Sarah's Chevron Memory Quilt, Lazy Day Quilt Progress + Pineapple Nostalgia Quilt Back from the Cleaners

Good morning and happy Tuesday, friends!  I have so much to share with you today, so let's dive into it.  First up is a lovely, snuggly flannel-backed Chevron Memory quilt that my client Sarah made in remembrance of her grandmother.

Sarah's Chevron Memory Quilt

70 x 90 Chevron Memory Quilt with Filigree E2E Quilting

Sarah pieced this quilt while working through the flood of emotions following the sudden passing of her beloved grandmother, incorporating some of her clothing into the quilt top and pieced backing as well as new fabrics with novelty print themes that reminded her of her grandmother.  We chose the Filigree pantograph design because it reminded Sarah of her grandmother's lace tatting and I knew it would give Sarah the loosely quilted, old-fashioned feel she wanted for this project.

Sarah's Pieced Backing, Flannels and Regular Wovens, with Filigree E2E quilting

Okay, so when Sarah first reached out to me about this quilt, she warned me that it was only her second quilt ever when she started it three years ago, that it was "full of flaws" and learning experiences, etc.  I was bracing myself for there to be challenges for me to work around -- and then this beautifully pieced top and pieced backing showed up in the mail.  

Spirit Song Quilt Progress and a Puppy Update

Look, you guys -- all of my Spirit Song Birds In the Air blocks are sewn together!  The top row of three 16" blocks are connected, and the remaining three rows have two blocks connected and one more block needing to be attached.  This phase is going MUCH more smoothly now that all of my seams are nestling nicely again, but alas -- my studio is not at all puppy-proofed, so I'm not getting in much machine sewing time these days!

Spirit Song Quilt Coming Along

I sewed and pressed exactly ONE seam this morning.  The rest of Sam's morning nap was taken up with laundry.  Hopefully I'll get back up to the Studio later today.  It's so exciting when a quilt top nears the finish line, isn't it?

Joining Blocks Into Rows

I've been piecing this quilt on my smaller Bernina 475QE while the bigger machine (the Bernina 750QE) has been set up for paper piecing.  I have a block all cut out, foundation papers printed, ready to go for Anders' Beware the Ishmaelites sampler, and had even pulled fabrics and printed foundation papers for a 16" star block for our guild's new Community Education Blocks on the Move program, but then so many guild members stepped up to create and donate blocks for the program that I now have more mini quilts for the display than fit on the display racks!  That takes the pressure off me to make one right this minute.  

Samwise at 4 Mos., AKA Mister Snuggle-Bucket

The adorable puppy you see pictured above weighs 49 pounds at 4 months old, and although he has learned to go UP the stairs from the first to the second floor of our home, he is afraid to come DOWN those stairs.  So every morning, my husband opens Sam's crate in our bedroom to get him out, and Sam sits in the back of the crate and won't come out until I get down on the floor next to the crate -- THEN he comes running out straight into my arms, tail wagging furiously, and plops down belly-up for cuddles and puppy kisses.  And then I have to CARRY THE 49 POUND PUPPY DOWN THE STAIRS so he can go outside and pee!  

I'll Be Strong 'Til the Finish if I Eats Me Spinach, Like Popeye the Sailor Man

I prefer my spinach served fresh in salads...  But I really do need to teach Sam to walk down those stairs on his own, before I fall and we BOTH get hurt!

Back to the quilting that is currently not getting done.  I still need fabric for borders:

Original Border Plan, 3/4 Inch Inner Border and 1.25 Inch Outer Border

I was originally planning something like that for the borders, kind of a mustardy outer border with a skinny teal blue inner border.  That would give me a 52" x 68" quilt top.  But then today I played around some more in EQ8:

One Inch Inner Border, Three Inch Outer Border

That's an Anna Maria Horner print for the outer border, I believe.  Increasing the borders to 1" for the inner and 3" for the outer border would bring the quilt top up to 56" x 72" before quilting.

My Favorite So Far.  Kaffe Fassett Border Fabrics

Of course, these are just fabric images in the computer, not actual yardage that I own.  I think I'm going to need to take the finished quilt top to a quilt shop and audition border fabrics in person to make a final decision.

My One Monthly Goal for March -- Quilt-wise -- is to get this top assembled with borders purchased and sewn on!  My One Monthly Goal for the puppy is to teach him to walk down the stairs before we both stumble and plummet to our deaths.  

