Sister's Choice Quilts

Mini Donuts Table Runner

I am really having a ball this week with plenty of free time on my hands. I put away the St. Patrick's decorations and realized that many of my older table toppers are looking shabby and not up to "snuff" anymore. That made me think I should eliminate them and make room for newer seasonal table runners and toppers. I must have two tall stacks of fall/Halloween table runners, which makes my less bountiful spring collection look paltry.

Being pleased with the little apple and apple core mat I made last week, I thought I'd tackle something in spring colors. I used a Pattern Basket pattern called "Mini Donuts" and adapted it to make a table runner about 11" x 40", which is just right for the narrow table in my foyer. It has 16 4 1/2" blocks surrounded by a narrow lattice and a 2 1/2" border. The fabrics were in my Lori Holt fabric stash.

How perfect is this backing fabric? I am not sure how I got it, but I have over a yard of it. I think it may have been included as a panel in one of the Lori Holt bundles I purchased a year or so ago. It's almost cuter than my top. 

I have to run out and buy some more batting first thing tomorrow if the rain stops for a minute. Then, I do believe I will quilt it myself since the apple mat project went so well. Hope I didn't speak too soon. I am just too impatient to wait a year to use it if I send it out to be quilted.

 

Lots of Red Sampler Progress

I am really coming along with the Red Sampler blocks this week. Not too many more to go. I realized last week that each of those blocks needs to be framed with strips of background fabric. Luckily several Etsy sellers had the fabric, so I have been ordering it. Those Etsy vendors typically are super fast at mailing things out. 

I am really relaxed this week. Eva is at science camp. It is windy and rainy, so I hope she isn't going to be washed out poor thing. She was so excited to go. Lots of hiking and campfires and so on. And the whole staying in a cabin with your friends is too fun.

She is so grown up. I do not know how that happened so fast.

This is an audiobook I finished the other day. Have any of you read it? It is being heavily hyped on Instagram and other places. The author was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her last book, so everyone has been waiting with bated breath for this one. And I thought it was kind of badly done.

Basic plot summary: former alum returns to her high school boarding school to teach a couple of classes as an adult. When she was at this school as a kid, her roommate was murdered and a man was convicted of the crime. Our main character suspects a miscarriage of justice and is determined to have the right guy convicted, even if it's been over 20 years. 

My issues were that one, the book was far too long. Like 75 pages too long. Two, there were too many characters to keep track of. Then there was a side-story romance of the main character and some guy that added zero to the story and could easily have been left out. Next, the ending was a real letdown. And worst of all, the narrator of the audiobook kept mispronouncing the name of one of the important characters. The last name Daugherty is NOT pronounced "Dog-er-tee". The G is silent for heaven's sake. It is "Door-tee". She said it wrong about a hundred times. Ok, my rant is over. 

Did you read this? What did you think?

Which of These Blocks Is Better?

Which of these blocks looks better? I already know because I did a little experiment for you dear readers. I wanted to show you what a difference contrast and value can make. The block on the left looks sharp and clear and the block on the right is a muddy hodgepodge that your eye can't make sense of.

Large prints, although beautiful, can be very tricky to work with. And prints that have fussy details or that just read "busy" are difficult to incorporate into quilt blocks. 

The block on the right is not successful mainly because the rust floral print of the pinwheel is too large and has too much going on in it. What is the dominant color? Is it rust, is it gold, is it pink? It is difficult to read. The rust used in the block on the left reads almost as a tone on tone, and that darker value of the rust fabric really makes the pinwheel stand out.

(Good contrast)

The green dot in the right-hand block isn't bad, but when you compare it to the green used in the block on the left, it seems a bit wishy-washy. The green in the lefthand block reads more solid and contrasts more sharply with the rust fabric used in the pinwheel.

The gold print in the right-hand block seems like a fussy afterthought. The small taupe print for the inner pinwheel in the left-hand block is subtle and doesn't fight with the other fabrics. I think it is possible that the gold could have actually worked in place of the taupe in the left-hand block, but I think it would tend to steal the thunder of the rust pinwheel, which is the element we want to stand out. The lighter tonal value of the taupe works better.

(Poor contrast)

When I am quiltmaking, I am leaning more and more towards small prints that read as solids. How about you? Do you ever regret your fabric combinations? Do you enjoy using large-scale prints in your piecing?

Fun Weekend Sewing

I have needed a new mat for my laptop computer for the longest time. I've made do with doilies or old table mats, but I got the notion to make myself something cute this weekend. 

I've been watching some of Lori Holt's YouTube videos on scrap busting and that led to me browsing through a few of her excellent quilting books, which are chock full of cute quilt block patterns. I literally pulled scraps from my stash bins and picked out three of her adorable block patterns and started sewing. I love how the apple and apple core mat turned out. It is a shame to cover it up with my computer!

Here's a closer look. You can tell I did the quilting myself. It is so strange how the results seem better when the quilting is a lot closer together. Maybe the lines are easier to follow or something. I don't know, but it turned out pretty well.

The little dahlia mug rug is cute too, but I was really rushing to finish this one. My piecing is ok, but I should have slowed down when I was sewing down the binding. Oh well, it makes a cute set on my desk and I will enjoy using them over the next while.

