Quilt Reveal: Awards Banquet

Hello all!

I have a finished quilt to show you!  Awards Banquet.

Here is the story. This quilt started out as a leftovers quilt, as do many of the small quilts I make. Here is the original quilt which used free pieced rails.  To make this one different, I used only the black and white fabric and cut the rails with a ruler.

4 Improv Quilt

©Shasta Matova

After I made the triangle blocks and decided to set them on point. I auditioned several fabrics and decided to use red for the setting squares and the center squares.  I pulled out this red which feels more city and made the quilt more elegant than the improv origins would show. I added it despite the fact that the red fabric felt more city-like as compared to the black and white chickens which felt more country.  We are allowed to have chickens in the city.

When it came time to choose a border, I was a little bit conflicted. I wanted to use up the black and white fabric I had, but I read the words as 2000 at first glance.  If I wasn't willing to use 2000 fabric in 2014, when was I going to?  So I decided to use it.  As I cut it up, I realized that it didn't say 2000 at all. It said "moo" and there were cows on it. How could I have missed them? My favorite fancy red fabric was going into a quilt with chickens and cows on it. I don't think we are allowed to keep cows in the city. Most of my black and white fabric came from a fat quarter swap.

My realization came at just about the time I received an invitation to attend an awards banquet.  It is an annual banquet to thank the employees for the hard work they have done during the year.  Usually when I am invited to this banquet, I am asked whether I want beef or chicken.  I didn't get to choose that year, because the person inviting me chose for me. It's probably because he didn't think to ask me until it was too late and had to make a choice right away, but I will believe that it is because he loves me and wants me to eat healthier that he chooses chicken.

Anyway, these two things mixed in my head and this quilt became to be known as Awards Banquet. After all, the name "Leftovers Quilt" has already been taken, and this quilt is far too nice to be a leftover.

I cut the setting triangles the wrong size, and instead of scrapping them, I turned them into three-dimensional prairie points in the border. I really like how they extend the setting triangles make the top float.  I was going to leave them loose, but it was easier to quilt them down. I free motion quilted awards ribbons in the center squares to fit the name. #1 of course.

This is a small quilt measuring 19 1/2" X 24". It was started in April 2014 and finished today.  It snowed yesterday, so I rushed to finish it today while there was still daylight outside.  I was able to photograph it outside in the snow. Even though it isn't an unusual design, it is my own design. It is my first Finish for 2016.

For finishing, I received this Certificate of Completion. But no beef or chicken, unfortunately, as I am trying to eat vegetarian, and I don't have either of those in the house.

Linked to:
Let's be Social #107.
Needle and Thread Thursday

Going Around in Circles

The Quilty 365 Circle Project continues!  Besides joining all the circles I have made already, I've made some more circles.  I'm really enjoying this, because gives me a chance to be creative and start a new project every day.  And since it doesn't take a long time to make a circle, there are lots of finishes!

Here are the latest additions. Since they were already sewn together, I cropped the photos to show only one block at a time. I must have ruined the ratios, since the software cropped them all to fit its ratio. You get the idea anyway.

 I finished this one yesterday. I think it deserves its own photo.  All of these are common embroidery stitches, although you may not recognize them the way I made them.

Last, but not least, to commemorate my Finish Goal, I quilted Awards Banquet. Free motion!  I just need to add the binding and label to get it finished.

 

Linked to stitchery link party.

2014 End of the Year Show and Tell

I finished two quilts this year. At first, I was ashamed at that lowly number, but now I am proud of it. I quilt for fun, not for a job, so I don't need to be productive. I simply need to make the quilts that provide enjoyment for me. And I certainly did that.

Besides my finished quilts, I also worked on other quilt projects that haven't made it to the finish line yet.

 The quilt on the left, Tuxedo Diamonds, was made in early January.  It was fun to make.  I showed it to you last year, but the colors were not right.  They are more true in this one.

 I was impressed by all the red and white quilt shows, and thought I should make a red and white quilt or two to have my own.  It looks good with the red and white optical illusion quilt I made last year.  I got the idea for this quilt from a quilt I saw on Pinterest.  I don't like this one as much as that one, mostly because it doesn't look like I envisioned.

I worked on this Awards Banquet quilt in April. It goes with the red and white theme, but I wanted to add black.  I have a lot of black and white fabric from a fat quarter swap and I wanted to get started using it.  Like Tuxedo Diamonds, I did not use a quilt pattern, but simply used my own ideas.

I was really having fun making and designing this quilt when I found out I needed to spend a month in Lansing for work with very little notice and after the overtime had already started.

