The Flying Geese Frenzy Quilt

This is my July and first Finally Finished for the 2021/22 Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge and I am off to a freakishly fast start. Once the blocks were laid out on the design board, The Flying Geese Frenzy was a quilt in less than 48 hours. But then on the other hand you can say it was six years in the makings.

The inspiration for the Flying Geese Frenzy quilt was the Fat Quarter Shop’s Fat Eighth Frenzy quilt made in 2015 with BasicGrey’s PBJ and Persimmon fabrics, some of which I purchased from Country Threads when the store was opened. This is one of my favorite collections which I made several quilts, one of them was my youngest son’s Wedding Quilt and scraps of it have appeared in other quilts like my Gypsy Wife and Smitten. These fabrics will be making another appearance in the Dirty Dozen Challenge since I have another UFO with these fabrics in the queue. 

After the Fat Eighth Frenzy quilt was finished, there were around fifty+ bonus HST (just under 8”) made from the parallelogram blocks. I like the challenge of making quilts with leftovers and with what I have in my stash. Last year, I decided I wanted to finally make a quilt with these HSTs and grouped them with yardage of the blue zig zag print and the prettiest blue floral print. I paired the HSTs which were the same and there were around 25 of them which matched. My thought was to make flying geese blocks and sashed them with 7” high cuts of the blue floral print and side bordered with a 7”width  of the zig zag print thus making a 70”x96” quilt, a super twin size. It’s a good thing it fell to the wayside because once I started planning to make this quilt on July 1st, I made a smaller version of 58”x78” by changing the size of the sashing and borders.

Before we left for the Grandparent House, the HSTs were laid out on the design board and upon my return this past Tuesday, they were sewn together. I realized after the flying geese were made and deciding that each block would be sashed individually instead of using one long strip, I was trying to determine the width of these blocks. I realized the flying geese were not what I considered an even size because I did not trim the HSTs to a consistent size of 7.5” square prior to sewing them together. Truth be told, since I use either my die cutter or triangle paper to make my HSTs, I never trim them. I should have trim these HSTs since they were cut offs when the parallelogram blocks when they were sewn together. Lesson learned, so I trimmed each flying geese blocks to 7.5” x 14.5” which resulted in some of these blocks having their points cut off once the top was assembled but otherwise the sewing went well.

You can see I alternated the sashing strip with either the floral or zig zag print because some of the flying geese blocks had either one of the prints in them. So in order to give good contrast and to avoid what I call globs, they were paired with either one of the prints and those that had the zig zag print were paired with the floral, and vice versus. The middle blocks had the floral sashing and the side blocks had the zig zag sashing since the border was now going to be the floral print. This is the reason why the quilt ended up being smaller since I only had an 80” length piece of this print and thought the zig zag border would be too busy. Also, I changed the size of the finished sashing strips from 7” to 3.5” high.

Sewing the flimsie went fast and it helped that the flying geese blocks were trimmed and that the sashing was pieced and not one long strip which I originally envisioned. I know I have a hard time lining up blocks when the sashing is one long strip which is the reason why I don’t make quilts without cornerstones. The sashing strips were cut 4” x 14.5” and the border strips were 7.5” wide.

Fast decisions were made for the quilting, vertical straight lines, 1” apart with #2610 Aurifil Light Blue Gray and the backing is a 2004 RJR stripe found in the newly organized backing vault. Another tip I learned and now going to follow is you can avoid quilting over safety pins by not quilting when it’s 3AM in the morning. Thankfully, my Juki Junebug survived and I did replace the needle right away.

When I sewed the binding with the zig zag print, I used a tip which Linda, Texas Quilt Gal just posted about who learned it from Janine, Quilts from the Liittle House and that is to use a folded post-it note to get nice, sharp corners by lining it up with the edge, sewing up to it and then angling off.

Here’s a somewhat close-up of the quilting, binding and backing. I’m especially pleased with how everything went together so nicely and freakishly fast. I wish this would happen more often.

I brought the Flying Geese Frenzy Quilt to the Grandparent House this weekend to take photos of it around the porch and fence. Unfortunately, the skies were overcast, which supposedly is great for quilt photos. The only Sunshine was provided by the Master Quilt Holder’s very sweet Assistant and yes, she was wearing her pajamas.

