Quilt Reveal: The Earth Laughs in Flowers

I finished sewing down the binding, label and hanging sleeve of the daisies quilt while watching a couple of  marathon of shows on PBS: Mercy Street, Victoria, and Secrets of The Six Wives of Henry VIII.  The pattern has daisies in the title, but my niece and my sister say it looks more like sunflowers.  It is a gift for my niece, who is  concerned about the environment and is resembles a modern hippie. I thought "The Earth Laughs in Flowers" would be a better title than daisy's chickenpox, which was the working title of the quilt.

We went to a quilt show at a park yesterday, and I brought the quilt with me, so it could get a proper outing and beautiful backdrop for pictures.

We took a lot of gorgeous pictures, and I thought a slideshow would be a better way to show 16 of my favorites. Enjoy!

Personalize your own free picture slideshow

PS This is my first time using Smilebox, so please be sure to let me know what you think of the experience. I notice that the show keeps going until the music stops, but there are only 16 pictures, so once the slides stop coming, you can exit the program.

Luck with Binding Daisy Quilt

I gifted the Daisy Quilt like this, with the promise to bind it.  (That's my new couch. It came with the pillows.) (Oops, it is upside down!)

I don't know if I have any of the outer border fabric left to make a binding, so I decided to see if I could find something else.  I found a fabric that I thought might work, from my limited stash of fabric that is more than a quarter yard.  I usually buy fabric in quarter yard pieces, unless there is a really really good sale or I really like the fabric, so my selection is very limited.

Even though I left it out all day to audition it, as I usually do, the day was dreary all day so it was difficult to tell if it would work.

I decided to use it anyway, and cut the strips, joined them and pressed them, and started sewing down the binding.

Before I got to the first corner, I remembered that I need a label and a hanging sleeve. Since this is a gift quilt, I thought it would be good to add a sleeve to give the recipient more options in how to use it. Now that I have the hanging sleeve cut and pinned, the sun has come out, and I am really happy with my fabric selection.

I have a good fabric, that was easy to find, I probably got it for a good price, and I remembered the label and sleeve before I sewed down the binding. Happy days!

Linked to:
Oh Scrap! 
Let's Bee Social

Quilting Daisy's Chickenpox

Just to prove that this is a quilting blog, I am quilting Daisy's Chickenpox.  I gifted the tile quilt to my sister, but this one has all the safety pins!  I did relent and buy more safety pins, but I still wanted to get this one done before sandwiching yet another quilt. This one was next in line, and it didn't seem fair to bypass it for another quilt.

The store where I bought the machine says I don't need a walking foot. Strange that they don't have a walking foot for the machine, but it does work just fine without one.

Edited to add: I see I did say walking foot. I meant darning foot.

120 Circles and Counting

I have all but one of the daisies quilted. Before changing thread for the last daisy, I wanted to catch up on some circles.  This explains why I need to have "Finish" as my motto this year, doesn't it?

 Block 117

There isn't much of a story to this one. I felt like working with an orange scrap and this is what I made.

Block 118

This one is woven. The green batik makes me think of army colors, and the red/white/blue fabric seemed like a good match for it.  Celebrating a holiday before its time is a good rule to break.  

 Block 119

This is using scraps from Block 118.  Since this is a rule breaking quilt, I like the idea of having circles with slashes in them to say "Don't."  This slash is curved since we are bending the rules in this quilt.

 Block 120

This Pacman block is inspired by Twiggy and Opal's recent finish. Jayne used solids in hers, but I used only what I could find in the scraps box. It's also a fitting block for Pi Day (3.14).

Linked to:
AHIQ Linkup

Plenty of Quilting

I've been doing plenty of quilting on the daisies quilt. It is going much better now that I have adjusted the tension, and have relaxed a bit. Thank you everyone for your advice. I have sewn down 11 of the 16 daisies. I have been changing the thread to try to match the color of the flowers and have the purple and the pink ones left to do.

This means I have met my One Monthly Goal, which was to quilt 8 of the 16 daisies, but I think I will go ahead and sew the rest of them down this month too. I still have to do the background to do, but I don't think I will have time to do that this month.

I have also been trying to clean the sewing room. This is always a hard task for me to do, as all that new fabric makes me want to start a new project, and the older ones beg to be finished. Since I wasn't about to adjust the machine for regular sewing when it is set up for free motion, I did finish these two blocks that just needed a bit of hand applique. These blocks are from A Life of Plenty. I worked on them during jury duty last year and hadn't put them back with the other Life of Plenty blocks.

Linked to:


Moving it Forward Monday
Silly Mama Quilts

Free Motion Quilting and More Circle Blocks

I've started quilting the Daisy's Chickenpox quilt, and when the machine is set up for free motion quilting, the production of the 365 circles has slowed down. I still have a few to show you though.

