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! ❤

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!