(S)Crappy Celebration: Meh? + Stonefields Prep + Pineapple Log Cabin UFO

UGH.  You guys, I am sick of working on this project again!  I finished the blocks I was working on last week but it was such a chore coming up with a layout.  I really hate that I made 5 or 6 versions of each block in the exact same, or nearly the same fabrics, even though I thought that was a feature of the inspiration quilt that I liked and deliberately wanted to replicate when I was starting out.  I have begun mixing some stash fabrics in with the matchy-matchy Tilda prints, but it's not making me love it or anything.  

I find myself wishing this was two (or more) separate quilts.  I love a double 9-patch quilt with a white background and it would be pretty to have a rainbow version with each block a different dominant color.  The other blocks where I didn't use any white fabric, or very little white fabric, have a much heavier feel.  But I've made 42 of these 9" blocks already, enough for a 54" x 63" throw quilt with a 6x7 layout, and I feel like enough already.  Time to wrap this up and move on!

This is the best I could do on the layout, trying not to put identical blocks too close together if I could help it (sometimes I couldn't) and trying to balance out white background, lacy 9-patch blocks with the darker, not-enough-contrast blob blocks as best I could.  This is what we are dealing with:

54 x 63 (S)Crappy Celebration Layout

Checking value distribution in gray scale just to be sure:

Same Photo, in Gray Scale

Then I went to my EQ8 software to see whether adding sashing and cornerstones would improve the quilt at all:

Deceptively Simple: Stonefields Blocks 28 + 29 "Paper Flowers"

 Alright, y'all -- I finally finished those two little appliqué blocks for my Stonefields quilt that I was prepping at the end of May, and good riddance to them!  Behold, my design wall displaying meager progress:

29 Blocks Completed for Stonefields Sampler Quilt by Susan Smith

Stitching the stems was fine, but needle turning these flower shapes was a wretched and miserable stitching plan that I regretted almost immediately.  

Stonefields Blocks 26 + 27 "The Semi Circles"

Hello again, my stitchy friends.  I have two more completed appliqué blocks for my Stonefields sampler quilt project to share with you today, Blocks 26 & 27 "The Semi Circles."  I used a prepared edge starch and press method with Karen Kay Buckley's Perfect Circle templates, glue basted the shapes in place with Roxanne's Glue Baste It, and then stitched the appliqué by hand using YLI 100 wt silk thread.  The Stonefields Quilt is a beautiful antique-inspired quilt pattern written for advanced quilters, with very minimal instructions.  It was designed by Susan Smith and you can get a copy of the pattern on Etsy here (this post contains affiliate links).  You know those people who have been sewing clothing forever, who buy a new dress pattern, study the pattern pieces and then just sew up the dress based on their experience and preferences without reading the instructions at all?  If you can do that with appliqué patterns, then you'll be fine with Stonefields.  I was a little intimidated at first by the lack of instructions but now that I'm getting into it, I'm kind of enjoying the extra challenge of puzzling over each block and thinking through the pros and cons of different methods for turning that line drawing into a finished quilt block.

Completed Stonefields Blocks 26 + 27 "The Semi Circles"

My friend Gretchen who is also making this quilt (in a gorgeous blue and white color scheme) didn't care for this particular block design and she came up with a lovely embroidered block alternative that you can see on her blog here.  I thought the Semi Circles blocks were kind of cute and a nice opportunity to showcase some larger prints in my stash, including this pink and green on white floral that I inherited in a small stash of quilting fabric that belonged to my late mother-in-law.  Pink was her favorite color and I think she would be happy to see that her fabric made it into a quilt, especially as this was an intact fat quarter rather than a scrap from a completed project.  Perhaps she thought it was too pretty and couldn't bear to cut into it.  I can relate to that!  

Selecting Fabrics: Overcut Circles on an Overcut Background Square

With The Semi Circles block, there were no instructions given except for the diameters of the circles.  So I put a lot of thought into how I wanted to make mine.  My background squares were all cut oversized before I started my project and normally I would trim the block to size after stitching the appliqué, but I decided to trim the background square down to 6 1/2" first for The Semi Circles since the appliqué goes all the way to the raw edges of the blocks.  I would not want to be cutting through my completed hand stitching when I trimmed the blocks down.

