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.

a few more rounds and rows

in april, when i last posted all my spring finishes, i was hard at work adding rounds to my liberty + chambray courthouse step quilts, which went quickly. because many of these prints are obscure ones i don't use often or haven't used yet at all, i tried to identify each print as i added it on. here, the outer pieces are "d'anjo" and "favorite flowers."

i'm using relative value to create a little contrast and distinction in the rows so they don't just blend together. this next row is darker prints (again, this is relative to what it's next to). none of the prints are as deeply-colored and high-volume as the3rd rows' "ros" and dark blue "wiltshire" prints are, but i'm working with what i've got.

these two prints are especially yummy: "mitsi" in green and "thorpe" in a deep primary palette. "thorpe" is one of those prints i either like or dislike based on the color scheme. this is a good one.

back to low-volume with a print i failed to identify (but so cute) and "felicite" in an aqua colorway.

the 9th row (? and "emma louise") is as far as i got before i had to shift gears and move back to working on "wiltshire rows." i was hoping to get it handquilted and/or bound before leaving on d3's senior trip so i could photograph it with her in wales, but that simply didn't happen. no big surprise there. it's ok. the extras are nice when we can make them happen, but not essential.

i did get "wiltshire rows" sandwiched and basted, and handquilting has commenced. i had a big piece of the pink and navy colorway i originally purchased to use on the back of "guys and dolls improv," but then changed my mind about. no worries as i found a place for that piece here. quilting is usually like that - if you don't use something where you originally intended, it will find a home somewhere else. 

aunt bet’s mother’s day, a finish

 

aunt bet's is an eclectic, sort of improv-looking pattern that i admired for a while before i took the plunge and made it. i was actually going to use a completely different stack of fabric for this pattern, which i may still do, but then this particular stack jumped out at me as wanting to be an aunt bet's.

i started this quilt on mother's day weekend during some lovely free time gifted to me by my husband, whish is why aunt bet's and mother's day are both in the name.

i think the appeal and genius of this pattern was the simplicity and the make-do look that comes from a composition of two traditional blocks (flying geese and log cabin) plus some improv patch areas that increase the size and would eat up any additional fabric the maker had laying around. i don't know why, but it had a sort of gee's bend look or the look of something put together out of necessity but still attempting to be artistic. i think it's key to have good contrast so the patterned sections don't get lost in the riot and jumble of fabrics. i studied jolene's version to understand why her's was so much more distinct than some others i'd seen.

the backing is two large pieces of fabric from the front and a strip of scraps to join them. the pink anagram print is actually from the front, but the large black gingham is meant to echo the small black gingham on the front, but in a scale more appropriate to a backing and large piece of fabric. i like them together.

for the binding, i wanted to use a white-on-black swiss dot, but i didn't have any on hand and wanted to work from stash only, so i chose this white-on-black little cirlce and dot print instead. it's close enough.

as i've been in to pairing my quilts with books lately, i have also picked one for aunt bet's: the little red hen, a classic from my childhood. a few weeks ago i was delighted to find this in board book form and bought it to read to my grandchildren. when i did read it to them, i immediately thought of the colors in the aunt bet's quilt and knew this would be the book for aunt bet's.

now here's a confession: i veered away from the original pattern and i think i should have left well enough alone. see, the original pattern doesn't have pinwheels in it, or even a second layer of flying geese on the bottom. the second layer of geese i still like and agree with as an addition. the pinwheels, i kept thinking about removing right up until i started the handbinding on the quilt. i was literally thinking, " is it too late to just cut them off? would that be too much work to detach them and use them somewhere else?" 

the pinwheels came about because i was making all those flying geese with the stitch-and-flip method, which i prefer, and i thought all the bonus hsts created by that method would be so cute as pinwheels. and they are in deed some very cute pinwheels. i just think they sort of messed up the calm vibe of the quilt. they add all this energy and movement to the ends that doesn't need to be there. but there they are and there they'll stay. 

this is why i need to make another aunt bet's and just let if be itself next time. maybe with the fabrics i was originally going to use for this quilt.

