Drunkard's Path Photo Shoot

I finished my Drunkard's Path quilt in November and already showed you the finished quilt.  I wasn't happy with its reveal though, because I wasn't able to get good photos of it.  I showed it to you on the floor of my porch. As a result, the size of the quilt was hard to see. It looked longer or shorter than it really is, depending on the angle I took the photo.

Yesterday, I got a chance to fix that. My family invited me to go to a quilt show with them at a park. This was the same park where we did a photo-shoot of The Earth Laughs in Flowers formerly known as Daisy's Chickenpox. Remembering that photo-shoot, I brought Drunkard's Garden along, and we managed to get proper pictures of this quilt.

This park had a lot of beautifully curved structures which properly echoed the curves of this quilt.  I don't have anything new to tell you about this quilt, so for historical reference, it was started in August of 2003 and finished in November of 2019. I tried to do another Smilebox slideshow, but apparently, you have to pay to be able to share it.

Here are 11 pictures of the quilt taken at Inniswood Metro Gardens in Westerville, Ohio. Some of these are similar to each other, but I liked them all the ones I am including for different reasons.

1.

 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

 Which picture is your favorite?

Quilt Reveal: Drunkard's Path

It's not called Drunkard's Path for nothing. The drunk took a long time to find his way home. Year's in fact. This quilt was started sometime in August of 2003. I don't know the exact date, but counting from August 1, it would be 5,960 days.  I was using low volume backgrounds before the term "low volume" was coined.

I called it Drunkard's Garden then. It is a rectangular lap quilt, but not as rectangular as this picture shows.. It is rainy out so not a good day for a photo shoot, although it is better than yesterday when there were lots of shadows everywhere.  The backing is blue, similar to, but not exactly the same as, the binding fabric.

I'll have to take it out for a walk and get more photos but I wanted to share this finish with you.  It changes the quilt stats significantly.  Before I enter the finish date on this quilt, I have finished 77.37% of my quilts, taking an average of 229 days to make a quilt.  After I enter the finish date of this quilt, I have finished 78.10% of my quilts, taking an average of 282 days to make a quilt. The average number of days to make a quilt didn't increase as much as I thought it would. My small quick quilts this year and throughout the years helped a lot with this average.

I'm not sure what is next on the quilt list.  I would love to work on quilting another top, but there are lots of scraps that need taming.  I might do a little bit of both until one or the other takes over.

Linked with:
Off the Wall Friday 
Finished or Not Friday 
Oh Scrap!

Binding Drunkard's Path

Another week has gone by so it is time for another weekly recap.  This week, I have been focusing on sewing the binding on the Drunkard's Path quilt. I am more than halfway done of the hand stitching part.

While there is no big profusion of flowers in the garden, there are a few flowers that make it worth the effort to look. I have a new retaining wall by the front porch which really helps spruce up the place too.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 44

This week, I've been binding the Drunkard's Path quilt while listening to Radium Girls book on tape.  It is a disturbing book because radium poisoning has awful symptoms, and because it is hard for me to know that people can be so cruel.


I've also started writing my Yearly Recap post. It involves me having to read my own blog to see what I have been up to all year. It looks good so far. I want to make sure November and December also have some good showings. Having the Drunkard's Path quilt finished will help a lot with that.

• 15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
• 15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 268 out of 307 sessions
• Success Rate: 87%

Linked with:
Kate's Life in Pieces 15 Minutes to Stitch

Courthouse Steps

I am cleaning up for a family gathering and still cleaning my sewing room as a part of 15 minutes to stitch.

This means that the room where I sew has to be returned to living room / dining room status. The dining table had some fabric strings on it, and instead of finding an appropriate box and an appropriate place to put the box, I thought it might be better to just turn them into blocks.    Bonnie Hunter's  crooked courthouse steps quilt tutorial came at exactly the right time. Cleaning by sewing. That's my story and I am sticking to it!