I couldn’t resist including more photos of the Flying Geese Frenzy Quilt since the Grandparent House is a wonderful place to take photos since I don’t have a fence nor railings at the other house. I even have a clothesline here but have yet to put it to use. I’ll be bringing this quilt back to the other house where once the other quilt from the Challenge is a finally finish, these two quilts will be part of the new Master Bedroom Ensemble. Yikes, I hope that quilt could be a fast finish since it will be king size and I’ll be quilting it myself via QAYG.

I’m glad my Challenge quilt for July is a Finally Finish because I’ll be spending some time preparing for some secret sewing which I will posting and providing “peeks” of my project shortly. The final reveal won’t be until mid-September. Is it me, or is this summer just flying by but not freakishly fast, right?

Linking up with:My Quilt Infatuation NTT

June Unexpectations

I like for my posts to have a theme to tie in my activities and I came up with “unexpectations” since I had a total of 8 Finally Finishes for June which was quite unexpected plus there were other things which I’ll mention during this post. Since traveling back and forth to the Grandparent House and becoming disorientated as to which house I’m waking up to, I’ve now really don’t know what day/date it is. Since returning home this past Sunday, I was always thinking one day ahead. I planned to post on the last day of June which happened to be yesterday not today which was unexpected. The definition of “unexpectation” is the absence of expectation/want of foresight which I think I’m using the word in the sense of quilts/project not on my radar being unexpectedly finished. As for wanting foresight, I’m pretty good at knowing what I have to do and also good at avoiding or doing what I shouldn’t be doing. 

Not all of my Finally Finishes were unexpected, two were expected which were my Follow Your Own Path Quilt and my Country Threads Dirty Dozen Challenge-June Quilt and posted about earlier this month. Two of the six other Finally Finishes, and unexpected, were already posted; Zingy Zinky and Road 15 which you can see in the Country Threads Dirty Dozen Challenge post. More Unexpectation followed just by merely coming upon these projects in the course of doing something else.

Scrappy Ernie was a flimsie made last year from some One Canoe Prints which Kathleen McMusing generously gave me some scrap after much “whining” from me. She won some fat quarters from a Bloggers Quilt Festival which we both participated.  Not that I was unhappy with the prize I received, but I was really hoping to win the One Canoe bundle and from time to time I would mention this to Kathleen over several years. Well, she finally sent me the scraps after she made what she wanted and most of the scraps received were 2.5” strips, perfect for an Ernie Quilt.  After I added some strip from Cotton+Steel, Zen Chic and Crazy Mom stash, I made a 40”x56” flimsie.

After coming upon it, I thought I would finally quilt it since I’ve met all of my commitments for June. I quilted it with straight and wavey lines with a Pale Apricot Essentail Thread which I just purchased and it blended nicely with both the top and backing which is a Thimbleberries print quietly sitting in the backing vault for several years. The mint/teal binding is a Crazy Mom print.

As much as I love this quilt, I really need to donate it to an organization of Kathleen’s choosing. Once I find out, I’ll wash it and send it to a new home which I hope will be loved.

Zingy Zebra is a baby quilt I started earlier in the year at the Grandparent House and was brought home to sit on my project cart. I decided to finally sew the strips together and quilt it because I happened upon it because it was with some yardage I needed for another flimsie. I decided this would be the easier of the two so it became a Finally Finished. Most of the prints were from a Emma+Milo bundle of five fat quarters. I needed six in order to make this quilt so I added the black and white alpha print.

I straight-line quilted it with a Smokey Gray Essential Thread. The backing is one of the prints used in the top and in keeping with the Zebra theme, a black and white stripe was used. This quilt measures 36” square and will be saved for a future baby shower present which the darling granddaughter will be needing for a gift for either a future cousin or for her Speech Therapist.

