Category Archives: Pieced Quilts

A Vintage Finish

Looks like I made it, and with a few days to spare! My ALYOF goal for August was to quilt and bind my vintage double nine patch quilt. Yahoo for setting goals.

I had asked readers to suggest ideas for quilting the vintage quilt and was happy to receive tons of suggestions. Thanks so much for the ideas. I decided to quilt a basic cross-hatch over the main nine-patch blocks. Then I wanted to do something different with each of the three borders. My original thought was to do different cable patterns so I bought a couple of cable stencils.

Alas, it wasn’t entirely successful. I started by doing a basic, single cable on the middle (narrowest) border. I had great help with tracing the stencil. Ian was home for the weekend and kindly traced for me.

Try as I might, I couldn’t relax and just stitch. I wanted to use my walking foot, maybe that was the mistake? The stitching isn’t fluid and I am less than pleased with it. Hoping that a run through the wash (in my NEW washing machine) will make the jitters a bit less obvious.

Because of the issues with the single cable, I lost interest in doing a more complex cable pattern so I put the stencils away in the deepest recesses of my desk drawer. I don’t plan on looking at them for quite some time. Instead, I played with some motifs that Lori Kennedy has posted over at The Inbox Jaunt. I chose her Modern Leaf pattern (which I posted about earlier this week.) Because I am susceptible to this sort of nonsense, I wondered if I should use a motif with the word “Modern” in it when I was really trying to go for a vintage look. Jeez… I need to get over myself already. It worked out fine and was very fun to quilt. Because I did the quilting with cream colored Mettler thread, it is hard to see in the pictures. But I am much happier with it than the single cable. (I love the fabric with those little pins. Really cute.)

For the final, outside border I did basic straight-line quilting which I just eyeballed using the side of the walking foot. Simple and clean. I backed it with a blue print and as you can see, I used one of the cream background fabrics as the binding.

One small concern that came to mind is that I have a six inch gap between stitching lines on the cross-hatch. The batting said I could space the quilting with as much as an eight inch gap. However this is likely the widest I have gone and it seems sketchy to me. Any input on that? I could still add lines to the body of the quilt if need be. If I split the difference between the existing lines, I would have a three inch gap. Thanks for any ideas you might have.

Overall, I am happy with the finish. This is a more traditional quilt than I normally make but I enjoyed it. My next project is more modern and uses Kaffe Fassett yardage and jelly roll. I am chomping at the bit to get started on it so stay tuned.

Linking to my favorites: Let’s Bee Social, Finish it up Friday, and Sew Bittersweet Designs. Take a peek at these sites – there is a lot of great work out there!

Double Nine Patch Update

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Hey everyone! I finished the vintage double nine patch quilt top. Yay for staying with it and getting it done. It is a good size for a lap quilt. Finished, it should measure out to about 60″ x 70″. I am really happy with it and look forward to getting it basted and ready to quilt.

The quilting decision is an important one due to all of the negative space that this quilt has. My FMQ skills are improving but aren’t stellar. What to do?? My thinking is that this sort of traditional quilt calls for FMQ over straight line quilting (I usually associate straight line quilting with a more modern project). Because this will be auctioned off at a 1940’s themed fundraiser in October, I feel like I need to do some decent quilting on it. I need a foolproof idea! Please help me out here and send ideas my way! Do I do an easy all over stipple? If so, do I stipple the main portion and do something different on the borders or just cruise right over the borders too? I have plenty of time to decide. I don’t have any batting just now (well, other than the piles and piles of batting scrap – I could probably stitch those scraps together and make a piece large enough for a king size quilt). I need to spend some time on Pinterest and hop over to a few sites (The Inbox Jaunt and The Freemotion Quilting Project come to mind) for inspiration.

One more thing…. Totally off topic here, but yesterday my quilt model and I went to the movies and saw “Inside Out”. I had high expectations for this new Pixar film since the reviews are glowing. Yikes, I was disappointed. Both of us kind of shook our head on the way out, wondering what the hype is all about. I found it really preachy – sort of like they were forcing a lesson down my throat. Neither my daughter nor I could figure out what age group this was aimed at. The plot doesn’t seem suitable for early elementary school ages and it seemed very trite for older kiddos. Did I miss something? Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for it? Just curious what others are thinking about this movie.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and Needle and Thread Thursday. Links to these sites are available at the top of the page, under link ups.

Double Nine Patch Progress Report

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Well, I am happy to say It have made great progress on my vintage double nine patch quilt. I have all of the blocks done and have been sewing the rows together. It worried me to set this as my goal for June but it appears I’ll be able to finish it this week and we are only at the middle of July! Just never know.

Here are a few rows – they are not yet pressed though.

This quilt has been fairly mindless to create. Lots of repetition in making the smaller nine patches and then sewing those into the 9″ blocks. For the most part I have been happily listening to music and stitching away. I usually have either music or a podcast on when I am sewing, unless I really have to focus on the pattern. This week I indulged in lots of oldies. I had my playlist set to include music from the early 1970’s (which would have been junior high and high school for me). Carole King, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens and The Lovin Spoonfuls, to name just a few.

Music doesn’t seem to distract me when I am sewing but TV is not such a great idea. When I was cutting the smaller background squares for this quilt there was an episode of “The Office” playing. (Julia recently discovered this show.) It was so distracting – I think that show is so funny. I ended up cutting 3″ squares instead of 3 1/2″ squares. Dang it. I have tons of the fabric so that wasn’t a problem but now I have a pile of 3″ squares ready for another project and I had to spend the time to cut a new stack in the correct size. Clearly watching tv doesn’t work for me when I am sewing or cutting.

The quilt will have two borders of the cream fabric with a narrow border of navy blue in between them. If you remember, the small nine patch blocks are made with the vintage fabric that I received last spring. I need to look through the vintage stash to see if I have a big enough piece to make the navy border. I think I need about 1/2 yard and doubt I have a piece that big, especially since the vintage fabrics are 24-36″ wide. Looks like a trip to my LQS is on the agenda for tomorrow, darn it. I am really excited to sew the rows together and put the borders on. Hoping to have a quilt top finish for you by end of the week.

So, what’s on your playlist when you are sewing??? Do tell.

Linking to Lorna at Let’s Bee Social and Connie at Freemotion by the River. Links to both of these parties are at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Red Blocks Resized

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Here is an update to yesterday’s post! Because the size of those red blocks was driving me crazy, I decided to fix them. It was simple and well worth the bit of time it took. Being made of simple squares, I just cut them down. I didn’t even rip the original blocks apart. They were so much bigger than necessary that I just sliced them apart. First I cut them to 7 1/2″ blocks but they still looked too big. I cut them back to 6 1/2″ and they are just fine. I had to make a few more blocks to complete the row.

I don’t know yet in what order I will put them together. They need sashing though. With each row made of a different block, the patterns don’t line up. I think they need separation between the rows. I also have some definite issues with a few rows being short or long. That will have to be dealt with before I can assemble this. I don’t look forward to that….. If anyone has a strong desire to do a random act of kindness, please come and fix them for me.

Very glad to be able to call this a finish for the month of July on my RSC15 project!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts.

Red Bow Tie Blocks

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While I am making good progress on the vintage double nine patch blocks this week, I got a bit bored with them this afternoon. I decided to take a bit of a break today and I worked on my July row for my RSC15 project. I mentioned earlier that the block that Mari decided on for the month of July was a bit labor intensive. Because of this, I opted out of the Classic Stitches BOM just for this month. I will go back for the August row.

Instead, I chose to make a row of simple bow tie blocks. Red is the color for July for RSC15 and that is a fine color for a bow tie. This will be my power tie row. I love the blocks and think they would make a great quilt all on their own. Excuse the weird colors on the picture below. I took this in my sewing room so it the lighting was sub-par.

I wanted to add some bigger rows to the quilt. So far I have five rows that are made of six inch blocks, one row with 7 & 1/2″ blocks and this month I made 10″ blocks. To avoid doing the math needed to create 10″ blocks, I used the Block Fab HD app on my iPad that I have mentioned previously. While I like this row on its own, I am not so sure I like it with the other rows that I have made.

When I lay out the rows together, this row is so huge and chunky. I may just leave it for now and see what the block is for August. If I make another row or two of ten inch blocks, it might balance out. If not, I can easily make a new row of bow tie blocks. They go together quickly.

The more I look at this picture, the less I like the huge row of red. If I just shrink them down to 7 1/2″ blocks – that might give it the balance it needs. Then the bow tie blocks would be the same size as the light blue water wheel row and would be different from all of the six inch rows. Do I call this a finish for RSC15 for this month? I doubt it. Me thinks I will be making more red bow ties.

linking to Let’s Bee Social, So Scrappy and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Not a Lot of Sewing Going On

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This has been a week spent in the car rather than my sewing room. Some months ago, I enrolled Julia in a class at our ‘local’ state university. They hold summer academy classes in a range of subjects for high school age kids. She wanted to take the Forensic Science class. This academy is very well done. She has a professor from the college and only 16 students are in each class. She has been working on extracting DNA from samples of blood and learning about how things are done at a crime scene. She loves the class. This girl loves her science.The university is about 1 and 1/4 hours from our house. Her class lets out at 5:00 which is, naturally, prime traffic time so the commute home is long and tedious. It has been worth it though to hear the stories of what she is working on. Choosing to live in the rural area that we do means driving your kiddos all over kingdom come in order to expose them to all the experiences a child needs.

We spent one night in a hotel near the university to avoid a couple of the drives. I brought my small sewing machine and set up shop for a day and an evening.

I made a bit of progress on a new project I am just starting. I am using some of the blue fabrics from the vintage collection that I posted about here. I cut strips from the blue scraps and joined those in sets of three strips. Each stripset was then sub-cut into strips that are 1 and 3/4″ wide. Those strips were then joined to make tiny 3″ nine patch blocks. The little nine patch blocks are the cutest. I will be combining those blocks with solid 3″ blocks into a larger, double nine patch to end up with a 9″ block. I have made about 25 of the baby blocks and need 100 so I am just getting started.

Hopefully I will get caught up this weekend. It is supposed to be fairly warm so I don’t see that I will be outside very much. Spending the week in Sacramento with my daughter really made me appreciate living in the Sierra Foothills. Sacramento is so darn hot – it was 107 degrees today! In addition, the traffic is lousy. We are so lucky to have nice cool nights and no traffic. I am thankful for our little town in the mountains.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Linking to Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl and Let’s Bee Social.

Progress Report

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This week has started out with a productive bang. Yesterday I completed my neutrals/red heart quilt top. Today I finished up our taxes (never a fun task). Wow. If I don’t do anything else this week, I’m ok with that!

I got on a roll with the neutrals quilt and it all came together so quickly.

The fence wasn’t quite tall enough to photograph the whole thing but this is most of it. Pretend I ironed it – the wrinkles are really showing in these pictures!

I pieced one little random block. When I was trimming the HST’s to be used in making the big heart, I had little bits and pieces leftover. I used a few of them to make this little guy.

Tomorrow I will get the backing assembled and pin baste the layers together. I haven’t quite decided how to quilt it. I know I want to use straight line quilting but not positive of the pattern. Also thinking about quilting the heart separately or different somehow so it stands out more.

Making good progress on my March goal! Also got started on the yellow scrappy blocks for RSC15 and they are going to be adorable. They are a double star block – finished the first of ten blocks today . At least all of the pieces are cut though so they will go together quickly.

Linking to Sew Cute Tuesday, Linky Tuesday and Let’s Bee Social. Links to all of these great sites are located at the top of this page under Link Ups.

Relax

On Gratitude

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Hi Everyone! Two posts in as many days. How about that?

I have recently started reading Yvonne’s blog over at Quilting Jetgirl. She is a really talented quilter and her blog is fun to read. She has begun a link up on Thursdays that she calls Thankful Thursdays. This week she has a great post about the inspirational quilters from Gees Bend that recently spoke at Quilt Con. It was really an interesting read. I think it is a timely reminder to focus on what we are grateful for. My last post was a bit of a downer because I recently finished a quilt and was not so thrilled with the final product. Rather than point out the nice things such as the amazing, hand dyed fabric that I used as the center accent fabrics (which I won from the monthly giveaway sponsored by Angela on soscrappy.com!) or the overall look of the quilt, all I could see was the less than perfect quilting I had done. Way too negative.

So this post is a reminder for me to remain mindful of the positive. This week I am filled with gratitude for the amazing spring blossoms that I have in my garden. We are having a very early spring – it has been unseasonably warm here in CA while the rest of the world is enduring a very harsh winter.

My peach tree is blossoming. Crazy early and I am hoping we will still get peaches. Hard to say with the blossoms coming about in February. Either way, it looks lovely.

Daffodils and primroses are in bloom as well.

Hard to believe how the climate can be so incredibly opposite from one side of the country to the other. The silver lining to a crazy warm winter are these blossoms that are popping up in my yard. Hope the eastern half of the world begins to thaw soon.

I had lots of finishes this week. I started replenishing the little clothesline/clothespin bags that I sell on Etsy. I was almost sold out (it is warm enough to use a clothesline in parts of the country!) This week I made them with upcycled denim jeans that I thrifted. They came together so quickly compared to the ones that I have made with burlap. (Burlap can be tricky to work with.)

And now a polka dotted version.

Nice to add a few new items to my Etsy shop.

Also finished up the February Row for my RSC15 quilt. I am following along with Mari over at Academic Quilter on her Classic Stitches Row Quilt. She should be releasing the next block for March on Tuesday of next week. Looking forward to seeing what she has planned as well as what color Angela has picked for March. For February Mari did a tutorial on these little heart blocks. I did 6 inch blocks. They were very simple to piece.

Here they are with the broken dishes blocks that we did for the January row.

They look cute side by side like this. Tempting as it is, I won’t stitch any rows together until I see what the others look like.

Hope you are all finding reasons to feel grateful. Some days you have to look deeper to figure it out but there is always, always something. Thanks to Yvonne for the reminder. Leave me a comment on gratitude. I would love to fill the page with positive thoughts. 🙂

Linking to Thankful Thursday and Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, as well as TGIFF.

Finish for the Week

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This week seemed to just buzz by. Actually, time just seems to buzz by in general. Not much can be done to slow it down though. After a ridiculously dry January (.05″ of rain instead of our 11″ average) we are supposed to have a stormy weekend. I am looking forward to the rain, maybe as much as 4 inches will fall over the weekend.. The weather gurus on the news keep saying that this will not impact the drought and we are still in deep trouble for this coming summer. (This is mainly because it is too warm and we aren’t getting any snow. The snow pack is a huge source of our water later in the season.) Well, be that as it may, any rain is going to help. The news can be such a buzz kill….

Had a few nice finishes this week. I am working on a quilt for a donation to my daughter’s middle school. Got the quilt top done!

I was really not liking these blocks. They look better now that they are framed with the black and set on point. I made the sashing fairly wide to add some size to the quilt. It is a lap quilt and measures 58″ x 58″ now.

Not sure that the process for making these blocks is all that special. It is called the “ten minute block”. The best part of making them was timing myself to see if I could do the block in ten minutes, which I could. (Gotta find the fun wherever possible!) However, the finished block is a bit boring. If using only one fabric for the background of the block (like I did) then couldn’t the same effect be achieved by cutting a 12 block of fabric and just using applique to put the center accent on? It would be less work than cutting the five pieces that it takes to may it as shown in the “ten minute” block tutorials. If you are using different colors to make the 12″ block then the “ten minute” system makes more sense. (It also makes the blocks more interesting. Probably should have mixed it up a bit on these.)

At any rate, the quilt top is done. I have backing fabric ready to go. A trip to my LQS is in order for the binding, which is always a good thing!

I am trying something new! I signed up for my first mini quilt swap on Instagram. I have been reticient to do this. When I see the pictures that people are posting for their mini quilt swaps, it is so intimidating. Some of these are just gorgeous. The ten year old me rears her head in fear that whatever I make just might not be “good enough”. Oh well, I smacked her down for once and signed up anyway. 🙂 I got my partner assignment this morning. I am really excited about this project. The quilt has be be between 16″ and 20″ in size and must be shipped to my partner in early June. At least I have some time to decide what I want to make. It is an Alison Glass swap so the fabric used must come from one of Alison’s lines. She has such gorgeous fabric so that will be fun to choose.

Finally, my heroine, Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts, posted some cute pictures of pincushions that she had made last week. I loved them and immediately started digging through scraps. I found a little piece that was leftover from the center of a mini quilt that I did last year, Garden Patch. It made a sweet center for the cushion. It is about 4″ square and I filled it with crushed walnut shells which gives it a nice heft. I love it!

I will be using the donation quilt shown above as my ALOYF goal for February. It is the obvious choice since I have to give it to the silent auction committee by March 1st. Also linking to a new linky party, Show Off Saturday, at Sew Can She. Be sure to check this party out along with the others!

Linking up with Connie at Freemotion By the River, Lorna at Let’s Bee Social, and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts. The links to all of these quilting queens are listed at the top of this page, under Link Ups.