Miniatures

I'm two thirds of the way through the month of sharing quilts from Fiber Arts Fiesta and I realize that I haven't yet shown any of the traditional miniatures.

This is the first place winner in the Miniature category, New York Beauty by Jan Lehman-Shaw.

The colors of these hand-dyed fabric say New Mexico to me and I love the hand-quilting on this tiny wonder.

The second place winner was a tiny sampler, Maureen, Carol and Cynthia's Quilting Journey by Cynthia Figueroa-McInteer.

Third place was won by a hand-quilted, whole cloth doll quilt, Winter Roses by Norma Koelm.

I especially liked the play of color and line in  the Judge's Choice winner, Star Brite by Linda Erickson.  I think this would be a fun design to supersize for a bed quilt. 

Small Cogs on a Small Quilt

It's probably symptomatic of the stress/procrastination going on around my house this week, but look what I finished last night.

It's drizzly and gray outside and so the natural light is not so good in the studio this morning ... but it may actually make it easier to see the quilting.


This little quilt–it measures 18 by 22 inches–started with the intention to play with an idea of using hexies to create the look of cogs and wheels: a small study before making hundreds more hexies for a large scrappy bed quilt.

I used the last scrap of the pale gray hand-dyed fabric for the binding, but decided it needed just a bit of color, so inserted the purple piping.   (It is real piping, added to the binding using Susan Cleveland's Piping Hot Binding technique).

There are five different quilting designs in the background. Only the ghost cogs were marked before quilting; a straight ruler was used to quilt the grid for all of them.   It was interesting to play with grids made from 60 degree angles.

Many of the commenters on the WIP post liked the idea of the ghost cogs and encouraged me to leave them un-quilted, which I did ... if I do something like this again, I will think ahead and put an extra layer of batting behind the ghosts, so that they will have the same fullness/dimension as the appliquéd ones.

Here's a closer look at the quilting–I am not sure why the colors in the upper right photo came out so much better and closer to reality than the rest.


Some of the photos aren't as sharp as I'd like ... I'm blaming the gray day and lack of natural light ... and may come back and replace them if/when the sun comes out.

I was surprised at how similar two of the designs look (upper left, lower right). The first is made from all straight lights (using a ruler) and the other has freehand curves.

Since it's been a while since I've finished something that I can share on my blog, I'm celebrating it at all these linky parties:

Can I get a Whoop whoop? on Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Crazy Mom Quilt's  Finish it Up Friday
Fabric Frenzy Friday on Fort Worth Fabrics
Free Motion Mavericks on Lizzy Lenard Vintage Sewing
QuiltShopGals' Creative Goodness
Richard and Tanya's Link a Finish Friday
WIPS Be Gone on A Quilting Reader's Garden

Pinwheel HSTeria Continues

I love to play with those left-over bits that some would have tossed and, for some reason,  it always feels like PLAY when I pull them out and use them.

The small 3-inch pin wheel blocks are made from 1 1/2-inch half-square triangle squares that were bonus units sewn after they were trimmed away from the I-Spy star quilt.

The smaller 1-inch pinwheel blocks are made from tiny 1/2-inch half-square triangle squares that were bonus units sewn after they were trimmed away from the 5-inch Violet blocks I made for a sewing machine cover. After I decided I wanted them around the outside edges, I needed to make more. (I used the 8-at once method for making the half-square triangles I needed for 10 more pinwheels, starting with two 2 3/4 inch squares).

The I-spy string-pieced borders were strips sewn from the left-over bits after cutting squares for a few I-spy squares swaps.  I had sewn up 4 strips, each 4 1/2-inches wide and about a yard-long, longago and stuck them into the bin of I-spy fabrics and squares.

The top measures 27 by 33 inches.   I can't wait to quilt it ... along with the sewing machine cover and the I-Spy Stars kids quilt that made it possible.

It also is inspiring me to pull out my collection of all kinds and sizes of HSTs and see what might come from them ...

A Little Finish with a Long Story

I call this little doll quilt, Upcycled Shoo Flies, because it was begun when I was cleaning up some small red and pink and white scraps (from making free-pieced loving words for the Block Lotto) on my work table and instead of tossing them, I made a dozen 4-inch liberated shoo fly blocks. The finished little quilt measures 19 by 24 inches.

If you like the wonky shoo fly blocks and think you'd like to make some of your own, check out my tutorial, Three Ways to Wonkify a Traditional Quilt Block.

After I put them together into this top, I wasn't quite happy with it.  When I won a strip of a vintage sheet, I  remade it with some of the floral strips.

When I came back to this quilt early this year, I thought it would be fun to try quilting from the back in the plain border. I didn't have enough of the floral sheet for a back, so I pieced the back and used it fo borders on the back. First, I quilted the center of the quilt–feathers winding around the white background, outlining, then echoing the print in the floral strips. Then I flipped the quilt over, used painters' tape to mark the inside edge of the border and quilted the borders by outlining, then echoing the flowers in the print.

I felt like Murphy's law started working overtime as soon as I decided to finish up this long-ago pieced quilt.  I mentioned earlier this week how I started quilting it shortly after my Bernina came back from a trip to the dealer for a routine maintenance.  Actually it was exactly 2 weeks after ... and the machine stopped working (again) soon after I started quilting the feathers in the white background.