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 41

This week, I cut and prepared the binding for the drunkard's path quilt. I cleaned the dining table as well as sewed seven string blocks. These are the same blocks shown different ways. The seventh one is under the needle.


15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 247 out of 286 sessions
Success Rate: 86%

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch 
Finished or Not Friday

Taking the Scenic Route to Declutter Sewing Room

My sewing machine, Opal, is at the spa this week. She deserves a rest after all the work I put her through - sewing practically every day. I was waiting to find a good time to let her go, until I realized there would never be a good time to let her go.

The original plan was to sew the binding on the drunkard's path quilt and then hand stitch the binding while she was away.  If I ran out of work (haha), I could prepare more applique blocks for 1857 or another quilt.  It turns out that I didn't even sew the binding on before I had to take her in.  I thought the repair person came on Tuesdays so getting her there on Monday made the most sense, but when I got there, they said they will ship her to Detroit.  There's nothing like a spa day in Detroit.

In the meantime, I haven't made much progress on the binding.  I did choose a fabric and cut the strips.  Instead of working on applique, I decided to do some extra decluttering and housework.  I had half a can of white exterior paint. I brought it out so I could repaint the wind chimes that had fallen down before I put them back up. The can was rusty and the paint was drying out but it was still usable so I decided to use it up, straight out of the can. I ran around the house and gave anything that was already painted white a patch job - mostly the garage door which was completely repainted, but there was still paint left so the side of the house and the porch also got touch ups here and there.

I also gave my neighbor a couple of things that were in the garage. So although I am officially decluttering the sewing room, other things in the house are also getting decluttered.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 36

This week I selected the fabric and cut the binding for the drunkard's path quilt.  I also took photos of older quilts and showed them to you.  In addition, I have continued the declutter of the sewing room.  Although most of this time was spent on removing items that don't have to do with sewing or crafting,  I am going to take full credit for stitching this week. 

Having more space to move around and find the crafting things is preparing for stitching, and all that willpower it took to avoid working on any other project definitely deserves some credit.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 214 out of 251 sessions
Success Rate: 85%

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Drunkard Path Quilting Closeups

I am still figuring out what fabric to use for the binding of the Drunkard's Path quilt, but  Kyle and Cynthia have asked me to show the quilting of the Drunkard's Path quilt. I am happy to oblige since it will show why took me so long to do it all. 

 The quilt is composed of "rings" around a center circle, shown above. In this circle, I put ovals inside each quarter circle with a sort of ribbon candy design inside each oval.  There is a grid in the center. And outside the oval are fingers. have no idea what to call any of these quilting designs since I just doodled but hopefully the descriptions, along with the picture will make sense.

In this picture, the dark pink on the bottom is the center circle.  I put some zig zag quilting around the dark areas on both sides and surrounded the center circle with petal shapes. I continued the petal shapes all the way up the light areas.

Going out further from the center circle past the light ring is a ring of dark area.  There is a light semicircle that juts into the dark area.  I put a fan shapes in there.  In the dark area, I tried to make these S shape quilting. This was hard to do. It requires a lot of concentration as to which direction you are supposed to be going while figuring out which space needs to be filled.  It wasn't very successful in all the areas, but it is a dark area so I didn't worry too much about going the right way. This ring is the first ring I quilted, and I did each semicircle individually for the most part although I did add some overlap to blend them.

I tried to do all the dark blue areas first, then dark purple to avoid too many thread changes, but once I finished the purple, I decided to just do all the dark areas with the dark purple. Hopefully it adds some consistency to the rings.

This is the first light ring I quilted, and I decided to quilt them in one big section instead of individual blocks to treat it as a big ring. I outlined the dark areas on each side and made these big leaves. In hindsight, I should have treated each half separately - just do one side of the stem and come back to do the other side, but by the time I thought to do that, I had gone so far, I decided to keep doing it that way to be consistent.