After our arrival home this past Sunday and having five days to spend in the studio, I sort of did some unexpected upheaval/reorganization in my quest to come up with my 2021/22 Country Threads Dirty Dozen Challenge. Before I came up with my project list, I decided to take a gander at some small wall hangings and Patchbox Quilts which were waiting to be quilted—most of them over 15 years which were laying on the top shelf in my backing vault. I found a flimsie made almost 20 years which I decided to Finally Finish, although I could have added this to the Challenge list but seeing that this would be good for the upcoming 4th of July holiday which should be no surprise that I totally forgot this was coming up next week. My Flag Parade wall hanging was made from Indygo Junction prints and the flimsie was made as a shop sample during my Quilt Shop Days which were in the ‘90s and early 2000s. I had wanted to embroider a word, either “ Love, Hope, Honor and Glory” on one of the four light fabric strips in the rail block but never got around to it so it laid unfinished. 

Since my new favorite way to finish a square quilt is to do quadrant quilting, I decided to do just that with Coats & Clark Golden Tan thread. Fortunately, the “I Pledge Allegiance” fabric for the backing and the blue star print was with the flimsie so no searching was thankfully not needed.

Here’s a closeup of the quilt so you can see the wonderful border print of the Flag Parade. I love vintage-like prints of children which I have a nice stash waiting to be used.  I didn’t have any notes of this quilt but I suspected it was an Indygo Junction print and this was confirmed when I saw it on the selvedge of the blue star print.

Well, after the Flag Parade Quilt was a Finally Finish this past Tuesday morning,  I thought of keeping my habit of duo finishes, so I decided to finish an Indygo Junction kit, Stitch ‘N Play Quilt waiting to be finished since maybe 2002.

The redwork blocks were finished and needed to be cut and sewn with the red sashing and bordered with the wonderful Playtime Fun print. I like to mention that this quilt was a Finally Finished by late evening—two Finally Finishes, especially UFOs for almost 20 years was both totally unexpected and feels real good.

I made a few minor changes, the binding is a black and white mini check instead of the red print which I thought it would give a nice vintage look and I sewed black buttons instead of tying with white thread. The backing involved a little bit of a search in my American Jane/Vintage Children stash and I found the red daisy print which I think is just perfect. (As previously mentioned in this post, I like vintage-like children prints which I keep together. While going through this bin, I also found my previously missing stash of Wizard of OZ fabric and much to my surprise there isn’t much left. The blue print, which was waiting to be reunited with the rest of the stash, was and maybe one day a mini or Patchbox quilt can be made. I’m going to mention the Wizard of OZ prints again later in this post.) I lightly quilted the Playtime Quilt with red thread on the sashing and around the blocks.  I didn’t want any quilting to distract from the very sweet border print,

After the two Indygo Junctions wall quilts were a Finally Finished, I focused on compiling my projects for the Challenge. I changed up my rules for participating this year: 1.) all projects needed to be in a block stage and not just quilts waiting to be quilted; and 2.) it has to be a project I like and want to finish and not be finished because of how long it’s been an UFO. This eliminated a 20 year old log cabin quilt made with just 9 different calico prints and I wasn’t loving it when I pulled it out. I am really looking forward to finishing these projects. #3 was the number drawn for July which is a quilt going to be made from Basic Grey PBJ scraps.

Without showing you pics, I finally unexpectedly reorganized my binding drawer and my backing vault. I decided the binding drawer needed to be reorganized, especially since I plan on quilting some of the Patchbox quilts and needed to know if the bindings were ever placed in the drawer. Most of them were found. Last October,  when my Wizard of  OZ quilt was a Finally Finish, I could not find my Wizard of OZ binding in the drawer nor the stash. I chose another pink mini check since I thought it would look better and assumed that what I chose originally was gold. After the binding drawer was reorganized, I found the missing binding fabric and it turned out to be the pink gingham print in the collection so that was the plan all along; I just forgot.

Thanks for reading this unexpected long post which took me awhile to write since it is now July 2nd. I started this post in the late afternoon and got sidetracked with a video game.  I mentioned before that I’m very good at doing what I shouldn’t be doing. Also, I like to mention that I have not yet decided how my posts are going to be emailed. I am thinking of compiling my own email list since I think I have a core group of less than twenty-five who read my posts and can do it this way, I think. I still will link up my posts on Linky parties and post on Instagram.

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy 4th. Now I need to clean the very unexpected mess in the studio I made before we head out to the Grandparent House.

Country Threads 2020/2021 Dirty Dozen Challenge-COMPLETED!

Since July of last year, I have been a participant of this Challenge and I am quite proud of myself for having completed my June UFO which is my Flights of Fancy Happy Lappy Quilt, another one of the tops finished in 2014.

