Sister's Choice Quilts

Progress Made, But I Can't Share It

Trying to post some pictures while I am away from home this week.  I am failing miserably!  I can take pictures just fine, but when I try to download them to  my husband's laptop, then upload them to Typepad it doesn't work.

I am on a little getaway and took my sewing machine along.  I had hoped to share my progress with my Sunflower blocks.  I have finished three of them, so I guess you have to look at Thelma and Lisa's progress and imagine mine!

I have to say that I am not regretting making this quilt top smaller!  With all those tiny little sunflower center pieces, there are a million ways for your quarter inch seam allowance to get off.  Don't ask me how I know this.

 

Little By Little

Little by little, I am making progress with my Sunflower Sisters quilt.  I grabbed a few minutes today and got my flip corners sewn onto the sunflower centers and lattice blocks.

I have made the decision to make my quilt top smaller than the size in the Buggy Barn's Autumn in My Garden quilt pattern.  There are three reasons for this.  First, Lisa and Thelma, with whom I am sewing along, are way ahead of me, and if I make the full size, it will be months before I finish.  Second, I really want to use this quilt as a table cloth for late summer and fall entertaining.  This smaller size will lend itself better to that end.  And third, I just wasn't feeling the love for the orangey yellows we gals swapped to make the project. 

I know, I know, sunflowers are actually an orangey color in nature.

But I don't like it. 

I want my sunflowers to be kind of a buttery yellow.

More like that, but even softer.   More like Van Gogh's sunflowers.

I have struggled with this since Day One of this project.  My collection of buttery yellows was pretty small. Not nearly enough for the full size version of this quilt.  I compromised and started making my blocks with the orangey yellows my friends and I traded.  Lord knows I had plenty of those orangey yellows.  Sigh.  I didn't love it.

So today, I said "the heck with it" and made the decision to go with my buttery yellows and make my quilt smaller.

Honestly?  I don't know if I am making the right choice.  I am full of doubts that the brighter yellows might be the better choice after all, but it just doesn't feel like "me".  I guess we will see what happens when I get my blocks made.  If I don't love it, at least I won't have a bed sized quilt and hours and hours of work invested in the project!

Usually I am so much more decisive.  On the one hand I tell myself "Nicole, go outside of your comfort zone for once", and on the other hand I say "Do what you feel most comfortable with".  Ack.

Sunflower Sisters Progress

The sunflower centers are coming along.  I have actually made 12 small ones and 10 large ones, but am considering making my project smaller than full sized.  I put up nine large blocks to see what it would look like if the top were three blocks by three blocks, and think I could live with it just fine since I plan to use the top as a table cloth.

Busy busy week for me.  Between working, running to the hospital to visit Grandpa and taking care of my little grandaughter, I just haven't had a minute.  My sunflower center strips are all lined up ready to be sewn, but do you think I have had a second to sit down and sew?  Nope.  And, look, there in the background is an unpacked box!  I should just put that out in the garage, it will be January by the time I get to unpacking it!

Hope you are all having a great week and getting more done than I am.

Pumpkins!

I promise this is the last post on fall decorating.  I just can't seem to resist the cute little mini pumpkins when I go to the grocery store.  I mean really?  How cute are these little guys?

There are several decorating blogs I enjoy visiting, and the trend this fall seems to be decorating in neutral colors.  White pumpkins, burlap wreaths, succulents--colors much softer than the oranges and rusts I gravitate to this time of year.  Here are some links, if you would care to visit and see what I am talking about.  A Stroll Through Life, Miss Mustard Seed, Vignette Design.

While I do enjoy the occasional white pumpkin, it just doesn't seem right to leave out the glorious rusts and oranges and reds that say "Fall" to me.

My mantle and hearth have evolved into this at last.  I am not as lavish (cluttered) as a lot of people who decorate, but this assortment of objects pleases me.  I am wishing I had gone for larger pumpkins for the pumpkin stands, but that was all my grocery store had on hand, and I was too impatient to wait for the bigger ones to come in!  The pumpkin stands came from an online shop called Grandin Road, which has amazing Halloween decorations.

Two More Patterns

I just love it when we get a great discussion going on this blog!  Thank you all for your very thoughtful comments on the subject of copying someone else's designs.  Most of us don't mind a bit if our work is duplicated by someone else, and in fact find it flattering.  Quilters tend to be a pretty generous group, so that isn't a big surprise.  According to Merriam Webster:  Inspiration is a force that makes someone want to do something or that gives someone an idea about what to do or create.  I doubt there is an artist anywhere who has not been inspired by someone else. 

When I did my pattern post a few days back, I left out two new patterns I ordered recently.  The Strawberry Social pattern by Margot Languedoc of The Pattern Basket is so darn cute.  I have seen this one made up on several blogs and it is adorable.  There might be a special little girl in my life who gets this quilt some day!

The booklet on the left is called Moda Candy, put out by Moda of course.  There are 18 projects in it, all featuring those little 2 1/2 inch precut squares.  The patterns are terrific and who doesn't have a drawer full of scraps they could cut into 2 1/2 inch squares?  For myself, I kind of doubt I will be buying any mini charm packs.  It is a crime how much fabric scraps I have on hand, so it would be pretty cinchy for me to just cut a million of them into squares myself to make one of these projects.

Hope you all have a lovely day, and get some sewing squeezed in it somehow!

 

Copy Cats

It was interesting to read the comments you all left regarding having someone copy your quilts.  It seems that no one who responded really minds!  The reason I asked is because I have a couple of friends who don't like it all that much.  They like the fact that they have created something unique and aren't wild about having copy cat versions of their work floating around. They aren't rabid about it, and would never object or complain, but I hear their little mutters from time to time....