Stonefields "Four Little Stars" Block 24 + Trimming Appliqué Blocks to Size

Hello and Happy May!  I have another Stonefields appliqué block to share with you, the first of two "Four Little Stars" blocks.  It was quite fiddly but I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Stonefields Block 24, "Four Little Stars"

The other accomplishment I'm proud of is that I finally got over my fear of trimming down the oversized appliqué backgrounds on all of my completed blocks for this quilt, and no applique blocks were destroyed in the process!  Now that all of my Stonefields blocks are 6 1/2" unfinished, it's easier to mix them up on the design wall and get a better feel for how this sampler quilt is taking shape.  That will help me make decisions about which colors, prints, values to use more or less of in subsequent blocks.  Stonefields is a sampler quilt pattern designed by Susan Smith, and this post contains affiliate links .

Stonefields In Progress, All Appliqué Blocks Trimmed to Size

I'll document how I trimmed those blocks for Future Rebecca's benefit later in this post.  First, let's talk about the Four Little Stars block.  

Stonefields Blocks 20 and 21-23: "O is for Oscar"

Good Morning, my lovelies!  I have had extra motivation to finish these quilt blocks and share them with you as quickly as possible -- in order to bump the butt photos of my jeans alteration post off the landing page of my blog.  And also, these blocks are cuties!  Quick disclaimer, this post contains affiliate links.  And now, meet "O is for Oscar," blocks 21-23 of the Stonefields Quilt pattern designed by Susan Smith:

Stonefields "O is for Oscar" Blocks 21, 22 and 23

As usual, (for me, anyway) the most time consuming part was selecting fabrics for each block.  However, that's also the most enjoyable part -- picking out one or two new Tilda acquisitions and then digging out treasures from the scrap bin or a fat quarter from my Deep Stash to coordinate, knowing that even though I'm making the same quilt from the same pattern many others are using, mine will be uniquely mine because of the fabric mix.  And it is so satisfying to step back and look at the finished blocks that you imagined in the beginning and then stitched into being.  

I stitched these blocks like an assembly line, since they were three the same.  I cut out all the pieces and organized them on my design wall, then took the pieces down and lined them up next to my sewing machine for chain piecing all of the blocks at once.  Below, the block backgrounds have been sewn together and pressed and the appliqué circles are ready to be positioned on the block.  I used one of Karen Kay Buckley's Perfect Circle templates with the starch and press method to get my circles so round and smooth.  Even if I'm needle turning all of the other raw appliqué edges  in a block as I'm stitching, I'll always use a Perfect Circle template to preturn the edges of circles because they turn out so much better for me that way.  Hats off to the quilters of the 19th century who had no choice but to needle turn their circles because heat resistant plastic templates hadn't yet been invented!

Machine Pieced Blocks, Prepared Circle Appliqués Ready to Go

Susan Smith's (very minimal!) instructions for the Stonefields quilt assume that makers will be hand piecing their blocks and needle turning all of their appliqué.  For this block, there was a note about sewing the circles to each of the square patches before piecing the rest of the block together, which made me scratch my head a bit as I couldn't figure out why that would be advantageous.  I felt it would be easier to keep things straight and square and positioned properly if I pieced the block first and added my circles last, so that's what I did.  

Conquering Stonefields Block 18, "Star in a Star"

Happy Sunday, everyone!  I have another finished block for my Stonefields sampler quilt (pattern by Susan Smith) to share with you, Block 18 "Star in a Star."  It was a fiddly little bugger for sure, but I'm delighted with how it turned out.  These blocks will finish at 6" after being trimmed down and sewn into the quilt.

Stonefields Block 18, "Star in a Star"

I have heard from a few other quilters who are working on Stonefields or other Susan Smith patterns who are struggling with the lack of instructions, so I'm going to try to share a bit more about how I'm puzzling out the more challenging blocks.  This is not "the right way," "the only way," or even necessarily "the best way" -- only the way that worked for me.

Stonefields Block 17 Remake + Mistake Discovered in Block 16

 You guys, I was so proud of myself when I switched off my sewing machine last night, put my new Stonefields Block 17 "Square Peg in a Round Hole" on my design wall, and went to bed thinking all mistakes had been corrected.  (If you're wondering what was wrong with the first one I made, read this blog post from a few days ago).  I strongly prefer the on-point orientation of that square with the circle cutout now that I've fixed it in my purple block.  The square on point element is repeated in many of the blocks in this quilt, and repeated design elements are one of the things that gives cohesion to a sampler quilt like this one.  

