2013 Show and Tell

Happy New Year!  Another year finished, and it is time for the annual "what did you make this year?" show and tell.

This year, I didn't do a lot of quilting.  I was busy working on remodeling a "handyman special" property, which was quite a challenge since it required me to learn how to be a handyman.

I did manage to make a few small quilts though.

The snowbird quilt was the most recent finish.

The red and white one was made at the same time as the snowbird.

In September, I finished some simple curtains for my bedroom and the guest room.  The photo shows the guest room curtains.  I've read about the trick of having big curtains to make the windows look bigger, but my walls are really small, and big windows like that would dwarf the room and make it look smaller.   I got new curtain rods after this photo was taken.  The willow is a stencil on the walls that were made by the person who lived here before me.

Tulip Pillow made at Viking Sewing Event

I made this pillow cover at a class at Joann's in the summer.

I finished Blushing Bride in January. I am still debating whether to add some more embroidery to it.

There are a couple of quilts that I have been working on recently. The end of the year trunk show really serves as a motivator.  I didn't finish these in 2013, but they are well on the way.

This is another red and white quilt so I can have a collection. It doesn't have a name yet. When this is finished, I will have two red and white quilts!   It started out as a copy of a quilt I found on Pinterest, but I lost the pin amongst my millions I have on the board, and decided to wing it on my own. So many choices! Should I add sashing? Border? Red or white? They all changed the look of the quilt, and were all perfectly acceptable choices. In the end, I decided to not to add a sashing or a border and leave it as is.

I think that the main difference between my quilt and the one I found was that the original quilt is bigger, and my white triangles are proportionately bigger. They are small, and I was afraid they would all get lost in the seam allowance.  This makes it look completely different from the original, but it looks okay and I decided to keep going with it.  I could always make another one that looks closer to the original. I am going to add at least one more row of echo quilting before binding it.  I decided that I'd rather not skip the extra row of quilting just to have another finish in 2013.

This is the Daisy quilt I am making from a kit. It is all put together and sandwiched.  It needs quilting.  I was going to free motion quilt the red and white one so I could test out that feature on my new machine, but I wound up doing straight line quilting on it to keep it simple.

I hope you have enjoyed my 2013 Show and Tell.  I hope you have a wonderful New Year, full of happy memories, good health, peace and relaxation, a large circle of loved ones, lots of money and even more time to do the things you want to do!

Infinity Reveal

In less than a week, I have finished the red and white Infinity quilt.  I used a faux piped binding tutorial to add a little zing.  I had some difficulty in getting the two end pieces to line up right, and after a few tries I decided it was close enough. I am happy with it, although I probably should take it out the last seam and do a better job of turning over and securing the binding.  I hadn't thought about the binding when making the rounds of the quilt, and hated to lose a whole round with the binding.

It finishes at 9" x 9 3/4".  Here's how it looks on my wall.

I especially like the zing the diagonals make when looking at it from the computer chair.

Here's the label. I was going to make a small courthouse square, but I decided to mimic the "infinity" stripes. I should have used a fabric pen instead of a sharpie, but at least the info is there!

The red and white fabric has been used in this flag quilt which I made in 2010.


It has also been used in this spiderweb quilt, which is still unfinished. I have it pinned to some gray fabric, but I have now decided that red or white would be a better option. Hopefully this quilt will be finished this year.

Red and White Infinity Quilt Continued

The Liberated Quilters yahoogroup were having an at-home quilting retreat this weekend. It was nice to think about other people quilting along with me while I continued to work on my Infinity red and white reproduction quilt.

On Sunday, I added a few more rows. I will spare you the photos as I added each row.  I continued to sew until I ran out of the red fabric I had cut. I could have cut more if I wanted it to be bigger, but it was also the same time that the small ruler I was using wouldn't have worked.  I didn't have a plan for how big the quilt would be, and wasn't thinking of limiting it to the size of the ruler, but it seemed like as good a stopping point as any.

