Sister's Choice Quilts

Long Road Home Blocks All Done

A free day equals lots of sewing time, and I made the most of it.  What you see in the photo above are 90 Long Road Home blocks.  Nine stacks of ten blocks each.  This quilt is a diagonal set, and I plan to get it on the design wall some time today.  I need to cut out the setting triangles, but that won't take long.

I always have a few minor complaints about Bonnie Blue quilt patterns (much as I adore their designs).  They never tell you how many units or even how many blocks you will end up with.  I find that annoying.  Yes, I can do the math, or count the blocks on my fingers, but how much trouble or room would it take to just say "Make 90 blocks" or "You should have 180 strip set units".  I know, I am being petty, but I like things to be comprehensive.

One surprising thing, that I really did like, was the lack of waste in this quilt.  Want to see what I had leftover after making the 90 blocks?

That's it. Now that's economical.

Some of the French General fat quarters I ordered arrived yesterday, so I plan to cut more strips today.  These fabrics are mostly from the La Belle Fleur and French General Favorites collections.

I hadn't purchased either one of those groups, so I am happy to have at least gotten some of the reds for my stash.  Isn't that little fleur de lis print adorable?  Should have gotten a half yard of that!

In other news, have you heard about the Moda Friendship Quilt Along?  It is a program sponsored by Moda where 27 designers share a free downloadable 9 inch friendship quilt block.  I have been visiting daily and printing out the block patterns for myself.  It would be a fun sampler quilt to make, or even a one block quilt (if you could chose a favorite block!).  At any rate the block patterns may come in handy some day, and it has been fun visiting the blogs of the various designers I was not so familiar with.  Let me just say Edyta Sitar (Laundry Basket Quilts) is incredible.  If you aren't familiar with her, check out her blog.  Her quilts are A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

Added later:  Hmmm.  Remember when I was cutting out the strips for the Long Road Home project?  I was complaining that after cutting out the required number of strips I had a ton of fabric left over?  I had forgotten about that.  So, what the pattern said to cut out was dead on, but what they said to buy was an over estimate.   Unless the kit makers included more fabric....Not sure since I didn't measure the cuts in the kit.

Drowning in Strips

I feel as if I am drowning in strips for my pineapple blocks!  I did get the lights all cut out and organized into labeled baggies over the weekend.  After cutting for hours, I still do not have enough French General reds.  I ordered 13 more fat quarters and that is just going to have to be enough.  If not, I will dig around and pull non French General reds and add them into the mix.  So, for now, I am on hold until the fabric reinforcements arrive.

It was a great feeling to be able to really dig into my stash of lights and use up many many bits and pieces that were leftover from other projects.  I am so glad I hung onto all these smallish pieces as they did come into play very handily.  My lights come from all sorts of fabric collections, not just French General, so maybe I should lighten up on the self imposed rule that all my reds be FG.

Today I will be working on my Long Road Home blocks, which you can see in the upper left of the photo, next to my sewing lamp base.  It is a big old mess in the sewing studio right now, with three different projects being worked on at once, plus my student's two projects.  Must. Create. Some. Order.

 

Travel Bags

I made a couple of little bags last week.  For me!  The one above is perfect for face creams and make up, or perhaps all your makeup brushes.  I know when I travel, I prefer to keep my brushes separate from everything else.  Hmmm, I believe I should make one more...

On the blog In Color Order, there is a super tutorial, if you are interested in making one of these bags for yourself.  And if you can't quite get it just by looking at the tutorial, Jeni offers a pattern for the bag in a half dozen sizes that you can download for $6.50.

The bags in the photo wer made from fat quarters and a little piece of accent fabric.  The fabrics are "Sew Cherry", designed by Lori Holt for Riley Blake.  Cute, huh?

And since I gave my previous hair products bag to Mary Ann for her knitting project, I made myself another one of those too.  No pattern for this, I just sewed two fat quarters together and made a casing for a drawstring.  I like my bags to be lined.  They feel more substantial that way.

 

Simply Irresistible

Have you ever in your life seen anything so adorable? 

