Week 45 of 2020

 

When I let Zeus out yesterday afternoon, I noticed a bird beautifully silhouetted in front of my neighbor's tree with the orange leaves. We have had fabulous colors this year, and this tree has never stood out to me. I ran inside to get the camera and when I came back, it was still there.When I zoomed in, I could see the bird clearly.  In fact, the bird stayed there and posed for me until I had more pictures than I could ever need. Most of them came out sharp and clear.

Work on the quote quilt continues. I decided that I do want to add another layer of fusible behind the quilt to hide the stitches, but before I did that, I wanted to make sure I was done adding as much of the big things as I could. I decided to add a blue moon. Before I had decided on the quote, I was going to add another moon to show that this is a moon and not just a blue circle, but then realized there was already another moon nearby.

The quote helps too. I am glad I found this quote to add for my moon. It is actually one I have been thinking about a great deal, as it reflects my thoughts on the coronavirus situation from the very beginning. Aim to eradicate it. I am thinking of adding a small Halloween motif since it happened on Halloween.

The fact that it is a circle makes me think of the Circle 365 quilt I have been making during the time period of the quilt, and  the fabric is from the Story Maze quilt so this block represents my former quilts too.  There are plenty of other references of that throughout the quilt too.

 

I added the virtual cemetery booklet to the quilt. I used the elastic from a disposable mask. The button on the left just hides the strings. The string loops around the button the right to keep the booklet closed. I added the yellow ribbon to hold down the pages. It isn't necessary but hopefully it helps to avoid stress of the weight of the booklet on the quilt. Underneath the booklet is a pretty ruffle from a bed sheet. I haven't sealed the outside so right now, it forms a pocket. I don't think anything should be added inside it though, since it would add more weight to this block.

When I saw this quote from Maya Angelou, I knew that it just had to be on the quilt.  I typed it and tried to see it in different fonts, and one of the font uses all capital letters. I think this quote is worthy of being in all caps.  The fabric was my first attempt at water-coloring the virtual cemetery booklet. I decided to use the watercolor underneath the block and let the colors shadow through. I put a light yellow fabric in the middle to hide the original [duplicate] quote. 

I had pictured other floral designs around the quote, but just let myself do whatever I felt like doing, and this is what happened.

2020:  Weeks 45 of 15 Minutes to Stitch

 

 

This week, we voted in person at the polls. Everyone was very friendly, and there was a festive atmosphere there.

 

I worked with my mother on a project. One of my distant cousins was buried this week and we were able to attend the memorial virtually.  I hadn't met him, but maybe I will add something to put in the pocket behind the booklet.

 

I tried to get my space ready for working from home again. I added more motifs to the quote quilt as I showed in this post.

15 minute days this week -- 7 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 259 out of 313 days

Success rate  = 83%

Linked with 

15 Minutes to Stitch

My Trunk Show

Soma who blogs over at Whims and Fancies is hosting an online quilt truck show called "Trunk Full of Quilts".   It's really a ploy just to see my quilts, and I am happy to indulge her.

Welcome to High Road Quilter, where I, Shasta Matova, make quilts at a slow, incremental pace.  I spend a few minutes almost every day in some sort of quilting activity, and those few minutes add up and then eventually, I have a finished quilt to show on my blog.  To keep the blog (and quilting) from being boring ("Look, I sewed a seam", "Look, I sewed another seam!"), I work on more than one quilt at a time, which slows down the pace to Finished! even more. This trunk show will show that quilts can happen, even a few minutes at a time.

These aren't necessarily my favorite. I just pulled out some pictures of quilts that I may not have shown on my blog for a while.  Here they are, in no particular order:

This is a little quilt I made for my sister.  The center is a panel I found at a quilt store, and I worked around it with ribbons, beads and tassels.  It was a fun quilt to make.  I have since purchased many more beads and ribbons so I can make more without-a-pattern quilts in the future.

This wreath quilt is one of my first applique quilts. It was fun to make.  The cross hatch quilting in the center was recommended by the pattern, but it was difficult to do since I did not want to quilt over the applique.  I've always wanted to make a similar quilt with the cross hatching done before the applique, but haven't done it yet. If you look closely, you will see that I even added embroidery on the leaves.

This quilt was made impulsively following a pattern I found on a blog. It was put together very quickly and was a lot of fun to make.

This is one of my few bed size quilts.  It is one of my favorites.  It is an I-spy quilt inspired by Weeks Ringle.  You are supposed to follow the lines to tell a story.  I changed it up by also making it a maze. You can follow the blank spaces and find your way out. There are two mazes in there - one is shorter than the other one.When I gave it to my niece, she took a toy car along the maze, so it is also a road!  This one was a lot of piecing and organizing, but it was worth it in the end.

This is a fun little quilt I made with my leftovers of my four patch posey quilt.  I used some beads and ribbon on it. This a great quilt concept to cut four identical pieces and switch them around to get mirror images.  I hope to make more of these in the future. I also hope to finish the original quilt that this was a leftover of.  I gave this quilt away.

