The Tell Tale Blues Quilt

I thought that my Tell Tale Blues quilt, which was one of the eight flimsies made since July, would be the one I would finally finish. This quilt was made with a Jelly Roll, last Saturday was Sew A Jelly Roll Day and I seem to be sew-lebrating with making quilts with 2.5” strips this month since The Kitty Corn Mix quilt was a finally finish earlier this month and another flimsy made which you will see later in this post. I mentioned this quilt in a July post when it was a flimsy and called it a dream/scream project: I’m thinking a better name for a project of this type would be a daydream since I worked on it for one day and then set it aside.

Like some of my quilts, I wasn’t planning to make my Tell Tale Blues quilt. Every day, I receive a memory photo feed from either Apple or Amazon, and I just so happened to receive the above photo of The Opposites 2.5” strip roll taken in October, 2020 which was when I purchased it. Of course, it prompted me to make another Staggered Strips and Bricks quilt like my Celestial Moonrise Quilt.

After pulling additional fabrics from The Opposite collection from my stash of Marcia Derse fabrics since the roll was not going to be enough, I decided to use the yardage of The Blue One which was a nice accent against the black, gray, white and natural tones of The Opposite fabrics.

Here’s a photo of my yardage of The Blue One before it was cut up into 4.5”x16.5” bricks, both horizontally and vertically.

Lessons learnt from the making of The Celestial Moonrise quilt on the right was applied to The Tell Tale Blues quilt. I wish I had more of the blue fabric since I think it almost gets lost against the black, grays, white and natural and not liking it too much after the flimsy was finished. It sort of looks “spooky” doesn’t it, which how I came up with the name because thumping sounds and Edgar Allen Poe came into mind as I was sewing this late into the night.

I had the perfect backing for The Tell Tale Blues quilt which was my last piece of IKEA’s 2010 Beckmans of Design print which fits the spooky feel. Even though the backing was 60” wide, I still had to sew additional strips on the side to accommodate the width of this quilt.

I was happy with my choice of using #4060 Aurifil thread for the top since it blended nicely with all of the colors and silver was used for the bottom.

Here’s some close-ups of the fabrics and the machine quilting of straight and wavey lines. For the binding, I used leftovers from The Blue One along with additional blue prints from the Marcia Derse stash. The Tell Tale Blues quilt measures 60”x80”(approx.). 

It was just a little bit windy this morning when an outside photo was taken and the Master Quilt Holder had no problems holding it up. It looks so pretty in the morning light.

Before The Tell Tale Blues quilt was a finally finished, I worked on another daydream project for several days with my 2.5” strips leftover from previous Staggered Strips and Squares quilts. Once this is quilted, I’ll have more details but wanted to show you a pic of the Master Quilt Holder and the Apprentice Quilt Holder who both were needed to hold up this 80”x92” flimsy. The Apprentice Quilt Holder is leaving the Nest which means he may not be around much to help hold up the quilts. I don’t think this was an incentive for him to finally move but it sure is nice for me to have his old bedroom for another creative space. BTW, this quilt will be for the bed which will still remain.

We’ll be heading to the GP house tomorrow where the darling Granddaughter will be babysitting us for a week. Trips to the Zoo and Pumpkin Patch are planned and maybe a little chance of some sewing and knitting.  Upon our return, some home reorganization and makeover will definitely keep Hubby and I busy.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT

Postcard from Sweden sQALrrel

I started the New Year off with having no set plans or projects; just to continue participating in the 2021/22 Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge and the yearly mmm Quilts Celebrating a Famous Canadian Birthday QAL which usuallly starts in April. Apparently now, I’m participating in two of Sandra’s QAL this year having just finished my Postcard from Sweden quilt. This one was really done under the auspices of a sQALrrel lead by madammmenabler my latest name for you know who.

I had just finished my flimsy for January’s CT UFO Challenge and had a few days to make another Brown Bear quilt for the darling Granddaughter before we left for the GP House, but what did my wondering eyes happened to see on IG on January 10th that Sandra was hosting another Postcard from Sweden QAL starting on January 16th. For a brief minute, I sort of shrugged it off having participated in the first QAL and thinking I didn’t need another one since I’m not a big fan of making quilts with solid color fabric. (You can see and read the details from the first PFS quilt Here.) But then my mind got to thinking of other possibilities this quilt could be made with like, Grunge or other tone on tone fabrics which I’ve amassed during the last months of 2021 but then realized that the latest Postcard from Sweden (PFS) quilt would be so interesting in Marcia Derse fabrics which I’ve been collecting for over ten years. I still had the pattern, fabric cards I made of the Kaffe Fassett Shot Cottons and Peppered Cottons used for the first PFS quilt and the extra HSTs leftover which came in handy so rather than waiting to start on the official start date, I wanted to start right away to see if my idea of using prints would work. 

The color cards helped in in choosing which Marcia Derse fabrics were similar to the Shot Cotton/Peppered Cotton used before and I did not limit my selection to just solids but also included prints which I thought would add an interesting look to my second PFS quilt. (I might add thatI did this when I should have been working on the Brown Bear II Quilt of which I’m saying I took a brief “Paws”.) The original PFS quilt used 36 different fabrics but for PFS II I used 46 different fabrics since there were some Marcia Derse fabrics which I didn’t have enough of and used Shot and Peppered cotton HST leftovers of the same color number and mixed it with that. I did have to resort using one Lonni Rossi print for the one color I still didn’t have enough so there is one color number which uses three different prints which makes PFS II so interesting.

Even though the QAL did not officially start until January 16th, my blocks were finished by the 13th, right before leaving for the GP House with the Brown Bear II quilt in tow. I made my blocks one at a time to make sure the correct fabric was in the right place and the seams were pressed in the right direction. I normally walk over to the ironing board which is a few feet away to press but decided to purchase a TV tray to make an ironing station next to  my sewing machine in order to keep my blocks straight and to save time—what a difference.

Sandra “egg-couraged” me by saying that my PFS quilt would probably be finished by the 18th but only the flimsy was. It could have been done if we didn’t go to the GP House and although it would have been tempting to stay home it wasn’t enough for me to give up seeing my darling Granddaughter even though she had a cold/cough. Fortunately, we returned home with our health in check and the PFS II quilt was a finally finished on the 20th.

Like the first PFS Quilt, machine quilting was done with wavey lines, 1” apart and a CT Essential Thread in Magenta was used. While sewing this quilt, I was worried about the binding since I knew I did not have any yardage of a Marcia Derse fabric I could used but fortunately last year I inadvertently ordered a yard of V&Company ombré woven fabric in Magenta which worked well with this quilt.