Finished or Not Friday: Mini Quilt Retreat Edition

I've got two finishes for March to join in with everyone gathered at Quilty Girl Alycia's for "Finished Or Not Friday" this week! 

Once I was fully back from our recent trip to visit my MIL in North Carolina, it was time to sort through all the things I brought back.  Either I put them away or wanted to try to get some of the projects finished that were started during the "mini quilt retreat" that happened as part of our trip.

Bowl Cozies

In my quilt retreat recap,  I mentioned that I had the opportunity to cut out some bowl cozies using the Accuquilt Small Bowl Cozy die borrowed from a guild member.  

While away I was only able to get them started and get one to the point of being ready to be stitched around the edge for turning right side out.  The good news is I was able to work on them last week and get all of them completely finished!

The "feature" fabrics: three for "Yellowstone" and one for "Bridgerton" 

The insides (or alternate side since these are reversable).

I was happy to get a chance to try the die before committing to buying it.  I've made a few cozies already as I have been making them for us and for friends and family reflecting our favorite TV shows.  

I had been using regular rulers and a few specialty templates to cut them out.  The "tumbler cut" of fabic I purchased for the "Bridgerton" one was small enough (9" x 14") that I had planned to try using the tutorial by Vanessa the Crafty Gemini since her method worked with that size cut --- the other methods I use start with a 10-1/2" square.    

The good news is that this die accomodated the smaller cut and boy was it way easier to cut both the fabric and batting at the same time when I used the die!  I should note here that Accuquilt also has another die that makes a larger bowl cozy but you have to have the Go! Big machine to use that one.  What I was interested in seeing was how the size of cozy the small die makes compares to the ones made with my original methods.  Turns out it's actually pretty good!

Clearly the cozies hold a standard soup bowl about the same with the only diference being pointed versus rounded corners.  I will say that the cozies using my original method were slightly taller.  

However that might have been due to the fact that this particular one (and another one made at the same time) had been made from miscut starting squares and I had adjusted the depth of the darts to compensate.    

Since it seems to be pretty much the same result, I will probably keep the die on my Wish List and wait to see if a good enough sale on it comes up to make me abandon the tools I already have or if I get a rush of requests that make the quick cutting of the die the preferred way to go.    

I do have to laugh though:  a week or two before we left, my DH discovered the allure of bowl cozies!  He had seen me make them and had seen the ones I had made and gifted to others and the two I gave his mother when we visited her previously.  However he hadn't understood their purpose until recently when he was going to heat up a bowl of food and I suggested he use one of the cozies before putting it in the microwave.  

He was skeptical that it could be heated along with the food and I explained that it was because all the materials (fabric, batting and thread) were all cotton -- nothing metallic to mess up the appliance.  When he went to pull the bowl from the microwave he was immediately impressed and a convert!  He loved the concept (and not having to touch a hot bowl) and of course immediately said I should make more, LOL!  

I told him no worries there:  I already have fabrics (as well as a quilt top) for another of our favorite shows that has a new season coming out in June.  So his wish will be my command in about another month or two! 

Pulpit Tile  

Looking back through my project documentation files, this appears to be my third oldest WIP so it's a huge deal to now finally be finished!  

Front

Back.  If I were to make this today, I wouldn't stagger those side blocks!

So the story of this one is that in 2005 I wanted to finally try making my first bed-sized quilt (and since this obviously isn't it, you can see the first one that I actually finished here).  I figured the easier a quilt I attempted, the faster and more likely it would get made.  Looking for easy quilt designs,  I found a simple medallion design in a book I looked at while in a book store.  We were there with our oldest son waiting on the release of the latest "Harry Potter" book at the time.  

The quilt I saw had a large central field surrounded by multiple plain (as opposed to pieced) fabric borders and was made using Provencal-style fabrics.

And only as I wrote this post did I realize that I did eventually buy that very book!

The big book was pretty expensive and still being a relatively new quilter I didn't buy it.  Despite that I figured the design would be easy enough to figure out how to make especially since I had quilt design software at the time.  Yet before even drafting the design (rookie mistake),  I went shopping at a craft store I frequented that was my primary source for quilting fabric since they often had remnant yardage cuts of one to three yards at discount prices.  It was the kind of place that you never knew what you might find in stock when you visited.  

Luckily, I found all the fabrics you see in the quilt with the exception of the purple.  I bought what I thought was enough for each round of a medallion design but when I formatted it and calculated the yardage requirements for a quilt the size I needed in the Quilt-Pro software I used at the time,  I was discouraged to find that I didn't have quite enough of some of the fabrics and that I needed at least one more contrast fabric (preferably a purple) for it.

Later that same year,  I was on the McCall's Quilting magazine's website which now you can access their content through Quilting Daily (who BTW are having a site-wide sale this month for NQM).  I saw instructions for the "Jack in the Pulpit" block and recognized it as one I had downloaded and printed out when I first became interested in quilting.  When I pulled out that print-out,  I "re-discovered" that I had made notes about about how I could use that block in a quilt.  The notes also referred to using Quilt-Pro and when I checked,  sure enough I had the center of a nice quilt all laid out which I hadn't even remembered doing!  

Having combined the "Pulpit" block with a "Snowball" block, the layout created a "chained tile" look that I thought might be interesting with the "Provencal" fabrics I'd purchased.  Even then you were able to scan fabric images into designs and doing so it only took three fabric placement variations to come up with a scheme I really liked.  A quick yardage calc this time showed that I also already had enough fabric for it although I still needed that purple-contrast one.  