so there you have it - aunt bet's mother's day quilt. this will be my last finish for a bit as i've left off the binding of the fall strips quilt, the last one in this batch, until probably fall. i'm working on my liberty church quilts at the moment and need to circle back to the next set of quilts that are in the quilting stage so i can get them processed through to finishes. it's been fun and oh so satisfying to get this group of quilts finished in the last few weeks. time to get the rest moving along now. 

i have a few starts in mind, but, for once, my desire to finish some longterm wips is stronger than my desire to start new things. my philosophy is "the more quilts i start, the more quilts i'll finish," and that is true. but i also feel like moving the old starts to a finish, as well, that's the urge i'm having at the moment. could change, we'll see.

liberty courthouse steps, a start

i have "wiltshire rows" top complete, and i felt like getting the other liberty lap quilt i'm in need of going, too, so i can baste them together. if i'm going to get the batting roll out, i want to take care of that in one fell swoop.

so i started my liberty courthouse steps quilt.

and while i'm at it, i'm making two; one for tamsen, one for me.

i started with capel in a deep red colorway for the center. i guess i was thinking how log cabin blocks traditionally start with a red center to represent the hearth. i suppose a courthouse doesn't need a hearth, but it's not a bad way to start, so it doesn't really matter after all.

for contrast, i'm going to alternate between low-volume liberty prints and more colorful ones as i add steps. the next two liberty prints i added are theo and mirabelle.

i had a home ec moment where i sewed two chambray strips on at once, but i caught myself quickly and made the fix.

i had a little visitor come see what granna was doing in her magic room. hi, baby!

i do intend to make these quilts basically identical, but i had some scraps i wanted to use, so one of the quilts got sea blossoms and wiltshire for the color round, and the other got ros and wiltshire.

this morning i got another round of low-volume added: williams and clarisse, two prints i haven't used before.

this is going pretty quickly. i have all the chambray strips cut. the only thing taking much time is pulling and cutting the liberty. there will be 12 rounds of steps, so i'm already a quarter there.

low-volume crossroads, a finish

my low-volume version of the treehouse crossroads quilt is finished!

the top is composed of blocks made with colored low-volume pieces for the backgrounds, neutral low-volumes for the "roads", and kona color of the year 2017, flamingo pink, for the centers.

the backing is made of two large pieces: a soft grey riley blake dot and robert kaufman buffalo check in bright pink, which is quite close to the flamingo pink in the centers on the front.

binding is a grey stripe, a riley blake basic.

i was really excited about this idea when it first occurred to me i could make a crossroads quilt in low-volume fabrics. coming up with all the fabric combinations and making all the blocks was quite pleasurable. but when i started putting the top together, i thought perhaps i had been too broad in my definition of low-volume. some of the prints i picked definitely had light backgrounds and plenty of white in them, but the colors were brighter, bolder, or denser than other low-volume blocks i had made. in the end, i was feeling, "meh, it's okay. i tried. better luck next time."

however, as i worked under the quilt over the course of several binding sessions and snuggled under it in between, i began to feel differently. i thoroughly enjoy this light-hearted, light-colored quilt and think the various blocks work together great. there are so many prints i love and i'm happy they're all in there.

 this quilt was once again an exercise in the very difficult task of quilitng straight lines. golly, it's hard! any little deviation or variance feels so noticeable. washing the quilt and the resulting crinkle has helped hide the flaws somewhat, but not entirely. oh, well. i don't focus on them much and forget to look at them at all the more i use the quilt. perhaps using pink thread makes them more obvious, but i do like it.

my book pairing for this quilt - milly molly mandy, the sweetest childhood stories ever told. milly molly mandy's pink striped outfits perfectly echo the pink centers of these blocks.

these books have been around for ages, but i didn't discover them until my youngest child was little. we had many enjoyable afternoons reading these stories together. although i wish i'd had them to read to the older children, i do like that they are a special memory with her.

i'm glad this was a spring finish so i could photograph the quilt with the roses blooming in our yard; our new yard, that is. or rather, the yard at what will be our new house (when it's finally renovated). there's a lot more photo potential here than in our current backyard, which was a great backyard for raising kids in, but just isn't very photogenic.

next up, i want to make a companion log cabin quilt with the flamingo pink for the hearth centers on those, too.