I then had to make the decision of whether to add white after the red. In the original quilt, the round is not finished.  I really liked the liberated aspect of it, but I also like the symmetry of completing the round. Since I was joining the Liberated Quilters retreat, I had to try to figure out whether it would be more liberated to copy the liberated aspect of the quilt or to liberate myself from the pattern to make a more conventional courthouse square.  At the end, I decided I wanted to make the quilt more rectangular, so I added the white at the top and the bottom.

I wanted to make sure that I kept the quilting simple on this quilt.  I got out a book of quilting patterns, Helen's Copy and Use Quilting Patterns (Dear Helen, Book 6) and found a simple grid.  I think curves may have worked better on this quilt, but I didn't want to distract from the pattern.  I simply made a copy of the grid (it was just the right size) and pinned it to the quilt sandwich.  (I used a fusible spray).  It was a simple continuous line so it was very easy to quilt.  I tore off the paper and trimmed the quilt. I'm not sure I chose the best quilting pattern - since the grid is square and the block is rectangular. It is just slightly off center, but because of the small size, it looks more off center than it is. But I am liberated, and it is staying the way it is.

All that is left is the binding, the hanging sleeve and the label.

Reproduction Quilt from Red and White Exhibition

I have been wanting to do some quilting for so long this year, but it just seemed like I was too busy. I finally decided I was going to have to make some time to do it.  I spent too much time on Pinterest, looking at quilts. Each day, I would find one or two quilts that made me want to drop everything and start that quilt.  I didn't, of course, I wouldn't have had the time to make all those quilts. I don't make a quilt in a day, no matter how simple it is.


Sometimes, I even put the quilt as a desktop image.  This is the quilt that is on my desktop image now:
http://limilee.tumblr.com/post/12514034308/red-and-white-quilt-from-infinite-variety

It is a red and white quilt from the Infinite Variety exhibit from the American Folk Art Museum.  I've been wanting to make a red and white quilt after seeing all those gorgeous photos of all those red and white quilts.  It only has two fabrics and is a simple courthouse square.  And as a bonus, I have solid red and white fabrics.

I decided to go ahead and make it. Yes, quilting has occurred here on the High Road.  There are only two pieces of fabric, so I don't have to rummage through all my fabric scraps and be reminded of all the unfinished projects I have in the quilt room.  And I can quickly get out before I realize that I really need to finish cleaning the quilt room.
Here's the progress thus far:

I decided that instead of making a square, I would prefer a rectangle. I trimmed off just a bit from the center to make it rectangular. My daughter said it looks like an "O". I like that. It looks like the Ohio State University symbol. Go Bucks!

I am happy that it still looks like an O for Ohio State. I really like the red on the outside and plan to end with a red round and red binding.  Since all the rounds are being added to one piece, this quilt would work well with another quilt as a Leader and Ender.  Unfortunately, I don't have another quilt set up, and I don't want to go through the sewing room again. I am trying to reduce the number of times I have to run my scrap through the machine though.

The original has more rounds, and there is plenty of fabric left. They were big pieces and I chopped off a little bit to use - about a quarter yard's worth. While taking a break from this quilt, I came across a Quilt Cam that Bonnie Hunter had recorded.  She answered a question from one of her viewers about the backing fabric.  She recommended not starting in the center and working around and around, saying that it would require measuring again and again after each round.  Yes, Bonnie I know exactly what you mean. I am cutting one round at a time to make it easier to keep track of the pieces.

 

Even though it is tempting to stop after a few rounds, the zing that happens at the diagonals doesn't really happen until quite a few rows have been made. I don't like the pulling that is happening, but hopefully it will be fine after it has been quilted down.

That's all the progress from yesterday.  I still have to decide how many rounds I want to add.  I want a small quilt, but one with impact. Writing this post, I looked up where I got the original quilt, and since it is from the Infinite Variety exhibit, I am going to call this quilt Infinite, because of the number of rows.