When I resumed the quilting earlier this week, I managed to get to the borders before I ran out of thread. Usually, I celebrate when I finish off a coneof thread ... but not this time. I didn't have any more of the Lace White thread, but I was feeling so motivated to finish this silly little lark of a project, so I decided to use another "white" of the same type of thread.

A couple nights ago, I was determined to keep going until it was done ... my cat, Grace Hopper, had other ideas and late Wednesday night, insisted I stop quilting and go upstairs to bed now.

I was able to finish yesterday evening ... and Grace was happy to keep me company while I stitched down the binding late last night. I had pulled out the last of the vintage sheet with a plan to use it for a hanging sleeve, but decided I liked it for the binding.  The tiny pink piping was added using Susan Cleveland's Piping Hot Binding technique.

Here are a few more detail photos of the finished quilt.



This sweet little girly doll quilt makes me smile because it's truly a silk purse made from a sow's ear: a recycled sheet and small scraps that were on their way to the trash. Even though crazy things kept going wrong and a bossy cat got in the way, it's finally done.

Now I just have to decide where to hang it and appreciate it for a while.

I'm celebrating this finish by joining the linky parties on:
Can I get a Whoop Whoop?
Finish It Up Friday
Link a Finish Friday

And because Grace helped so much with this quilt:
Feline Friday

Finished?

When you do you consider a project finished?

Is a quilt finished when the top is complete and it's sent off to a longarm quilter or added to the to-be-quilted pile? When it's quilted and bound, label and hanging sleeve added? This little quilt, pieced in December is now, as Amy once called it, "done, done."

For more details about this little quilt, and measurements for making your own mini-Tall Shoo Flies, see my post on the Block Lotto today.

Is a knit project finished when the knitting is done? When it's sewn together? How about when you wear it for the first time?  I finished the cowl to match my Aran hat last weekend–unfortunately, as a feared, the  yarn requirements in the pattern were wrong and so there will be no matching fingerless mitts.  I am otherwise happy with how it turned out and have been wearing it out in the cold and snow this week.  The cable pattern was easy to remember and fun to knit.

Last Fall, I finished another knit, the lacy mystery beret, Meret. When I failed to find a right-sized plate or platter in my kitchen to use to block it, I tucked it away ... until earlier this week, when I was making a stir fry and looked at the cover of my wok in a new away. It was perfectly sized.  After blocking, I added a ribbon inside to keep the edge of my extra-slouchy beret the correct size. Now, this one also feels REALLY finished and ready to wear. 

I'm joining the link list on Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?  Check out how productive quilters in blog land have been. 

Switching Gears: New Projects in-Progress

This week, after finishing up the scrappy comfort quilt, I started quilting the first of the four little quilts I pulled out of the trunk last weekend and put on the design wall.

 

The little shoo-fly quilt is so busy, I decided to quilt the starry background in simple diagonal parallel lines with black thread.  I marked the first seam with blue painter's tape, adding angles at the outer border. 

I used the width of the foot and the bar on the walking foot to quilt seams approximately 1/2 inch apart in the background, skipping over the shoo-flies and green border.

Last night, Johnny inspected the quilting and helped me look for any threads I missed while I trimmed ... or maybe he was just trying to convince me it was time to go upstairs.

I also started a new knit project–here's a photo of the project and the gauge swatch I started last night.

I've been in the mood to knit cables and this little book, Hats–A Knitter's Dozen, grabbed my attention when I visited Village Wools in Albuquerque while my sewing machine was at the mechanic. I hope this heathery blue-gray yarn will be light-colored enough that the lovely aran patterns will show.  The yarn shop was lovely and inviting.  If it were closer, I think I could spend a lot of time exploring all the books and patterns.

I'm linking to Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday. 

Playing with the Left Overs

I needed a play break on Sunday afternoon and so I put any and all work I felt I should be working on aside and decided to play with the small triangle squares left over from my Holiday Lane pillow.

Although I probably wouldn't have paired the red, green and/or white fabrics with the white on black star print, since I had these squares, I decided to follow this path and see where it led.

Before I show you what I did, I wanted to share the pillow in it's current state ... yes, Grace has claimed it as her own.

I trimmed those half-square triangle units to 1 1/2-inch squares and added some 1 1/2-inch squares and 1 1/2 by 2 1/2-inch rectangles to form a 3-inch by 4-inch (finished size) shoo fly block.

Happy with these proportions, I made some more, using up the left-over triangle squares and cutting up fabrics for two more blocks, for a nice round number of nine blocks.

 

I added skinny 1/2-inch sashing and a couple of borders and now have a pieced quilt top of doll-sized-proportions of 18 by 24-inches, ready to be quilted and hung.  I'm calling it Starry Skies and Shoo Flies.   I still think that if I'd purposely chosen fabrics for this quilt, I wouldn't have used the star print for the background–it doesn't feel like me, but it's OK and it was fun to play in the studio and just go with the flow and not think a lot about it. 

 

Although this project is off the design wall and onto the studio floor (for photography purposes, after it proved too windy to take a photo outside), I'm linking up with Judy's Design Wall Monday.