Stonefields Block 17, Just as Susan Smith and Rebecca Grace Intended

Before remaking the block, I took the time to trace over the ridiculously faint lines of the block pattern with an extra fine point Sharpie pen to make sure I could clearly see it through my fabric, because even with an LED light box you can't see these patterns well enough through most fabrics.  If I'd done that tracing and darkening of the pattern right off the bat, these mistakes would not have happened in the first place.  And I am hugely annoyed with pattern designer Susan Smith that I have to take all that extra time to trace over every stinking block pattern with Sharpie before I can use it, because the pattern cost $200(!!!) and there are hardly any instructions whatsoever, just vague hints and clues and anecdotes about the blocks, and how difficult would it have been to have these patterns printed with thicker, darker lines like every other quilt pattern author uses in their patterns?  GRRR...

So this morning I walked into the studio, admired all my pretty blocks on the wall (I finished a couple more EPP hexagon rosettes for the border yesterday as well:

Slow But Steady Stonefields Progress: My Design Wall Today at 8:19 AM

I am so glad I remade that purple block!  It only took me an hour or two and whereas the old block made me feel disappointed and annoyed with myself, the new block makes me feel DELIGHTED and pleased with myself for identifying what went wrong, adjusting my process to make errors less likely, and successfully creating the block exactly the way that I wanted it to look instead of settling for less.  

Stonefields Blocks 16 + 17 "Square Peg In a Round Hole," With an Oopsie!

There are two new Stonefields blocks on my design wall, and one of them even looks like it's supposed to!  Behold, Blocks 16 & 17, "Square Peg In a Round Hole," one of which has the square peg on point the way it belongs, and the other of which does not:

17 Stonefields Blocks + 21 Hexie Rosettes for Border

Aaaargh!!!  I only accept partial responsibility for this error.  The appliqué patterns for the Stonefields quilt are printed RIDICULOUSLY faintly, nearly impossible to see through the background fabric with even the brightest LED light box.  I did not realize that my background fabric was oriented incorrectly until after I'd glue basted the delicate purple square with the circle cutout onto my block, and I used a bit more glue than normal because of how skinny those bits are on the side.  I wanted to secure that shape to my background fabric while it was flat on my work surface to preclude any stretching or distortion that might occur.  In hindsight, I would have been better off skipping the darned light box altogether and just positioning the shapes on this blocks using the horizontal, vertical and diagonal fold lines.  Shoulda, woulda, coulda.  I noticed the mistake as soon as I finished glue basting the purple block and heat setting the glue with the iron.

Edges Turned Smoothly, Glue Basted to the Background, Not Yet Stitched

I considered peeling the shapes off to reposition them correctly before stitching, but when I tried to lift one purple corner I realized how securely it was glued down and didn't want to risk damaging the applique.  The prep work on these blocks took a LONG time and I didn't want to have any unnecessary do-overs!

October OMG is Finished: Deco Custom Quilting (Substantially) Finished, Off the Frame

I've finished my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for October, three and a half weeks early!  I am as shocked as YOU are!  My entire 102" x 102" Deco bed quilt (pattern by Lo & Behold Stitchery, available on Etsy here) is now completely stitched in the ditch and all of the digital designs have been quilted as well.  (This post contains affiliate links).  I took one last photo in the Garish Yellow Quilt Studio as I was taking my quilt off the frame:

My 102 x 102 Deco Bed Quilt is Off the Frame!

Now that Deco is off the frame, I can start packing up all of my long arm quilting tools and supplies and Bernie and I can disassemble the frame and pack everything up for our upcoming move back to North Carolina.  However, although I completed what I set out to do on this quilt for this month, the quilt is not yet 100% quilted.  According to the batting manufacturer, I have more than enough quilting to hold the quilt together, but it's uneven quilting in that the digital quilting areas are quilted more densely, with lines of stitching much closer together, than the pieced blocks that are only stitched along seam lines between contrasting fabric patches.  It has always been my intention to complete this quilt with additional quilting in the pieced blocks.  However, it's "quilted enough" for me to feel comfortable taking it off the frame, folding it up, and packing it in a box for our move.

All SID (Stitch In the Ditch) + Digital Quilting Completed

My original plan was to reload this quilt on my long arm machine at the other end of the move to quilt the pieced blocks with decorative ruler work and free motion quilting, but then I got to thinking about how I've always wanted to play around with combining machine quilting and hand quilting on the same project, in different thread weights.  

Sarah's Scrappy Double 4-Patch Quilt + Plotting and Scheming My Next Stonefields Blocks

Happy Monday Tuesday morning, Friends!  Well, I’m delighted to report that I’ve finished all the stitch-in-the-ditch quilting on my Deco quilt, but alas — it doesn’t look any different than the last time I showed it to you.  Because, you know, invisible thread…

So I thought I’d show you this lovely double 4-patch quilt that I quilted for Sarah over a year ago, with a Baptist Fan quilting design that you CAN see.

Sarah's Double 4-Patch Quilt with Baptist Fan E2E 

I love Sarah’s carefully planned scrappy palette of fabrics, with such wonderful value contrast that makes the red and blue chain seem to shimmer.  And she had the sweetest fussy cut vintage fabrics like this little one with the children waving flags:

Baptist Fab Quilting Detail

Meanwhile, as we say in the South, I’ve been “FIXING” to start my next Stonefields Quilt blocks.  

Keeping Up With the Gretchens: Hand Stitching vs Bernina B990 Invisible Machine Appliqué Experiment for Stonefields Blocks

Good morning and Happy Sunday, everyone!  After my reckless but ultimately successful experiment on my Deco quilt last week (read about it in this post, which I edited and updated after coming back to the quilt and realizing that all was well after all), I decided to conduct another Mad Scientist Experiment on my Stonefields quilt project.  You may have heard of Keeping Up With the Joneses or Keeping Up With the Kardashians, but I'm all about trying to keep up with my blogging friend Gretchen who is cruising through her Stonefields quilt and leaving me behind in the dust!  Just kidding; I am delighted that Gretchen, Chris, and Hanne were all successfully cajoled into starting or resuming their Stonefields quilts (pattern by Susan Smith available here) as a very informal quilt along with me.  I know it's not a race, but I must be the slowest stitcher ever to have threaded a needle and it can be discouraging to put in so many hours and see so little progress -- especially since there are so many challenging and intense quilts that I want to make (I am thinking of YOU, Star Upon Stars, Down the Rabbit Hole, Simple Folk, and Happy Days!).  Behold my design wall with Blocks 1-12 completed.  Block 13 is another appliqué block that is prepped and ready for hand stitching in the coming days.  (This post contains affiliate links).

Completed Month One Blocks for Stonefields Quilt, One More to Go

Earlier in the week, out of mild curiosity, I timed how long it took me to stitch the 3 1/2" diameter cheddar print circle in one of my Pomegranate blocks.  Wanna take a guess?  

Hand Stitching a Pomegranate Block for Stonefields

It took one hour and seven minutes for me to stitch down that circle.  That was uninterrupted continuous stitching, not including threading the needle, trimming away the backing fabric, and not including stitching the light blue orange peel shape that I've started on in the photo.  No wonder I'm not able to keep up!  I am the snail of stitching!  

Stonefields Applique Prepped, Blocks 5-13 + Applipops vs Perfect Circle Templates

Good morning, my lovelies!  I have been having so much fun prepping my Stonefields Month One appliqué blocks this week!  You know, digging through scrap bins and working with scissors and something suspiciously similar to Elmer's School Glue to put these little blocks together makes me feel like I've been transported across space and time back to kindergarten arts and crafts.  It's magical and so cathartic.  If you are someone who admires appliqué from a distance but thinks "I'd never have the patience," I urge you to give it a try sometime.  It is so much like those school projects from decades ago where we dug through old catalogs and wallpaper sample books and construction paper scraps from other projects, cutting things out with our safety scissors (we were fussy cutting!) and trying to eat the paste when the teacher wasn't looking.  I know of no other pastime that can make me forget my arthritis and my wrinkles, dissolve all the cares of the world, and make me feel like a 5-year-old again.

Here are my Stonefields Blocks 5-13, prepped and ready for stitching:

Stonefields Blocks 5-13, Prepped and Ready to Stitch

When I say that my blocks are "prepped and ready for stitching," I mean that I've made heat resistant plastic templates for all of the applique shapes, selected the fabrics, traced the shapes onto the wrong side of my fabric scraps with a pencil, cut the shapes out with an eyeballed scant 1/4" turning allowance, and preturned those seam allowance/turning allowances by wetting them with starch and pressing them back over the edges of the heat resistant templates.  Then I used the pattern sheets and a light box to position the applique shapes on my background fabric and basted them in place temporarily using tiny dots of Roxanne's Glue Baste-It (this post contains affiliate links).  I put those drops of glue about an eighth to a sixteenth inside the edge of the patch so I won't be hand stitching through the glue.  By the way, this preparatory process is exactly the same regardless of whether I was planning to stitch the shapes down by hand or with my sewing machine using an invisible appliqué stitch.  If sewing by machine I would just need to slip scraps of tearaway embroidery stabilizer beneath each block before stitching to prevent puckering.  I'm not going to promise that there won't be any machine stitched applique on this quilt, but for now I'm going to stitch my applique by hand using my favorite YLI 100 wt Silk thread and my Bohin size 12 Applique Needles.  I love how these thin needles and thread create truly invisible stitches that just sink into my fabric and disappear.

A Spoonful of Sugar, A Capful of Starch + Quilting That Is More Fun Than Stitch In the Ditch

Well, my plan was to complete all of the SID (Stitch In the Ditch) quilting throughout the entirety of my 102" x 102" Deco quilt before starting to quilt the fancy designs.  Instead, I got this wild Mary Poppins idea in my head about how a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down and it probably wouldn't hurt to quilt just a few fancy designs on my quilt before I advanced to SID the next row, just to see what they will look like...

Finally Some Quilting I Can See!

In hindsight, the designs I stitched in the light blue squares are more densely quilted than I had intended.  I knew this 10% into stitching the first one, and I could have stopped the machine right then, picked out those stitches, and chosen a less dense, faster stitching design.  But I didn't want to spend 30 minutes picking out those stitches.  Now I'll have to quilt the rest of the behemoth of a quilt more densely to balance it out, which will take an extra hundred hours or so...  😳. I have a very peculiar and inefficient laziness whereby avoiding work creates much more work.  Anyway, it's gratifying to see some quilting texture on this quilt.   As this is a bed quilt and I want it to finish softer than cardboard, I"m using 50 wt matte polyester So Fine thread in my needle paired with MagnaGlide 60 wt thread in my bobbin.  This is going to take forever...  Wicked thought: What if I just CUT THE QUILT OFF at the bottom of this row, and instead of a bed quilt it can be a TABLE RUNNER?!  

Here's how those designs look in the setting triangles across the top of the quilt stitched in contrasting Teal thread against the solid Indigo background fabric:

Setting Triangles Quilted in So Fine Thread, Color Teal Against Indigo Fabric

All day today and yesterday, in between forced frisbee outings with His Little Highness the Dog, I was working on my Deco quilt.  But wait -- there's more!  A few days ago, I started prepping appliqué for my Stonefields quilt!

Grunt Work: SID Quilting on Deco + Appliqué Prep for Stonefields

Welcome to today's boring blog post.  I'm bored already and I am the one writing it -- not a good sign, but let's begin.

😂.  Clearly I was not in a good mood when I started writing this blog post yesterday!  Good thing I left it in Draft mode or I might have driven all of you away for good!  The blog post begun with a bad attitude yesterday and revised with a better attitude today is about not-so-glamorous prep work at the front end of a project that lays the foundation for smooth sailing and a successful finish.  It's like stretching in the morning or flossing your teeth before you go to bed -- you can skip this stuff if you want to, but you'll probably pay for it later if you do!  I'll be talking about the foundational stitch-in-the-ditch quilting on my Deco quilt as well as getting my appliqué templates ready for my next Stonefields quilt blocks.  

Quilting Begins on My Deco Quilt

I Loathe the Drudgery of Stitching In the Ditch Quilting!

Stitching in the ditch -- quilting along patchwork seamlines -- is utter and abysmal drudgery.  If you do it really well, you can't see the quilting at all and sometimes that results in quilting over a line you already stitched because you couldn't see it.  But if you wobble or some speck of thread or bit of gook on your carriage wheels creates a hiccup in your straight line of quilting, it will stick out at you like Pinnochio's nose or a lump on the noggin of the Wylie Coyote.  And right now I DO have something somewhere that is giving me grief.  I wish I'd done a thorough cleaning of my carriage wheels before I loaded this quilt because it's really hard to get to all of them with a quilt on the frame.  It could also be that one of the machine's cables is catching on something at the back of the frame and needs adjusting, but I can't see what's going on back there when I'm quilting manually from the front of the frame and Bernie has been too busy lately to help me troubleshoot.  

Here's a block in the top row before the ditch quilting:

Not Quilted Yet

Below, I have outlined all of the green squares with stitching in the ditch.  Do you see those couple of wobble bumps?  Those are happening when I feel my machine catching on something ever so slightly.  I am stitching very slowly and using a straight edge quilting ruler as a guide, but then suddenly the machine gets knocked away from my ruler edge by some microscopic obstruction and Bad Words come out of my mouth.  For now I am just ignoring it and soldiering on.  Every imperfection is glaring when the quilt is on the frame under the bright lights and I am hyperfocused on every stitch.  Much of what looks like a catastrophe in the moment ends up not being a big deal in the end, and anything that is STILL a catastrophe at the end can be ripped out and restitched if it still drives me crazy.

I'm using Aurifil monofilament thread in color Smoke (this post contains affiliate links) with Fil-Tec MagnaGlide Classic 60 wt navy bobbin thread, in case anyone is interested.  If you can't find MagnaGlide Classic, it doesn't come in the color you need, or your machine can't accept prewound bobbins, Superior's 60 wt Bottom Line or Microquilter would be good alternatives.  You can even wind monofilament on your bobbin but beware -- it's prone to stretching so slow your bobbin winding speed way down, only wind your bobbin half full, and recognize that with invisible thread top and bottom it will be much more difficult to monitor your tension throughout the quilting process.  Those are the reasons I prefer not to use monofilament thread in my bobbin even though it works beautifully in my Berninas.  Oh, and I'm also using Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 Black batting. I know that if/when I wash this quilt, the needle holes will close up and my imperfections will be less visible.  You don't see the monofilament thread against my green fabric, but you do see tiny specks of black batting in the needle holes if you put your nose right up to the quilt and you have your strongest reading glasses on your face.  Ask me how I know this.  👀

SID Finished (Sloppily) Around Green Squares

I deliberately did not SID the seams between navy patches within those blocks because I want to deemphasize those seams and do some other quilting in those areas to make the background recede and the green squares pop forward.  These are vague plans half formed in my mind; I won't decide for sure until after I see how my digital designs look stitched out.

My big, boring accomplishment for this week is that I have done this SID quilting to all of the green and navy blocks across the top row of the quilt.  I think I am going to rip off my ruler base tomorrow and start stitching the digital designs in the setting triangles between these blocks, because I am hoping that will cheer me up and distract me from my wobbly SID quilting.  Imaginary Judge's comments: "Straight lines should be straight."  Duh.  My dog thinks it looks awesome, so there!  ;-)

Deco is Loaded + Stonefields Prep: Overcasting Appliqué Background Blocks

Greetings, my lovelies!   This will be just a quick update to share what I accomplished in the last few days before I head to New Jersey for my mom’s burial service.  No, I don’t have any hand stitching prepped for my trip, but I did get a little prep work done so I’ll have things ready to stitch when I get home.

My Deco quilt is loaded on my long arm machine and my ruler base is on the machine, woot woot!  When I get back to Florida I’ll be ready to start stabilizing this custom quilt project by stitching in the ditch between blocks with my favorite Aurifil Smoke monofilament thread.  This is a big bed quilt, 102” x 102”, and I’m in no rush whatsoever.  Expect to see dribbles of progress over the next few months on this one.

102 x 102 Deco Quilt Loaded on my Bernina Q24 Long Arm Machine

Second accomplishment, I have made some progress on the prep work for my new sampler project, the Stonefields Quilt by Susan Smith!  The pattern instructions told me to cut out forty 6 1/2” background blocks for appliqué.  I ultimately decided to tear my fabric instead of ripping it per the instructions in Jeanne Sullivan’s book, and I tore my squares at a generous 7 1/2” square so I’d be able to trim them with the serger knife when overcasting the raw edges and still have excess to trim after stitching the appliqué.  I think that was a good amount of trimming insurance as the blocks are about 7 1/4” now after the serger knife trimmed the whiskers away.

40 Appliqué Background Blocks for Stonefields Prepped

Did I really need to overcast the edges on these little blocks?  Debatable.  There is definitely a potential for fraying of the raw block edges on larger, more complex blocks that will be handled a lot during hand stitching (like my 19” FrankenWhiggish blocks, still awaiting the final stuffed berries).  These Stonefields blocks are small and relatively simple, so they might have been fine without overcasting.  

March Madness (NOT Basketball!): New Tilda Fabric + Stonefields Quilts for Nanette (and for Rebecca)

Today I'm sharing Nanette's Stonefields quilt that I quilted for her in January of 2023.  This was one of fourteen quilt tops (out of a stack of many more!) that she had originally planned to quilt herself and had been feeling guilty about leaving unfinished -- you know, like quilters do!  With health challenges multiplying and the stack of quilts not getting any smaller, she decided to scale back some of that self-imposed pressure by having some of the quilts professionally long arm quilted by me.  

Nanette passed away suddenly a week ago, and that got me looking back through photos of her quilts again and thinking about how glad I am to have helped her achieve the satisfaction of seeing and enjoying her gorgeous quilts as finishes.

Nanette's 65 x 65 (Modified) Stonefields Quilt with Filigree E2E Quilting

First things first, let's credit the pattern designer.  Stonefields is an original pattern by Australian quilter Susan Smith, which she was commissioned to make by Paramount Studios for a film that was shot in Ireland.  I have no idea which film; what I've shared with you is all the info I was able to squeeze out of the World Wide Web!  Stonefields is a sampler quilt combining appliqué with EPP (English Paper Piecing) and machine piecing, and Nanette shared that this was the most expensive pattern she ever purchased and that made her feel even more pressure to have a finished quilt to show for what she'd invested in it.  

So, I know what some of you are thinking -- edge-to-edge quilting over hand stitched appliqué?!  I know, I know.  Nanette's original plan was to hand quilt this one, but she realized that she had more quilt tops that "deserved" hand quilting than she would ever be able to complete in her lifetime.  Custom machine quilting was outside of her own skill set and beyond her budget, especially considering the number of tops she wanted to finish all at once.  And so she sent Stonefields to me, and I recommended the simple loops of the Filigree allover quilting design.

That Bunny Rabbit Is My Favorite!

With this quilt, it was really important that the appliqué and patchwork should be the star of the show and the quilting should just be a supporting element.  

September Stitching Goals: FrankenBerries, Setting Quandaries + Seven Sisters

Stuffed berry production is happening!  Preparing all 96 of the remaining stuffed berries needed for my FrankenWhiggish Rose quilt is my September stitching goal (and if I get any of them stitched onto the blocks as well, that will be "gravy"!).  

Tip: Pencil Eraser Holds Perfect Circle Template for Tracing

I'm using my Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Circles templates to make my berries (this post contains affiliate links) along with leftover Quilters Dream Poly Select quilt batting and Wonder Under fusible web (using up an old package I had on hand).  I discovered that I can prevent the Perfect Circle template from slipping if I hold it in place with a pencil eraser in my left hand while tracing around the template with a mechanical pencil held in my right hand; that photo above is to remind Future Rebecca of these neat trick the next time I am tracing around small template shapes.

I traced all 96 berry circles onto the paper side of my Wonder Under paper backed fusible web, fused the marked Wonder Under to my batting scraps, then rough cut around groups of 12 (12 berries per block) just to help me keep track of how many were needed and how many were finished.  I experimented with three different pairs of scissors before deciding that I like my ApliQuick 4" microserrated scissors best for cutting out these tight circles (that I probably shouldn't have crammed so close together when I was tracing them).

And So It Begins: Cutting Out Fused Batting Circles for Berry Stuffing

Appliqué prep work does seem to go faster for me when I do it assembly line style, so I'm going to cut out all of my berries before I proceed to the next step of fussy-cutting my larger fabric circles.

Meanwhile, I've been walking past these nine blocks on my design wall every day, marveling about how those broderie perse rosebuds didn't take me nearly as long as I thought they would, and realizing that I am going to have all of my blocks completely finished and ready to set if I just keep working on it a little bit every day.  That makes me want to revisit, reevaluate, and overcomplicate my plans for setting the blocks and finishing this quilt!

I could add one inch diamond sashing, a wide neutral border for a quilted formal feather design, and an outer one inch diamond border, as visualized in this EQ8 software rendering below:

66 x 66 FrankenWhiggish Setting with Diamond Sashing

August Goal Completed, FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds Are Done!

Oh my gosh, y'all -- pigs have sprouted wings and Rebecca has finally accomplished her One Monthly Goal by the end of the month.  I know what you're thinking: flying pigs are much easier to believe.  All nine of my FrankenWhiggish Rose blocks now have their eight tiny broderie perse rosebuds stitched down in their centers:

Rosebuds Completed on All Nine FrankenWhiggish Rose Blocks

The block on the lower left is the only one that is 100% complete with its stuffed berries, so making 96 more of those and stitching them to the other eight blocks is the next task for this project.  Side note: I wish I'd used a greater variety of fabrics for my pieced block backgrounds, because it was annoyingly difficult to come up with a layout for the blocks that didn't put two of the same fabrics next to one another.  And I'm loving how my new-and-improved design wall is working out in the hallway:

FrankenWhiggish Blocks On the Design Wall

By the way, there's an added benefit of the white Bump drapery interlining that I used to recover my design wall, in addition to it complementing my gray walls better than the natural cotton batting.  This is one of those projects where the colors in my photos never look much like the fabrics do in real life, but it was so easy to correct that with a single click using the White Balance tool in photo editing software, just by clicking the white design wall surrounding my blocks.  

