old quilter, new trick

 

i'm trying to get one thread-length a day stitched into "wiltshire rows." a few days ago, as i was nearing the outer edges of the quilt, i thought about how when machine quilting i occasionally catch the excess quilt back in the stitching, sewing it to the back of the quilt, but that it never happens when i handquilt.

sure enough, as i was working on the farthest row to the edge, i did just that! well, i thought, that's a first. i'm 13 years a quilter and i just managed to make a new mistake. how fun is that?

 

there's nothing i hate unpicking more than handquilting. fortunately for me, this happened on my second set of stitches for the row, so i didn't lose much. i hadnt' even pulled the needle through when i noticed what i'd done. all i had to do was fish out the knot at the end, snip it, pull through, retie, and get stitching again. now i'm right back at it.

progress on the handquitling - one third complete. 

there are 15 rows of chambray i will be quilting on both sides, and one thread length currently reaches approximately halfway across the width of the row. so that means i have 60 thread lengths to complete the quilting. so far, i've done 21 of those, putting me at just over one third done.

getting there one stitch, one thread at a time.

something else curious i've been musing on as i stitch is the way i still don't have my preferred stitch style figured out. i don't have a consistent stitch length or distance between the stitches. even when i'm using the same needle every time, these factors vary. i am definitely leaning toward small stitches, but it's the distance between that varies the most. and i honestly can't even tell which i like best. there is appeal in both larger and smaller distances between.

the above photo is pretty consistent on both sides of the small block.

this is a good example of not being the same or consistent.

i wonder if this will work out over time, or if it will always vary? this is my 12th handquilted piece, so it's not like i'm completely new to it. i definitely have learned to make smaller stitches than when i started. but they are still noticeably inconsistent, even across one quilt. it's a mystery to me!

goodness, these two close-ups are not showing my seam-matching skills at their best. that's okay. all of it is a-ok because i make quilts that are good enough, often pretty darn nice, and get loved a lot. living with all the imperfections and embracing them.

now, back to the needle and thread because i have some downtime!

little moments

i was scrolling my quilt photos from 2024 and found a lot of small quilting moments i didn't record, so i'm collecting them in a post of their own. it's the small quilting chores (and moments) that add up to big quilting finished, after all.

i want to celebrate, or at least recognize, all the parts that make up the whole.

the opening photo (above) is two projects intermingled on my sewing table: bits of liberty betsy and green crossweave i cut for "star hollow" blocks before i changed my mind about the project sitting on top of pieces for flying geese blocks to finish off "grellow garden geese." both of these projects need some rethinking before they move forward.

although i completed "beach brellies" in advance of my grandson's 2nd birthday, i was out of town for his actual birthday (not granna's choice!). i fully intended to have a small brithday party for him at my house, complete with a little cake and the presents i'd collected for him. however, it just didn't happen.

when his sister's first birthday arrived in december, i knew there was no more procrastinating the gifting. so i wrapped his quilt and birdies together to give to him when i brought her gifts to her.

he does use his quilt and the heather ross sea horses on the back are his favorite part.

this was a handquilting moment in the fall. a little laptop movie watching while i stitched away at "liberty holly hobbie." can you name the flick?

a gathering of most of my "stella grande" quilts - because i want to make a book of them. i did some photo books of a couple of them for my kids they belonged to, but i was very inspired by jolene klassen's self-published quilt book to make my own quilt book just for me.

jolene made her own book with blurb, a self-publishing site i have used to slurp my private family blog into a book before. it's beautiful! she just made what she wanted the way she wanted and offered it up for publishing-on-demand from the blurb site. i was smitten with the idea as a way to make a scrapbook of two major quilt projects of my own - my stella grandes and my liberty lap quilts. 

but i got stumped on a few technical issues. i don't know what program she used to compose her pages that aren't photos. if i ever get it figured out, i'll do the project and share how i did it/what i use.

side note about the above photo - the quilt in the photo was also made by jolene and i spied several of the fabrics in it through out the book in other quilts. so fun.

i don't just make quilts, they actually get used around here! this is fluffy on my "valoe" quilt.

d4 and i did eventually figure out what we wanted to do with her 8th birthday/sweet 16 quilt, and we involved the whole family. everyone stitched together at least one block for her quilt, adding the family to the quilt's story. i love this so much.

she says she doesn't like sewing, but you could fool me half the time.

did i mention the time i made one of my cute betsy hearts backwards? so frustrating when i only had a few minutes to work on the project and wasted it with a series of mistakes. ah, well. somehow i still make quilts!.

snuggling under jolene's quilt, contemplating d4's quilt.

uh, hello, selfie with low-volume crossroads quilt.

i have no explanation.

 layout of my longterm scrap project, "bonnie lass" by jen kingwell (resized), to see how it's looking. have i even talked about this one at all on this blog? i'll go look. 

report - it got a very brief mention twice. i'll save the explanation for another post.

so there's the little lost moments of my quilt life in 2024, the forgotten photos.

