Rhodie Blooms Flimsy

Rhodie Blooms, my variation on Bonnie Hunter's 2021 mystery quilt Rhododendron Trail, is a finished top! It's quite large, about 87" square at the moment. 

I'm super happy with how it turned out. And I have so much appreciation for Bonnie, who creates this space for all of us to play in every year. ❤

Most of the choices i made in the border were to try and tone down and balance the center, which is very bright and high energy. There are a lot of UV dyes in my fabrics, the white on white constant is quite reflective, and the aqua seems to highlight the pinks. So it is a lot. 😂

Since the flying geese for the border were already made i decided, eventually, to use them. But I also felt the quilt had reached its Maximum Pink Capacity, so I went shopping for the light purple fabric in the inner border. It was my first time in a quilt shop since Covid started! It was really nice to see everything with my own eyes and to talk to other quilters about fabric, lol. I didn't realize how much I missed it.

I thought a fairly dark border was needed to help ground the quilt. I used the remainder of the emerald fabrics from the hourglasses, and pieced them with some turquoise from my stash. The lime strip is also pieced from the leftovers from the center. I think the border did its job, it doesn't feel like the quilt will fly away any more!

So I'm happy to have that all done, and in only five months too! Feels like progress. Happy quilting everyone! 

Growing

Now that half my Rhodie Blooms blocks are sewn I've laid them out with the planned sashing to see how it will all look. I'm happy! Tilt your head because it will be sewn together on point. 😁

If you're familiar with Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail you can see her block right in the center there. I was playing with that, tried the hourglasses as sashing, saw the star shape, and decided to make that the middle of the block instead. 

I've used a different pink for the outside ring in each block. 

And a few purple fabrics too. I'm glad I added the purple, it helps to ground the quilt. 

I also auditioned a few different fabrics for that pink square in the center of the limes. The almost solid batik in the pictures above feels a little heavy. I was going to go all scrappy for those, but I quite like this floral:

It has all the same colors as the quilt! If I have enough I'm tempted to use it for all the squares. 

Anyway that's half so back to the sewing table! Happy quilting! ❤

First Rhodie Block

Here's the first block of my variation on Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail mystery quilt! Making circles out of squares and triangles just never seems to get old for me. 😁 I've decided to call it Rhodie Blooms, since it's more flowerlike than the original, and rhododendron is such a mouthful. 

My quilt will be square with 25 blocks. The remaining 24 are set up and ready to sew.

This should keep me busy for a while! I'm interested to see how the purple will fit in the block, so I'll do a few of those next.

Apparently Blogger has been bouncing or delaying the posting of some comments, so if it happened to you I apologize! But the settings are right so it's definitely Blogger doing it, not me. Thank you for reading in any case!

Happy quilting! ❤

Keep Going

It's so satisfying to watch the piles of units growing. I'm almost ready to start assembling blocks! This started as Bonnie Hunter's latest Quiltville mystery Rhododendron Trail, but I will be putting it together differently. What happens is that I play around with the units before the final reveal, find something i really like, and decide to branch out on my own from there.

I had none of the hourglass units made before the reveal because I was hoping to make fewer of them. Unfortunately my layout will actually require more! But it will be worth it.

I also wasn't sure how far my white on white background fabric would go, and where best to use it, so that is another reason I waited. Now, knowing my final layout, I was able to place some additional colors in the block. My blocks are more flowerlike, so I added orange and green to the pinks and purples. 

I used a few light silver grey prints as the background for the pink and green hourglasses. I'm interested to see what, if anything, the placement of the background fabrics adds to the final design of the quilt. I'm thinking that because they're less scrappy they may have a more dominant role, since they won't blend the same way. We'll see!

Those green squares will be used the same way as in Bonnie's quilt. The aqua print would have been that skinny sashing in Bonnie's layout. But, since I'm not doing that, I decided to use it as another background fabric. I love the combination of aqua and lime! I'm excited about all the colors tbh. 😂

How is everyone doing with their New Year's resolutions? I did really well for about two weeks. 😅 Oh, this is easy, I thought! It was worth it to keep reminding myself to release the tension, because I was feeling a lot happier. But, then distractions happened and I lost focus for a while. 

About a week ago I realized I had to refocus on my resolution. After I did, I started seeing other things I could do to make my life better. And a couple things to stop doing! I can at least say that I've learned not to beat myself up for getting off track. No special occasion required, just recommit and keep going! 

Happy stitching everyone! ❤

Let Go

Happy new year! How much tension are you holding in your body right now? I've realized that I've been in a constant state of fight or flight throughout this whole pandemic. It's just not healthy. Since it's the new year and time to think about better habits, my intention for the new start is to let go of all that resistance and defensiveness. It's an internal change not an external one. I still follow all the guidelines to keep myself and everyone around me safe. But I'm also trying to identify and release all the mental and physical resistance I'm carrying in myself. We all know that releasing stress is the best defense against illness. But I admit it's an ongoing practice. 😂

Not a very quilty resolution? Maybe, we'll see how it develops! 

2021 was a good year for my quilting. A dedicated sewing space has made a huge difference. So my plan for 2022 is to just carry on. I'm more in the mood to finish projects than start new ones. Of course, "finishing" may involve making physical some ideas I've been refining for a year or more on paper. 😉

My pictures today are from the current Quiltville mystery, Rhododendron Trail. But I've also been working on a dark background version of Grassy Creek that I may start sewing this year. I have several tops that are very close to done as well. It would be great if this year i can make equal progress on getting them quilted.

Rhododendron Trail is going in a different direction than I first planned. I pulled all those shadowy grey and purple fabrics for the darks, but I'm not sure I'll use them now. Since the clues are using large pieces in matched sets, I went back to my stash and got more large pink prints. And since my white on white fabric is getting depleted I supplemented it with those tiny hearts that just caught my eye when I looking around. 

I haven't made any of the hundreds of hourglasses in clue 4 yet because I was worried about how far my background fabric will go. I also plan to make the quilt square instead of rectangular, so my final numbers will be different. I'll wait to see how they are used before I start those. Hopefully I won't need as many! 

I hope everyone is hanging in there! Take care of yourselves. ❤

Rhodie 123

Week 4 of Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail mystery quilt has just been released, so I think i should catch you up on my work for the first 3 weeks. 

The week 1 HSTs are right above. You can see I have a very wide range of values and hues for the pinks. I can get away with it thanks to the constant white on white fabric I'm using for the background. I've finally remembered why I have that -- I bought it for the background of my Texas Star EPP project. It's well over 10 years old and purchased from an LQS that closed long ago, sadly. It was torture hand piecing it and I switched to a solid white. But it looks great here, I'm very happy with it. Love that it's finally having its moment!

Week 2 was flying geese. With a scrap quilt I try to avoid sewing the same fabric to itself, just to heighten the scrappy feel and highlight the piecing. I've noticed that when units are mirror images like these they often end up close together in the final reveal. So I used completely different fabrics for the left and right geese. Hopefully that will simplify assembly later on!

Week 3 is just adding more white to our week 1 HSTs. It's quite boring, lol. You can see that I've been trimming the dog ears as i go, which definitely makes it slower now as well. But I know accuracy is a problem for me with a long diagonal seam, and it helps me a lot if the square sides are cut to measure before I sew. So hopefully that will make assembly easier as well. 

I've done enough mysteries now to know that the final assembly is the real test, and rushing the early weeks just costs time in the end if you have to go back and fix things. 

I still have a lot of week 3 left, but week 4 finally cuts into our darks, so I may jump ahead a bit. I have a good feeling about this one, with all the sharp contrast and saturated colours it should really pop!

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!