mastering geese for a swoon

so, i started something new a little while ago. no surprise there! when i get the urge or the itch, i just dive into something. this time i decided to join the IG #swoonalong. in celebration of her 10th year anniversary in the quilting business, camille rosskelly started a quilt along of her most popular pattern, swoon. i've had the pattern as part of her craftsy.com class i purchased a few years back, and it's been on my "to do" list for ages. it's on everyone's "to do" list because it's so awesome. when the swoonalong came up, i resisted for a little while before being sucked in.

i'm eyeball deep in projects, so i wanted a quick version of swoon. i decided to make a swoon variation of my stella grande quilt pattern: one giant swoon block with a top and bottom border. i'm using heather bailey's floral picnic bouquet in gold as my main fabric, sandi henderson's meadowdot in mint as the secondary fabric, and essex linen from robert kauffman as my background.

i decided if i'm going to make the ultimate quilt, one of the fabrics better be my ultimate favorite: meadowdot, of course. i picked the floral to compiliment it. and i've always wanted to try linen. it seemed a good time to do that, too.

i started cutting away on the floral. and did it wrong. the swoon pattern i have is for a 24"block, but i wanted a 60" block. so i had to do some math. and i did some wrong. then i decided after reading up on quilting with linen that i should use a 1/2" seam allowance rather than the standard 1/4". so i did some more math and re-cut my floral center square.

at this point i realized i was not going to have enough of the floral for the quilt, even before i made my cutting error. so i had to visit etsy and ebay to hunt down that out-of-print fabric i was committed to using in my quilt. lucky me, i found 3 yards of it, so i'm safely stocked again.

and then i ran out of essex linen in flax. i went to my new local shop and go more, but thought it seemed to look a little different than the piece i had picked up earlier in the week. after washing it was still a different color! i talked to the shop owener and found out it was the wrong one. stalled again. whew!

while i was waiting on fabrics, i was also following the #swoonalong progress on instagram. i noticed some of the pieces in the pattern that were originally composed of hsts (like the pattern i have) were being made with flying geese instead. that makes for less seams and a more composed look, so i decided to just figure that out, too.

basically, i've rewritten the entire pattern myself.

i'd love to share all of it here, but that would be giving away a copyrighted pattern. sorry. can't do it.

i had to experiment with the geese to figure out the technique and math for those, too. with some trial and error, i got it down. i had some extra squares of linen not yet used that i paired with some solid scraps,

  the upper left-hand corner of linen is a failed attempt at getting the corner the right size. i tried just cutting a triangle and sewing it on. it came out wrong. i don't even remember what size it was. i think i probably used the leftover piece cut off some of the other bits i'd already done.

i read up on making geese a little and decided to go with stitch-and-flip rather than trying to just sew a corner on.

the geese i need are 12.5" x 6.5" unfinished. i think what i used was a 7" square for the corners.

after stitching both a 1/2" and a 1/4" seam allowance (for reinforcement), i clipped the corners off, per the flip-and-stitch method.

 the linen doesn't behave exactly the same as cotton, so i found i needed to sew a scanter seam so it would reach where it needed to be to line up with the block.

in the end, i completely nailed my tip for my flying goose (singular). it's exactly perfect. which is what i'm going for with this quilt. i've found that when working with large scale patterns, all the little flaws are much more noticeable. since there aren't that many pieces for this quilt top, i think it's worth the time and effort to get them right.

i now have most of the geese units completed, so it's on to the corner units. only i've turned back to the other projects i had going. my grande swoon is in the wip pile for the moment. when i do get back to it, i'm ready for a fast finish and i've got the tricks to getting it right down pat.

if only i remember them . . .

pennies for the finish

 along about the fall of last year, i became slightly obsessed with a certain quilt by rachel hauser of stitched in color fame: the vintage tangerine penny patch quilt. rachel kindly hosted a penny patch quilt along and despite the fact that i was trying to complete a quilt for each of my seven children for christmas, i was sucked right in. the whole christmas idea sort of got blown out of the water because of dear old penny patch. (well, practicality had something to do with it too.)

i hemmed and hawed over fabric choices, made a color diagram of rachel's original so as to pick it apart, and shopped, culled, replaced, slaved over this quilt, trying to figure out what made it tick. (here, here and here) around thanksgiving time, the top was done. and my obsession abated. penny patch languished in the more urgent christmas gift wip pile on the piano room floor.

 a few months ago i decided to get that top off the floor, so i made a pieced backing, which then also lay in the wip pile on the floor. eventually a sandwich was spray basted and i finally tackled dogwood fmq. i've already written a lot about all these steps along the way, so no need to rehash.

