Halloween quilt finish

I started this quilt Sept 2023 right after the baby quilt for my cousin, trying to keep the momentum going from having actually made something. I didn't get it done by Halloween but did finish the top by mid December. After that, of course, it hung around in the closet like the rest of the quilt tops. I saw something similar floating around on Pinterest, thought I had a good idea of how it was done, and decided I could try it out. I had a layer cake of gray fabrics and a long-collected stash of Halloween prints. The inspiration quilt certainly had blocks larger than layer cake size, but the convenience of having the precuts in my stash outweighed any inclination to try to get it exactly the same.

I sprinkled some khaki corduroy into the gray solid mix for some fun texture in the x blocks, and picked out my most moody prints to feature in the alternating blocks. For a Halloween quilt, it's quite subdued! In contrast, the back is bright and wild. I was laying things out on the floor just continuing to add scraps and shapes together (in columns, can you tell?) until it was about the right size. 

To brighten things up a bit on front, I added a bright orange damask print binding. It's kind of "gothic mansion" in flavor and frames the whole thing very nicely. I hand stitched the binding down instead of my usual machined zigzag. 

I am very pleased to have the first of my stack of sandwiched quilts completed, and even in time for this year's spooky season.

gettin’ one done

I started this quilt late last September and worked on it through fall. The top has been done since mid-December and having been a part of the recent quilt sandwich extravaganza, it was ready to be quilted. It will feel nice if I can get this one done before this year's spooky season, so I took this one out first. 

I had some bright orange thread in my stash and decided to take the simple route and just do diagonal lines through each of the blocks. I debated whether to skip going through the x blocks or not and I am glad I chose to do it because it makes an interesting secondary geometrical pattern where the print blocks and x blocks are framed in the crosshatch.

sassy tote for rehearsals

I have been going to a lot of rehearsals. In one symphony in particular I tend to want to take a bunch of things like my heavier instrument stand, a seat cushion (such hard chairs!!), and a stand light. It would be an easy solution to just grab a tote bag out of the stack I use for groceries, but why skip an opportunity to do something handmade? 

The pattern is called Tourist Tote and I discovered it from a YouTube video. It's a long one, but she nicely steps through the entire thing which is useful for a visual learner like me. I have been saving this hip and sassy girl fabric for a rainy day, so to speak, and while the scale vs bag size made it necessary to deliberately cut pieces to feature faces instead of feet, a larger project like this is a good use of a big print like this. I've also used it to back a quilt. 

This musical notation print was among a stack I brought home from my mom's stash this summer and isn't this the perfect use for it. I forget where I got the bright pink corduroy but my goodness it pops. All of the pieces are interfaced except the handle which I used quilt batting scraps instead. I wasn't sure the interfacing called for was thick enough for the type of bag I was envisioning, but it actually worked out just fine. I am glad I used a heavier fabric for the bottom, though. One could probably also do a quilted panel for any of these pieces and it would turn out similarly sturdy or better. 

Along the way I messed up a few measurements while cutting to make the girl fabric work so it is smaller by maybe an inch, no big deal. The musical notations as a lining is perfect - won't show dirt and topically appropriate for use. I initially was not sure about using the black and white on the outside for the handles given the lighter values in the main print, but with the electric pink corduroy as a complement that looks nice with both, I like the way it all works. If I were more adventurous, I could have added things like pockets, zippers, and other fasteners to hold things like a water bottle to organize the inside more. That didn't feel necessary or appealing to me. 

I do wish the handles were a little bit longer, so I may look for a way to extend them without deconstructing the whole thing. Maybe a piece of leather at the top, we'll see what I can find. It's an ideal size for my musical paraphernalia as well as a water bottle and snacks. Sassy and fit to purpose!     

motivation

Moving a couple of languishing quilt tops to the finished quilt column this year has felt pretty good. I still have more, and my new goal is to get all of them finished. I think it will feel like a clean slate and a great mental block removed! One of the quilting steps I like least is to make quilt sandwiches, so I decided to just have an irritating afternoon of smoothing, pinning, and obsessing over wrinkles so I could get the rest of the tops in the closet ready for quilting. 

I had purchased the backing to this gorgeous quilt as a 108, so thankfully there was no piecing required for this queen sized quilt. But no joke, it was a bear to put together. I ended up taping the batting to my (freshly cleaned) floor and then spreading the top out to line up those two layers, then transferring it to a cleared off (and also freshly cleaned) kitchen island to get it on the backing and pin it.

I am not totally confident it won't have some play in the back when all is said and done, but the only other solution I had was taping it all on the floor, pinning it there, and ruining my back and knees in the process. No thank you! This will do. 

