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! 🎉🎉🎉

Overthinking

My original plan with Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune mystery, when it started last year, was pretty much to follow the pattern. Except for the dark background, I used about the same colours as Bonnie in the same places as Bonnie. I did plan from the beginning to make it larger, and hoped to use one of my old Asian fabric panels in the centre, since Bonnie's inspiration was her trip to China last year two years ago. 😂

Eventually I accepted that my very western fabrics didn't play well with the panel, so that idea is on hold and I went with the Mariner's Compass I showed last time instead.

While I was playing around with the layout of the quilt, I had the bright idea of blending the edge of the blocks out into a scrappy brown border. Partly because just following the pattern started to chafe, and partly because some how when the clues came out, I cut way too many brown squares.

I really have no idea how that happened. It is over 3 inches/8 cm high!

Anyway, I made quite a few of these...

...instead of these...

...with the goal of doing something like this.

Fast forward one year, and I am now regretting it. It would be a lot faster and easier to just make all the blocks the same. And it would give me more flexibility in the final layout, I expect. And most of all, the tricky border is not really going to be better. The quilt was already good.

But, today I accepted that it would be more complicated to unpick all those units, than to just keep going. So the tricky border lives.

I do have to say that I am loving all those browns. They really give so much life to the colour scheme.

It's all a balancing act, isn't it? I've been looking at quilts with fresh eyes this past couple of months, and I think one thing I've been guilty of in the past was overthinking and making my projects too complicated. And then they stall. Reading the first AHIQ post for 2020 (which is thoughtful and beautifully written, btw), I laughed to see that the definition of modern utility quilt now includes an emphasis on a finished quilt. I am sure that is one of Ann's contributions to the dialogue. 😉 Totally right too, and I'm hoping to channel some of that energy this year.

Of course, you don't have to look very far back in my feed to see this crazy idea. But obviously it will be EPIC and I still plan to do it.

But I am also hoping to maintain this new perspective, and try to keep my projects from getting overly fussy and involved. The question is if the extra detail adds value to the finished quilt. If it does, then great, but if it doesn't, move along.

Happy New Year!

Pattern by Judy Mathieson

So, it turns out that I am very bad at quitting anything. I'd like to say I've found my compass, or something apt like that, but truth is I'm just blowing around in the wind. But in any case, I may as well blog about it. 😂

The new Quiltville mystery, Frolic, has started! I started too, but I'm not so sure my colours are working. I'm waiting for the reveal to see if I need to change course. In the meantime, I have plenty left to do on last year's mystery, Good Fortune! I've shared a little of that on Instagram, but never here on the blog.

I decided to try a dark background for a change, and I'm very happy with that. The instructions called for string units, but I didn't have a lot of orange strings. I tried some slightly improvisational skinny inserts instead:

I'm happy with them too. Of course, the process of making them created a lot of orange strings! And since I decided to make the quilt larger by adding blocks, I made some string blocks as well.

My new laptop doesn't have the good editing software, yet, so apologies, my pictures are not the usual standard.

The orange blocks are nearly finished. I made two test blocks for the stars...

They looked a little small when I took the photo, but I don't know if that is just a question of pressing or if I need to tweak them.

And that Mariner's Compass at the top? A medallion for the centre! The pattern is easy foundation paper piecing from Judy Mathieson's book Mariner's Compass Quilts, New Directions (C&T Publishing 1995).

I'm super happy with everything in this quilt, the warm colours will be really nice in winter.

I want to do another dark background for this year's quilt, but I'm not quite sure of the colour placement. Bonnie's colours blend where mine contrast, so I think I should wait for the reveal. And as we all know, I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy.

Happy new year everyone! Let's sew!

Until We Meet Again!

Hi everyone! Long time no see. 😄

As you all know, I haven't posted in over a year, and I've decided to let my .com url expire. I'm not sure what will happen to the blog. It'll be somewhere in cyberspace I guess.

Everything is fine with me, and I hope you all are doing well too! I still sew now and then, but not as much. I have to admit, I've been mostly hanging out on mobile, where three emojis constitute a deep conversation. And it's just so convenient!

So, you can still find me on Instagram, @lakeviewmonica. 

Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading and sharing their work! It's been a wonderful experience and it's been so great to connect with like minded people around the world through our blogs. I really feel like drawing a line here is going to open up something else, so, it's definitely not goodbye. Until we meet again! Take care everyone.

💗😂😉

The Big Rainbow Plan for 2018

...and probably 2019 too.

Blue for January

So, this is my first post of 2018 for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Last year's project was a rainbow version of Bonnie Hunter's Talkin Turkey. I finished the blocks but they are still not all sewn together.

The first colour for 2018 was blue, and I did start my new project back in January. I didn't share it then because I was giving myself time to change my mind. But, it's working and it looks good, so it's on. And it's the project I've been most keen to get moving since my break.