another few days of intense handbinding and penny patch is now finished. with only 24 hours to go til the finished link party for the quilt along at stitched in color closes, no less.

oh, yes, i am happy.
this quilt has turned out differently than i anticipated, but the process of making it has taught me a lot about color choices and fabric placement, about myself as a quilter. it helped me to grow. i'm even starting to like it again.

but right now i'm mostly just so pleased to have it finished.

special thanks to my dear friend jill for helping me with the photographs!

linking up with thursday threads at my quilt infatuation.

triangle along pull - updated

***i'm updating my fabric pull for the triangle along. after looking at #trianglequilt on instagram, and marking all the ones i liked, i realized i really like mostly solid quilts best. and after playing around with the modern solids ii pieces that i got from cuts of cotton, i decided to get some more solids/near solid basics for the triangle quilt.

(bye-bye fabric fast and it's only the 2nd!) i love the way they look on the order screen. i've kept this screen open just so i can go back and look at them again. something about the way they look in all that white makes me happy. when i made the collage, they look a lot more color dense. that's something to keep in mind when making the quilt, i guess. now all I have to do is wait for them to arrive. these will form the base of my quilt and i'll use all the lovely prints mixed in here and there. maybe just one or two of each print. i'm gonna have a lot of leftovers!

perhaps i'll do a double-sided quilt with strips of all these luscious prints on the back.



i've wanted to do a triangle quilt, and paula's quilt along is the perfect opportunity. however, now that i have dug out my pull, made last month, it's looking something like a train wreck and i'm unsure of myself. there will need to be some culling done here. i really like all the triangle graphics out there in solids with pops of colors on more low-volume backgrounds. this looks nothing like that! maybe once i start cutting and placing, i'll get some inspiration?

linking up with paula's selection party for the triangle along.

triangle along with paula

 that purchase from fabricworm that i mentioned finally showed up. after making two spring fabric mosaics (here and here) for the color intensive class, i wanted the fabrics. and once the fast was broken for the month, i just went ahead and purchased with glee. a tad bit of guilt, too. in all honesty, unlike my other purchases for the month, these were bought simply for the "i want" factor. i got some of the fabrics from the mosaics and some i had wanted to use for the mosaics. some i also got from fabric.com instead because they were less expensive (not arrived). i had no real idea what to do with them, but i'd created the pull when making the mosaics and thought they'd make something great. lucky for me, the idea showed up before the fabrics did. thank you, paula!

 

do i need another project? heck, no! but that isn't stopping me because i already have fabrics picked for this (so no purchasing required - really), i have the ruler, it doesn't start for another month (time to get wips done), and i've wanted to do a triangle quilt for ages. quilting along with a group under that sassy paula is the icing on the cake! isn't it great how quilt-alongs get you going on something you have intended to do? it just motivates and inspires me so much to work on stuff when doing it this way. i especially enjoy the flickr groups and link parties where you get to see so many variations on the same project. paula even has sponsors offering prizes along the way. so if you've ever wanted to triangle, and i know you do, come along.

for the last year, scrapbook papers like these (above) have been inspiring me to contemplate a triangle quilt. although i've considered doing a solid triangle quilt, i think my spring pull is a good match for this look.

now, my pull is actually a mix of the two mosaics: one that was more yellow/green/grey/pink and one that was new greens/spring blues/touches of warm colors. i am using the two florals of the same print in two colorways to tie everything together. it's now a very cool spring morning with some warm touches to it.

however, now that everything is here, i'm not sure how well it's blending. i've been breaking it down into separate groups to see if i like it better that way.

going with the blue background floral here. the main problem with this is it lacks any more coral. but pops are nice, so it could work.

then again, i really like just these together! so pretty and cheery, yet calm, too. there should be plenty left over for another project with these fabrics.

this it a mix to go with the grey background floral that incorporates the yellow-y greens and gold with bits of red, too.
 

or i could add a bit more grey (from stash!) and the soft magenta print to pick up the touches of purple in the main floral.

