Rhododendron Trail Fabric Pull

It's Quiltville mystery time again! This year's is named Rhododendron Trail. My improv coneflowers quilt is going great, but it's been a lot of thinking. I'm ready to let someone else tell me what to do. 😂 My last mystery, Good Fortune, is a finished flimsy, so I have room to start. And I don't think you can go wrong with a pink and white quilt inspired by flowers. Right up my alley! 

I've only made one significant change from Bonnie Hunter's colours. She used pink, burgundy and yellow. Burgundy is about my least favorite colour (still remember the horror of Marsala), so I've chosen a shadowy range from grey through deep purple instead. 

I'll use a range for the yellow also, from lemon through citron and lime. 

I found a fairly large white on white piece for the background. I'm hoping it will stretch for the whole project because I'm really bored with my collection of low volume whites. I've used them in SO many quilts now. But if necessary I can probably use a black on white low volume print as well. 

I have that very light sea glass print for the constant. I think i can get away with it because the white is also constant and reads as a solid.

I'm looking forward to getting started! 

Coneflower Layout

This is where I am right now. I can't fit it all in the photo, but you can see the full layout in my sketch:

Two posts ago I was thinking that I would keep the leaves wider than the flower heads, since I made the leaves Way Too Big. But I laid out the flowers before I even attached the leaves and it was clearly not going to look good.

So a lot of leaf trimming happened. 😁

I have a stack of those trimmings now. Maybe they'll find a place in the quilt, maybe they'll just be placemats because we could use some new ones. 😂

In the sketch you can kind of see my plan to log cabin around 3 sides of each flower. It's time to make them all the same size to save my sanity sewing them together. I haven't measured anything yet and I love that they're all different. 

I plan to log cabin around the words too when I am ready to sew those together. I'm hoping the consistent construction method will unify those very different pieces.

There's no photo yet, but I have laid out the words around the flowers and I'm pretty happy with it. So it's going well.

I've also looked at the colours for the new Quiltville mystery Rhododendron Trail. I have a good feeling about a pink and white design inspired by flowers! And it's been a couple years since my last one so I'm going try to do it. That gives me about 3 weeks to get to a good stopping place with this one. 

Fancier

Another idea i had for the coneflowers was to add a contrasting strip. At first I thought they should be in a separate quilt, but then I thought just do it now. 😂

I made the top one first and didn't love it, but the second one is better. I think I'll just rip that final seam on the top one, trim down the yellow part, and it will be much better. And then I'll make one more.

I forgot to share this earlier, but I did also make that "lost and found" word pair from the title of an earlier post. 😁

I've had several ideas for a transition between the light center and the dark border, but I have a feeling I should hold off before I sew anything until I get the center sewn together. It's possible that it's already enough. We'll see!

And Some Flowers

I've been thinking about some free-pieced coneflowers since the summer, but couldn't really justify starting something new then. When I realized all those word pairs I've been making belong in a border, there was a demand for something in the middle. I immediately thought of these. Thematically, they are kind of perfect. 😁

For the leaves I wanted to suggest a light, feathery texture without being too literal. I made green and white strata, sliced them up, and rotated through the layers as I sewed them together. It is a good way to generate a lot of piecing quickly. 

My plan was for the flower head to be about the same width as two leaf sections. As you can see, they are nowhere close. 😂 I think I'll build out the background around the flowers to make them fit better.

I also was planning to make chunky stems, about 3 cm/1"+, but now that i look at the picture i think a crisp skinny stem will sharpen it up quite a bit. I don't want anything to line up too rigidly, but there still has to be some definition to hold the eye. And to balance the high contrast border too.

That's the real fun of an improv approach, isn't it? Try, adjust, carry on. Enjoy the surprises along the way. ❤

Lost and Found

I just wrote that title and now I think I need to add that duo to my quilt. 🤣

My plan for this quilt was for it to be an art quilt that hangs on the wall. For like a decade now I've been expecting to transition from utility quilts to art quilts. But this week I was looking at online classes and I had a major insight. Wall quilts don't light me up. Bed quilts do. 

There's a couple reasons. First, I like working large, it's just more exciting and dramatic to me. Also, the expectation that someone may sleep under the quilt clarifies the message and the design quite a lot for me. It's like a duty of care to keep the message positive and healing. 

So as soon as I realized that I want to make a bed quilt, the design came together in a few minutes. These pairs of opposites will be the border. I only need one or two more and that's done. There's a couple I already sewed together stacked that will have to be unsewn, but that's easy at this point. 