I'm linking up todays post with:

·       One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts  

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Spirit Song Blocks Nearly Completed, Only 38 Blocks to Go

So, in the midst of my sadness over losing my dog to cancer, I have not yet loaded the Jingle quilt that I was planning to start quilting between Christmas and New Year's.  That is a challenge that requires more positive energy than I could muster right now.  Instead, I've been piecing more of those Birds In the Air blocks for my Spirit Song Dress Code quilt, which is a total tangent (squirrel) from the projects I'd intended to be working on and finishing right now, but it's cathartic.  I had intended to use these HST blocks as leaders and enders, but the bright colors and frustration-free simple construction are cheering me up.  I think to myself, "I'll just go up to the studio and sew for 15 minutes," and then two hours slips by without my noticing it.  Just what I need right now.  And so the collection of blocks on my design wall has grown to this:

Spirit Song On My Design Wall: Only Three More Rows to Go

To recap, this project is made up of traditional 4" Birds In the Air blocks and I designed the layout and scrappy color scheme in EQ8 quilt design software as an experiment.  

 

My objective was to design a simple quilt that could be made with my Accuquilt GO! dies, so each block is comprised of three 2" finished HSTs (Accuquilt die 55393) and one 4" finished HST (Accuquilt die 55031).  

50 x 66 Design Rendering Created in EQ8

I used the EQ8 design printout as a rough guide as I was choosing fabrics for this project, since the virtual fabrics loaded in my software are similar to but not identical to the actual, physical fabrics in my studio stash.  I ended up not using as much purple in the real quilt and my little blue triangles are true blues rather than teals as in the design rendering, but I still love how accurately the software tool helps me predict what a quilt will look like BEFORE I cut into any fabric.  EQ8 gives me super powers!

Yes, I spent some time fiddling around on the computer before I came up with this design that I liked enough to commit to making it, but I tried out lots of different color options and layouts before settling on this one.  Without the software, I would have been making the first idea that I came up with, the one that I did NOT like when I previewed the design in my software.  It takes so much time to cut, piece, and quilt a project from beginning to end.  Even without factoring in the cost of materials, the software is my most valuable quilting tool because it ensures I'll never again get 3/4 finished piecing a quilt top and realize that the color/value/scale aren't working the way I envisioned it in my mind.

Piecing WIPs on My Design Wall: Spirit Song and Beware the Ishmaelites Sampler

You can see the scale better in this photo for how much I've got done and the size of the finished quilt.  I know that the seam allowances between all of those 4" blocks are going to shrink this down dramatically.  If I feel like it's too small once the top is assembled, there are always borders, right?  The huge blocks off to the right are for an in-progress FPP (foundation paper piecing) project, my Beware of the Ishmaelites Queen sampler quilt for my younger son's bedroom.  The last quilt I made for him was for his Twin size "big boy bed" when he turned two, but now that he's 16 years old and 6' tall, he needs a bigger quilt for his BIGGER boy bed!  Hah!  I'll return to piecing that quilt after I finish the Spirit Song blocks and clear away the debris of pink/peach/coral fabrics that have taken over my cutting table.

To make the 50" x 66" throw size like my EQ8 rendering, I need two more blocks to complete those partial rows near the bottom plus three more rows of twelve blocks each, for a total of 38 more blocks.  I have already started chain piecing all of the remaining blocks so I should be able to finish them today.  Then I'll fine-tune my layout, borrowing my sons' and husband's eyeballs to help me check for balance and avoiding two patches of the same fabric placed adjacent to one another.  I don't know how I'll quilt it yet, though.  I think it would be a perfect candidate for a lovely computerized edge-to-edge design, but my longarm machine isn't computerized and it won't be computerized any time soon.  Wouldn't this one be perfect?  It's called "Dave's All That Jazz" and it's available from Urban Elementz here.

Dave's All That Jazz Digital/Paper E2E Quilting Design from Urban Elementz

Dare I attempt another paper pantograph on this one?  Dave's All That Jazz is available to order as a paper pantograph, but it's definitely not in the Beginner/Easy category.  My initial experiments with paper pantographs taught me that following the paper pattern with a laser light is not as easy as it looks!  Stay tuned...

