GROW LOVE

This has arrived, and I'm thrilled.

Stars In Their Eyes is a group of quilters who met on the now defunct 3x6 Sampler Quilt Mini Bee. (That was a great way to get started in an online quilting group.) We wanted to keep sewing with each other when the group folded, and started with each of us taking a turn as Queen Bee, and receiving blocks we asked for from each of the other members. I made my Feathers quilt with blocks from SITE. It's one of my all-time favorites.

Next, we decided on a round-robin exchange. Each of us would state a theme and make one or two blocks to start our own quilt, then send them to one after another. Every six weeks we'd add to another member's quilt in subsequent order, until the quilt came back home. Along the way, we posted sneak peeks of our work, but the final outcome would be a surprise. I started with this:

Hand appliqued, I stitched this last summer while I was in Pittsburgh with the little family.

I needed something to work on  while I was away from my sewing machine for five weeks!

Here are some of the teases my bee mates sent. I knew they were making good stuff, but I didn't know what to expect.

I certainly didn't expect a whole, complete quilt top! And a true medallion quilt, with borders going all the way around! And such artistry- well, I think I knew it was going to be great. But really, this is so, so great! I love the colors, the designs, the balance, all of it!

It's hanging over the couch, next to me, and I stare at it, loving it. I can hardly wait to quilt it, but I'm enjoying it as it is, for now.

Not all the quilts have made it home, yet, but all that have are fantastic. You can take a look here and here and here and here. This has been a lot of fun. I think everyone loves their quilts as much as I love mine.

While I keep vigil for the mailman...

Here's another UFO (unfinished object) from the closet. I wanted to sew something, but didn't want to start on a new project. (More on that, later.)

I was part of a swap; lots of little squares sewn together and sent to one another around the US to make scrappy patchwork quilts. Then I got tired of the patches all crowded together, and re-shaped them into asymmetrical blocks and sewed them together. Then I got tired of the whole thing, and put it away.

I mindlessly sewed some neutral strips around the edges, then wondered why I had bothered with that. Then I got distracted by all those little pairs of squares that had been saved with the quilt top. Had I meant to use them as a border? A scrappy binding?

Now I thought I'd like to just sew them up as a traditional patchwork.

Then I quilted them, using one of my favorite designs. As I'm sewing, I see all the little wobbles and inconsistencies, but when it's done, the overall design takes over. My not-so-circular lines appear as lovely, interlocking circles.

Even better once they've been washed! (Yes, we're in a drought, so it had to wait to take a ride with a full load of laundry.)

I sewed two panels back to back, to make a pillow. No piping, no zipper, because I wanted to see the checkerboard pattern all around. I'll just stuff this one, and sew it shut. When it needs to be washed, I'll un-stitch it and redo it, no big deal. Nice, summery colors, soft, squishy, ahhh.

The quilt top? It's back in the closet. I'm clearing the deck, getting ready for this to come home:

A year ago, I took a workshop to learn hand applique, and made this big panel. (Pattern by Piece o' Cake) Then I sent it off to its travels to the different members of my Stars in Their Eyes quilt bee. Each one, in turn, has added to it, and today it's supposed to come home to me via USPS! I have no idea what I'll get, but I have seen what we've been adding to one another's tops as it's been my turn on their travels. I'm trying to keep my mind open, to be ready for anything, but really, I have great expectations!

First Finish - Feathers!

Feathers is my first quilt finish of 2014

I'm part of a very friendly and creative online sewing bee called Stars in Their Eyes. When I asked my hive-mates to make me two feathers using Anna Maria Horner's pattern, they all said it was a block they'd wanted to try, and they produced some gorgeous feathers! My instructions were to use fall colors, including purple and aqua and blue, and to use any gray for the background.

I realized, when I'd received all the blocks, that I could put them in an ombre arrangement, which is quite fashionable these days. You see hair, clothing, cakes, all sorts of things with a color gradation from dark to light. I made a few more blocks to complete the rows, and sewed them all together.

When I saw it all together, I knew I wasn't going to give it away as a gift, as I'd first thought, but I was going to keep it for myself! Then I started thinking, maybe I'd make it bigger, because it would look so good covering a bed. Should I make more feathers? I didn't really want to have more feathers made by me, and I wasn't patient enough to wait for my next turn in the bee to ask for more feathers made by my hive-mates. I auditioned some borders, but they detracted from the geometry and bold colors of the feathers.

I like our feathers better than these printed feathers.

It was one of those evenings when DH was out of town, and I was reveling in being able to stay in my sewing room, and I could set up the ping pong table in the garage to spray baste, that I stitched up the quilt back and put the layers together and marked my first few lines and started quilting it! Time to "git 'er done!"

Have I mentioned how much I really like
the crinkly texture a quilt gets when it's been washed?

I quilted chevrons: big, wide zig zags, another current fashion. (Because I'm so stylish like that... ha!) I really like how the quilting plays with the angles of the feathers, and how it crosses the lines where the background grays change from one tone to the next.

I realized after I'd started quilting it that I'd forgotten to sew the "siggy" blocks into the backing of the quilt. Each of my hive-mates had made a small block with their signature on it. As you can see in the photo, I trimmed them to circles and hand appliqued them to the soft, gray flannel back.

Thank you, Lisa, Sam, Sue, Becky, and Brandy!

The binding is in a text print, in reference to the online conversations that I enjoy so much with this bee.

Here's the big reveal!

If only my photography skills were better! 

Cozy and stylish in my family room.

Linking up with Lily's Quilts: Fresh Sewing Day

and with

I Quilt at Pretty Bobbins

feathers

I wanted to name this post "the birds and the bees," referencing this quilt block and the ladies in my online quilting bee who are making it . I named my last post "Orphans," which attracted lots of traffic to my blog, but for the wrong reasons. I wonder what kind of traffic and comments I might get with "the birds and the bees" as a title!

