Basting Party

Basting for party of one, please. I've been working on assembling the quilts you saw on my design walls last post, and I've been basting quilts as well.

That salmon backing I finally was working on? It's pieced together, matched with it's quilt top and already basted. I didn't take a photo of it laid out. 

I basted the red and white wedding quilt, and have my machine threaded and ready to start quilting on this.

I just finished basting this quilt about an hour ago. I had planned to baste this quilt first in my little basting spree, but when I was laying it out with DH and the wide back I purchased for it, The wide back was not wide enough, and was completely wonky. The selvages were not even close to being parallel, there was at least a 4" difference. It also wouldn't lie flat. I tossed it in the dryer with some water thinking maybe the threads would relax, but that backing is not behaving at all. I had another wide backing in black, so I brought it upstairs to see if that would work. It was nice and flat, but again, not wide enough. I really don't understand that, because both backings were listed at 108" wide. Neither were that large. The quilt is about 103" square, so 108" backing should have been close but usable on a sit down machine. I refuse to cut and piece a wide backing that SHOULD have been wide enough. I got online and ordered a 116" wide backing from Backside Fabrics. They got the order out immediately, so I just left the basting table up a couple extra days and basted other quilts first.

I basted this wedding quilt first, and actually, with my one hour of FMQ per day, I've already finished quilting it. It still needs to be trimmed and bound.

I also grabbed this UFO out of the closet and basted it to go to that up and coming grand-niece I just found out about. 

So I got five quilts basted this basting spree, and I have more pins, but not the desire to baste any more quilts right now, so when DH gets home the basting tables are coming down and the living room set to rights. I still have quilts from my last basting spree that didn't get quilted, so I have plenty to keep me busy. 

I do have one more deadline quilt that needs to be finished in July, but it's not cut out yet, so no need to wait on it. My goal for the wedding quilts was July 27th, and I think I should make it. The other deadline quilt has a deadline of July 21st, but I think if I get the top finished by July 1st, I'll have no problems getting it done in time. 

In the meantime I'm still assembling quilts, and I also started making some blocks out of some bonus HST's that have been hanging around. I'm looking around the quilting studio with thoughts of, what can I get to the next stage easily enough? If it's a stack of blocks, maybe it's time to make assemble it into a quilt center. The blue Weed Whacker quilt I had on my design wall last post is together, but I still have to sew on borders. The container of bonus HST's were letting me know they were ready to be quilt blocks. I'm not really cutting anything new (even though I need to cut that dinosaur quilt for a grandson), but I am working on a bunch of stuff at once. The number of quilt tops hanging in my closet was down to 9, instead of the 20+ there were at the first of the year. Not all the ones I've basted are quilted yet, but my year long goal was to baste at least one from the closet every time I basted a deadline quilt, and I've done that. I've even finished several from the closet this year. 

I had a couple years of very low finishes, but lots of starts. I feel like this is going to be a good year for finishing. 

Playing with Blocks

A lot of my non-deadline quilts get stalled at block stage. I didn't used to have a good place to lay quilts out, and that made it hard to figure out layouts. As I worked on assembling that red and white wedding quilt, I decided it a great time to work in some of those UFOs stalled at block stage.

I've upgraded a couple things about my quilt block assembly, specifically how I organize my rows for sewing. I used to pin a post-it note onto the first block of a row, with the number of the row written on it. I finally gave in and bought numbered pins, which I thought were ridiculously expensive, but I love them now that I have them. Also, after stacking the blocks from left to right, I would pin each stack for a row together until I started sewing that row. Good insurance should the stack of blocks get knocked over. I was having issues getting a pin though the stacks between my repetitive stress injury and hand issues, so I switch to using wonder clips (like a small clothespin) and I'm liking that option better as well. 

Although I web blocks all the time, I found webbing a quilt top unwieldy and unnecessarily fussy. For those of you who love that method, that's great, and I am so glad you found something that works well for you! I still do best sewing one row of blocks at a time, then sewing the rows into pairs, then pairs into fours, etc...until the quilt center is finished. One thing about sewing just one row of blocks at a time, is I go though a LOT of leaders/enders. When I get into a mood to assemble quilts, I've found it just as easy to sew a row of another quilt together as a leader/ender as it it to use small units. The assembly mood struck this week, so I've been using different quilts as leaders/enders for another. 

This Weed Whacker quilt has had the blocks done for about two years. It has the same number of blocks as the wedding quilt I was assembling, so I used it as my leader/ender for assembling the wedding quilt, and now both quilt centers are finished. I pieced a piano key border at the same time I made the Weed Whacker blocks, so after I cut an inner border I can get this quilt top finished. 

I got DH to help me lay out another quilt that had all the blocks finished. Once it was sorted into organized rows, labeled with my numbered pins, and clipped with wonder clips, I started messing with the leftover units from this quilt. I didn't want a border on this quilt.

After some fiddling, and raiding of my scrap user system, I came up with this layout made from the leftovers. Again, I don't think it needs a border.

I was going to stop there, but I came across a plastic shoebox that could easily be emptied if I just assembled another quilt center.

I made the blocks for this quilt probably 3 years ago. It is made completely from double sewing corners and sew and flip corners and claiming that extra HST. All of these are from 2.5 inch units originally. I don't like to short the seam, so when I'm making 2.5 inch sew and flip corners, I use a template I made to draw a second line on the unit. I cut a 1.75" square from template plastic, then cut that in half diagonally. When I draw the diagonal line on the 2.5 inch square for sewing the sew and flip unit, I simply grab my homemade template and draw a second line right after. It doesn't take much extra time, and I prefer drawing an extra line to squaring up units that are not a consistent size. Some people hate sew and flip units, and that's fine too. I often make units that don't have to be sew and flip that way just to have the bonus HSTs. These are units from multiple quilts, so it takes a while to have enough to make a quilt, but they do add up. 

This is one block from that quilt. It takes 16 HST's and with the size HSTs I used it makes a 5" finished block. (See my numbered pin marking the row?) I think this quilt need a border, but I'm not planning on fiddling with that now. I just want to get the quilt center together and hang it in the closet. I keep changing my mind of what type of scrappy border it needs, so I need some time to think about it.

Again, I was thinking I would stop there, BUT, I am getting ready for a basting spree now that the three wedding quilt tops are finished. Last basting spree I basted 10 quilts. I've only quilted six of those. Even with not quilting all of the last bunch, I have enough pins to baste more than just the wedding quilts. I just found out I have another great-niece on the way, and I happen to have a UFO that would be perfect for her, so that will get basted as well. I glanced over my remaining quilt tops trying to choose another to baste, and I found one that's been languishing just because I haven't finished piecing a backing for it. 

The particular quilt top has a bunch of fabrics from DH's grandmother's stash, and she had a ton of salmon colored fabrics. I'm not a huge fan of salmon-y colors, so I cut what I could into 10.5" squares to piece a backing for that quilt. I started piecing the backing a couple years ago got interrupted by life and never finished. Well, this is an easy fix, so I laid the backing out and it will be assembled as well. If I have enough pins, I plan to baste that quilt as well. DH is going to help me set up the basting tables tonight, and my plan is to spend the next few days basting quilts until I run out of pins. He's working a bunch of days in a row, so even if I only baste one quilt per day (which is my usual goal), I'll be finished before his next day off. 

I only FMQ an hour per day, so I'll have plenty of time to work on assembling the quilt tops that aren't finished yet. I don't feel like every quilt has to go from start to finish in one whack, but moving a quilt forward to the next step brings a huge sense of satisfaction. 

Scale

As a quilter I am constantly learning, oftentimes by my mistakes. You know what? Learning by making mistakes is a time honored tradition, and possibly the best teacher of them all. 

The wedding quilt I've been working on ended up being one of those learning situations. I love log cabin quilts, but this is the first time I've made a curved log cabin. No problem, I drew it up on EQ 7, figured out the cutting plan, and finished the last of the blocks yesterday. Everything was going great until I started putting it up on the design wall. 

This was my original layout plan. This was supposed to be one quadrant of the quilt. It looks pretty good in the photo, but in person, the design was so large it was hard to see the design. I made the blocks 12", so this one floral design was 4 feet across. I decided to add another quadrant before I decided anything. 

Again, in the photo it looks ok, but in person, I realized I was completely losing the design. I realized when the quilt was on a bed, most of each design would be hanging off the side of the bed, so it really wouldn't show. I realized that the scale was all wrong for the design to really show up. I had planned 12" blocks, set 8x8. This layout would have worked out much better had I planned 8" blocks set 12x12, and the quilt would have been exactly the same size. Instead of four huge floral motifs I would have had nine. I could have even opted to make 6" blocks and set them 16x16, and then there would have been 16 floral motifs. Both the 8" and 6" blocks would have been a better option. 

The thing is, the wedding is in July, and I don't have time to start again from scratch. I started looking up curved log cabin layouts, and saw several I liked, but a lot of them didn't work with my blocks. I have 32 blocks where the red logs are narrow and the white logs are wide, and 32 blocks where the red logs are wide and the white logs are narrow. A bunch of the layouts I saw required all the blocks to be the same. Rather than getting frustrated, I decided to just start playing with the blocks, and I ended up going for the simplest solution.

I found several layouts that would work with the blocks I had, but I thought this one packed the most visual punch. Each circle is 2 feet across, which is a better scale to use on a bed. 

I rarely work with blocks this large, so I'm not really that surprised I didn't take scale into consideration. I've made lots of huge quilts, but I rarely make a quilt block larger than 9". I've made plenty of large quilts with smaller than 9" blocks, but I just don't work large scale very often. 

The quilt has a completely different feel than my original intention. I think the circles look pretty modern. The couple getting married are young, freshly graduated from college, so modern may be a better option for them anyway. Good thing I never let a couple choose the quilt pattern or I'd be stuck, but in this case I didn't even let them choose the colors, I used their university colors. 

I still want to make a quilt with my original layout plan, but I'll be using smaller blocks for sure. I've got no time to work on a quilt like that anytime soon, but the idea is saved in EQ, so I can revisit it later. In the meantime, I've learned to keep scale in mind, and that's a good lesson to learn.

He's Here!

The grandbaby we've been waiting for has arrived. I was blessed and got to see him be born!

He's a big boy at 9 pounds even! He was 20.5 inches long. His name is Titus William, but from now on he will be known as Mr. T on he blog. 

They got some really cute pics done at the hospital. These are a couple of my favorites.

In his daddy's hands.

Holding onto Mama.

When he got home we snapped a pic of him on his quilt. 

Now DD#2 has a beautiful family of four. 

I got back home last night, and just crashed. Today was laundry and errands. I still haven't made it downstairs to the sewing room yet. Tomorrow I hope to get my Bernina set back up and all the sewing things that need to be unpacked put away. Likely no sewing tomorrow either, because DH and I are hoping to go see Avengers:Endgame. If I can get everything set back up, I'm hoping for a productive sewing day on Friday. 

Sewing While Away

I sewed like a fiend last week, and got that purple and green quilt sewn into a quilt top. At the last minute, I decided to bring a sewing machine to DD#2’s house for baby watch 2019.

Here is my set up in her guest room. I brought the table with me, but borrowed my SIL computer chair to sit on.

I got half the blocks finished for the next wedding quilt. Ergonomically my sewing setup here pales in comparison to having my sewing machine dropped into a cabinet. Once I finished sewing half the blocks I decided to pack up my machine and finish the rest at home, but having half the blocks finished is a huge advantage once I get home.

No baby yet here on baby watch, but I am having fun with Mr. LJ while we wait.

In this pic he had just heard the garbage truck. That’s why he has such a funny look on his face.

Since I have no newborn pics to share yet, here’s some cuteness from my grandson born in January.