Blogger's Quilt Festival:Fall 2012

Amy's Creative Blog is having her Quilt Festival again and here is my entry. 

 Warning: this blog is very picture heavy! 

The quilt was a BOM called "Singing His Praises", designed by Sherry Moore. The blocks are predominantly paper pieced, so this quilt was a longtime project, the piecing took me a couple of years in between other quilts!

Each block represents a different Hymn, eg. the Crown of Thorns block -"Crown Him with many crowns". If you click on the photos you can see more detail.

There is a narrow red flange around the outer sashing, then a pieced final border.

Blocks are custom quilted with a lot of feathers.

Each corner features a 5" PP block with a little musical note made up of some very tiny pieces!

Some of the blocks like those above and below, were a challenge to quilt.

The quilt was completed and donated to Living Faith Church memorial Fund in 2010 in memory of our beloved son Matthew.

CW Quilt Top Finished!

Woohoo, it's ready to quilt!

I am really happy that this quilt is done. Of course now I see the big picture there are areas I would change but not at this stage, it's a scrap quilt after all, not supposed to be symmetrical! Can't wait to feather quilt it for the couch downstairs, have to find a backing first.

October Craftsy BOM Blocks

Catching up with the BOM's I got behind two months and still have to make September blocks.

This month was paper piecing and I usually love it, but found these blocks rather tedious.
This was the better of the two, and it did go together well, just took longer than it should have for that size and complexity of PP.

I have made more complex PP blocks that were much better designed, but they are done and I am pleased with the results and also that there's only two more of these BOM's, the September blocks are  curved piecing.

My Civil War Quilt Progress

 Working at the DSM today, I was able to piece the center with all the HST's. It was time consuming matching up all those tiny blocks and I am pleased to have that part done. I have decided that this quilt is a keeper and will go in the living area downstairs, I need a quilt there and this one has the perfect colors.

Now to work out the plan for surrounding this with all of the hourglass blocks.

Above are the bindings for the two batik Arrowhead quilts, the green is for the latest vintage applique quilt. Not sure why the color washed out so much perhaps overshadowed by the batiks, LOL.  This is more true to color.

They are all neatly wound around cardboard to keep them tidy until I can apply them to the quilts.

The Week In Review!

Unusual for me, but I have not blogged for about ten days, I am afraid that the problem with my back returned in the worst way leaving me quite unable to sew, quilt or really do anything.
Today is the first day I have been mostly up and around and I took advantage of the opportunity to meet up with my quilting friends at 35th.Ave. Sew 'N Vac for their "Black Bag Saturday".

 A few years ago I had the privilege of quilting this vintage Missouri Daisy for a client and fell in love with the design, isn't it adorable and very typical of the period. Knowing I would not be able to tackle all the handwork myself, I have searched for a top to buy but never found one in good enough condition- they are handwork labor intensive and rather rare it seems. Each of the little petals are gathered and appliqued on top of the stars, then the center applied last.

I was more or less bewailing the fact that I would never have one of my own to quilt when one of my blogger/quilt friends Cheryl, over at MO.Broker, My Creative Side offered to trade her piecing skills for my quilting -wow I was tickled, and jumped right on that offer!

 I have decided to keep the stars all the same color and the petals will be a variety of other prints, the background white Kona muslin.

 These are some of the FQ '30's reproductions I purchased for my own Missouri Daisy, a bargain at $1.25 each. They will be for the petals, in addition to those prints below which came from stash.

This red may be used for the stars, I thought it would show the petals more unless I find a better alternative! The yellow will be for the centers of each block.
Cheryl and I plan to blog about this project as we go along, Cheryl may even invite a sew-along if anyone else is ambitious enough to complete this quilt. It is not a complicated quilt and there are several settings available, the little gathered petals on the stars are the most laborious part. It does appear that this block design like many of the older ones is known by a few other names, Amish Dahlia, KC Star and probably others. The unique design that sets it apart are the gathered petals, otherwise the star design itself is not, I think, unusual.

This green I also purchased today, it came from a selection of '30's repros solids and will work very well to bind the recently quilted vintage applique quilt. See previous post!
Our group then went to brunch after our exhausting shopping and before moving on to other activities!

I stopped in at Joann's to pick up velvet panne fabric to make those posh looking pumpkins you may have seen around in specialty stores for $25-$50. There are many ways to make them some posher  looking than others but two of the best tuts I found are at House of Hawthorne and Stone Gable Blog .
 It looks really easy and I think they are adorable, but instead of using very expensive velvet I am using  inexpensive crushed panne that is on sale at Joann's. I purchased one yard total for $3.
The "blue" is in reality a royal purple, just hard to control the colors in the transfer from cloth to the page!
I will blog about my project, the most difficult part will be to find those lovely pumpkin stalks, so if anyone has access to pumpkin/squash stalks, please let me know! I can use sticks but it won't be the same!

