Shenandoah quilt,

This morning I spent machine quilting 

I decided to try using this pretty ivory colored Clipdot from Michael Miller on the back, and I love it.   It is a lightweight cotton with some texture on it.  The quilt feels really light and airy...

The quilt itself is called Shenandoah, by Creative Sewlutions, and you can make it in seven sizes!  

this is the second size I've made.

it only uses two fabrics,..... for this throw sized one Im using a beautiful Asian floral by Hoffman and a moda Weave as the background,

the first one i made, in the smallest, crib size version I used a pretty border print,  

It is a pretty cool pattern, all in all, I am already thinking how I can vary it by filling up those columns eith piecing....

Dresden Plate Monster quilt

Well, after a concerted effort, today i finished the machine quilting on this monster... 

(You probably know that feeling where you've got so many different projects on the go that you just have to try to finish something!  It's been creeping up on me and I am going to try to get some of these projects finished off before the year end!)

I know that Ive blogged about this quilt quite a bit in the past, but its not very often that I tackle a king sized quilt, and this is the first one that I have ever done the quilting on.  it took a long time!   (plus I did it in add-on sections)

Anyway, even though there are puckers and erratic stitching, it is now ready for the last stretch, the binding.   I will need to go buy something for that, and I am thinking about going with a medium blue or that green thats used in the dresden plate locks..   It might come down to whatever is available. 

Maybe I will get this one done before Christmas! 

Sixty Shades of Neutral

I started this jellyroll race couple of weeks ago. I like the idea of having the strips run vertically and so I used 60 strips to make it taller rather than wider.  

If you have never done a jellyroll race, the idea behind it is like this. You start with a big stack of 2 1/2 inch strips. 

Sew all the strips end  to end until you have a really long strip! 

Fold the strip in half and sew all along the side so that now you have a strip that is twice as wide and half as long.

Fold it in half again and sew the side. Now the piece is four strips wide.

Fold it in half again and sew the side. Now the piece is eight strips wide.

Fold it in half again and sew the side. Now the piece is is 16 strips wide

Fold it in half again and sew the side. Now the piece is 32 strips wide.

This is where you would stop. The piece is now 64 inches wide.

You wouldn't fold it in half again because then it would be 128 inches wide.

The other dimension of the quilt depends on how long your strip is at the start.

If you use 40 steps, it would be 1600 inches long, which is why sometimes this pattern is called the 1600 quilt.  So because you always have 32 strips wide, you would divide 1600" by 32 to get a measurement of about 58 inches.   Your quilt would be 58 x 64.

But, I used 60 strips, which is 2400 inches.  And 2400 inches divided by 32 strips wide is about 78 inches long for each finished strip.   So that is what my  quilt turned out to be, about 64" x 78".

To facilitate this, we cut a bunch of two and a half inch strip packs at the store. There are 20 strips in one pack, and 40 strips in another pack.

 

Then I had to decide how to quilt it.

I decided to divide it into columns of three strips wide each.   

That meant that each column would be about 6 inches wide which is a nice width to quilt on my home machine. 

Each column has a different quilting design on it. This makes it more interesting for me to quilt because I am easily bored.

These are some of the designs that I quilted on it. You can see that I am not an expert quilter because my lines aren't always smooth and my stitch length varies quite a lot. However, I will keep practicing and getting better.

fans ( i changed the lighting on some of these photos to make the quilting lines easier to see)

wavy triangles

figure eights

small spirals

I am pretty happy with how it turned out. It is a nice quiet quilt that will look nice next to other more colorful ones.  I must confess that I stole this idea from Val who made one of these out of pale batiks a couple of years ago.  

King size quilts,

Well, to state the obvious, a king-size quilt takes a long time to sew.

I continue plodding away on my fancy dish quilt.

I added a fifth row and the outer edge to one side of the quilt.

And I spent a bunch of time quilting.

After that I laid out the final row and outer edge, finding out at that time that I needed to sew four more X blocks

Which I did.

I'm hoping that I can finish this quilt in the next few weeks

,

cutter quilt project, placemats

A couple of years ago we used 1930s reproduction fabrics as one of the colorways for our Saturday surprise sampler blocks.  At that time i sewed some pieced blocks from my scraps thinking I would make a baby quilt.  

When I sewed the units together it didn't really excite me. So, I just folded it 

up and put it away. I think that I would have liked it more if there had been more white in it.