It may sound strange to say that bed quilts are my artistic medium, but I feel so much relief when I say it that I know it's right. I'm pretty excited actually. 😂 It's good to know. 

(Oh, and no, still no sign of those Grunge fabrics btw. But maybe they are getting closer. 🤣 )

Moving Along

I've made another word pair since last time:

And I was still thinking about using the leftover crumbs in the quilt. I thought pieced hearts would be cute.

Maybe they are cute, maybe in a different project, but the crumbs feel too stingy here. I'm starting to get a sense of where I want this to go, and crumbs don't fit the narrative. Maybe some other form of improv heart will still work, we'll see. 

So now I know I don't have to worry about those, I'm hoping things will start moving again!

Left and Right

The plan was to use the green fabric for "left." But left was completely finished before I realized! Anyway, it was perfect because I had just enough of the red and green floral fabric to fill in the space as it is now. Balanced! 

I'll be honest, the flying geese are pointing in on purpose. That's my little prayer that we can all find common ground in the middle a little more often! Partisanship has become so insane, and we are all less free when we let one side tell us what to think without even listening to the other. 

And yes, federal election in Canada on September 20. Don't forget to vote! 

Ripping Seams

Yesterday I made "wrong," and today I made "right."

Wrong wiped me out, I was so tired after! Obviously the R and the G are a little challenging, but I needed the seam ripper a lot.

Then today I thought it would be easier, and it turned out to be worse. I actually had a seam allowance on the front at one point! 

So I've stopped sewing the words together while I have a think. It's probably time to improvise. 😄

Just Start

I think it was back in January that I was out running errands and I heard Katy Perry on the radio. The lyrics were such an accurate picture of recent events for me that I just started to laugh. A few days later I thought it would be a great improv quilt.

But then the obstacles started to rise. I had SO many projects, and literally no room to work. I have some great Grunge fabrics i bought for an improv art quilt, but I couldn't find them. And what was the quilt going to mean, anyway? The original spark that made me laugh was gone. I got busy on all those other projects that I finished recently. 

Only... I kept thinking about it. 😂 But what was it going to mean? If it's just trivial is it even worth the time? If I try to make it more significant is the foundation strong enough to hold up? And where tf are those Grunge fabrics? My stash is toooo big. 🙄

This August the #30DaysOfImprovQAL started, and it seemed like a really good idea. I signed up, read the materials, watched the fun videos Shannon and Amanda put on Instagram, didn't start...

...because I realized the quilt i still want to make is this one. And I still don't know where those Grunge fabrics are, so I'm just going to use what I have at hand. 

This morning i was all set to pull solids for this quilt, because it's modern and improv and most people make word quilts with solids... and i didnt even do that. No more distractions, I'm just going to start where I am and see what happens. 

What's it going to mean? Idk.

What fabrics and colours am I going to use? Idk.

What am i going to call it? Idk but not idk. 😂 Hopefully something better will emerge.

Am I going to fall flat on my face? Maybe, but you just don't know until you try, right? I can tell you one thing. It's already bigger than I planned. 😅

I keep reading that as gold instead of cold. Maybe I'll run with that later. You can see i started with a mistake in hot too, but I left it. I filled in the right side with the leftover crumbs, which is kind of slow, so I hope I haven't set a bad precedent there.

We'll just have to see where it goes!

Good Fortune Flimsy

My version of Bonnie Hunter's 2018 mystery quilt Good Fortune is a finished flimsy! It's the first time I tried a dark background for one of her quilts, and I love how that worked out. If I start a new one I'm thinking I'd like to do a dark background again. 

It's also the first time I turned her design into a medallion by replacing the nine centre blocks with something else. I surrounded the Mariners Compass i discussed previously with some turned edge machine applique. Lucky coins and rubber tree leaves! The coins have been done for almost a year, but the leaves were inspired just recently by the AHIQ string tulip quilt.

The free-pieced tumbler strips i made for the border turned out to be short, so I filled in the corners with a few of those extra brown squares. Still plenty left. 😂 I'll probably use them in the next one too, if I do one. 

I keep saying "if" because I still have several other Quiltville quilts to finish, plus so many other large traditional quilts that have been started. I think I'm ready to try something intended more for art than function. I realized there's never going to be a perfect time so I may as well just start. I'll come back and finish these traditional quilts as a break between new projects. 

