Swirling Spheres Revisited

 

In the last several months I picked up a bunch of buttons between a Freecycle post and my mother's donation to Swanson's Fabrics.  I sorted through them and kept a bunch of ones I liked.  Some I have plans for.  Others I just like.  Then there's the handful I set aside to add to a quilt.

Swirling Spheres was a Project Quilting submission back in 2025 that featured buttons.  I had envisioned more buttons on it, but had neither the time nor the buttons to do that.  

I fixed that.

Shift in Direction

My inkblot layout has been on the wall for months (see photo below).  I bought green fabric for the background over a month ago.  Next step was to start cutting and sewing.  So imagine my surprise after cutting a few pieces I stopped.  

Nope.  This wasn't working.

String Backpack

As I was making my new dance bag, I realized how shabby my little string backpack was.  It was some freebee from Rob's work years ago that happened to be a really useful size.  I've used it a lot over the years.  It's faded, dirty and is starting to develop a few holes.  Time to replace it!  

I dug through my orphaned blocks for inspiration and discovered a handful of blue and green four-patches that I don't even remember putting together.  Must have been some experiment that failed to launch.  There were enough pieces to make the bag with two four-patches left over.  Perfect.

The pieced sides by themselves could easily pull apart so I backed them with some fabric and ran some wavy lines of stitching over them to hold them all together.  Then I stitched the sides and the bottom and rolled over a sleeve on top for the string.  I bound the inside seams so there were no raw edges.

Goings On

A trip to the Cape for Family Weekend had me return with a trunk full of fabric.  Literally - the whole trunk stuffed.  Unfortunately it smelled of moth balls and smoke.  Ugh.  It took days to get the smell out of the car.  I brought the majority of it to Swanson's fabric (they couldn't sell it because of the scent, but they could give it away).  I kept a tiny bag of it - maybe a 10th of the overall haul.  It took me a whole evening to iron the stash.  I will likely keep 13 yards of it, the other eight I may not keep - which will go to Swanson's, of course!

Green and Black

I'm working my way through the last bit of black and grey scraps as well as some clean-up projects as I figure out what the next project is.  Picking a background color for the inkblots was a lot more difficult than I anticipated.  I didn't want a bold background color, because I wanted the focus on the black blocks.  I browsed through so many bolts of fabrics of blue and purple and pink and cream.  I don't know if it was because of the colors in Hundred Acre Wood, but I kept coming back to a set of three greens.  I liked the medium green the best, but I also liked the idea of an ombre effect - so I bought a bit of all three.  I wasn't trying to add to my stash, honest!

Hundred Acre Wood

Another finished baby quilt.  Added bonus - I had a calm, sunny day to photograph it without having to watch the forecast for a week hoping for a break in the weather.

When I showed the finished quilt to my sister she thought maybe I should name it Beanstalk.  I liked it - and it got me thinking about fairy tales and children stories.  One of the fabrics has bears and rabbits on it - which made me think of Winnie the Pooh.  So I named it Hundred Acre Wood.  It has kind of a forest-y feel.  It fits.

Walk This Way

 

Where did June go?

Well, it wasn't spent quilting.  This quilt hated the ideas I came up with it.  I actually started stitching two different free-motion designs and ripped them out.  I didn't make any progress until I switched to my walking foot.  Now I remember why I hate stitching in the ditch (loved the walking foot, though).  But it was progress!  It was enough to get the ball rolling.

Green Sandwich and Inkblots

I finished the top of the sage quilt.  I love the little dark green squares.  

I had picked a taupe color for the backing that I thought would work.  Once I put it near the front of the quilt I hated it.  I found a few more fabrics in my stash that I liked better but none had enough yardage.  Okay - new plan.  

May Adventures

Am I a bad daughter?  I had my mother come to me on Mother's Day.  But it gave us the opportunity to walk the loop around my neighborhood.  When we got near Duck World we had the flock of chickens, ducks and geese flock to us like we were handing out treats.  There were several goslings and ducklings that came to check us out.  The two chickens with the crazy hairdos greeted us as well.  They are a goofy bunch!

I did fix her sewing machine while she was here... so I can't be all that bad. 

Supernova

Supernova is finished and photographed!  I am thrilled with result.

Supernova started from a ton of extra grey and black triangles I had cut but didn't use in a king-sized quilt's background.  That quilt also produced a bunch of black and white crumbs.  Scrap Stars barely put a dent in the pile of triangles and crumbs.  Therefore, this quilt had two parameters:  use up the remaining triangles and create as few (or none!) black and grey pieces as possible.  While researching quilt designs I came across several lone star patterns.  I made the triangles into diamonds and started playing with various layouts.  

Surrounded by Green

We're finally moving out of the muddy grey spring season and into many shades of green.  Ahhh....  Spring arrives a week or two later up here on the hill than it does in the center of town.  Our trees are seriously thinking about leafing out in the near future while a mile or two away trees have real leaves.  Alas, the weeds are growing as fast as the grass and my perennials.  I still love the lushness of it all.

