Septe”MMM”ber Shine

It’s been awhile we’ve been home for at least a one week stretch and one of the projects I needed to finally finish was my Shine Quilt designed by Sandra (mmm quilts).  The flimsy was finished in early August but in between the numerous visits we made to the Grandparent’s House since then, this was the first time I had a decent block of time to tackle the quilting.  To tell you the truth, if you’ve seen Sandra’s Shine Quilt and admired the exquisite quilting she did on her quilt, you would understand my hesitancy in quilting straight lines which is the only type of machine quilting I do besides wavy lines and thinking that it would look too bland.  Surprisingly, I love how the straight lines looks and doesn’t the sunlight dappling through the tree branches onto the quilt make it “Shine”?

To give you a little back story on how the quilt got to be made, Sandra asked me a few months back if I would like to be a pattern tester for her Shine pattern which you may wonder why she would ask me since I”m a little rebel or tend to “misbehave” when I joined her QALs which have been, according to my calculations, five.  I’ve always did something a little different with either the background or construction and did not always follow her pattern but the finished quilt always looked the way Sandra designed it.  I promised Sandra that I would be a good pattern tester and would follow her instructions completely.  I chose to make my Shine quilt with Carrie Bloomston’s Wish fabric line with Ruby Star Society Spark fabric for the background.  I chose this for the background since I thought the Silver Gray fabric would help the letters and stars stand out and also I wanted a background fabric with a little detail to make up for the inevitable lackluster quilting.

This is the first time I had the opportunity to be a Pattern Tester and I took this task very seriously.  I read the cutting directions very carefully to make sure it was accurate.  I did order an extra half yard of the background just to make sure I had enough in case I made an error cutting or in this case my iron acted up and splashed rusty water while I was ironing it and ruined a quarter yard.  Thankfully I still had enough.

It didn’t take me to long to break my promise to make the quilt according to her instructions.  Sandra let me deviate from her Flying Geese method since I like to make them using my die-cutter and that was the only time I “misbehaved”. 

I wished I could had a video of me sitting by the sewing machine, concentrating on following the instruction with my finger running over each line to make sure the patches were sewn together correctly and then lifting my head up and staring into space when I realized then that I wasn’t a Pattern Tester but Sandra gave me a pattern test to see if I could really focus and follow her instructions. This happened when the patches were almost all sewn together into blocks. Talk about getting schooled for my “bad” QAL behavior.  At least the “test” was easy and also very fun to sew, I’m not saying this for extra credit.

I think I passed and learned some patience in sewing the top together.  I’m never one for pinning rows together but for this quilt I did to make sure they lined up.  Funny fact about the making of the top was I was really tempted to only finish the left half of the quilt since I thought that the Shine panel would make a nice banner especially for a classroom but my determination to be a good “Pattern Tester” prevailed. Also, I like to mentioned that this is the first time I ever pieced letters and really enjoyed making them.  I even told Sandra she has to come up with the rest of the alphabet.

Once the straight line quilting of 5/8” apart started, it was a breeze, no pinches or puckers.  It was really nice using Aurifil thread for both the piecing and quilting.  I really thought the straight lines would be boring but I think it gives the quilt a nice graphic look.

While I was machine quilting, I was listening to “The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding” by Jennifer Robson which was recommended by Wendy of Pieceful Thoughts.  It’s a story about the embroiderers who worked on the wedding dress which inspired me to embroidered some of the stars around the flame with yellow floss. 

The backing was yardage of a gray dotted fabric I had in my stash which I love when that happens.  I originally wanted to bind the quilt with the same solid yellow fabric as the small stars but decided the gray and white geometric print would accent the colors of the quilt better; the yellow would have been overwhelming.

Shine was a Finally Finish this past weekend and of course rain was in the forecast so I didn’t think I would be able to post until later this week. Surprisingly the sun was shining on Labor Day and we had the opportunity to go to a friend’s house which has acreage to gather acorns for my squirrels.  I brought along Shine so I could take photos of it amongst the trees and, of course, with Honest John, the twelve-foot road sign on the property.  They look good together don’t they?

Here is the Link to the Shine Pattern which is available to purchase from Sandra’s Etsy Shop.  This is not an affiliate link and just wanted you to know where you can purchase this fun pattern. I still am tempted to make just the Shine panel which would make a nice door quilt or a banner for a future classroom.

It’ll be a few more days before we leave for the Grandparent House and my Shine Quilt will be living there now in the darling Granddaughter’s bedroom.  I’ve already made her another Patchwork Blankie which I will share on my next Post along with other projects done during the rest of September.  It seems like Summer is leaving us too soon. Hope everyone stays healthy and happy.

July/August Blog Break

It’s been six weeks since my last post and I decided to give the new Blogger interface another go, despite reading other bloggers’ comments about problems they’re experiencing and also seeing how elongated photos are appearing on their blog. For the past few days I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to leave  Blogger and join Wordpress which comes at a cost I’m not sure would be worth it. This afternoon I had some luck with editing my 2020 Quilts and Project page and was comfortable with using the editing tools once I knew how to access them. So, here I go with posting what I’ve been sewing/finishing in between the three visits to the Grandparents’ House, mostly photos with brief descriptions.  And if my photos are experiencing the same problems with elongation, I might be posting photos of myself since my Twiggy Days have been long gone.

I’m participating in Country Threads 2020 Dirty Dozen QAL which started in July and I committed to finishing twelve UFOs. Coincidentally, the number pulled was for a Country Thread’s Pinterest Kit for a table runner purchased before the shop closed over five years ago. The runner is now a Finally Finish and sitting prettily on the dining room table at the GP house.

Sandra, mmm Quilts asked me if I would test her latest pattern “Shine” which I was happy to oblige since it was an opportunity for me to use my recently acquired Carrie Bloomston Wish fabrics. The flimsy was finished several weeks ago and the pattern is available from Sandra’s Etsy shop “SandraJaneQuilts”. Once my Shine quilt is a Finally Finished, I’ll write more about this quilt and my adventures of being a “pattern tester”.

Emily, The Darling Dogwood, and I decided our third QAL together would be Fat Quarter Shop’s Jelly Snowflake and both of us decided independently of each other that our quilt would be a little different. My modified version doesn’t look like a snowflake but there are snowmen in some of the prints so I named this quilt Frosty Flake, so apropos since it is my favorite cereal.

Two baby quilt tops were made for Jack’s Basket.

Granny Squares blocks were sewn for an QAL between Sistas and waiting for sashing and border.

My August block for the 2020 Color Challenge is sewn and the color this month was Pink for Flamingos.

Last of all are two feedsack fabric projects which I was able to work on while at the GP House. Surprisingly, the darling granddaughter showed no interest in my sewing machine, supplies, fabric-it’s a good thing we have a lot of good toys and videos to distract her, along with snacks.

I gave myself a little pep talk these during my blog hiatus to spend more time in my studio and try to commit to a number of hours each day to my “craft”. I should mention that I haven’t done a very good job in recording my activities in my planner and not tracking my fabric log but pretty sure it’s negative, maybe barely. Also it was a little tedious typing my post on my iPad, just don’t like my index finger doing all the talking and also the uncertainty with the new Blogger interface. I’m glad to be able to post before we leave for another visit to the GP house. Here’s to better Blogger Days and to figuring out how to insert links and labels.

P.S. before I published this post, I learned that I inadvertently typed this as a Page and not a Post and thankfully nothing was lost. My index finger could not handle the retyping.