Me either.  I had to have it.  It is a Chateau Rouge kit put together by Country Sampler.  I have talked about presentation on this blog in the past, and nobody does it better than Country Sampler. 

I have a project in mind for this pretty collection of fabric, but am stalled because I need a special 60 degree triangle ruler to complete the project.  You can bet this yummy package will be out front and center for me to enjoy it while I wait for the mail man to deliver my ruler.

This is the photo of the quilt courtesy of Country Sampler.  I was prepared to let Chateau Rouge slip by me this time, as I felt is was so similar to other collections French General has offered.  However, when I saw this photo, and let the lovliness of those yellows sink in, I realized that this collection does offer something new, and I wanted it.

The pattern is free on the Moda website: unitednotions.com

Click on Free Patterns and scroll down until you find this one.  You will have to download the pdf file, and then print it out.  I don't know whether or not you can see the detail in the photos, but this is not your typical one block triangle quilt.  The red triangles are all strip pieced and cut out with the special Clearview  60 degree ruler I was telling you about.

There sure is a lot of cool stuff out there!

Finish the Old, Start Something New?

I took my own advice and rummaged around a bit in the old stash cupboards this past weekend.  Oh my, look what was hiding away in a plastic project box labeled "Pretty Maids".  At first I had no clue what "Pretty Maids" meant.  I have glanced at this box a hundred times over the past few years, and really never properly considered what was in it.

I have a habit of pulling fabrics together for quilts I think I might like to make in the future, putting them away together in a box, and promptly forgetting all about them.  Now that is a bad habit I would like to break.

So here were all these positively gorgeous blues and browns, just wasting away in the dark.  I think the majority of the fabrics may have been designed by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Bros.  Aren't they sublime?

What the heck is "Pretty Maids"?  That was the name of the pattern for which I was considering using these fabrics.  But I changed my mind after taking everything out of the box and inspecting it.

I am going to use this old Miss Rosie pattern called "Message in a Bottle".  The scrappy lights will go back into the stash for another day, but those yummy blues and browns will all get to play.  The fabrics are all older pieces from my stash, but there are a large number of a collection called Nottingham Village that was designed by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Bros.

My line of thinking is that I finished something old, so now I get to start something new.  (Bye Bye Jellystone, Hello New Project).  This is a concept I hope to put into effect this whole year.  I cut out the fabric while Eva played at my feet, emptying out all the pantry shelves and kitchen drawers.

My fabric is all cut out, and I am drawing lines on some of the lighter squares, to make half square triangles.

I did make one modification to the pattern instructions.  One of the block units is "Square in a Square".  This is a block that has ALWAYS given me fits.  There is a tool that my friend Monique Dillard of Open Gate Quilts (and host of the Blogger Girls BOM) invented that makes this problematic block easy peasy summer breezy.

The tool is "Fit to be Square".  You  make the block unit larger than you need it to be, and then use the ruler to trim it down to the perfect size.  Similar concept to her "Fit to be Geese" ruler.  See how those digaonal lines are lining up exactly with my center square?  I trim the top, turn the block and trim each of the four sides accordingly.

My thought is that I would vastly prefer to spend a few more minutes trimming down an over sized block than to wrestle with a mishapen one, trying to make it line up and fit with the other blocks in the quilt top.

The modification I made to the pattern was to cut the block units according to the chart that came with the ruler.  For a finished 6 inch block, you cut the center square 4 3/4" and cut two squares 4 1/2" (cut once diagonally) to form the four triangle sides.

As are all Monique's tools, this one is a winner, and I highly recommend it.  Monique did give me this ruler, but I'd have bought it anyway!!

Fabric Flapdoodle

I love a scrappy quilt, and can usually pull from my stash a nice compatible mixture of prints.  The project I am currently working on, Hill Country Baskets, is giving me a real headache.  I swear I have cut enough fabric to make about four Hill Country Baskets quilts at this point in time. 

The whole thing started with a kit.  And you know me and kits.  Usually I like about a quarter of the fabrics provided and end up swapping out the rest.  A huge waste of my money, buying kits.  If I tell you I want to buy a kit, remind me of that please.  It's just me.  I always want to personalize my projects, and resist working with something someone else picked out. 

