Sew Brimfield - A Finished Quilt

I know, I know, long time, no blog!  I had been working on my projects very regularly then all of a sudden, not so much.  Sometimes it is like that, I lose the quilting mojo, but it always comes back.  It is back and I am back.

I'm naming this quilt Sew Brimfield, after the retreat where I made most of the blocks.  I highly recommend the retreat, they are holding it again, and you can find the information for it here.  My blog post about my experience at the retreat is here.

The finished quilt is 61" by 72".  It was inspired by a quilt I saw on Instagram made by The Pattern Basket.  I had previously made a similar design, Great Granny Squared by Lori Holt, so I used that pattern but reduced the size of the squares and added another round to each block.  I made the quilt entirely from stash, including the border, binding, and backing.  Yea!

I sent the top to Teresa Silva of Quilting Is My Bliss; you can see more of her great work on her Instagram account.

I understand this "swirl pose" is the thing to do for quilt photos now, lol.

In the meantime, I've been working on another UFO (2023 is my year to tackle UFOs) and have a couple more unfinished projects queued up to go.  However, quilting was interrupted for a vacation trip to Naples and the Amalfi Coast of Italy.  Totally fabulous!  I went with Girls Guide to the World and highly recommend them for women who want to travel but not alone.  I've enjoyed my trips with them even more than solo travel.  They are offering the same Amalfi trip again in May 2024.  Here are some highlights:

Sailing around Capri

Inside the Blue Grotto at Capri

Lemons growing in Sorrento

View of Positano (the one day it rained)

The view from my hotel room balcony in Sorrento

Pompeii

Pastries in Naples

Until next time!

Just Finish It Challenge - First Finish

While giving my sewing room a much needed clean up, I found so many unfinished projects.  I'm determined to finish at least five of them before undertaking anything new.  Here is the first (sort of) finish.  

It's the quilt I started at the Sew Brimfield retreat in early November.  I made most of the granny square blocks at the retreat, finished the last few when I got home, then the project sat.

Last week, I got the top finished, with the borders on.  And I have the backing ready.  So while not quite a finished quilt, it is ready to go to the long arm quilter.  

This is another made-from-stash quilt.  I need to use up more of my stash before I buy fabric because I simply don't have room for more, short of storing it in the attic.  

On to just-finish-it number 2.

Pirouette or Dance Party, A Finished Quilt

About 10 months ago, I began the process of making about a gajillion half square triangles out of my collection of 30's reproduction prints to use in the making of a design called Pirouette by Carrie Nelson.  The pattern in featured in the book A Scrapbook of Quilts by Joanne Figueroa and Carrie Nelson (well worth having in your quilting library if you don't own it already).  I finished the top by mid-summer then had it quilted by a long-arm quilter.  I got it bound in time to give it to my sister and brother-in-law for Christmas.  I named my version Dance Party.

I was really happy with the way it came out and they seemed to like it too.  

It is a fairly easy design to make, though the number of blocks needed for a queen bed size quilt means the process can become a bit tedious.  

The quilting design is a panto (edge to edge), a loose feather that softens the linear piecing.  I used a wide back by Lori Holt for Riley Blake fabrics that I bought for this purpose but all the other fabric, including the binding, came from my stash and is from older fabric lines.

I hope you had a merry Christmas or other holiday celebration and are settling in for the new year.  I'll be back soon with my plans for 2023.

Moda Blockheads 4/Little Blocks 4.5

I have 17 4.5" blocks (finished size) made and I am putting this project aside for now.

I've been making the blocks out of Christmas-y fabrics, bits and pieces from my stash.  I like the blocks but don't know what I am going to do with them and have kind of lost the love for this project.  Mostly, I've realized that I really don't enjoy the process of foundation paper piecing.  When I made Rainbow Connection, I was excited enough about my vision for the finished quilt that I could tolerate the process.  Not so much now that I don't have an endpoint in mind.  I much prefer the process of making the regular pieced blocks from the Moda project, and I plan to go back to it as soon as I have a plan for the blocks.  I may even add more from the Little Blocks project.  

But until then, I need a project I can love, and I have something in mind.  But first, I'm going to make some items of a "practical" nature.  Look for an update soon. 

 

Pirouette, A Finished Flimsy

And the top is finished!  It is not quilted yet but I put it on my bed to see how it looks (also to be sure it is big enough).  I enlarged Pirouette, from the book A Scrapbook of Quilts, from 16 blocks to 25 blocks so it would fit a queen size bed.  And I made the outer border 4" wide to add a bit more.  I think it will be about 93" square after quilting.

The color in this close-up photo is closer to "real life" than the photo above.  The 30's reproduction prints are bright and cheerful.  

I had to buy some fabric for the back as I did not have anything big enough in my stash so I went for a wideback fabric (108 inches wide) because my least favorite part of quilt making is piecing the back.  I am going to take this to a longarmer to quilt and am contemplating designs while I wait for the back to arrive.  I want a design that will make the seams in the white areas less apparent.  I do have some fabric for the binding.  It is a blue print, the same blue as the solid I used for the tiny cornerstones in the center of each block.  

This quilt was a good stash buster though I still have enough 30's reproduction prints to make another quilt.  I'm thinking maybe a log cabin.  But that won't be my next project as I have a few things in the pipeline to get to first. 

Starting To Pirouette

I'm working on my Little Blocks 4.5 sampler; with three blocks released every Friday, it makes a great weekend project.  Deciding I need a concurrent project for weekdays, I started Pirouette.  

