More "On Ringo Lake"

The color scheme for Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery quilt -- “Ringo Lake” -- is Chocolate browns, Turquoise, Corals and Neutrals.  Since a lot of my home is decorated in brown and early in my "Quilt Career" turquoise was one of my favorite quilting colors, she had me at hello!  Even better, I was able to find a few good things in stash to start me off.   Digging for turquoise led me back to some “oldies but goodies”. For instance, I still had about a fat eighth of this Jinny Beyer print:

That was used in my very first quilt project from 2002:

 

The Jinny Beyer fabric was used for both the binding and the backing and was the only fabric I purchased for that project -- the rest came from my clothing sewing stash and the floral was from a garment district dumpster dive!  I didn't want to invest a lot of money in this venture back then because I wasn't sure if I was going to want to keep doing this "quilting thing".  Guess that question has been answered!

I was also able to re-purpose parts of an old UFO that I have long debated about either going back to or abandoning.

I started this so long ago, I don't even have any notes of when I did so (a rare thing for me).  It was to have been my first mystery quilt project and was from the Fall 1999 issue of Quilt magazine. At the time I didn't have a good 1/4 inch foot and after sewing a bunch of triangle squares realized they weren't the size the pattern said they should be. Back then that was enough to discourage me and I put the project aside saying I would go back and fix them “at some point”. Yeah right!  Needless to say, since then I've done a lot of projects and more than a few mysteries but this one never moved from its position at the bottom of the “To Do” list.

However, I did remember this project when it came time to look for fabrics and in fact both the turquoise and the neutral fabric I had used in it are now part of the “Ringo Lake” story.  After taking into account what I moved over to the mystery project,  I saw that I still have a lot of the HST units that had already been attached to plain squares:

Hmmm, they look good like this.  I'm going to also keep these pieces handy and see if I can maybe incorporate them into Ringo Lake somehow --- maybe a border or for the back?

I also did a dive into the "Scrap Users" bin for strips in the project colors:

I didn't get a lot from there but at least these were already cut so ready for use.  I was also able to pull some more stuff from the big stash of fabric I won from Vicky over at the LA Quilter blog four years ago.

Even with all of that and a few other browns and corals from  stash, I still needed to do some "stash enhancement".  I guess that's another good reason for Bonnie to start these on the day after Thanksgiving -- "Black Friday" sales are a big help in the stash enhancement department!

So all the gathered stash is in the box on the right.  So what's in the bag on the left?  Why it's my (now old) "En Provence" stash!  And why is it out you ask?  You didn't?  Well I'm going to tell you anyway -- in the next post that is!

Catching Up On Quilt Labels - Part 4: For The Finale, the Cardinals Are Back!

...or I should say the Cardinals are (finally) ON the back!

I finished piecing this back in March of last year but it has taken until now to finally finish the label for my "High Strung + 2" Christmas quilt.   This journey started back in December of 2014 when I was able to get the book "Christmas at That Patchwork Place"  (published in 2001).  It was of interest to me for one big reason:

This is the "Cardinals" wall hanging by Deborah Moffett-Hall that is in the book.  When I saw the Cardinals design in a "Stitch This!" blog post on the Martingale site at the end of 2014, I just knew I had to have the pattern because back in 2008 I had made this:

...another wall hanging also by Ms. Moffett-Hall which had appeared in the December 1997 (#298) issue of Quilters Newsletter magazine.  That time, I had reduced the original by half (made the finished squares 1" instead of the patterned 2") and used it to make a label for this:

This was my first Christmas quilt, a free Block of the Month offered by Debbie Mumm in 2008.  

