valoe cabin, a start

so, this is very not-seasonal and not anything i was planning to do at the moment. i am so motivated to get some wips completed and the starts i do have planned in the queue did not include this quilt at all. but i tried out an idea late one night and then my grandson keeps asking to sew with me and this turned out to be the easiest thing to sew with him. 

so . . . 

a few weeks ago i was browsing my saved ig posts (which is such a good way to see a lot of quilts i like at once and get inspired). i came across this old quilt from quilter jenna valoe. the color palette is classic jenna and this is one of the quilts that inspired my "valoe" stella grande quilt. i knew i had plenty of scraps from my "valoe" quilt leftover, so even though it was late at night, i snuck downstairs and whipped up a block, just for fun.

that was supposed to be as far as it went for now. the block and the scraps were supposed to be put away until maybe spring.

but then the little guy came over and asked to sew. i didn't have anything else out ready to sew with him. so i grabbed the scrap pile, cut a few pieces into 2.5" strips, and we made another block. this has happened on repeat several times now and i'm quickly accumulating blocks!

he likes to sew with me, but the discovery of my candy bowl of sewing sweets is, i think, the main motivator. granna is stingy with the sweets - we have to complete a whole block before he picks out one candy (it was candy corns until this week when those were gone and we switched to peanut m&m's). but he's really into it and works hard for that one little bite.

i've been letting him decide what order the colors go in, which was making for some similar-looking blocks. i've started guiding that a little by giving him a choice of two colors to pick from for the next one we sew. he always wants to hold the "key," the little screwdriver tool for changing my needle and foot. fortunately, that's on a ribbon, so it's easy to keep track of. it's the first thing he goes for when he gets inside the blue doors. then he sits in the chair i found for him and runs the buttons and foot pedal on demand. i let him choose the speed at which we sew and lately he is really into turtle speed. it makes me a little antsy because the turtle is soooo slooooow. but he's the boss! i'm impressed how patient he is while i cut and press between strips, although he has started fidgeting and pushing a button or two while my back is turned, haha. granna is strict about safety, so I jump right on him when I hear that button click behind my back. 

so not only have i started a new quilt, we're actually completing it rather quickly as these are big blocks and i don't need much more than a dozen for the quilt. i asked my grandson if he wants this to be for him and he says, no, he already has a quilt that i made for him. i asked if we should make it for his mom. no, she already has one, too. i guess we'll just have to wait and see where this one lands. maybe he'll change his mind once it's done.

season switch

christmas is right around the corner and i can hear the christmas quilt projects calling me. i've ordered some new christmas fabrics with some new quilt ideas in mind, but really, what i want to do most is get some of these wips knocked off the naughty list. let's look at what i have to work on.

first, the christmas liberty log cabin (pictured at top above) is in the handquilting phase. this is a top contender for being an actual finish this year.

since i found more of the background fabric, the "jungle" peppered cotton, this spring, i can now proceed with the liberty "star hollow" blocks, as well. i do think i want to upsize the blocks to better utilize and showcase the liberty prints, but i can now get to work making decisions and blocks.

the "bright forest" christmas tree quilt only needs a few more trees done before it's a top. i may have found a backing i like for it, too. we'll see when my christmas fabric orders arrive. this project is from my mostly-on-insta-not-really-blogging era, so there's nothing posted here about it beyond a mention in an end-of-year round up for 2022. it's made from amy smart's "patchwork forest" pattern. 

the companion quilt, "shelter in place," a "serendipitous pile" quilt and my quarantine commemorative quilt, is in the same state. it's not a christmas quilt, but it goes along with the forest quilt, so i could see working on it once the christmas ones are done. maybe not until january? recently, i've had some ideas of how to improve it, so i might be getting back to this, too.

i still have fabric from that pile left to work with and have thought a wonky star quilt might be a nice addition, rounding it out to a trio rather than companionship. but that's also down the road. let's keep focused on whittling down the wip list to a reasonable dozen or so projects.

my final "stella grande" quilt, "frosted forest star" has been a completed top for a couple of years. i just haven't landed on an acceptable backing for it. i want something wintery and simple, but color-matching through online shopping is quite difficult and nothing has appealed to me enough yet. i did buy yardage of a basic white-on-grey swiss dot fabric to possibly use, but haven't been enthused enough to actually do it. however, i might have found an acceptable match in a snowflake fabric that's on its way to me now. we'll see. if it's a good fit, this is my other top contender for a finish this year. 

