The Most Quiltiest Time...

Here's the sky outside at about 8:15 this morning. I'm sure that all over the northern hemisphere people are looking out at similar scenes these days. The clouds are so thick that the street lights come on in the middle of the afternoon, and inside we have the lights on all day. Nothing inspires me to quilt more than a day like this! To me it's the most, quiltiest time of the year.

Bonnie Hunter's first clue for En Provence came out this morning. You can read it here, for the next two months. We're making a whole bunch of all-white four patch blocks. "Woo hoo," I thought at first, "easy!" But...then I thought maybe this would be a fun place to do something silly with my flamingo fabric...

"Maybe I should wait and see how the squares are used before I make any commitments," I thought. (Although, on further reflection there's no way I'm going to fussy cut this fabric 200+ times. But, I decided to wait and see, so that's what I'll do.)

Outside, it is still perfect quilting weather:

Plus, I've been waiting all month to start a new project today. A new project. Today.

Allietare is the obvious substitution. It's so close to finished.

All the red blocks are done, and I just have seven of the black star blocks left.

So, I put this one together. Six left.

Then I remembered that it's AHIQ again this week! Thank goodness! The Allietare blocks are beautiful, but they are slow going with a lot of seams to match. 

Back in October I started a new improv-ish project. But I only made a couple of blocks before my back fell apart. Now I have like a "free week" to get that moving. This is it -- Liberated Stars!

These are Gwen Marston's style of liberated star block. I love the way they look, and they are fun to make, too. I should have had some in my Gwennie Medallion, but I wanted to re-purpose those bear claws instead.

Now I've decided to make a whole quilt of liberated stars. Liberated Stars for a New Day.

Yes! Remember this crazy thing?

That will be the centre. It's still a medallion, but Sue Garman's feathered star is the only thing left of her pattern. Last year I simplified it by enlarging all the pieces to suit my low-thread count fabric. This year I am going to liberate all the stars, large and small. 

I plan to make it much scrappier, too. I bought a lot of that Heirloom Manor collection from Connecting Threads (on sale now), which is very brown and tan. Now it will be primarily used for the backgrounds, and I'll use brighter scraps for the stars.

In fact, all those bright yellow star points are reclaimed fabric from Cardinal Stars. I had tons left over when I redesigned it, and I just couldn't bring myself to throw it all out.

I spent one evening watching tv with the seam ripper, and reduced the old hsts back into triangles. I know it seems crazy, and you may be relieved to know that the black triangles all went in the garbage!

But, I really think it was worth it, because you need triangles anyway to make the liberated stars, and everything was just the right size.

And this intense yellow does look sharp on the navy background:

There are some Brinton Hall leftovers in the centres, too. 

Scrappy and liberated seems way more interesting than my previous plans for this quilt. I've been thinking about and redesigning Stars for a New Day for years now. I guess it takes as long as it takes, because this is the plan that has traction and that I am 100% happy with. Another star quilt!

Let's hope I can do a little more before Bonnie's next clue for En Provence. :D

Flamingos!

Iza Pearl Flamingos

Flamingos!

Bonnie Hunter's Provence

For Bonnie!!

Right after the final reveal of Allietare last January, I started making colour plans for the next Bonnie Hunter mystery. For Allietare I pretty much stayed in the box, and only changed one colour from Bonnie's palette. This time, I wanted something totally different! My plan was to go with pure blue and white, and carefully manage the values to reveal the pattern. Cool and elegant, I thought.

Flamingos

Sometime mid-summer I got an email announcing the release of this gorgeous Flamingos collection by Melissa Ybarra of Iza Pearl Design. I love that watercolour style of print, I loved all the greens and aquas, and I've always loved flamingos. Wouldn't it be crazy, I suddenly thought, to forget the blue and white, and somehow use this collection for Bonnie's next mystery? I particularly liked all the blenders with the mini flamingos.

But, I squelched down the idea. I had a good plan. Then, for the first Slow Sunday Stitching link up after my summer break, hostess Kathy had a photo of a flamingo pool toy. I know Kathy has done Bonnie's mystery for several years, so there was that association again -- Flamingos, and Bonnie! I went shopping.

However, Bonnie's announcement of the new mystery, En Provence, was very tempting too. Her colourway is almost half purple, and she mentions a "halo" of magenta. Even though purple is not my favourite colour, this sounds very promising to me! The effect with dark and light purples, and some kind of bridge in magenta, could be really gorgeous. And yellow sunflowers! I love those too. Dilemma.

