4 in 20

I have quilted and bound 4 quilts in the last 20 days! My left elbow is complaining about all of the quilt wrangling, but overall, I'm feeling pretty good about getting so much done.

This is the Double Four Patch I finished yesterday. I was sick of doing allover quilting patterns by the time I got to this quilt, so I quilted pumpkin seeds on the diagonals, diamonds in the inner border, and leaves in the outer border.

I still feel like such a beginner at FMQ. My quilting is far from perfect, but it was pretty fun using the piecing as my guide. I've seen some very simple quilts brought to amazing levels by the quilting. I'm not sure I'll ever get there, and most of my quilts are so scrappy the quilting is pretty lost anyway.

When I was quilting this quilt, I was really wishing I had the HQ Sweet Sixteen Sit Down model I've been drooling over. I think that following the piecing would be easier if the machine was higher and at 90 degrees. The visibility would be so much better. Someday I'd really love to get one, but it won't be anytime soon I'm sure. I am thankful I have a DSM that works well for quilting, even a king sized quilt. My shoulders and elbow would appreciate a little less quilt wrangling, but at least I can do it.

I tried a short arm on a quilting frame, and sold it within two years. The quilting frame was not large enough for most of my quilts, and even that size frame completely maxed out the space I had available. I also had a harder time sensing a problem when so removed from the quilt, so when I had to rip out stitches, I had to rip out a LOT. When I'm moving the quilt I'm more in tune with what's going on. I think a sit down long arm would be the perfect set up for me, and someday, I think I'll have one.

Mamaw's Last Quilt Is Finished!

Mamaw passed away in April 1988. Here it is almost 30 years later, but her last quilt is finally finished. I've been in possesion of the pieces for about five years, maybe less. Does it count for double points when you are crossing a UFO off two people's lists? ;-)

I am happier with the quilt now that it's quilted. It needed some texture. In case you are wondering why I chose a pink binding, there are a couple of reasons. All the white fabrics in this have pink on them, and the backing I was given for it is predominantly pink, so I chose a pink binding to bring out the pink on the front.

I also finished another quilt this week, which I can't show pics of yet. I started quilting on yet another quilt. I am ahead of schedule for getting these quilts done before our trip. Maybe I can knock out some smaller projects before we leave too.

I am in several online quilting groups, and a lot of quilters who quilt on their DSM like I do, do not like to quilt in the summer. They think it's too hot with part of the quilt on their lap. I think about it differently, and I'd much rather quilt than have the iron on in the summer. When I'm cutting or piecing, I have the iron on a lot, and when it's really hot (I live in Southern Arizona) it's hard enough for the air conditioner to compensate for the outside temps, never mind deal with an iron heating the inside. To each his own, but if you end up with a lot of the quilt on your lap when quilting, perhaps you could support more of it with an ironing board lowered down next to you, or a table next to your cabinet if you have a small work space. I am blessed to have a big sewing cabinet with extensions, but I still grab the ironing board to sit to my left if I'm quilting a huge quilt.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me about my attempts to be more active. So far, so good, I've been exercising for three weeks, and I'm noticing even on my days off the treadmill, I am moving more. Today was an errand day, and I've got almost as many steps as days I exercise. In fact, when DH was trying on shoes, I was walking the store just to get in some more steps.

Errand days can be a drain. We dropped off two vintage machines to be serviced. Both of those will be leaving the house, but I wanted them serviced before I pass them on. We then went to Costco, which was thankfully not too crowded today. Then it was home to put those groceries away, shoe shopping for DH (found some at the second shoe store), a quick run in to Joann to look at thread (didn't buy anything), then DH and I ate dinner out, and stopped at the grocery store to get a couple specialty items I couldn't get at Costco. Errand day was a drain, both on my energy and our bank account! It's all good though! DH has new shoes to hopefully ease his pain on his 12 hour ER shifts. The house is stocked with food, and I got to eat some yummy Greek food for dinner. So glad today was a "day off" for DH and me :-)

Spring Cleaning

Last weekend, DH completely emptied both a small storage room we have, and the shed. Everything out of both places meant stuff all over the backyard. We found two boxes DS the Elder left behind, but five boxes DD#2 left behind. DD#3, who currently lives with us, reboxed her stuff, and got rid of a bunch. We donated enough stuff, that the seats had to be put down in the van to get it all in. Some stuff ended up in the trash, victims of mice or bugs. Outdoor storage has it's down side :-( At any rate, after a full day of working, only DH has stuff in the shed, and now he can finally call it his own, and work on his scooters and such in there. The little storage room has DD#3's stuff, along with stuff the twins have outgrown that I want to save for future grandbabies.

I think I still have one box I need to go through, that is mostly old paperwork. I'm thinking most if not all of it will end up recycled.