Then there is another dark "ring".  It is only in the corners and doesn't go all the way around the quilt.  I quilted these chains on them. I enjoyed making these. I like the design and the area to quilt is much smaller and it is in the corner so it is easy to maneuver.

The final "ring" is the light corner.  I separated this into rows and doodled a design in each row. Each of the corners has these rows, but they don't have the same quilting in each row.  These rows don't go all the way up to the corner  The final quilting has more of those chains going to the corners.  I wanted to make sure I was sewing up towards the corners to keep the fabric smooth.

I trimmed the quilt to the block size for a tutorial I will prepare for you, but as you can see, it is coming up a little bit short and you can see the batting in the corner. The tutorial will show how to fix that.

I will show you the whole quilt after it is bound.

Finished Quilting Drunkard's Path

When I looked at the list of my quilts that I have been keeping ever since I started quilting, the second UFO was the drunkard's path quilt.  The top had already been pieced and it just needed to be sandwiched and quilted.  At the time I made the quilt, I really had a hard time doing any free motion quilting, and I wasn't all that good at straight line quilting either.

I can't say I am better at quilting now, but I have more confidence and less fear. Since this is an older quilt with dated fabrics, I felt free to just add stitching to add texture.  I really enjoyed doodling on the Adinkra quilt, so I decided to do the same on this quilt.

So for quite a few months, I have been slowly taking parts of this quilt and quilting it.  A few minutes at a time, as the ideas of what to quilt in the spaces come to me, and as I can convince myself to touch a quilt sandwich in the heat of the summer.

I am happy to announce today that there are no basting safety pins on the sandwich, which means that the quilting is officially done!  The quilt isn't finished of course, since it still needs to be trimmed and bound, but it is certainly much closer to completion now.

The pictures on this post obviously have nothing to do with the Drunkard's Path quilt and are there for your viewing pleasure only.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 35

These two weeks, as the days and weeks continue to blur together, I have been working on quilting the ethnic drunkard path quilt, and finished my mini of the month. I have also been cleaning the sewing room. You may get a bit of a deja vu from my last posting, but, what can I say, I have been consistently avoiding any distractions this month.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 14 out of 14
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 207 out of 244 sessions
Success Rate: 85%

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Changing Thought Patterns

I've been thinking differently lately, as an experiment, or maybe because my mind has melted in the heat..

First of all, when I was making the Fuschia Fairy quilt, I didn't plan it out.  I thought of an idea, implemented it, and waited for the next idea to show up so I could implement it.  I embraced each idea as it came along and did it without thinking about other possibilities.

That is the same way I am quilting the Drunkard's Path quilt. Yes, I am still quilting that monstrosity of a lap quilt.  I think it is possible that I will wind up using a whole spool of light thread and a whole spool of dark thread when I am done. I am having fun, but it is slow progress, waiting for the next idea, and finding the motivation to quilt something warm in the summer.

The other change has been a thought I had about the nature of quilting.  When I think of daily or frequently occurring tasks as compared to projects, I tend of think of quilts as projects.  After all, when I paint a railing, the railing is painted and I won't have do it again, at least for a very long time. When I make a quilt, I wind up with a finished quilt and once it is made, it generally can't get undone.

The change is the shift of quilting from project category to recurring category. Since I enjoy the process of quilting, once a quilt is finished put away, the quilting isn't really done, because I will pick up another quilt to work on. Sure I will celebrate the completion, but I will move on quickly to the next quilt.

 My goals for the summer has to be working on completing projects, so that when the busy time at work happens again, the unfinished projects don't rear their ugly heads at me. I can rest assured that progress does get made when I am not as busy.  This doesn't mean I won't make quilts. After all, the recurring tasks do have to get done. It just means that I can't spend hours quilting, since I really need to be spending that time getting something done that will stay done.

All of this explains why the drunkard's path quilting is not finished, and the charity quilts have barely been started.

