It's a Top!

This past week has been a lot of fun with DS the Younger and his family.

Here is Mr. X knocking down his Daddy's block tower. 

We were blessed with 3 grandchildren in just under 12 months. The blonde in blue (Miss E) is the oldest of those three, and DD#1 and her DH snagged both the babies for a meet and greet. 

Here's Mr. X and Mama meeting the youngest of the latest round of grandkids. 

DS the younger hadn't gotten to meet his nephew yet, and this was taken at DD#2's house. This time DS the Younger and DDIL snagged the extra baby for a photo. These two boys are 4 months apart in age, but now much different in size. Mr. T is a big boy!

I am very thankful I chose such a simple pattern for Mr. J's dinosaur quilt! Even with company, I found a few minutes here and there to sew. This morning after DS the Younger and family left for home, and I stripped the beds because we have different company for the weekend, I sewed the last borders on Mr. J's quilt.

I quickly pinned it up on the design wall, just to take a photo. I'll take a better one once I have the quilting done. I needed to make the quilt longer than the pattern, so I added that strip of dinosaur fabric both above and below the footprint border. The outer border is dinosaur skeletons that glow in the dark, so that should be a fun surprise. 

I have company for this whole weekend, then I have about 10 days before the next round of company. During that ten days I MUST finish the dinosaur quilt. Mr. J's birthday is right after that company leaves, and a doubt I'll have any sewing time during their visit. 

Third Wedding Quilt of 2019

I did it! I finished the last wedding quilt I know of for this year. I've got another nephew talking marriage, but I think it will be next year. 

It was really bright when I had DH take the photo so the colors are pretty washed out, but this gives you the idea. This quilt is 103" square. 

The natural choice for thread color to quilt this quilt was black, but black thread on black fabric causes me so much eye strain I won't do it anymore. 

Instead of black, I chose a dark gray thread for the quilting. It's actually darker than it shows in this photo. I'm starting to make thread choices on what's better for me as the quilter, than what's possibly the best choice for the quilt. A predominantly white quilt can be quilted with a pastel color and it's not glaringly obvious from a distance. A predominantly black quilt can be quilted with gray with equal success. 

I debated quilting some feathers or something in the setting triangles, and that would have looked great. I think custom quilting would have been lost in the busy Asian-Inspired fabrics. I opted for a very organic looking meander, and you know what, something else may have been a better choice, but this quilt is finished, and finished is better than perfect!

This is the quilt where I was so frustrated with the backing fabrics. I had two different 3 yard pieces of 108" wide fabric. The quilt is 103", so it would have been close, but both of those backing fabrics were too small. From selvage to selvage, the fabric was too small to work, so that tells me manufacturers are selling fabrics as 108" wide, but not all of them are. I had to order a backing fabric from the 116/118" selection to get one that fit. Now I have two black backings that can't even count on covering a 100" quilt. If manufacturers are going to short us on wide back fabrics, they need to offer a better selection of 118" fabrics. Honestly, I'd be willing to pay more to get wider fabric, because on some quilts that extra bit is enough for binding. 

I got the pieced borders for the dinosaur quilt ready to sew on. I won't be working on that for a bit, because we've got a family dinner coming up on Sunday and I need to hide my progress from Mr. J. His birthday is in July, so this Nana needs to get going!

DS the Younger and his family are arriving today and staying for a few days. We haven't seen him since he was deployed, and most of the family still hasn't met their baby, whom I will refer to as Mr. X since they don't want his information online. 

So it's family time for me, but I'm glad I pushed myself and finished that wedding quilt! Now I won't be stressing about deadlines during their visit. Now that the dinosaur quilt is my only deadline before Christmas, I've got some breathing room. 

Avoiding Quilty Disaster

I'm not normally a pre-washer. I'm usually a "Throw it in the wash with a couple Color Catchers and hope for the best" kind of gal. Most of the time that works just fine. I have had two big bleeding quilt issues, but of the couple hundred quilts I've made, I thought that was not bad. 

