In the Mood for Red, White and Blue

‘‘Tis the month for sewing red, white and blue quilts which means I have three Finally Finished, two of them longtime UFOs and one quilt a start and finish within nine days which would have been done sooner if not for a five day visit to the Grandparent House. I already have a nice collection red, white and blue (RBW) quilts and it’s been awhile since I’ve made one, with the exception of some small wallhangings, but these three just “happened” to get made. 

This is the first RBW quilt finally finished and if it weren’t for Mary Etherington, Country Threads posting the one she was currently working on, there was a strong possibility this would have remained a top. It’s been over five years since this was made and was a QAL which Mary hosted. I changed the dimensions of the blocks to 6” finished so I could die cut them and used fabrics from my Minnick & Simpson stash. Seeing Mary’s current quilt gave me the impetus to finally quilt it. It’s the first time I’ve ever sprayed basted and really liked it and thought it would be a game changer but as I later discovered it works best right now for small quilts. This quilt measures 28” square and already hanging on the hallway door.

This is the second RBW quilt which I finally finished as a result of the first quilt because I made the two at the same time and it just wouldn’t be right for it to remain an UFO. The pattern is Dandy designed by Pat Sloan and she also hosted a QAL. I thought this was a great pattern for the Zippity Doo Dah fabrics designed by Sandy Gervais which I had a layer cake and yardage. This has to be one if the few quilts I've made which only used four fabrics. After I made this top, I wasn’t sure how to quilt it so that’s why it was an UFO for so long.  I decided to quilt it with curvy horizontal lines and again I spray basted it and this time I don’t think I liked it as much with the numerous pinches and puckers. This quilt measures 34” x 46” and will be a seasonal table topper for the dining room table.  (I’ve been thinking a lot of Pat lately because right after I finished my Dandy quilt, I learned that while going for a walk, she tripped over uneven pavement and broke both of her wrists and had surgery today. I’m a big fan of Pat’s patterns and fabrics and wish her a speedy recovery and hope she heals well.)

While hunting for the binding for the Dandy quilt and coming upon the Zippity Doo Dah layer cake, I knew I wanted to use it for an Algorithm Quilt, a pattern designed by Gundrun Erla, GE design, which is a fun pattern to make and a nice change of pace from the strip and square quilts I’m fond of making. Would you believe, we're at the end of June and this is the first quilt the Master Quilt Holder has held up outside? 

The pattern did not include borders and measures approximately 49"x64". Normally I do not add borders but thought since I still had yardage of the floral print I would add borders so the quilt measures 57"x70 which is a nice size to cover more than a lap.

Since I added borders, I was tempted to quilt straight through the borders but decided that I would start the straight and curvy line quilting inside the top and bottom and spent the time burying the knots.  I was going to use a natural color thread and glad I decided at the last minute to use instead Red. For the borders, I also did a combination of straight and curvy lines also.

For both the Algorithm and Dandy quilt, I was able to back it with a 2001 print designed by Jill Kemp/Bear Paw Design.  It's a patriotic print with text saying "Remember Me' which I'm glad I did because it's definitely been waiting to be used.  Since I didn't like the red print I had left from the Zippity Do Dah stash, I decided to use a ticking stripe of red and natural which went well with the other prints.

If you read my last post about my Centred Quilt, which I mentioned that I was unhappy with the new Blogger interface and some may have interpreted that I wasn't going to post anymore since I wrote that this post would be the last post I would do in the old or Legacy Blogger interface which I dearly love. Well surprise, surprise, I'm writing this post in the new Blogger interface since I decided to put on my big Blogger pants and post with the flow.  My mentor Sue of PatchworknPlay and tormmmentor Sandra of mmm quilts have been helpful.  I discovered one of the problems I was having is that my MAC Pro Laptop is ten years old and cannot support the new Blogger interface so the toolbar was not appearing.  It worked on my iPad but there was no way I was going to type with one finger.  My hubby suggested that I try typing it on my PC and it works but I had problems with uploading photos directly from OneDrive.  Another problem is inserting links so I apologize for not including them in this post.  Hopefully, Sandra, who promised a little tutorial for the new Blogger interface can offer some insight.

Wishing everyone a Safe, Happy and Healthy Fourth!

Hometown Girl Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilt

This week I am excited to show you my Hometown Girl Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilt. For the past two weeks I've been working on two Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilts (I posted the Autumn Woods quilt last week, you can read the post here ).

