Jiffy July

I thought the end of my freakishly fast July would be these two quilts but decided that I could do one more Finally Finish with my Flour Garden Table Runner.

All three of these were 2020 Flimsies and also happen to be the last of the quilts in which the color Citronickle makes an appearance. I also decided to switch calling this month Jiffy instead of Freakishly Fast because I like the alliteration of Jiffy July. Here are some deets of each of these Finally Finishes:

Kiwi and Mango Tango (KMT) Slinky

If the prints in this quilt look a little familiar, it’s because I made this from the leftover strips and squares from the Kiwi and Mango Tango Bundle Buster quilt made in 2019. 

The Kiwi and Mango Tango Bundle Buster Quilt was given to the darling Granddaughter’s parents and I always wanted to make a quilt for myself from the scraps.

Usually, only squares are used in “Slinky” quilts but since I had some strips leftover, I didn’t want to cut them into squares which would result in some waste. Plus, some of these strips were my favorite prints of Pam Goecke Dinnorf’s Figment Fabrics. I think the Charcoal Aged Muslin setting strips by Marcus Brothers accents these fabrics nicely.

I machine quilted with a combination of straight and wavey lines in an Essential Thread in Charcoal Gray on the top with a variegated Gray thread in the bottom which I thought would go well with the fun backing fabric. The binding is the same Charcoal Gray fabric used in the top which makes it look like I faced the quilt. KMT Slinky measures 55” x 75”.

Ernie a Go Go (previously named Urban Ernie)

I thought the name Ernie a GoGo fit better with the colorful VeloCity fabric line by Jessica Hogarth, P&B Textile since the focal prints has a few things with wheels that say “Go”. 

I can’t remember the idea behind this quilt which the rail blocks of various widths were paired with plain patches of the focal print and black and white rails which sort of remind me of prison stripes and jokingly thought of renaming this quilt Ernie Goes to Prison. Additional fabrics used in this quilt were from Art Gallery and Cotton+Steel.

My favorite way to machine quilt the “Ernie” Quilts is to combine straight lines with wavey lines and I used Charcoal Gray Essential Thread. The backing is the splatter print which I purchased a bolt of just for backing the modern quilts and it complements this top well. For some reason, I did not set aside any fabric for binding and spent some time hunting the stash to find a print which went with the other other fabrics. I chose a Jackie Shapiro black and white stripe. This quilt measures 56”x72”.

After Ernie a GoGo was a Finally Finish, I thought a photograph with Banana the Bike would be fun so I asked the Master Quilt Holder to take it down from the rafter in the garage. 

I thought I would include a collage of the Master Quilt Holder who thought I should take Banana for a spin but I rather use her as a quilt prop for just the right quilt. Banana has been gathering dust hanging in the garage for the past several years as you can see from the dusty Swifter that’s stuck in the Master Quilt Holder’s back pocket and laying on top of the back seat; sort of looks like a bunny tail, doesn’t it?

Flour Garden Table Runner

If I haven’t already plan for this quilt to be a table runner, it would make a nice bench seat cover, wouldn’t it? I just love the happy color combination of teals, grays, navy and Citronickle.

I mentioned in a previous post that I seem to like collecting the fabrics received in the Fat Quarter Shop’s Sew Sampler box but here is a rare instance when I was perusing through an old quilt magazine and I was inspired to make a log cabin table runner with Linzee McCray’s Flour Garden Honey Bun Mini Roll. I added additional prints from other fabric lines for more variety.

Simple diagonal quilting with Aurifil #2920 thread on top and smoke gray on the bottom went easy-Thank you Hera Marker. Binding was, no surprise, the Citronickle Kimberly Kight print. This table runner measures 24”x48”.

Just two more days left for the month of Jiffy July and I think five Finally Finishes makes it a pretty productive month. I’m going to spend the last days starting on some secret sewing and I’m going to be slab happy. I’m looking forward to an Awesome August which may not involve a lot of quilting since we will be traveling and Hubby with his band, The Fossil Tonez have several gigs planned.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, NTT

Citronickle Canyon

I’m having a good string of Finally Finishes since the beginning of June and my Citronickle Canyon Quilt is the tenth one in seven weeks. So far this year, it’s my twentieth Finally Finish and my sweet sixteen UFO-I guess almost weekly travels to the Grandparent House helps me to stay on task. The Citronickle Canyon was an UFO from last year and finished in March around the start of the lockdowns. I thought I share the idea behind this quilt and the influences of good quilt friend Wendy/Pieceful Thoughts.

