Whew! September and October were quite busy life-wise and as a result my blog became a victim of neglect. Fortunately that was not the case with my quilting and in fact a lot of the busyness was related to it! The good news is that having those projects helped during yet another time when having things either in the works or with deadlines helped to keep my mind focused during times of stress.
Equally helpful is to have hosts like the lovely Quilty Girl Alycia to provide a place for us to "jot this all down for posterity" through her weekly "Finished Or Not Friday" linkups!
So here are the things I worked on these past two months and that I am pleased to say also made it to the finish line (and this is your official "Long Post Ahead" warning!!!):
Finish #1: A Fall Flannel Raffle Quilt (try saying that three times fast!)
One of the potential stressors was that I thought I would need a raffle quilt on short notice for an Art Show my community garden had announced in mid-August was being planned. When word of it was shared at our monthly meeting, my expectation was for a late September or October show as we have held in the past. I quickly came up with an idea for a display of my quilts with the theme being -- appropriately enough -- "Fall Quilts" and made a pile of the ones I planned to display.
Having successfully made a quilt to raffle off at our last show two years ago , I knew I would be expected to do the same again. As such I went with the same simple design for it: I decided to make another 9 Fat Quarter Disappearing Nine Patch quilt. The good news there was that I already had a great bundle of Fall colored flannels purchased during a shop hop last year. Eight of the fabrics in the bundle were from Holly Taylor's "Endangered Sanctuary" line for MODA and the cardinal print was from her “Cardinal Reflections” line.
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| This was it laid out on my design wall. |
When I opened the bundle, I had been surprised to find that one of the fat quarters in it was a border print that featured images of woodland animals (you can see what it looks like as yardage in the fabric line link above). Not what I had expected but great for the purposes of this FQ design! It did require a bit of fussy cutting and then cutting and sewing up the FQs a little differently than in the normal "disappearing block" process in order to get them placed properly in the final layout. I liked the way it all worked out in the end!
For the backing, I was fortunate to find and purchase another print from the "Endangered Sanctuary" line which I used to fill out the center of the back and for the binding. I filled out the rest of the back with a brown tone-on-tone flannel print I had leftover from making this quilt from a good while back. Just proof that leftovers and scraps can be helpful stash too!
I got it done right before we went on our last camping trip for the season during the last weekend of September. The campground provided a great place to get a nice picture of the finished quilt in an apropos location!
Unfortunately, a date for the Art Show still hadn't been announced by the time of our trip and the following weekend we were scheduled to travel down down to North Carolina for our annual Fall trip to visit my MIL. So the good news is that if they do the event next year, I already have everything I need to participate!
Finish #2: My First Quilt of Valor Donation!
Speaking of North Carolina, we last visited there back in February. Since my MIL is also a quilter, our visit is usually also a mini quilt retreat for the two of us. On that trip, I joined her quilt guild since I have attended both general and "bee group" guild meetings and workshops as a guest with her over the last couple of years. Her guild is the Tar River Quilters Guild and they have many subgroup "bees" and many Community Outreach projects that members can participate in and contribute to. When I joined, I picked up two outreach quilt kits one of which was for a Quilt of Valor which included fabric for the top and binding and a label.
The guild holds a QOV presentation ceremony every November and the QOV tops have to be submitted by the end of September to the quild member that longarms them. At the time I joined the guild, the rule was that you submitted a backing with your finished top so I had purchased fabric for my kit before we left NC (it's the blue fabric with stars at the top in the picture above). I had the usual "quilter's expectations" to get both of the kits done before we returned for our Fall visit. Of course, it took my MIL reminding me about the QOV submission deadline to finally get it started in August, LOL!!
By that time, the donation rules had changed: the guild had received a funding source for their QOV efforts so now, you just submitted the top, prepared binding and $20 and the member doing the longarming (who is also co-chair of the "Patriotic Bee") would provide the backing, batting and the quilting. The pattern for the kit was a simple one but it turned out that the fabric balance in the kit left a little to be desired and the fabric provided for the borders was a little short too!
The good news was that now that I no longer needed to submit it, I was able to use some of the backing fabric I had purchased to help me come up with a color distribution that was pleasing to me for the layout in the center. That then left some extra bits of the remaining fabrics provided in the kit to craft pieced borders that helped stretch the white solid that had been provided for that purpose.
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I did have to do some more work on that
lower right border before sending it though! |
I managed to get the top done and the binding prepped by the end of August. The top, binding and a label that was included in the kit and now with my name written in as the maker was put in the mail back to NC so it could be submitted for quilting in early September.
As noted earlier, we were scheduled to return to NC the first weekend of October and would be there for two weeks. I expected that the quilt would have been quilted by the time we arrived and that my task in the first few days of our arrival would be to attach the binding and sew on the label by hand. Well imagine my surprise when we attended the bee meeting and I learned that my quilt was not only quilted but had already been bound and the label attached!