I repurposed a set of shelves that were in the shed, and I finally got my walk-in pantry cleaned up and organized. I've been working on it a little along, but now it really looks much better. All that organizing is incredibly time consuming, but worth it when it's finished.

I did quilt one quilt this week, not one of mine, just one I was finishing as a favor to someone else. It was made by their grandmother, who passed away a few months ago. It needed to be finished, so I did. I didn't even take a photo of the finished quilt. It was a tricky quilt to finish, as it didn't lay flat, but I pretty much quilted it into submission. I hope to start quilting Mamaw's quilt tomorrow.

I love to read, and I love quilting. The only problem with that is they are both sedentary hobbies. I've been trying to clean up my act as well as the house. I bought a treadmill, and my goal is to walk 45 minutes per day, at least on the days DH works. We often are pretty busy on his days off, but he usually works four days per week, so I am on the treadmill more days than I'm not. Because we are usually running errands on his days off, I tend to be pretty active those days anyway.

My phone has a health app built into it. It tracks my number of steps, and minutes of activity. My phone even takes my pulse.

This was a screen shot of my phone today. My phone evidently thinks that walking 2 mph is running, because believe me, I was not running for 38 minutes today. Still, 91 minutes of activity, and 12,000 steps is hopefully a good start towards improving my health. I get about 6,000 steps while on the treadmill, and today the other 6,000 were from shopping. Neither DD#3 nor I are big shoppers, but she really needed clothes, so we went clothes hunting for her. I had hoped to get some sewing time in today, but that didn't happen.

Taking the time to exercise definitely cuts into my quilting time. I used to shower at night, before bed, but now I am exercising in the morning, then showering, so by the time I get some housework done after all that, it's usually lunch time or close to it. I used to spend a lot of my morning quilting, on days I don't have to watch the twins, and now I don't. I'm sure it will have an impact on my quilting productivity, but my goal is, I'll be healthier and able to quilt more years if I take better care of myself now. I don't expect things to change overnight, but you have to start somewhere, so I'm starting on my treadmill.

Piano Playing

Melodie, my name, is musical, and that is the only musical thing about me. I can't sing on key, can't clap in time, or play an instrument. I tried drums, but I have no rhythm. I tried flute, and my instructor was so frustrated with me, he hit me with the flute. I tried piano and organ, and I can pick out Mary Had a Little Lamb, and the first few bars of "The Entertainer", with one hand, not both. Yes, I am pretty much a musical disaster.

When it comes to quilting, I can finally play the piano, that is, the piano key border. I love scrap quilts best, and I like them best with a scrappy border. I've put slab borders on scrappy quilts when I'm pressed for time, and I'm almost always disappointed. When I take the time to make a scrappy border, I am always happier with the result. Piano key borders are the easiest of the pieced borders to me. I looked around my sewing room today, and what did I see?

 

 

A piano key border to go on a Christmas quilt.

A Piano key border on a hanger with the quilt center.

  A piano key border rolled around an empty toilet paper tube, so it won't get wrinkled, waiting for me to assemble the quilt center from the finished blocks.

A piano key border I once had yards and yards of, enough to border FOUR quilts!

This is one of the four quilts that piano key border went on.

 

And here is another it went on. I already gave away the first it went on, and tomorrow I'll be putting it on the last of the four quilts.

 

 

I never measured how much piano key border I made, and after bordering four quilts with the massive length I had made, this is what is left. I think it might be just the right length to make a baby quilt backing a bit wider.

It is not uncommon for me to just make huge lengths of piano key border to use on scrappy quilts, and never measure how much I actually need. When I go to put the border on, I actually do figure out how long it needs to be, and unpick the seam at that length. If I'm a bit short, it's easy to cut a few strips and add to length. If I have too much, well, that's even easier. If I have a lot left, I can make a Chinese Coin type of quilt with the extra. A few feet left? I usually save that for when I need a quilt backing to be just a bit bigger. A little bit left? Well, that's usually the beginning of another piano key border!

I like a lot of the variations of piano key borders too, alternating long rectangles, with a shorter one with and an added square. Add a triangle to each one and get a picket fence, triangles on both ends and you can have a chevron border. There are so, so many ways to use scraps in a border, checkerboards, square in a square, almost any unit can make into a scrappy border on a scrap quilt. I never run out of scraps, so having lots of options is fantastic, and using even more scraps in the border puts those scraps to work, instead of taking up space in the sewing room. 

You want to know the real secret though? If borders are hard for you to get right without waves, pieced borders are actually easier to get right! Now, that is only true if your 1/4" seam is right, and consistently right, but honestly, I have fewer problems putting on pieced borders than slab borders.

One of the above quilts is a double four patch. If I use the same size strips for my piano key border, as I do for the blocks, I will need four "keys" to border each block. I make my inner border with the same size strip, to make for easy math. If my quilt is 9x11 blocks, I start with the side borders, so I'm dealing with the 11 blocks. 11 blocks x 4 "keys" per block= 44 keys + 2 more keys to cover the top and bottom inner border. My side borders need to be 46 keys long. I count down 46 keys from my length of keys, and unpick the seam there (or just piece a border 46 keys long. I pin each end of the border one the side it's going on. Now I need to find the middle. What is half of 46? 23, so I count down 23 keys, and that seam is the middle of my border. With 11 blocks down, the middle of the 6th block is the middle of my quilt center. The inner border is not so wide I can't eye lining up the middle of the border, with the middle of my quilt center. Pin the center. From there I just keep pinning the middle of each area of the border, until I feel comfortable it is lined up well. Unless the quilt is very large, I usually don't use more than 5-7 pins per side, it really is that easy. 

When I do the top and bottom borders, I do the same, but I either have to add cornerstones, or add however many keys I need to to cover the width of the side borders. In this quilt, the top and bottom borders were figured as 9 blocks x 4 keys= 36 keys + 2 keys to cover side inner borders=38 keys, plus each side piano key border was 3 keys wide, so add 6 more keys for a total of 44 keys. If I had wanted to use corner stones instead in the border, I would have only added the extra 2 keys to compensate for the inner border, then added a cornertone on each end.

If I want to add cornerstones to a border, a pieced border is the absolutely easiest way to do that. Slab borders with cornerstones are much more difficult to me.

I pin-basted Mamaw's quilt today, and a pay it forward quilt. I need to come up with two more backings to pin baste another two quilts next week, then I'll be on a quilting spree. I found I had four quilt centers just waiting for borders, and the outer borders were already pieced. They were literally just waiting for me to cut inner borders for them. Well, by the end of this week, those will all be quilt tops, and I'll quilt them as I get to them, but at least they won't be waiting for borders!

Mamaw's Quilt

Mamaw was my husband's paternal grandmother. She was quite a lady, born and raised in the hills of Kentucky, hardly any education, but tough as can be and extremely hard working. She passed away in 1988, two weeks before our second child was born.

Someone in the family saved her last quilt project. They thought they'd finish it, and after a while realized they wouldn't, and eventually I ended up with it. It's been sitting in my quilting room for a couple years now, out of sight, and low on my priority list. I've decided this year is the year I'd like to finish those UFO's that were not mine, so out this project came. Finishing old projects reminds me how blessed we are to be modern quilters.

I never use fabric foundation squares, but I have a couple projects from older people who did use them, and this is one of those. The fabric square feels like a really thick cotton muslin, and check out the flat felled seam! No waste here! most of the edges of the squares are ripped, but some were cut with scissors.

Here are some of the strips included with the project. They are poly/cotton blends, and I'm pretty certain both of these fabrics were curtains, as there were hems attached. Again, these were ripped into strips, which was really a problem with the floral, since after ripping the fabric wouldn't lie flat. I don't know how Mamaw dealt with that, but I ended up using a rotary cutter to cut the ripped edge off.

Here are a couple of Mamaw's blocks before I trimmed them. If you look along the bottom edge, you can see how different the sizes were. I had everything from scant 10.5" blocks to 11.5" blocks. I found a few spots where she had traced something with an ink pen, and attempted to cut on the line. I'll stick to my rotary cutter and quilting rulers!

 
She had trimmed her blocks up with scissors, but scissors aren't as accurate as what we have available today. I lined the corners of this block up with a ruler, so you can see how much easier we've got it. Hold the ruler, and with one slice of a rotary cutter we've got a straight cut in seconds. I wonder what Mamaw would have thought of today's tools. Mamaw had made 17 blocks, and I made an additional 31, for a total of 48. I set them 6x8. I trimmed all the blocks to 10.5", so the top finishes at 60x80 inches. I'm thinking she used stuff around the house to determine her strip sizes, because they were really odd measurements. Her seam allowance was variable, but not a 1/4" seam to be found. I am not used to piecing blocks with a foundation fabric, and when I make string blocks, most of my strips are about an inch wide, not wide like these. Between my being a little lost, and her measurements being creative, the design doesn't meet up quite right, but I think the end result is probably close to her intention. I don't intend to add a border, just quilt it and bind it as is.

When I was given the project, I was also given fabric for the backing. If you guessed it is a poly/cotton too, you'd be right! My goal is to get the quilt finished before the family reunion in June. I'll be giving it back to the person who sent it to me, and what they do with it is up to them.

So, that's what I've been working on. I wouldn't have chosen poly/cottons to use, I wouldn't have constructed the quilt that way, but that's not really the point. This is Mamaw's quilt, and even if I'm finishing it, it will always be her quilt.

Completely off topic, we bought a new play set for the twins, and they are loving it!

 

 

Looks like fun, doesn't it?