OMG: One Monthly Goal(s)

It's a new year, and that makes it a great time to try something new with goal setting.  I'm going to set THREE goals each month, one for Piecing, one for Quilting, and one for Garment Sewing (something I'd like to do more of this year!).

• JANUARY PIECING GOAL: Complete Spirit Song Dress Code Quilt Top
• JANUARY QUILTING GOAL: Load Jingle BOM Christmas Quilt Top and Begin Custom Quilting
• JANUARY GARMENT SEWING GOAL: Set up a dedicated garment sewing work station in my former guest room.  I don't have room in my quilt studio to be working on garments and long-term quilt projects simultaneously, so I'm thinking about setting up a separate cutting table, ironing board, serger and cover stitch machines in the spare bedroom along with the dress form.  That way everything is ready to go for quick mending, alterations, or whatever knit dress or top I might want to whip up...

I'm linking up today's post with:

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

·       One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts

Tentative Quilting Plan for Jingle and More Spirit Song Birds In the Air

Alright, you guys -- my #1 priority quilting goal for the month of December is to get as much of this Christmas themed Jingle project quilted as I can.  It's not loaded on my frame yet, but here's what I've accomplished since I posted about it a few days ago:

• Located a package of Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting in my stash that can be cut down for this quilt
• Ordered and received a package of Quilter's Dream Wool batting to layer over the 80/20
• Located the 108" wide backing fabric and prewashed it in HOT water to shrink it as much as possible (all of the blocks in this quilt had to be soaked repeatedly in boiling hot water with Dawn dish detergent due to a dye bleed, so I'm certain that most of their shrinkage has already taken place)
• Reviewed my notes from the longarm quilting workshops I took with both Lisa Calle and Judi Madsen during Spring Quilt Week in Paducah earlier this year
• Ordered and received a new ruler gadget from Lisa Calle's online shop to assist with stitching in the ditch around all of this applique
• Started a tentative custom quilting plan on my iPad in the Notes Plus app -- I just import the photo to the app from my iCloud photos, stretch it to fill the page, and then I can sketch quilting designs directly on the photo as you see below:

Tentative Quilting Plan for Jingle Quilt

Cool, huh?  I know quilters have a lot of different ways they try out quilting motifs on a quilt, like dry erase markers on vinyl, etc., but doing it on my iPad means I can doodle through a gazillion options whenever I have some down time.  What do you think so far?  I like those ruler work designs that I put on the inner setting triangles and I know that if I mark them carefully, I should have no trouble executing them on the longarm.  The feathers in the outer setting triangles I'm not so sure of.  I think I'd have to mark them all ahead of time and follow the marked lines to avoid the dreaded String of Ogre Toes look, but if I can do that successfully on a practice piece, I might give it a go on the real quilt.  Otherwise/instead, I'll do one of those piano key things where every other stripe is filled in (I tested that idea out on some of the red setting triangles near the top).  I don't know how well the yellow "ink" shows up on your screen, but all I did for the center medallion is come up with reference points to make a giant X behind the applique, so I can break that area up and do one fill inside the X and a different fill design in the V-shaped areas outside of the X.  Not sure what either of those fills might be, but I'll definitely have to mark the big X prior to loading the quilt.

I picked the doodling "inks" based on what would show up on the photo, but I'm actually planning to use Superior's Antique Gold Metallic thread on those red and green setting triangles if all goes well.  I'll use monofilament for all of the stitch in the ditch between borders, blocks, and around the applique, and an off-white shade of So Fine for the background fills behind the applique.  I think I want to get some lighter weight Bottom Line thread to put in the bobbin with my metallic and monofilament threads, and I don't have any of that on hand, so that's on my To Do list for this week:

1. Locate my Superior Bottom Line thread color chart and select bobbin colors to coordinate with quilt backing (for monofilament), metallic threads, and possibly for background fills as well.  Order cones of thread from Superior.
2. See whether I already have an arc template for the spine of those triangle feathers.  If not, figure out what size I need and order it.
3. Test out feather design on sample quilt
4. Mark medallion X and feather spines on quilt top
5. Load the Jingle quilt on the frame!

Meanwhile, I spent some time sewing up some more Birds In the Air blocks for my Spirit Song Dress Code quilt today:

121 Blocks Complete out of 192 Needed; 71 Blocks to Go

This one is also reminding me of pink lemonade.  I know it's obnoxiously bright, and I don't care.  If I can just finish the blocks, I can clean up the giant fabric mess and refocus my attention on the longarm machine.  I keep telling myself that, and then I say I'll just sew a couple more of these HSTs and then I'll stop...