The current big project is to go through the bedrooms and touch every single thing to see if it sparks joy, and if it does, to give it a comfortable home. I've already done the downstairs, the master bedroom and the bathroom, so it is turn for the other bedrooms.  I had been debating about which other bedroom to start with, but each one seemed to become a bottleneck for the other, so now I have decided to work on both of them simultaneously as needed, while focusing on the sewing room. There are lots of things in there, and the progress is slow as I want to think through properly what to keep and where to put it, and decision making is tiring.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 33

These two weeks, as the days and weeks blur together, I have been working on quilting the ethnic drunkard path quilt, and have started my mini of the month and one of the charity quilts (the batik one). I have also been cleaning the sewing room.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 14 out of 14
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 193 out of 230 sessions
Success Rate: 84%

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Quilting Ethnic Drunkard's Path Quilt

After finishing the commission quilt and the mini quilt of the month, I could finally resume the quilting that had slowed almost to a standstill when the busy time at work happened.  I decided to pick up on quilting the drunkard's path quilt. I call it the ethnic drunkard's path quilt, because I already have another drunkard path, and this one has a more exotic feel to it, but I don't know the art in these countries enough to know where exactly to place it - Morocco, Spain, Persia, etc. The other one is really a leftovers of this one, but it is smaller and got finished before this one. That one took forever to quilt too.

I am working on a domestic sewing machine, and apparently working long hours, forgetting to turn on the light!

It is a lap size quilt, which seems to grow in size as I am quilting it; (really, I have how much left to quilt?!), but I am pretty sure it will resume normal proportions when I am done.  Right now, I am quilting the light ring around the center shape. I wanted all the lights to work together so I am quilting them all as a group. The echo quilting really helped add the cohesiveness to the pattern.  It is pretty big area width size so I used these long leaves, but they seemed like long bananas when I looked at them. These curly shapes make me happy.

It isn't perfect quilting, but there is less pressure than there was when I first made the quilt.  I am not as much of a perfectionist anymore, and the fabrics are dated enough now that I can relax a bit. And although I can see lots of mistakes in this picture and I almost wanted to take out this quilting, when I step back and look at the quilt as a whole, the quilting adds texture I want, and I am leaving it, and continuing the same design in similar spaces around the entire center. If you do keep doing it, it isn't a mistake, it is a design choice!

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 30

It is already Wednesday, but I wanted to enjoy bragging about my finishes. So now I can belatedly tell you about my stitching week last week, that ended on Sunday,  After finishing Fuschia Fairy, I have been working solely on quilting the ethnic drunkard path quilt.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 172 out of 209 sessions
Success Rate: 82%

The pictures of the tomatoes and peppers were taken at a park. I hadn't seen those shapes and really like them.

Linked to:
Throwback Thursday  - this quilt top is from before I started this blog. I think it has waited long enough to be quilted.
Wednesday Wait Loss - I am still learning free motion quilting and am learning how to step back and look at the whole picture instead of fretting over every little bobble, of which there are many!

Still Quilting Drunkard's Path

When I told you that I was almost done with the dark circles on the drunkard's path quilt (two weeks ago?), I was telling the truth. I had already quilted more than three fourths of the circles.  But since progress has been slowed this week, the measurement of the progress has changed, and I am still almost done with the dark circles even though I have quilted quite a few more. The measurement is more in terms of how many I have quilted - about one to four quarter circles a day.

On one of these days, I ran out of thread, so my 15 minutes was spent up finding more thread, winding the bobbin, and finding the next dark quarter circle to quilt and running the lint roller over it to prepare it for quilting. Had I been spending a whole afternoon, these 15 minutes wouldn't have been thought of, but since each 15 minutes counts now, the fact that no quarter circles had been quilted that day does not mean no progress was made that day.

I took Zeus for a car ride, but when we got there, he would not get out of the car!  I think he was afraid to jump, since he got hurt the last time he jumped out of the back.  I think he should be okay from the passenger side. He didn't let me carry him down and I couldn't get him to go down to the floor board so he would have a shorter jump. He is heavy for me to carry and when he isn't cooperative, that makes it that much more difficult. That was the end of our outing. When I got home, he still would not get out of the car, and I had to fashion a ramp from things I had in the garage and distract him with cheese.  My emergency ramp won't work when I am not in the garage so I will have to think of something.

