Prairie Vine

When I saw this quilt in Quilt Sampler, Fall 2007, magazine, I just fell in love with it. The pattern stuck in the back of my mind for some time, and when I made an order for some of the Hearth & Home fabric line from Connecting Threads, I realized that even though I had ordered the fabric for some other quilt (since forgotten), this fabric was actually perfect for the Praire Vine pattern.

It was meant to be a straight setting of double x blocks, seperated by sashing, with the vine border. When I finished the blocks, I still had lots of fabric left over, and got to playing on EQ, of course. I fiddled with the double x block, simplified it, and set them as an alternate blocks, in a diagonal set.

There will be a lot of leaves to applique! I’ve set aside the blocks for now; I have to order the border fabric; and I already have lots of handwork. I’m not sure how I’ll be doing the leaves – so many choices for applique!

Centre of the Storm, and getting back on track

I haven’t been posting a note for while as I’ve been, well, unable to write or focus much, as even now I’ve re-written this opening sentence about five times!

My family has been going through some rocky times, each person with their concerns and problems, all affecting me as wife and mother – how can i support them? - how can I fix it?!! (i know, can’t be done) – am I listening well enough? – am I letting them know I’m there to help, without crowding?what can I do other than worry?

My quilting is usually where I dump all this self-talk, and focus on creating, while my brain subconsciously works though the problems. The past few weeks though, this has been difficult, and all I’ve got is several projects, started or finished, that just don’t seem to make me happy. I sure hope I can get out of this slump soon – I do believe that if I’m happy, then those around me might catch it!

I’ve been working away at some piecing and finishing, thinking that eventually there’ll be “click” of aaahhh. this is good :)

This morning I was looking for a picture of a finished quilt, somewhere on my computer. I know its here, because I’ve used it on a blog post. But i cannot find the actual picture, and I’d like to print it out to doodle on for quilting ideas. I also can’t remember under what EQ file name its saved under, and I have too many EQ quilts to count. This made me realize that things have gotten way out of hand – I’ve been in too much of a fog of disorganziation and . So because this blog is meant to share a quilting journal - I better get back to it before I get to lost.

Here’s a finished top, that I completed a few of weeks ago. Its Lori Smith’s pattern, 30’s sampler. I’m not very happy with how the arrangement of colours turned out – the quilt just looks crowded, with no one place to look at.

This is a good example of why I do some quilts as a block of the month. I rely heavily on EQ for my quilt planning, and with a sampler quilt such as this it really can’t be done. I don’t have a full size design board, and if I did, I’m sure I would have arranged the blocks differently, or chosen colours differently.

I finished up the sampler because I got an itch to start the sampler blocks in the new book Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler. I made myself finish this one, which was hard as I knew it was going in a direction I didn’t much like. The new sampler, which I’m simply calling Elm Creek, will be all blues on an ivory background. Much easier for me to work on, knowing at the end it pretty much has to look right with a one colour scheme.

Now, i should go and do some clean up on the blog lists on the sidebar, and remember to use tags and such so I can better organize my posts!

Baskets of Wishes

Here it is!  Finally done and ready to be delivered to my Mom as her birthday gift.  Based on a pattern called Noel Sampler, Fons & Porter magazine,  Aug-Dec 2005,

New pieced projects….and one quilt top quilted

I thought that I was very slowly working working away at quilting my Mom’s quilt, and I discovered that you really can get a lot done, just 15 or 30 minutes at a time.  On Sunday, the quilting was done, the binding is on now, and I’ve got two weeks – lots of time – to hand sew the back of the binding.

While I was taking my time quilting, the still cool weather got me going on a few new pieced quilt tops.  As my list shows, I do like a lot of variety to choose from :) 

First there is a scrappy quilt from civil war repro fqs and bits and pieces, called Pick and  Choose, from American Patchwork & Quilting.  Here are four sections that will form a block.  There are hundreds (well, maybe not hundreds) of hsts and strips to sew before I can sort them out to put together the blocks.

I got a Dresden Plate finally started, using “twice the charm” strips from Thimbleberries Three’s Company, brights.  No picture here, because I haven’t yet picked out what I”ll be using the for the centre circles.

There is a quilt on the cover of Quilt Sampler from Fall/Winter 2007 that I so liked and have thought about ever since.  Connecting  Threads’ new line, Hearth & Home, was to me just perfect for this pattern  - here’s one block done.  I don’t know why the centre square looks crooked…

Then these baskets-in-waiting.  Six pieced, one filled.  Waiting for there bounty….pattern called Bountiful Baskets by Lydia Quigley at the The Rabbit Factory.  The fruit are fused and machine stitched, but I’m not sure yet if that is the final choice in the applique method.

And, I finally got a drawer stocked with a great selection of solids and black yardage – waiting for that perfect patttern so i can finally make a quilt with solids that I’ve been wanting to try for so long.

One more pattern that I have on my mind is Stardust Serenade from the Rabbit Factory – I’m having trouble deciding on its colours but I’m in no hurry – I’m sure they’ll jump out at me one day.

"Invisible" Machine Applique

I would definitely recommend Pearl's DVD for learning the process of freezer paper applique - however - she does not show any machine stitching in the DVD, just hand applique.

After a long time of practicing and reading up on various methods of stitching, I finally learned that the best way to accomplish "invisible" machine applique is to experiment with the stitches on your machine, and with the threads you have. Here are two blog postings that can be helpful on choosing the stitch settings for your machine: BlackBird Designs and BunnyHill Designs. On my Viking D1, I use a blanket stitch that has a couple of forward stitches, followed by one stitch bite going into the fabric. The width is set at .5 and the length at 1.0. This does take practice, and it does seem at first that the needle isn't even going into the fabric because of the very narrow width. Just practice on your machine and find what's right for you! Don't forget too, that through the quilting process your applique pieces will likely get "sunk" into the batting and back, so the stitches will likely become even less visisble.

“Redwork” Outline Embroidery

I so enjoyed sewing the black outline embroidery blocks from Lydia Quigley’s Whitework Applique Samper.  (more about this in previous posts).

I’ve since added a couple of more outline embroidery projects to the list of handwork projects.

At first I thought I would make up some blocks from Margaret Docherty’s book Hearts and Tulips, using both fusible applique and outline embroidery.  Here’s a picture of the first block, I was partly through the second block when I thought this wasn’t turning out the way I’d like.  So  that book and its lovely patterns are shelved for a while!

I have often thought of a series of flower applique drawings in a Better Homes and Garden book, but I never did take the idea to planning a quilt with them.  I now realize they would make up very nicely as bluework sampler – blue outline embroidery with blue and white setting pieced blocks; the block size is just 4” so they are a great little quick project.  These flowers are all American state flowers, fifty are presented but there are some duplicates.  Some of those duplicates are the same as ones that represent out provinces, and I’ll make up drawings for our provinces as well.  I don’t care what the flowers might officially represent, I just like the detailed drawings and the flower name given and drawn on each block pattern.

Then I came aross this month’s installment of Anne Sutton’s A Tisket a Tasket.  Looking at the previous blocks I had made, I realized that they were looking too cluttered with the orphan blocks that I wanted to use with them in a quilt – and, these blocks kind of deserved their own fabric theme.  So I started to make them up with a dark brown thread outline embroidery which I think will go very nicely with the orphan blocks – here are two done, shown with paper copies of two more and a possible block setting.

For outline embroidery, I back my fabric with a very light fusible interfacing.  This gives the fabric just enough body that I don’t need a hoop.  I used a red transfer pencil for the basket blocks, and a black transfer marker for the flower blocks.  I’ve also in the past just pencil traced the outline with the help of a lightbox.