I took all my sewing stuff out of the living room and put it in (what was then) the newly organized craft room so my daughter wouldn't have to look at a mess all month. When I came back, I left the mess in the craft room and worked on other quilts and haven't taken it out yet. I think it just needs to be quilted.

 

My big quilt reveal, of course, is the Improv Quilt, which I already showed you recently.  Once I got over trying to please the Sherri Lynn Wood, I had a lot of fun with the designing aspect of the quilt. I liked being able to make my own decisions about what to do next. I know I can't remember the exact dates on this one, but it was finished before I went to Lansing.  I know I was working on Awards Banquet at the same time as the Improv Quilt. This quilt needs another name, so if you can think of one, let me know. 

I took my sewing machine to Lansing with me, and didn't have a lot of time to decide what project to take with me.  I grabbed a kit that was taunting me when I was cleaning out the craft room.  This kit was waiting while I was trying to implement the "finish the WIPs first" rule, but I decided that the kit had waited long enough, and since it was a kit, it was a WIP.  I was able to work on it after work at the hotel. In Lansing, I worked long hours, but since I didn't have the chores I have at home, I was able to find time to work on it. This one required careful cutting and piecing, which was quite a change from the liberated cutting and piecing of the improv quilt.  The top as directed by the kit is done, as you can see on the table, but I have been adding another border. I put it away when we were hosting a birthday party, and didn't take it out after the party.  I see a recurring theme here.  I think I shouldn't put away any quilts until they are done!

Last, but not least, is this Christmas trees quilt. I have been seeing a lot of trees quilts on Pinterest, and wanted one of my own.  I found a directions for a liberated tree quilt on Diary of a Quilter, and got to work. It is a liberated quilt. I have a lot of Christmas fabric I've gotten on sale over the years, and thought this was a perfect opportunity to use them. I made a whole bunch of trees, and rejected a few that didn't fit the finish size I chose. I'm sure I will be able to use those elsewhere - maybe the back. I started this quilt a couple of days before Christmas, and could have tried to rush this one so I would have another finish for 2014, but I decided to take my time and enjoy the process.  I now have a really nice head start for 2015.






In 2015, I hope to clean up the new mess I made in the craft room and finish organizing it.  Then I want to finish some of the quilts that got abandoned during cleaning missions.  I really enjoyed working on the quilts and they don't deserve to be abandoned. I don't think I will have time to do a lot of quilting in 2015 either, but if I work on finishing what I have already started, I should have some finishes to show for it.

Red and Black and White Awards Banquet Quilt

Here is my latest quilt, in progress. It is another small one. It started innocently enough. I had some black and white fabric left over from another project, and I decided to make a small quilt out of it instead of putting it away. It was a simple matter of sewing the more white than black strips next to the more black than white strips, and cutting them into triangles and sewing them to each other. There wasn't a lot of fabric left, and it made six blocks.  I decided that the six blocks didn't look good right next to each other, and would look better on an on point setting.

The fabric from the center squares was also from the sewing room.  It all went well until I needed fabric for the setting squares.  The whole point of using fabric that was already in the sewing room was to keep from digging into the supplies, but I needed other fabric for the setting squares.  Since black and white goes with almost anything, I wound up auditioning a lot of different fabric - more black and white fabric, green, red, and yellow.

I found the pretty red, which is one of my favorite fabrics.  It turned this scrappy, use up what you have, into a beautiful quilt that was worth the effort.  I also spent a lot of time auditioning the border fabric.  I participated in a black and white fat quarter swap when I first discovered that quilting groups were on the internet.  Most of my black and white fabrics are from this swap, and I think they have waited long enough. I discovered the internet quilting groups just in time to know that I had jut missed the millennium swaps.   There had been many people who swapped fabrics for the end of the century.   Before that, I was a lonely quilter, trying to figure out everything from magazines.  Anyway, the border fabric has cows on it, and the word "moo, but it looks like 2000 to me when I first saw it, and it made me feel that I had a late chance to participate.  One of the black and white fabrics has chickens on it, so a cow fabric isn't out of place.

I had originally cut the setting triangles incorrectly, and decided to play around with putting the bad triangles on the front of the quilt.  I like it!  I can add them as prairie points so I can still use the border.

After sewing the raw edges, the triangles would be smaller than they were pictured. I decided I wanted the triangles even smaller, so I folded them in half instead of cutting more and sewing them to each other.  Here they are cut and ready to sew into the border.  I'm wondering if I should add something (applique? embroidery? and if so, what?) to those center black squares or leave them as is.

I am also working on helping my daughter sew a blouse.  I am not used to making clothes, but it is turning out quite nicely.