 

goodness, too many options! i think i'll just go with everything together. but not until the end of march, when the quilt along officially starts. until then, i have plenty of wips to complete!

january's intention

 finished just in time for the next block to arrive in my inbox tomorrow morning, i have completed "intentions," my first block for the sugar block club 2014 bom series from amy at stitchery dickory dock.

being part of a bom series and making this block was a new experience for me in many ways. i've never done a traditional block before, mainly because they have been too complicated for my skill set. both the hourglass mini block and the 3-triangle mini blocks (official name?) were new to me. i surprised myself by working well with so many triangles.



because there is a low time commitment with only one block each month and because there are so many pieces/chances to throw off the size to each block, i focused on precision more than i normally do with this block. there were a few redo's for me, but not too many. in general i shocked myself with some pretty precise piecing. not perfect, mind you, but definitely personal progress.

i've never purposefully made blocks over-sized and then trimmed down, but i gave it a go this time and was converted. i did find one block that i either had to trim slightly off center or remake, and i let that go (notice the way the pink and blue point is slightly off in the upper left of the photo). however, when trimming up the mini blocks to assemble the larger one, i accidentally trimmed one 1/4" too small. arg. but i just whipped up another one.

also, when my hourglass block was a tad too small, even after repeat pressing, i just made another one (which is still slightly imperfect if you look at the bottom points). so i have a few spare parts now, but this doesn't bother me a bit. they'll just get worked into my backing when the time comes.

spare parts for the backing

with this series, each block is a surprise each month. i was a tiny uncomfortable with this at first because i wanted to know where the series was going when i made fabric selections. i wanted a color palette to start with but didn't know how many different fabrics might be required. however, i got over that and gave into the fun of working with continual surprises. despite wanting to break into my liberty fabrics, i knew they were too precious for a skill-building experience. instead, i picked over my stash to find some prints that have a sort of farmhouse and playful vintage feel to them. but i'm obviously also working in some modern prints with that comma circles print. i'm just going to take it month by month with the decision making.

all in all, this was a fun little project; a great exercise in skill building and comfort-zone busting. i look forward to the February block tomorrow.

sign me up

with cousin wendy true at the baby shower

i didn't even touch my january lovely finish pick. yes, "paris daydreams" is still languishing on the family room floor in a pile of other wips. some other baby quilts which were required at the last minute got in the way, like the one i got 90% finished for the baby shower. so to make things even more doable for myself in february, this simple strips quilt for baby weston, due mid-month, is my lovely finish pick for february.

i have several wips going at the moment, but because my plate wasn't full enough or orderly enough or whatever enough, i have organized my quilting time to include a few new "to do's". this weekend after the baby shower, i took a quilting break for some blogland inspiration. and found two new quilt alongs that i want to join. yes, i still need to actually get started on sarah's barn door qal and finish penny patch, but here's why the others are different: they are block of the month quilt alongs that will use up my stash and will push me to skill build, one little bit at a time.

this one will produce one nice, large block a month. i love the idea of having just one block to try out a new skill with. it'll be a nice break from any other projects i have going to do just the one block. at least that's my thinking. I'm thinking of diving into my liberty stash for it, but am hesitant to commit my most precious pieces to skill building experimentation. maybe i'll give a practice block a go first. goodness, i have a harder time committing that liberty to a project than i did committing to my husband for eternity. (mormons don't just marry for time, it's for after death and the whole rest of eternity, too. he's stuck with me!)

 

i completely hesitated to add myself to this group, but the truth is i already have the pattern and some fabrics in mind, so why not pace myself with a few bits a month? and i'm pushing myself to full disclosure and complete honesty on this space as a way to hold myself accountable, which is why i'm fessing up about this project. no closet hiding here.

i'm actually thinking of using my first fabric purchase stack for this gypsy lady. i was going to do a plus quilt with it, but i've stopped liking that idea so much and now think it'd be great for the "gypsy wife". i think it will need a few additions of red and more solid medium- or high-volume prints, but it's a good start. I'm still thinking of a huge section of meadowdot for the back. yum.

additionally, i have a lot of leftovers from my headband stash and i don't make headbands anymore. looks good to me!

to be honest, this pattern rather scares me, but i think it will be a good skill builder that isn't too complicated just yet. it's going to fill my need for more complex/less simple designs, that's for sure.

there is no pressure here to get either of these quilts done right away. they are just filler projects. have i justified myself enough?

oh, yeah, and i'm also enrolled for color intensive with rachel at stitched in color. this is light on projects and heavy on theory/ideas, which appealed to me. it's actually going to help with my other projects, or so i tell myself.

it may seem like all i've done lately is rack up projects for myself, but this week i actually got most of that baby quilt done, finished another top, and made some good headway on my detachable color card. naturally, that meant i had to find more to do so my plate stays over-full rather than just getting on with my wips.

full disclosure, ladies. keeping it real and my insanity in the open.

penny patch flimsy

penny patch: hello, quilt top! link party here.

wet weekend ready

 yesterday was just plain weird around here. i was sick, but i wasn't. honest to goodness, as long as i was sewing i didn't feel queasy and didn't notice my headache. the mr though i might have the flu, though, so ordered me not to touch anyone. that totally worked in my quilting progress favor while making kid control difficult. there were lots of air hugs and kisses thrown back and forth, but the little toads just ignored my verbal instructions when they felt like it.

my oldest daughter has been given notice that if her dog isn't properly potty (yard) trained to poo in the right spot by the end of the year, she (the dog) is leaving. the training involves the dog being tied to her poop spot until she goes. but we have the stubbornest dog on the planet, who wouldn't clear her bowels until around dinner time. hence we had a daughter stuck by her dog and a dog barking incessantly all day long, and well into the night. poor neighbors.

the toddler decided that now she is two, she's no longer staying in her crib. she climbed right out several times for hours after bedtime. the evening ended with her being put in a portacrib she can't escape, in the middle of the family room. decisions for adjustment need to be made now.

and it rained all evening and night.

with all this upheaval going on, i couldn't get to sleep. so about 12:45, i gave up and started messing with fabric and the quilting blogosphere for a few hours. i feel completely turned upside down and disoriented.

this morning has dawned gloriously cloudy and wet. the younger half of the family is snail hunting in the impromptu ponds created by the rain.

there are snails and light-catching water droplets everywhere. the liquid gems look especially lovely in the ripening citrus, making the fruit look fresh and juicy. only a few more weeks and it will be ready!

 
as for the inside of the house, i may not have been touching my children yesterday, but i did lay a hand on my sewing area. just look how clean i got it! that end of the table hasn't been clear since before Halloween. i've got my cutting mat hiding under the table cloth. there is still a bit of flotsam to put away, but it's looking respectable in comparison to the recent norm.

i made sure not to include penny patch in the photo too much becaue i'm sure everyone is as sick of looking at that as i am. yes, sad to say, but like all torrid love affairs, my obsession with this quilt is quickly turning to . . . ick. or maybe impatience. how else do i say it? having conquered the layout of the quilt, i'm heartily sick of sewing it together. about 2/5ths of the top are done. i just want to move on and see something besides the penny patch. although i suspect learning to dogwood quilt it will help revive the joy before we settle into a cozy but less passionate relationship.

my goal for this weekend is to get twirly back under the fmq foot and finished off.
the penny patch fully pieced, too.
i also want to dive into this box, my late-night puzzle when i couldn't sleep.

see, i had a simple pattern sketched out so i could quickly put together a quilt for my second son. it was made from a jellyroll and a few large cuts of yardage. he's not really that into quilts and would like anything i threw at him, so fast and simple (just to get it done and in his hands) was my plan.

however, when i looked at it last night and broke open the jellyroll, i realized i have changed as a quilter in the months since i designed this and bought the fabric. just this month i decided i don't prefer working with a single fabric line as much as i like mixing it up. and simple was good, but i wanted to take it up a notch creatively with this quilt. i didn't want the quilt coming out looking like one large pieced line of fabric that i threw together just so i could make my son a quilt. this is going to be his mamma made and i want it to be a bit more special now. i'm not going to let the Christmas deadline cheat him or me.

i toyed with a few ideas and fell asleep thinking maybe i could make a boxy, male-ish version of lolly lolly. that would be cool. this morning i pulled a few more fabrics to mix in with the jellyroll for some added depth. but i'm kind of nixing the lolly lolly boy idea. i think it's back to my original design with some modifications and a trip to the store for some solids to use as a field for the strips. only time will tell! it's back to the experimentation/infatuation stage.

with this wet, cozy weekend before me, i think i'll get some of this knocked out!

my making Christmas update:

d1 - "plus a diamond" needs handbinding

s1 - wonky stacked coins not started

d2 - "taite" needs handbinding

s2 - "bandwidth" not started

d3 - "twirly" is in process of quilting

d4 - flowered pillow sham not started

d5 - "paris daydreams" flimsy

penny patch qal - laid out and piecing top 

penny patch evolution

 the obsession with penny patch continues. really, such a simple quilt, but i've turned it into an epic quilt journey. all my blocks are laid out now. i've been much happier with it since the changes i made to my original fabric pull.

terri ann said to me in a comment, "it's funny how obsessed we can become with creating perfect balance on even a scrappy style quilt huh?" too true. this one keeps dragging me over and sucking me in. having it on the design wall where i see it all the time is a completely different experience. it's actually rather silly how much enjoyment i get out of messing with these blocks, rearranging the squares.

however, this weekend there was still something bothering me. a few somethings.

1. i have never been happy with my choice of the pink as the "pop color". it just didn't pop. but it was the only other color besides the oranges and blues from the pull, so i was using it.

2. i wanted some more color fabrics that were less color dense, included more low-volume in them, as a way to add more low-volume to the over all look.

3. i didn't have enough different blue prints, especially once i decided to remove the green prints as my filler blues.

4. that really bright tangerine was sorta buggin' me, too.

see, i like all these fabrics. but the original pull only incorporated 2 different lines and one of the prints, that sprig, was in the quilt in 6 different colors. i was craving more variety. but i did not want to spend any more money on more fabric. a lady with a bookcase full of fabric, and several boxes to boot, should surely be able to make-do from her stash.

 so i inserted a butterfly print from sandi henderson's meadowsweet collection. every quilt needs a bit of meadowsweet, right? it stayed on the board all week and i thought i liked it. but then i stopped liking the linear nature of the butterflies. they were fluttering in my face too much. it just didn't flow with the feel of the quilt.

by the way, because of the size of my design wall, the quilt is laid out on its side, hence the odd orientation of the blocks in the photos. just in case you noticed and were wondering.

well, i visited my stash again and again. orange is sort of a new color for me and apparently i don't have much low volume, either. darn it!

by saturday, i just couldn't stand it any more. i was going to have to either be unsatisfied with the quilt i had already invested so much time into or GO SHOP. shopping definitely won out.

i brought home a 1/4 yard of everything in the store that i thought might even come close to working. i looked for a different pop color that i could somehow still tie into what i already had and prints in my current color that included a lot of neutral/low volume as well. to really complicate matters, this quilt has a very specific 60's/70's feel to it that i'm trying to maintain.

strike two

strike three

i replaced the butterfly print with a sweet orange floral from happy go lucky by bonnie and camille for moda. it was much better . . . and then it wasn't.

honestly, the more i started pulling out prints and trying to add in the new ones, the more i felt like i was just creating fabric vomit. was i making a huge mistake? had i wasted enough time and effort already? (the fabric is not wasted - it'll get used somewhere, sometime.) self-doubt was trampling me. but as i continued to plow through, switching and culling, it started to feel right.

a closer look at the notebook low-volume print. see the light blue lines that make this look like aged notebook paper? love it.

i could have just sewn everything together the way it was and decided not to care. sometimes you have to cut your losses and make do. i really believe that. but i also believe in not settling. deciding when to do which is hard. however, this quilt has been a learning experiment for me all along, so i made the choice to keep learning. i kept thinking about a recent post where rachel hauser said "don't settle." it seemed right.



and it's paying off. i'm so much happier with the results now even though i suspect that it really doesn't look all that different to anyone else.

some new low-volumes added and a few more blues, including darker ones

i was completely surprised by what ended up working for me. the dark horse, long shot choices were the ones i liked best. goodness, i even pulled that happy go lucky floral that replaced the butterfly that replaced the tangerine sprig, and put the tangerine sprig back in in a few select places.

finally, a home run - several of the new add-ins are seen here

but it's okay. it's all okay. i'm feeling my way through what i like and what works for me. it's stretching and growing going on over here. it's not even so much about the final quilt any more as it is about what i'm experiencing. that's important to me this time around. it won't always be my priority with a quilt, but this time it is.

***surprise, surprise - since i wrote and scheduled this post, laura has said this even better than i have over at little and lots. not only is she a great quilter, she's a writer, too; always speaking to the heart and getting inside the head of quilting. how does she do it? "So, to me, these quilts have ended up being about me as a creator. About pushing aside those evil voices that nag at you when you’re working–voices that sometimes make you put down your work in discouragement." ditto what she said.

all in place now - sewing together of blocks has commenced

i haven't recreated vintage tangerine in exactness here. not by a long shot. i have a more aged tone going on and my colors are stronger, there is less lightness to it. but i do have something i like a whole lot. the fact that this looks very fall-ish is an added bonus since I was just thinking some of the quilts in my family room look so very summer they should probably be put away for a few months.

the last question is what to do with all the cut rejects, because surely i have nearly enough for another quilt by now. i'm probably going to throw them together into a second (third?) penny patch called "leftover pennies" and give it away to someone special i have in mind. i like that idea. i think God can take the messes we make in our lives and make something beautiful or useful out of them. why can't i do that with quilt leftovers, hmm? it won't even make a bit of difference to me how that 2nd one turns out because i already know it's going to be a big, beautiful scrappy pile of culled fabrics. and that's good, too.

the stack for penny patch 1.2

linking in: