January Roundup

This has been a productive month in the quilt cave. It is cold outside and warm in here! I have refocused my efforts and reopened creativity channels.  Part of this includes journaling about quilting progress, challenges and lessons learned. 

I am giving myself permission to skip days writing, which reduces the feeling of obligation to a task and helps me to focus and have fun. The writing allows me to analyze and issue, critique, and then let the criticism go.

One of my important goals for the year is to relax and enjoy the process. And to not worry so much about perfect piecing and even stitching. That just isn't me.

I have finally figured out how to position photos! I knew there had to be a secret tip. Secretly obvious on the same tab that controls the size. 

Challenge Updates

PhD in Quilting & One Monthly Goal

I have completed three quilts this month. My FMQA Sampler and Fabric Self Portrait are the first two UFOs finished this year!  I also completed one new start - FMQA Whole Cloth Corgi.  

I'm utilizing the spreadsheet both as a record of my goals and a plan for which quilts may (emphasis may) be worked on in which order.

As I figure out the best way to grab a picture of the sheet it may be more readable in future months.

More details on my Fabric Self Portrait are found HERE. I started it in March 2021 with my Quilt Bee and finished this month as part of my 'grab the low hanging fruit' attitude.

The FMQA Whole Cloth, was conceptualized in December 2021 and started/completed in January 2022. Details about this quilt and the FMQA Sampler are found HERE. I'm calling this a Red Table Scrap as well, as it might end up on my side table at the office if not on the wall. And it is RED!

Additional details for the FMQA Sampler are found HERE. The post includes closeups of each motif. I pieced the sampler last spring, and put the first motifs on it in October 2021. The goal for this sampler is twofold: to showcase the motifs learned in class and to experience manipulating a larger quilt in your machine. I quilt on a HQ Sweet Sixteen - and I appreciate the larger harp space. It was important to me to finish these two quilts in January so that I could submit them for Graduation from the String and Story Free Motion Quilting Academy and I am happy to say I met that goal!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge and Table Scraps

I set myself up to succeed for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month. My intent one Saturday afternoon was to select the fabrics and cut the pieces for my chosen blocks so that I could work on them during the ensuing weeks. I managed to complete all six blocks that evening. I'm still hoping to make some red string blocks and crumb blocks and that may happen over the weekend - or in February.  RSC progress is HERE.  As mentioned above, I'm calling my Whole Cloth Corgi a red Table Scrap. I should be more flexible/less deadline oriented by March.

Other Quilty Activities

I have two bed quilts that really need to be finished by mid-February so that I can deliver them in
person when I visit family. These are the Star Bright Quilts that I pieced last spring as I prepared for the Quilt Plan Challenge offered by String and Story. In hindsight, I could have participated in the challenge without a fresh top (or in my case a pair of fresh tops) but cabin fever combined with actually shopping in person again and stroking fabric led to a pair of tops.

One of my challenges was the backs. Both quilts ended up sized for double beds after I added extra bits to the pattern - and I didn't have enough fabric to just seam it together in the middle. I used bonus triangles to create two 90 inch strips. The green strip will be be a horizontal as I have 5 yards of fabric available. The blue strip is vertical - and has an additional 6 inches which will likely end up trimmed off, but was necessary for the back.

I pressed and repressed the Orlando Magic themed top, and managed to sew the center strip to the wrong side of the fabric which I fortunately caught before I added the second strip. That was a frustrating 96 inches to rip out... I'm not a fan of really long seams to start. I've now quilted the blue star points, the blue and black squares and probably 1/3 of the background.

It is slowly moving forward. This is the biggest quilt I've wrestled with so far and I'm still figuring out how best to manipulate it under the needle.  I need to clear off my cutting/pressing space and start pressing the second quilt this weekend so that it is ready to sandwich when I free up the rest of the pinmores from this beast.

Finally - in the continuing theme of grab the low hanging fruit, I added the borders to the Sunflower Runner - complete with mitered corners.

This one is heading back into hibernation for a few months until I can get the second Star Bright Quilt completed. I am happy that I conquered mitering a border.

