A little bit o'hand stitching makes it all right

Applied the binding to mom's quilt this morning, so now I just need to spend about four (to five) hours or so turning it to the back and blindstitching it in place!

Oh joy!  I love getting down to the final strokes!

You may notice a slight variation from the wide border material (lovely brown marbled Robert Kaufman "Watercolour") to the binding (also a gorgeous brown crosshatch by Kaufman called "Quilter's Linen"), and that is only because by the time I realized I wanted to bind the quilt in the same material as the final front border, it was too late.  I couldn't find any more available yardage of any kind...anywhere!  Not online, not locally, not using pleading messages via the blog.

As it was, I had to hunt to find the 2.5 yards I located for the border - and even then I was cutting it close...figuratively AND literally!

Anyway, with eight borders of varying widths between the back and front combined, the binding was going to be the very least of my issues.  And, as you can see, it really isn't any sort of an issue at all.

Closer to completion

Have about two-and-one-half-to-three-feet left of outer brown border to finish quilting, then on to the roughly 6" square bird centers.  After all of this time I still have no idea what I will do in those portions. 

During the quilting process this afternoon I think I figured I also need/want to quilt the larger sections that remain open between the border area (I am currently finishing up) and the quilted hex sections.  Just don't feel quite comfortable leaving that much open space to the whims of use and time (to say nothing of the cleaning it will receive from my mother).  Yup, those open sections need (DESERVE) quilting.

But what?  Hmmm-m-m-m-m--m--m---m---m.....

Ack!

It's been so humid for the past week - but even more so over the last two days - that I can't machine quilt!

The material is getting hung up on the machine bed, and not slipping and sliding!!!! My shoulders and wrists are feeling it - just can't keep quilting in this weather.

Perhaps today is a piecing sort of day.

Piece out, homies.

Roadblock

Having an emotionally difficult time choosing which way to attack and quilt the border region(s) on this quilt. I thought I knew what I wanted to do, I really did, but the time arrived (over a week ago) to begin marking and quilting......and I can't commit!

I could add a little mod quilting to the overall piece, and because it's so simple I don't think it would clash or detract from the quilt, but then I get just a bit scared.

Then I doubt the decision.

Then.................I do nothing.

I could stay completely "traditional" in the look and add two separate border components - one on each of those two borders - but then I think, "are they too similar, would it be overkill?" and "what would I do with the open chunks in those half squares, quarter squares, and medallion areas?" (you see, I really didn't want to quilt over the birds - around them, yes, but not over them).

I also get a little nervous about not doing any sort of quilting in the space consisting of the cream and wheat strip borders. It's a small space, but it feels like there should be something quilted over at least part of it.So, to fix that quandary I then began to sort through my stash of stencils.

I played with a large artsy oak leaf and acorn motif which could stretch over a greater portion of the brown border and into the next section. From this point I could then stipple quilt in the areas on both sides to fill it in, and make the leaves and nuts stand out.

Any thoughts from anyone out there? Do any of these combinations look like a winner?

I am at a roadblock and need to get moving to recover my lost time on this quilt. Help! Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Update: quilt-@zz-kicking-thing

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:

As of 7:29 PM, I have ten completed hexes quilted today! Only fourteen remaining to stencil and stitch and then it's on to the first of the two borders. Stay tuned -- that is, if you're keeping track.

Original post, earlier in the day -- 6 down!

Four more marked, and......

GO!

Kicking some major quilt @zz

Dear diary,

Today, I did pass the halfway mark with the hexes. Happiness.

Tomorrow...who knows.

20 of 48 'down'

Still have the lion's share of hexes to quilt, then the borders. Can't tell you how much I am looking forward to moving on to the borders!

Today my plans are to keep chipping away at the hexes, hopefully whittling the to-do portion down to less than half. Tall order, but I feel up to it today. The weather is fine, and I am knuckling down.

Time

It is taking nearly as long to get the design stenciled on as it is to quilt each section, and this heat is not helping at all.

I am so drained after 30 minutes of hoisting the quilt and maneuvering it into position under the needle, straightening and smoothing and cajoling just to have a handle on it for guiding it to and fro, that I want to walk away from it until this heat breaks - but I know that is a bad idea. I cannot afford to lose the lead time I have for getting this particular quilt finished. I am ahead of schedule and I want to stay there!

The girls are as angst-y and fertummelt with the weather situation as I, but they refuse to head to the lower level for some relief during the heat of the day. They lie scattered around the room, ready to pounce onto the quilt should I walk away for a bathroom break or to refill my water glass.

If I were a smart cookie, I would forgo the stitching and get the lower level ready to work in and then move us lock-stock-and-barrel to the cooler area!