i would really like to see some of these finished for the holidays, but being the holidays are starting, i'm going to keep time with family first and let the quilting fill in the gaps where it may.

a third down, plus

wensleydale 14

the fall colored liberty prints have been making their way into the wensleydale blocks since i've had them out for "bathsheba" and "farmer oak's flocks." these first two here have a variation of "betsy" in them, and the other two have some liberty also. still loving the mini project of one block a day, although it's not exactly been every day.

wensleydale 15

fifteen blocks done means i'm a third the way through this quilt top. i can start reusing fabrics i've already used but i still have so many pulled that i haven't used i'm not sure i'm going to do that. i guess i could always use the leftover cut pieces i currently have set aside for another quilt? there are a couple from jolene's book i could use to make some more fall quilts from the scraps if i don't choose to use them again in this one. i'll think on it. some of the fabrics i will for sure be reusing - the ginghams and checks i want to include in most blocks. did i say i was trying to use a floral in each block and a gingham/check in most if not all too? well, i am. as my ginghams are limited, i'll be using those on repeat.

wensleydale 17

wensleydale 18

this block has a few repeats because i have some miscut triangles from the other blocks that i'm trying to use up. i do like the colors in this one, but i didn't realize i'd used the same print in two different colors until i got to the outer rectangle and it was too late to go back. ah, well. i suppose it will get lost in the overall quilt and no one's going to fault me for it.

my foundation papers i ordered for jen kingwell's "trentham" quilt have arrived, and i've ordered the book. i'm unsure when the book will arrive because it still seems to be uncertain when it will be available in america. i'm in no hurry to start the next fpp quilt but i am anxious to see the book in person.

i may have ordered the foundation papers for "lamingtons with tea" as well. seems fpp has got a hold of me. but i will be doing one at a time on these.

grellow garden geese, a finish

"grellow garden geese," my second fall quilt finish is washed, stocked in the family quilt basket, and in use. i've been waiting for the fall colors to come in around here for a nice outdoor photo, which would show it to best advantage. but those colors are not here yet and i've settled for a basic bedroom photo set.

this quilt was a chance for me to practice flying geese and use some fabrics i wasn't so chuffed about. it's low-stakes, for sure. early on in my quilting, i bought a half yard set of these "origins" fabrics by basic grey for moda after seeing a quilt made from them that i liked well enough, but did not love. a decade later i decided to mix in some solids and coordinating fabrics to see if i could make something i liked. the verdict: meh. kind of. it's fine. but other people around here like it a lot. i think i just need to reconcile myself to the mellow color palette. it's not what i would normally choose to make but it does have it's pleasant aspects.

i split the fabric collection in two, separating the cool-toned fabrics from the warmer ones. this is the warmer collection. i used the multi-colored floral in the photo above as a guide for what other colors to add in the mix. it was feeling a little drab with just the yellows and grellows, so i added some of the brown tones from the floral for more warmth and contrast. i left out the aloe colors because they are in the other set. i hoped the yellows, grellows, and browns would do well together.

in the floral, the browns are small touches of accent color. in the quilt, they are of equal size to the other pieces and cast quite a different effect on the whole. i called the quilt "grellow garden geese" because, originally, the grellow was the strongest color. and i like the alliteration. but with the warm browns added in such quantities, its more like "spiced grellow garden geese" in the end. ah, well. i did lean heavily grellow on the back trying to redeem the name and it's sticking.

the quilting is wide-spaced, horizontal, straight-line quilting in a golden yellow color.

the binding is another fabric from my early quilting days, the popular and pretty "henna garden" from sandi henderson. i was liking the browns in the quilt when it came time to bind it and thought it would make a nice edge to the quilt. i think working on the quilt during the fall season heavily influenced this leaning towards the browns.

somewhere along the way in my making of all the geese, i made two different sizes. the smaller ones were 1/2" smaller than the others. i simplified things by putting the two sizes in separate rows. this resulted in rows that don't match across the seams, but it's not distracting at all. quilters just make do, right?

everyone else in the house seems to like this one and i'm satisfied with it. some of our makes we really love and some we just like. that's okay. i think i do like this quilt better than if i had used the whole collection together. it taught me more about what i like and don't, and it gave me a lot of practice making flying geese. that's not wasted.