Well, I've got church in the morning and then we'll spend the entirety of Sunday afternoon returning Son the Elder to his college campus.  It was a very low-key but restful Thanksgiving holiday at our house -- just what the doctor ordered!

I'm linking today's post with:

SATURDAY·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY·

       One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts: http://www.elmstreetquilts.com/  

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       Moving it Forward at Em's Scrap Bag

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

TUESDAY

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

Spirit Song Dress Code Is Growing On the Design Wall!

Good morning!  I finally got caught up with everything else in life that needed doing last week -- whew! -- so I rewarded myself with several hours in the sewing room, chopping up fabric with my Accuquilt GO! cutter and then sewing the triangles together.  Here's what I've got up on my design wall so far:

Spirit Song Blocks In Progress On My Design Wall

I felt like what I had at the beginning of yesterday was getting too bright and juvenile-looking, so I deliberately added some caramels to the peach/orange/coral fabrics and started mixing in some darker blues for the little HSTs.  This is what was on my wall at the beginning of the day yesterday:

Where I Started Yesterday

It's hard to make an accurate comparison since the light is so different in those two photos, but hopefully you get the idea.  I need to cut up a greater variety of those background neutrals and little blue triangles, too, so that I can avoid placing blocks with the same fabrics next to one another in the final layout.  

I'm just sewing the 4" Birds In the Air units right now, not yet joining four of those together to make the 8" Airplane blocks.  And I haven't cut out the whole quilt yet, either -- I want to get what I've cut already sewn together, get it up on the wall, and then be able to adjust with lighter/darker/different scale/whatever fabrics as needed.

It might not look as though I got a great deal done yesterday, but I have about 50 more of these Birds In The Air units almost finished, piled up next to the machine and waiting for when I get home from church this afternoon:

Lots More HST Units Coming Together

Speaking of which, I've been sitting here at my desk with my morning coffee, all snuggled up  in a flouffy bathrobe with a towel on my head -- and I need to leave for church in 25 minutes in order to be on time for choir warmup.  Yikes!

I'm linking today's post with:

SUNDAY

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       Moving it Forward at Em's Scrap Bag

Accuquilt Spirit Song Quilt is Now In Progress. Want to Make One of Your Own?

Good morning!  I finally got some sewing time in last night, giving me something to post about today.  I've been busy with some travel lately, and the recent migration of my old Bernina 7 Series Yahoo group to the new Groups.io platform has been taking up a lot of my time as well.   If you own or are interested in learning more about Bernina sewing machines or software products, consider this my personal invitation to join me and 7,000 of my dearest friends over at the new BerninaLand forum on Groups.io, which you can find here.  All Bernina models are welcome, and there are special sub groups for the 8 Series, 7 Series, Q Series Longarms, Software, and Sew Techie (dedicated to all of the ancillary tech tools that many of us are using with our sewing these days).

And now, without further ado, I present to you the fruits of an hour in the studio last night:

Making a Start on My Accuquilt Spirit Song Quilt

By the way, another reason I haven't been posting as frequently lately is that my PhotoShop Editor software is not compatible with the most recent Mac OS update, and that's the program I use to remove the yellow cast from incandescent lighting, to lighten the shadows from pictures I take in my studio late at night, and to resize my photos so they will load quickly when I post them here on the blog.  I am bumbling around in the Mac Preview and Photos apps, trying to make my usual photo edits, but I didn't find the same tools  -- totally missing the little eyedropper that tells PhotoShop which area in the photo is supposed to be pure white or pure black, for instance.  If anyone out there has recommendations for easy photo editing apps, tools, whatever that are user friendly for Mac, please share in the comments below.

My Accuquilt Spirit Song Quilt, 52 x 68

About this new project: I designed this quilt in EQ8 software with the objective of creating a design that could be completely cut out using the dies that came in my 8" Qube set with the Accuquilt Go! cutting system.  I named it the Spirit Song quilt after the contemporary Christian choir I sing in at Christ Lutheran Church, because we color coordinate our outfits based on a different "dress code" each Sunday morning, and this quilt is colored with the dress code that I most struggle with finding something to wear: Peach/Pink/Coral/Orange with Khaki!  