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| The quilt displayed at the monthly guild meeting. |
One of the guild angels had already handled the binding and label application for me!! So I am happy to say that my very first QOV donation will be presented to a veteran at the guild's November meeting tomorrow! Unfortunately, I won't be there for the ceremony but hopefully will be able to get pictures of the presentation from the guild newsletter or my MIL.
The Patriotic Bee has decided to push for members to submit QOV tops all year round to take the stress off of getting them prepped for the ceremony as it would seem that I was not the only one that waited until close to the deadline to submit their top. I am already looking forward to making another top for the guild that I can have ready for our return in February (and check out my sidebar to see what else I will be attending in NC that month!). I am also once again encouraged to push forward in getting the four (!) QOV tops I've already made quilted and find out how to donate them in my own community at their annual Veteran's Day ceremony.
Finished Quilts #3, #4 and #5: Results of a 3 Yard Quilt Retreat
As I said, when we visit my MIL, she and I usually have a mini quilt retreat. When we go down in the Fall, it is also during the time that there is a Shop Hop in her state. So we also spend a few days visiting the quilt shops that are within a couple of hours drive from where she lives. As a result, I try to take projects that are either simple to piece or don't require alot of mental focus since whatever work I do on them in the limited time we have together will be interrupted by shopping, guild meetings or other community events or activities that she wants us to attend with her.
For this trip, I decided to make my focus the many kits I have compiled to make "3 Yard Quilts" by the Fabric Cafe. We both love the designs they come out with which are often great inspiration for our shop hopping or for stash busting. I will admit that I now have too many kit bundles already put together so it actually kept me from shopping for more on this trip! My hope was to piece up some of the ones that I already had and even better, quilt them using my MIL's longarm.
On that end I was somewhat successful as I did get these three at least cut out, pieced and quilted before we left after that two week stay:
While all of these got pieced and quilted, only one also got bound. Once we returned home, one of the remaining two still needed to be trimmed. So the story of those quilts are:
#3: The Barbie Quilt!
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Back with a label area pieced in and using a cheater print
which was also used as one of the fabrics for the top. |
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| Fabrics and quilting detail. |
The inspiration for making this quilt was our trip to NC last year for the funeral of my MIL's sister. My DH and I had traveled down for it with one of her two remaining sisters and that sister's daughter and granddaughter. At the time, the "Barbie" movie had recently come out and despite the sad occasion, we managed to have a lot of fun talking and joking about "the world of Barbie" with the granddaughter during that trip.
When my DH and I returned to NC earlier this year, I had come across some "Barbie" related fabric on a trip to Hobby Lobby and just knew I had to make a quilt for that little girl with it. The pinks in the two prints I found coordinated perfectly with a patchwork cheater print that was also on sale so I immediately made plans to work on a 3YQ to give to her. With it all done, it looks like it can now definitely be a Christmas gift for her this year!
#4: Another Sn'Gnomies Quilt!
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| The back is fleece. |
This too is another quilt with a prior trip provenance: right before our trip in February, I had pieced another 9FQDNP quilt as a birthday gift for a long-time friend of mine. She's a big fan of Gnomes and I had found a FQ bundle using Shelly Comisky's "I Love Sn'Gnomies" flannel fabric line for Henry Glass Fabrics. In the process of stashing for that project, I wound up buying a lot of extra fabric due to the timing of the arrival of a print I had originally planned to use in the backing of that quilt and needing to buy more of a directional print in order for it to work in that design the way I wanted.
So when that project was finished, I still had quite a bit of stash left over that I thought would be enough to make another quilt. Then when Joann's went out of business earlier this year, I saw some fleece fabric that was the perfect color to go with the leftovers. I had used fleece as backing for a quilt some years back and loved how the quilting looked on it. When I finished quilting this one, I had trimmed it in prep for binding which is what you saw in the picture at the start of this reporting section. Unfortunately, I was just short of having enough of the Aqua Snowflake print I preferred for the binding so had to get a little more of it. When it came in last week, I was then able to complete that last task.
And it looks like I'm not done with this fabric line! I often receive sales promotion notices from the Annie's Attic catalog site and even though I was not planning on buying anything, I figured I'd just take a look to see what they were offering --- I know, never a good idea! Well what did I see but a kit on sale to make one (or possibly two) rag pillows made in this same fabric line! I had purchased the starting FQ bundle and a panel for the quilt I had made back in February from Annie's so was not surprised they might have more of the fabric still in stock.
I actually like making pillow covers and have never tried making a "rag quilt" style project before so I admit I was intrigued. What was not totally clear from the kit description was if the kit did supply fabric for just one pillow or for two. Even so, I was not sure I had a need for two pillows since I really don't even have a personal need or person in mind for this quilt right now. However, it was a tempting (and cheap) enough idea that I decided to look around both to see what the process of this technique involves and to see if there were any other rag pillow designs out there of interest that I might even be able to make from the fabric I already had left. Sure enough look and ye shall find!