This kit was part of a class I took over the last summer.  The fabrics were provided/selected by the designer and the quilt shop offering the class.  They were fine.  I just had to start messing around with them, thinking, if I took this out, and swapped that in, I would like it better.  After about 100 fabrics going back and forth, I  no more could tell you what was in the original kit, than I could fly to the  moon.

Nothing seemed to be working to please me with these basket blocks.  So I started eliminated color families.  Took out the greens, put them back in.  Out went the blues, and back in they went.  The reds and browns were my only definites.  Finally I put some of the fabric squares that were going to be turned into the basket blocks up on the design wall to get a feel as to how they "played together".  I firmly decided the blues had to go, and then after about ten minutes, they were back again.

So, I took a photo, and looked at that on my computer.  I decided the greys weren't adding a thing to the mix, and my goodness, will you look at that chartreuse?  What was I thinking?  The cockamamey stripes are bugging me too.  They can be in my quilt only if they are all going in the same direction.  Sometimes you just get a much better perspective if you take a picture and review it more dispassionately than when it is face to face with you on the design wall in your sewing room.

So truly, after hours of fooling around, these are the colors I have decided to go with.  For now.

This project box is such a mess, seriously.  How on earth am I going to keep all these pieces straight?  And what shall I make with all the rejects?  Do any of you dither around like this?  Thelma, you don't need to answer that question.

And It Made All the Difference

A fat eighth bundle of Barbara Brackman's Metropolitan Fair fell into my lap this week.  I was so pleased to receive it and not just a little bit blown away by how gorgeous the colors in that line are.  There are soft reds, mellow pinks, medium tone blues, yellowish greens, cocoa browns, silvery greys...These colors are inspirational, I am telling you.

I have a project that is hanging over my head from a wonderful class I took this summer at Buggy Barn.  The pattern is by Red Crinoline Quilts, and is called Hill Country Baskets.  The block is actually called "Cactus Basket" I think.  Anyway, the class was awesome, the instructor inspirational, the project wonderful, and the kit that was included in the class price...not my cuppa tea.

I tried, people, really.  I tried to embrace those burgundys, navys, forest greens and blackish browns.  I tried.  The fabrics are perfectly fine.  Very fine.  I've used them before, and I will use them again.  But not right now.  Just not what I am in the mood for these days.

Years ago, I had a quilting mentor who commented that I had been using a very dark palette over the past months.  Was everything ok at home? she asked.  What?  Why?   Turns out she had a theory that when a person immerses themselves in very dark  murky colors it is indicative of their internal mood/state of mind. Dark colors = a dark mood.

Don't you just hate that when someone sees right through you?  By golly, she was dead on.  I was in a funk and wallowing in it, and had been for some time.

At this time in my life, I am struggling to make the best of several situations and am finding that I am so drawn to more cheerful, brighter colors in my surroundings, clothing, and quilting projects.  My Hill Country Basket project has been weighing me down, and making me feel dreary, and I think it is because of the somber colors of the fabric.

So, when this bundle of Metropolitan Fair fabric arrived on my doorstep, I was energized.  Super charged.  I could see right away that this was what my Hill Country Basket quilt project needed.   A shot in the arm.  No.  A complete overhaul!

I got up at dawn the next morning and started cutting into that gorgeous fabric bundle.  I eliminated the dark forest greens, navy blues and blackish browns.  I replaced them with the lighter silvery toned colors in the Metropolitan Fair collection and everything has changed.  I can still use my backgrounds, my lattice fabric, and I believe even my setting triangle fabric and border from the original kit.  But that addition of those lighter colors has changed everything.  And for the better.

Hope to show you a couple of Hill Country Basket blocks next week.  I am sweating over my Halloween 1904 project.  Focusing, don't you know.  But I may just have to multi-task and make a couple of basket blocks using my gorgeous new fabric!

Metropolitan Fair

Just a quiick post this morning. It is supposed to be my day off for sewing, but I am having to take Grandpa to the doctor an hour and a half away.  Nothing wrong, just a little tune up.  With any luck I can hunker down over my Bernina late this afternoon.