My progress on the Red Sampler Blocks has slowed down because I realized that I need a heck of a lot more background fabric and have to wait for it to come in the mail. It turns out all those red sampler blocks have to be framed in background fabric. Yikes. Luckily I found what I needed online. While I'm at it I should buy the border fabric before it is all sold out! Thank goodness you can order just about anything online. Remember in the old days if your local quilt shop didn't have it anymore you were out of luck? Now you can hardly even find a local quilt shop.

Hope you had a good weekend. I finished a couple of books and should do a review of what I have read lately for you this week. 

March UFO, and Probably April and May too

Now that my green Don't Fence Me In quilt is a finish, I thought I had better stick to my goals and pick a UFO to work on for March. As I went through my bins of UFOs, I came to a halt when I saw my red blocks from the Lori Holt/Bee In My Bonnet Red Sampler Quilt Sew Along. That was it, for sure. I checked my notes and figured I was on Week Nine. I got out my fabrics and stitched away happily on the three blocks for that week. 

Then I thought it would be nice to lay all the blocks I'd made so far out on the design wall and enjoy them all together in their red wonderfulness.

Oops. So, not on Week Nine. Yes, friends, this is what happens when you set aside a project for a year or more. You get all mixed up and don't know where you are. Darn it. Clearly, I need to go through all the blocks I have made so far and figure out where I am. 

I did make this little guy though, and he is as cute as can be. I was supposed to have made him for an earlier week, but as I recall I was having trouble finding the instructions. Lori said the center block was from her Granny Square book, but she made it in a different size and then added star points so everything finished at a 6 inch block. Ok. That took some research and watching her YouTube tutorial and figuring out that she was using 1 1/2 inch pieces instead of the 2" ones in her book, and I needed 2 x 3 1/2" flying geese...You see what I mean. It came out great in the end though. If any of you are confused as I was as to how the heck to make this block, email me and I will tell you the measurements of all the pieces. 

Here's what they call the "beauty shot". Look at all those pretty blocks. After seeing how cute they are, if you are inspired to make this quilt, the instructions are on Lori Holt's Bee In My Bonnet website, all organized and everything, week by week. You do need at least three of her books to make the blocks though. 

She also has YouTube videos showing her progress. And Fat Quarter Shop has a fat quarter bundle of Lori's reds to get you started. It seems like a good deal for $65.

So there you are. I will get myself up to speed on this project and look forward to sharing my progress with you. It is a sixteen-week sew-along (you make several blocks a week in 12" and 6" sizes) and I figure I am at least half way done. 

Don't Fence Me In - Finished

Well, I did it. Here is "Don't Fence Me In", an old pattern by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company, made with a collection of fabrics by Andover called "Lucky Charms". I am super pleased with how it turned out and will order backing for it and get it sent off for quilting. It will be fun to use it next year in the early Spring.

As always, it is a good feeling to get the big design wall cleared off. In my effort to tackle some UFOs each month, I've decided what older project to carry on with next. I think I am going to pick up the Red Sampler Quilt project I started with Lori Holt so long ago. I am more than halfway finished with those blocks.

This is a picture of Lori's finished quilt. As you can see it is huge! Who doesn't love a red and white quilt? I've made several of them over the years and they are a true classic. 

My husband and I watched Brendan Fraser in "The Whale" last night, in our Oscar winners movie marathon. I have to admit, Brendan Fraser's acting performance was definitely award-worthy. Although the movie was possibly one of the saddest I have ever seen. I was left thinking about all the delusions we comfort ourselves with in order to feel that our lives have had some purpose. Very depressing.

Sara is coming over tonight and we will have our St. Patrick's corned beef recipe a day early. My corned beef recipe is absolutely the best. Here is a link to the post where I shared my recipe. Do not make the mistake one reader made when she tried it out. The recipe calls for a glaze made with Jack Daniel's whisky. After you apply the glaze mixture to the roast, KEEP THE COVER OFF THE POT. Otherwise, your entire oven will blow up from alcohol fumes and you will be very unhappy.

Sewcialites: End of the Tunnel

The Sewcialites block of the week sew-along will be over before I know it. We have made 19 blocks so far into the sew-along and there will be a total of 24. I've made a couple of extra blocks along the way in case some come up that I am not overly fond of. 

When you lay things out, there is always a block that doesn't fit in because of color placement or design. That block on the lower left is an example of one that doesn't fit in so well because of the dark fabrics placed on the four corners. All the other blocks seem to float on the light background, making that one stand out as "not like the others".

Today I was able to get some sewing done, and have almost finished sewing my Don't Fence Me In top together. I hope today to get the borders on and that little project will be complete.

My workload has been redistributed as I requested. Not in a way that makes any sense particularly (there is an entire week with no deadlines), but I will make it all work somehow. 

This is a newly released book that I know a lot of you are going to love. The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell is a cozy mystery that is based on the Great British Baking Show. A group of contestants gathers at a large estate for a baking competition and participants start being sabotaged and of course, someone dies. It was a fast read, and very entertaining. 

Hope your week got off to a great start!