Coming Home and Frank

After admiring several quilters' "Down The Rabbit Hole" quilts over the past year or so, I decided to sign up for this year's Sarah Fielke BOM project, "Coming Home".  For a long time now, I have wanted to make an appliqué project. I have taken several appliqué classes through the London Friendship Guild and have completed several small class projects in the process.  The fee includes the instructions for each step, paper templates which I print out myself each month and video instruction by Sarah each month.  Since Sarah lives in Australia, this is my best chance to take a class from her for now.  The quilt is not really a "Block" of the month, but is a medallion with new borders added each month.  

The first appliqué that I had to do was five circles for the centre block.  I picked out the green buildings fabric for the circles and then hummed and hawed over what to use for the backgrounds...  After a good night's sleep, I decided to use the fabric shown above.  I spent an hour or more happily appliquéing the circles yesterday afternoon as I listened to a podcast.

There are 8 little houses in the centre block and I decided to put interesting little fussy cuts in the windows and doors.  This first set of houses are magenta, not red as appears in the picture.

I purchased the roof fabric at QuiltCon in Nashville.  There are lots of houses in this quilt and I am thinking of using the same roof fabric on all of the houses...

You can see that the turquoise houses have little owls in the windows.  My centre block came together nicely and is exactly the right size!  WooHoo!

 The 2nd month's instructions were released at the end of February so I hope to get caught up before the end of March.  There is more appliqué on my horizon...

My daughter's Prague cityscape had some more stitches added this week while Finn had a nap.  

It snowed again(!) this week where Finn and my daughter live.  Finn likes to stick his face in the snow!

My Frank Lloyd Wright window continues to look more defined as I add more gold outlining stitches.   I am over half way finished the outlining now. 

You can see I needed to move the hoop this week.

Finn really enjoys his naps!

Today was National Quilting Day and I celebrated by spending the day with other members of the London Modern Quilt Guild at a sewing day.  I will do another post this week about my new project that I started this week and worked on today.   Stay tuned...

In the meantime, I will be linking up with my Slow Sunday Stitching friends over at Kathy's blog in the morning.  They all appreciate an encouraging comment!

An Old UFO--Flimsy done!

Twice a year, the Elgin Piecemakers get together for a sewing day at a local church hall, usually once in the fall and once in the winter.  Our winter sewing day was March 2nd.  I was in a bit of a conundrum trying to figure out what I was going to bring that day to sew until I found a bag of string pieced triangles in a bag on a shelf in my fabric storage area. Several years ago, my husband attended a conference for work and stopped by a local quilting shop to pick up a gift for me.  The ladies in the shop assured him that a Bali Pop jelly roll would be a welcome addition to any quilter's stash.  Soon after getting the strips of fabric, I found a pattern online and sewed sets of four strips together and cut them into triangles.  I'm not sure why they got put away in a bag and stuck on a shelf, but they did not see the light of day until the night before the sewing day as I was rummaging around looking for a project.  The pattern was nowhere in sight and I can't even remember what it was supposed to look like so I decided to play around with the triangles and make a lap quilt with them. 

There was a piece of navy blue fabric in the bag and some of it had been cut into one inch strips so I attached a strip to the edge of each triangle and started laying some of them out on the floor to see how they looked.  I love the colours!

Soon, I had all of the triangles laid out on the floor and I was ready to sew the columns together. I added a narrow strip of blue between each column and there was just enough navy fabric to square off the ends.  I had to do some piecing to stretch the fabric far enough to finish it off.

By the end of the day, I had two columns sewn together and the blue ends on each column.

It didn't take too long to get all of the columns put together...but there was a problem...I ran out of the navy fabric and was not going to be able to add navy side borders on the quilt.   Hmmm.  I found some navy solid in my stash but it did not match exactly.  This past Saturday, I went with a friend to a quilt store in search of a solution.  I brought some of the navy fabric with me, hoping to match it, but no such luck.  The store did not have the right colour of blue in stock.  As I looked through the store, I saw a navy batik fabric and wondered if it would make a good border for the quilt.  I purchased a yard and a bit of the fabric and brought it home.   Perfect!

I used some of the navy solid that I had in my stash for the narrow borders on the two sides of the quilt and then added a 4" piece of the batik to all 4 sides of the quilt.  I think it looks great and is a wonderful frame for the quilt.

It was not until I had the quilt together that I noticed the 3-D boxes...Do you see them?  Totally cool but totally unintentional!  I already have a plan for quilting this one myself with my walking foot but first I need to figure out a backing.  It will be a generous lap sized quilt.

BTW...I finished of the last of my drunkard's path variations comfort quilt blocks last week as well.  The colours for this one are navy, hunter green and cream.

Slow Stitching and a Finish!

My Frank Lloyd Wright cross stitch picture is coming along...I have added more outlining this week in the evenings.  There is still more to do in the middle section at the bottom. I will work on that part tomorrow for Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy.   My daughter has also been working on her Prague cityscape under the close supervision of Finn.

He likes to inspect her stitches and occasionally steel any thread left lying within his reach...

I quilted my "Just Sew" wall hanging over the last couple of days.

