I Will Spend the Winter in a Flower Garden

Contrary to my young years, summer is my least favorite season. And August my least favorite month ... I'm weary of the heat, my under-the-eaves sewing room is too hot and everything in the garden is past it's best bloom.  But just on the horizon is autumn ... cool crisp air, bright blue skies ... and the beginning of a new Quilting Season.

This year's TV time project is to finish the Flower Garden quilt that my Grandmother started back in the 60's.  YiaYia got all the flowers pieced.  I joined the flowers together.  And now she's ready to quilt.  Since this is all pieced by hand, I am going to quilt it by hand.

Grandma's template for cutting the hexies.
1960.  3 lbs of hamburger or sausage for $1.00

These hexies were not English paper pieced.
They were just plain ol' hand pieced.
The key is learning to pivot and anchor each of the Y-seams.
After a few, you get the knack.

If I had to bother with templates, this quilt never woulda happened.

Early in my quilt life I pulled all of the flowers with red centers from Grandma's pieced blocks and made a small baby quilt.

 ... and did the quilting by hand.
I think it was my first large hand quilting project.
It was lap quilted without a hoop.
I should have used a hoop.

If I had used a hoop there may be fewer
 globs of fabric where they ought not to be.

The other thing I learned was not to fully quilt each hexie ... there is no definition of the individual flower garden blocks.

So this Flower Garden quilt will be quilted
to follow the blocks, not the hexies.
I am much happier with the look on the back.

I am still finding the hoop a bit awkward
because there is lots of turning as
I quilt around the blocks.
But I'm sure I'll get better at it.

This is a big quilt ... 90 x 95 ... 99 blocks
There is lots of opportunity to hone my craft.

A Short Tale of Two Quilts

I only had one quilt in mind when I started cutting fabrics ... a contemporary lap quilt with Flying Geese blocks.  After cutting all the 7 1/2 in squares to make the geese, I had a lot more fabric cut than I needed for one quilt.  So voila and ooh-la-la ... a coordinating baby quilt.

Lap on the left, Baby on the right

And just as a side note (because I go off on tangents so easily) the French really do say ooh-la-la with cute little regional variations ... the Parisians say it more ho-la-la.  And the Italians really do say Mama Mia ... I've heard it with my own ears.  Ok, back to quilts ...

A simple white binding

4 different fabrics for the binding
so each corner
is a different color

As per my usual, the Flying Geese quilt was laid out in EQ7.  I played around with having the geese flying in all different directions but decided I liked them flying in formation.

Making Flying Geese blocks is painless and fun when you use the full square method which I first saw years ago when Simply Quilts was still on the air.

Here is a link to '...laugh yourself into Stitches' web site.  She has a great tutorial on the full square method for flying geese.  http://chezstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/no-waste-flying-geese-tutorial_17.html  Also, checkout Stitches quilting ... some pretty amazing work.

  

Just cuz, I made Hourglass blocks with the remaining 7 1/2 inch squares. I ended up with 4 blocks with the white fabric and didn't like the white randomly placed ... so made a design feature out of them with a Square in a Square block in the middle.  I really like the effect.

' 1/4" mark ' has a great tutorial on easy sew hourglass blocks.  She marks her sewing surface like I do so she doesn't have to mark the center line on each piece she sews ... big time saver.  http://quarterinchmark.blogspot.com/2013/05/tutorial-hourglass-block-without-marking.html 

The back of the lap quilt.

There was one last Flying geese block left so it was incorporated into a strip on the back to give the reverse side something interesting ... and I love not so many scraps left at the end of a project.

Soft tonal fabrics with not much pattern ... love these colors together.

Available in my Etsy shop.

Don't know if anyone will be interested in companion
lap and baby quilts, but thought it might be a nice "Mother and Child" gift for a new mom

.https://www.etsy.com/listing/157783016/summer-sale-10-off-modern-baby-girl?ref=shop_home_active

https://www.etsy.com/listing/157783706/summer-sale-10-off-modern-lap-couch?ref=shop_home_active

Aqua Blue and Lime Green and Two Very Different Quilts

Aqua looks good with just about every color ... but my favorite is with lime green.  I've yet to meet something aqua that I was not immediately drawn to.  My heart's desire is a pair of aqua cowboy boots ... someday, sigh.

The circles quilt I made a couple years ago as a wall hanging in the laundry room to hide the electrical panel.  The walls are a soft soft lime color and the floor is black and white check so it looks really zippy. I'm going to try and make a Christmas wall hanging with lime green and red (same plan as I had last year ... one of these year's anyway).

The chevron zigzag quilt is a girls quilt I just finished for Etsy.  I made the chevrons using a square two-patch method because I wanted the lime green strip a wee bit smaller than the aqua strips ... you don't have the option to vary the widths with the half square or triangle method.

The squares are 6" and the circles are roughly 3" and
the circles are pieced with the freezer paper method.

Anyone who has done their own quilting is familiar with Leah Day's website The Free Motion Quilting Project.  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

I did the quilting in a 'stream of consciousness' way using several of Leah's patterns.  It was a blast to do!  With the heavy quilting it causes a trapunto effect on the front and I hand quilted around the circles to give them even better definition.

