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.