Harder than you think...

Remember the first time you went in to a quilt shop to "pull" a quilt?  I suspect most of us go in with one idea and come out with a completely different palette.

That is the case with this quilt top.  My-niece-the-athlete asked me to make her a batik quilt.  Seems easy enough to say yes to that.  But I had a few stipulations, knowing this young woman as I do.  SHE had to pick the fabrics.  SHE had to pick the pattern.  SHE had to lay out the blocks when they were done.  And, SHE will have to choose which quilting pattern SHE wants before this goes on the long arm during my next trip to Chicago. To say she is a woman with strong preferences would be a slight understatement (wouldn't it, doll, if you are reading this?).

Prior to starting the decision making process, she had been drawn to all the bright and geometric quilts I've made -- particularly those with white sashing and small blocks.  She spent hours and hours looking at jelly rolls in batiks, various color palettes and slowly began to narrow down her preferences.

That's so easy until you walk into a quilt store with about 200-300 bolts of batiks and everything flies out the window.  I had taken Cozy Modern Quilts by Kim Schaeffer since we obviously needed to know what the pattern was before we could go any farther. Her book has a lot of very geometric and striking designs and the minute my-niece-the-athlete saw this pattern, one decision was made.

Now the fabric.  That process took a little longer -- like hours longer.  She pulled bolts, we looked at bolts, we added, we took away, we closed our eyes, we opened our eyes, we added more, we took away more, we talked to other quilters in the store and ultimately -- SHE decided on the fabrics and the sashing.  And we were done.  At least with that part.

She did a fabulous job.  I went into the store thinking I was going to be working on a "knock-your-eyes-out" bright quilt.  I left the store with beautiful, soft, calming fabrics that have created a very different feel when they have all been put together.

There is a LOT of sewing in this quilt.  The 90 blocks each have 21 pieces in them (sashing finishes at 1") and then I sashed the left side and top on each block as I went.  I did not want to trust getting all those little 1" square sashing blocks out of alignment for my geometric girl!  It worked and the blocks pretty much lined up with minimal "scootching" required.

While I love this book and am about to start a new quilt from it out of my beautiful pink FQ bundle from my-niece-the-quilter -- I urge you to read it carefully and work out the pattern in your head.  I've fussed a bit before that the quilts are all reduced to minimal steps and without caution, you can over cut.  I actually was able to do a little bit of strip piecing on this quilt by thinking it through and speeding up the process just a tad.  In the end, this quilt is 7.5' x 7.5'.  It's not a small quilt and mis-cutting batiks would have made me very very very unhappy.    As it was, my waste has been minimal.

I hope you have someone in your life that loves your quilting and wants to share in it in some way!

Jan

It Takes a Village -- Part 2

It's that time again -- Amy has her fall edition of Blogger's Quilt Festival active for a week, starting today.  If ever you wanted to see an encyclopedia of quilt goodness, it's worth taking a stroll through all the submissions.

I am going to submit my "It Takes a Village" because of what it means to me.  I love this quilt.  I love the women it represents.  I love to quilt.  

Seriously -- take a minute and walk through the incredible quilts and stories over at Amy's Creative Side!

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I am a scrap hound.  I admit it.  I like it.  I profit from it!

I call this quilt "It Takes a Village" for a very special reason.  Only about 40% of this quilt is from my scraps.  The rest have come from my friends in the village where we lived outside Chicago.  It's all batiks and I haven't done much with batiks in the past few years.   A few of them, however, work mainly in batiks (to my advantage, I'd like to say) and aren't particularly fond of small scraps and using them up (to my advantage, I'd like to say!!!!!).

When we would get together to sew, it was always great fun to find a little baggie of snippets.  Some might be a bit too small to use but many could easily become 1.5" squares or greater.  And there was one particular trash basket at MacQuilts house that was always worth going through if I could get there before the cleaning lady.  My goodness, I've found some great scraps in there.  Tsk!  Tsk! 

Even more touching for me have been the times that a package would show up at my door after we moved to Kentucky and there would be baggies of cute little batik goodness in there.  Hence, the name of this quilt.

I did lots of "cutting" for it but not in the usual sense.  I pulled out all my 1.5" squares, some 1.5" strips,  trimmed up all the donated scraps, and started sewing!  This has been such fun.  Between the fabric and the randomness of it, it really was "grab and go" sewing.

The quilt is modeled after Tonya Ricucci's "Lego" quilt that I found on her site about a year ago.  There are a number of posts where she talks about her process and that led to a plethora of similar quilts being made and enjoyed by other quilters.