I gave this denim quilt to my daughter. It is made out of blue jeans - lots and lots of them.  It took a long time to make, but I liked the casual look of the quilt.  It was also stress free because it didn't have to be made perfectly.  Any "mistakes" just went with the mood of the quilt.

This is a little quilt I made as part of the Small Quilts Yahoo group with Kathy Tracey. They have quilt challenges every month, and while I would like to make a quilt a month, my sewing schedule doesn't allow that.

I hope you have enjoyed my little trunk show.  I  hope it gives you a sampling of the kinds of quilts I make.  Most of the quilts pictured are pretty traditional, but I make modern quilts, art quilts, improv quilts, crazy quilts, and any other kind of quilt too.  Please you come back and visit me again. You are welcome anytime!


Here's more details about the Trunk Full of Quilts Show if you want to participate too.  The trunk show link party will start on November 10th and end on November 18th.

All you have to do is write a blog post including photos and a little description of each of your favorite quilted projects (they do not have to be from 2015, but they must be finished projects). Then visit Soma's page and link up.

Shared Fabric

When I gave my daughter a quilt, I was showing her some fabric I had used in other quilts. She said she wouldn't remember, and really, she didn't care. I do, so I thought I would document the fabric I used in the stars. There was even some scrap fabric that I don't remember where I used originally, so I figure I'd better do it while I still remember the rest. You probably don't care either, but at least you get to see a mini quilt show of my quilts.



You are going to have to trust me about the shared fabric with this quilt, since this photograph doesn't show the shared fabric. The story maze quilt also has shared fabric with many of my other quilts.

I called the fabric green in this summer swap quilt, but I am calling it blue in the SITP.

I don't think I used the blue fabric in the SITP, but at least one of the background whites is shared. And no, I'm not going to take the time to see which one.

The crossed kayaks quilt also shares a white with Lilebeth's Garden, and probably with the SITP as well. It also shares a couple of the blues. I didn't have a lot of extra fabric in this quilt, and I used some in the denim circles quilt, and want to save the rest for the border.

This denim circle quilt also has a lot of fabric from many of my other quilts. This photograph shows some great matches. The white with blue flowers in the top left is from my Storm at Sea, and I have that fabric in the SITP as well. The second one, the flower bud, is from a dress my daughter and I were going to make, and I have that fabric in the SITP. The brighter blue underneath that one is in the Arkansas Snowflake, and either it, or another fabric from that quilt is also in the SITP. To the right of that - the solid blue, and the plaid one on top of it, are both from a simple quilt I made for my niece. Fabric from that quilt is in the SITP as well.

Here's the storm at sea. The white background fabric with tiny blue leaves is shared.

This is the Arkansas Snowflake. The snowflake print is shared.

Another blue quilt I made at about the same time. I gave this one away. I'm just showing it to you since I am showing the blue quilts, but maybe it is the source of the mystery fabric.







The dark blue fabric in the Evening Stars quilt is in the SITP.

I didn't think I had a lot of leftovers from this Kanji Wishes quilt, but I was excited to find a strip of blue batik and mottled fabric to add to the SITP.

Here's another one of my blue quilts. Most of the blocks are swapped blocks but I did add a few. Maybe the mystery fabric is from this quilt.

Here's another quilt that isn't blue but shares the white background fabric with the SITP.

Happy Autumn and Quiltathon Results

My calendar says Autumn begins today. Happy Autumn. Since I haven't finished everything I wanted to do for spring and summer, I have my work cut out for me. I've made a list, and hopefully today I can get more productive. If I can get off the computer, that is.

I have been quilting this weekend, because Judy said we had to. It's Quiltathon time. What did I do? I cut up lots of fabric and sewed them together, of course. Isn't that what quilters do? I went through my scrap basket and cut up some squares from quilts I have made before. I found all sorts of lovely blue fabric - from the kaleidoscope quilt, my niece's quilt, the Evening Stars, the story maze quilt, the Japanese quilt, the denim circles quilt.

I've made a lot of cutting mistakes on this quilt, so I trimmed one eighth inch off of all my squares. Fun times. I have enough fabric to cut all new squares (for several quilts), but then I would have to figure out what to do with this size square, and I would rather try to reduce scraps. And to think, there was a time when I was envious of scraps and wanted to make some.


I am glad I didn't tell you last week that I had finished with the outside star points. I was almost done with all of my little flying geese when I realized that I had added dark squares to the sides of the big flying geese when I needed light squares. It wasn't that much of a problem to rip them out, since it was something I could do while I was watching tv, and I need that size square for another part of the quilt, so it isn't wasting much.

Two steps forward, one step back. I'm not sure why I am making so many mistakes in this quilt. I think it all leads to not paying attention to the directions as much as I usually do. I've been spoiled by step by step directions. Even though I understand the directions in this quilt, everything leads to the picture and I think I know what it looks like, and don't bother to look at it as often as I should.

Eventually this quilt will get finished, and hopefully I will have discovered all the errors I want to correct before it is all finished.