Terra Cotta Mini

After my stroke, I was itching to get back to the sewing room. I had done a little bit of English paper piecing in the hospital, but machine piecing is my preferred sewing method. But, my first week or so back was definitely time of recovery. I was worn out, I was sore, I wasn't walking very well at all. And I wasn't super confident in my fine motor skills needed for cutting and precision sewing. I was no where near confident to work on curves, which was my current WIP. Oh, and I wasn't limber enough to get down on the floor, so finishing the quilt I had in progress was out, too, since I was piecing rows together at this point. 

So, I had to figure out what to sew that I was up for sewing, and also had all the materials I needed...I toyed with a simple charm pack/HST quilt that's on my list, but I didn't want to use white for the background and didn't have enough of any other fabrics for the background, so that was out. I thought about Interwoven, by Lo and Behold Stitchery, but I didn't have solids and wasn't sure if the prints I picked were small-enough scale, and I read a reviewer who said the pattern required a lot of precision, so that was out. 

I had ordered a random sample pack of mini quilt patterns from Modern Makes (by Alderwood Studio) on Black Friday so I looked at the 5 patterns I was sent. To be honest, the set of patterns I got was pretty disappointing and if anything, it confirmed my decision to not participate in the program. I really only liked 2 out of 5, and 1 was excessively disappointing. Oh well, c'est la vie, non? One that I like is called Terra Cotta and I decided to make it as my first post-stroke project. The great thing about mini quilts is they don't take a lot of fabric, the cutting is minimal, and they wrap up quick. Plus, I can quilt mini quilts on my own machine. I'm not confident enough to quilt big quilts myself, so I send them out. But minis can be completely finished in a few hours. 

Luckily, I had some solids that worked great together and I finished it up a couple weeks ago. After I pieced it, it took me a few days to figure out how to quilt it. I didn't want to just quilt along the pieced style, I felt like that was boring. So I looked at my Walk book, by Jacquie Gering, and found a great design I felt like I could do. 

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and the only frustrating part is that I used a Sewline ceramic pencil to mark lines for quilt guides and I didn't actually get it all out. I tried scrubbing it with water with a microfiber cloth and a toothbrush, I even washed it in my washing machine (air-dried it after to avoid the heat of the dryer). They're faint, so I just gave up. Sadly. Lesson learned, don't use the ceramic pencils for quilt marking! At least for me. 

Scrappy Chain

I got my Irish chain quilt bound a couple weeks ago and am just now getting around to blogging about it. I did take a bit of time to decide what to bind it with; at first I thought I should use an aqua fabric, and so I decided to pick up a solid because I don't love using prints on bindings (it feels like a waste, same thing with backings...) but in the end, I went with a low volume. I really like the stripe as a binding, and I like that it doesn't stand out the same way a darker binding would. So often I treat them as focal frames, and I think sometimes a quilt doesn't need that. 

My binding is still a tad wavy and I'm getting frustrated by this. The backing is regular quilting cotton, a cut I received from a friend who was destashing. I thought the wavy borders might be due to the minky I typically go for, but this is not minky. It's also not quite as bad as normal...still, I'd like to figure out what I'm doing wrong. 

Scrap Quilts: Irish Chain Edition

I have far too many scraps. And I'm not very good at using them, not really. My problem is that I save pieces that are far smaller than I should because I *might* use them. I do, on occasion, use excessively small pieces, but not super often. Another problem I have is hoarding those scraps. If I have a large-ish scrap and I need a smaller piece, I'm loathe to cut it down if I cut off a large but not large enough piece, because then that piece I'm cutting off is wasted.

Yes, I have a problem. 

So, as you can imagine, I have a lot of scraps. I wanted to do a scrap quilt just as a quilt instead of my usual leaders and enders project this year (I have a great one going right now that I think will turn out so good!), and I saw a simple Irish Chain quilt in a monochrome color way with low volume scraps on Instagram somewhere. They're not groundbreaking, of course, so it could have been anywhere, but I think it might have been on A Crafty Fox, she has a lot like that. And I think Diary of a Quilter has a tutorial...

Anyway, I decided to wing it, because I know how to sew nine patches. And  I did it in aqua. I opted to sew with what I had, so some got sewn as strips and then subcut, and others got sewn together as individual squares. 

Against my better judgement, I decided to alternate the nine patches with single squares of fabric. I should have sewn nine patches together with just low volumes for the alternate squares, but in my head I thought that might get too busy. However, I think the way I did it is too plain. It did make it quick, though! 

