Sister's Choice Quilts

Friday Finish #7 Blended Blue Log Cabin

Months ago, Lisa, Perry, Cindy and I did a Blended Quilt Challenge.  The idea was to get inspiration from one of the books from In The Beginning by Sharon Evans Yenter and Nancy Martin that involved a blended fabric technique, where one fabric sort of blends into another, making the over all design indistinct and blurry.  I was toying with a number of ideas at that time, and one of them was from the book Floral Bouquet Quilts by Sharon Evans Yenter from In The Beginning.  I ended up choosing another design for the challenge, but had started these blue log cabin blocks. 

I finished the quilt top this week, and am fairly pleased with the results.  The challenge with this project all lay in the sashing, which had to be fussy cut from a large floral print (the border fabric).  The design had to concentrate a densely patterned part of the print in the areas where the sashing came together.  I made a real hash of it, to tell you the truth, and it found it was a great thing that I had over bought the large print by a number of yards.  The repeat was widely spaced and much fabric was wasted.

Due to the mess I made of things, I ended up having to piece the lattice, as you see above.  I fussy cut little corner stone blocks and inserted them between the berry vine cuts.  The result is roughly what was shown in the pattern, and I am accepting of the end product.

The book, as I mentioned is Floral Bouquet Quilts, and the pattern is called Log Cabin Garden.  The fabric was from my stash, except for the border fabric, which is a lovely print by Alex Anderson for P&B, called Redwork Romance.  I know, I know, it is blue, so go figure.

I need to address the response to my scrap give-away.  To tell you the truth, I am fairly overwhelmed by the response I got, so I closed the comments after twenty four hours and 144 comments.  I want to be sure all of you who say you are interested in inheriting this small portion of my scrap collection fully understand that these are leftover scraps--no very large pieces.  The box I will send is about the size of a 12 bottle wine box (in fact it IS a wine box) and it will indeed be packed with fabric scraps from my recent projects.  These are scraps I have no particular use for and am happy to pass on.  The volume of responses I got makes me think that some of you may be over estimating the prize factor of these scraps.  They are mostly Moda fabrics from recent groups such as Roman Holiday, Peace on Earth, Posh, Old Fashioned Charm and others, but keep in mind, they are a wide assortment of *scraps* (i.e. SMALL PIECES).  Glad to share and all that, but I don't want anyone to be disappointed!  Ozzie will hold a drawing early next week and I will happily send off the scraps to the winner.

Whew, you kind of scared me friends, with your sheer volume, so I wanted to be sure I made full disclosure!  There are a heck of a lot of you out there!  I forget that sometimes in my blathering, and sometimes it takes 144 people to get my attention and realize how public a blog really is!

In friendship and gratitude,

Nicole 

Wasting Away in Fabricville

In general, I am not too squeamish about sacrificing a bit of fabric.  I tend to buy a bit more than I need, so if I miss-cut or find that I want extra of something, I am covered.  This project I am working on for my Friday Finish this week is off the chart as far as wasting fabric is concerned.  Do you see how my ruler is positioned?  That is one of nine two and a half in strips I need for a fussy cut lattice.  The fabric to the right of the ruler is what I am wasting to get to the next repeat of what I need.  I started with four and a half yards of this pretty Alex Anderson fabric, and cut it to ribbons.  Here is my scrap pile.

I was very grumpy about all this waste.  As it turned out, I was not thinking creatively enough about the manner in which my fussy cut strips were going to meet up and work with each other, so it was a very good thing I had some extra fabric to play with.  I ended up having to piece the lattice, but at least I was able to achieve the effect I desired.  So, in the end, most of the fabric I squandered was due to my own ineptitude!

Friday Finish #6

I felt like I rushed this one a bit, but here it is, delivered on time for a Friday Finish.  Between getting distracted with another quilt project and Ozzie plaguing the life out of me, it was a bit of a crunch to get this one completed!  I am pleased with the way it turned out and think it will be a fun decoration on the back of the couch or a chair during the holidays.  The colors are holidayish, without being too Jingle Bells-HoHoHo if you know what I mean.

The fabric is Roman Holiday by 3 Sisters for Moda.  The pattern is Opening Day by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie's Quilt Company.  Let me just say that Miss Rosie patterns are accurate, extremely clear in their directions, never deliver any unwelcome surprises, can be used with any fabric collection at all, and never ever fail to thrill me completely when I finish one. 

Lisa and I were supposed to work on this pattern together, but I dilly dallied too long and she finished hers before me.  I am so happy that I got on the ball and got mine done!  Go to her website, Stashmaster and compare hers to mine.  She is much bolder than I am about the use of her lights and darks and isn't afraid to take a risk when it comes to being interesting.  We are the same, but slightly different in an intriguing way.

Flying Geese units were an integral part of this pattern.  I made so many flying geese I lost count.  There are flying geese in the star points and flying geese in the border.  Happy geese, flying every which way.  And I am not kidding you, with this pattern, the instructions are so accurate that you can't go wrong.  Cut carefully, make sure you have your 1/4 inch seem allowance, and you'll be happy as Larry.

As to my canine helper, let me just say he was a total pest while I was trying to finish this.  If I went too long without petting him, tossing the ball, or playing tug, he would snatch some small article up from my sewing room and dash madly out the door, where he KNEW I would follow in hot pursuit.  Here he is with a baggie of border triangles for Meadowbrook Farm.

Nanner nanner nanner, can't catch me.  Very funny.  After awhile he got bored with this game and decided to hang out with me in the sewing room next to me.  He easily found a pile of fabric to rest on and was content for about ten minutes.

That stack of blues is the fabric that distracted me today.  Remember way back in December when some of us were making a Blended Quilt Challenge?  This is one I began and dropped the ball on.  Maybe next week's Friday Finish?

Friday Finish #5

 

Mom discouraged bragging in our house when I was growing up, but I know she would give me some slack if I pat myself on the back for finishing this quilt top.  I have been struggling to get this done for more than two years!  The first challenge was the appliqued circles.  I am not skilled at hand applique, and have also had my issues with some machine applique techniques.  That whole starch thing was the biggest mess when I tried it!  Finally I figured out (with the help of many people's advice) how to do raw edge fusible machine applique, using a blanket stitch.  I was sure happy when the circles were done and had come out---well, circular.

Then I put the project away.  Don't get me wrong, I really liked it and sincerely wanted to finish it.  But that pieced checkerboard lattice around not only each block, but as an inner border as well?  I wasn't sure I was up for it.  Every few months I would go back to the project box however, take out the applique squares I was so pleased with, and tell myself I just had to finish it someday.

This summer was the time, and Friday, June 27 is the day!

The pattern is called Garden Fence from a book called Hearth and Home Quilts by Joanna Figueroa and Lisa Quan.  If you don't recognize their names, they are the Fig Tree designers.  I didn't purchase a single piece of fabric for this quilt top.  It was all scraps from my stash.

I really like this one and think it will look great in the family room with my Blended Neutrals quilt.  Some times you just have to stick to it and get it done.

Friday Finish #4--Not Vanilla Latte

Meet "Not Vanilla Latte"!  She was supposed to be made out of an entirely different pattern which was called Vanilla Latte, but I didn't care for that pattern so much, even though the name is cool.  I chose another pattern called Citrus Punch from the same book, and used my layer cake of At Water's Edge by Blackbird Designs for Moda.  The book is called The Sweet Life and is one of the Anka's Treasures offerings.  All the patterns in the book can be made with layer cakes, so it may be a good investment for you if you are into those yummy packs of 10 inch squares.

Now, all you beginning quilters out there, listen up.  This would be a great pattern for you!  It shows off all the pretty fabrics, without chopping them up into teensy pieces.  The piecing is all straight forward and simple.  You will learn strip piecing for the little four patch block centers and get practice making large half square triangles for the setting border.  Give it a try, you won't be sorry! 

This pattern will work with absolutely any collection of fabric.  Just use your imagination when you see a pattern that may be made out of fabrics outside your comfort zone.  Look how totally different mine looks from the one in the book:

For more advanced quilters, you could easily make this larger and add mitered corners.  I would have done miters, but didn't have enough fabric.

When this fabric line, At Water's Edge, came out, I was on an austerity program, and not buying everything I saw.  I thought I could live without this group just fine.  However, as the months went by, I kept seeing quilts made out of it by more forward thinking quilters than myself.  Oh, how I regretted not buying this fabric when I had the chance!  Now it is too late, with most stores sold out of parts of the line.  Well, guess what?  The layer cake concept was the answer to my problem!  A jelly roll would have done the trick as well.

