Tilda Scrappy Celebration, New Sewing Chair + Pretty Things Blooming in Florida

Good morning and Happy Friday!  I finally got around to piecing my backing for the Deco quilt a few days ago, packed it up on a hanger with the quilt top, and put it in the Quilt Purgatory Closet to marinate (and atone for its sins) while it awaits its turn on the long arm for quilting.  Finishing the Deco backing means that I can turn my attention to other projects at LONG last, and I decided that piecing six more blocks for my Tilda Scrappy Celebration quilt would be a nice palette cleanser.  

Three Blocks with Solid Aqua

Three Blocks with Stash Substitution Fabric

I had one fat eighth of aqua Tilda Solid fabric, and that was only enough for three of the six blocks I wanted to make, so I dug around in my stash and found a scrap of a print fabric that looks just as nice.  To my eye, this kind of "make do" substitution adds interest to the finished quilt, so each block that goes into the quilt will feature six identical, or nearly identical blocks depending on how much I have of each fabric I want to use.  It always feels good to pull something out of the Deep Stash and put it into a quilt!

Ready to Piece Some Y-Seam Blocks!

Scrappy Celebration was a 2023 QAL (Quilt-Along) designed by Lissa Alexander and published in American Patchwork & Quilting magazine.  The pattern is available for sale here on the APQ Shop web site, but I don't have the pattern -- I just went off the photos I saw online and did my own thing in EQ8 software as usual, and for this particular block I decided I preferred to piece the block with two chisel shapes and a Y-seam in the aqua fabric instead of with a rectangle and a square.  I printed a template onto green card stock paper from EQ8 and that's what I used to cut my aqua patches.  So there are my blocks (above photo), ready to be sewn!  

Cutting Out Chisel Patches with my Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Scissors

It was after sunset when I was ready to cut out these pieces and I don't have good lighting above my cutting table.  Normally I would have used a rotary cutter and ruler to cut out these patches after tracing the templates, but I opted to sit in a comfy chair and cut them out Old School style with a scissors -- except that my scissors aren't really Old School at all.  They are Karen Kay Buckley's Perfect Scissors with microserrated blades that help to grab the edge of the fabric for more accurate hand cutting without slipping or shifting (this post contains affiliate links).  I love these scissors so much, I bought them in multiple sizes for different tasks.  The ones with 4" blades are fantastic for cutting out intricate appliqué shapes.

Tracing Templates onto Wrong Side of Fabric

My Quilting Elders will know all about using templates to cut out quilt patches, but I'm including a quick recap here for any younger quilters who might stumble on my blog post.  You really don't see many template patterns in the quilting patterns published these days.  In EQ8 I have the option to print templates with or without seam allowances, and if I was going to be hand piecing I would probably print templates without seam allowances.  That way the traced lines on my fabric would be my actual stitching lines, super helpful for hand piecing accuracy as you just sew along the lines.  I'm machine piecing this quilt, so I printed templates that have my 1/4" seam line included and the actual seam line printed on the template as well.  I used a tiny 1 mm hole punch, just large enough for the diameter of my mechanical pencil point, to mark the Y-seam intersection point on my template (circled on the template in the photo above) and each time I traced the template onto the wrong side of my fabric, I twisted the pencil point in that hole before lifting the template.

I needed matching pairs of this shape for my block.  In the Tilda Solid aqua fabric, which doesn't have a right or wrong side, I could have just cut all my shapes the same and then flipped half of them over, but my print substitution fabric needed to be cut out in opposite pairs.   So I just flipped the template over for every other tracing.

Same Template Upside Down for Matching Pairs

By the way, if I had decent light above my cutting table, it would have been faster to fold my fabric and then rotary cut multiple patches at once, then go back and individually add that little Y-Seam dot to each patch.  I traced each patch individually and cut them out with scissors so I could sit in my chair where the light is better!