Linking to:

PhD in 2022: January Report - hosted by Gail Quilts

Table Scraps 2022- hosted by The Joyful Quilter

Free Motion Quilting Adventure

 In January 2021 I enrolled in the Free Motion Quilting Academy taught by HollyAnne Knight of String and Story. This is a twelve week course that you can follow along and work at your own pace as life happens.  My intent was to blog my way through the course, and I think I mentioned it in past posts, but life happens, so I'm summarizing here.

First task was to create thirty or so practice sandwiches - a great opportunity to utilize the 'what were you thinking' fabric and fat quarters in your stash. I created mine using muslin on one side and odd fabrics on the other.

Then came the practice - lots of doodling on paper and fabric. I took an extended break and then started back up doodling on paper and fabric again before I started the Sampler quilt.

First step was to find a pleasing layout and turn the layercake into a quilt. I added a few additional fabrics and spent an afternoon auditioning layouts. For our final project we needed to include all thirty motifs on the sampler quilt.

I sketched all the motifs into a 1.5 inch square grid, then cut them apart and spent some time rearranging until I found a layout that worked for me.  Closeups of the quilting can be found here. I created my quilting plan because I knew that I wanted to distribute the dense and less dense blocks throughout the quilt - and to try to avoid putting similar motifs next to one another. Plus, I reduce the chance of skipping a motif or missing one altogether.  The first five went on the quilt in October - and the last 25 from December 31-January 2.

I took advantage of a snowy day to utilize my neighbor's fence as a backdrop. I am very pleased with the finished quilt. This will live in our living room. Those of you who know me, see that I deviated from my usual garnet/gold palette.

The other project for graduation is a fat quarter sized whole cloth quilt. The primary guideline is that you have to use multiple motifs in an intentional manner. Looking at the work of past graduates is inspiring and gave me lots of ideas of what to do. I thought of several options - including my sister's chickens. Then I settled on an abstract corgi. And back to my happy colors.

My first step was to find a silhouette that works for me and enlarged it as far as I could on and 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, and then used a light pad to enlarge it a few more times by tracing around it. I cut it out in freezer paper and ironed the freezer paper onto my background.  I added the frame, with mitered corners for contrast and to model the types of signs I'll see in our upcoming Rally Obedience activities with Serendipity. The batting is an offcut from one of the previously completed quilts, so I'm not sure which brand it is. Backing came from my 'what was I thinking' pile of fabrics. It is a nice fabric, but, well, you know...

Under the needle it went (HQ Sweet Sixteen). I started off stitching around my freezer paper silhouette. It didn't stick as well as I had hoped, and the foot knocked under it a bit - so rather than pull out stitching, I worked my way around the body again to fix some of the issues with her topline and then filled in the body stitching.  Gold 50 weight WonderFil Konfetti thread. A combination of gingkos, paisleys, and swirls to add texture to the coat, and a little fill on the white parts of the dog. There is some fuzzy stitching along the ruff and pants because Corgis are fuzzy little beasts. There is also some Corgi fluff quilted into the stitching that I'm gradually removing because that is inevitable when you live with a Corgi.

I added feathers and McTavishing for texture around the dog using a garnet/red WonderFil Konfetti 50 weight along with a row of pebbles just inside the frame, and then switched back to gold for woodgrain on the frame.

After binding, it was time to recruit Gus for a photo shoot. He is great at getting Sera to look at the camera, but she was still unimpressed by the process.

I am very pleased with this course. Something clicked for me this time. It could have been the structure of doodle on paper and then on fabric. I've tried getting to know my machine in the past with much less success. I am now looking forward to finishing many of the tops in my pile and experimenting with new motifs and designs along the journey.

In addition to teaching the 30 motifs, HollyAnne has a great week on quilting plans - and also offers Quilting Plan challenges through String and Story periodically. She is a great cheerleader for her Quilting Rockstars and has built a community on Facebook of very supportive quilters as we cheer one another along.

My One Monthly Goal for January was to complete both of the graduation projects! Done!  

I am linking to the January One Monthly Goal, hosted by Elm Street Quilts

Fabric Self Portrait

 

Last spring, my quilting bee gathered on Zoom for a sewing day. The challenge was to create self portraits in fabric. The inspiration for this gathering is the work of Freddy Moran.

This pushed me outside of my comfort zone. The idea was to go abstract and find items representative of yourself. I found a happy medium by including Corgi hair - I could have gone with all corgis for hair.

Then came the fun part, raiding my fabric shelves and finding meaningful images to include - heritage, hobbies, friendships. And of course auditioning where they might fall.