Local Happenings

I never have enough time to do all the things.  So I currently have a handful of photos I wanted to share but never got around to posting.  I'll try to squeeze them in now!

Our local porcupine greeted us on our walk a few weeks ago.  He was a little camera shy - when I approached to get a better photo he ducked for cover.  
 

Scrap Stars

This is the first finish of three scrap quilts I'm working on.  Not one of my favorite pieces but it uses up a series of diamond rejects (too small or badly pieced) as well as a bunch of grey triangles and some crumbs.  Good practice for free motion quilting as well. 

It's a small piece - a little over two feet wide.  I thought I'd give it away but it ended up in our master bathroom.  It turns out that replacing the shower curtain with a glass door makes for a very echoey room.  Normally I would not hang a quilt in the bathroom.  In this case I have a home for the quilt and it makes the room seem less cavernous.  Win-win.

Sharing with:
Quilt Schmilt - To Do Tuesday
A Quiltery - Put Your Foot Down Thursday

Bobbin Tension Bliss

I have been quilting away.  I cannot believe how correctly setting my bobbin tension has solved ALL my quilting issues (well, except for user error...).  Even stitches.  No weird looped or breaking threads.  The bobbin doesn't rattle so much.  I only need to stop stitching when I've finished the area I'm quilting, I've run out of bobbin thread, or I've messed up the pattern.  

It's bliss.

It also means I'm nearly done quilting the Lone Star quilt.  Red should be wrapped up today; only the white and pink on the edge is left.  

Inkblots and Green

All sorts of projects in the works.  Two quilts pinned and ready to quilt.  I just need to figure out what pattern I want to do.  

Spent way too much time surfing Pinterest for scrappy, crumb and string ideas.  Ooh, what do I want to do next??

I also got around to cutting the fabric I originally bought for the kaleidoscope blocks.  Look how they turned out!  (Design floor in use because I used all the batting that was on my design wall.  Need to replace that soon!)

Quilted Cushion Fabric

My sister wanted some seat cushions for her dining room chairs.  She asked my mother to stitch them up... at which point they came to me to see what fabric I could offer.  

I dug through my stash, brought out some orphaned blocks before pulling out several sets of crumb blocks.

Piecing and Pinning

The last Project Quilting challenge comes out later today - so I was able to focus on clean-up projects this week.  I have almost cleared out my backlog of Winter Stars scrap.  Whew!  I pieced together a backing for the Lone Star quilt.  Then I ripped out a few of the center star's seams and restitched to get rid of the bulge I had complained about in an earlier post.   The center points are a total mess but absolutely no one is going to notice those.  The quilt is flat enough to ease out any other ripples when I quilt it.  

I started sandwiching it before I noticed a few jagged edges along the black and red Vs I had intended to address (the other missed points are more forgiving).  The frustrating thing is two of them had already been ripped and restitched.  Thankfully third time was the charm (and kept to my two-rip-and-restitch rule).  This quilt is officially sandwiched and in need of quilting inspiration.  

Project Quilting 17.5 - Cyan & Orange Pizza Box Cozy

This week's challenge for Project Quilting was to create something two dominant complementary colors.  Excellent!  This was a chance to clean out some of my stash and to make an insulated pizza box cozy (which has been on my to-do list for some time).  Our nearest pizza place is a ways away and we're hoping this will keep it a little warmer on the way home.

Mystery Wall Quilt

I participated in a mystery QAL (quilt along) last spring for the Colour Value Mystery and pieced together this wall hanging.  It then sat for several months until I had a chance to quilt and bind it.  I'm pleased with the result!

I started the quilting with a walking foot.  My design required pivoting the quilt back and forth and that got tedious pretty quickly.  I switched to free motion quilting which sacrificed straight lines and precision but the process was a lot more enjoyable.  (Especially having fixed the bobbin tension issues.) 

At some point I started to quilt some curves, but disliked the look.  I ripped them out and continued quilting straight lines.  I really like the designs over the gold and white (the black is quilted, too, but does not stand out).  I extended those patterns across the border as well.

Lots of Lines

I started this mystery quilt last spring.  It has been on the shelf waiting for Winter Stars to be done.  I've been able to focus on it last week, plugging away on the quilting.  I wrapped that up this weekend - all I need to do is square it and bind it.

At some point I tried using a ruler to quilt straighter lines.  Nope.  Just as bad as I remember the last time I tried that.  Maybe I'll try ruler quilting when I get a nifty longarm machine.  Ha.

Do you recall I had some bobbin tension issues?  I spent some time on the bobbin before quilting.  I don't have a tension gauge, so I tested it by filling a little canister (remember when cameras needed film?) with safety pins then  clipping it onto the thread.  The bobbin needed tight enough for the canister to pull the thread a bit at a time but not so loose to drop to the floor.  With a bit of trial and error I discovered 22 grams is a good spot.  Stitches are even no matter which direction I quilted.