Speaking of chairs...  My new sewing chair finally arrived and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!  Instead of getting something marketed as a sewing chair, I just went to a high end office furniture store and ordered a height adjustable "armless task chair."  The cushioning is much thicker and more supportive than in any sewing chair I've ever owned, the height is perfect, and the black leather will be easy to keep clean as it won't collect all the lint and stray threads that were stuck all over my old fabric chair.

LOVE My New Sewing Chair!!

It felt good to get something totally different up on my design wall after staring at the all solid fabric Deco quilt for so long.  I'm not sure I love the new blocks with the earlier ones, but I'm reserving judgement.  It just so happened that there was a lot more white/near white fabric in the first blocks I made.  If I incorporate more saturated colors as I go along, I think these blocks will be fine.  If not, I just won't use them in the quilt!

Scrappy Celebration Blocks On the Design Wall

And now, a quick nature detour -- I've been enjoying the "Spring is Here" photos from quilters in other parts of the country and in other parts of the world, so I thought I'd show you a little of what passes for Spring in Southwest Florida, home of the "endless summer!"  This tree next to our garage was totally bare all winter and I thought it might be dead, but it has sprouted green leaves and hot pink flowers!

I Have No Idea What Tree This Is

I wish I knew what kind of tree it is.  There's another one on the property nearly identical but with white flowers.  Here's a close up of the blooms:

Hot Pink Flowers on Formerly "Dead" Tree

Every time I walk around the property and see something new blooming, I snap a picture.  Today I found this pretty white orchid growing in an abandoned mess outside the greenhouse:

Random Orchid Clinging to Life

...and this pretty purple orchid hanging off an algae-covered PVC structure not too far away:

Another Random Orchid Blooming

Lest you get the false impression that I'm living in the Garden of Eden, I have to share this reality check photo of the greenhouse full of nearly all dead orchids, very depressing:

The Orchid Glass is 98% Empty

My late father-in-law was heavily into orchid gardening, but the figurative expression "hot house flower" exists for a reason.  There were hundreds of gorgeous orchids in and around the greenhouse back in the day, many of them rare varieties, and my FIL enjoyed pampering them with specially filtered well water, fans to keep the air moving, whatever food and other maintenance they needed.  He lost interest in the orchids when my MIL got really sick and then, when he went back to the greenhouse and saw them all dying, it was too depressing and he just gave it up.  Neither Bernie nor I am interested in developing the specialized knowledge or devoting the extensive amount of time to care for all of these delicate plants -- that would have to be a labor of love for sure.  But when I walk through the greenhouse where 98% of everything is dead and dying, I always look for those one or two plants that are blooming.  It's a good metaphor for life, don't you think?  Like are we going to appreciate the glass half full or complain about the glass half empty...  Or is the greenhouse 98% dead or 2% alive and blooming!  When life gives me a mostly dead greenhouse, I choose to focus on the flowers that survive.

Sunset Over the Gulf of Voldemort

Last but not least, here's a recent sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico America Voldemort.  Yeah, I have renamed it so I can refer to the Gulf without offending anyone, regardless of their political leanings.  I'm going to call it the Gulf of Voldemort, or the Gulf-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.  We're pretty far inland, 35-45 minutes from the Gulf depending on whether it's "in season" winter traffic or lesser summer traffic once the "snowbirds" have flown back up North.  I don't get to the beach often, but it sure is pretty.

What are my sewing plans for the upcoming week?  Well, that custom sampler quilt for Marybeth needs to be reloaded sideways so I can quilt the final long borders and then I'll want to look over the whole thing to decide whether the quilting density is well balanced.  If not, I'll probably go in and add quilting where needed.  Hopefully I won't get obsessive and start ripping and redoing everything.  Need to be in the right frame of mind for that.  Before going back to the long arm machine I want to piece some more Scrappy Celebration blocks OR cut and piece a Cleopatra's Fan block OR start my Stonefields quilt...  We'll see.  I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Musings at Songbird Designs  

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt  

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

 TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Happy Mother's Day tomorrow to all of you moms and grandmothers out there!