upsizing

somebody is waiting for me to come party. 

actually, this is how i found my flimsy shoddily stored up off the floor, 25th birthday party balloon for s1 inexplicably partnered with it.

this looks inviting to me!

last saturday, i entered the blue doors with the intention of finishing off the "farmer oak's flocks" top and, if i was lucky, basting and echo quilting it before the day was out. there was only one row left to attach, which would be easy enough.

that was quickly done, but i found when it was all put together it was entirely too small. it looked like a little baby quilt at something like 42" x 48", which doesn't sound so small but looked it. i was disappointed. i knew all along after i miscut the cornerstone blocks and sashing in the beginning that the quilt wasn't going to be the "cuddle size" lap quilt i intended it to be, but seeing it all put together confirmed that it was, indeed, too small.

what to do?

another row and column of blocks would upsize the quilt satisfactorily. that would equate to 12 more blocks added. originally, i made the nine patches from pairings of fabrics, one set of pairings each. i liked the symmetry of that and was loathe to change up my plan. i get irrationally attached to ideas like this. but i didn't know another way around it if i was going to add that many blocks. 

i knew i hadn't used a couple of the fabrics in my fall stash, so i decided to start there, make some pairings, and then decide which other original blocks to make extras of. i took out my fall-colored liberty box, the one i used as my fabric pull for "bathsheba" to see what else was in there. i found i'd only left three unused, which surprised and confounded me. (well, i hadn't used the "sea blossom" print either, but i was sick to death of it and refused to put it in this quilt.)

so i made a desperate dig through my entire liberty shelf to see if anything else at all filed under a different category would work. 

to my great surprise and pleasure, i found another ten acceptably colored prints in the correct color palette. most of them were colorways of my favorite classic prints and one or two were hiding in recent orders i'd made that hadn't been properly put away yet. shame on me because they would have been really nice in "bathsheba," too. then again, i do rather like when companion quilts have mostly the same elements as each other, but some fabrics unique to each. 

either way, i now have this nice thick stack of leftover 2.5" strips that will probably make an entire other quilt when paired with a crossweave or woven. my brain is already working on a setting for them as my third fall liberty lap quilt. maybe some sort of scrappy trip around the world? at this point, it'll be filed away for next fall because the season is nearly over and i have one finish left in me before getting out the christmas fabrics.

i found a dark green "capel," a monotone gold "betsy," a deep green and a navy blue "betsy," each with gold and brown tones in them, a dusty purple and a steel gray "mitsi," an "ianthe," and two fall-toned "wiltshire" prints i hadn't included.

i mixed and matched them several times before being satisfied. then i got sewing.

the very last pairing was the green "betsy" with a "wiltshire," that i loved separately, but no so much together. however, it's okay in a quilt to have some less-attractive parts because the whole makes up the difference, so i was willing to put these together so that the other pairings looked their best.

but more than halfway through the block set, i recalled some of the mostly-blue ditsy prints i used in the original blocks and wondered if there wasn't another such fabric i'd overlooked. i looked through my red-white-and-blue liberty box and found a print with blues and browns in it that would work. sold!

i unpicked all the pieces i'd sewn, put the beautiful green "betsy" squares aside for another project, and worked the blue "empress" pieces into the nine patches with the dark "wiltshire" squares.

yes, it all took extra time, but i might as well get it right. i recently read an interesting post about "perfectionism vs. integrity" in sewing. this was one of those "integrity" moments for me and effort well expended.

here are the new pairings.

i'm quite happy with them. the bottom left block is a little brighter than the rest, but i believe it blends well with the rest of the blocks in the quilt overall.

i pushed through getting all the block sets made and the sashing and cornerstone pieces cut. that was my days work. i didn't have a basted quilt ready for handquilting at the end of the day, but i was well on my way to the project being in a state which well pleased me.

since the rest of the top is already put together, my plan was to add the new blocks along the perimeter. this goes against my normal "mix it up well" way of laying out quilt blocks, but i wasn't going to be unpicking all those delicate fabrics and resewing everything. i spent quite a while deciding on the layout of the new blocks before walking away from it for the evening.

