a thousand pokes

Last night I picked up this quilt again and got back to hand quilting. It's not going to finish itself! It has been draped across the end of this couch for the whole winter not because it was being used, but to remind me that I have to work on it. I had one row of blocks quilted and last night I finished another row and a half. 

Today my forearm hurts a bit presumably from the many many times I gripped and yanked on the needle. I stayed up waaaaay too late working on it, but the progress is fun to see! I have 9 rows to get done, so I'll need to pace myself while still keeping some momentum going. My goal is to be done with this in 2026!

summer wall hanging, finished

Last night was a big night - I finished this wall hanging. I really love the colors I managed to pull together for this one and how they work perfectly with the beautiful print I used for the backing. It's a little bit late for summer, I had hoped to have it done by August 1, but it will look great on the wall for the remainder of what may be a steamy September before my pumpkin wall hanging appears in October. 

I had the top completed around the holidays, I sandwiched it up this spring, and it sat around for a while while I decided how I wanted to quilt it. The challenge I have many times is that when I have a lot of negative space I don't know what to do that will look good. This particular time I also paused because of thread color choices. I really did not want to use white thread on the saturated color but I didn't want anything to show on the white. And I was even more reticent to stitch over that amazing appliqué corner! In the end a simple crosshatch seemed like the way to go to just get it done, and I do like the way it works with the geometry of the blocks. I used a light gray on the front and had a bright magenta bobbin wound up near the machine, so I went with that for the back.

  

This was a Natalie design from a Missouri Star Quilt Co "triple play" day tutorial video, my favorites to watch. The theme of the episode was the rail fence block. The whole design has so much movement despite the simplicity and very traditional blocks, and I had a great time playing with the prints and choosing the motifs to feature in the appliqué. That zen pair of scissors just does it for me. I have just a small precious scrap of that print left. I ended up using every last square inch of the floral print for the back as well as the remainder of my ochre trees for the binding. I had just inches to spare! The thing that tickled me in particular about that print is that I have two projects where this unique color was the perfect thing to augment a stack of prints that I had assembled. Who would think? 

I hung it up in its spot this morning and it's going to make me smile every time I walk by! It's gorgeous. 

a hand quilting adventure

Yesterday felt like the day to start hand quilting this quilt. Watching a recent video from Pin, Cut, Sew on YouTube got me over the activation barrier and back to thinking "how hard can it be to freehand Baptist fans, anyway?" She does make it look so easy. This may take a while, but I think it will be fun and that I will like the end result a lot more than I would have liked any kind of machine quilting, especially any that I would have been able to attempt on my machine given how large this thing is. 

Pretty tickled that I found a hand quilting thread color that so closely coordinates with the colors. I hesitated a bit thinking the bright blue would be distracting across all the purple sections, but that fear was misplaced. The thread is thin enough that it really doesn't 'pop' the same way pearl cotton would. I'm not doing tiny tiny stitches, but they are close enough together that the pleasant pucker of hand quilting shows up. I am also taking advantage of the structure of the blocks to help me gauge my arcs in a semi-regular manner. Each arc is the width of that HST in the bottom right corner of the churn dash block. Those blocks have geometry where it's easy to see the next arc, and for the other blocks I have fashioned a marking tool using a compass and a knitting needle. The knitting needle marks the fabric with grooves, more like a Hera marker would, and it fits nicely in the pencil holder fixture on the compass. For the wider arcs it's a bit of an imperfect science because the compass is actually too small to open wide enough from the "origin" corner, but I have figured out a work around and the tool does the job much nicer than my eyeballing would. 

So far I am happy with this decision and confident it will look good. Will see in a few weeks if I still feel the same way! It would be nice to have this done by the end of the year, but I won't hold myself to it. I am very pleased to have this stage started, though. 

half birthday eve finish

Last night I put the last hand stitch in the binding of the friendship braid quilt that's taken a very long time to come into being. Better pictures to come in not-evening light, but suffice to say that it's really gratifying to have this one checked off the to-do list. And just in time for my half birthday! 

omg it’s under the tree

Approximately one million nine hundred and seventy two stitches later, it’s done! Last time I left this, it was August and I had plenty of time until we put the trees up. Ha! The stack of hexies definitely hung around in my “to do” basket until at least early December. 