The New Design Wall, Take 2 + Slogging Along With FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds

Good Morning and Happy Weekend!  We've been bustling and busy since my last post.  Bernie and I drove eleven hours back up to Charlotte, North Carolina to move our youngest son Anders into a new apartment at UNC, spent some time with my mom in South Carolina, and then drove another eleven hours to get back to our new home in Naples, Florida.  We drove him up this time because we needed to get his car up there and we had a lot of stuff we were bringing for the apartment, but we'll be flying him home for breaks.  Meanwhile, the new bump drapery interlining fabric for my design wall was delivered from Amazon (this post contains affiliate links) and Bernie and I are both SO much happier with how it looks now!

96 x 96 Design Wall Wrapped with New Bump Drapery Interlining 

When I posted about the first version of this design wall last week a lot of you thought it was fine as long as it was functional, and if it was in a dedicated studio or craft space in my home where no one had to look at it besides myself, I might have agreed with you.  But I lobbied hard to get my husband on board with putting the design wall in a very prominent, public part of our home where everyone would walk past it and have to look at it all day long, every single day, and I promised that I was going to make it look GOOD there.  

FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds, Michele's Log Cabin Stars Quilt, Laundry Room Makeover, Swedish Pancakes + A 21st Birthday Celebration

Good Morning, Quilty Peeps!  As you can see by my way-too-long blog post title, I have lots of ground to cover today.  First things first, I am happy to report that I've finished prepping ALL of the remaining broderie perse rosebuds for my FrankenWhiggish Rose blocks, they are all glue-basted in position on the blocks, and the hand stitching to secure them is in progress.  That's right; I have a portable hand stitching project again FINALLY!

All FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds Are Prepped and Ready for Stitching!

In case anyone is interested in what's in my portable hand stitching "toolbox" for this project:

• YLI 100 wt silk thread in color 256, matched to the rosebud fabric
• Bohin size 12 Appliqué Needles (these are the only ones I've tried that don't bend or break on me)
• Colonial Needle Company Leather Thimble Pad stickers (I use one on my right pointer finger to help grab the needle and pull it through the fabric, or to protect my fingertip when I need to exert a little pressure on the back end of the needle to force it through a spot where the glue dried stiff)
• Thread Heaven (no longer available) or Thread Magic thread conditioner to help prevent snarling and knotting -- I don't need it when I'm using silk thread, but I have it in my hand stitching kit because it's a big help when I'm hand stitching quilt bindings with cotton thread
• My new 2.75 magnification sewing glasses from Warby Parker, so I can thread the eye of my needle and see how many threads of fabric I'm grabbing with each stitch
• That nail file in my kit is actually for my fingernails, because often I'll discover some little scratchy spot at the edge of a fingernail while stitching when the thread gets hung up on it
• Not pictured, I also have a tube of Neutrogena Hand Cream in my hand sewing kit and another one in the drawer next to my sewing machine.  I like this kind because it's not greasy, has no fragrance or dye, and a tiny drop goes a long way to just barely moisten my fingertips so I can get a better grip on what I'm stitching without gooking it up with lotion
• Either my Apliquick 4" Microserrated Scissors (pictured) or my Gingher Spring Action Thread Nippers (preferred if I'm just clipping thread and not trimming needle turn appliqué shapes while stitching).  If I'm planning to take my hand stitching kit on an airplane, I'll swap out for a cheap thread clipper (in case Airport Security confiscates it and throws it away) with a pack of dental floss that I could use as a backup thread trimmer in a pinch

(Those are affiliate links, by the way).   You probably won't see much of FrankenWhiggish for a couple weeks while I'm stitching the rosebuds to the blocks because, if you've seen one of my blocks get rosebuds, you've seen them all!  My Seven Sisters pattern and templates finally arrived from Australia and I'm planning to start on that project in September.

Instead of sharing FrankenWhiggish, I thought I might share some of the backlog of long arm quilting clients' quilts that I haven't posted about before, like Michele's version of Emily Dennis's Log Cabin Stars quilt.  Here's a teaser to whet your appetite; we'll return to this quilt later in today's blog post:

Michele's Log Cabin Stars Quilt, Pattern Available here