the next morning, i was enjoying a morning cuppa on the stairs and looking over the pieces all still laid out on the floor when i decided to move just two blocks from the perimeter so i could mix things up just a little. it was a good compromise although it would require some nasty unpicking and some y-seam style repairs to put the new blocks in where i was taking the original ones out.

in the end, it'll be worth it. no one else was probably ever going to look at this quilt and say, 'hey, all these blocks along these two sides of the quilt are only on the outsides and were probably added on after the rest were put together. that's not good mixing! what a fabric sudoku fail." but it's going to please me that i did it.

the quilt is now properly sized and (mostly) well mixed/balanced in block layout.

at the end of the day, it's myself i have to please.

slow busy

 i've been busy with life stuff and busy with slow stitching.

life stuff: a nephew's wedding and extended family in town, a friend's 50th birthday, a seester's birthday, d5's birthday with a shopping day and a trip to disneyland to celebrate, d2 moved home from tokyo after two years of language school, a nephew home from church mission in korea, helping put up christmas lights at the temple, a mud run with all 5 of my girls. lots of fun and exhausting stuff.

slow stitching: i've been handbinding "grellow garden geese" and the liberty courthouse steps quilt.

blogging: not so much.

a little help

two-thirds the way there on this little fall nine patch, which i'm calling "farmer oak's flocks." since the companion quilt is "bathsheba," the single girl quilt, named after the heroine in "far from the madding crowd," this one made me think it should have something to do with farmer oak, maybe it's his sheep in their pens.

my oldest daughter and grandchildren were visiting the other day when my grandson suddenly said, "oh, granna, we need to sew!" so we did. he helped me put together another couple of rows of these nine patch blocks. this time he ran the pedal until we got to the parts that needed pinning and he was all about the pins. he likes the glass head pins, which i don't like to use for patchwork because they don't lie flat. i'm not sure how these ones even ended up in my pincushion, but he always manages to find them and wants to use them. i indulge him. whenever i sew with him, everything slows down to his pace and preferences so that he enjoys the process.

there was an alligator involved, too.

and then a little sister.

i let them practice sticking pins in a section of patchwork while i was seam ripping a row i'd put on backards, they had a grand time. when d5 saw that i was letting the kiddos pin things, she freaked out, but granna knew better. they were supervised and they did just fine. that's how kids learn - you show them how to do things properly, watch them do it, and let them do it themselves. being the youngest, she doesn't always realize how capable children are at an early age, which is ironic for such an independent gal. her older sister laughed at her saying she'd been the least supervised of them all, she just doesn't remember.

the grandchildren weren't much help with most of the real pinning, but they were enthusiastic about being involved, which is what counts to me. the more i let them practice like this, the better their motor skills will get and the more they'll actually be of help later on. they especially liked using the magnetic pin wristlet d5 gave me for christmas a few years ago. gadgets are fun!

 that's the next two rows put together with just two more left to go.

11, 12, 13

wensleydale was once a daily occurrence around here before "bathsheba" and some quilt batching interrupted. it was a fun little project to play with fabric pairing every day.

now "bathseba" is complete and my batch processing of the other quilts are also done, i'm back on my daily "wensleydale" train.

 i'm still on track to get it done by the end of fall. it's nice to be back!

i just saw that jen kingwell's new book "gathered" is out now. i thought i'd preordered it on amazon, but it's not even on amazon. i don't know if the tarrif/shipping to the US mess changed something there or if that was never a thing. i already ordered the FPP papers for the "trentham" quilt from it and am trying to figure out the best place to get my hands on the book. so when "wensleydale" is done, i'll have another FPP project waiting.

bathsheba bound

binding on "bathsheba" is complete. i suppose she's finished; she's in use. i do plan to add some handstitching, but she's essentially finished.

traditionally, i use a herringbone flannel to bind my liberty + chambray/crossweave quilts. i found some lovely woolies flannels by bonnie sullivan for maywood studios in various colors at fat quarter shop, which is what i used for this quilt.

d4 and i had a pleasant crafting afternoon on saturday, she making bows for christmas presents and i handbinding, while we watched a series of disney movies i like to sing along with: coco, encanto, and moana.

 i love the slightly masculine touch it adds to this quilt, yet it's soft at the same time. 

after all that quilting and machine binding i did recently, i have several more handbinding projects in the works, which means some more finishes coming up!