Back then when I needed a specific fabric or color like this,  my source was the City Quilter store (still around but online only now) and going there as usual they did not disappoint.  I found the purple calico there and now that the fabrics were all collected,  I assumed I'd start this one right away.  Of course as usually happens, other project priorities meant I didn't actually start the cutting for this one until early in the next year.   

I did get the top done although smaller than originally designed.  And then it sat.  And sat and sat --- for years!  Mostly because I had big ideas about how I thought this "should" be quilted and most of the ideas involved stitching complicated Feather Wreaths and the like (typical rookie ambitions).  None of those were things I had the skill to execute until many years later.  Even once I had them,  I now had other priorities so while I still liked the design, finishing it never seemed to get to the top of the "To Do" list.  

So when planning the recent mini quilt retreat and anticipating another visit with my MIL's longarm, this seemed like a really good candidate for that.  I figured those complicated stitch motifs would be way easier to stitch out using programmed stitch patterns and even better having access to a longarm frame meant not having to baste the darn thing by hand!

Of course, things didn't go quite as planned!  First of all we were pretty busy most of the trip so I didn't get to work on it until the last few days of our stay.  Before heading down to see her,  I had picked out a bunch of potential stitch patterns I thought would work for stitching in the two central blocks:

I did wind up using one of these in the border cornerstones.

However, that plan was quickly dashed because the throat space on my MIL's HQ Moxie wouldn't accomodate being able to stitch the 12" blocks in a single pass.  So plans changed to just doing a simple,  oversize all-over Stipple across the central field of the design.  So the first of this trip's "Longarm Lessons Learned":  consider throat space limits (on her machine, about ten inches) when planning to use block based quilting patterns.

The next issue I realized after I loaded the quilt onto the frame was that before we left home, I hadn't considered what thread I planned to stitch this with.  That really annoyed me because I knew I had both Wonderfil and Aurifil threads at home that would have worked better with it than the only one I brought that came closest:  Aurifil #5011.  My MIL didn't have either color of the other threads I would have liked to use or a suitable alternative in her thread stash.  Ironically she did have two quarter-full spools of the #5011 which did come in handy later on when I needed just a little more thread to finish up the quilting.  

Although the Wonderfil thread I would have used was available at the Quilt Con show we attended as part of the trip,  I knew I had two spools of it at home so really didn't want to purchase another.  Aurifil was also vending at the show but they didn't have the particular color I wanted in their booth.  Nor did I find it at the two quilt shops we visited before I got to work on this and we didn't have time for a run to another that might have had it.

So I started the quilting with what I had since it only really contrasted on the purple.  I picked two traditional-style stitch patterns for the two sets of borders.  The thread and pattern combination was fine on the outer border but the choice for the inner border was an issue:

While that "Rope" stitch pattern fit the "vibe" of the quilt, the fact that it's executed by backtracking (stitching twice) over the curves heightened the contrasting nature of the thread being used.  No bueno!  So I stopped the machine ripped all of that out and choose a new pattern -- one that did NOT re-stitch parts of it so kept the contrasting nature of the thread down to a minimum:

 "Longarm Lessons Learned #2":  When planning to quilt a quilt away from home,  make sure to pick out appropriately blending threads either before I leave home or early in our arrival so I have time to shop for replacements or alternatives.  Also be concious of how a stitch pattern stitches:  does it backtrack thus building up the density of the thread used and will that be an issue for the finished look?

More "Longarm Lessons Learned":  #3 happened when executing the border patterns.  I both revisited and got extensive amounts of new practice on lining up patterns to continue a stitch pattern.  What I learned (with help from this video and this one) is that you want to preferably break the patterns at or create a clear stopping/re-starting point.  I also had some issues with the borders as I got down towards the bottom of the quilt.  It became evident that the inner border wasn't advancing completely square and straight.  For the pattern used in it that presented a problem in that I really needed it to be placed evenly between the seam lines.  

"Longarm Lessons Learned" #4 that I learned from this video and this one was how to map out a skewed or uneven stitch area using the "multipoint" function in Pro-Stitcher and then use the "Skew" function on the Modify menu to fill the pattern in the mishapen space evenly.

Lastly, "Longarm Lessons Learned #5" was about clearing stuck threads in the bobbin race.  I learned that even partial hand wheel turns actually fully advance the bobbin race one rotation!  It's not something you can see unless you are sitting in front of the race as the handwheel is being advanced so you may need two people to do this one.  

I learned that when I saw a stuck thread but couldn't pull it out and the handwheel seemed stuck when I tried to turn it.  Then DH came in the room and when he "rocked" the handwheel,  I could see that the race did advance a full turn each time.  Continuing to do that, evenutally the race moved to the point where the stuck thread could be easily pulled out after which the handwheel went back to moving freely!   Whew, as I've said in the past, every trip is another learning session with my MIL's machine!!

So I'm pretty happy with this finish!  First off because I'm glad to get another "oldie but goodie" done.  I also appreciate just how much of my own quilt history and experiences are wrapped up in the story of its making.  It is a perfect example of this philosophy:

Now I can go and check out how everyone else has advanced their personal quilt history by seeing all the makes that finished up or are in progress this week over at Quilty Girl Alycia's for "Finished Or Not Friday"!