After I got the book, I wondered how I wanted to make the pattern up.  At the time, I had already started work on the "High Strung" quilt but it wasn't until I was finishing up the top in May 2015 and needed an idea for the label that I thought of this design.  I decided it would be fun to "continue the tradition" of using Ms. Moffet-Hall's designs as a label for a Christmas quilt.  Knowing I had plans to custom quilt the quilt because of all the applique on the front, I decided not to plan to piece it into the backing (which had not been purchased at that point).  When I finished (hand) quilting the quilt in early 2016 and was finally ready to make the label, this time I didn't change the size of the finished piece because leaving it full size would help me solve a problem:

I bought the backing fabric for "High Strung" after I had to commit to hand quilting it (because both of my sewing machines went on the fritz) and with the idea that I'd be stitching the header area with a light gold thread.  The thread I wound up getting and using was actually cream colored -- fine for the background I was stitching on but now not so great for the backing fabric I had chosen.  So the label size was perfect for covering up (most of) the light stitches on the back! 

Most of the fabrics used in the pieced picture came from my stash but some (the cardinal bodies, the gold border print and gold splattered label area) came from fabrics I won back in 2013 in a "de-stash" giveaway by Vicky who blogs at LA Quilter.   The light green and gold print was purchased at last year's New Jersey Quilt Fest show (which is coming up again in March).

Construction of these pieced-picture designs are fairly simple:  just follow a piecing chart and fill in squares, HSTs and "tipped" squares (squares with a smaller square sewn diagonally to form a triangle in the corner) in the appropriate color to create the picture.  In the border, the design has appliqued "berries".  Lucky for me, I was working on this right after I purchased my Accuquilt Go! machine so could make short work of the 35 (!) circles that needed to be cut to fill out the design.  I was able to cut them with fusible web already attached to the fabric (and luckily I had just restocked some Lite Steam-A-Seam 2) which made it easy to position them and fuse them down before sewing around the edges.

I really expected to get to this during the year but it wasn't until December when I made the Label Pledge that I was finally motivated to make a push to finish this up. Unfortunately, just as I started stitching down the berries, my primary Janome machine malfunctioned (again).  Fortunately, I had my Euro-Pro backup machine serviced over the summer so it was able to jump right in and pick up the slack. 

Then the issue was how to finish it.  Just do a (pillow turn) facing with a backing fabric and sew it on?  Add piping into the edge?  Add binding?  In the end, I decided that I wanted to quilt it.  I had some of the binding fabric from the quilt leftover (and already cut) so figured I could finish the edges that way so it wouldn't even need the extra layer of a backing.  Then was the challenge of "quilt whispering" (how to quilt it?).  Even once I was ready for that, the next challenge was the fact that it's been years since I've free-motion quilted on my Euro-Pro and it took a while to get my muscle memory and coordination back and being able to stitch well on that machine.  Maybe because I was stitching on batting only, I found I had to stitch at high speed with stitch length set to "0" and with the feed dogs up (which is what Leah Day does) to get half way decent stitch length control.  I don't remember using the feed dogs up in the past with this machine but hey, whatever works!

The "back" after the quilting was finished.

After it was bound, the last bit of the puzzle was to tack stitch the center of the label onto the quilt (on Saturday) and then sew it down around the edges yesterday as part of a Slow Sunday Stitching session. 

I admit, in the end this was a bit much to do for a label.  In the future, I'll have to carefully consider whether I want to do a label as complex as this and see if there is a possibility of piecing it into the back before quilting the quilt rather than quilting the label separately.

The good news is that with this finished, every quilt I have made now has a label and I have fulfilled the pledge I took with the Quilt Alliance.  There will be no anonymous quilts in my future (so it is written and so it shall be done)!  Please do your descendants and future quilt historians a favor and do what you can to add a label to your quilt projects.  The world should know that you are the astounding creator and craftsperson behind your wonderful quilt!

Project Recap: Do Something To Crow About

This is a very small project that's very long on process so be forewarned! 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To start, some background on this project:  back in 2013 I saw this little wall hanging offered on Ebay:

I loved the sentiment and the little bit of applique on it.  While I liked the format of it and homespun backing/binding, I wasn't sure where I'd hang it and wasn't jazzed about it as an addition to my décor.  Looking around, I realized that I had on hand all the materials it would take to make it myself and I had an empty frame that hangs at the entrance of my living room that I had long wanted to make a little mini project to fill.  I figured that a variation of this little piece would be the perfect thing to fill that frame.  Initially, I folded up my printout of the listing so that only the picture showed and put it in the frame as a reminder/nudge.  However, it was  long time before I came up with any definite ideas about how to translate the design.