Pirouette is one of the excellent designs in A Scrapbook of Quilts, by Joanna Figueroa and Carrie Nelson.  When I got the book last year, I knew immediately that I wanted to make this one, it was just a matter of identifying the best fabric to use.  

It occurred to me that I had a lot of 30's reproduction prints stored in a bin and they could work nicely in this design.  Moreover, I have a gift recipient in mind (but better not mention it here).  The fabric is left from making two quilts for Miss Main Street's "big bed" when she moved from the crib.  Miss Main Street is 26 so this fabric practically qualifies as vintage.  It was all in good shape though, especially after a good starch 'n press.

The first step is to make eleventy gazillion HSTs.  I'm using Triangles on a Roll paper, which helps with both accuracy and speed as most of the fabric is partial fat quarters and fat eighths.  When I get down to smaller pieces, I'll use the traditional method.  

I've made a good start.  Tearing off  the backing paper is the most boring task, made better by doing it while watching a Winter Olympics broadcast.  Here is a block laid out on one of my design boards, not yet sewn together.  

Here's a glimpse of some quilts I made long ago using 30's repros.  The windmill block quilt on the upper left was one of the first bed size quilts I ever made; I probably made it in 1998.  It alternated on Miss Main Street's bed along with the one next to it.  The two underneath quilts on the lower rod are also in 30's repros.  

And for this one, Shasta Daisy, I used 30's repros for the foundation of each block.  

I'm enjoying working with these fabrics again.  There is something cheerful about them, and

cheerful is what I need now. 

Trip Around the World - A Finished Quilt

Pieced, quilted, and bound... I finished the Trip Around the World quilt that I pieced last summer.  The weather has been so good lately so I took this photo outside in our back yard.

It is a generous throw size, 64" by 72" and I bound it using the same fabric that is in the outer most "ring" of squares, the teal green tone-on-tone fabric.  You can read more about how I pieced this quilt in my earlier post on it, here.

This is the last quilt that Karen Thompson quilted for me, before she retired from longarm quilting for clients.  She quilted it with a curvy swirl panto design.  

I like swirling designs like this one for their softening effect on the angular patches.

I made the quilt top last summer when I was in use-the-stash mode so almost all of the fabric came from my stash, even the backing.  I did a fabric pull to coordinate with the colors in our family room, using the floral throw pillow as the key inspiration (the curtains in the room are made of the same floral fabric).  I wanted this particular quilt to be used in our family room and to complement the decor there but even when I'm not trying to coordinate with a room's decorating scheme, I find this method of selecting fabrics for a quilt to be quite effective.  

If you have a fabric you like, select your quilting fabrics based on the colors/shades in the inspiration fabric, in the ratios they are used in the print, and you pretty much can't go wrong.  You don't even have to use the inspiration fabric in the quilt itself, but just as a guide to selecting the fabrics you will use.  

Mr. Main Street is trying to hold the quilt up to get a picture.  The corgis saw the camera and thought they were supposed to be the models; you can see the paws of one of them (along with the mister's sock feet) under the bottom edge.  

Well, I have even more binding to do.

Modern Handcraft Snowflake Quilt - Snow Day

We've had an unusual amount of snow in NJ over the past two weeks, keeping me indoors and working on this snowflake quilt.  

It is from a pattern by Modern Handcraft; she recently held a sew along but I wasn't ready at that time.  It is a very well written pattern with lots of illustrations and a few photographs, in an 18-page booklet.  Very thorough and easy to follow, I 10/10 recommend!

For the background, I used various blue fabrics leftover from the quilts I made in blue and gold when my daughter was in high school.  I wanted a wall hanging that would fit in my kitchen so I reduced the size of the quilt from 60" by 72" to 40" by 48" by reducing the size of squares of fabric that make up each block.

The first step is to cut out the fabric then make the HST's that give the snowflake image it's shape.

Instead of using solid white fabric for the snowflake, I used Michael Miller Fairy Frost in the snow white color.  It is hard to see but it is printed with a little bit of gold that gives the fabric a pearly shine.  

The top went together fast and I'm happy with the way it came out.  I think it will look even better after it is quilted.  

Funny story:  I asked Mr. Main Street to help me by holding the quilt while I took photos.  After we were done, he asked me, "What is this design supposed to be?  A Viking rune?"  In his defense, he likes designs that are centered and have symmetry but it is a good thing I have you blog readers for positive feedback!

Like Sunshine On A Cloudy Day - A Finished Quilt

I have a quilt finish to share; I'm calling this one Like Sunshine On A Cloudy Day.

This quilt was inspired by a string quilt I made several years ago.  It is my most used quilt and I thought something similar to use in rotation could be a good idea.  Inspiration also came from my stash, as it holds a lot of floral prints in light colors, mainly from the 3 Sisters collections for Moda.  I was really wanting to make a quilt from my stash, something I would really like and not just for the sake of using the stash (I put too much time into my quilts to spend it making something I'm not enthusiastic about).

I sent the top and backing to Karen Thompson, my longtime quilt collaborator.  Karen used an edge-to-edge design that is similar to Baptist fan, a quilting pattern I'd wanted to use for a long time.  

I bound the quilt with a darker pink tone-on-tone print.  It makes a nice finish and complements the darker pinks in some of the floral prints. The blocks are just 6" square and each strip of fabric in the block finishes at 1" wide so this is a good block for those leftover bits and pieces of fabric we all have.

I even used fabric from my stash for the back.  This is big quilt, 96" square for a queen size bed, and I didn't have enough of any one print but I had two coordinating prints.  I must have bought these with some use in mind but I can't remember what.

I'm happy with the way this quilt turned out and have it on my bed now.  It's like a ray of sunshine on these dreary January days.