Block 113

A four-patch with quarter circles appliqued raw-edge style. Orange thread is in the machine because of the quilting and it matches here.

Block 114

Another design that starts out with a four patch, but this one goes way beyond that. Most of the border will be hidden in the seam allowance so very little will show.

Block 115

I know I've done circle of triangles before, but it looked really good last time and I enjoy using up these pretty little scrap bits. I was thinking about making a snippets quilt, but I think I have enough WIPs.

Block 116

One of my friends from HubPages, Mark Ewbie, drew a drawing of a woman looking on as a man was reading the directions.  I really liked it, so I cropped it and recreated it in fabric.  There was a quilting challenge to make something with the theme of reading, and since I didn't want to start a new project, I could at least satisfy myself that I did something about reading in my quilt.

Beginning of Row Six

Here's the layout of this week's row. I haven't sewn these together yet.

I have secured the applique on all of the blue and yellow sections of this block, as well as all the 1857 blocks. I am doing them assembly line by color, to avoid continual changing of thread on my machine.  I still have to do the green (once I get some green thread) and the red. There is going to be a lot of starts and stops for the leaves on this block.

Daisies Quilting

Before I show you the quilting on the daisies, I need you to turn into a man on a galloping horse.  While you are at it, you might as well choose to be an unobservant man.  Get on the horse and gallop really fast, as fast as the horse can handle.  Are you ready?

Ahh, isn't it lovely?

All right, I will show you a clearer picture.

I've quilted a couple of the daisies down.  I am facing several issues in doing this.

• I am planning on giving this quilt to someone, so the stakes are higher.
• The fusible I used was not a good quality, and even though I did press them (at least twice), the petals still are not secure in some places. It also has been sitting, folded, for a while.  There are a couple of places where the petals bubbled up and got a fold stitched into the quilting.  I'm willing to let those go.
• I don't have a flat bed on my sewing machine.  I bought a drop-in table, and while it solved the problem for my old machine, my new machine doesn't fit in the table. I have put up stuff (books) to get the bed as flat as possible but I still have some drag.  I'm going to have to research and save up for a bed for this machine.
• Those inner petals have to be pinned out of the way, and the pins have to be avoided while quilting.
• Free motion quilting works sometimes for me and sometimes it doesn't.  I did fine on the improv quilt but it was fairly small.  The biggest problems I had on that one was to limit the jerkiness and getting the stitch length from being excessively big or small. I didn't have tension problems on that quilt. 

On this quilt, the tension isn't right.  The top thread is flat while the bobbin thread goes in and out.  I think this is a function of not coordinating the machine and hands correctly, but only practice will help with that.  I am hoping that I will get better as I go along, and then I will take out some of the particularly bad stitches and try again. I think I will switch to a practice piece for a while. I might have to think of some walking foot quilting for the background too.

Question: Is this type of tension problem just an issue because it doesn't look good, or will it come apart with washing and use?  Just trying to figure out how important it is to fix it.

Linked to:
Oh Scrap! 
Moving It Forward 
Freemotion By the River 
Building Blocks Tuesday 
WOW - WIPs on Wednesday

One Monthly Goal for March

My monthly goal is a quilt that has been sandwiched and ready for quilting since December of 2013.  It really doesn't seem like it was that long ago.  It doesn't have as many safety pins on it as I thought, but I want them back anyway. I need them to be able to quilt other quilts.

This is the last picture I showed you.  Even though another quilt is in the way, you can see the colors pretty well in this picture.

It is threatening to rain today, so there won't be any glamour shots, but at least you will be able to see the current status.  It will make the final quilt reveal more exciting.

This quilt is one of the few quilts I have made using a kit.  I didn't have any batik fabrics at the time so getting a kit was very helpful.  I did have to buy the background pieces, which required some time, since I was getting them slowly, one fat quarter at a time from the quilt shop.  All of the fabrics has dots on them.  The pattern is called Daisies Do Tell, but because of the dots, I call it Daisy's Chickenpox.

It sat kitted for a long time before I got around to making it.  I wanted to use the batik fabric leftovers for other things and decided I'd better get this started and done before all the fabric disappeared.  This picture is proof that the top is pieced and sandwiched.

The inner row of petals are two layers that have been fused together so that they can be seen on both sides. They are supposed to be free like that.  The circles have been sewn through both the inner and the outer sets of petals using embroidery stitches on my machine. I don't remember if they are also sewn to the background or just fused in place. Some of the fused outer daisies are peeling off, which worries me, but hopefully sewing it down will hold it secure.