Over time I came across a few pieced or applique heart block designs that I thought might work but it wasn't until I saw a quilt with pieced Double Heart blocks that I got inspired.  I liked the block because the hearts are made with my favorite block unit:  flying geese!  At that point I searched through my stash to find fabrics that would bring the simple block to life.  I found some in an coincidental place:  earlier in the same year I saw the listing, I had won a big stash of fabrics from blogger Vicky of the LA Quilter blog who was trying to downsize her stash.  I've been keeping that stash separate with plans to do a series of quilts from it.  I found the perfect pieces for the hearts in that stash as well as a great fabric for the crow.  

That same week, I was also looking through magazine back issues and found the perfect crow applique in a pattern by Lynda Hall of Primitive Pieces by Lynda in BHG's Sew Scrappy Vol 2.  Her project in that issue is called, fittingly enough, "Lots To Crow About".  With that name it was obviously destined to be added to this piece!  So I made my hearts (the extra flying geese will be added to the "Orphan Blocks" stash) and copied the crow template, figuring out how much to reduce it to fit the size of the piece to be made for the frame:

and then cut out and added the crow applique:

Now I needed to add the embroidery.  I typed out the phrase in a word processing program and then played with fonts until I found one I thought I could render in embroidery.  I quickly realized that transferring the words to the piecing was difficult because you can't use the "light box" method to transfer your design due to bulk from seams and the applique.  I found a few tips (like this one at Barbara's Cat Patches blog) that suggested using Sulky's Fabri-Solvy, a printable water soluble stabilizer for projects like this.  The problem was that at the time I wanted to work on this, I couldn't get to the Joann's near me to purchase the stabilizer and knowing I could get it locally, didn't want to mail order it.  So I came up with another solution:  why not take the example of  Golden Threads Quilting Paper and transfer the design to a light weight paper that I can print out the words on and then stitch over and tear away.  

Golden Threads pictures courtesy ConnectingThreads.com

I didn't have any Golden Threads paper either but I did have the next best thing:  tissue paper that you use for wrapping gifts!  I pulled some out and ironed it onto freezer paper (the quilter's multi-tool!) so I could send it through the printer. 

Sorry for the fuzzy picture but you get the idea!

This gave me my embroidery template and stitch guide which I pinned to the piece with applique pins.

I should note that this took more than a few tries to get right: as you can see from the previous picture, the first time I printed it out I printed it in black -- not at all helpful when you're stitching with black thread!  After switching to the more visible red print, I had to work on how to render the stitches.  Originally I tried replicating the thickness of the font with Satin Stitch and then an Outline stitch -- neither worked well with the Perle cotton thread I was using (I tried it with both size 8 and size 12).  In the end, I defaulted to working with the Perle 8 and using a simple backstitch and just did a simple outline of the font letters to get the job done.  This is only the second embroidery project I've done this year so I'm still getting my "sea legs" on this craft which I haven't tried since I was a teenager!  I also added an embroidered flower and stem as was done on the inspiration piece, using the Perle 12 threads I've been using for my wool ornaments. 

With the embroidery all done, I layered the finished top with a remnant of wool batting and this piece of backing:

I had this in my stash with a note attached to it that said "For Quilt Label".  The original yardage this comes from is cotton fabric that I got back in eighties!  My best friend from high school and I worked at garment district accounting firms back then.  We also sewed then so did not turn down offers of free fabric (hmmm, sounds like some things haven't changed!).  She had gotten the fabric from one of the companies her firm did work for and split the haul with me.  When I started quilting, anything cotton that was in my sewing stash was fair game for quilting so this cotton print was handy for a number of projects.  It started off as the stash for a Stack 'N Whack project (that is still a UFO I'm afraid):

....and was used to make pieced fish blocks in this project (from 2007 and recently posted about here):

Used here to make the white fishes with the rainbow stripes.