2024 was a very big finish year for me. i had several quilts almost completed that i pushed over the finish line into "finished and in use' status. that was quite satisfying, for sure. but moments that add up to a finish are mostly where my quilt life exists.

2024 stats

finishes - 9

starts - 6

start to finish - 1 (kind of)

tops completed - 2

quilting completed - 1

handquilting - 3; 1 completed, 2 in progress

fall log cabin, a finish

 

closing out the year with a finish from earlier this month i just realized i never posted about. i completed the handquilting on fall log cabin just as fall was about to become winter. december is christmas season, but winter doesn't technically begin until december 21st, the winter solstice and d1's birthday. so while everyone else on the quilty internet was posting about their christmas makes, i was still in autumn, and it's where i'm ending the quilting year.

i really enjoyed the handquilting on these log cabin blocks, even though i managed to bungle nearly half of the blocks when making them, which made it harder to handquilt since they didn't all follow the pattern the way they should. 

usually with a log cabin block you start at the center "hearth" square and add pieces by rotating a quarter turn each time. it's simple enough, but i turned my blocks the wrong way more than once. from a distance, they all look just fine. it's only when you study them up close that you notice something is occasionally off. take the bottom right square in the above photo - you can see the hearth is not centered because i put the very last strip on the opposite side of where it should have been. but it's still my favorite block of the whole quilt because of the fabric pairings in it. maybe someone will get a laugh out of it someday if they notice what i did.

fortunately, i seem to have got the hang of making the block correctly as i'm currently working on a christmas liberty + crossweave log cabin quilt. fingers crossed i continue to get it right from here on out!

i really love this cozy, traditional quilt made in modern prints and fall colors. there are a few prints i absolutely dislike, but they worked color-wise, so i included them. i never learn, do i? i know that putting an ugly or unsatisfying print in with prints i do like won't make me like it anymore than i already don't, but i do it anyway. and it's ok; i am actually getting better at not being bugged by those poor fabric choices. this time i even managed to make one block almost entirely from the prints i like least in the quilt, which makes me laugh now. overall, still highly satisfied with the results.

being a fall quilt, i really wanted to shoot this one in a fall setting. lucky for me, in our desert home the fall colors don't really start until december. in fact, they weren't as far along as i hoped when we took these finish photos, but they were good enough. 

i had my eye on this local riparian retreat full of changing cottonwood trees as i was finishing up the quilt and looking for a location to shoot it. i've never stopped there before even though i've driven past it several times a week for a decade now. it was a great find and perfect quilt shoot location. the only problem may be i used up all the shot locations already in this one shoot.

fall is long gone now, but there will be another one soon enough with the new year.

i wish you all a happy and cozy new year!

christmas crossweave (and liberty) log cabins, a start

i am still loving log cabins. and liberty + crossweave. in fact, i started and nearly flimsied a christmas liberty + crossweave log cabin the second week of this december. man, it was a fun project while i had time for it. i had high hopes of getting it fully sandwhiched mid-december before my college kiddos arrived home for the holidays and maybe even completing it on new year's eve, making my tenth finish for the year. but . . . as i was completing the flimsy, i sewed two different 5', full-length seams incorrectly and spent my allotted completion time unpicking and resewing those seams. ugh.

so the flimsy never happened. i got lost in the holidays and having my entire fam together for the first time in 3 years, never once again touching the project. (but the youngest and i did have a nice handstitching session a few days ago and i did make progress on "wiltshire rows.")

i had a couple yards of this lovely deep forest green crossweave stashed away, which i always intended to use for a liberty + crossweave quilt. i think it's one of moda's older crossweaves from at least 5 years ago, from before they updated their crossweave collection. i have tried and tried to find more of it because i actually would like to use it in at least two other quilts, but i cannot locate it anywhere. the new moda crossweave greens aren't anywhere near this dark. so i've had to figure out how to economize it to stretch over the two quilts i already started with it.

originally, i was making these cute little 6" "star hollow" blocks found on jolene klassen's "blue elephant stitches" blog and in her "a year of quilts" book. but i found making them at this size a bit tedious and actually wasteful of my liberty fabrics. if i was using scraps, these would have been a good use of them. but cutting new yardage to make the little corners was wasting nearly as much of the fabric as i was actually using. they sure are cute, though!

this pattern at the small size i chose also wasn't showcasing the beautiful liberty prints much. 

after making a few stars, i also began making log cabin blocks with sets of four liberty prints in christmas colors or from christmas collections.

there are a range of pinks, maroons, reds, and various greens in the prints i pulled. these were my original picks, which i added to and then shuffled into five sets.