If you read any of my past posts, you will remember that Citronickle is the name Wendy came up for the yellow green color which is a combination of Kona’s Pickle, a beloved color, and my liking to call any yellow green Citron. You can see in the quilt that Citronickle makes an appearance. The Canyon portion of the name is from Violet Craft’s Palm Canyon fabric line which Wendy and I both received a mini roll of 20 strips in a Fat Quarter Shop Sew Sampler Box. I can’t recall the conversation which transpired between us that prompted her to send me the remaining strips she had left after making a lovely bag with her roll of Palm Canyon. It wouldn’t surprise me if I had mentioned that I very rarely use any of the fabrics included in the Sew Sampler Boxes which I’ve been receiving these since the beginning of this wonderful program and, yes, I have a wonderful collection. In order to make this quilt I needed to buy some fat quarters and yardage of the focal print of Palm Canyon plus I added some Michelle d’Amore Contempo prints which I purchased during a Colorado vacation in 2018 along with (not shown) a Art Gallery print and a gray and white Pick up Sticks print which I purchased after seeing this in some of Wendy’s quilts.

The pattern is a variation of my Staggered Strips and Squares Quilt Pattern and the Big Cat Crossing Quilt  shows larger patches of a focal print and vertical rail blocks used in this quilt.

The Citronickle Quilt is made up of 8”x16” patches of the focal print, 8” rail blocks set vertically and various sizes of strips sets made of 2.5” strips and 4”x8” rectangles. One difference with the strips is that some of them were sewn with diagonal seams to complement some of the angular prints.

Here’s a close-up showing the focal print which shows the wind turbines with the rail blocks and strip sets and you can see the all of the fabrics I mentioned above. I like to mention I really love the focal print and it was hard for me to cut which is why these patches were 8” x 16”.

Upon my return home last week from the Grandparent House and with a few days in between before we left again, Citronickle Canyon was quilted with diagonal straight line quilting 1” apart and some spots a little wonky which I thought would work  since this quilt seem to have an angular look. I quilted it with a 50wt Silver Aurifil thread and the binding is the gray and white Pick up Stick print dutifully saved in the binding drawer. The quilt measures 56”x72”. I forgot to take a photo of the backing which you can see on the left side of the fabric photo above. I mentioned this print in my June Unexpectations Post as it was the backing used for the Zingy Zebra baby quilt.

Here’s another photo of the Citronickle Canyon hanging around the fence at the Grandparent House. It’s too bad there are no canyons around.

Last of all, I want to mention that I’ve finally switched to Follow.it after reading so many posts from other bloggers who recommended this as a way to advise followers when I publish a blog post. At first I was hesitant and stubborn about making the switch but I really like this site not only for announcing new posts from me but also for reading other posts from my blog buddies, the news and other points of interests. I’m still learning how to navigate this site but so far no problems and I can’t say enough about their customer service. It’s so nice to communicate with a person in real time and am so thankful they converted my subscriber list. It was so easy and I am amazed that I was able to do this. Thanks Suz, Janine, Nancy and Sandra for writing such great posts about this new service and helping the poster child for being technically challenged on Blogging to finally go with the flow.

Last night after returning from the Grandparent House and enjoying the start of a six-day hiatus from the darling granddaughter and before I started quilting another 2020 UFO, I thought I “treat” myself by playing with the Alison Glass fabrics I been accumulating/purchasing lately. I decided that I am going to make another Ernie Express Quilt but only using two fabrics instead of four fabrics in each block. This is the start of something fun and will be doing a “somewhat” tutorial on the making of these blocks. They do sew fast or as I am saying during the month of July “freakishly fast.”

If you’re looking for inspiration or need something to get your sewjo sewing, check out to see what Wendy is doing. You might see some Citronickle.

Linking up with:My Quilt Infatuation\NTT

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.