In any case, it's very satisfying to have this done and I'm very happy with how it turned out. My favourite so far!

It finished at 84.5" square, which is the size I prefer for a queen bed. 

Thanks again to Bonnie for another great mystery. The way she breaks down these complicated designs makes them very doable. I'm always amazed i made it!

String Tulips Sprouting Fast

So I'm done all my AHIQ String Tulip QAL blocks, and I'm a little sorry that I didn't capture most of the process that got me to this point. As i said in my last post, PC-based blogging just isn't working for me any more. Let's hope this mobile Blogger app will hold up.

These are a few pictures from my Instagram account, @lakeviewmonica. I realized today that I should blog first and Instagram after. So that's something to shoot for. 😄

Anyway, the main tweak i made to Ann's tulip blocks was the addition of those improv cut and pieced leaves in the background.  I used light greens for the leaves so they wouldn't overpower the tulips.

The stems and tulips are turned-edge machine applique. Both are stitched with a zigzag stitch in deep purple thread. I love using thread as a design element in applique I've decided. I tested first with machine blanket stitch, but the zigzag just looked better. And I have to admit my decision was influenced by the fact that zigzag is a utility stitch on my machine. Since AHIQ is largely about utility quilts and all. 😉

For now all the blocks are labeled and put away in a drawer. I've been trying to excavate my Design Bed of Shame (aka the spare bedroom bed) a little before I start this new improv quilt along on Instagram. I think there's only 3 current projects on it now.👍 Getting there!

Good Fortune Border Decision

Since my old PC-based blogging style just hasn't been working any more, I'm trying a different approach here with the Blogger mobile app. I'm hoping that more frequent, shorter posts will still capture my thought process without cutting into my sewing time. We'll see how it goes! 

My dark background version of Bonnie Hunter's 2018 mystery, Good Fortune, is finally sewn together. Since it's very active i thought a simple border would be best and I went with these free-pieced tumblers. The technique is by Sujata Shaw. I've admired similar borders by other quilters, so I figured this was my chance. 😄

When I laid it out, however, it looked a little unpolished on it's own, so I ended up adding that skinny pink line, which makes a surprising difference. I also expected to use orange binding, but that felt cloying and syrupy to me. I know I've said that before with a similar colour scheme, some time in the distant past. I prefer warm tones, but suddenly you hit a point where it's too much and you need to cool it off.

I'm hoping to get going on an improv quilt along that's currently running on Instagram. Before I miss the first week completely. 😅 I'll decide tomorrow if I'm going to finish this top first. 

And I can tell you right now this mobile app is not great for adding labels, so I'll have a think about that. Happy quilting! 

AHIQ String Tulip Quilt Along

One of the AHIQ founders, Ann of Fret Not Yourself, has been hosting a quilt along with a really charming recipe that combines string pieced blocks and string pieced applique tulips. I've been lurking and admiring it for a while, but I didn't think I had the bandwidth to make it. 

After I finished the centre of Rose Boll and made the dubious decision to put it away, I pulled out Ontario Shores. I finished all those blocks, 

...and made a start on attaching all the sashing. It's looking pretty good. But I just ran out of steam. Time for something new!

I like almost everything about Ann's quilt except the size, so the first thing I did was that sketch at the top to see how it would look larger. Think it's going to be pretty good. 😊

The string tulip quilt along has an improv mindset, so there is plenty of encouragement to do your own thing and run with it. And everyone knows I change designs all the time. 😂

But I do try to preserve the things that drew me to the project in the first place. In this case there were several. Ann has made two versions of this quilt now, one with a blue background and mainly red tulips, 

Photo: Fret Not Yourself

and one with a light print background and mainly blue tulips.

So looking at them both, I considered what I like about them.

• I love the string pieced X blocks around the centre. That's probably my favourite thing about the quilt so I'm keeping that.
• I prefer the light background and the red tulips, so I'll combine those two things in mine. (And hey, another mainly red and white/neutral quilt. 😉)
• This is a great opportunity to practice turned edge machine applique with a simple, forgiving shape. I'll just change the design a little.
• In general Ann matched the centre colour of the tulips with the colour on the main diagonal of the X blocks. I think that's important repetition, so I'll keep that.

So overall, my quilt will look a lot like Ann's. Besides the size, I only have two other changes in mind.

1. Because I'm going to do the applique with my little Eversewn Sparrow, a smaller block will be easier to handle. I broke it down to 10" squares with one tulip each.