Basically, these are 10.5" blocks that are set 6 x 6 so the quilt finishes at 60" square.  As I started to lay it out, I wasn't thrilled with the fairly apparent demarcation where all the blocks were coming together vertically, so I changed the setting a bit.  The first row is six 10" blocks.  The second row starts with a half block followed by five 10" blocks and ends with another half block.  That breaks it up a bit.  You can certainly still see the blocks when you look but it's a bit less obvious. The third row is six 10" blocks and so on.

As I laid the blocks out, I actually looked for places where the "logs" were the same fabric end-to-end -- or at least similar.  This is the first time in my quilting life that I wanted same fabrics touching!  That helped break the lines a bit more.  As you can see in the red piece here in the corner, there are two blocks there but the same fabric is a bit of a fooler unless you look closely.

So -- I love this quilt.  It's really not mine.  I made it but the fabric was from special people who are now in Chicago, Iowa, and the Bluegrass area of Kentucky.  My intention (once I get it labeled and washed) is that it goes to them.  It can travel among MacQuilts, CookingMama, Mom22SmartChix, MyNeicetheQuilter, LogCabinQuilter, and ShirasGram.  They can keep it as long as they want (years!) and then pass it on to the next one.  I certainly don't need it -- I've had my joy in looking at the fabric, playing with them, remembering the person that shared them, and often recalling the project they were used in.  Aren't quilting friends the best?

I would absolutely make this quilt again.  It's a great way to use those 1.5" strips of all sizes and walk down memory lane.  I hope you're finding time to be creative and remember those you enjoy sharing your quilting with!  Jan

Bouncy - Bouncy - Bouncy

Well this has been a week of bouncing around like a rubber ball.  

I had a perfectly good plan of action -- try to re-purpose the florals that didn't work in the D9P, finish the challenge quilt top out of the fabric line you see above, clean up the quilt mess that has exploded in my quilt room.   A good plan.  And then this happened:

My-niece-the-quilter came to visit and brought more goodies than should be allowed.  The tote had strips and strips -- yards and yards of strips.  The bag had 1" cuts and some selvages (one addiction I don't have), and a few other scraps.

I love her good taste in fabric!  Modas.  Batiks.  Sock monkeys.  Kaffe.  The list goes on.....

Did I mention a jelly roll of batiks that are pre-cut to 10.5" and pinned together?  WHAT IS SHE THINKING?

My head has been bouncing like a rubber ball since all this came to live with me.  I had already cut the circles that you see above out of the balance of the challenge fabric (that was instead of finishing the challenge quilt which I decided needed 8 more blocks).  

But, I kept being distracted by the batiks.  I mean really distracted!  I have never had a jelly roll of batiks and these colors are incredible.  This is the perfect chance to try Wanda's (Exuberant Color) tutorial on separating lights, darks, mediums.    Wanda is a master (mistress?) on value and you will love reading her blog and learning from her if you're not already a follower.

This is my design wall after bouncing around.  A few circles from the challenge fabrics led me to think about my shirts and what a circle quilt from the plaids/stripes might look like so I made a block.  I had the templates out anyway, right?  The workmanship is not the best but I think I like it and believe I could get king sized quilt out of just sleeves -- never mind the backs and fronts.

I also made two practice string blocks from the 1" goodies -- I think this will make a great donation quilt for a child.  And these are very different fabrics from my normal stash. How can you work on these and not smile?  They are cut at 5.5" to finish at 5".  Aren't they the cutest?

And, because I had to go a funeral three hours away in the beautiful Appalachians, I decided to take a break on the way home and see if I could find a companion fabric (besides black or another solid) for my pink FQs that was my birthday gift from my-niece-the-quilter.  I love this -- it works with the light salmon on one end of the spectrum and the deep pink on the other.  

What a week!  I love the fabrics but I honestly don't understand gifting such a treasure trove.  This young woman buys good stuff -- and I've been telling her since before she was born that I was her favorite aunt.  I think she believes me, don't you?  And -- to add more joy and anticipation to the future quilting here at iquiltforfun -- my-niece-the-athlete has decided she wants a large queen out of batiks.  I can't wait to go shopping with her to see what she selects or what jelly rolls she decides on.  She's doing lots of research and will pick the fabric and pattern.  I get to the the cutting and sewing and quilting.  I love my girlies!

I hope you have had a wonderful week full of good quilting surprises and family that loves and appreciates you!  I certainly have.   

Jan

It Takes a Village

It's that time again -- Amy has her fall edition of Blogger's Quilt Festival active for a week, starting today.  If ever you wanted to see an encyclopedia of quilt goodness, it's worth taking a stroll through all the submissions.