In the end, I still didn't have enough purple in my stash. And it turns out that flamingos are completely appropriate anyway!

Flamingos in Provence

By User Jjshapiro on en.wikipedia - Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is (was) here16:50, 28 August 2005 Jjshapiro 480×360 (68,708 bytes) (Flamingos in the Camargue, photographed 2004 by Jeremy Shapiro. {{GFDL}}), CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The word flamingo originates via Spanish or Portuguese from the old Provençal word for flame, and the Greater Flamingo nests in The Camargue nature preserve which is... en Provence. So that is a surprising amount of alignment for a theme that was supposed to be completely different! I had no idea there were flamingos in France.

Here is a helpful infographic that compares my colour plans with Bonnie's:

You can see the potential in that magenta halo of Bonnie's! Mine is much lower in contrast, but I hope the teal will still stand out:

The dark and light green flamingos will be joined with other similar shades from my stash. I still plan a scrappy look, with just a few flamingos here and there to tie it together. And I bought some larger pieces, enough for a wide border, of the main print at the top of the page, and this green leafy one:

I want to use all the most electric lime greens that I have, a wide range of pinks and corals, and very cool white backgrounds.

Although, if the first clue involves sewing the light and dark greens together, I will back off those really bright ones, because they drown out the darks. I'm hoping to sew both the light and dark green to the teal. That will look great!

It looks like a few of my Allietare leftovers (in the baggie) will work too. Ten days to go!

And no, Allietare is not finished, and my back is no better, but I am determined that it won't stop me completely. If I can get around half of the clue made each week, I will be happy. I have a lot of border fabric, so that will give me some options.

Who else is in this year?

Save this Space

So, it's been another frustrating and painful week here at Casa Monica. This is the last day to link up with the finale of the Gwennie-Inspired Medallion quilt along. This is where I am:

The theme is "Something Fishy," so it was a great opportunity to repeat the wavy background from the centre block. Fish are also designed and will be appliqued onto the waves. I'm happy with how it's all looking. But, my back is seriously wrecked again, for the third time since the start of the summer, so no progress there. Soon, hopefully!

You can see all the posts on my Gwennie Medallion here, including the finish when it's done.

My One Monthly Goal was to sew the binding on my Cardinal Stars quilt. And, this is where I am:

The hard part is done -- the yellow flange and red binding are both machine sewn to the front, and they are straight too! But, I strained my hand sewing the binding, so I'll have to take it slower. Frustrating! And, when it's done, you'll be able to see the finish here, as well as all the other posts on this quilt.

So, that's it for now. I can't wait to get back on track!

What's Up?

I know I've been MIA for a while, so I've been going through my camera this morning to see what I can share with you all. I've got some "progress" photos on the last round of the Gwennie Medallion, and my new guild challenge fabrics.

First, though, the autumn colours have been particularly good this year:

Outside, everything is looking beautiful. Inside, well...

The final clue for the Gwennie Medallion is "something fishy." My plan for the fishies has been the same since I read the clue. But, I still haven't started them, because I am wrestling with how to handle the corners.

I thought it would be good to carry the diagonal line of the light/dark log cabin layout into the final corners. I've saved this large triangle of background fabric from the basket block in Month 1. Maybe it could be the start of my corner blocks?

I made some strategic cuts.

The all-blue corner was not too bad. Don't ask me why it's so wide. I'm sure I had a reason.

I paired the blue triangles with some solid red to carry out that diagonal line, and built the block out log cabin style, as I did with the bear claws.

Since the project started my plan has been to have a wide solid red border after the final round. The idea with this corner was to transition the diagonal line out into the solid red.

"If I keep adding strips, eventually it will look right," I thought.

"I have to actually put it up on the wall and see how it all looks together," I thought.

Well, yes, those bloody red triangles were horrible, and no amount of building out would fix them.

Then I thought I would put my initials and the date in the corners instead. I unpicked all the blocks so I could re-use the strips for the letters.

I was happy with that plan, but yesterday I realized that another week had passed, and I still hadn't started. Back to the drawing board!

