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 50", 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!