 

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 13

This week, I made a bigger effort to quilt every day instead of quilting the whole week's worth at one time on the weekend.  I managed to quilt four out of the 7 days, and was able to make up the rest of the time on Saturday. I spent the time quilting more dark spaces of the drunkard's path quilt. I am thoroughly enjoying the process of quilting the quilt and do like the quilting I have added, but when I try to show the photos, I get critical and see the wonkiness of the stitching and the lint from the batting.

If you only sew one stitch, you have to show that stitch, good or bad. If you sew several stitches, you can choose the best one. I finally got smart and decided I didn't need to show my stitch, good or bad. I take plenty of other photos to cover!


15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 90 out of 90 sessions
Success Rate: 100%

Linked to:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Weekly Progress on 15 Minutes to Stitch

It is that time of the year when you get to see more progress pictures. It is a big quilt, so it is taking some time to stitch.  It is a large lap quilt, slightly smaller than a twin. I am making these deliberately wonky figure 8 shapes for the border. Some of the wonkiness might not be as deliberate as some of the other wonkiness. I am so used to working with small pieces that it is hard for me to quilt farther apart.  I will try again in the lighter areas, but for now, I am going for consistency.

 

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 12

This week, I wasn't able to quilt during the weekdays, but was able to minimally make up the time on the weekend. I spent the time quilting more dark spaces of the drunkard's path quilt.  I decided to go ahead and quilt them all in purple instead of switching up the colors so that the spaces all work together as one unit.  I wish I had made that decision earlier because I could have quilted them more continuously earlier!

15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 83 out of 83 sessions
Success Rate: 100%

This time last year, on the 25th, I sewed 2 out of 7 days, so I am ahead of last year. Hopefully I can continue to stay ahead!

Linked to:
15 Minutes to Stitch

WIP Inventory

Having finished a couple of small quilts, I decided to take inventory of my current works in progress and their current status.  I am hoping that this will help me see that progress is being made during the spring and summer slowdown. These are just the quilts I have been working on in the last few months, and not the other unfinished projects that are stored away.

Some people might be overwhelmed by the number of projects listed here, but I really enjoy getting to choose which project I want to work on. Since they are not standing in a straight line, being worked on one at a time, in order, when progress is made on one quilt, the whole group is making progress.

Here they are in no particular order.

 

Drunkard's Path

Ethnic Drunkard's Path was started in August 2003 and it is the closest to completion. It is already basted and a lot of the dark purple and blue spaces have been quilted.  I need to finish quilting it and bind it.  It is a fairly big quilt -  a big lap quilt. 

 

Colonial Bricks

 

Colonial Bricks was started September 2018. It has been pieced and the backing and binding fabric has been chosen and cut. The backing needs to be wider, so I am piecing the leftovers to insert to make the backing wider.

 

Sunlight in Winter

 

Sunlight in Winter was started December 2018. I am making the blocks one half yard of yellow fabric at a time. I used up half a yard of the butterfly fabric, and half a yard of the grunge fabric. I had a whole yard of the grunge fabric and since it is the darkest yellow, I decided to use that half yard to make the squares because I think the squares will show the pattern and it is my darkest yellow.  All of the yellow fabrics are very similar. I like that look but will consider adding more patterned yellows when I am closer to completion. I will not make the whole blocks until all of these subblocks are done.

 

Uncommon and Unexpected

 

Uncommon and Unexpected was started February 2019 as a part of a quilt along.  One of the things I really liked about the original quilt is how the cornerstones made the sashing look like circle dancing around the squares, and my eye moved from one overlapping circle to another.  My quilt does that, but the diagonally placed squares, and the striped fabric, and the small number of blocks stop the eye from bouncing too easily at the circles.  I want to add more blocks to help show more of that movement. Some of the border has been pieced but I am still thinking about how I want to accomplish that.