If it happens that you miss out on a fabric line you end up loving, don't despair.  Many shops who are out of big cuts of the yardage, may still have jelly rolls, layer cakes or even charm packs on hand.  You can still get your fix of a favorite group, even if it is late in the season!  Check online sources such as http://quiltshops.com/.  You can do a search for your fabric of choice and be amazed at how many shops around the country still have what you want.

Friday Finish #3

Woo Hoo!  Happy Dance!  I finished a UFO that must be going on ten years old!  When I was working on this project back all those years ago, I loved the fabrics and really enjoyed making all the log cabin blocks.  I remember excitedly laying the blocks all out on the floor at my parent's house one Sunday with my sister Kate.  "It isn't working" she said, after helping me lay them out.  I knew she was right, but I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong, exactly.  Disappointedly I put the blocks back in the project box and didn't open it again until a couple of weeks ago.

After studying the blocks carefully on the design bed, it hit me.  The problem was that some of the prints, especially the gold/yellow ones, did not "read" gold or yellow.  The same thing was true of some of the red and green prints as well.  What I needed to make this quilt work was more tone on tone fabrics.  Cute as all these prints were, some of them were just all wrong in the quilt.

Let me show you what I mean.  Here are my three main troublemakers:

The trouble wasn't so much with them, as it was with me.  I was looking at these fabrics totally wrong.  I had the top fabric categorized as "green", the middle one "red", and the bottom one appeared sometimes as "gold", and sometimes as "green"!  I simply wasn't using my eyes.

Here are some of the golds that were just too busy to blend in nicely:

So I spent a good deal of time remaking the blocks.  I didn't dig too deep for one of the troublemaker fabrics-if it was near the center of the block I let it stay.  However, my seam ripper did double duty ripping out any outer strips that didn't fit my criteria.  This quilt is all about contrast (which you know I like in a quilt, generally), and these busy prints clutter things up visually.

Interestingly enough, the author of the book the pattern came with had a very similar situation arise when she made her quilt.   She says that these scrappy style quilts can take on a whole new life of their own when you sew them together---a life you never visualized in your mind's eye.  Her example was that her quilt turned out totally Chrismassy rather than Late Summer/Harvest.  She added in some purple and loved the result.  The book is

And the pattern is called Autumn Ridge, but I am calling mine Farmer's Daughter.  I have a cool seed packet print on order that I will use for a border.  What do you think Kate?  Is it better than it was a decade ago?

Friday Finish #2 and Peace With Ozzie

Here is Ozzie, still sitting on a pile of Posh fabric and chewing on his bone.  He is behaving though, and keeping right next to me on the bed next to my sewing machine.  For now, the devil horns have been replaced by a halo.  I guess he really likes this fabric line.  I had a pile of Posh scraps ready to send to my friend Lisa, and Ozzie hopped right up on them and made himself at home.  Still want them Lisa?  (Yes, that is a piece of rawhide bone in the foreground).  Perhaps I should save some of the scraps out and make him a little Posh cuddle quilt to remember our first big fight.  We worked out our issues yesterday, after he made a royal mess of my carefully laid out pieces.  I forgave him and he let me work in peace today.

Um, so what did I learn?  Close the door to the design bed, and no more slime bones.  It isn't Ozzie's fault.  Just look at the experession in those soulful eyes.  His entire being is focused on trying to understand me, and a little hurt that he may have failed somehow.  He tries to be good, and is completley mystified when I blow a gasket over some weirdo thing he can't comprehend.  Honestly, if we are lucky, he will be my companion for good dozen or so years.  So, shouldn't it behoove me to make the most of them?  My promise to Ozzie:  more play time, more cuddles and more understanding on my part of what it is that will make your life more meaningful.  Aside from tormenting me that is.  My heart swells.

Balance.  That is what we need.  More balance.  Time for Ozzie, time for sewing. And on that note, I have a Friday reveal!

Ta da!  My second Friday Finish.  Can't promise I will keep this up all summer, but I am sure going to try.  Gotta get these quilts out.  But not at the expense of neglecting Ozzie.  He is a high maintenance little guy, and I was the one who brought him into my life.  We need to make some compromises.

Note on the quilt top.  The inspiration was a book called Basket Bonanza by Nancy Mahoney, but I did my own thing by combining several ideas from the book and making the quilt bed sized.  Fabric is Posh by Chez Moi for Moda.