The fabric used is a 2012 Michael Miller fabric line designed by Paula Prass and the pattern is what I call the Happy Lappy Quilt which is one of my favorite patterns for making a quilt with just six fat quarters.

 I was planning on quilting my usual horizontal straight line quilting but at the last moment was inspired to do big wavey crosshatch instead which sort of mimics the pink/green tile print along with horizontal and vertical straight line quilting along each rectangle. I’m not sure if I liked how puffy it made the quilt look but it is cuddly.  I would have expected to have looked this way had I used fleece for the batting but I used Warm and Bright.

I used a Baby Pink Essential threads for the quilting and the binding was the stripe print. I loved the fabric so much that I bought both colorways and yardage for backing which I don’t normally do unless it’s on sale. The quilt measures 40”x 54”, approximately.

It should be no surprise that this quilt was bequeathed to the darling Granddaughter who will be using this as her porch quilt at the Grandparents House. I am surprised though as to how much she likes this quilt and is very receptive when I cover her with it. I don’t mind her using it outside since I found a small tea-like stain on one of the prints, of course, it had to be on the light print and must have already been there when I purchased the fabric and didn’t notice it when I made the flimsie.

After the Flights of Fancy quilt was a Finally Finished and sort of unhappy then with the finish I thought I would end the Dirty Dozen Challenge by turning it into a Bakers Dozen Challenge by quilting my Road 15 flimsie which was made in 2017. I made this as an alternative to my Moda Chef Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilt in case they turned down this pattern, but happily it wasn’t so the Road 15 never got quilted. I thought it would be apropos for it to be the final quilt for the Challenge since I purchased the fabric from Country Threads in 2013. It’s a good thing I waited to quilt it because I knew my quadrant quilting would be perfect using Smoke Grey Essential thread. The binding was the skinny burgundy red stripe which has been happily sitting in the binding drawer.

Funny story here; after I finished binding the Road 15 quilt and had leftover, I thought I would finally quilt a block which good quilt friend Dee sent me several years ago and bind it and have a cute mini quilt ready for the Christmas holiday. Now Dee has previously sent me a cute black crow mini quilt before and I thought she wanted me to finish this block myself. Of course, while I was quilting the block, I remember that she had sent me the pattern for a Gift Box quilt and this block was my starter block. It’s a shame for some reason I didn’t keep this pattern with the block and separated it by putting it in with my Christmas fabrics and double shame since I had more of the Road 15 fabric in my stash. Big Dang and sew sorry Dee but this is going to look cute hanging up at the Grandparents House.

Here is a collage of the quilts finished for the Dirty Dozen Challenge along with some stats. The oldest UFO was twenty years, Pipertown, and the newest UFO was two years old, Modern Puzzle; the average UFO age was 7 years.  Ten out of the twelve, were just tops waiting to be quilted,  one had the blocks sewn and one really wasn’t a real UFO but a Country Threads kit waiting to be made. I do feel very good with all of these finishes since I quilted them myself with my new machine quilting confidence of straight and wavey line quilting. Projects planned for the next Challenge is still being thought about but I know there will be more projects in the block stage and not as many waiting to be quilted. I may have another 20 year old quilt which is a log cabin quilt I started in maybe 1997 for my sister-in-law and all I can say is Calico is going to make a comeback. If you check out Country Threads details on the 2021/2022 Challenge, it’s not limited to quilts and could include gardening and household projects. Cleaning out my closet has been on my mind for the past several years but I have to give it a big No for adding this to my Challenge list. Like I’ve always said or thought before, I rather be quilting.

Follow Your Own Path/Celebrating a Famous Canadian’s Birthday QAL

June is a busy birthday month in my house being that we celebrate birthdays for myself, my oldest son affectionately known as Demando in Blogland, Granddoggie Daisy and for the past five years a Famous Canadian also affectionately known as Sandra’s Father. While the birthdays celebrated for my family involves cake, I celebrate the Famous Canadian’s birthday by participating in the annual QAL hosted by Sandra, mmm quilts.  Since this is a milestone anniversary of celebrating a Famous Canadian’s Birthday I thought I create a collage of the quilts I made in observance of this fun and important QAL. And talk about having ants in her pants waiting for June 15th, the first day of the Linky Party, so I can post about my Follow Your Own Path quilt which was a Finally Finished  for more than a week.