I outlined the sewing machine and did quilted circles in the knobs. I used a couple of pieces of masking tape stuck beside each other and traced a spool to make the circle.  Then, I cut out the circle and placed it on the dark teal parts of the machine.  I then used my walking foot to slowly sew around each circle.  This method worked quite well. I'm not good at free motion quilting.

The needle of the machine is embroidered with grey thread. 

I finished off the quilting this morning and then made and machine sewed the binding to the top of the quilt just in time to leave for the London Modern Quilt Guild meeting this afternoon.  I took along a needle, thread and my thimble so that I could work on it during the meeting, hopefully completing it before show and tell.  Alas, show and tell time came up faster than I could sew and only half of the binding was sewn down before I held up my quilt for everyone to see.  

The backing fabric came from my stash and was a relatively recent purchase.  The binding fabric was purchased specifically for this quilt...I bought extra so I can use it in future projects as well.  I used turquoise thread for the quilting.

I will be adding a hanging sleeve and displaying this quilt in my sewing room. The pattern for the sewing machine and letters came from Lori Holt's book, "Spelling Bee".

I have another quilt almost done--it just needs side borders and then it can be quilted.  This will be tonight's project.

I forgot to do my stash report for February so here it is...  not too bad considering I purchased a lot of fabric at Mad About Patchwork and at QuiltCon in February!

Fabric added in Feb 2019:   27.25 yards
Fabric added in 2019:  38.75 yards
Fabric out in Feb 2019:  23.0 yards (much of this was destashed, Marie Kondo style)
Fabric out in 2019: 40.1 yards
Net fabric out in 2019:  1.35 yards

I will be focussing on finishing a bunch of UFO's this month so the fabric out should be well ahead of fabric in by the end of the month.

QuiltCon 2019. #3

I've been home from Nashville for over a week now and I still find myself thinking about and remembering all of the fun I had at QuiltCon.  When we arrived in Nashville, we went to the Tennessee State Museum to see this exhibit:
 

There were lots of other conference attendees enjoying the quilts as well.  One of the quilts on display was this basket quilt made by Samantha Pack.

Here is a close up of one of the baskets:

As you can see, this quilt was rather intensively hand quilted.  The local modern guilds used this quilt as inspiration for their Charity Quilt.

Every modern guild was invited to make a charity quilt using small pieces and a certain colour way.  The quilts were all on display at QuiltCon, in the hall outside the show and along the outer walls of the show as well.  The basket inspired quilt will be on display at the museum with the original quilt after QuiltCon.

Of course, the charity quilt that I noticed right away was inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright window. It was made by the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild. They called it "Transparency Parade".

The quilt below was made by the Greenville Modern Quilt Guild (Greenville, South Carolina).  It was called "Zoomville".

For quite a while, I have been following Paige Alexander's blog, "Quilted Blooms".  I have commented on her blog and she has commented on mine and we have had several conversations by email over several months.  Paige belongs to the Greenville MQG and she made the little pink building with the plus sign on it in the upper right quadrant of the quilt.  You may wonder how I know this...

 
Paige and I had been in touch before QuiltCon and exchanged phone numbers so that we could meet up during the show.  Here is Paige (almost) pointing at her contribution to the Charity Quilt.

Paige is the co-author of "Modern Plus Sign Quilts" and we arranged to meet at the end of her book signing time at the publisher's booth at the show.  After her signing duties were complete, she gave us a tour of the quilts that she had entered in the show.

Of course, Christine, Paige and I had to get our picture taken with her prize winning quilts. This Transparency Plus Sign quilt came in 2nd in the Michael Miller fabric challenge category.

Her second quilt in the show, "Double Crossed" came in first in the two colour quilt category.  What a thrill for Paige to win two ribbons at QuiltCon!

I learned that Paige's paid employment involves lots of numbers so the plus sign theme for her quilts and book is very appropriate!  I did not get a close up picture of the quilt above but there are tiny fussy cut plus signs at each intersection. What a fun detail! 

You can find the link to Paige's blog, "Quilted Blooms" in my sidebar. 

I have made a quilt from "Modern Plus Sign Quilts" and it is in line to be quilted.  I hope to finish it soon. 

There will be more posts from QuiltCon in the next week or so. 

       

Stitching to Nashville and Back Again

If you read my previous post, you will know that I attended QuiltCon in Nashville last week.  From where I live, it is a day and a half of driving to get to Nashville.   Christine and I and our husbands made the journey in our car.  My husband did the driving and Christine and I sat in the back seat cross stitching (me),  knitting and embroidering (Christine).

Near the beginning of our trip, this is what my Frank Lloyd Wright cross stitch picture looked like:

I was soon rounding the corner...

And working on the last corner...

Christine made a cowl with some pretty Burgundy yarn.  Casting on...

And knitting away...

On the way home, I finished off the cross stitching on my picture and started the outlining with gold metallic thread.

Christine and I both bought embroidery kits at QuiltCon.  She worked on hers on the way home as I cross stitched.

It was a sunny day so the lighting was perfect.

Here is my kit...I will work on it when Frank is done.

I worked on FLW again this week at home and here is how it looks now.

This will be tomorrow's project again for Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy.  I am using Thread Heaven on the metallic thread to keep it from tangling up too much. I know from experience that the outlining can take almost as long as the cross stitching so this will be in my hoop for a while yet.