July is my month for our Stars in Their Eyes bee. (This is an online group of friends who take turns making quilt blocks for each other.) I’ve chosen Anna Maria Horner’s Feather Bed block, one that really caught everyone’s attention when it was introduced. I’m really excited to see my friends’ creations of this bold and colorful block!

Sam of Cup of Tea and a Slice of Cake has already made two blocks for me, here's her first!

The instructions for making this block start with making a fabric strata (a lot of fabric strips sewn together) to cut multiple vanes (side sections of the feathers) from. Since I’m asking my friends to make two feathers for me, and variety is a goal for these feathers, it makes more sense to me to paper-piece the individual sides.

On my first try, I pulled out a pile of strings from recent projects. Most of them were 1” to 1.5” wide, and the vanes ended up taking 12-16 strips to finish. It created a dense texture, and since I was experimenting with monochromatic strips, they’re kind of serious looking. I thought they were too dense to make both sides of a feather like this, so I paired each vane with a single fabric for the other side.

The feathers in the pattern, and the feathers Sam made already are bright and colorful, I like them better than my first attempt! So I tried again. This time I pulled out 2.5” strips, and looked for color contrast between the strips. Here’s a suggestion: I paper pieced the vanes, and removed the paper before I trimmed the shapes, because the bias edges stretch out of shape easily. After I removed the paper backing, I traced another pattern piece onto freezer paper, then ironed it onto the sewn-together strips, placed my ruler on top of the pattern,  and cut out the shape. Freezer paper has a waxed backing that adheres to the fabric when ironed on, and it peels off easily without leaving any residue. That made it easy to line up the pattern piece with the strips angled correctly, and to cut without the pattern shifting.

Another suggestion is one Sam made: cut the background pieces bigger than you need, so you don’t have to get the angle and alignment perfect when adding the background to the feather. This is especially advantageous when adding the little wedges at the top of the feather.

You’ll notice, too, that I used two different values of Kona gray fabric for the backgrounds of the feathers I made, and they are different from the gray Sam used for the blocks she made for me. Any gray fabric is good for these feathers. *Black background fabric is acceptable, too.* Use what you have, what you think works best with your feather fabric. The quill, or shaft of the feather can be any neutral color, too.

When you’ve sewn together the feather and the background, I’m asking my friends to send two unfinished feathers, not sewn together. Each feather block should be 9.5”x18.5,” but I won’t mind if they’re a little bigger, or even a little smaller.

I hope my friends will have fun making this block, just as we did making Lisa's x&+ blocks and Sam's Union Jack blocks.

Orphans, the fabric kind

It's the end of the school year, and Friday, May 24 was my last day of work for the school year, part-time intervention teacher for kindergarteners. No, wait, there was testing to be done, so I was called in to work the next week, and Thursday, May 30 was my last day. Oh... more testing, so I worked again on Monday, June 3, and that was my last d.... except that tomorrow is a mini conference day so I'll work as afternoon sub in kindergarten. And then I'm officially on summer vacation!

With all this off-and-on schedule, I've been snatching opportunities to tackle and finish small projects. I really enjoy being in the 3x6 online quilting bee, and I'm part of a really friendly hive again this quarter. Since our hive is specifically making star blocks for one another, and I've been making stars for the last few rounds of the bee, I was happy to find a star block that's a little unusual, but still not paper pieced.

I figured out how to make it after seeing it on Karen's Flickr! photostream, and found some focus fabrics for the centers, and knocked out the blocks in a weekend. Fun! (If you want to see them in more detail, visit my Flickr! photostream.)


In the last quarter of the 3x6 bee, our hive was so friendly, we formed our own bee, Stars  In Their Eyes. For May, Lisa requested X&+ blocks in a specific color scheme, intended for a baby quilt. These blocks are really fun to make! I wasn't satisfied just making two, because I was eager to see the effect of putting them together, so I made four. (To see the gorgeous quilt Lisa made with her blocks, look here!)

The X&+ blocks are so addictive, I decided to make some for myself, and to use up some of my scraps that were starting to overflow my scrap pockets:

I keep scraps in shoe storage pockets, hanging on the door.
You can see the greens overflowing here!

I cut scraps and kitted them up, and started making blocks.

I kept making blocks until I had so many, I had to make more, so there would be enough for a bed-size quilt. I think they lose a bit of their charm when there are so many, but I'm still planning a quilt big enough for a bed, a very utilitarian quilt.

Laid out on the floor for effect, not sewn together yet.

June is Sam's month for our bee, and she asked for Union Jack blocks. After cutting on the wrong lines and making one too small, I successfully made these blocks, and I think Sam's quilt is going to be very charming!

That too-small Union Jack block wasn't going to languish in my orphans basket. I quilted it, piped it, backed it, and stuffed it, and made it into a little cushion. 

Pebble quilting and kelp quilting finished this mish-mash of leftover parts, and it got made into a pillow, too. This time with a zipper.

Detail of quilting. 

The scraps from my zig zag quilt top also got made into a pillow cover. I may be late to the party, but I love how arranging the half-square-triangles by value (light/dark) creates the diamond design. 

Pillow back with zipper, quilted in diagonal grid.

Scrappy binding, quilting echoes the flowers on the backing.

Here are my no-longer orphan pillows at home with their family of LWR quilt and other cushions. 

Meanwhile, I've been giving sewing lessons to Gabrielle, initiating a new sewist into the stitching community. We started with a pincushion, then a shoulder bag, then a pillow cover with a zipper, and here she is with her first dress! I'm so proud!

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday!