Giverny Kaleidoscope Quilt Finish + Big Birthday Surprises: A Bernina Q24 is Coming Next Week (APQS Millennium + IntelliQuilter For Sale)!

Today's post is a long one; I have three things to share with you.  

1. Graduation Quilt Finished Early!

First things first, my lovelies -- I put the final stitches in the binding of Anders' high school graduation quilt last night.  I finished it EARLY, y'all -- graduation isn't until Tuesday, and Quillow Sunday at church is on June 6th.  Woo hoo!!  This was my One Monthly Goal for May, and it feels good to hit the finish line with several days to spare!

70 x 90 Giverny Teleidoscope Graduation Quilt for Anders

I really love how the ombre backing fabric came out, too:

Giverny Teleidoscope Ombre Backing

I ended up doing a 1/2" finished width binding on this quilt because it seemed more proportional to the oversized kaleidoscope blocks than my usual 1/4" binding.  As for the size, it came out right at 70" x 90" before washing it, and I used 100% cotton batting so I'm bracing myself for some shrinkage to happen in that first wash.  I had intended for the quilt to be a little larger, but it will be fine.

Date Night With Jack the Ripper: A Directional Tension Thriller With a Happy Ending

Friday Night with Jack the Ripper

You should have seen the look on my husband's face when I told him I was ripping stitches out of Anders' graduation quilt.  You'd think I just told him that I fed one of our neighbors to the dog or something.  It was all there in his eyes -- shock, horror, revulsion, "how could you do this to me, to us, and to our family?!" blah blah blah.  But a quilter's gotta do what a quilter's gotta do, and sometimes you just have to put on your Big Girl panties and reach for the seam ripper.

So I finished quilting Anders' graduation quilt late on Tuesday night, but when I took it off the frame and flipped it over, I saw a couple of spots where I wasn't happy with the stitching on the back of the quilt.  I know better than to make rash decisions when I'm tired, so I walked away from the quilt and decided to come back and triage in the daylight, after a good night's sleep.  Sometimes I can pick out and restitch small sections of quilting invisibly, knotting and burying the thread tails so you'd never know any "quilt surgery" had happened there.  This was not one of those times.

Tuesday Night, When I Thought I Was Finished

Inspection on Wednesday morning revealed directional tension problems in the first two rows of quilting, about 15" across the entire top of the quilt.  

What the Heck are Directional Tension Problems?

Oh, I'm so glad you asked!  

Tuesday's To Do List: Champagne in Giverny for Son-the-Younger

Well, I hope everyone likes the champagne bubbles because we're committed to them now!  After agonizing over trying to choose the perfect design for Anders' graduation quilt for weeks now, I finally decided to show a few options to the soon-to-be-graduate himself and see what HE likes.  Anders chose this design for his quilt, Kristin's Champagne Bubbles E2E, and I started stitching it out this afternoon.

Kristin's Champagne Bubbles E2E on Kaleidoscope Quilt

I just LOVE how my IntelliQuilter can quilt out such smooth, perfect circles onto a quilt, don't you?  This is one of those quilting designs that can only be stitched out with a computerized machine.  I chose 100% Quilter's Dream Cotton batting for this quilt since Anders complains about being too hot at night -- and since he'll be attending college in South Carolina.  The thread is Glide in color Split Pea, selected because it blends into most of the lighter colored fabrics in the quilt top and is a near-perfect match to the backing fabric.

April OMG Success: Anders' Grad Quilt is a Flimsy!

It's the last day of April, and I'm crossing my big One Monthly Goal off my list in the nick of time.  I feel like that player in Sports Ball who slides into Home Plate right before whatever happens that makes him Struck Out instead of Safe.  That other dude who is dressed like a cross between a skunk and a raccoon yells SAFE -- and the crowd goes wild!!  🙌  See?  I do sort of somewhat pay attention to the Sports Ball games.  But mostly, I'm just shopping for fabric on my iPad...  

Giverny Teleidoscope is a Completed Flimsy

77 x 99 Giverny Teleidoscope is a Completed Flimsy

My Major Goal for April was to get my younger son's high school graduation quilt top, Giverny Teleidoscope, completely assembled, and I just finished that up about an hour ago.  (Those are my husband's naked toes sticking out on the right side of the photo, and my soon-to-be-graduate son Anders' gray sock clad toes sticking out on the other side).   I pressed it flat as a pancake with Mary Ellen's Best Press, and even remembered to stay stitch 1/8" from the raw edges all the way around the quilt top so it's ready to load and quilt.  

