Project Quilting 16.6 - Swirling Spheres

The last Project Quilting challenge of the year was called Button it Up.  My first thought was a shirt or a coat.  Boring.  I have a pile of buttons I want to use up, so how to use them?  Creating a postcard or a mug rug seemed awfully lumpy (and not very useful).  Maybe a pillow or a wall hanging would work better with the texture?  After some research on button quilts I found some interesting designs featuring circles.  I was fully inspired by this and ran with it.

Both Rob and my mother thought I was crazy attempting a wall hanging in less than a week, especially since I was still cutting and ironing circles on Friday morning.  I had a final layout by Friday evening ready to fuse in place.  Saturday morning I fused, sandwiched and quilted.  I had hoped to quilt it all with one color of thread (for speed reasons), but quickly hated how it looked.  So I took the time to rip what I quilted and switch matching thread.  It was quilted and bound with corner pockets for a hanging rod by early afternoon.  It had to be!  I ran off to dance the rest of the afternoon and evening.  I brought the quilt with me to the dance and spent the dance break burying threads.  Whew!

Two Kinds of Marmalade

I'm calling this quilt Marmalade, since it was created with my Citrus Quilt leftovers.  It's a smallish quilt, roughly 16x24" - perfect for hanging on the wall or the front door.  I found a nice piece of blue just the right size for the background.  The layout left a lot of empty blue in the upper right corner that begged to be filled.  Perhaps some appliqued circles?  Naw - needed more squiggles.  

I have often admired quilts that continue the pattern of the piecing or applique into the quilting.  I've always wanted to try that - and this was my opportunity.  I found some yellow, green and orange thread, drew a rough outline of what I wanted and started quilting. 

What do you think?  Really fun.  It looks better in person.

Project Quilting 15.4 - Time Flying Postcard

I made another postcard for Project Quilting's 15.4 challenge - Hourglass.  The challenge required an hourglass shape.  The first thing that popped into mind was an hourglass with wings.  Sure - I'll roll with that.

My first idea was to make it symmetrical with the wings on either side, but I had a hard time fitting everything on a 4x6" card.  This is what I came up with.  Time flies when you're having fun!

Sharing with:
Persimon Dreams - Project Quilting 15.4

Project Quilting 15.3 - Citrus Banner

My entry for Project Quilting's 15.3 challenge - Inside Out is a wall hanging /door banner featuring the insides of a lemon, orange, grapefruit and lime.  It ended up being a five hour marathon on Saturday to complete.  Not how I like to work.  

I landed on the citrus slices idea while admiring the mini lemons produced by my mother's lemon tree.  Ooh - and maybe use my Dresden plate ruler?  I wanted to do something pieced, and my idea required something bigger than a post card. 

I spent a chunk of time cutting and assembling pieces before I realized I had measured something wrong.  The pieces were too narrow and weren't coming full circle.  (I now have a ton of little pieces that are begging for another project.)  My second attempt was more successful (but if you look closely at the lemon, I had to jam in one of the little pieces to get it a full circle).  So I lost what little time I had to work on this on Friday experimenting.

The whole design and assembly was on-the-fly with some vague ideas of what should work, and then doing and redoing things as I went along.  Not conducive for a deadline (I had to be done by 5pm on Saturday because of other commitments).  The quilt ended up with minimum quilting, a machine sewn binding and a few more mistakes than usual.

Finishes for 2023

This was not a big year for quilting.  The majority of my finishes were done in the first several weeks of the year for Project Quilting.

Watership Down post cards, mixer cover, smartphone carrier
Dresden pillow, pink wavy pillow, bowl cozies

Holly Sweatshirt

Last year I had promised my mother an embellished sweatshirt.  I bought a couple of sweatshirts but both were too big.  Mom found a sweatshirt that fit her, so I appliqued leaves on it.  Of the extra sweatshirts, I made a wonky Dresden design for one sweatshirt.  The other was a little smaller and I wondered all year what I wanted to do with it.  It seemed a shame to just get rid of it. 

