September’s Seven Year Stitch Surprise:The Farmhouse Baby Boomer Blankie

With vacation traveling and trips to the GP House, I was resigned to having only one finish for September which was the Scrapffiti Quilt finished earlier in the month. When I was home finally on the 26th and had a few days before leaving again for the GP House, I saw on the Fat Quarter Shop Facebook page, a simple rail fence quilt made to celebrate National Sew a Jelly Row Quilt Day. I figured this would be a surprise quick make and knew I had the perfect jelly roll and background sitting in my stash for way too long.

Way too long as in seven years + and I know this because my then six-month darling Granddaughter took a photo with it and other jelly rolls when she visited me during the week of National Sew A Jelly Day. She is now 7.5 years old, so this was another impetus for me to finally make something with the jelly roll.

The Farmhouse Jelly Roll is on the right of the photo with the darling Granddaughter and was design by Fig Tree & Co. When I purchased this jelly roll, I also purchased a yard of the text print which I used for sashing. The black and white gingham print is from Moda’s Essential Line and was used for the cornerstones and binding.

The flimsy was a fast make with the 10” rail blocks and only twenty strips were used. I removed any black prints and some of the ditsy print. The Farmhouse BBB measures 46”x58” which is a nice size to keep the lap warm.

I knew this could be a quick make if I backed the flimsy with a piece of plush fabric and I had the perfect size  and color which was a leftover in my stash, but not for seven years, maybe five. I did simple grid and diagonal machine quilting in a polyester lime green thread.

The Farmhouse Baby Boomer Blankie was the first surprise make for September (you can see the second surprise quilt Here.) I didn’t want to Post until we were at the GP House so that I can take a photo of the darling Granddaughter with the finished blankie so I could do a collage with her as a baby holding the jelly roll and finally after seven years which went by too fast, holding the finished quilt. She was quite co-operative with taking photos and I hope she doesn’t think it’s for her. I’m still deciding who I will be gifting this to and one of the possible recipients just so happens to live in a farmhouse.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT

A Razzle Dazzle Finish

Let me start this Post by saying how much I love my Razzle Dazzle quilt which I finished just less than two months after the flimsy was made in late July. I love the Ruby Star fabrics and the Razzle Dazzle pattern of 18” blocks with a fun twist on a Churn Dash block. I think this quilt lives up to the definition of Razzle Dazzle which means “noisy, showing exciting activity displayed and designed to attract and impress.”

The fabric and pattern are from the Fat Quarter Shop’s Ruby Star Society Quarterly Club I received earlier this year. I belong to several Fat Quarter Shop Clubs and do have to admit that I love receiving monthly or quarterly shipments of fabric. However, there has only been very few times that I actually have made a project using both the pattern and fabrics. When I received this pattern with the 12 fat quarter bundle of fabric from the Linear Floradora and Petunia collections, I knew I wanted to make this quilt because the fabric was fun plus I love big blocks especially when I can die-cut all of the patches. I did make one slight change to the pattern by not using a solid light as shown but instead I paired the fabrics with other fabrics, mostly lights, I had in my Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society stash. This made for a very low contrast or “mush” as I call it and like how busy Razzle Dazzle looks.

The only challenge I had was making sure all of the blocks were made and laid out correctly which was sometimes difficult to determine because of the many prints used.

All of my fabric combinations for each block were fun but the above two are my favorite. You wouldn’t think that a color combination of gold, red orange, lilacs and pinks would work but it does.

Machine quilting with both straight and wavey lines using a medium gray Aurifil thread went well until I was thinking this quilt was Razzle Dazzle with No Frazzle. Then, of course afterwards, came a few rows have tiny puckers here and there. You can’t see them but I know where they are. The backing is a Robert Kaufman wide back print. Surprisingly, one of my favorite parts of my quilt is the gold stripe binding which is a Ruby Star Society Warp and Weft print and was not my first choice. I was going to use a fuchsia print from  another Ruby Star Society collection but decided it wouldn’t look bold enough against the warm prints and glad I found the gold stripe binding in my stash. Razzle Dazzle measures 54” x 72”.

Now that Razzle Dazzle is my second finish for September, I am ready for my next project. I didn’t realize until a few days ago that September 16th is National Sew a Jelly Roll Day. I thought it wasn’t until next weekend which meant I would be at the GP House. I was already planning on making a Ernie Quilt in memory of  Mary Etherington’s beloved American Farm Tiger cat, Ernie.

Mary Etherington designed the first Ernie Quilt which was made with a Denyse Schmidt Jelly Roll back in 2016. Here is the link to Her Post.

I will be making a variation of an Ernie Quilt called Rambling Rows and you can purchase this pattern by sending a check for $5 with a self addressed stamped envelope to Mary Etherington, 2343 Palm Avenue, Garner IA 50438. (Not an affiliate link). Once I make my version, I already know that there will be an explanation behind my quilt. Hopefully, I will be able to explain next week.

Skyfall

Since I wasn’t home on National Sew A Jelly Roll Day on September 18th, I still wanted to observe it and just finally finished my Skyfall Quilt this past weekend. Looking at this quit, you may think it’s an improv quilt made without a specific intention, but it’s not, it’s more improvise to me because it was made from fabric already set aside and a pattern which didn’t quite worked out as planned.

