Chinese Coins Quilt Reveal

I finished the Chinese Coins quilt last week, but it has taken me some time to take quilt reveal photos. I wanted to try to make a nice vignette instead of showing just a flat quilt, and was trying to think of things to use. Since I am new to making vignette, I tried several different options.

When I went to Target, I saw a little scarecrow and pumpkins that I thought would be good for the display, but I didn't buy them because I decided I should be able to find things around the house that would work.  Then I went to the thrift store.  I have been looking for a doll bed.  I still haven't found one, but I found two chairs and this doll.

As you can see, I haven't quite mastered the art of the vignette.  The doll is a little bit early for Christmas, dressed in red and green. I now have enough chairs for a classroom, but still no bed.

The pattern is in Kathleen Tracy's book. It was a fun little quilt to make. I especially liked the fact that it did not have any half square triangles!

Home Again Commercial

My daughter is back home, after spending a year out of the country going to school in England.  Picking her up was incredibly easy - we found a convenient parking spot right by the door, and there was a very short wait time before we saw her arrive.  The luggage came right away, and we were on our way home in practically no time.

On our way home, my daughter announced that she would like to make a stop at Taco Bell to pick up the new Doritos tacos.  It was hilarious, and we thought it would make a grand commercial, so my sister tried to record the conversation.  Since we missed the initial announcement, we made it an interview format and everyone thought of questions to ask her:

How long have you away? a year
Where were you? England
How long ago did the plane land? about 20 minutes
Where do you want to go?  Taco Bell
Are there any Taco Bells where you were in England? no
Don't you like soft tacos better than hard tacos? Yes, but these are made from Doritos
Um, aren't you a vegan? [laughing]

Unfortunately, we missed the whole interview because someone was recording without actually pressing the record button.

What made this even more striking, though, was when she picked up the first sauce packet.

It says: "I knew you'd come back for me."

Yet another quilt and more ramblings

Magazines

Once upon a time, was it only last year?, I vowed to myself that I would never subscribe to all those magazines again. They kept piling up, and I never had time to read them.  Most of them were free and I thought I could use them to make collages, or learn something new, and then donate them to the local charity, which even picks up the stuff.   How quickly we forget.

Remember the Italy and the England trip?  Well, I managed to get some frequent flyer miles, and they are expiring.  Do I have enough to go anywhere else, maybe even across the state? No, I have just enough to pick up some magazines. Lots of magazines.  I hate to lose out on all my points, but I am not going to jump through any hoops to keep them active, or to figure out what the hoops are, so I will be supporting the USPS this year with tons of magazines.  I'm sorry and you're welcome.

To get ready, I went through (some of) my current magazine collection (current as in they were from 2010, but I hadn't gotten around to reading them yet) and donated the whole lot (except the quilting magazines, of course, cause they weren't free, and 'cause I can never get done looking at them.)  The charity thrift shop and its magazine buyers will be happy, I'm sure, especially if I can speed up the cycle and send not too outdated magazines.

I'm going to have to keep a box handy and create a system to fill the box as soon as these magazines start coming.

Quilt

I've started yet another quilt.  Yes, another one. The Small Quilt newsgroup headed by Kathleen Tracy (Prairie Children and their Quilts, Remembering Adelia, etc.) has a challenge where they make one small quilt a month. I like small quilts, because they have a quick finish, and I want to make more.  It's funny, when I showed my friend the other ones I made this year, she didn't understand their purpose.  She suggested sewing them up together, and adding an extra layer of batting so they would be really useful, of course.  Maybe I've been hanging around quilters too much (online) since I now think that thin quilts and small quilts are normal. Every person I know who isn't familiar with quilts thinks of quilts as bed size comforters.

In the photo, I am auditioning the background and border fabrics.  I am sewing on the binding now.  This one turned out to be much bigger than my other small quilts.  I thought about using fewer "coins" but instead I added an inner border, so it is even bigger than the pattern.  Oh well, the quilt wall will need a variety of sizes, and this one will fill up the wall much faster.  Of course, I still need to get a nice wall for the quilts.

Daughter

My daughter is coming back, not soon enough, but after a year in England, the plane ticket has been bought.  I am doing my belated spring cleaning, now that I finally have the time, and it feels like I am getting ready for her to come to a fresh clean house.   I'll have to think of something else special for her return.

HubPages

I have joined the Apprentice Program on HubPages.  They teach you how to properly write articles that will generate traffic and revenue.  The first month, they give you a list of 8 articles to write, and after that you learn to choose your own topics and titles.  I am planning on writing 24 this month instead of the minimum of 8.  So far this month, I have written two:

How to Finish a Quilt Back is one of the ones that was chosen for me. It is about choosing a backing fabric. I asked Barb from Fun with Barb if I could use some of her photos, and she said yes. Thank you so much Barb. Your pictures provided great support to the hub.   She always has such interesting backs on her quilts, that as soon as I saw the assignment, I thought of her.  We can only provide two links to each hub to any one site, so I tried to limit myself to just two of her pictures, because I wanted to link them to particular blog posts.  I wound up using three, and just skipped the link on one of them.