..... but found its real usefulness as label fabric:

After the layering, I quilted the piece with simple diagonal quilted lines.  As I had hoped, the wool batting combined with the tight background quilting made the hearts and crow "pouf up" just a bit to add more texture to the whole thing.  My last plan for this was to add small prairie points to fill in the areas around the applique and the block.   Have I mentioned that I'm into gadgets?  For a while I had wanted to try Susan Cleveland's Prairie Pointer tool (be sure to check out her videos) and figured that the very small (1/2" high) points I needed for this would be a good test for it.  So I chose fabric from my stash of 1-1/2" scrap squares and made the points:

The tool worked fine (although I look forward to trying some of her more decorative styles).  We're almost there!  Here is the finished piece before framing (finished size 4-1/4" x 6"):

...and here it is in the frame:

I realize that I should have more carefully measured what the finished measurements of the inside of the frame was.  The finished piece was a little too tall and had to be squeezed into the frame which means the top and bottom points got a little shortchanged in terms of visibility. 

Just before I did the embroidery on this little piece, I read this great post by Bonnie Hunter.  She viewed an antique quilt exhibit at the Vermont Quilt Festival and it inspired her to do a post on "Lessons Learned From Antique Quilts".  It's a good read and the gist of it is that quilters of the past made gorgeous quilts with a lot less tools and materials than we have now and a close look at their quilts show them to often be far from perfect.  So there's no reason for us to get all bent out of shape about our projects.  Just finish it already and love it when it's done!  In fact, 100 years from now, some one may marvel at what YOU made and how you did it!  Considering the issues I had completing the embroidery, that advice could not have come at a better time!

Note:  Also on Bonnie's post is a great sideshow of the quilts from the exhibit (click here for the thumbnail shots if the slideshow doesn't view).  Do also read the post itself for Bonnie's insightful comments about the details of many of the quilts.

So I'm glad to get this little one done and glad to get a chance to flex so many creative muscles while doing it!  Hanging this little piece near my quilt space will be a reminder that (as I commented on Bonnie's post) just finishing something is an accomplishment in and of itself! 

Getting Back To Work - Part 3

Just wanted to get this posted before I have to head out today.  As I've said in my last few posts, I've been working my way back to my quilting.  When I posted earlier in the week, I showed how messy my cutting table was -- definitely an impediment to doing any sewing.  Lori Kennedy over at the Inbox Jaunt did an Open Line blog post on Friday asking quilters to share about whether cleaning their space led to more productivity or new ideas.  I know that when I'm in the midst of a project, the clutter doesn't bother me but when it comes time to start something new or restart my creative mojo (with all due respect to Mark Lipinski), the clean slate can be invigorating!

That said, I've cleared the design wall....

 

...and cleared the cutting table....

....and cleared the sewing table....

....so now what's at bat?

I decided to start with the Thea's Puzzle Quilt since it is simple, improv stitching.  It's a perfect warm-up!  The picture shows the final audition of the placement of the wedges for the blocks.  I sewed them together last night but with DH and I headed out to volunteer at a Father's Day event today, I probably won't get to trim and square up the blocks until tomorrow.  While stitching the wedges together, I also started on another little project that I was able to use as a leader/ender:

 

A long while ago I saw the little heart applique wall hanging (lower right) on eBay.  While I liked it I had no where to display it.  What I did have was a frame about the same size that hung in my living room and needed to be filled.  The simple design inspired me to try to make something inspired by it that could go in the frame.  I found the perfect fabrics in a stash of fabrics I won on Vicky's LA Quilter blog a few years back when she was trying to downsize her stash.  I've been wanting to put together a few projects that highlighted what I received and while I have a few ideas for those projects, this is the first one I've been able to push forward.  Looking forward to doing a little applique and embroidery on this one!

 

A very Happy Father's Day to all!