Spirit Song at Christ Lutheran: Pink, Peach, Coral with Khaki

Once this quilt is finished, I can wear it to church like a cape any time I can't find anything in my closet that is clean, seasonally appropriate, and currently fits me in these colors...

One of my readers requested a Quilt Along for this project.  The last thing I need right now, with holidays right around the corner, is a bunch of new self-imposed deadlines and stress, so I'm not going to do any kind of schedule for this, but I will share the information you would need if you wanted to make a Spirit Song quilt of your own.  If you do, I'd love to see it!  You can probably make this quilt using cutting tools that you already own, but I've provided links (some of them affiliate links) below to the Accuquilt dies and other gadgets that can speed up the cutting and improve accuracy as well.  Just to clarify, I drew this quilt in EQ8 and used the software to audition fabrics and plan my layout.  Spirit Song is what I'm calling my own personal quilt, not the name of the quilt block.  

One 8 Inch Airplane Block (Four 4 inch Birds In the Air Blocks)

This quilt uses one 8" block, comprised of HSTs (Half Square Triangles) in two sizes, 2" (finished) and 4" (finished).  It's an old, traditional quilt block called Airplane and instructions for piecing it can be found on p. 3 of Accuquilt's FREE 72 Block Patterns booklet that you can download from their web site here.  I've also seen a single quadrant of the Airplane block called Birds In the Air.   

To make a 52" x 68" quilt, you'll need a total of 48 8" Airplane blocks (or 192 4" Birds In the Air blocks).  Although I'm using Accuquilt dies to cut my fabric for this project, you could cut this quilt out just as easily with traditional rotary cutting.  I'm not sure whether the dies actually save any time with HSTs, to be honest, since they are so easy to cut from strips with an acrylic ruler and a rotary cutter.  

• 576 2" finished HSTs in Assorted Neutrals (Accuquilt Die #55712 from the 8" Qube set, or #55063, or cut from 2 7/8" strips if rotary cutting) 
• 192 2" finished HSTs in Assorted Blue/Teal prints (Accuquilt Die #55712 from the 8" Qube set, or #55063, or cut from 2 7/8" strips if rotary cutting) 
• 192 4" finished HSTs  in Assorted Peach/Pink/Coral/Orange prints (Accuquilt Die #55710 from the 8" Qube set, or #55031, or cut from 4 7/8" strips if rotary cutting)

Since this is intentionally a scrappy quilt, it's difficult to give precise yardage requirements.  Based on the EQ8 yardage calculations, I'd say you're probably good with about 2 yards total of peach/pink/coral/orange fabrics, 2 yards total of assorted neutral print fabrics, and 1 yard total of assorted blue/teal fabrics.  These amounts do not include borders.

By the way, I purchased my 8" Qube set because it came with my Ready, Set, GO! starter kit when I purchased my Accuquilt GO! cutter.  Since there are 8 dies in a Qube set that can be mixed and matched to create countless different block designs, it's a good value and a good way to get started.  However, I would rather have the HST dies that are sold separately than the ones that came in my Qube set.  Die #55712 from my Qube set only cuts two 2" HSTs at a time, so even with 4 layers of fabric per cut, that's only 8 triangles getting cut out at a time and I need 576 of them in neutrals and another 192 of those little triangles cut from blue fabrics.  If I had die # 55063, which is sold separately, that die cuts out TWELVE 2" HSTs in one pass, or 48 triangles at a time if I'm cutting four layers of fabric per cut.  Same thing with the 4" HST die that comes in a Qube set -- only two HSTs per cut with the Qube die, but if you buy die #55031 separately you can cut out four 4" HSTs per cut.  The whole appeal of die cutting for me is speed without sacrificing accuracy, so if I end up using the GO! cutter frequently enough, I'll probably purchase the die that cuts out 12 HSTs at once instead of just two.  

Another way to make this quilt would be to slightly oversize your rotary cut triangles, cutting them from 3" strips and 5" strips respectively, and then trim them down to size after sewing them together and pressing them open, using a special HST ruler from Bloc Lock.  The Block Loc HST ruler has a diagonal ridge that nestles into your seam allowance for perfect positioning, ensuring that your HST unit finishes the correct size with a perfect diagonal seam after trimming.

Okay, folks -- that's all you get for today!  Happy Wednesday.

I'm linking up today's post with:

• ·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication
• 
  
• ·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation