Rose Boll Flimsy

I'm still slowly excavating my WIP storage drawers. There are SO many projects in there! I almost wish Ikea storage was less efficient, then I would be closer to the bottom by now! 🤣🤣🤣

Anyway as I mentioned last time I finally made a decision on the border for Rose Boll, my "red and white" version of Bonnie Hunter's Roll Roll Cotton Boll. Bonnie has a triple row of squares set on point for her border, which certainly looks great. I sketched a few colour variations, or maybe a single row of squares:

But I really didn't want to fiddle around with that, and I felt like the quilt was already very busy with all those floral fabrics. When I put it away I was thinking just some chunks of the reds would be best. But I guess I didn't exactly love that either or I would have done it at the time. 

Then while I was finishing the String Tulips top I realized that random string piano keys could work. I like how they have the same visual weight as the centre of the quilt. And they have the right balance between formal and improv piecing. 

Sorry that is a very blurry picture! I pieced the floater from some of the florals with the whitest backgrounds. Because the piano key strings were randomly cut, and not perfect strips, I pieced them on paper foundations using pages from a phone book. The piecing went quickly and I think it is a low stress way to keep everything going in the same direction! It's fun to compose as you sew, too, you don't have to preplan every detail.

I didn't want to do the mitered corner but that diagonal line just felt necessary, to echo all the diagonals in the center. I had to hand sew the inner corners to make them lie flat, but it was worth it.

So here's the whole thing, 89.5" square at the moment! 

I've noticed that I go through a similar emotional range on all my projects. I get the idea and do some sketches and I think, that'll be awesome and I'm all excited. Then starting the project is fun and I like sewing all the early units. Then you have to assemble the blocks and it starts to drag, and then you have to join the blocks and it's even worse, lol. And then the centre is done and I should be happy but I'm usually not. Somehow it doesn't live up to my expectations at that point.

It's not until I come up with the right border, get it sewn and lay out the finished top that i think, well, that's actually pretty good! One could easily say, piano keys, what is the big deal about that? And I think the answer is that if the border is right it flows and it's not a big deal. And if it was wrong you would see it right away!

Anyway, I'm still enjoying working with strings so I'm planning more projects with those. And I'm still really enjoying putting my own spin on Bonnie Hunter's patterns, so there will likely be more of those to come as well! I have a dark background version of Grassy Creek planned that I think will be gorgeous, but I think I still want to finish at least one more UFO before I start anything new.

I'm not ruling out the next mystery, though! Just as I'm writing this I'm thinking a Halloween colour scheme could be fun to try! Black, purple, brown, it could be really lush! I guess we'll see! 🤣

Thanks for reading and happy quilting everyone! 

String Tulips Flimsy

My queen sized version of the AHIQ String Tulip QAL is a finished top! I love it and I'm so glad Ann shared her instructions for this fun project. 

It turned out a lot more green than I expected, lol. The background fabric is green and yellow on white, so I thought it would read more white than it does. It's good, though, I'm so over that low volume phase from a few years ago. I look at some of those UFOs and I have no motivation to finish them.

The red diamond shape around the center was not strictly pre-planned. While I was assembling the string blocks I thought a diagonal line would be useful in the outer border. But as soon as I started laying it out the diamond in the inner border was obviously the way to go.

It's quite large, about 224 cm (88") square. I'm going to do another wide binding since I really like how the binding on Picnic turned out. This one will be scrappy reds using the fabrics in the tulips. For the quilting I'm thinking a leafy panto will look good. 

So yay, another one assembled! These large quilts are definitely what i enjoy the most. I started a wall quilt after finishing Picnic and I had to cut it short because I really wasn't enjoying it. I need a bigger sandbox to play in. 😁

Next up will be the border for Rose Boll. I had to pull it out to make sure my red binding fabrics for the tulips weren't needed on that (they weren't), and I finally decided what to do there. More strings! 🤣

Happy quilting everyone ❤

Finished Picnic!

Finally 😂

I think this top went together very quickly and easily, but then it took forever to quilt and bind. It's the largest quilt I've finished, so that's probably why the learning curve was so high. It's about 218 x 234 cm, 86" x 92".

I named it Picnic because I used up several old food-themed novelty fabrics, as well as some printed ginghams. My design was inspired by pictures I'd seen of a quilt by Sujata Shah in her book Cultural Fusion Quilts. I've blogged about that before here.

Because it's so large I took it to a DIY longarm, but that didn't go well. Eventually I decided to do an all over stipple on my home machine. It was heavy work but I'm satisfied with the result. Hopefully now that I've learned i can quilt a few more the same way.

I also cut two different bindings for the quilt, but it's been so long that I don't even remember what I thought the issue was! Anyway this turquoise one seemed fine when I looked at it this week so I just went ahead with it. It's almost an inch wide, 2+ cm, which surprised me! But I'm just assuming it was a design choice and I think it works fairly well. 😉

Everything is machine stitched because my hand sewing situation is not much improved. 

Anyway I'm very glad to have it done and I plan to put it to use right away! And I'm on a binding blitz right now so I hope to have a few more small finishes to share soon.

Happy stitching everyone! And one more photo for the road...

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! ❤