The Hometown Girl fabric line was designed by  Pat Sloan for Moda and was available in two lines; regular prints and batik which I chose for this quilt.

Back in May, Moda announced that September 16th will be National Sew A Jelly Roll Day, (you can read about it here) when quilters will be encouraged to finally break out the Jelly Rolls they've been saving (I think the word "hoarding" is a more appropriate word) and making something for them, for their family or friends or for charity (there are several quilt drives for the victims of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma which you can check out on the Internet).  Moda has done a pretty good job of promoting this event with their designers posting patterns or giveaways on their blogs.  Even though I have a die-cutter and can cut my own 2.5" strips, there are times I can't resist buying a jelly roll especially when they are on sale. The Jelly Roll Charm Chase pattern is the one I designed using a Jelly Roll and a Charm Pack of the same fabric line and it was chosen to be a Moda Bake Shop pattern back in June (you can find the pattern here) and (read about my experience here).

It's just purely coincidental that I've now made two Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilts with fabric lines that had "Hometown" in the name but this is the first time I've made one in batiks and I think this might be my favorite version so far.  The nice thing about working with batiks is that there's no wrong side, and I've learned, there is selvedge even though it doesn't look like it.  I had to do some research online to verify this because I was tempted not to trim the strips.

And yes, I am in love with the wavy organic lines machine quilting I did for this quilt.  I've been seeing other quilters use three different thread colors lately but being that I have trouble picking just one color, I decided to use a variegated teal thread and am very happy how it accentuated the fluid lines of the quilting.  I think this is one of the reasons why I love this quilt so much. Before quilting, this quilt measured 58"x72" but because of the intense quilting the length shrunk 2"--wow, wasn't expecting that.

As mentioned before, I've already made four of the Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilts and thought I post a photo of them so you can see how this pattern works with other types of fabric design.  This pattern can be easily adapted to using your own 2.5" and 4.5" squares cut from your fabric stash and I'm thinking I would like to make one with the many Asian prints I have in my stash.  There are so many possibilities with my stash and it could be just something I can do when I want to make an easy quilt which is pretty often. Of course when I do make this pattern from my stash, I will have to change the name to Strippy Square Race since no Jelly Roll or Charm Squares would be involved.

I went into writing this post thinking I only had a few Jelly Rolls but now realized that I had seven of Moda's and three from other fabric lines--ten in all and now I'm thinking Moda probably had me in mind for this day.  Just a little disclaimer here, I had taken a photo in my basement studio of all of the Jelly Rolls in my stash and I thought the photo would be better if it appeared to have been taken outside, so PicMonkey photo editing once again came to the rescue. (Hmmm, I could put them on the bison from my Yellowstone photo again). I know of one quilter/friend (her name rhymes with Bee) who has more than me and between the two of us we should be participating in a Jelly Roll Month.  The one problem I have with Jelly Rolls is untying the pretty ribbon and using them.  I know from my own sons and from watching the Big Bang Theory, that action figures increase in value only if the packaging stays intact but I don't think it's for investment purposes, (although that's what I going to tell my Hubby now), that I'm saving my Jelly Rolls.  I know when I see the right pattern, I'll use one and there's been several patterns I've seen lately that is calling for one of these Jelly Rolls to come out and play.

My post is ahead of National Sew A Jelly Roll Day and was done in the anticipation of the arrival of my Granddaughter Micah Rose who is staying with me this week and won't be leaving until Saturday.  I knew there would be no participating in this event on the scheduled day because there's a priority who comes with a big smile and thinks Jelly Rolls are toys.

I hope everyone will have time to sew a Jelly Roll, either this Saturday or any other day.  I know there are many of us who have heavy hearts and minds during these past weeks with all of the hurricanes, the worries for our families/friends and the damages it's causing or caused.  I am working on sending a fabric package to the West Houston Quilt Guild who are in need of supplies (you can read The Constant Quilter's (Wendy Caton Reed) post here) and I know there will be other organizations/groups I will be sending one to also. Because of this, I won't be posting an update of my Minus 100 Yards Challenge this time because I pretty sure I'm going to be meeting my goal now.

Linking up with:

My Quilt Infatuation: Needle and Thread Thursday

Crazy Mom Quilts: Finish It Up Friday

Confessions of a Fabric Addict:  Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?