I found this even less expensive kit on another website and liked that it was definitely for one pillow and was bigger than the one (or ones) made in the Annie's kit. That kit has since arrived and now is on the list of projects to tackle in November!
#5: The "Cheers" Quilt
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| More flannel fabric for the backing! |
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| Fabric and Quilting Detail |
This one was also the result of a prior trip but it was the camping one in September! Well actually, this also started with the Joann's GOOB sales as I found the licensed "Cheers" prints there. At our prior garden Art Shows, everyone always asked if I sell my quilts. I am leary of doing so only because while we quilters know how much fabric and more importantly time costs in making a quilt (and if you've never thought about that check out this post or this one), I believe most people seem to put the value of a handmade quilt at what they can pay for a mass-produced one in a store.
However, I do believe you can convince people to accept a rate closer to what it actually costs if you can make a quilt personal enough to them. I think wedding, baby and t-shirt quilts fall into this category but I also think "themed" quilts around movies and TV shows could do the same. So when I saw the discounted licensed prints, I thought they would be good prospects along with the fairly quick to make 3YQ designs for some potential "for sale" quilts.
And that was my plan for the two sets of fabrics I coordinated together (I have another fabric that features framed B&W pictures of the show's characters) and the plaid flannel that I bought for backing and binding both. That is until we went on that last camping trip for the season at the end of September. We have been camping with a co-worker of my DH who has organized trips for a group of family, friends and co-workers for the last five years and we have gone with them the last two years.
This last trip we took was to scout out a potential campground for next year's Memorial Day weekend trip. We camped at Lake Taghkanic state park which is actually the very first one my DH and I camped at over 30 years ago!
So we were excited at the chance to check it out with her as well as a chance to take a trip down memory lane. While there were a few things that were the same as we remembered like the lake with the beachfront swimming area:
However, by and large we believe the actual campsites and campground set-up is way different now than it was all those years (no, decades!) ago.
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| Our campsite and setup this trip. |
While there are still some ground tent sites, we don't remember there being any platform sites back in the day!
During one of our stints around the campfire, his co-worker mentioned a fondness for the "Cheers" TV show! Well, you know what immediately went off in my head: Gift Quilt!! She knows that I quilt and has seen the quilt we use that has now become a permanent part of our camping kit (which can be seen here). We had also talked a few years ago about her commissioning a quilt from me. While this isn't the design we talked about, I was really excited to make and give her another one in the meantime in appreciation for all the work she does in planning and organizing the camping gatherings we have attended.
A Short Aside about Longarming
I want to again note that these last three were all quilted on the longarm my MIL purchased back in 2023. Ever since, every trip down has been a chance for us both to learn more about using it. She has a Handiquilter Moxie that came with a tablet to run the Prostitcher stitch patterns software. However back in June, the battery on the tablet malfunctioned (the term she was told is "exploded") and caused the back to pull away from the front of the tablet. She has been waiting on a replacement so this was the perfect time to learn some lessons and get some practice on how to quilt free-hand or free-motion on her machine. We had actually tried to do a bit of that on our last trip earlier this year but now were forced by circumstance to really dive deep into the process. As is with doing free-motion on a domestic machine, it takes time and more importantly practice to get comfortable doing the stitching without the machine guiding it.
We also once again started off dealing with tension problems and so once again learned more lessons about how longrams work. This time it was realizing that when you thread the machine -- and unlike when you thread a domestic machine -- it is not enough to just guide the thread around the upper tension disk area.
In the case of the longarm, you actually have to be sure that the thread is "popped" between the disks. We started off experiencing lots of looping on the back of the test pieces we stitched only to find out that the simple problem was that the thread wasn't actually seated between the disks! Once we resolved that, the tension balanced itself and we could move on to improving our free-motion skills.
I've done more free-motion on my domestic than my MIL has on hers so I was a little more comfortable with it than she was. However, we both got some stitching on actual quilts done and both can see where more practice in the future will definitely help us improve! That doesn't mean we don't also look forward to getting the tablet and pre-programmed stitches back though, LOL! We have also discussed that on the next trip down we are going to go halvesies and invest in a ruler base and she is going to purchase a ruler foot. She already has a couple of rulers and I will bring down the ones I have that are made for longarms and that will be our next scheduled longarm lesson!
Whew! If you've stuck around this long, thank you! I know it's a lot but this is what happens when you don't blog for a couple of months! I should note that there was also quite a bit of cross stitching going on during this period but I'll save that for another post! So head back over with me to check out what everyone else has to share this crafty week at Quilty Girl Alycia's for Finished Or Not Friday!