Avoid the 9 Most Commonly Broken Driving Laws is one I chose for myself. These are based on actual statistics from the state of Florida.

I am going to let you know all of the hubs I write during this program so that you can keep track of my progress.

Ramblings

Stars for BOM

I am working on the setting stars for the BOM I made last year, and it is taking a while, so I thought I would just post some random facts to keep you up to date with my summer.  The BOM was in Civil War colors, and I chose to use my own fabric for the setting stars to keep it from looking like everyone else's quilt.  At the time, I decided I wanted to have a red feel to the quilt, so I chose some brownish reds for the setting fabric.  I didn't want it to be too red though, so I am also using some browns and other colors as well.

Then I go into indecision mode.  I am not sure that the reds I am choosing are really Civil War colors.  Some of them I can probably get away with, but some of them are decidedly a country red, and even though they go well with the other colors, I am not sure I am not breaking some major quilting rule.

Just like I worried about my "sophisticated" quilting ruining the modern feel of the three hearts quilt, I am worried that my "country" reds are going to ruin the civil war feel of the quilt.  I remember a time when I didn't care about these things, and wish I could go back.  In fact, I deliberately cross contaminated things so my quilts and I couldn't be put into a particular category box.  Ever since modern quilts have been shown as their own separate category, I seem to want to put things in their nice neat cubicles, except that I still have preferences to mix and match.  The country red is staying, not because I am confidently liberated to use the colors I want, but because I am not going back to the store to buy more fabric.


I am also making a small quilt using the scraps from the stars, and it is turning out really well.  I think I may want to submit this quilt to a magazine or somewhere be published, and it is rearing up indecision for me as well.  Now there is a greater "oh what if this next step ruins the quilt" and "does this fabric really the best fabric to use here" indecision. 

Shopping

The last time I went to the store, they were having a sale, and I bought four yards of clearance fabric.  They had a one yard minimum, and I am sure these would be great for backs or backgrounds or something.  I completely broke my "only buy fabric for specific quilts" rule, but I decided I deserved the splurge.

Then I had a friend who commissioned another quilt.  I went shopping for fabric for that quilt, but I wound up buying a great deal of fabric and thread for myself as well.  It was also on sale, but this was definitely not a well deserved splurge, coming so close to the other splurge, and especially coming so close to my last day at work.

Now I am not sure that I am even making the commissioned quilt.  It is a twin sized quilt, and I wanted to make sure that I had properly heard what she wanted, so put together the quilt using Paint by scanning the photos she had given me, and the blocks she wanted to go around the quilt, and typed up what we had discussed.  She has decided that she doesn't like what the quilt looked like.  I didn't change the colors or spend a lot of time making the drawing look just right, since it was just an idea of the quilt, so I am not sure if she just couldn't picture the differences between the sample and the actual quilt, or whether she really wouldn't have liked the finished quilt.

I am glad I did write this up though, because I would much rather have her be unhappy now, then after I went through the trouble of making the quilt.

Pinterest

I have joined Pinterest, mostly as a way to share my hubs, but have been spending more time enjoying seeing and pinning all the beautiful quilts that have been pinned there.  Several people have complained about photos from their hubs and blogs being pinned there without their permission.  I can see why you wouldn't want a photo pinned there, especially if you were a photographer.  But I really see it more as free advertising.

Besides, many people are going to copy and save a photo of a quilt on their hard drive anyway.  When I decide to make a quilt, it would be great to be able to find the original so I can find out more about the quilt and whether a pattern is available.  Pinterest actually keeps the photo and the link to the source attached, so more can be learned about the pattern.  Is it possible that I would make a simple quilt by using the photo and not buying a pattern?  Sure, but I could do that anyway when I found a photo on a blog or on my hard drive.

Besides, I quilt pretty slowly.  The chances of me actually getting around to making a quilt from a photograph is pretty slim, as much as I would prefer otherwise.

Fleas

It's been a bad year for fleas and ticks. Well, it is a good year for them, but a bad year for us dealing with them.  So far, the thing that has worked the best is the flea comb, and it seems now that after the thorough brushing and combing, Zeus's fur is much better taken care of than my own hair.  He is looking very pretty, even though he still keeps scratching himself from time to time!

Quilt Reveal: Three Hearts Quilt

I have finished quilting and binding the three hearts quilt.  Please check my previous posts for details about this quilt.

The fabric I had separated as "use me" in my stash was the one I used for the binding and the simple label. I really like the backing fabric as well.

This is what it looks like before washing. I used two different fabrics for the background, and just like in the book, the one white looks a lot darker than the other when looking at it on the quilt. In real life, the whites are both very similar to each other.

This is what it looks like after washing. The pencil markings came off great, but there was one spot I used the eraser to erase (old habits die hard), and that little blue stain is still on the quilt.  I did play around with the photo program to try to get the colors to look truer in all of these photos. The quilt finishes at 13" x 17".

I like it. I think it will be a great addition to my quilt wall collection.