Here is my quilt for this year’s Follow Your Own Path QAL, a theme that, a QAL rebel like myself, could be inspired to go off course. Surprisingly, I behaved myself by sewing somewhat on schedule and did not deviate much from the pattern which I will mention later in this post.

I love participating in Sandra’s QALs; her patterns are fun, quick and easy and I always seem to have just the right fabrics in my stash. I have to confess, though, that this year’s Follow Your Own Path (FYOP) QAL was a challenge to find the right fabrics in my stash. Part of the fun in participating in a QAL is to make the pattern your own and I was having problems because I kept seeing Sandra’s version of the one she made for Modern By The Yard Ezine. I knew that I would have problems finding eight fabrics in four colors with two shades and with the right patterns/scales in my stash.

After several days and hours of pulling out fabrics and coming up with numerous combinations, these are the fabrics I finally decided upon and was resigned to using.  To tell you the truth, I was not in love with this choice, partly because the colors were similar to Sandra’s quilt and I could foresee how this quilt would look. Part of the fun of participating in a QAL is making the quilt your own.

While putting away the piles of fabrics I had pulled in my quest to find the perfect fabric combinations, I passed my bins containing new fabric purchases.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this fabric neatly folded, tucked under some other fabrics, but enough for me to see that this was the fabric I wanted for my background. I thought I could exert QAL Rebel privilege by using the same black fabric which was going to be my background for the shadow arrows. Combined with using Basic Grey Grunge fabric of which I have a nice colorful collection in my stash, this would work and this combination definitely made my heart sing. Unfortunately I only had a 3/4 yard remnant of this background and I needed more. I purchased this remnant online and the selvedge didn’t show the maker or the name of the fabric line. Thanks to some sleuthing of past online purchases, I was able to determine that it was from Dear Stella and after typing a search for Dear Stella Graffiti fabric I had a name for this fabric line: Pour Some Sugar On Me which I think was inspired by a 1987 song by Def Leppard which may explain why this fabric line had a rock music theme. I was able to purchase yardage of this fabric, on sale, from Hancocks of Paducah.

So, Grunge and Graffiti makes my FYOP quilt and is fitting of my usual QAL Rebel-ness and the theme. On a side note, as for using the same black fabric for the shadows, not being a rebel, because Sandra in her   

April 4th post confirmed that you can use black fabric for all of the shadows which was a “YES or fist pumping moment for me. The only thing that concerned me was that I had to wait several weeks for the fabric delivery which postponed my “follow the schedule” mantra for this QAL. I should mention that I had intended to make the smaller version of FYOP but chose to make the throw size so I could showcase more of the cool fabrics.

Once the fabric was received, cutting the fabric was smooth sailing, thanks to some of the patches were die cut and being able to cut the larger patch sizes with my Stripology ruler. (I should mention there are no affiliate links in this post.)

Like all of Sandra’s previous QAL patterns, these arrow blocks were a snap to make despite having to pay close attention to the arrow orientation. Really these arrows could have been made at one time but someone was following her mantra. Leave it to Sandra, the Shadow Master, so named by Kathleen McMusing, to figure out a shadow can be created with just three patches of fabric. I see from posts on Instagram and on Blogland, there were a lot of participants who finished their quilts early, probably, I think, because the pattern was just that fun and quick to sew.

Once the flimsie was sewn, I decided to add a 2/-1/2” border with the background fabric so some of the shadow arrows would not be next to the binding which was going to be the same fabric as the shadow arrow. This is my only deviation from the pattern.

This black and white paint splatter print by Springs Creative was perfect for the backing and a nice alternative for wanting to preserve the remaining yardage of the background fabric. I found this fabric at Walmart and purchased a whole bolt of it since this print would work so well with some of the modern quilts waiting to be quilted. I found this bolt on the very top shelf which involved some climbing on my part since hubby was shopping elsewhere in the store. If you’ve seen the YouTube video of a huge Monitor Lizard inside a store climbing up a shelf, that’s what I looked like, but not as graceful.