A few days ago I pulled it out and looked at it again, wondering what else I could use it for,

One possibility was to turn it into a cushion cover, just by folding it in half horizontally to make a large cushion.   It measures about 30" x 35"

I decided to quilt it while I was still thinking about possibilities. I just sewed a series of vertical lines over the top.

I folded it around a pillow to get an idea of what it would look like as a cushion, but I decided against that.

In the end I cut it into four main pieces, with a little bit left over down the center, in order to make placemats.  Of course I still had lots of scraps so I used them for binding.

Here are the two that I have finished selwing the binding around.

Of course I still have that little leftover strip,  Who knows what I could use it for in the future

Adding to the quilt, a tutorial

In this post I will describe how to add a new section to a quilted section.  There are a few photographs.

However, I hope that it will be of interest to some of you who want to quilt large projects on your home machine.

I quilted most of the central panel of the Fancy Dish quilt. It is quite long, about 105 inches, and 39 inches wide.

This was the rough diagram I made when I was figuring out how many blocks I needed.  I also used it to plan what sections Iwould divide it into for the machine quilting. 

I decided to divide it into four main sections, each of them is outlined in orange pencil crayon. The central panel that I quilted above. Is the one that is three blocks wide and has the blue on it.

Now I'm going to add a single row of blocks, which has purple on the diagram.  That will leave the two side edges to add later, they will each have a roll of full blocks and a half block border.

So first of all you trim the edge of the section that has been quilted.  I trimmed it about 1/8 of an inch past the raw edge of the pieced blocks.

Gather the batting, backing and the next row that you plan to add. My pieced blocks were 13-12" wide, so I cut my batting and backing about an inch wider, at 14-1/2".

Lay out the quilted section so that the backing is facing up.  Lay the the new strip if backing fabric right sides together along the edge. ( I really like this backing fabric!)

Pin the edge, and also pin the fabric to the quilt along the other edge, so as to keep it out of the way.

When you pin it on, you might need to stretch the quilted part a bit because the quilting tends to make the piece take up a bit. 

Turn the section right side up so that you can add the pieced row to the top of the quilt.

Place it right flush against the edge of the quilt top, the 1/8" inch of batting and backing will extend a bit farther.  Matchup any seams as you go. Also move the pins from the back to the top so that you won't run over them when you are sewing..

Again, you will need to ease in the fullness of the top strip, because quilted section will have shrunk up a bit.

Also pin down the strip on the other side it so that it doesn't flop around when you are sewing.

Here it is all pinned now.

I folded it up like an accordion so that it would be easy to move to the sewing machine.

Now, Sew the seam one quarter inch away from the raw edge of the blocks, taking out this row of pins as you go.   I'd recommend using a walking foot for this. It gives a better even feed.

To add in the batting you will just need to change your stitch to a very wide zigzag.  Push the edge of your new batting strip close to the right edge of the batting and zigzag it together

This is what it looks like now that the batting strip has been added.

Lay out your quilt on a flat surface again, and remove the pins that are holding the backing out of the way.  Smooth the backing over the batting.

Do the same thing for the front of the quilt. At this point you might even want to iron the seam that has been created.

Go ahead and pin-baste the new section, and you're all ready to quilt again.

Vintage quilt progress

I had a relaxing sewing time when I added all the machine button hole stitch around these blocks.  I had enough supplies on hand to do the blocks below.

I drew a diagram and counted up what I have yet to sew, and I need to do 7 more alternate blocks, and 10 half blocks for the edges, which means I have 136 more petals to cut.  I'm out of Steam a Seam so I am switching to trans-web now.

In the mean time, I sewed up the center three columns so that I could start the machine quilting:

Here it is laid out with the batting and backing ready to baste.

After the pin basting is done, I cut the extra batting away. 

I'm doing this quilt in sections to make it more manageable since it will be pretty big.

This morning I googled FMQ designs to get a few ideas on quilting patterns to fill in the nice white areas.  

This won't be an heirloom quilt, but I do intend to have some fun with the quilting, and try out lots of patterns.  

On another note, I got a gardenia at the grocery store.  It's quite pretty but has quite an overwhelming scent. 

and this little half grown cardinal came to visit yesterday.  It was trying to figure out how to control it's flying.  It would fly into things and then have to rest.  It's mother watched it and occasionally tried to guide it by showing it where to go.  it was interesting to watch from behind my window.