This year, in addition to all the rainbow colours, I'm going to have a range of shapes to keep things interesting.

And the entire quilt is going to be foundation paper pieced. It's slow, but I realized that it will be the easiest way to manage a wide range of scraps, and all the different shapes and sizes I'm going to need.

Is it starting to look familiar to anyone?

How about now:

Yes, it's Sue Garman's Halo Medallion, the 2017 BOM she designed for The Quilt Show, and her last one before she passed away. The pattern is still available this year to TQS members. I loved all the borders and the distinctive Halo Star in the centre, but I knew that a whole month of sewing flying geese, followed by a whole month of pinwheels or HSTs, would never work for me. Then last year I had the idea of superimposing a rainbow over the whole thing:

That way, for each RSC colour of the month, I get to sew a cross section of different things.

Obviously, it's a crazy idea, but I've done a Herculean amount of planning, and so far, so good. My rainbow has 11 colours plus grey and/or beige in the two corners (still TBD), so it's most certainly going to run into 2019.

I was also thinking of doing Bonnie Hunter's Garden Party for RSC this year, but I've come to my senses on that. It will have to wait.

Anyway, I'll get into more details in future posts. In the meantime, check out the rest of the RSCer's at this week's link up.

Sunset Queen

Hello!

So, I didn't take any of my planned breaks last year, and now I've been on an unplanned break instead. I am fine, it was my dad who went into the hospital with pneumonia earlier this spring. The following day we were met with a phalanx of social workers, and a host of pitying looks from all the staff. They sent him home. His dementia makes him extremely volatile, and they were happy to see him go. Of course, we had to get him settled again. The pneumonia is gone, thanks to the pneumonia vaccine he had a few years ago. And he is relatively steady now, so this week I've actually been sewing.

This little project below has been a finished top for six weeks. I used Ann P. Shaw's pattern Barnyard Queen, and I call mine Sunset Queen:

Ann is carrying on as the authorized teacher of Ruth McDowell's freezer paper piecing technique. For my first try, I liked the idea of a full sized pattern and a forgiving subject like this. I did alter the background and one of the legs slightly to give her a more forward stance. I found the method was very logical and well explained. You are on your own though, when it comes to choosing fabrics. But, I like that part, and it helps to have a big stash. The eye was a lucky find in Kaffe Fassett's brown Jupiter, which is also the long stripe in the tail. Basically it was an excuse to play with fabric!

I may or may not do one of the roosters, too. It was just the right degree of challenging. This week, though, I've been back to my UFOs, and this is the first photo of fabric I've taken in weeks:

Exciting, eh? Those are strings for the alternate string blocks in Rose Boll. I started them last summer, and they are slow going. I'm only about half way through, and I've expanded the strictly beige palette to include pink and yellow, just to keep myself motivated.

I've also dusted off (literally) my RSC 2018 project, and I plan to share the first step soon. I've read no blogs at all for months, so I hope you all can forgive me. It's going to take a while to catch up!

Heart of Ringo

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's been over a month since my last blog post, but there's still been plenty of sewing, and plenty of thinking, happening here. I've done a lot of work on Bonnie Hunter's most recent mystery, On Ringo Lake, and it's going well. But, I've changed mine so much that it doesn't look much like Ringo Lake any more, and I've been quite perplexed by how to describe that process. My first Ringo Lake post was in November, and after that it's just been Instagram. I always call myself a "process blogger," but I'm not sure that is serving me well any more. For the next while, I'm going to focus more on milestones and finishes, and see how that goes.

So anyway, I think On Ringo Lake is a gorgeous block, and I've been a little jealous of all the great versions that are being shared on the link ups, since mine will be so different. In the January 8 link up, Wooly Quilter had three blocks on her design wall in the shape of a heart, and I thought that would be a great quilt right there. I always like hearts, and it gave me an excuse to make the block as written, so I went for it!

Three blocks, the sashing, a range of setting triangles...

...some really wide borders, done! Three days, so that is my fastest make yet. Right now it is 56" x 72" (142 x 183 cm). 

I'm so glad I went ahead. I love the crystalline look it has. All the fabric was in my stash. The solids are Kona, the pink is COTY 2017, pink flamingo. I don't know when or why I bought the white, but it was a little worse for wear so I was glad to finally use it well.

I know a professional quilter would have a field day with those wide open spaces, but, I think I have a simple idea that I can do myself. Into the quilting queue it goes!

My first Ringo Lake project, which I'm now calling Ontario Shores, is at the "just a nine patch" stage. These are the first 25 blocks, lined up and ready to sew.

I hope I can stay focused, because an exciting new toy was just delivered! It's an Eversewn Sparrow 30, and I think it will result in some big changes to my project line up. I am pretty sure I should sew these before I open the box...