 

Involved in the making of Skyfall was a Jelly Roll of Janet Clare’s Aubade along with a charm pack and yardage of the same line paired  with HST blocks and yardage of her Nocturne fabric line which came out afterwards. Four years ago, I designed a pattern for Moda Bake Shop called Jelly Roll Charm Chase and always wanted to make another one with the Aubade Jelly Roll and Charm Pack but never did partly because I designed another pattern later called Staggered Strips and Squares which for me is an easier pattern to make. If you’ve made a Jelly Roll Race quilt, there comes a point in the pattern where you have to cut a panel consisting of 32 rows and maybe 120” wide in half vertically and I always have a problem cutting up two equally sized panels. There has been several times I had to even up the panels by at least six inches. I find it easier to sew the rows with strip sets already precut to size rather than cutting the rows to size later. Also with the Staggered Strips and Squares pattern, you can space the fabrics more evenly and avoid globs of the same fabric/color being the same spot which can happen with a Jelly Roll Race quilt. My original plan for the Skyfall quilt was to use the Staggered Strips and Squares pattern but  modified it so the strip sets were 8”(finished) instead of the usual 4” to go with the 8”(finished) HST blocks made several years ago and four-patches made from the Aubade charm pack. Also, the rows would be set vertically instead of horizontally.

After the strip sets were sewn, I knew it wouldn’t look right with them mixed together with the 8” blocks on the same row so I decided to make separate panels of  strip sets  and 8” blocks. Fortunately this change did not affect the the number of strip sets already cut. 

But “dabnabbit” as one says while in the act of improvising, the panels of 8” blocks sewn together were shorter than the strip set panels by 2.5” or 3.5” so extra strips needed to be added and weren’t too noticeable. Of course I didn’t find out the differences in size until I sewed the two panels together the first time because I assumed the block panels were going to be the correct length. I found out while working on Skyfall, that Aubade and Nocturne fabric lines was inspired by the music composed for either the evening or morning skies so I should have been able to hear maybe Claude Debussy “Clair de Lune” playing in my head. But no, instead I heard the sounds of pounding, sawing and jackhammering trying to improvise to get these panels to fit together along with some salty language. 

After much noisy improvising, the top was done and surprisingly while working on it, I did not have a final name for this quilt. When I was going to make a quilt with just HST, inspired by a quilt made by Crazy Mom, Amanda Nyberg, I was going to call it Nightfall. Since there were a lot of light fabrics mixed in with the blues, I wanted to name it reflecting both the night and morning skies and maybe a little disappointment with the way the quilt looked at first, so I jokingly considered calling it Nightmare or Downfall.

Happily while quilting it with a combination of straight and wavy lines, I came up with the name Skyfall which came with a song with the same name by Adele. And yes I was singing it and playing the song while machine quilting which went well and liking Skyfall even more partially due to this quilt finally getting a nice proper name. I used Aurifil #2610 Light Blue Gray for the top and #2605 Gray for the bottom.

Here’s a photo of the backing which is the Jungle Jive print from Blank Textile found in the backing vault.  I thought showing the backing would answer any questions as to why I used  a different color thread for the bottom. The binding is a very dark Navy print from Aubade which I almost wasn’t going to use because it was too dark but decided to use it to justify the dark prints in Skyfall. Plus I had ordered it from a shop in Alaska several years ago after much searching for it and didn’t want the trip to be for naught.

Skyfall measures 64”x80” which is a little too large for the Master Quilt Holder to hold up comfortably. We went to the park for a photo shoot and he was willing to stand up on a park or picnic bench in order for the quilt to hang right but the Wind was just too breezy. Maybe Mother Nature thought I should have named the quilt Windy since there is a song that goes with that name.

Well it turned out the best photo was taken after our park visit from our front porch off to the side where all of the blues showed up beautifully, especially the medium blues. The Wind did not follow us home which made me think of the adage “there’s no place like Home” and did confess to the Master Quilt Holder that we didn’t need to go the park after all. I don’t think he really care since there was no falling off the benches involved.

I had a pretty productive month in September; four Finally Finishes which two commitments were met, a DrEAMi and Skyfall which I’m calling a just because I could when you’re home for five days. Also, with these Finally Finishes meant writing four posts in one month which is something I have not done in awhile. When I started my Blog, I used to write weekly posts which have now evolved into monthly posts for the past two years. But surprise, surprise, I will be writing another Post for October 1st which is the Five Year Anniversary of my something rosemade Blog. I’m doing this mainly to have a record of this milestone and mostly will be just stats, so now I’m off to do some compiling.

P.S., On my last post, I mentioned that I’ve been on a fabric purchasing binge lately which I attributed it to observing my 25 Anniversary of being a Quilter and maybe instead of buying 25 yards of fabric I should instead buy 25 lbs. Well, I am just loving the comment made by Nancy’s husband who said I should purchase 25 bolts of fabric which immediately put him in contention for Best Quilt Husband Ever and had me thinking which bolts of fabrics I would buy. So, maybe a new laptop for my 5 Year Blog Anniversary would be a nice way gift since there’s only so much fabric one can buy, right?

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT Thursday