Sister's Choice Quilts

Opening Day Is Coming Together!

I am making major strides toward finishing my Opening Day UFO. Yesterday I got three rows of stars sewn together for the center of the quilt. I was thrilled that the points of the stars are all coming together great. There was some concern in my mind that they might not.

And I am thrilled to report that I finished all 128 flying geese for the border that will surround the center section of the quilt! Once I started sewing a scant 1/4' seam, I had a teensy smidgen of fabric I could trim off the flying geese units, which made a big difference in them coming out the same size. I am truly thrilled with my progress on finishing this quilt top up.

 I have a funny story for you. I've been chuckling over it for the past two days. Last night Eva texted me that she was getting a special award at school Friday morning, and could I be there? I was excited to find out more, and told her that of course I'd be there. What was the award for? "I am getting the 'On A Roll Award'", she proudly texted. The 'On a Roll Award'? What does that mean? "I got all A's on my report card, so I am one of the kids who will get the 'On A Roll' Award". 

"Do you mean you are on the Honor Roll?"   

You can't tell me you aren't at least smiling.

Opening Day Flying Geese and Stars

Here we have 36 star blocks for Opening Day! Making them wasn't too bad, except for trying to starch the already pieced units. I did switch over to Mary Ellen's Best Press, and it is working pretty well. The fabric doesn't get as stiff as I like, but you know what that product is brilliant at? Getting fold lines and stubborn wrinkles out of fabric. You know those lines that don't seem to ever press out? Well, something in Best Press tackles them and makes them disappear. 

The 128 flying geese are going to be a process, however. I have made about a dozen. I just hate this method of making them. Well, I should amend that statement.  The method isn't so bad, but there was absolutely NO room for error when cutting out the pieces. For a 2 1/2 x 4 1/2 unfinished block, the instructions have you cut one 5 1/4" square and four 2 7/8" squares. If only it had given me an extra 1/8", I could trim these geese down and they would all be perfect. The instructions just say "your flying geese unit should finish at
2 1/2 x 4 1/2".  Right. In some ideal parallel universe. 

Now, in the pattern, Carrie says she herself used Monique Dillard's Fit to Be Geese method, which of course makes the units oversized and you trim them down. But she doesn't tell you Monique's measurements, for copyright reasons no doubt. I sure wish I'd paid better attention to Carrie's comment and used Monique's method back when I cut out this fabric!

My geese are coming out relatively well. Very close to 2 1/2 x 4 1/2", but just a hair smaller or a hair wonky in one way or another.  Fudgeable. Is that a word? I am making it work. These new ones are a heck of a lot better than the ones I made in 2010 at least.

If you are wondering what that plastic gizmo is on my throat plate it is a stitching guide by Lori Holt called Seams Sew Easy. You position it just so on your machine bed and supposedly you don't need to draw lines for stitching diagonally. It works great, but with these precarious units I didn't want to take any chances, so I drew lines anyway. You can see on the unit under the needle that the device works great. See how the bottom tip is lined up perfectly with the right hand line/guide?

Hope your week is off to a good start. Yesterday was baking day, so Eva and I made mini bundt cakes from a Taste of Home recipe. I filled the cups too full, so I need to watch that next time.

 

 

36 Stars Done!

I have been completely obsessed with my discovery of an old UFO "Opening Day", a pattern by Carrie Nelson. This UFO was all cut out and all the flying geese for the star blocks were made. Back in the day, I wasn't that concerned about making flying geese with a super accurate method, and I certainly never considered starching my fabric before cutting it out. 

These two issues are huge. I have come so far from 2010 in terms of my quilting perfectionism. I now always make my flying geese and half-square triangles slightly larger and trim them down to the desired size. Or use paper piecing. Additionally, I have embraced pressing my seams open for the most part, which makes my blocks so much flatter. I also only work with starched fabric these days. My accuracy and the look of my blocks is greatly improved. 

Working with these kinda-sorta close to 2 1/2 x 4/1/2-inch flying geese units was awful. I tried starching the units with spray starch, but that shrank the fabric a bit, which I could not afford. Then I switched to Mary Ellen's Best Press, which gave the units a bit more body, but not the level of crispness I like.

(I'd love to hear from those of you who love Mary Ellen's Best Press. Tell me what it is that you like about the product. I definitely prefer to use spray starch prior to cutting out my fabric, but the Best Press seems like a good product to use while sewing or after the block is complete.)

So here's a funny aside. I am the first to admit that my math skills are definitely basic. However, I was pretty sure I knew my multiplication tables. For some reason I was figuring that if I made 8 blocks of each of my four colors I would end up with 36 star blocks, right? Um, make that 32. So of course I was short and had to come up with some additional fabric to make four more stars, plus re-do some flying geese that were wonky and to replace the center 4 1/2 inch squares that I shrank with the spray starch. Luckily my stash is vast and I actually found some great fabric matches.

Well, I've got my 36 stars done, and I am full of appreciation for my usual method of making accurate flying geese and working with nicely starched fabric. My next step is to make 126 more flying geese for a border. I can't starch the fabric, but I am going to see if I can come up with a way to use my cut-out pieces in a way that allows me to trim the units down slightly. 

Overall, I am pleased with the way the blocks are coming together, but it's harder work than I'm used to!

Down a New Rabbit Hole

I got an email this weekend from someone who was looking for a pattern in this Farmhouse Favorites book by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. Since Carrie is my favorite designer I have her book. The book is out of print now, sadly, but you can still get copies on Amazon and used copies as well. Twelve of Carrie's patterns are in the book, and those individual patterns will not be found for love or money anymore. I sent my reader the link to purchase the book, but I don't know if she did or not. It's a great book, actually.

The email from my reader put me in mind of an ancient UFO that I had started back in 2010, maybe earlier.  I think I abandoned it because we were moving and I never picked it up again after we were settled in our new house. The project was called Opening Day and I was using the exact fabrics shown on the pattern cover, "Rites of Spring" by Brannock and Patek. I went out to the garage and had a rummage, and low and behold, I found the box with the project. Unfortunately, the pattern instructions were nowhere to be seen, so I was lucky to have the book, which has the pattern in it. 

It seems that I had cut everything out and had made 140 flying geese for the quilt blocks. This was back in the day when I felt that close was good enough and starching fabric wasn't anything I considered doing. Well. These days I go to a lot of trouble to have my flying geese be perfectly accurate in their measurement, and I can't sew on floppy unstarched fabric to save my life. What could be done to salvage this project? I started out by trimming the flying geese down to as close to the exact size as I could get. I wasn't getting much to trim which encouraged me.

I decided to lightly starch the block units as I went along, which was a big mess. It did work pretty well though once it dried. I didn't notice any shrinking and the fabric crisped up enough to make it at least "sewable". Gosh, am I ever spoiled working with nicely starched fabric now that I have adopted that practice. 

I made eight red stars on Friday. They are a skosh shy of 8 1/2", but I think I can make it work.

Then on Saturday, I made eight green stars. 

I still like this fabric, and green and red are a favorite combination for me. The other stars are kind of a bronze color, and a chocolate brown. I think I'll work on this a bit each week and see where I get. Wish me luck! Do you ever rediscover an old project and decide to finish it? This seems to be my year for tackling UFOs!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend. Eva is back from science camp. I picked her up on Friday at 6:00 PM. She was starving and dirty, so I brought her home and put her right in the shower. We fed her fresh baked banana bread and a hot meal, and she was in bed by 8:30. All in all, I think she had a great time.

 

 

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.