I am apparently not a smart cookie, and in truth, I am actually feeling more like a low average Twinkie right about now....maybe even an underachieving King Don.

Maybe I should just go wash dishes or do some laundry and spend some sweaty time away from the quilt. Probably would be better in the long run for the quilt, eh?

First stitches are in!

May have to pull them out and re-do them after it's all said and done, but this train only runs downhill from here on out!

The camel-colored thread was a better choice than a brown. Thanks, Barb. ; )

Two months to the day

To. The. Day!

I began the Ocean Waves in April - the beginning of April - while I was struggling with those two classes and studying like a fiend. Wasn't paying enough attention to the math portion of the quilt making process, and managed to put together a lovely set of mismatched-in-size hexes with the central square.

They were perfectly pointed and stitched together, but darn it all if they weren't a hugely wrong size for the center square they surrounded!

I lost a lot of time ripping out all of those seams, reworking the math and re-cutting those pieces, because I hadn't enough of the material for a couple of those fabric choices to cut new triangles! And it wasn't as if I could go out and buy more of the central square material, either. Some of those fowl fabrics were hard to come by in the first place; but the whole truth (or the greater portion of it) was that I hadn't the funds to do any more shopping....so I was sunk unless I could make the changes work and simply 'adjust' everything I already had cut.

Usually my way to cope with stress is to sit and sew - fairly mindless once you get into a rhythm...and usually fairly harmless, too. I can relax and ruminate, unwind a bit, and then get back to whatever problem it might be that I needed to get back to and conquer with a better attitude - and a game plan of some sort.

Well, since it was the sewing that was vexxing me, I really had a mountain of poo to shovel through.

I ended up re-sizing a tremendous amount of triangles by trimming off 1/8" from three sides of those already cut triangles - hundreds and HUNDREDS of them. And if you're thinking to yourself: "Of course she cut off the excess from three sides of the triangles - they only have three sides!" Think again!

If you're a real quilter [wink] you'll know there are five face cuts on a triangle - the two extra being at the two non-right-angle points.

Anyhow, I am digressing - of course.

I began the quilt initially on the fourth of April, but after discovering my error, and having to regroup, I put it aside until the 14th, and began the sewing anew with all proper-sized pieces at the ready! Today is the 14th of June, and I have the quilt sandwiched and pin-basted, READY FOR THE QUILTING PROCESS!! Two months to the day - and it feels good.

I, of course, will keep you posted on the quilting.

Tee hee, now I can begin to work on the commissioned turquoise and purple string quilt!

The borders are on...

...and the top is finished! FINI!!

Thought I had made a drastic error in sewing together the long strip components of the border (5 strips per side - three of them less than an inch finished), and was about ready to cry, then set it on fire. Turned out it wasn't a drastic mistake so much as a REALLY close call.

Mitered the corners this morning (yes, all five strips), and now I am trying to assemble the back so that I can get this monster stretched and basted...today!

Yup. I am on a mission - and so is Flop! She wants to be the first to sleep on the new quilt.

Wahoo!

Just four series of rows to join together and then on to the borders!!

[cheering, high fives, confetti]

When I sat down at the machine this morning, I still had a lot of triangle points to pin together (and sweat over) - and I wasn't looking forward to it. But now I can see the end of this particular tunnel, and I am jazzed again.

With a long time-out (in order to drive Bud to work), I am once again approaching the massive pile of pins and awaiting iron. While on the road, I took a few minutes to do some 'rithmetic and found that in just the major rows/seams alone, there were 184 points to match and pin! This does not include all of the incidental matching to get the smaller components of each block of triangles (within the hexes) to match.

I am now ever so glad I decided to make the Ocean Waves portion smaller and put a rather decadent set of border rows on instead. With any luck - and few interruptions - I should be able to piece together the border bits and hopefully get started adding them to the whole configuration before having to drive back to Fenton to gather Brian and get him back home.

Yup, I have made a good dent. Once the individual rows were together I still had 23 intersections (triangle joints) to match and pin for each pair of rows....eight times over! So, as I said, I am jazzed to be this far...........finally.

Wahoo, indeed!

Moving along

Three and one-half rows to assemble, then the borders!

OK, maybe not exactly. That's sort of wishful thinking, I guess.Maybe it's more like: Assemble the three and one-half rows, sew the rows together, then the borders....THEN the backing (assembling and stretching), and then I can sandwich, baste, and begin the quilting.

Wahoo!

But, in all honesty, because of the poor lighting (the sun and clouds are not cooperating), I am growing weary of pinning all of these dadblamed triangle points!

Some progress

Not enough, but some.

I actually managed to grit my teeth and commit to the layout, stitching together a good many of the hexagons and making it/them permanent.