Another Vintage Applique Quilt

Another UFO done, except for the binding which I will have to purchase. I want to frame the quilt with one of the solids from the sashing and solids are not something I keep, except for black and white. Hopefully I can find something suitable at one of the local quilt shops.  These are vintage fabrics, 40's or 50's I would guess but surely I can find something solid/ or that reads as a solid in either pink or purple close enough to blend for binding.
P.S. Upon further investigation, mostly in my "Dating Fabrics" book, it appears this quilt is more likely 30's origin. The solid color fabrics are very typical of those shown for the period 1910-1935.

Here is a page from "Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide 1800-1960". The three fabrics on the bottom row and the yellow/gold above them are the same colors as used in this quilt.They are somewhat faded in the quilt because I [foolishly] laundered it before quilting to remove some of the dirt and the colors ran,  the pink worst of all!

Fortuitously all the fulness in the blocks and around the bias edges of the setting triangles quilted out without a tuck anywhere, a huge blessing at any time.

 I always love the look of a simple backing, with a nice quilting design I think it makes the quilt reversible.

This was fun to quilt and really not too labor intensive though I am paying the price for being at it too long yesterday by lying flat on my back most of the week with the heating pad! I will be really happy to get the surgery behind me so I can get back to the way I like to live!

Wordless Wednesday

http://wordlesswednesday.blogspot.com

Vintage Thirties Applique Quilt

This quilt top was purchased from an estate sale a couple of years ago, hand applique and some embroidery. It was very dirty, stained, and rather foolishly I chose to wash it before quilting. A gentle hand washing might have been ok, but I used my front loader washing machine and the seams frayed badly.  If I had thought to place it in a lingerie bag before laundering it might have prevented some of this issue. Consequently I set it aside and decided to face it another day!

  That time has come, and today I put it on the longarm to get it quilted. In addition to the fraying, which necessitated lots of snipping of long, loose thread, it was very wrinkled being 100% cotton. Ironing smoothed it out a little but I am happy to see that the quilting is taking care of the rest!

In addition to the fraying, the colors in the sashing ran and now the background has a faint pink tinge. Nothing I have done so far has removed that color bleed, perhaps after it is quilted and bound I will try another method, but it needed stabilizing before any more laundering.

 The blocks are a bit full, and the setting triangles are wavy on the edges, but the quilting is taking in the excess fabric ok and it's coming along quite nicely using a variety of quilting stitches from one area to another. It will be a nice girly quilt, it's quite large about 82"x106". Seems I make a lot of girly quilts!

Binding

To bind the Ugly Quilt Fabric project, I needed to cut the binding on the bias in order to get the desired effect. Usually the square root method [click here for directions] works OK but the first time I used it I ended up with about 14yds. of bias binding, double the requisite amount. Rather cautiously then the next time I managed to come up about 18" short, although that particular quilt, the Stash NYB had two rounded corners that may have complicated my calculations! This time once again I have twice what I needed! What is it about me and my square root calculations? I know I got the square root correct each time but somehow I did not translate this accurately into the fabric requirement.

So I now have about 5.5yds. of nicely prepared black and red striped bias binding left for whenever there's a quilt needing just those colors and exactly this amount! My Mum was fond of quoting Robert Burns, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley" she used to say. 
It happens!

It is difficult to see the narrow binding from a distance so here's a close-up.......

and on the much lighter opposite side, the binding shows more.
Another quilt on the "completed" list. 
I have no use for this wall hanging so it will likely be donated for a charity auction.

Civil War Quilt Progress

A little progress here, it's an ongoing project in between other things.
Not much quilting this week, I have had the little boy plus one day out with my back just too painful for anything.

This is the plan for putting these CW. HST's together, they are small so it takes a lot of them to make a quilt. The design I am using with the number of blocks I have currently, would be too oblong so it looks as if I need to make at least another 150 of these little blocks to widen the quilt to better proportions.

Fortunately I have "triangles on a roll", I think Meredith gave me these, left over from one of her projects. They make HST's so much faster, easier and more accurate, just sew on the lines, cut and press! I do love these little blocks especially with CW fabrics so it isn't too much of a chore to make more of them.
There's a quilt on the LA that I hope to get done later today, and tomorrow is group "sew day", I think Meredith may come, and perhaps BJ.
I just realized yesterday that somehow I missed the Craftsy BOM for both September and October, one is a curved piecing project the other the Friendship Circle block pattern. I need to catch up on those, probably tomorrow then perhaps some more of the CW. HST's.