Interference the Quilt is a Finally Finish

I'm having a pretty good year of making quilts with fabrics that I've been longingly wanting to use.  It helps that I put myself on a Fabric Fast and so far I am minus 58.5 yards from my minus 100 yard goal.  It was the Hand Maker fabric by Natalie Barnes which I paired with the most perfect pattern Interference turn to be used.

Interference by My Quilt Infatuation is the fourth My Quilt Infatuation pattern I've done. I just love patterns which are simple but look complicated and showcases the fabrics, especially large focus prints which is what Kelly's patterns are.  Also, it's nice that I can use my die-cutter for most of the cuts. If you check out her website, Kelly has free tutorials and her patterns are available thru bluprint (Craftsy). (This is not an affiliate link, I just like to share where I get my inspiration and resources.)

If you're wondering which patterns I've done, they are the Purse String Block (left, free tutorial),  Unruly (center two) and the Classic Meets Modern (right).

My Hand Maker fat quarter bundle was purchased first back in April, 2017 and when I saw the Interference pattern several months later, I knew the two together would be perfect. It's too bad that I have more projects than time and it took over two years to finally put it all together.  Once the patches were finally cut in May, the sewing was simple and fast, no matching seams. I just love putting together the combination of three different prints for each block.  There were 26 different prints in this group and I added another black and white print from another collection since I thought it needed another black print to offset the one lone black print in the Hand Maker collection.

The blocks were finishes the first week of June and were not sewn together until this past Tuesday. There were birthdays, celebrations and a QAL which "interfered" with the finish.

My normal hang-up in finishing a quilt because I can't decide on a backing did not happen this time. I had yardage of this multi-color print with the same colors as the top in my backing vault which I bought while on vacation several years ago.  The quilt was machine quilted with vertical wavy lines with a gray Connecting Threads variegated thread and was bound with the black and white print which was not part of the Hand Maker fabric line.  This quilt measures 55" x 66" which is a nice size for a lap quilt.

The Weather once again played Interference with photo taking.  It was cloudy when I hung this quilt up on my front porch with green Frog Tape. Sure enough, after taking photos and removing the tape from the siding, the Sun decided to make an appearance.  

Not to let the sunshine go to waste, I thought the quilt would look nice against the retaining wall in the back yard and fortunately the grass was not wet nor were there any mosquitos lurking around.  I just love the colors in this quilt which is perfect for this time of year, Supposedly Summer.

Normally, you think of interference as being a negative experience--either visually, physical or hearing.  Interference the Quilt is a positive experience, it looks lovely, sewed nicely and you just have to hum Interference like a celebratory chorus of  Hallelujah while machine quilting. And if that sounded like interference then it's because I'm a quilter and no Lady GaGa.

Linking up with:  My Quilt Infatuation, NTT

Beothuk Star QAL-Celebrating a Famous Canadian's Birthday

If there isn't already enough birthday and holiday celebrations this month at my house with my birthday on the 14th, Father's Day on the 16th, Demando's birthday on the 18th and Granddoggie Daisy's on the 20th (it's like cake every other day-yum!), I also have a famous Canadian's Birthday, aka, Sandra, mmmi Quilts' father,  to celebrate on the 15th.  And there's no better way than to do this is by finally finishing my Beothuk Star Quilt in time for the celebration/Linky Party.

Depending on how you look at this, I've either completed the Trifecta or the Quadalupe of QALs hosted by Sandra, mmm! Quilts; nevertheless I've done them all and finally finished all them on time.  What I love about participating in Sandra's QAL is that I always used fabric from my stash plus her patterns make great use of my die cutter.  Also adding to the mmm-merriment are the wonderful sponsors she lines up. There's always ample time to construct the quilt but I've found that once you start the quilt you just can't stop, just like a good snack.

When the Beothuk Star QAL started back on April 3rd, I initially chose the fabric on the left but decided the fabric on the right would be better because of the stronger contrast.  Both fabric choices are Carrie Bloomston fabric lines.  With the exception of the Postcard from Sweden QAL, I once again improvised my background fabric by adding another print since I didn't have enough of the one print.  You can see that I added the khaki tan newsprint to go with the white newsprint which I think helped define the stars nicely.  It wasn't until the top was sewn that I saw my colors well represented the theme of the Beothuk Star being the red was for the Beothuk or Red Indian Tribe, blue for their spirit, yellow for their strength/hope, tan for the land/Earth and newsprint for the words that always need to be said or read to keep their memory/history alive albeit how painful it may be.  You can read Sandra's backstory of the Beothuk Star here.

I've already confessed to Sandra that I did not construct my quilt according to her thorough instructions since I used my die-cutter. So 3"x6" finished flying geese were made in place of some of the 3" half triangles and my quilt was constructed row by row but you wouldn't know it if I haven't mentioned it.   You can see that I was rather the daredevil by basting the quilt with straight pins and only having maybe one inch of batting/backing on all four sides.  I survived the numerous pricks on the fingers and hated it when the pins snagged against my legs. But the quilting was done under two hours.

One of the reasons why I chose to use the newsprint, besides it being very interesting, is that I could do KISS (Keep It Simple Sunshine) quilting by just doing quilting in the ditch and some diagonal quilting.  The Newsprint fabric is one of my favorite and I was very stingy in not wanting to use it for the backing so I used a tone on tone tan print which I won't bore you with a photo.  Really, I just forgot to take a photo of the back.  The binding was the tan newsprint though I thought of using the yellow fabric but it would have detracted the center star.

When I finished the Beothuk Star quilt Wednesday night, I knew the next day was supposed to be cloudy and rainy so I was thinking my photos for this post were not going to be so great.  Imagine my surprise when the Sun woke me up this morning so I quickly changed and went downstairs to take photos outside.  Since this quilt only measures 42" square, I knew there was no way the Master Quilt Holder was going to be able to crouch down to hide himself behind the quilt.  Thankfully, this past weekend he bought a new power washer for his Father's Day Gift, (yes, we buy our own gifts to avoid disappointment) and I knew the siding outside the front door was just cleaned with his new toy.  Also, I was fortunate enough to have green Frog Tape which I bought after reading Laura's Slice of Pi post about using it to hang up quilts outside on brick or siding, you can read about it here.  So, the quilt was photographed on the siding and it looked so nice.  Even when the wind blew, the green tape still held the quilt up. You can see some of it where the red arrow is pointing.  I think this wall is going to be my new favorite place to hang up my quilts for photographing.

Not to worry, the Master Quilt Holder won't be replaced by this roll of green Frog Tape.  I still going to need him to keep the siding clean with his new favorite friend, the power washer.  We're going have to give it a name.  It's funny that the power washer is the same color as the green tape.

I'm looking forward to joining the other Beothuk Quilts on the birthday of a famous Canadian.  Sandra did a great job with this QAL and I'm looking forward to her next one.  I already put my vote in for her to do one with her Luminous Layers Quilt, you can see it here.  I can tell you right now I'm going to have to find some pretty interesting fabrics to make up for the beautiful quilting that I know I won't be able to do.

Linking up with mmmi Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation, NTT.

A Blessed Finally Finish: Women of the Bible Quilt

Even with the absence of a Project list for 2019 and deciding that I would have a take it easy year, I'm still surprisingly have been staying focused on finishing last year projects and making new quilts with the once new fabrics which have been waiting for the right projects.  I'm thinking that the ever present squirrels in my studio have a good quilting conscience who are prompting me to sew the right thing.  In March, after finishing one of the "haf-to-do" quilts on my mental plate, I thought some fun with something new was in order.  But then the mood for me to finally finish the Women of the Bible Quilt hit me, or maybe in this case was divine intervention, and I knew the time was right to sew it all together.

The Women of the Bible Quilt (or I renamed the Bible Quilt) was started at the beginning of 2016 with my good quilting friend Dee and we decided to join a QAL on Facebook hosted by Crafty Threads.  Each week, we received a free online pattern for either a 15" or 10" block which was inspired by one of the women in the Bible. There were forty blocks and the goal was to finish all of the blocks by mid October and to put the top together by the end of the year.  

I chose to make my quilt with bright fabrics since I had purchased a large stash of Crazy Mom's Good Neighbor fabric when it came out in 2015 and also had a fat quarter collection of Emily Herrick's Technicolor fabrics.  I also included some other fabrics from Riley Blake, Moda and Connecting Thread. Since the quilt was all about the Women of the Bible, I wanted to make sure the quilt had a feminine feel and was able to find some multi-color floral prints which tied in all of the other colors.

There were twelve 15" blocks and twenty-eight 10" blocks.  I started the QAL with good intentions but did not finish all of the blocks until the end of 2016. Once again, I did a QAL Escape Artist thing by modifying three of the last blocks just to get them done.  You can read about the finishing of the blocks then here and surprisingly some of my hesitation had to do with Gypsy Wife. An interesting note is that the Bible Quilt was started before my blog and there were name calling for some of these blocks between Dee and I.

I decided to set the blocks, sampler style, most likely inspired by my then recently finished Classic Meets Modern Quilt and laid out the blocks in four quadrants.  In order to do this, I had to sew an additional 10" block.

After adding the 8" borders and cornerstones which made a very large quilt, 85" x 95", my plan was to send this quilt to Nancy of Grace and Peace Quilting in Minnesota.  The top was finished the first week in March but I waited until last week to send it to her because I was waiting for the snow to end which in the Midwest did not stop until early May.  I thought it would be safe but then we had all those tornadoes and my fear of my quilt strewned across the highway from an overturned truck was still very real.  My prayers were answered when my quilt arrived safely both to and from.

Nancy did a wonderful job with the machine quilting, it's either Figure Eight or Wishbone using the perfect shade of pink thread which matched the pink stripe binding. (You can read Nancy's post about this quilt here).  The turnaround from sending and receiving the quilt was just eight days and once I received the quilt back this past Thursday, the binding was hand sewn by that evening.  I haven't hand sewn binding in quite awhile and I thought it was going to take at least eight hours but was surprised that it took less than four hours. The 108" wide backing is also from the Good Neighbor line and I'm glad I purchased it when I bought the other fabrics. 

I was thinking that I was going to have to rely on Nancy's photos of my quilt since she always takes nice photos of quilts hanging from her deck since I was worried that I wouldn't be able to take a full photo of  the quilt because of its size and would have been too much for the Master and Apprentice Quilt Holder to handle. But then I remember hanging the Slinky Quilt from the screen room gutters.  The Master Quilt Holder appreciated that he didn't have to hold up this quilt and listen to my being Quiltzilla and boy did those nine boot clips do the job.  I also had an epiphany while the Master Quilt Holder was standing on the step ladder hanging up the quilt and realized that I don't need a clothes line after all; good news for him since he's been resisting my request, aka whining, for the past few years.

After a little more than three years from the start of this quilt, the Bible Quilt is a wonderful, finally finish. It's seems like it took forever and am glad there's a little less guilt in the studio now. My original intention was to give it to my son and his wife but I've since changed my mind; it's going to be for my beloved and very quilt-spoiled granddaughter's bed when she visits. This amazing technicolor quilt is just perfect for a little girl.  BTW, before posting, I did an online search to see if anyone is offering a QAL or free Women of the Bible block patterns but could only find ones available for purchase.

It seems that more often than not I'm going to mention something about the weather, it's still crazy with lots of rain, warm and days of sunshine are few and far between.  Today, we finally switched our bedding to the Summer quilts and this is the latest we've ever did this.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation NTT and Meadow Mist Designs, Favorite Finish

Star Shine and Blues-A Finally Finished At Last

My Star Shine and Blues (SSaB) quilt was finally finished this past weekend. I seem to be in a phase during the month of May with working on quilts started while I was recovering from my knee injury last October.  I'm thinking or maybe feeling after I finished the Jolly Jinny Jungle Quilt last month, the other projects from this time, are wanting to be worked on also and maybe preventing me from starting any new projects.

SSaB was started last August when I was in a mood to make a quilt with the many Cotton + Steel blues, yellows and lights in my stash which were accumulating too long in my stash.  Once again the fabric side of my memory bank finally merged with the pattern side when I realized the Hold the Pickle block which Sue of Seven Oaks Street Quilt posted in February, 2018 would be fun.  Yep, the fabric and pattern side aren't in synch but in my defense, fabric buying is done with the hope of one day finding the perfect project to  sew with it.  And when I do find a project, I like the challenge of finding the fabric in my stash rather than in the store. But then, I'm at the age when I'm beginning to forget what I bought until I happen upon it or it's thrown at me by one of those rascally Squirrels in my studio.

Flutterby (left), Red Pepper Pickle Dish by Connie (right)

I'm partial to the Pickle Dish Blocks and I loved Sue's version of a variation of the Pickle Dish Block which was to remove the Drunkard Path unit.  Back in November 2016 when I was visiting Mary Etherington and Connie Tesene (Country Threads), Connie proposed that the three of us do a Pickle Dish QAL, 'ala Red Pepper Quilts, and showed us a sample block and gave us a full-size pattern. I wasn't excited about the curved piecing and would have been more receptive if I was able to die-cut the quarter circles.  I thought by making my Flutterby Quilt would be a good substitute and once again I demonstrated my skill of being a QAL Escape Artist.

Sue's Hold the Pickle was perfect for die-cutting.  After deciding on the quilt size (60" x 72), this meant I needed thirty blocks: 15 Hold the Pickle Blocks and 15 alternate blocks which was sort of a framed four patch blocks. After much planning and deciding on which colors to use and where  (when I make another Hold the Pickle quilt, it will be just these blocks. I don't remember why I chose to do it with an alternate block but laziness may have been a factor--hard to believe, right?) I spent some time pressing, die-cutting and making a big mess (I will spare you a photo of this), I was ready to sew.

After making two of each of the blocks in September so I could test the layout, SSaB was set aside for other projects until November when I needed something I could sew in my Upstairs Sewing Room. If there's one thing that I appreciated from my accident is it's really nice to have projects which are ready to sew.  I also was very glad that the 26 blocks remaining were finally sewn together, sew many patches.

It was early February when the blocks were laid out and the top was finished.  It seems like SSaB was something I worked in stages spanning several months apart.

SSaB languished for one of the usual reasons, choosing a backing from my stash, because I'm on a fabric diet this year, which came down between a gray vertical stripe or a nice quite right blue Dear Stella print.  I decided on the Dear Stella print because sometimes you can't have it right on both sides and the one thing this print had going was that it had owls, birds and other forest creatures some of which appear on the C + S prints.  The really big hang up, though, was quilting with entire diagonal lines which I've never done before and wasn't sure how to pin baste.  It wasn't so bad after all. Once I prepped my Juki 2010 for machine quilting, much to my surprise, when I started I saw that the tension wasn't right since the quilt was puckering big time.  I ended up ripping rows several different times. Thankfully, I finally was able to figure out my tension problem and Juki might need to go in for servicing. 

I machine quilted with diagonal straight lines on the blue and yellow squares and wavy lines in between with light gray Aurifil thread. I quilted 3" apart and was easy to do by using the 3" patches as a guide.

I'm glad I decided to bind SSaB with the dark navy print since  it was needed to offset the navy prints already used in the top.  

I'm sort of regretting my idea of using navy but my thinking back then was to included all of the blues, ranging from dark blues to light periwinkle blues bordering on being a gray lilac.  I used some of these blues before in my Blue Ernie Stash Dash Quilt and I thought it turned out well. The yellow fabrics with the navy fabrics seem to fight with each other as to which one is the more dominant color; I would have preferred the yellow so the Hold the Pickle blocks stood out more. Maybe I should have placed the alternate blocks differently like away from the center. At least I did get to use all of my C + S blues.

As mentioned earlier in my post, the other projects, which used 2-1/2" strips, I started during my recovery period are now tops and ready to be quilted. No indecisions on the backing nor the machine quilting, I just need to find the time.

Also, I finally shipped my Bible Quilt to Nancy, Grace & Piece Quilting for machine quilting.  The top has been finished since March and I've been waiting for the endless snow to finally stop and I'm thinking maybe it's safe now.  I had visions of my package being strewned along a snowy highway after being ejected from an overturned USPS truck on the way to Minnesota. But then again, we sure are having a lot of rain and tornadoes in the Midwest, so I'm saying prayers and crossing my fingers.

I'm hoping to be able to start a totally new project this week, no more 2018 UFOs or any green fabrics Good Quilting friend Carol just gifted me (center photo).  Seriously, I'm thinking of calling Jinny Beyer's Studio to see if they would barred Carol from buying any green fabrics but I'm pretty sure they won't.  I have two already die-cut projects (left and right) with never before used fabric and I just love having ready to sew projects.

On a side note, you know the saying that old men sit around talking about the weather, well I'm thinking quilters who blog might be prone to doing this also.I can't  believe how long it took me to write this post because I need to take some photos outside which usually this is the time of year for doing this. I was waiting for the rain and clouds to go away so the Sun can make an appearance, which it did here and there, but then I wasn't ready to run outside to take a photo because I was still in my pajamas.  Today, the Sun is shining for more than five minutes and it is so welcomed and thankfully I'm not in my pajamas.

Linking up with My Quilt Infatuation NTT

Jolly Jinny Jungle Quilt--A Finally Finish

It's almost the end of April and this is my first and maybe my only post for this month. April was not the month for time spent quilting but rather too much time spent on getting the taxes prepared and filed and having the pleasure of seeing my Granddaughter, Micah every weekend this month which was the first time this ever happened and I hope it won't be the last time.  There was only two finally finishes for April, this quilt, the Jolly Jinny Jungle (JJJ) quilt and another Chicago Cubs baby quilt which may be another post for another day.  I'm calling this a DrEAMi project even though the JJJ quilt was started almost a year ago last May. It was finally made possible when two quilting forces somehow collided: one being after many years of being gifted these wonderful fabrics (and feeling guilty) from my good quilting friend, Carol,  and the another, Sandra, who hosts the monthly DrEAMi linky party, and who I also refer to as the Master mmmEnabler, thought I could use some yardage of green batik fabrics she was selling for a friend who was destashing, which meant this quilt had to be made. Sandra now has a new title--mmmPetus--yep, she does make things happen.

Good quilting friend Carol and I have known each other for twenty years and we spent some wonderful years working together at a quilt shop and share some of the same tastes in fabrics.  Jinny Beyer fabrics was one of the first line of fabrics we both purchased and there was a time when my quilts always included one of her fabrics. Even though it has been years since Carol and I worked together, we still get together for lunch and even a class with Kaffe Fassett. When we travel, we always buy something for each other since our travels always include going to a quilt shop.  Carol visits her son and family in Virginia so she makes regular stops at Jinny Beyer's quilt shop and most of these fabrics shown above, some Jinny fabrics and some batiks or tone on tones, are from there.  Carol knows that I love green so most of the time my gift of fabric is green.  I've always kept my gifts from Carol in a separate bin in anticipation of one day making a quilt with them.  And if these green fabrics weren't enough, I've already accumulated a lot of green fabrics, in all shades, design, pattern, etc. and I used to always pick up some green when shopping but made myself stop because I have found that whenever I needed a "certain" green for a project, I never had it, so I figured I might as well wait until I needed that "certain" green.