2. Rather than Ann's dots I may add leaves to the tulips. My first thought was to sew on spiky triangles after the applique was done. But I didn't love that. It just feels too sharp and aggressive. I love the wider tips of the X blocks, so I'm thinking I'll try that shape for the leaves too. You can see that idea in the bottom left of the first photo at the top. That will have to be pieced before the applique is attached. Or, maybe those could be appliqued too. Idk yet. 😄

Ann provides instructions on how to draw your own applique pattern here. I plan to applique all 3 petals separately. I thought it would be nice to have the strings radiating out from the centre line of the tulip. But, then I realized it would be better to have the direction of the strings in the tulips more or less echo the strings in the pieced blocks. So the vertical line is the right one and I drew a sewing line on all the petals.

I still have SO much Ricky Tims' Stable Stuff from my early attempt at Sedona Star, so I'll just use that as a base for the petals and leave it in the quilt. There are only 24 tulips in my queen size quilt, so I just traced each one in pencil rather than making a clean printable template. I think it's probably better if they aren't exactly all the same.

I'm a little concerned that I've done the most fun part first here. 😂

I had those strip sets in my scrap box, so I threw them in. 24 sets of string petals are now done.

And my scrap box is exactly as full as it was before. Hopefully the X blocks will use up a little more!

Tysm to Ann for permission to use her photos, and this excellent QAL! Next up, the applique background. Probably.

Rose Boll Progress

 

As I slowly excavate back through my UFOs, the next one that caught my eye was Rose Boll, started in 2017 and last seen here in June 2018. I have to admit, every time I read back through those old posts I just laugh. So optimistic!

Anyhoo, I don't think I ever gave much detail about my process on this quilt, so I'll cover that a little now. As you see above, most of the blocks have the same red fabric in the centre as well as the HSTs in the sawtooth edge. 20 HSTs are needed for each block, but I foundation paper pieced them in sets of 24. So, there were leftovers.

I decided to use the leftovers in the main quilt also, and made a few scrappy blocks. Since they were different anyway, I used different colours from my stack of floral "neutrals" for the centres. The gold and pink are from the same collections as some of the reds and whites I used, so it still ties together.

When I started to work on it this year all the string blocks were done, and there were only about 6 of the sawtooth blocks left. I finished those, laid it all out, and sewed together the centre.

As always, lol, I had considerable debate about the border. Bonnie Hunter's original quilt has 3 rows of diagonal set squares in the border that looks great. I sketched a few variations on that, and decided it was too much in my busy fabrics. A single row of squares looked a little better on paper. But, once the centre was complete I realized it's more than enough as it is. I'm just going to do a narrow inner border in gold and a wider outer border in scrappy chunks of red, and call it done.

And then I did a Very Dangerous Thing, and folded it up and put it away without finishing the border. I just wasn't in the mood to iron and cut those red chunks. 😂

insert optimistic closing here

And then I pulled out another project. 😜

Border Disputes

 So apparently in 2017 I was under the impression that the border was ready to sew onto my version of Bonnie Hunter's 2015-6 mystery quilt, Allietare. But obviously that didn't happen. 😅

I had SO much indecision about the border for this quilt. I know I bought 3 or 4 different fabric combinations for it. A couple of them were even in my Allietare project drawer!

When I finally pulled the project out again, it seemed to me that these Kaffe fabrics were ready to go. The fussy cutting was done and I just had to sew them on.

The two side borders with the flowers went on fine, but when I started work on the top and bottom I remembered why I stopped. The grain of that fabric was very slanted and I was determined to fussy cut it aligned with the print. Which was no where near aligned with the grain. So when I was done the top and bottom strips were actually curved.

But you know, I was already halfway so I thought, %&$# it, and sewed it on anyway. And actually, it seems pretty flat now.

Those waves you see in the photo are just where the fabric got caught on the carpet. Hopefully.

Nothing a long arm couldn't quilt out, right?

Anyway, I am so impressed with Bonnie's design on this quilt. It looks so complicated, and I'm rather amazed I pulled it off! I'm pretty sure if I saw the final quilt before I started it I never would have attempted it. But the instructions break it down into very simple steps, and it's kind of magic how it comes together. It's funny that the hold up all these years has been these last strips of fabric around the edge. In any case, I'm very glad to have another top done!