The thing is, when I cut out the red and white wedding quilt last year, I decided to pre-wash all the reds. I even pre-washed the red backing fabric. For all that preparing, it didn't do me a lick of good, because the quilt ran when I washed it (with color catchers!). So now we can make that three quilt bleeding disasters! Not all the white fabrics turned pink or red, but a couple of the fabrics turned really badly. I ran it through the wash a second time, with oxiclean and more color catchers. Still red, washed it a third time, still red. I didn't have the supplies I had used the other times I had a quilt bleed, so I started googling looking for a remedy to try where I had the supplies on hand to try. 

https://suzyquilts.com/fix-fabric-bleeds/

I had Dawn dish soap, so I decided to try this. I put the quilt in the bathtub around 5PM. I added the dish soap, hot water, and agitated as recommended. I checked the quilt before I went to bed, drained the water, rinsed the quilt, and then added fresh water and more dish soap. I let that sit overnight. The next morning all but two fabrics were back to white. The worst fabric was now pink and not red, so better. I decided it would have to do, and I put the quilt in the washer with extra rinse cycles to try to get the dish soap out of the quilt. I checked it after that, decided to try oxiclean again, and threw in a couple color catchers. The color catchers didn't really change color this time. After another wash, again with extra rinse cycles, I decided it was as good as it was likely to get, and tossed it in the dryer.

I think since I had used several red on white fabrics, the pink fabrics don't show up badly. If anyone asks me about it, I'll say I threw some pink in to add depth! Only I know what the troublesome fabrics originally looked like. I do find it kind of funny that none of the WOW fabrics turned color. The last quilt I had run had a bunch of Cream on Cream fabrics, and they took the excess dye badly. 

At any rate, I'm calling this wedding quilt done. I am currently quilting the third wedding quilt. 

I did finish the baby quilt for the upcoming grandniece.

I had some fun with the quilting.

Some continuous curves and a leafy motif.

Some ribbon candy.

And some spiral flowers. It was fun quilting some fun stuff on the baby quilt. I've only been meandering on the wedding quilts and it gets boring. I am fast it it though, and when I'm quilting a giant quilt fast is good. Smaller quilts I am more adventurous on. 

I can definitely see the light at the end of the quilt deadline tunnel!

One Wedding Quilt Down!

I finished one of the three wedding quilts I had to do. It's six months past the wedding date, but, hey, it's only six months late, I've been two years late before.

This quilt has been mailed to the recipients, I had hoped to give it to them in person, but that didn't work out. 

I only have two circles left to quilt on the red and white wedding quilt. I hope to finish quilting it tomorrow, but likely won't bind it for a week or so. The sewing machine I like to bind on is set up to quilt a baby quilt. My sit-down longarm doesn't like cotton thread, and I had the perfect cotton thread to quilt the deadline baby quilt, so I'll quilt it on my Bernina. 

I've also been sewing on my vintage machine. Oh, how spoiled I am to have multiple machines set up at once. It works really well for me. 

I had a bunch of black and batik bonus HSTs from a pineapple quilt I made for DD#2 a few years ago. I sewed them up into blocks this week, and I only ended up getting 37 of them. They finish at 5", so not very big. I decided I'd use black sashing and purple cornerstones to make them go a bit further. This is just them laid out on some black fabric to see how they'd look. I like the purple churn dashes that come up in a secondary pattern. If I set the blocks 6x6 with sashing and a border, it should work for a baby quilt. I'll have one extra block, maybe I'll turn it into a coaster. 

I was assembling the baby quilt on the design wall as leaders/enders while I was working on those black and batik blocks. I only have one row left to assemble before I start sewing rows together. 

I finally cut the panel to size for Mr. J's quilt, and I stuck it up on the design wall just to keep it from wrinkling. Honestly, his quilt will be pretty easy, but how I hate cutting huge pieces! If there is an easy way to cut something accurately 34.5 x 40.5 I don't know it. Yes, I used the lines on my largest cutting mat, because I couldn't figure out how else to do it. I folded the panel in half too, because my longest ruler isn't that long. I was really nervous to cut it. I cut the border that goes around the panel, and I cut all the pieces for the pieced border that goes around that. I have a few more things to cut for his quilt, but I may wait until I have the first two borders one before I cut any more. I'm altering the pattern, but the first two borders are per pattern directions, just in different colors. I have a couple different ways I could go to make the pattern taller, and I think auditioning them then make a decision is likely my best bet. If you are curious, I am using a free pattern found here. Width wise the pattern is fine for a bed quilt, but height wise it should be taller. Mr. J's favorite color is red, so I'm doing a red background on the pieced border, with black footprints. 

This weekend no sewing will be done, it's family time. DD#2 is bringing down the baby to meet the family, so I'll be making a taco bar for a crowd.  They had newborn photos done, and I think this one is just the cutest!

It's perfect with the UP! themed nursery they have going!

Miss E just turned 1 and has conquered the thumbs up sign! She's a cutie, but I might be biased. 

Lots of stuff going on, lots of projects being moved along. I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for this year's deadline quilts, then I can start my huge Christmas quillow project. I plan to make 13 quillows and I likely won't start until August. Nothing crazy about that, right?