Here is some eye candy for your enjoyment.  This collection is called Metropolitan Fair by Barbara Brackman for Moda.   Just look at those corally reds with the greens and blues.  And the browns and the tans.  I have an idea for this that is making my heart go pitter pat.  I will share more later!

Shiloh: More Than Half Way There

Now isn't this a pretty thing?  This is the center section of my Shiloh quilt!  I am so excited to have gotten these blocks together over the weekend.  In fact, I was so excited to share it with you all that I took a picture before I even pressed the top.  I love the colors of this quilt, and especially like the way the lighter fabrics in some of the blocks make your eye dance around the surface of the quilt.  And the blacks too...blacks always make your eye move around to find more blacks.

The fabrics of this quilt really evolved since the begining of the project.  I  started out with some very nice Civil War Reproduction fabrics and particularly liked one fabric that was rust colored.  On a whim, I started rummaging around in my stash to see if I had any more fabrics similar to it to add to the quilt, and discovered I had a layer cake of a collection by Barbara Brackman called Arnold's Attic.  This line was full of gorgeous rusts, browns and greens. Immediately I started switching out many of the fabrics I had initially selected, keeping some, but adding substantially from the Arnold's Attic layer cake.  I used everything in the layer cake except some tourquoisey blues, that were fabulous, but just not for this project.

I started to cut up the layer cake into the sizes I needed for the quilt top and was surprised to see how far they went.   Surprisingly (or maybe not), the addition of this layer cake completely changed the original look of the quilt I had started to make!  You think a layer cake isn't all that much fabric, but this proved to me just how far they go towards making a complete, full sized quilt top.  As I said, I had many other fabric scraps that I used as well, but I bet if I had had two layer cakes of Arnold's Attic, I could have make the entire top with just those alone.

And what you see above isn't all that I was able to do with that layer cake.  There was plenty to use for the outer flying geese border as well!

 

Yes, that is Open Gate Quilt's Fit to be Geese ruler.  I can't tell you how much I love that tool.  Even if your quilt instructions tell you to make the flying geese units using a different method, you can use this tool for perfect results.  You just need to know the finished size of the flying geese unit you need for your project, and the Fit to be Geese ruler instructions tell you what size to cut your "sky" and "geese" units.  Cut and construct your flying geese, then use the ruler to cut them down to the perfect size.  You will never in your life have a wonky flying goose again.  Each unit is perfect, and most importantly, is the exact same size as all the others!

So this week I will be making flying geese for my border for Shiloh, but hope to crank out more Hill Country Basket blocks too.

I Got the Blues

Honestly, friends, I got nothin' here.  I am so sorry to be inconsistent in my blog posting, as I know many of you look for my morning news flash.  I have to admit, I am in a bit of a dry patch.  Lots happening on a personal level, maybe I will share, maybe I will keep it to myself.  Nothing major, just enough so no sewing is happening and my mind is a mush pot.

I did get a lovely email from a reader this week, which gave me an idea for a blog post topic.  Krista asked me for some advice regarding a quilt I made called Flowers for Clara.  You may remember it.  A Bonnie Blue pattern I made in 2010, which is one of my all time favorite quilts.

Krista asked me if I had used one consistent background fabric for the blocks and border.  I did do this in my quilt.  She wondered if a scrappy neutral approach would work for block backgrounds and border as an alternative choice.

I had to think on this for a minute, and decided that for me, with the scrappy blocks and the applique going on in the border, that one uniform background/border fabric would be my choice if I had to do it again.  However, that being said, if Krista has a great stash of civil war reproduction neutrals, and that busier look is what she is going for, she should follow her instincts.  My advice to her though, was to look for a caramel tone on tone and use that for both blocks and border.  I suggested this Kansas Troubles fabric:

   

She also asked if a solid might be a viable option to use as a background fabric for this project, and I advised her strongly against it.  In my opinion, a solid would be too flat, too boring, one dimensional, and not really typical of a quilt from the 1800's.  I think you need the warmth and the texture of a tone on tone print.

What do you all think?  Did I steer her in the right direction?  I'd love it if you weighed in, especially if you have differing opinions to mine.  Krista reads my blog and hopefully will see your comments.