and back to CQ

 I decided to finish the faerie blocks as wall hangings in groups of 4














 I used batting to pad the panels and sewed ribbon between the blocks to frame each one.




You've seen them all before but now they are all cleaned up nice














A simple hankie hem for the backing




so it won't show on the front, much.






 I've finished 3 so far and have 5 panels left







but they are not all matchy-matchy enough to pull together in one piece
                              

   and one isn't done yet





 so I don't know what I'll do with them.



A two piece wall hanging and three singles? 


Fit them to box tops?

A book?                                                     I dOn't knOw!

Happy memorial day

Today I honor all those who served, from my family and the thousands of others who gave of their time and some their lives to this country.

 Two pictures of my son of whom I am and always have been very proud.

When he was 3 he told me he wanted to drive a tank, his favorite movies have always been military/service oriented, even the sci/fi ones.


He wads in the ROCT program during H.S. and entered the Army and was sent to Afghanistan.

He has always tried to be the best person he can be, followed the rules (mostly) and does his best, every time.

despite his becoming a 27 year old grown ass man, I still see this little punk.

Every. Single. Time.

It makes me smile and my eyes leak at the same time.

I certainly am

I do try to keep my politics and atheism off my blog but every now and then you must at least make the attempt to speak out.
I only apologize for disturbing your Zen if this is where you find it.

What is happening in America today is Bullshit.
Promulgated by cowards.
Promoting the worst impulses humanity has to offer.
Spearheaded by a moronic puppet king.

If this offends some of you, too bad.
You should check your moral compass and fix it because its broken.
And no I don't care what the pet theory is out there for the continuance of this farce.
Go pedal your sick twisted ideas elsewhere, they will get no purchase here.

It's going to take decades to undo all the damage this administration has let unfold out into the world.
Black and brown people are not ruining America.
Old white entitled people who are so out of touch with Humanity, they are seriously threatening the world, are.

This may not be something that you all are interested in so fair warning
This video contains awesome vocal abilities by Sophia Urista
the music of Rage Against the Machine arraigned by Andrew Gatsukas
and is just as powerful if not more so than the original because this shit keeps happening....

https://www.facebook.com/brassagainst/videos/403790526761756/?t=362

Again, my opinion, back to sewing beauty.

Hawaii Shop-Hop part 2

 Still loving this mode of stain glass window quilting!

The ladies who chaired this committee should get a solid round of applause and a hearty handshake for picking some really beautiful fabrics!

Though I will warn you, the fabrics for the Strings shop are , In my never-to-be-humble opinion, kinda lousy. 
None of the greens or blues match any of the other colors within the set so keep your scraps!

the Strings" panel

The Sand colors did OK blending

as would the grey rock colors have but I wanted a more cohesive look to my blocks so I used the rest of what was already in the "lava" kit


 and with all of these I did supplement what we were given in the kit because, me!

The Panels get trickier and more fussy if you follow the course I took to put them together.
Which I heartily recommend because if you start with the beautiful bottom left one with the bromilliads and hibiscus you will be very sad, as it is the fussiest cut of them all!

I did have to fiddle and trim on each block it became more and more needful as each one got more and more complicated.

If you started with the flower block you may just give it all up as too dificult because this one is.

But it is so choice when its all done!

fussy cuts trimming and even had to replace and add a few pieces that that weren't there.

I'll need to drag out my old war horse from pasture to finish this up into a flimsy.

I hope she doesn't hold her retirement against me and decide to stop working all together! 

that's all I need anOther machine in the shop!

Oh, another thing about piecing these together, be sure to Iron the foundation to the WRONG side of the fabric! I oopsied that one in a few places. Shh! Don't tell!

So, Heres the thing....

I broke my machine.
                                 I am very sad.
                                                       i dropped on the floor and cracked its little head.
the repair guy says he can fix it, believe me hae's seen worse.
                                                                       goodness only knows what this is going to cost my purse.

Star Adventure #6 finishing up

 At least of one top, anyhow.

I thought of using all the blocks on one quilt but it was such a cacophony of color that I had to break it up into two

This works much better and isn't such a blast

Still a swirl of color but the black in between gives your eyes a rest

I suppose I could have composed this one better but you know how it is at the end of a long project.

The desire to get it done and off your table is sometimes more important than design

I was also running out of the original 'Grunge' black i was sing and at this stage I couldn't find more for love or money.

Well Poo!

so the next best thing will have to do and eqilter had just enough to finish but not much more!

Well heck!

This is why the back has that batch of pieced leftovers from the quilt I made my husband for his birthday a few years ago.

I need a volunteer to get a better picture of the finished quilt. I tried to get on by standing on a chair outside but no happy.

So I should have better pictures after I finish quilting the other top. I've got the back mostly pieced, funny story but I'll save that for next time

Stainglass quilt

 I diiid iit Myyyy waaaay!

This is so simple it should be illegal!

Trace pattern onto  steam-a-seam, cut pieces

Iron steam-a-seam to fabric, cut-out fabric pieces

Iron pieces onto background and

Voila!

                                   Done!

These are so easy I've done 3 in 4 days




Isn't the pattern divine?

Its from the hawaii shop-hop on big island.
they do it the whole month of february

This year was a coordinated pattern that fit together to make a whole top.

Instead of individual blocks with coordinated fabric so if you miss a few shops no big, Like in washington's version.

It makes more sense to do it that way here
but on big I, there are only 6 shops,
easier to do it this way.

You have to hit all the shops so everyone gets shopped

And you get a nice tour of the whole Island

so far so much fun!