Three Hearts Quilt

In my last post, I showed you the open book showing you my inspiration for my latest hearts quilt.  There is another picture n this post so you don't have to look for it.  It is from this book called Red White and Sometimes Blue: Classics from McCalls Quilting by Patchwork Place.

My main goal was to make something small and quick, with a modern feel to it. I decided that it would be great to have the three hearts form one heart.  I used pink instead of red because I had just purchased a BOM kit for one month, and it happened to be pink.

You know how libraries put certain books out on display to draw attention to them?  I had found a pink fabric while I was looking for something else, and I had placed it on top as a display because I wanted to use it next.

The piecing was quick and simple, although it did require some unsewing. Why did it take four seams before I noticed the error?  This would have worked great as an orphan block, leaving everyone wondering why I made a y, but I didn't want to cut any more pieces.

I only had three pieces of pink, so instead of looking for more or using a fabric twice, I decided to make only three hearts.  I liked the idea of using three hearts that form one heart, instead of making all six blocks. I think this design would be great for a couple with a child, or three children, or three grandchildren.  The white spaces would be lovely for embroidering in the loved ones' names or quotations.

My choice to use only three of the hearts left a lot of white space for quilting. Even though the goal was to make a thoroughly modern quilt, I decided that it was my quilt and a more interesting design would be a better choice.  Besides, I wanted to make use of the books from my big book buying spree.   Instead of simple quilting, I decided to use some quilting designs from the book Sophisticated Stitches by Don Linn.

It is a machine quilting book, but the motifs work just as well for hand quilting. The author encourages adapting the designs and using parts instead of the whole, and mixing and matching. I used some parts, and was happy to see that they fit perfectly into my quilt without resizing. This decision to hand quilt slowed the progress down considerably, but it is enjoyable. This week I have been hand quilting for at least fifteen minutes every day while I watch the Olympics. I was going to use white or cream thread, but decided it I was going to take the time to hand quilt, I would get credit for it, even if it did look sloppy and show my uneven and crooked quilting stitches. In fact, with my modern quilting style, I am not even fretting about uneven or crooked stitches. It's liberated if I do it on purpose, not mistakes. Can you be liberated and sophisticated at the same time?

 I did the top center and two of the little free form hearts on Monday.
 Tuesday, I did the left side and the other free form heart.
On Wednesday, as I was quilting, my mother called and reminded me about the family pack of chicken in my refrigerator. She said she had come over earlier in the day when I wasn't home and saw it there. She would have cooked it for me, but she didn't know what I wanted. Oops, I had left it there to defrost and I was supposed to cook it on Tuesday. When I got home from work, I was too hungry to cook, so I ate something quick from the freezer, planning to cook it later. But I would forget, because I wasn't hungry. So, I quickly set the hand quilting aside for my cooking emergency.
When it was time to quilt on Thursday, I could not find my needle. The thread from my unfinished motif had broken in two and the needle was missing. The quilt was on the couch, but I didn't remember it being in that location. Apparently in my cooking emergency, I hadn't properly put away the quilt. The dog was frantic because of the thunderstorm. I was worried that he might have had a fight with the quilt, and I was hoping that the needle didn't win. It wasn't until it was time for bed that I found the needle in the fold of the couch. On Friday, I finished the top half and started on the bottom half, which I completed on the weekend.
There is a little bit of extra space on the sides I want to quilt and I will be finished.

Quilting Orgy

No Mom, not that kind.

I've been madly trying to make up for lost quilting time.  I've been sewing anything and everything that wants to go under my pressure foot.  Big or small, new or old, it doesn't matter.  All sorts of parts and pieces are piling up on my sewing table, all jumbled up in a glorious mess.

The HSTs are star points for the BOM I did last year.  Instead of buying the package finishing kit, I chose to buy my own fabric, so that my quilt wouldn't look like all the others.  As usual, I wound up buying much more fabric than I need for this quilt.  Of course, I can use it for other quilts, including my Jane Stickle quilt and my other fall quilts.

The little pink things are for the hearts quilt - my newest project.  I like to have a new project going to keep my momentum going on my older quilts.  When I tell myself that I can't start a new project until I have all the old ones done, my motivation to quilt completely leaves, so now I use the new projects as a jumping ground to finish the older ones.

The purple / orange/ blue/ green thing at the very bottom is my Wildflower Garden quilt.  This one is even older than the BOM.  I had a minor error on this block and ripped it, but for some reason, didn't manage to sew it back together.  Now it is done.  All the pieced blocks are done. I need to work on the applique on this project.

I've also been madly skimming through my Google Reader.  I can't just delete the whole and start over.  So I skim and keep all the ones with the pretty quilt pictures, and keep adding to that never ending quilts-to-make list.

The hearts quilt is actually completely pieced.  I still was not able to free motion quilt it.  My machine is very fickle with free motion quilting, and I'm not in the mood to make it behave, so I am hand quilting it. It is another small quilt, and I am hoping that it will be my next finish. I'm actually enjoying the hand quilting.