 

Project Quilting 14.4: Watership Down Post Cards

My Project Quilting projects seem to be shrinking.  I started with pillows, then switched to a phone pouch and now I made post cards.  This week's challenge was A Novel Project - inspiration drawn from a book I've read.  So many books!  Which one to choose?  I immediately thought of some of my oldest favorites:  The Westing Game, The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues, The Blue Sword.  But they were obscure or would be hard to work with.  And what would I make?  

I stewed on it a day or two and decided a post card of Watership Down.  I wanted El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit of Inlé.  I ended up with a couple of extra brown rabbits, so I made two post cards.

The hardest bit was shrinking the rabbits down small enough to fit on the 4x6" card and yet be big enough to work with.  Once they were cut out and ironed on they needed a little embellishment.  I pulled out my book and first read the very end - it always makes me weepy.  Then I read the chapter where El-ahrairah goes to the Black Rabbit.  The Black Rabbit has very little description, other than having red eyes.  I caught the bit where Frith restored El-ahrairah ears and added a little bit of starlight.  I had to go back and reread the ending.  The movie/mini-series portray the Black Rabbit collecting Hazel at the end, but it's El-ahrairah who comes to get him.  The faint silver light around the ears is the give away.  I don't know if I realized that before.  

I Like Thursday: Valentine Goodies

This was a week of goodies, which gives me several nice things to share with LeeAnna's I Like Thursday.

Usually we stop off at the pastry shop when transporting guinea pigs to Dakin.  But we've had the current fosters since early December.  So we made a special trip to Cerrato's pastries this week.  They had a lot of beautiful (and delicious) items special for Valentine's day.  This one was a white chocolate shell filled with chocolate mousse.  Yum!

Project Quilting 14.1: Dresden Plate Pillow

Project Quilting is here again!  I've enjoyed participating in the last two years of challenges.  It's a series of one-week projects, creating whatever comes to mind with no worries on how it turns out.  My creativity seems to work best when given small parameters or when using stuff I have on hand.

This week's challenge was The First One.  For me, that meant trying a new pattern or technique.  I dug through and rejected several paper pieced patterns before I hit upon my Dresden plate ruler.  I bought this at Swanson's more than two years ago, because who can pass up a $4 quilting ruler?  It was brand new - still had the protective paper on it.  Using it would be a first!  Then I decided the quilt needed to be one color.  I discarded all my blues and reds to pick brown (beige/cream is a brown, right?).  I never know what fabric is going to speak up.  Excellent.  I've covered both the words first and one.

Finishes for 2022

Lots of completed quilts this year.  I participated in all of the Project Quilting challenges.  I also had four sandwiched quilts at the end of last year that I finished this year.  Whew!

Tablet cover, Storm at Sea heart, zig-zag mug rugs
black cat, flying geese circle, tea pot and cups and more flying geese

Leafy Sweatshirt

 

Years ago I raw-edge appliqued a sweatshirt with colorful leaves.  The sweatshirt is now well worn and most of the leaves are falling off.  It's heading for the recycle bin one of these days.

I happened to mention to my mom I might attempt to re-make the sweatshirt.  She said she'd love one. I started on the leaves while she found a sweatshirt her size (you can see the original sweatshirt and my first leaves here.)

The new leaves are slightly larger than my original design.  When I first pinned on the new leaves onto my mother's petite sweatshirt, they dominated the entire sweatshirt.  The colors popped but it was overwhelming!

Leaf Edges

My mother has asked for a sweatshirt appliqued with leaves (like this one I made years ago).  I haven't found a sweatshirt small enough for her, so I'm currently doing a practice run on an extra sweatshirt I have right now.  So far I'm having mixed results.

The leaves on the original sweatshirt were raw-edged applique that I glued then zig-zag stitched to the sweatshirt.  This was great for the the spiky leaves and sharp corners.  However, I set the zig-zag stitch too narrow and most of the leaves have partially peeled off (this photo was right after I completed it).  Given that the sweatshirt has been heavily used in the last 15 years, it still did pretty well.

Another Swirly Dresden

Years ago I found a really cool swirly dresden plate paper pieced pattern and used it to embellish a sweatshirt.  Loved the result, but turns out the sweatshirt was too big.  Not that I mind having a bulky sweatshirt, especially in winter, but was really loose.  The sleeves were too long as well; the cuffs were always in the way when cooking or washing my hands.  