Similar treatment was given to this smaller, though still quite large, solids quilt. I felt I finally got into a groove at this point, and stacking them on the couch looking so ready to go was really a thrill. 

At this point, given how large these two projects are, I ran into the bottom of my pin jar. Never have I ever! I remedied this by going out to get more, and I can't decide if I am embarrassed by having so many things on the go at once or pretty pleased with it. Regardless, I have TWO pin jars now. 

The next quilts I sandwiched were much smaller, just lap sized, and very quick to pin together. A piece of cake in fact! The pile grew in no time. I decided on the island because it was the largest spot I had for the big quilts, but I will definitely keep this in mind for any size. The counter height was so convenient, and really for a lap sized quilt or a wall hanging the surface is basically perfect. The backings hung off some and required some fiddling to get tight, but no worse than doing it on the card table upstairs. 

Looking at the pile of quilts ready to go is really quite something, and it was such a good idea to get multiple projects past this stage and into the "how do I quilt it" purgatory. Feeling motivated.

hot mess express

This summer, I took a train. This is nothing new, just incredibly infrequent. I took trains all over Europe when I lived in Amsterdam, and have done this particular Amtrak route from SF to Chicago once before, when I was in graduate school and plane tickets were just way too expensive for the holidays. This particular trip was with my dad (foot on the left!) who flew out to SF to keep me company on the multi-day trip back to visit family. Why hot mess express you ask? Just look! This is my lap of creativity and boredom busting. It's a beautiful mess.  

For anyone who has taken cross country trains before, in America at least, you'll realize that my attempt to start a new embroidery project was foolish at best and at times downright dangerous for fingertips. I had high hopes of making progress on this hip fox and floral piece, but the bumps and jiggles were really just too much. I did not get much further than what is in this picture. Of course a start is better than nothing, so progress was made, but away the needle went. 

My other companion on the trip was a long-standing knitting project. Just over two years ago, I started this wrap. It's a lovely Scottish lace piece from a folk shawl collection of patterns I scored myself at Powell's in Portland. I finished the pattern feet ago, but had quite a bit of the ball of yarn leftover despite having done my research to decide this would be the perfect amount of yarn. Best laid plans and all. When that happened I decided to just keep going in pattern and to not start anything new until I finished this - so-called monogamous knitting. That has actually meant that it's taken me a long time to make this AND that I haven't worked on anything new since. It was a banner day when I finally got to the end of the yarn and cast off that last stitch on the train. A bit anti-climatic really since I had pretty much run out of crafty distractions then, but exciting nonetheless. It seems quite long and I'm interested to see how big it gets after blocking! 

 The next time I have a train trip I'll remember to leave stabby projects at home and pack more yarn. 

summertime quilt finish

This was a photo I snapped out of the train window on my Amtrak trip to Chicago this summer. I remember the feeling of looking out at the prairie once we got to Iowa and having a strong sense of place from having grown up in Illinois. The mountains in California are great, but give me wide open spaces any day!

Interesting that I don't think I ever wrote about this particular quilt in progress! The photo on the left is from mid-July 2020. From what I can tell from my archaeological dig, I worked on this that week, and then I do recall not knowing if I wanted to add to it or not, so I hung it up in the closet "for later". Well. Later is now! I conferred with my mom and decided that it could indeed just be finished without any additions and be a nice sized lap or picnic quilt. I had it all sandwiched and pinned up before this trip to Chicago so I could throw it in my luggage, finish it there, and then leave it with mom who said she would enjoy it.  

I remember this being a jelly roll of very cute summer prints - umbrellas, rain boots, bicycles. I took some inspiration from a tutorial at Missouri Star to make the mixture of strip blocks and stars, using colors I had in my stash that serendipitously matched for the star backgrounds. I lucked out finding a fabric for the binding (years later) that coordinates pretty well. Happy to have this one done - it has for sure been one of the primary mental blocks in the closet whenever I've considered starting a new quilt, so the mental space is growing!

kodachrome finished

As predicted, it did not take very long to put the final touches on this awesome quilt. I bound it with the same print I used on the back which is this whimsical sewing notions print that I wish I could get more of. I don't even remember where I got it! 

I love everything about this quilt and I am really proud of it. This was perhaps my first project where I have tamed this many scraps into something cohesive, deliberately designed, and yet still delightfully scrappy and chaotic looking. It is also a sweet memory capsule of so many prints and projects of the past, as scrap quilts can be. It feels very appropriate for this quilt to be the one that built the bridge to my way back to quilting and creativity. I feel it deserves a much longer discussion, but perhaps when one has lived with the process for so long, what else is there to say? It is done. It is wonderful. And it is loved.