What I've been doing instead is my new guild challenge project. These three fabrics, from the "Charlotte" collection by Deborah Edwards of Northcott, have to be 50% of the quilt top. It's a small project, with a maximum perimeter of 120", (e.g. 30" x 30" (76 x 76 cm)).

The soft, traditional style has felt like a relaxing contrast to all these Gwennie shenanigans, so I've been spending a lot of time on it. Plus, it's due at the end of February, so there isn't a lot of time for deep thought. Unfortunately, I cannot share any progress photos at all, because it will be blind judging.

So, that's what's up with me, Next week may be a busy one, with a little playing around for AHIQ, the Cardinal Stars finish, and maybe the fishies too!

Brinton and Butterflies

Turquoise, green and hot pink butterflies!

It's time for the October Kaleidoscope of Butterflies link up, and I've done nothing at all on my "official" butterfly project, Down in the Garden. I can't believe it will soon be two years since Ink Week (really Ink Fortnight), and I still haven't finished embroidering the blocks. Oh, the shame!

Yes, well, maybe I would have more finishes if I actually did feel shame.

This project, however, Brinton Hall, is steamrolling over everything else. Today I made the 60 3" hsts that I'll need for the second border. The fabrics were all chosen and rough cut over the summer. Today I just had to pair them, sew, and trim.

And a few of them even have butterflies! Out in the real world, I'm also seeing the Monarch butterflies steadily heading southwest along the lake shore again.

I was careful to make sure every hst was a unique combination of fabrics. It was a fun day!

They will finish at 3", and I will set them with 1" warm beige sashings. Leigh Latimore's design uses 1/2" sashings, but I feel like these strong prints need more room to breathe. Plus, the math worked out perfectly! That is always my sign to stop tweaking the design. :D

In fact, I have been redesigning, and tweaking, and redesigning again, this project since the beginning of the summer. I've changed it so many times that I lost track of the different counts. So I had more hst fabric cut than I needed. And, apparently my final design will only need 16 of the hexagon rosettes, even though I made 20!

But, the end is in sight, because I have simplified the final border by removing all the handwork. None of the handwork in Latimore's outer border is in the original Anna Brereton quilt, so that was an easy decision to make.

I will make the pieced "square in a square" block, because that was in the original, and I think it is a good looking block! I am keen to get started on that, it should be a good challenge. Lots of quarter square triangles!

So, this has been 54 of the 60 hsts. I made them in sets of 10, but 9 fit so nicely on my rotating mat there.

Now, I really have to crack on with Something Fishy!

OMG for October

Just a short post for today. One Monthly Goal (OMG) has been going since January, but this is my first time participating. This month I really want to get the binding sewn onto my Cardinal Stars quilt. I quilted it six months ago, and it has been languishing because a) summer is too hot to sit with a big quilt in my lap, and b) I want to make a fancy two-colour binding, and I haven't been 100% sure of how I want to do it.

But, now the weather has cooled off, and I think I have a reasonable plan. The binding strips were cut long ago, and when I opened the box, I was surprised to see that I even ironed the red ones in half already! So I am primed for success. :D

Here's the before photo:

Check out all the other goal-setters at the October link up, right here.

Log Cabins and Stars

For the Gwennie-Inspired Medallion quilt along, the theme for Month 3 is log cabins, and the Month 4 theme is stars. I hoped that my bear claw blocks, that I rejected in Month 2, would still be useful. This is their chance! Mama bear and baby bear are now Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the two most familiar constellations in the northern sky.

In North America we know the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, which are the brightest parts of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. In Europe they see it when it is rotated around, and call the Big Dipper the Plough.

The Big Dipper has seven stars, and the Little Dipper has six, so I chose seven big bear claws and six small ones, and filled them out with some log cabin piecing. Two for one!

But really, it was the "log cabin" theme that unlocked the entire design for me. I thought it would be different to wrap strips around the whole medallion, log cabin style. A few others had the same idea! From there it was a short hop to the idea to continue the light/dark layout through all the borders.

I also sewed together all the small "crumbs" that were left over from the log cabin strips, and used them to fill in a few of the gaps.

And I used the brown and grey printed plaids from the centre block to make two 1/4" (6 mm) key line borders. I've been keen to try this tutorial by Barbara Robson for a skinny border, and I'm happy to say that it is easy and it works!

Those are the same plaids, by the way, that I've been using to make rosettes for Brinton Hall.

The last theme, for Month 5, is "Something Fishy." That will fit perfectly on the remaining two blue sides of the medallion! It's all coming together now. :D

Fortunately for me, Lori says the final link up will be open all month. I'm going to take a week or so to finish it up before my next post. Might as well do it right!

Childhood

Knock knock

Who's there?

Olive

Olive who?

Thank you!

I love you too!

For the non-English speakers (or you know, those who may not remember), "olive who?" sounds like "I love you." So you have just baited the other person into confessing their love! I remember my little sister telling this joke with glee when she was about five years old.

So, this is my solution for Month 2 of the Gwennie-Inspired Medallion quilt along. The theme is "Childhood," and I think a silly riddle checks that box. I was able to continue my "olive" theme from the first month. Improv letters like this are not uncommon in Gwen Marston's quilts either. And, I'm migrating to mostly solid fabrics, which is another thing many of Gwen's quilts do.

The theme for Month 3 is "Log Cabin," and you can see that foreshadowed in the way I'm attaching the borders:

And, since childhood was a long time ago, I did go ahead and use hourglasses in the corners as well.

So, I'm very happy with it now!

Remember these bear claws that I made and rejected for round 2?

This was a story about going camping and seeing a mother and baby bear running through the campground one night. Childhood memory + baby bear = twice as good, or so I first thought. But I've realized the problem was simply that the colours were too dark, too soon.

Now I know that they aren't bear claws at all. They are stars.

Months 3 & 4, log cabins and stars, coming soon! In the meantime, check out the other improv quilters at the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters' monthly link up, right here.

It's a Warm Finish!

It's Warm Inside is finally a finished quilt!

This poor quilt has really had its ups and downs. I designed it to be Quilt as You Go (QAYG), with the narrow white cotton sashings. But, between the fluffy flannel log cabin blocks and all the loose batting, it was way too dusty for my allergies. So, I pieced it all together and took it to a longarm rental place to quilt it myself.

Wait for the chorus...

That turned out to be a really miserable experience that started with a friend of the owner setting up a quilt on the machine I had reserved, and which went way downhill from there. I should have walked out right then, but alas, I was not as smart as the song. The clincher was when the owner told me that my quilting idea was wrong and looked bad, when I was about half done. Fortunately, there are other fish in the sea!

But, despite all the hardship, in the end I think it's a likeable quilt. The snowmen are jolly, and the simple quilting works fairly well on the flannel logs. I circled around all the snowglobes in the border, which made them quite puffy:

The fat red binding stands out well too. I had a couple of yards of aqua, white and red Christmas fabric that I think I meant for a border at one time. But it matched perfectly, so I used it on the back here, and filled in the remainder with the leftover snowmen fabrics from the front.

I have Mimi Dietrich's book Happy Endings, which includes this idea for piecing the label right into the back:

Since I had to piece the back anyway, it made sense to me.

So, I'm glad to have it done, only two years later than planned! I'm catching up. :D To see all the posts on this quilt, please click here.

The gnome? He kept his thoughts to himself.

And Some Dots

It's been two weeks, and I just have a little hand sewing to share today for Slow Sunday Stitching. The day after my last post, I was smoothing out my Gwennie Medallion basket block on the bed for this photo...

...and my back cracked and folded. Two days in bed, two days mostly in bed, but the good news is that I heal well, and the x-rays are clear.

I have not been back on the sewing machine since, but it has given me time to re-think that wavy border. I unpicked it a few days ago. Today, with luck, I will straighten out the sides, re-attach it, and move on to the first border. With luck, I will be appliqueing more olives by the end of the day!

While I was recovering, I did manage a little EPP for Leigh Latimore's Brinton Hall. When you really can't think at all, EPP is the perfect activity! I need 20 rosettes for the first border, and I ran out of plaids. Rather than repeating fabrics, I thought some dots would work:

So that will brighten things up!

I have one more suitable dotty fabric, this blue. Then I think I will have to repeat one of the plaids, probably the bright yellow from the last post.

I am still not 100% decided on the background and floater fabrics, or even on the design. The original Anna Brereton quilt, which inspired Latimore's design, has octagons, and I happen to have suitable octagons in my EPP stash. I've sewn up a few, but the way is still not clear.

But, I have to shelve that for now, because if I have any chance at all of meeting the October 1 deadline for the Gwennie medallion, I have to get back on that horse!