I am going to submit my "It Takes a Village" because of what it means to me.  I love this quilt.  I love the women it represents.  I love to quilt.  

Seriously -- take a minute and walk through the incredible quilts and stories over at Amy's Creative Side!

***************************************************

I am a scrap hound.  I admit it.  I like it.  I profit from it!

I call this quilt "It Takes a Village" for a very special reason.  Only about 40% of this quilt is from my scraps.  The rest have come from my friends in the village where we lived outside Chicago.  It's all batiks and I haven't done much with batiks in the past few years.   A few of them, however, work mainly in batiks (to my advantage, I'd like to say) and aren't particularly fond of small scraps and using them up (to my advantage, I'd like to say!!!!!).

When we would get together to sew, it was always great fun to find a little baggie of snippets.  Some might be a bit too small to use but many could easily become 1.5" squares or greater.  And there was one particular trash basket at MacQuilts house that was always worth going through if I could get there before the cleaning lady.  My goodness, I've found some great scraps in there.  Tsk!  Tsk!

Even more touching for me have been the times that a package would show up at my door after we moved to Kentucky and there would be baggies of cute little batik goodness in there.  Hence, the name of this quilt.

I did lots of "cutting" for it but not in the usual sense.  I pulled out all my 1.5" squares, some 1.5" strips,  trimmed up all the donated scraps, and started sewing!  This has been such fun.  Between the fabric and the randomness of it, it really was "grab and go" sewing.

The quilt is modeled after Tonya Ricucci's "Lego" quilt that I found on her site about a year ago.  There are a number of posts where she talks about her process and that led to a plethora of similar quilts being made and enjoyed by other quilters.

Basically, these are 10.5" blocks that are set 6 x 6 so the quilt finishes at 60" square.  As I started to lay it out, I wasn't thrilled with the fairly apparent demarcation where all the blocks were coming together vertically, so I changed the setting a bit.  The first row is six 10" blocks.  The second row starts with a half block followed by five 10" blocks and ends with another half block.  That breaks it up a bit.  You can certainly still see the blocks when you look but it's a bit less obvious. The third row is six 10" blocks and so on.

As I laid the blocks out, I actually looked for places where the "logs" were the same fabric end-to-end -- or at least similar.  This is the first time in my quilting life that I wanted same fabrics touching!  That helped break the lines a bit more.  As you can see in the red piece here in the corner, there are two blocks there but the same fabric is a bit of a fooler unless you look closely.

So -- I love this quilt.  It's really not mine.  I made it but the fabric was from special people who are now in Chicago, Iowa, and the Bluegrass area of Kentucky.  My intention (once I get it labeled and washed) is that it goes to them.  It can travel among MacQuilts, CookingMama, Mom22SmartChix, MyNeicetheQuilter, LogCabinQuilter, and ShirasGram.  They can keep it as long as they want (years!) and then pass it on to the next one.  I certainly don't need it -- I've had my joy in looking at the fabric, playing with them, remembering the person that shared them, and often recalling the project they were used in.  Aren't quilting friends the best?

I would absolutely make this quilt again.  It's a great way to use those 1.5" strips of all sizes and walk down memory lane.  I hope you're finding time to be creative and remember those you enjoy sharing your quilting with!  Jan

Bring on the Aussie Open!

It's going to be a good week -- I'm sure of it.  In just minutes, the coverage of the Australian Open begins and one of the big advantages of the time difference is that there are matches to watch during the day.  I'm hoping for LOTS of coverage and am preparing a list of things to do when I want to watch a match vs just listen while I sew.

I have prepped my first "dotty" Lollypop and have the leaves sewn down.  Circles are glued and waiting for me -- we'll start tomorrow so I can be sure the glue is dry.

Once those are done, then I have my little stash of batik scraps.  My Chicago friends know I am a "scrap magnet" and if it's too small for them, it's likely not to small for me.  I'm cutting strips down to 1.5" or 1.5" squares.  I have a few batiks but don't work in them as much as they do - and I'm more than happy to take their scraps.  Aren't they yummy?  I can sit at my ironing board, press them, and cut them...all the while being able to listen (and watch) the matches.

This is my first major tennis event since we moved (the US Open was going on while we were in Hawaii) and I think being retired and watching tennis during the day is about as good as it gets. The women in our family are tennis fans -- and we all tend to like the same players and get aggravated by the attitudes of others. Since this is a two week event, I may have to prep another Lollypop (the fabrics are still in the floor after all!) or can always pull out my personal stash of scraps and start cutting them.  There will be plenty to do with sewing in between.

I hope you have something to look forward to this week -- and a project you love to work on!  Jan