I bought a couple of blank sweatshirts over the winter, because my mom wanted a version of my leaf sweatshirt.  (Hmm.. I appear to have made that before I started blogging - I'll have to dig up a photo.)  Turns out both sweatshirts were too big for her, but one of them fit me better than the oversized one.  I decided to make a new color wheel.

Finishes for 2021

I did lots of work this year, mostly in the first few months.  I currently have four unfinished quilts, so January of next year is going to look amazing for finishes.

Fussy Spots, Mini Nauset Light
Kitty Corners, Crazy Postcard, From the Sunroom

I participated in the Project Quilting this year, which was fun!  These were my entries for fussy cutting, mini quilt, snail trail quilt, crazy quilt and Ab Intra (from within).  The crazy quilt is a post card.  The others are mug rugs and table toppers or little wall hangings.  I learned something new with each one.

Project Quilting 12.6: From the Sunroom

The last project for this season's Project Quilting ends today.  I figured out what I wanted to create days ago.  I had time to sketch it out, but didn't get a chance to start it until yesterday.  I'm glad it was a small project - cut, appliqued, quilted and bound in one day.

Project Quilting 12.2: Fussy Spots

I've watched a few seasons of Project Quilting float by my Facebook feed and decided to try it out this season.  I missed the first challenge, but anyone can jump in at any time, so I tackled the fussy cut challenge this week.

Off the Rails

I am running off the rails with my projects.  Eek!  It's all Project Quilting's fault.  I'd seen prior seasons float by on my feeds and decided to jump into this one.  The challenge is fussy cutting.  I had an idea, grabbed fabric to fussy cut and anticipated a quick project.  I started playing with fabrics and layout, which was cool.  However, once I got a layout nailed down, I started to reconsider what fabrics I was fussy cutting.  At this point I've flip-flopped to a completely different set of fabric and back to most of the colors I started with.

Nuts.

Deadline is Sunday at noon.  I'm not used to this kind of creative process under a deadline.  I need the fabric cut by tonight or tomorrow to have any chance of getting this done on time.  Wish me luck!

OMG Dress Finished

Huzzah!  I made it.  I may not look happy in this photo, but I am!  (I'm just a little dizzy... see photos below.)

My OMG was to update this dancing dress.  I like the dress, but it needed some pizazz.  It has been sitting in my closet for years because I couldn't figure out what to do with it.  When I "fixed" my tank top earlier this year I decided to tackle the dress, too. 

This project turned out to be a lot more challenging than I had anticipated.  Plus I kept getting distracted... and interrupted.

What did happen:  lots of pinning and unpinning.  Started the design on the front, didn't like it; moved to the back - and hit upon a pattern I liked.  The upper front had several false starts before I got the hang of what I liked.  I was going to have the loopiness zig-zag across the front, and that didn't look right.  Instead I kept the ribbons swirling in one direction around the whole dress.  Working around boobs and butt added to the complexity.  LOL  There was a lot of fittings, being very careful not to stick myself with pins.  Ouch!

Once I pinned it where I liked it, I basted it - I didn't want to try sewing it with all those pins.  Stitching it took hours.  I've quilted quilts in less time than it took to stitch down this bias tape.  The humidity unfurled chunks of the tape.  I could re-iron that before it was pinned in place, but afterwards, it was a lot of work to keep the raw edges tucked underneath. 

Playing Around

It's interesting how the color and intensity of fabric changes depending on how you cut it.  I had selected five fabrics to possibly adorn my dress, but when the chunks became narrow strips, one fabric immediately fell out of the running and another was knocked down in the list.  I still have four that I am still considering, and which ones I like best now depend on the design.

Next step has been making bias strips of my top three favorites.  I hope to start pinning them to the dress later today to see what speaks to me.

Dress Update

I see One Monthly Goal float around on various blogs and finally took a closer look at it.  I've decided to give this a try as motivation to update this dress!

I made this dress years ago.  Love the shape and the feel of the fabric... but haven't been so thrilled my choice of color.  I tried jazzing it up four years ago, but it ended up in the closet and hasn't been worn since. 

After my successful spot removal, I decided I should give the dress another try.  I pulled possible colors nearly a month ago.  These are the finalists.