine quilting.

Here’s the quilt quartet, almost twenty-five years in the making, not a saga, just my determination to finish them despite only having one darling Granddaughter. To me, the fabrics are timeless and I still have these fabrics in my stash. The two granddaughter quilts will be going to the GP House and it’s time to look for a chest or hutch to hold her growing quilt collection.

With my February Dirty Dozen Challenge project a big finish, I am looking forward to having the rest of the month to work on current projects and maybe start new ones. I do have on my must-do plate a request from Demando and my project for the upcoming Villa Rosa Designs Fast & More Fun Blog Hop next month. Eunice is also bugging me with another project and if it’s finished this week, I am sending her to jail. It’s always a battle between Peace and Piece in my quilting mind.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT

Rainbow Forest, A Grandson Quilt Finally Finished

 

The Rainbow Forest Quilt is my September finish for the Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge. Although you have a choice of either working on an UFO or a new project and I have done both during the past two months, I still like to finish an UFO, especially one that has been a flimsy for over sixteen years as the Rainbow Forest Quilt was. (Sorry for the rather dark photo, but it was really hard taking a good pic and had to rely on photo editing).

I used to maintain an Excel spreadsheet of my quilt projects and stopped when I started blogging in 2016. According to my spreadsheet, the flimsy was finished in 2006 and measures 68” x 90”. At that time, both of my sons were in their twenties and wouldn’t have appreciated the wonderful Jennifer Sampou Rainforest prints but probably would have if the quilt was made ten years sooner. So, according to my recollection, I referred to this flimsy as the Grandson Quilt #1 which turns out to be wrong and was actually the Grandson Quilt #2. I can’t remember the source for the quilt pattern but the spreadsheet noted that this pattern as Contemporary Patchwork which today would be considered Modern with the six patch blocks using various shades of the same color group. Some of the prints in the blocks were from the Rain Forest collection but some were prints from other contemporary collections. I still love the bright colors with fun prints and was glad to be reacquainted with them when the flimsy was pulled out.

When I first pulled out the flimsy, I was excited to start quilting it but then had second thoughts since it measured 68” x 90” which is a little bit outside my comfort zone. I was so sure that the green yardage I found in the backing vault would be enough but was 12” too short so I had to piece the backing with some of the leftover blocks I was lucky to still have. Even more luckier was finding the blue fabric from the Rain Forest collection in the binding drawer. I decided to machine quilt wavey grid lines on the center blocks and straight lines on the border with a variegated thread on top and green thread on the bottom. My sweet Juki Junebug was acting up on the final few lines of quilting and I was lucky to be able to finish it. I was debating on whether to sew down the binding by machine but decided I better hand sew it since there was a good chance Juki Junebug was too tired to finish. I know I should take her in for a Spa Treatment but am not happy with the local service center. I am entertaining thoughts of buying a new machine but really love my Juki Junebug.

I thought I include another close-up photo of the wonderful focus print and the border fabric. I know it wasn’t too hard to find fabrics in my stash then which went well with these prints.

As mentioned earlier, I thought the Rainbow Forest Quilt was the Grandson Quilt #1 but it turned out the blue quilt on the right was the Grandson Quilt #1. This quilt was made with then contemporary blue prints like batiks and from the Animal Attraction fabric line and was finished in 2002. Thank goodness I still have a printout of my spreadsheet to set me straight. This quilt also uses a border print and the pattern is a four-patch log cabin which was a class I taught during my quilt shop days. I can say that I still like my bright fabrics, fun prints and simple patterns; making quilts with borders, not so much.

Here’s a side by side photo of the two Grandson Quilts which is nice to have finally finished after starting them when I had vision of grandchildren back in the 2000’s. In July, I finished the Granddaughter #2 Quilt and the Granddaughter #1 Quilt is down for this year’s UFO Challenge and it’s another big one made with another Jennifer Sampou fabric line. The Master Quilt Holder had a real workout today with the pic taking  of the Grandson quilts and as mentioned in my earlier post, I need to stop making long quilts because they’re getting harder to photograph. I’m calling my participation in the September UFO Challenge as done even though there’s 20 days left in the month and there are three other projects I can do. Since July when the new Challenge started with the new rules, along with some dreaming, I have eight flimsies. I’m hoping to quilt at least one of them this month although September is going to be busy with the darling Granddaughter babysitting us for an entire week at the end of the month as well as October since I am determined to finally clean out the bedroom closets. You have to believe me that it is going to be one huge undertaking. Wish me fun.