Due to kitchen renovations, losing a Corgi to kidney disease, and then adding a Corgi and a Cattle Dog, all quilting was set aside for several months. Earlier this month, I decided it was time to finish and selected a fun backing.

During the course of the quilting, I managed to quilt the backing into the quilt - again... twice... so time was spent with snips and tweezers to work the fabric out without having to remove the quilting.

I used a variety of motifs throughout. Red thread in woodgrain to add texture and color to my hair, which is currently more red than blonde. A few colors to accent eyes and cheeks. I used invisible thread to outline the fused pieces and for the background texture which is largely McTavished with a few hidden Mickeys thrown in. I've worked with invisible thread in the past, and prefer the YLI nylon.

I decided on the red/garnet binding and spent an evening or two hand stitching that along with tacking on a hanging sleeve. This will eventually hang in my office.

January Rainbow Scrap Challenge

 January Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Red!

Red was where I dropped off last May. I had a stack of fabrics already pulled for my Blocks and the random numbers generated in my journal, so I settled in a few Saturdays ago to pull the rest of the fabrics and get them cut so that I could work on them during the month. By late evening, they were done!

A few pieces from the Coastal Pearls quilt

A bit from the Sunflower Table Runner

The Sunflower Table Runner and FMQA Whole Cloth contributed here

A bit left from last January's Table Topper

The floral used in my Fabric Face

And finally a random red which has appeared in many of the other blocks plus a piece from my original stash.

I may try to add some string and crumb blocks during the rest of January, though I'm deep into the quilting on the Star Bright quilts at the moment.

Linking to Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Forward Progress!

 In order to not hijack myself and get sucked into the internet, I try to avoid my laptop on weekends. The downside is that is where it is easiest for me to blog. So, recognizing this, I'm going to try to be more proactive as far as writing. I've also ordered an external hard drive (long overdue) to store the quilt photos so that I can blog from my tablet on weekends if I decide to do so.

We have a very annoyed Cattle Dog in the house going through her first (and only) heat cycle. She has spent some time in the cave underneath my cutting table so that she is at least around people. However, this now means that I have to repair the dog bed that is in the cave as she got bored and chewed off a corner. Good thing I know someone who likes to sew and might have a length of thread to spare.

Over the last 10 days I've been rather productive! Most of all, I've been CONSISTENT in spending time on projects. I've touched seven different projects.

I like having things in different stages so that I can pick up a task where I feel like doing so.

Binding on my FMQA Sampler is DONE! I just need to photograph it. I've been brainstorming places I could use to hang quilts to photograph. There was a small piece of fence near our house that was perfect, until it got taken down last week. So on my to do list for this week is photography.

My FMQA Whole Cloth project is fully quilted with the hanging sleeve attached and about 1/4 of the binding done. A future post will be dedicated to this project. To do this week - finish the binding and photograph.

Fabric Face - self portrait is quilted with the hanging sleeve attached and waiting to be tacked down, the binding needs to be hand stitched. A post for this project is forthcoming.  On the list for next week is to finish the handwork (my fingers are getting sore - plus I like having a binding project available to do in front of the television).

Borders are beautifully mitered on the Sunflower Table Runner. In the theme of picking off the low hanging fruit, I jumped on this one as I was mitering the border onto the whole cloth. It will go back into the queue now as I have two quilts that have to been done before February 17th when I head to Florida. I haven't quite decided on the quilting plan for this one, so it needs to percolate a bit more - even though it would fit in as a Red Table Scrap project. But... I know my limits.

My biggest accomplishment over the weekend was forward progress on the two Star Bright quilts. I made the center strips for the backing of both quilts using bonus triangles. This was a huge mental block as I kept moaning internally about how much of a hassle pressing and trimming those blasted triangles were going to be, and would I have enough, and would this, and would that...  Turns out, zoom call with family is a great time to press and trim. By Friday night everything was ready to be stitched together.

By Monday night, Christopher's Orlando Magic version of Star Bright was sandwiched and partially quilted! I've finished a little over half the quilting on the blue start points and squares. This one is well on the way to completion and is one of my two that will be delivered when I see my nephews next month.

And last, but not least, I've selected the pattern and fabrics, and cut them, for a baby quilt for a co-worker who is expecting this spring.