I'm thinking of running a class at Gathering fabrics on the technique.

I'd need a simpler pattern though, this one does take a learning curve.

using the blank side of the steam-a-seam for a starter, ironing on the wrong side of the fabric,
making sure you iron a sharp seam the size of the piece so you have a guideline to follow...

The star adventure part 5

so here we are at the last set of blocks in the series,

I think there may have been one or two patterns more but honestly I'm stared out.

Time to put them all together. Funny thing, I made 18 blocks all together and it turns out I've enough blocks for two whole quilts!

so off we go to the fabric store to find enough material to finish the sashings and then I'll worry about the backing and binding.

I wish I could have done a better job matching the corners on this one

But as I discussed before I had a limited amount of fabric to work with and as I predicted one mistake and you end up with not enough to finish a block.

Well I finish this one but had to monkey with the corners so they are way off, P-hoo!

The star adventure part 4

And again, Not quite the look I was going for in block one but getting better.


I would have helped if I had had some goldish star fabric bUt no. ad no I am not going out and buying more!

I'm very proud of myself, all the quilts Ive completed in the last year have been from my scrap bin and yet there is more.......

My goal is to buy as little fabric as possible and then just for finishing purposes like the back, sashing or bindings.


so far so good!

This one was fin to do as its constructed with all HST's
(half square triangles)

but a real challenge to keep straight while putting together

For my piecing wall I tend to use the louvered curtains in the front room where my sewing stuff is.

This is handy because I can fold and unfold them as needed to the full length of the sliding doors

which is a hundred inches + wide so I can easily do a king size quilt up there, it would just drag on the floor a bit.

The other nice thing is the morning sun does wonderful things to quilt blocks.
I'm almost tempted to make  a curtain for it, almost.

star adventure part 3

So these are the next few blocks in the challenge.                                                           the larger blocks in this series are the first ones tried  and so are a little off.                                                                            I'm learning more about that whole  don't put too many busy fabrics together thing.

                      It's the difference between a muddy looking block and a crisp block.                                                                   In the two blocks I made smaller you can see each fabric even though the picture is half the size.

Also tones were important here, I thOught I was going the graduating colors rout but that was not where I ended up.
They are still nice serviceable blocks but not the clear crisp outlines I was going for.

finished the Russian fairy tale quilt

So this got done in between all the star making

yay!

Each block has a border of ribbon, Each ribbon border is different.

I did this mostly to cover up the yellow I used to make the blocks the right size to fit the sashing.

To quilt the large border squares I used a template for the first time to do feather quilting, one big feather on each rectangle.




There is a learning curve, a new foot for bernie and some grey thread that blends really well with the many, many colors I used.

Here is a close up of one of the blocks and the ribbon I used.

I sewed it down on either side and folded the ribbon at the corners.

it works really well to cover that ugly yellow fabric.

The backing (isn't it gorgeous?) the blue and gold sashing were the only things I bought for this quilt.
so I'm still on track to buy ALMOST no new fabric for finishing.

And Molly approves so it must be good.

The star adventure

You may remember this pile of fat quarters fro the last post


but I need a refresher on how all this silliness started

so back to the beginning I go

I have since used all those fabrics (yay!)

and am now putting the whole blessed mess together

Ive had fun with this project,

I find it interesting how you can make the same pattern do different things by changing the color, tone or pattern of fabric

and finding out what works well together and what does not and what just looks like a hot mess might be mitigated by the border you put around it


I also didn't follow their directions exactly,

as you will notice, if you care to go to the site, there is a lot of waste and overcutting in her directions. so I took short cuts.

Mostly because I had a limited supply of my focus fabrics and one mistake,

like cutting a quarter inch to small or wide meant I might not have enough of a fabric to finish a block

So I did a lot of re calculating to use my stash to its best advantage.

The most used techniques in this whole challenge are flying gees and Half square triangles so once you have a good grounding in those ( a chart doesn't hurt) you're off an running

Adventures in sanity

As you all know I have been taking a break from crazy quilting,
Its not a permanent on just a cleansing, as it were.

I feel the need to have projects to do that can be finished quickly, mostly to keep my mind busy on things other than news, which I've switched off. For those that know me well that is a BIG deal as I am an itinerant newsie and have been since high school.

I'm still working on slow stitching and have several projects in the works but I'm a little brain fried with them right now so they will dribble in slowly as I get around to them.

I find it best to set things aside and work on something else when that muse has left the building, rather than trying to force it along or worse yet, let it sit there and stare at me, mocking my inability to create.

So instead I have taken on the NQS 9week quilt block challenge

looks like its going to be a fun quilt to make

It's much bigger blocks than I'm used to working on but I'm seeing the benefits to the larger format

the finished quilt if you follow the 9 block model
is 60"x60

but I want a bed size quilt so my first challenge is to make 2 of each block then pick 4 extras to make it long enough for a queen size bed.



my second challenge is to use as much of my star fabric stash as possible,



its mostly fat quarters with a few 1/2 yards mixed in so far so good

Blocks 2 and 3 have turned out spectacular!

Every thing I could wish for

nice defined points no missing ends or offset panels

notice how I said 2 and 3

Block one was, nice, bUt

was 2 whole inches to small, each finished block should be 16", this one was 14" NG

the pints were mostly fine but wonky in the crotches.

aaand the middle star has almost no definition between colors and so reads like a square at a distance, instead of a star.

Foo!

and I followed the directions too! Double foo!

so I took my stars destiny into my own hands and resorted to my comfort zone for making flying geese, instead of the stated directions

and it worked! whee!