The batting is 100% polyester because I wanted to minimize the puckering since it's a wall hanging.  For the quilts I keep warm with I don't like heavy quilting because it makes the quilt too flat (learned the hard way) and I always strive for just the right amount of wonderful quilty puckering ... it's that quilty puckering that makes a quilt so comforting, and warm.

And back to the other aqua lime quilt ... the back is a wonderful Michael Miller gingham that I got years ago.  I have the same pattern it in pink too. They make a wonderful quilt backs.

The strip is made with the little leftover bits from the zigzags.  I really like pieced backs ... and I really like not having scraps left. There was next to nothing left on this quilt.

While we're on the subject of zigzag quilts, thought I would share my sad story of the blue and white batiks ... indigo bleed.  Augh! This quilt was originally intended to be an Etsy quilt, but that beautiful deep rich indigo batik bled into the white.

Chagrin for me ... but not for my brother and sister-in-law ... it's their new boat quilt.  It'll be a great quilt to have for sitting back deck when the evenings are cool.

I did use 3 color catchers in the wash which I think helped
minimize the bleed, but didn't stop it altogether.

Aqua quilt on my aqua screen door.

Here it is on Etsy ....

https://www.etsy.com/listing/156288053/girls-chevron-zigzag-quilt-baby-toddler?ref=shop_home_active

Lone Star Quilt ... with Half Square Triangles

A Lone Star quilt with half square triangles is a much less daunting proposition than a Lone Star quilt with diamonds, bias edges and inset seams.

It has a wee different look than a traditional Lone Star, but still makes a striking quilt without all the sewing anguish.  Inset seams still give me lots of quality time with the seam ripper.

This is the first quilt I did on the Pfaff Grandquilter.

Pebbles on the Lone Star.  I love quilted pebbles
but end up not doing them very often anymore
... they take such a long time.

As designed in EQ.

The squares and HST's are 4-inches finished and the
overall quilt dimensions are 68 x 93,
which washed and dried down to 63 x 87.

I find I usually get about 13% shrink once my quilts
get all their quilty puckery goodness.

In the Dogwood tree ... it's a nice quilt hanger
(when it's not raining).

One mo' picture, just because the tree fern
is looking so good this time of year, and I like the pic :}

New Life for My Grandmother's Orphan Lone Star Blocks

There were three Lone Stars in my Grandmother's suitcase of orphan blocks.  I saw a picture of a Lone Star table topper on Pinterest and thought it was so cute and decided to do table toppers with these three Lone Stars.  I think Yiayia would like the idea.

This is the first one completed.

It is a quiet little riot of Federal blues, reds and pinks.
And perfectly imperfect with one of the star points 'out of pattern'
and a little piece of make-do tan fabric.

The other two Lone Stars are indigo and white.
One is completed, the third one is a work in process.

I'm hand quilting the stars and finishing the edges
with a traditional knife or butt edge binding.

To try to keep the star points from getting too wonky,
the center pieces are all quilted first leaving the edge pieces
un-quilted when I do the knife edge bind.

Pippa Ross at her Welsh Quilt blog has a wonderful
tutorial on how to do a traditional knife edge binding.

http://welshquilts.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-sew-traditional-or-knife-edge.html

Once the interior pieces are quilted, excess batting and backing are trimmed away, the edges are folder under and pinned together.

It takes forever plus two and a half hours to do the trimming and pinning, repinning and repinning to get the star points just right.

I knew those little applique pins would come in handy one day.

The second star done.

With all my Grandmother's quilty things, I am always
prone to pondering whose shirt or dress did that fabric used to be?

My Grandmother's Suitcase of UFO's

When my Grandmother passed away, I became the caretaker of all her quilty things.  The saying is 'if walls could talk' ... but I wish that these quilt blocks could talk!

I have a suspicion that some of the things in this suitcase are from my Great Grandmother, and maybe even a Great Great Grandmother or two.  But the blocks aren't talking, and I'll never really know.

On the right is a set of pieced blocks, ready to be topped in the ducks feet pattern.  I'll post these another day.

Today I became focused on what lay beneath in the suitcase.

  

An assortment of indigo blocks.  Most are hand pieced.
Some are machine pieced. Some are poorly pieced.
Some are artfully pieced.

These and all the blocks in the pictures below are just one each's.

They were maybe left over from other projects
or
"I made this one and I don't want to make anymore"

An assortment of stars and star-ish blocks.

The lone star on the left is interesting ... the diamonds
are set in a way that they look like swallows in flight.
I don't think I've ever seen that before.

And an assortment of circle-ish blocks.

The large wagon wheel on the lower right has the brown paper
pattern pinned to it with a piece of fabric in another corner so I
think that it might be left over from a project.

I thought this little block was particularly interesting ... and
how difficult it would be to piece into a block.

Is it maybe intended to be appliqued?

And someone along the way had the same idea that I had
as I went through all these disparate little blocks ... to sew
them all together into a scrappy willy-nilly quilt.

I love the ocean waves blocks.
With indigo centers.

One of my fore-mother's loved indigo or wore a lot of indigo.

I'm sure somewhere among these blocks are
remnants of the clothing of a grand parent I never had the
chance to meet.

That is a wonderful part of old family quilts.
Chances are that indigo fabric was Grandma's old dress.