I have to say I am a copy cat.  I get so many of my ideas from other people and certainly from patterns.  I might switch things up most of the time and use my own fabric ideas or make some other change, but many times I have made a quilt just as shown in a pattern, right down to using the exact same fabric group.  Sometimes you just have to have it as shown!  I was going to say that I do it less these days than in the past, but I guess it isn't so.  I totally copied Cathy (Quilting on Main Street) with her Red Pineapple quilt, and Lisa and Thelma and I are so enamoured of the Buggy Barn's Autumn In My Garden pattern that we are all making it together.  And swapped fabrics so all our quilts will even have the same materials!

So, how do I feel about having my work copied?  Why, I don't mind a bit.  I agree that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Living in these days of the internet, our work gets more exposure (especially if we have a blog), so it is inevitable that someone is going to like what we make enough to want to make a duplicate.  It's all good.

Some New Patterns

At the rate I have been finishing projects lately, I will probably get to these in 2016, but I did have to buy them.  Crows and Pumpkins from Primitive Gatherings, just because it is so darn cute and so Fall.  Abigail in Paris, which is a Heartspun Quilts pattern, designed by Pam Buda.  This quilt was taught at a class at The Buggy Barn this summer I believe.  I love the star blocks, the cake stand blocks, and the quarter square triangles in the border.  Last (but probably first!), I must make Wild Air by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company, designed by Carrie Nelson.

Thelma recently finished Wild Air, which uses a gazillion flying geese in the blocks and border.  The funny thing is, about two years ago we were traveling together and both bought the same fabric at Life's A Stitch quilt shop in Janesville, Wisconsin.  We weren't sure what we might make with it, but we both fell in love with the border fabric and the green toile. The green background fabric is Covey Toile for Andover Fabrics, and the red floral print fabric is Annandale by Jo Morton for Andover Fabrics.

Thelma ended up using her fabric to make Wild Air, and I am thinking that if a creative genius says to do something a certain way, who am I to argue?

My geese will be scrappy, as hers are, and I will raid my stash and add in some new fabrics to the mix, so my quilt will not be an exact dupe of hers.  Close enough that a man going by on a bus might not be able to tell the difference.  Hope she doesn't mind...

How do you feel if someone wants to make the same quilt as you?  Are you flattered, or is it annoying?  Or does it depend on who that someone is?

Sewing!

I actually got some sewing done yesterday in between making a crock pot dinner for the family, driving to the hospital to visit Grandpa, and having my nails done.  All in all, a very successful day.  Oh, and it started with a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks.  It does not get much better than that.

It didn't take long to sew the 14 strip sets I made, and even less time to cut the strips into 1 1/2" strips.  I am now all set to make those center sunflower blocks!

The crazy mess you see in the photo above are  my strip sets for the Sunflower Sisters Quilt I am making with my friends Lisa and Thelma.  They are miles ahead of me in the contruction of their projects, but I am making tracks to catch up.  Lisa has most of her blocks done, Thelma has her sunflower centers pieced.  Oh, and did I mention Thelma has expanded the size of her quilt to king sized, and is making 280 blocks that are 3" square? Her strip sets are made from 1/2" strips.

I'm kidding.  To my knowledge, this is one quilt she isn't changing up.  lol

To refresh your memories, this is the finished quilt we are each making.  The quilt is called "Autumn in My Garden" and is from the Buggy Barn book A Little Bit Crazy.

 

 

He Is Doing Better

Thanks so much for all your kind wishes yesterday.  I am so happy to relate that Grandpa is doing better!

When Eva and I went to visit him Monday morning, he was sitting up in a wheel chair, and dressed in his regular clothes.  I doubt he dressed himself, but at least he was out of bed.  I met with all sorts of therapists:  occupational, physical--and they all seemed terrific.  Eva was in awe of the place, and was especially amazed to see "Lawry" out of his normal scene.  His hair had been combed forward instead of back from his forehead, and she insisted that we get my hairbrush out of my purse and make it right.

The convalescent hospital was a hubbub of activities, with old folks in wheel chairs everywhere you looked, an aviary in the lobby and a contingency of hovering cats (which didn't seem in sync with the aviary full of birds, but I guess it made things interesting to watch).  In the lounge there were people sitting at tables, most of them in wheel chairs.  A lady came in and began to play some rousing tunes on a piano much to the delight of the loungers.  Eva clapped her little hands and started to dance to Ragtime Girl, which was the most fun entertainment these people had had in a long time, judging by their reaction to her.  She was wearing her little denim skirt with pumpkins appliqued all along the hem, and she loved making it swirl.

An old lady in a wheelchair leaned over to me and said sternly "Whose child is that?"  "Mine" I said.  "Oh, I don't think so", the lady replied frowning.  "Well, actually I am her grandmother", I explained.  '"Well, WHO is her mother?" the woman asked, concern and agitation rising in her voice.  I decided to keep it simple.  "Her mother is Sara" I said firmly.  "Well, all right then, you may go" she stated in dismissal.  Whew.  Glad I passed through that hurdle.

 

Brief Update

Hi there,  just a brief update to let you know why my blogging has been sketchy in the past few days.  Grandpa is very ill and has been in the hospital.  Over the weekend we had to move him into a convalescent hospital, as he is unable to do much of anything for himself.  It doesn't seem that he will be able to continue living in his cottage, even with his full time caregiver.   He really needs constant medical attention.

Between spending time at the hospital, moving his belongings out of his cottage and so on, things have been pretty chaotic on the home front.  We hope he will be able to come home to us, but at this point things are uncertain.

I do have a couple of sewing projects that are calling my name, and hope to get back to them tomorrow.  With Grandpa being cared for 24/7, it does free up a good amount of my time, so I should be able to use it to good advantage.