Design Wall Monday + Tuesday's To-Do List: Giverney Teleidoscope is Nearly a Flimsy

As of Sunday night, here's what Anders' high school graduation quilt looks like on my design wall:

All Nine Rows Completed!

All of my 11" kaleidoscope blocks now have their corners attached, and they are all sewn together into nine horizontal rows with their points matching up neatly at the seam lines.  Now all I need to do is to sew those rows together into a finished quilt top (or "flimsy") before I can load it onto my long arm frame for quilting.  My One (Two!) Monthly Goal(s) for April was(were) to finish piecing this kaleidoscope quilt top and to completely finish the bear paw quilt I shared a few days ago, so I think I'm going to end the month at two for two.  

Even though I had a pretty good idea what this quilt would look like with all of the pieces laid out and stuck to my design wall throughout construction, I love seeing the fuzzy design come into sharp focus as the piecing seams tidy everything up.  I am enjoying staring at this one, seeing the different shapes emerge in some areas and recede in others: triangles, Maltese crosses, curved diamonds, octagons and squares, as well as the curved orange peel design illusion that happens where the blocks come together at the corners.  I'm pleased with how this one is coming along.

Sesame Street Quilting With a Playful Floral Swirl E2E Design

Hello, hello, and happy Thursday!  Is it a "sunny day, sweeping the clouds away" where you live today?  If not, don't despair -- "I can tell you how to get, how to get to Sesame Street..."  

Seriously; by the time I finished quilting this one, I could NOT get the Sesame Street songs out of my head.  "C is for cookie, it's good enough for me. Cookie cookie cookie starts with C!"

4 inch Tumbler Quilt with Floral Swirl E2E Quilting Design

This is the second of two donation quilt tops that my mom pieced for me to quilt and donate to a local hospital pediatric patient, using the leftover Hibiscus Kona Solid background fabric from Lars's Mission Impossible graduation quilt (finished in 2019 and juried into QuiltCon Together 2021).  There was a ton of that Hibiscus purple fabric left over, and my mom kept me company in the studio while I was custom quilting Mission Impossible and she was using my AccuQuilt GO! cutter with the 4" tumbler die to cut up all of the leftover purple fabric into tumblers.  The print fabrics were pulled from my scrap bin and my stash, except for those fabulous Sesame Street prints -- I spotted those at a local quilt shop and they were a complete impulse buy.  I knew it would be great for The Charlotte Quilters Guild's Pediatric Outreach efforts.  

Another Month, Another Goal... Or Two: Of Bear Paws and Kaleidoscopes

 I was long-winded on the topic of that vintage Economy quilt yesterday, so today's post is going to be Short and Sweet!

I have a Major Goal for April as well as a Minor Goal.  The Minor Goal is to get my Color Outside the Lines bear paw quilt off my WIP list.  That entails labeling, binding, and hand finishing the binding on this one.  After clearing off the heaps of fabric debris on the cutting table from my kaleidoscope, I finally had room to trim the bear paw quilt and machine embroider its label yesterday.

Machine Embroidered Label, Ready to Applique

And no, that is not a typo or your eyes playing April Fools jokes on you.  I really did start working on this quilt SEVEN years ago, in May of 2014.  It will feel good to have this one done at the end of the month!

But my Major and Supreme Goal for April is to get my son's kaleidoscope graduation quilt, Giverny Teleidoscope, to the Finished Flimsy stage by the end of the month.  While I had the embroidery module and stabilizers out anyway, I went ahead and embroidered the label for Anders' quilt as well.  It's stitching out right now, while I'm typing this blog post.

Oh-Ma-Goodness; My March OMG Goal Was Attained... EARLY!

 Guess what?  If a quilter spends less time writing about quilting on her blog, she can get more actual quilting progress completed in her studio!  😲.  This has been a major epiphany for me!  Stop smirking!

Giverny Teleidoscope Layout, All 63 Block Centers Complete

Okay, so my One (and only) Monthly Goal for March was to complete the remaining 53 octagonal kaleidoscope block centers for my younger son's high school graduation quilt.  I only had nine of them finished at the beginning of the month and I got the remaining 54 pieced with a week to spare.  Whew!  Note that none of the corner triangles are sewn to the blocks yet.  I spent a few hours this afternoon cutting those HSTs (half square triangles) out and arranging the blocks on my design wall until nothing was jumping out at me in an unpleasant way.  I think I like what I've got right now, but I'm planning to look at it again with fresh eyes in the morning before I start actually sewing corners onto octagons.