I don't love this top. (It is fully sewn together, now, I just didn't get a pic of it while it was daylight before I folded it up and delivered it to the quilter...so you'll have to wait until it comes back!) AND, somehow I still manage to get blocks mixed up as I sew rows together. I ended up with a couple of background squares way too close together even though I did lay it out before I started...weird. I mean, weird that I clearly haven't figured out my method for getting rows to my sewing machine in order, even though I totally think I have, and I've been sewing quilts for a lot of years by now. Oh well, that's what seam rippers are for, eh?

I exclusively used scraps for this top, and I decided to use a piece of Anna Maria Horner fabric that I was given for the backing. It's a turquoise and it doesn't really match my aqua tones super well, though there are some that are a fair enough match, and it has yellow and red and pink and citrine flowers in sort of stripes. I didn't think about lining up the stripes before cutting and luckily I was able to flip one piece around and have it work out well enough...sigh. But, the backing was FREE, and I'm all about that for a scrappy project, lol

Magic Squared

During the pandemic, April Rosenthal designed a follow up collection to her very adorable Midnight Magic Halloween collection from a year or two earlier. I'm not generally a big Halloween fan, but I really loved (a lot of) that line, especially the florals. It was Halloween, but not overly cutesy, not overly Halloween-esque, and just really nice. However, the fabric faced major delays, and apparently, a lot of shops cancelled their orders. When I saw Abby Latimer had precuts, I ordered a jelly roll and a charm pack to make sure I had at least some of the fabric, and luckily, a local quilt shop got most of the line in yardage so I was able to buy some cuts of the best prints, especially the florals. 

But, what to do with the precuts? I don't usually use precuts. I feel wasteful if I don't use the entire piece of fabric, so trimming a charm square down to 3 or 4 inches is out of the question. I thought about a simple star block, using the charm squares as centers and the jelly roll to make flying geese for the points, but I didn't love the math. And then I saw a quilt on the cover of a book, and realized it would be perfect. I had seen the book at my mom's, but it was simple enough I was able to do the math myself. 

I cut some 2-1/2" strips from some of my Halloween fabric to mix in because I don't love quilts made from just one line of fabric, and got to work. It came together really quickly and I love it!

Apparently, other people loved it too. My quilter, Abby Latimer, posted a picture of it on Instagram and lots of people asked what the pattern was. Abby didn't know, I responded to one person who tagged me and gave the details, but I couldn't believe how rude some people were. "Why post a quilt without posting the pattern information??" or some such variation. Berating a longarm quilter for not providing detailed information she didn't have just seemed very rude. I hopped back onto the post to check out the comment section when I received a DM from someone I don't know who asked if I sold patterns because Abby wouldn't respond to her questions. I was appalled at how she had berated Abby, telling her she was so unprofessional and how could she possibly run a quilting business like this...Abby was more patient than I would have been, and I didn't dare respond because I didn't think I could without being rude back. However, a simple glance through the comments would have revealed my source for the design, and if she'd spent as much time scrolling through comments as she did berating Abby, she would have seen the answer to her question. Sigh. The internet has killed civility. 

I backed it with an amazing Halloween print I found on Hawthorne Supply Co on clearance. Love that! I think it's Art Gallery, but I'm not totally sure...

Magic Squared, long arm quilted by Abby Latimer, completed 2022

Hidden Stars

My older girls have been asking me to make them new bed quilts for a while. They've been jealous that the twins have minky-backed bed quilts, and theirs have boring-and-not-as-soft flannel. Even though they still share a room, I think they were also tired of having coordinated quilts and wanted something more personal.

It was on my list, but low. I have so many other projects that I'm more excited about, and they HAVE bed quilts. 

Then, I ordered a Florida jelly roll by Ruby Star Society when it was on sale and my oldest daughter fell in love with it when I opened it up to brainstorm. I don't usually buy precuts or sew with them because I've always found it easier to use yardage, and I don't typically sew quilts from just one line. Sometimes there's a dominant line, but I rarely use exclusively one line. 

This quilt is no exception. I used the whole jelly roll because it was a half-sized roll anyway, but I added a bunch of strips from my yardage too. And I copied a pattern I had seen online somewhere, doing the math myself  (not sure it was jelly roll friendly anyway). I love the secondary pattern it creates with the stars in the middle between the blocks and she was excited about it too. 

We backed it with dark gray minky and she loves it. At least, I think she does...she still mostly sleeps under her comforter. *shrug*

Long arm quilted by Abby Latimer, completed March 2022