the log cabin blocks, made with a bright red solid center and 2.5" liberty strips came together really quickly and were turning out so cute. i abandoned the stars for now and just made these. with 2 reds and greens each set, i made 2 blocks and then inverted the order of the prints for another 2 blocks. there are 4 blocks per set, 5 sets. this makes 20 blocks.

i had no problems with making the blocks correctly as i chained pieced them in sets. i learned to make sure the most recent piece i had attached was on the bottom before i added the next piece to the right side, and this time had no problems keeping myself straight. 

i carefully worked out how to attach all the sashing and what cuts to make. but . . . i forgot to add the darn seam allowance to my sashing cuts . . . twice. ugh. so painful. i was already really tight on the sashing and i hope i haven't wasted it because of the mistakes. maybe it only means the seams aren't where i intended them to be, which won't be a big deal.

it's going to be a lovely little lap quilt for our december services in years to come. many of my girls have already commented how much they like it. and i'm really looking forward to the handquilting to come. next year, of course!

as for the stars, i have an idea.

and one more liberty christmas lap quilt in mind, too.

good thing christmas comes every year!

fall trails, a finish

 

when i was making my fall log cabin quilt, i started thinking about how nice some of the fabrics would be paired with a lot of low-volume fabrics. there were many leftover scraps from the 2.5" strips i was cutting for the log cabin blocks, so i decided i'd make a fall version of a scrappy string quilt i'd seen from @catelowetextiles on instagram. 

many quilters classify scraps 2.5" or narrower and about 9" or longer as "strings" when sorting their scraps. you can make things like string stars, string blocks, or spiderweb quilts with string scraps. i like the format cate used. she sewed strings of differing widths but similar lengths into rows, trimmed them, and stacked those rows vertically to create her top. there is a lot of room for improv here and just doing what you like.

i used some strips as narrow as 1" cut, which finish at 1/2". i love my skinniest little bits in this quilt. it was a great way to add a small punch of color that didn't overpower the general soft vibe of the quilt.

this is a gentle, subtle quilt. the overall pattern isn't particularly exciting. it's the kind best enjoyed up close, the one you study for the little bits tucked into it that surprise or delight you, like the marshmallows on a roasting stick up there in the righthand corner.

the quilting of this piece is my least favorite aspect. it was an experiment on my part, one that taught me more by what didn't work than anything else. 

i was batch quilting several quilts at once and was tired of doing modern loops. i thought of this pencil doodle i would do in my notes at school all the time that i thought would make a pretty quilting pattern. executing it didn't work out as anticipated. this quilt was just a fun side project to use scraps, so i wasn't worried about making some mistakes and felt free to experiment. 

it hasn't crinkled nearly as much as i expected, meaning my quilting isn't hiding as much as i'd have liked. i didn't put the rows close enough together; denser would have been better. i should have marked a center line for the rows to follow because the seams aren't continuous from one section of the quilt to the next, meaning i lost my line several times when i moved from one string row to the next. that's less obvious than the design issues.

i was lazy and could have done better. but it's okay. i'm not too fussed about it. better luck (and planning and execution) next time.

the binding is lovely.

i've used this monotone floral from amy sinabaldi's playground fabrics line for art gallery fabrics in several quilts. it's a good warm-toned neutral that plays well in many places. very nice binding that adds a feminine touch to the quilt.

the backing is maybe my favorite part of the quilt, actually. i love the pairing of a bonnie christine for art gallery fabrics painterly floral with the snow white print from heather ross's far, far, away 3 collection for windham. i was able to incorporate both selvages pretty successfully.

i had to order large pieces of both fabrics to make the backing. when using scraps of them on the front, i realized they'd make the perfect pair for the back. i had a fat quarter of the snow white print that i thought was cute, but because of the large spacing and figures i wasn't sure where it would be very useful on a quilt. the answer is it makes a great backing. that's the only way to showcase all the fun different parts that are so spread out on the print.

this was a low-stakes, relaxed make for me. it was never going to be the favorite quilt in the house, which is just fine. it's cute and comfy, which is all it needs to be. i'm quite content.

