Monday, May 3, 2021

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.

Saturday, May 1, 2021

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!

Thursday, January 30, 2020

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! 🎉🎉🎉
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