 

ATC Holder

 

ATC Holder was started November 2018. It doesn't look like a lot of progress has been made on this, but there has been.  All of those photo corners have been cut and pressed. I think that was the hardest part.  I need to strip piece the cornerstones and once I do that, I think I will be able to piece this pretty quickly. There isn't any decision making left on this quilt until the center has been pieced. It is deliberately plain to let the ATCs stand out.

 

Circles 365

 

Circle 365 was started November 2015, and I have been sporadically working on this quilt since then. I am putting the circles together into the quilt top when I have enough, and it is 2/3rd done. The quilt is getting pretty big now so I have decided not to take it out since my blog readers have seen this quilt grow from time to time.

 

Fourth Rail

 

Fourth Rail was started January 2019 as a leader / ender to use up scraps.  The layout has not been decided but this one looks pretty interesting to me. I have a lot of pieces already cut so it is just a matter of sewing them together.

 

Stitchery 

You probably forgot about this stitchery, but it is pretty close to completion. It's been a while since I worked on it. The first time I mentioned it on my blog was August 2018, so it was started about then, but I  bought the kit from the thrift store a long time before that. It is made with yarn.

 

Seiring Genealogy Book

 

I don't think I have shown you this genealogy book, but I started it shortly after I finished the Priest Genealogy Book in December 2017. I have the pages all ready and all the genealogy information has been printed. I need to make the cover, add the genealogy printouts to the pages and embellish the pages a bit more. The cookie box is going to be used in the quilted cover to give it more stability.

 

Cultural Fusion Rail Fence

I showed the Cultural Fusion Rail Fence as part of the Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop. It was started November 2015.  The quilt top is done and the backing and binding fabric has been chosen.

 

Be a Diamond

I will be taking a part of this blog hop. My day is April 25. I want to keep it simple so this will be my April mini of the month.

 Bunny Parade

I am giving you a sneak preview of this quilt which I finished yesterday. This is a free pattern from Moda Bakeshop called Bunny Quartet. The designer of the pattern also provided a tutorial for a carrot on her blog, which I used as you can tell from the photo.  So my bunnies are a trio and not a quartet. She changed the name to Easter Parade, but since I have Elephant Parade quilt in the works, I am going to call it Bunny Parade.

Since it is a bunny quilt, I will show the whole thing to you on Easter. Since the diamond quilt will be my April mini of the month, Bunny Parade is my May mini of the month, so I will also show it to you again in May as a reminder. I don't want you to get tired of it so I am only giving you a preview now.  I know from personal experience that if you buy a Christmas present in July, it still counts as a Christmas present, even if you can't wait and give it to the recipient in July.

 

Quilt Statistics

 Since I pulled up my spreadsheet to record the finish of the bunny quilt and give you the start date for all these quilts, let's talk about the stats, shall we?  I have started 127 quilts and have finished 99 quilts, which is a 78% completion rate.

It takes me an average of 242 days to complete a quilt. This number has gone down, mostly because of all the mini quilts I have been making lately.  A lot of my quilts get done much quicker than 242 days, but I also tend to pick up projects that needed an incubation period. When I get an old UFO completed, that average number of days to completion goes up, but that won't stop me from working on my UFOs. The stats are there to record my progress, not to tell me what to do.

 

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 11

I spent this week making the Bunny Parade quilt. I also took inventory of all of my works in process.

15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 76 out of 76 sessions
Success Rate: 100%

I checked my results from last year, and I was at 100% on March 18th, so I am on track for this year.  The following week, the 25th, I sewed 2 out of 7 days. I'll see if I can beat that this year. It doesn't sound like a high bar to reach.

Linked to:
15 Minutes to Stitch
What I Made on Monday Yes I did make all of these today, why do you ask?
Peacock Party