WIP wednesday & the rest

 

i got some new liberty + chambray work started in april, but that was the end of my quilting season for a while. once travel season starts, about the only kind of quilting i get done is maybe some epp hadwork. but usually even that is too much for me to work in because of the pace of our travels.

so what have i been up to since april?

i'll give a short report on my non-quilting summer and then show what i've been working on since i picked up some quilt work again a few weeks ago. feel free to skip to the quilt photos at the end if you're not interested in my travel bit.

d3 is off to college in the fall, so my husband and i took her on her senior trip in may. we were mostly in the u.k. i didn't see any quilt or fabric shops, but this bakery floor in wales had strong quilt vibes. isn't it a fantastic pattern? we were home for less than two weeks before taking off again. just long enough to get the laundry done and repacked, it felt like. then i spent time travelling with s1 for my nephew's wedding and we went to a family reunion. home for a week and then off again. 

we are used to seeing our grandkids every day as they've lived next door to us with my m-i-l every since the older one was born. i miss them when we travel! my daughter keeps us supplied with photos and we make facetime calls when possible. this photo of fluffy (my nickname for her) made me extra happy because she's wrapped in one of granna's quilts.

at the end of june we embarked on our big family trip. we stopped in to see my husband's grandmother at the beginning before heading overseas. i found "groovy summer love letters" on the couch in the den, where it has been happily at home since 2019, which made me so happy. i got a nap or two under it while we were there.

then we moved on to tokyo for a week to visit d2, who is attending language school there. we saw many wonderful things in a short amount of time and had great family time together. some of the kids hadn't seen each other in 2.5 years, so it was extra nice to have them together again.

 nothing was really fabric or quilting related, except this fabric shop i spotted as we were walking around town. it looked fun and i was itching to explore, but we didn't have time to stop.

next we were on to australia! we spent 3 weeks moving all over that glorious country. ever since my husband said we'd be going to australia, i had high hopes of stopping in one of the famous quilt shops i admire there. unfortunately, we were never close to them and our trip was so tightly packed there wasn't time anyway. on the very last day of the trip, while we were in melbourne, i did have the option of taking off by myself to see either amitie textiles (jen kingwell's shop) or treehouse textiles (home of the crossroads quilt!), but either one was going to be quite difficult for me to make happen. i opted to stay with the family instead and thoroughly enjoyed my time at the stunning healesville animal sanctuary. so in the end, i didn't see any of the fabulous quilt places i have been dreaming about seeing. maybe someday when i'm not on a jam-packed family vacation i can make that happen. for now, i'm treasuring the wonderful things we did see and experience.

i did see plenty there to inspire me, like the bathing boxes in melbourne. they were so colorful and there were lots of great patterns there that would make lovely quilts.

i have a few online quilting friends in australia, such as karen of pieces of contentment. i dearly wanted to meet up with her, but was sadly not travelling close enough. however, i made new friends with a lot of the animals there instead! australia is home to so much unique wildlife. i preferred all the cute and cuddly-looking marsupials to the crocs, which we did also see.

one sad quilting related item of note from australia - their domestic flight standards are quite different from the rest of the world. i was caught off guard when taking a flight within the country from sydney to perth and lost my beloved travel gingher snips. i'm still quite sad about this. for a while i was mad, now i'm just sad. i had my travel epp kit tucked in a side pocket of my carry-on backpack, where it always is. i don't even think about it being there because it's never, ever been a problem as i've travelled the world. like, literally the world. it's been through airport security all over the u.s. and europe, central and south america, and japan. nobody else was threatened by the tiny little scissors, but australia was. and they took them from me.

but that's over and done now. i'm done travelling, but since i've been home i've been hard at work back at house design for our major remodel/build and had an unusual amount of family and extended family matters to attend to. i wasn't even thinking about quilting much until a few weeks ago when i suddenly couldn't stand it another minute. i actually wanted to start a christmas quilt and walked into the dusty sewing room to do so, but saw my fall quilts in progress and decided to finish them instead. 

i got the fmq completed on "fall paint lake." it just needs trimming and binding.

i've got "witlshire rows" handquilting underway again.

i completed the binding on this fall strip quilt. it needs a finished photo shoot, but it's washed, crinkled, and in use.

i dug out these flying geese for this other fall quilt, "grellow garden geese," but couldn't make heads or tails of what still needs to be done or even what i had done. there are two different size geese here and i didn't leave myself notes about my plans. this'll have to wait until i have time to think about quilts again. right now i just want mindless handwork sort of projects to do.

which is why i've resumed handquilting on this fall log cabin quilt. it has its machine quilting in the sashing completed and is bound. so it's actually in use in the house. but i never completed the handquilting in the blocks like i wanted to. so i've started again. in some ways it is already a finish, but i haven't officially called it done just yet.

originally, i was echo-quilting the seams of the blocks, inside and out (below), but i've decided to quilt down the center of each strip instead (above). it's more visible this way. it means i have to mark the quilt, but i like the look of it better.

i did the two center blocks on both sides of the seams already (above), but you really can't see it. if i'm going to the trouble of all this handquilting, i want it visible. so i'm doing the rest of the blocks in the middle of the strips and will probably redo these two at some point.

that's my progress report on what i'm currently dabbling in and what i've done since the last quilting season ended. i have no idea what else i'll fit in before the end of the year, but it's nice to be doing even just a little bit of quilting again.