16 more hexes to assemble (32 color matches to get together - some are already done, thank you Barb and Jean), and those pesky half squares and corners to cut, then it's all downhill to the border(s) and backing!

Good for me!

Ahoy! (more quilt punning)

The brilliant AM celestial light was quite helpful this morning. It perfectly illuminated the current condition of the Ocean Waves quilt, currently underway (I promise, this will be the last nautical pun.....for this entry).

As you can see, I've painted myself into a bit of a mini corner over the past couple of weeks, but I believe I have also managed to extricate myself from the corner this morning. So, now - against my better judgement - I am going to forgo completing the last twenty or so hexagon combos before sewing together the next sections already pinned into (tentative) place. After having looked at (and loving) most of the current layout for the better part of this week, I am satisfied (enough) to commit the layout to permanence.

The color combinations were meant to be rich and off-kilter, dazzling and sparkly when viewed on the whole, but to be subtle in their eclectic-ness. I wanted it to feel like a very well-integrated old world brownstone, in a New York-neighborhood, without a care for social 'norms' - but not so hip that it rocks the boat.
Sorry, that last line was not an intentional nautical slip.

Oh!  Neither was that.

[flinch]

I fully intended to insert brighter and darker combos in punches throughout the top (without making a pattern of it), so when your eye takes in the entire piece, I am hoping the balance of colors - with those playful light and dark highlights sprinkled all around - will frame the birds and please the eye.

I guess the only way to know will be to keep working diligently on days like today, matching and cutting and laying all together....getting as much completed as possible, until the playing and fiddling is over and the quilt top is complete.

Wish me luck, I am diving in! More later.

Decisions, decisions

Have I covered this title already? Ah, well. Que serra if I have.

My love of scrappy quilts comes naturally from my great grandmother on my father's side. She was grandma's mother (and they were both diminutive women), and small as she was, she could move mountains, Grandma Biddle could!

Her entire life she was a go-getter, my great grandmother -- right up until the very end. And I am wholeheartedly convinced that she would still be around had she not been knocked down by a neighbor's dog and broken her hip! While she was bedridden she came down with pneumonia and died at the tender age of 96....and that was over nineteen years ago!

She was the one who instilled a love of quilts (and quilting) in me. Her treasures to us grand kids were lovely and lasting, and I believe I quilt today because I originally wanted to make a treasure for each of my sons (at least, I would hope they would be treasured), and to replace the quilt she made for me (which someone had stolen years back).

Where is she going with this? How does this have anything to do with decisions?

Fast forward many moons and you'll find me at any time sorting wistfully through a wonderful stash, attempting to pair just the right 100% cotton ingredients into a brilliantly colored scrappy-looking top. I think the beauty of those older gems is in the basic fact that the material assortment was not as varied and contrived as ours is today. Those quilters worked with what they had, or with what they could trade for - or scare up from discarded clothes and feed sacks. I admire that aspect of their creation process, and the lovely combinations they stitched together. Their decisions were limited to exactly what they had on hand - nothing more and nothing less.

When I plan a project I am always noticing that at some point in the accumulating process I inevitably veer into a scrappers mentality - without starting off that way or meaning to. I may have a great color scheme planned, and everything worked out around one or two basic materials, and all the material I need stacked up ready to go, and I will still begin to play with slipping in another dozen (or two) fabric pieces to widen the assortment and dazzle the eye!

Why?

I have no idea, but rarely do my quilts ever end up exactly the way I initially envision them, or plan them to look. They're usually better, but almost always different than the intended scheme.

And here I am, as usual, stymied for the moment trying to accommodate my hideous indecisiveness. I've made myself a pile of too many decisions, and now I need to pare it down. Waahhh!

Minor dilemma

How should I cut this half-square for the top half-row?

The second and third photos do show a slight difference, in that there is more of the dragonfly showing, and the feather along the bottom right would break out of frame if I nudge it a bit more - which I am thinking of doing.

Anyone brave enough to chime in and send a response?

Last mid-term tonight

....then, it's back to regular weekly tests and studying (or rather, studying for weekly tests).

Weekend forecast: Looking forward to working on the newest Ocean Waves and making progress; and...meeting up with a HS friend to pick out material for a quilt she has commissioned me to make (for a niece of hers who is getting married this fall). We also need to discuss the size and pattern she would like to have made. In addition, the pockets on a pair of Bud's work slacks are disintegrating - they're more hole than pocket any more - and those will need replacing as well.

So, more progress photos by Sunday evening and perhaps some news, too.

Have a great rest of your week, wherever you may be!

Piece-ably -- b.

Darn it! It's like M&Ms

I keep going back to the sewing table. In this gorgeous daylight, I just can't keep away!

Imagine what I could accomplish if I had all of the pieces already cut and I gave myself permission to play!