"Keep calm and carry on" would probably work as a title for this post as well. 😂

Cheddar Broken Dishes Top

When I first picked up these cheddar and indigo broken dishes blocks last autumn, my intention was just to organize the project rather than actually finish it. I had things in several stages at once, with many many plastic baggies of HSTs and broken dishes units. And as you can see, my project storage system wasn't 100% foolproof. 😂

So I just wanted to make sure everything was accounted for and get things to a more consistent state of completion. But, the blocks went together so easily that I decided to keep going and get it done.

The original historic quilt that inspired this pattern had a few irregular blocks with some pink, light blue, and cranberry fabrics thrown in. To me that was a big part of the initial appeal of the quilt, so I threw in some non-conforming broken dishes here and there. 

This is a queen-sized quilt, and to keep it manageable I laid it out in quadrants once again. To get an even distribution of fabrics and values, I "deal" out the blocks so there are no duplicate fabrics in each quadrant. I also work from the lightest to the darkest to keep the values balanced.

I did the same thing with my scrappy neutral sashings. This quilt is 7 x 7 blocks, so the quadrants are not equal size. I started with the smallest quadrant and worked up to the largest, reasoning that the largest would also give me the most flexibility to make sure I didn't have the same fabric beside itself anywhere. It worked. 😄

I finished the border very simply with a neutral strip of fabric. I don't think the original has any border, but I have an indigo and white pinstripe fabric for the binding, and I want to float it out beyond the blocks.

The original also has a few cranberry blocks, but in the end I decided one was enough. You can see my fussy cutting compulsion got the upper hand a little there.

And that's another top done! Only four and a half years after the quilt was featured on the cover of the October 2016 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. Don't ask me when it will be quilted though. 😂 I'm still hoping a long arm will eventually come my way.

Technicolor Turkey Together at Last!

So the world turned upside down since my last post. There's nothing more I want to say about that, lol. But, I have managed to do some sewing now and then, and I have a few projects to get caught up over the next few posts.

I have an Ikea wardrobe with wide shallow drawers that holds my current works in progress. It's proven to be an excellent system. Even several years later everything is in one place with all my notes and plans, and it's been fairly easy to pick up and sew again.

One quadrant of Techicolor Turkey was already sewn together. I had made a very nice colour sketch of my planned layout for the rest, which saved my life on this so I highly recommend it. 😂

I made the blocks as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2017. The blocks are Bonnie Hunter's Talking Turkey design with my own pieced sashing.

When I put the quilt on hold, the border plan was for something mostly neutral with a few pops of color. But I didn't love it. While I was sewing it together I debated several different ideas, maybe multicolour strings or piano keys. Eventually I decided that an all neutral border would let the blocks shine. I carried the sashing out into the border, with some neutral strips sewn in between. This allowed me to sew on the border before I sewed the four quadrants together. If I can avoid a long seam I will!

At first I thought I would alternate light and darker neutrals around the border, but as I laid it out I liked it better with all the dark strips on the outer edge. I think a multicolour scrappy binding will be the right finish for this.

In any case it was really nice to get something done for the first time in a long time. I finally have a dedicated sewing area, which is making all the difference. It is easy to just leave the project there and work on it for a few minutes when I have time.

Apologies for the recycled photos from Instagram. If you follow me there, @lakeviewmonica, you will see things a lot sooner, lol. These days I am mostly on mobile and don't fire up the computer that much. I had to scroll back to August 2020 to find these pictures, so that must have been when I finished the top. 😅

I hope everyone is hanging in there! I'm going to queue up a few more posts over the next couple days. You know, while the computer is running and before I go back to emojis and likes on mobile. Happy stitching everyone!

Good Fortune Progress

A little late, but happy Lunar New Year/Spring Festival everyone! It feels appropriate to have progress to share on Bonnie Hunter's 2019 mystery quilt, Good Fortune.

All the blocks are done! 🎉🎉🎉

Assembly has started! 🎉🎉🎉

I'm just laying out 9 blocks at a time, and trying for an equal distribution of dark and light values in each section. The orange blocks with the skinny inserts will be in the centre of the quilt, and the string blocks are going around the corners. It's already a very active quilt, so I decided a symmetrical layout would be best.

This is the point where you find out how accurate your sewing was last year. 😂 Fortunately, I tend to sew scant, so it's easy to trim the block or tighten up a seam if necessary. And fortunately, that hasn't been too often.

So far, so good! 🎉🎉🎉