One of the reason why the background fabric is important for me when I do a mmmquilt pattern is that I need it to hide or camouflage my lackluster quilting.  I had wanted to do quadrant quilting but I couldn’t line up the arrow points with the quilting lines so I did horizontal straight line quilting, 3/4” apart.  Inspired by the Follow Your Own Path theme, my quilting lines were not always straight, sometimes I couldn’t see the guide lines, especially on the background fabric and were in some places, downright wonky. I used an Essential Thread in gray for the machine quilting. FYOP measures 58”x64”.

Kathleen McMusing already posted her FYOP quilt last month and threw the gauntlet down as to finding a cool place to photograph your quilt. Knowing of some of the other participants in this QAL, like Diann who lives near a sculpture park and Wendysota (Wendy from Minnesota) who wouldn’t surprise me if she captured a Bear to hold up her quilt, I created a collage of where my FYOP quilt would look great thanks to some photo dropping via PicMonkey.

This one is my favorite taken when we were visiting South Carolina several years ago.

After hanging around all of these photos, my FYOP quilt deserves a rest on the porch steps at the Grandparent house. I’m not sure of this quilt’s final resting stop but I did offer it to Demando to hang in his bedroom since it would go well with the other graphic art he has hanging around but he declined. Surprisingly, he does not like the background. Demando did mentioned, though, that he would like a new quilt for his bed, the nerve.

Again, for the fifth year in a row, I would like to thank Sandra for designing this wonderful pattern and hosting, as usual, a fun QAL, “ton père strait fier”. Be sure to check out the Linky Party to see the other FYOP quilts and don’t be surprised if you see a Bear holding up Wendy’s quilt. As for suggesting future QALs like I’ve done in previous posts, I thought I mention that I would not have a problem with using my graffiti background fabric again. Also, still hoping for Bella to be one of the prizes.

Linking up with MMMquilts Celebrating a Famous Canadian’s Birthday Linky Party

Zingy Zinky is a Finally Finished

It’s a great way to start off a new month with a Finally Finish although I was hoping that my Zingy Zinky would have been finished yesterday for an end of the month finish but had a quilting snafu which I will mention later in this post.

Zingy Zinky was one of the flimsies finished last year and I wrote about it briefly in my Flimsy Frenzy February post which I had at that time named it Zingy Zebra. I decided to rename it Zingy Zinky since this is a version of the Slinky, Pinky and Blinky Bill Blankie quilts and I had to keep the “inky” as a reference to this series of quilts made up of rectangle strips and squares.

Like the previous quilts in the “inky” series, the strips and squares were cut 4-1/2” from mostly Art Gallery prints in shades of pinks, teals, golds/oranges, black&white and low volume prints.  There are almost forty different prints used in the squares. Instead of using one print for the setting strips, I alternated two prints, an Art Gallery multi-color stripe with a Cotton+Steel Netorious in black which is the reason why Zebra was in the original name for this quilt.

Zingy Zinky measures 56”x76”. The backing is an Alexander Henry print from 2011 which I bought last year from Hobby Lobby and been sitting in the backing vault to be paired with the right top— I think it’s perfect for Zingy Zinky, or should I say the ZZ Top. I used the black Netorious print for the binding.

As mentioned in the beginning of this post about my quilting mishap which I have now filed as “what not to do ever again for machine quilting” is never changed your presser foot setting in the middle of quilting unless you want big time puckering nor does 50 wt. Auril in black give quilting stitches enough definition—I should have used the 40 wt.  I had to rip out 15 rows of quilting just for the presser foot setting mishap and decided to keep using the black Aurifil thread because it would have involved ripping out another 25 rows.

You always have to include a photo of your quilt blowing in the wind.

One last photo before I end this post—Zingy Zinky hanging on the garage door since the Master Quilter was unavailable since he was busy planting his vegetable garden. I just love this pattern, it’s simple and a great way to use up scraps, charm packs or a favorite fabric collection.  I already have another one planned but will have to wait since I don’t want to start any new quilts until I finally finish a few more of the eleven flimsies left over from 2020. Plus, my quilt for the Follow Your Own Path QAL need to be ready for the June 15th Celebration of a Famous Canadian’s Birthday.  This month already seems to be going by fast.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, NTT and From Bolt to Beauty, Brag About Your Beauties