This is a lap quilt, but I am not sure I will be able to finish it by the end of the month.  I am planning on using free motion quilting to secure the outer petals and add quilted leaves to the stems.  Maybe a stippling stitch in the background.  This is a big step for me - free motion quilting period is a big step for me - so making any progress will be a step in the right direction.  I'd like to get all of the quilting done, but I can't promise that I will finish in March.  I should be able to do at least half of the flowers done.

I have plans to do a thorough spring cleaning and want to limit how much time I spend quilting.  I also have the daily circles and BOMs to try to keep up with.

Linked to:
One Monthly Goal

2015 Calendar

Last year, I received a coupon to get a free calendar from Shutterfly.  I gathered a bunch of photos of my quilts and threw them together into a calendar and got it printed.

This year, I received another coupon to get a free calendar from Shutterfly.  I still haven't gotten things planned enough to make a decent planned calendar, but I thought that last year's strategy worked well, so I copied it.  I grabbed some images of quilts I have made - both finished and unfinished.

I didn't want to use the same template I used last year, because I didn't want it to look the same.  Last year's template had quotes on it, and I really liked that idea. Since the template I chose this year didn't have any quotes, I needed to find my own quotes to add to the calendar.  I chose story quote as the word to search. I was planning on finding different topics for inspirational quotes, but I liked so many that I kept with the same theme for the whole year.

Some of these story quotes are about living life, and some of them are about telling a story. I felt that both kinds are applicable to me.

I didn't include names of quilts this time. I probably should have recorded them, but I don't remember the names of all of them, and since many are unfinished, I wanted the flexibility to come up with new names.

I initially thought I had more images of finished quilts than unfinished quilts this year, but it is pretty much half and half.

I added the pictures to the month that it seemed to fit best in.  When I went to the actual page, I was pleased to see that the background color of the template worked well with all of the selected quilt images.

I especially like this purple one with this quilt, although I'm not sure why, since there is very little purple in the quilt.

If you haven't done this before, I highly recommend it.  Seeing the images of these quilts professionally printed makes me feel like a real quilter!

Most of these quilts have not been shown in last year's calendar. In fact, I think there is only one repeat. It is purely accidental; if I had remembered it was on last year's, I would have used a different image.

I had to take the pictures at an angle this year, so you can't see the calendar at its best.  Trust me that it is a high quality calendar and it makes my quilts look very good.

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!

Daisy's Chickenpox

Having finished two small quilts, I felt it was time to tackle a UFO.  But the quilt I wanted to make was not one that was already started.  It was a kit I had purchased a while back. It must have been on sale for a really good price since I don't usually buy kits.   It is made with batik fabrics. The kit included all the batik and other fun fabric for the daisies, but we had to buy the fabric for the background and the border (and of course the backing). Since I had recently become a Bag Lady at the quilt shop and would get a free fat quarter every time I visited the shop, I decided to get the remaining fabric one fat quarter at a time.  This delayed the time I could actually start the quilt.  I was looking for dotted background fabric, so there was a short delay until there was a new dotted fat quarter. The background was supposed to be light green and dark green, but I decided to expand to yellow so I wouldn't have to wait for light green dots. By the time I had enough fabric, I was too busy or had started another project or something.

I have often wanted to finish this quilt (and another batik quilt kit) so that I could get a chance to play with the leftover batiks.  This was my only source of batiks (aside from buying more).  Eventually I did buy more fabric and the two batik kits stayed in the back of the closet.

Now, even though I felt I should finish something that is already started, I decided to make this quilt while I was excited about making it.  After all, my brother wouldn't know what to do with a kit anymore than he would know what to do with a UFO.  I do plan to finish what I start so I don't create new UFOs.

Anyway there are only 16 blocks in this quilt.  When I whined about having to cut the weird shaped background fabric, I could tell myself I only have to do it 16 times.  It turned out that cutting those weird shapes wasn't a big deal at all, and it was actually fun to do curved seams again. Same with fusing and cutting the daisies.

This quilt is not a cheap one to make, since there is fusible behind all of the pieces of the flower.  There is the background daisy, a smaller inner daisy, and then the center circle.  The inner daisy is doublesided (two pieces of daisies with a fusible between) so that it can be left free for a three dimensional look. I was able to get yards of fusible for a really good price on Black Friday so now I have fusible for another quilt as well.

I secured the daisy on the background using a flower stitch on the machine.  I want to give this machine some heavy use while it is still under warranty.  I also want to take advantage of as many features of the machine.

The pattern is in a book called Follow the Dots...to Dazzling Quilts by Jayme Crow and Joan Segna and is called Daisies Do Tell by Jayme Crow. I believe this pattern is also available separately from the book.  The LQS kitted it with dotted fabric to go with the theme of the book.   Since I'm not selling it, I don't have to be politically correct, and am calling it Daisy's Chickenpox.