The issue I was having was this: I was feeling much too lazy to hand stitch them all together, but I didn’t think that zigzagging along all the seams would look very good, even if I used gray thread. Soooo. They sat. And sat. And sat some more. I think the fact that we actually had the trees up and last year’s (perfectly fine) tree skirt was under the little tree upstairs was what got me going. So the next many evenings and afternoons were spent whip stitching these all together. I finished one afternoon when Mom and I were in the studio and she snapped this picture.

As I went along, I had to refer to a photo of the whole thing put together because I decided to go with the completely mixed up version, and that’s much harder to remember what goes where. I used hand quilting thread and a quilting between to stitch and used a simple whip stitch, just as if I were doing English paper piecing. The cream thread is visible on the back, but not on the front and that’s where it matters most. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. To be honest, when I finished it (under the wire) I thought it looked too small and was pretty bummed. But it’s a perfect fit under our little tree that we put on the blanket chest. And it’s kitten approved! It took him a few days to want to sit on it though, I think all the prints kind of blew his mind. 

red white and blue no. 2

Getting back to my red, white, and blue fix for a minute... I worked quite a bit on this pillow last weekend. After finishing the first one, another was sure to quickly follow. I've got two of these big pillows, so I'd like two thematically similar covers.

This time I dove into some of the books I've got on the shelf in my studio. I looked at different pillow patterns and quilt blocks and ended up picking a block out of my Shape Workshop for Quilters book that worked out great with the jelly roll strips. I had to make just a few simple cuts, a few sewing lines, and I had blocks in no time. It was pretty satisfying.

I paired two blocks with two large squares of white to make a pillow sized (24 x 24) piece. The quilting was partly done by machine and partly hand stitched. I had intended to do it all on the machine but I had no red thread! I actually really like the way the hand stitching stands out so I'm chalking that up as a lucky break. The stitching lines are just to either side of the white squares in all directions. I like the way the resulting "plaid" on the white space echoes but does not match the strong geometry in the pieced blocks. 

The backing is from my random large cut of gray canvas fabric with a blue zipper and navy stitching. I used a couple strips of one of the navy prints to make a binding and attached it as I would normally do a quilt binding (in contrast to the last pillow). 

It was so hot again today, but I did pop outside to snap a few pictures and test these out on our new porch chairs. While I do love the pair together, I think they are too large for the chairs! I guess they will stick around inside on our living room couch like I originally planned. For now they're folded up and waiting for July. 

Mosaic Medallion, finished

I finally finished this quilt in mid July, a year-ish after starting it, but SO MUCH LIFE has happened in between that I'm getting to sit down and reflect on it just now. Remember this? 

My last update in February I had just started the hand quilting. It took some time and I seriously debated finishing up by machine midway through, but I finished it up in time to bind and photograph before heading up to Sacramento to have a fun weekend with the recipients. Phew! Made it in time for their one year anniversary at least!

For the binding I used up my navy polka dot print and added a few leftover strips of other fabrics that were in the quilt. I really like the look of a scrappy binding, especially when the quilts are all folded up. I used my usual method of sewing to the front and zig-zag stitching down in the back. 

For the back I just pieced together two long pieces of yardage of fabrics I used in the quilt top - one is a really colorful flower print and the other a bright purple batik. I was sure to also give them a few color catchers for the first few washes, because I'm not at all sure how the batiks I used will wash. 

This is by far the largest quilt I have made to date. It ended up being about 90 inches square and a bear to wrestle with! I do love how it turned out. The pattern was a free pattern from Art Gallery Fabrics called Soulful Windows, and all of the fabrics were just pulled from my stash. Sarah really loves purple, like me, and I think the green and navy are nice complements to the different hues of purple I had.

I hand quilted in different colors of pearl cotton: coral, navy, and a variegated turquoise. It gets lost from far away but I promise, close up the colors pop and look really nice. I just did rounds of straight stitching around the medallion sections to keep it simple since the whole thing is pretty busy looking as it is. 

That also brings some of the medallion pattern from the front onto the back, which is otherwise pretty simple looking. 

This originally was intended as a picnic quilt, like other wedding quilts I have made, but it turned out so big that it fits very nicely on a queen sized bed. I hope they enjoy it, however they choose to use it.