After Hours

After finishing Weathervane Island, I was ready for more of that sweet, sweet finish-y feeling, but without the commitment of several months of work.  I'd recently turned up a little quilt from when I was a kid (below, left), which gave me an idea for a shortcut to the payoff. 

The old little quilt is a true mess - some seams are hand-stitched and some are machine-stitched, there isn't a right angle or straight line to be found, and it's clearly seen a lot of love.  An evening's work produced the little quilt on the right from my purple scraps.  I pieced and log-cabined and cut and pieced some more, then sandwiched it with some flannel and a plain back and did envelope construction.  Machine-stitched the turning hole closed and top-stitched around the outside edge, no burying threads or hand sewing at all, and it felt great.  

Other remarked that Martin Scorsese would always shoot a little project after spending years on a movie - well, I get the impulse.  

I felt like I should get back to my next big project, which right now is all about varying shades of gray with some white thrown in, and lo, needed a leader and ender project to work on with all the piecing of the little tiny quilt.  I blew through all the gray stuff I had ready to piece and felt very proud that I'd gotten back into the big project.  

Aaand then, this happened:

And, then pillows: 

Churning out cute little mini things seems to be out of my system for now, and I've just finished a dozen gray Ohio Stars, which is good, but something about piecing together these teeny little scraps is very satisfying - there are probably more tiny little dollhouse quilts in my future. 

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday at crazymomquilts.  Happy crafting!

BQF: Love Grows a Grove

My second entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival is Love Grows a Grove, a twin-sized orange tumbler quilt. 

With five lines of quilting at every seam, the process took awhile.  Dealing with the very lofty wool batting and so many quilting intersections was frustrating and there is a whopping number of imperfections in it, but once it went onto the bed, I stopped seeing them entirely.  Now I just see the Orange Quilt, as it is known around the house.  

Spot Check in orange and some mini tumblers make up the back.  There's no plain white on the front, but some of the mini tumblers are white. 

Bias binding in Navy Kona, because as stubbornly orange as this is, I couldn't stubborn any more orange. 

I collected orange fabrics from far and wide for this one - old stash, a couple online purchases, plus things from quilt shops nearly a thousand miles apart.  I like to think that it would be almost impossible to replicate it.  How many of our quilts wouldn't that be true for, though?  

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Tumbler (made from my own 6" template)
Dimensions: 62"x83.5"
Thread: 100% poly C&C in white
Yay!: ORANGE
Doh: Puckers, puckers at the crosses
Binding: Double fold bias binding in Kona Navy, machine sewn to the front and hand sewn to the back

This quilt is in the Machine Quilted at Home category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Happy crafting!

BQF: Weathervane Island

The Weathervane quilt is finished! 

I used the weathervane block variation that Patch the Giraffe used for this beauty with a different design for the sashing.  

Before its wash

Hand-quilted about 1/4" away from the colored fabric in each block, and 1/4" outside the cornerstone squares.  In the picture below, you can see a bit of the purple-on-white print I used instead of white on the inside of two of the squares. 

Green and purple may be my favorite color combination.  The green fabrics are a combination of stash and much hunted-for shades of the exact right green, which for me means true green leaning toward teal. 

After its wash

The back was pieced from fabric that's not my favorite, or that I have a whole lot of and bought just for backings. 

The back, featuring not-the-best green

The binding used up most of the rest of my Fizz in the medium green hue - I'm sad to see it go, but I love the shade of it and thought it was worth it to use on the binding, since it is pretty visible. 

This one will hang in the very bare bedroom.  

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Weathervane variation
Dimensions: 39"x39"
Thread: pieced in C&C white 100% poly, quilted in crazy strong old handquilting thread in white
Batting: Natural 100% Cotton Hobbs Heirloom
Yay: Favorite colors! and Secondary pattern in cornerstones
Doh: I'd change some of the value pairings of color if I were starting over again
Binding: Double Fold, machine sewn to front, hand sewn to back

Linking to the Blogger's Quilt Festival and Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it Up Friday.

Happy Crafting! 

Greetings from Sleeve Island

In knitting, when you're working on the sleeves of the sweater, and you work and work and work and have basically nothing to tell the blog about other than "sleeves more again," that is called being stuck on Sleeve Island.  Maybe only by the Yarn Harlot. 

I haven't come up with a good name for the same phenomenon in quilting, in which hand quilting something takes a while... and then longer... and then, like, a lot freaking longer because it takes so long.  Hand Quilting Isthmus?  That doesn't have the same ring.

Anyway, that's where I've been.  Then, after my long stay on Quilting Sleeve Island, I got stuck at Hand Sewing Binding Down Customs.  I estimated that doing all of the hand quilting was going to take 16 evenings, and I wish I could remember when I thought that, but I'm quite sure it was more than 16 days ago. 

I just finished it, just now, and took a way-after-dark picture of it.  I'll write up the post on Friday, so as to enter it into the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  At first I thought that started 5/1 and was bummed that I'd missed it with this quilt, but of course I was wrong and it starts Friday.

Hopefully sunlight will be kinder to it.  I'll wash it, too, which should shrink the batting a bit.

SELF.  GO TO BED.  Okay.  Goodnight, and happy crafting!