This is a Jinny Beyer print which I had yardage of and I've included plain rectangles of it in the quilt since this ties in all of the different shades of green together.  This piece came with a kit for an ironing pad bag and much as I would have liked to have used it for its intended purpose I really needed to use it for the JJJ quilt.  Carol would understand and this isn't the first time I've raided a kit. I like to name my quilts and the only problem I had this time was choosing which one I came up with in the course of eleven months. Since starting this quilt, I've changed it several times; the first name that came into mind was Postcards from Carol, since at that time I was finishing up my Postcards from Sweden QAL quilt and then there was How Green Is My Quilt, since this is a very green quilt but I finally settled on Jolly Jinny Jungle.  The Jolly is for the Jolly Green Giant and all of the Ho, Ho, Ho, Green Quilt which my mind was saying/singing, Jinny because I just had to include her very cool name and Jungle just because I like alliteration in my quilt names and Tarzan wasn't going to work.

So to give a timeline as to the making of the JJJ quilt, after the backing was received was Sandra, I drew up a design of HRTs, since I like the look of HRTs and could die-cut them and rectangles on graph paper.  The design was helpful for me to determine the color combinations and how many HRTs to die cut and rectangles to rotary cut. The patches were sewn together from last May through June and then sat in the basket until November when the HRTs and rectangles were sewn together into 6" x 12"(f) blocks which may have gotten done because this was one of the projects I could sew while recuperating from last Fall's fractured knee.

After the blocks rested for another four months, I finally finished the top at the very end of March.  The quilt measures 54" x 72".  I ended up not following my design exactly and just letting the blocks decide where they wanted to go.

The machine quilting was organic, curvy waves approximately .75" apart and the thread was a bright Olive Green which is no longer available from Connecting Threads.  The binding is yardage from Gail Kessler's Dimple line and after looking through my four bins of green I was getting afraid of not having that "certain" green and glad I found something which went with the quilt.  I'm still not a big fan of scrappy binding as well as scrappy backing.

And this is the backing I pieced from the yardage purchased via Sandra.  I knew when I saw it that it would work with the other green fabrics.

In case, you noticed that there was too much fingers showing in the holding up of this quilt, it's because the Master Quilt Holder was busy barbequing and I wanted to take photos while the Sun was still out.  The Apprentice Quilt Holder, aka Demando, was asked to take the photos while I held up the quilt and it was not easy especially when the Apprentice is taking time doing selfies and photos of his sidekick, Duke.  I so appreciate the Master Quilt Holder now and understand his complaints that holding up quilts wasn't easy.  I also feel bad for the times I took my time taking photos because I wanted to drive my point of wanting a clothes line.  And if you're wondering why the Apprentice didn't hold up the quilt, as mentioned before, the Sun was still going strong at 6pm and if I had asked him to hold up the quilt, he would have complained until the Sun did go down, thus ruining the photo op. I don't think he's ever going to be a Master like his father so that's another reason for my needing a clothesline.

BTW: last year, Carol and I came to an agreement/understanding which may have been initiated by me not to buy each other any more "gifts" but leave it to her to already break it.  We're meeting for lunch soon and she mentioned that there was a little something from Jinny.  I hope it goes with the other fabrics I still have in my gift stash.

Sandra's newest QAL, Beothuk Stars, has just started and I'll need to do some catch-up when I return from my one-week visit with Micah who's doing a great job of grandparent sitting. I'm looking forward to making this quilt since I'm using Carrie Bloomston fabrics which I've been accumulating for awhile now--no Carol involvement this time, but yes for Sandra for being an mmmPetus.

Linking up with MMMiQuilts DrEAMi, My Quilt Infatuation NTT and Meadow Mist Designs, Favorite Finish