February Trip Review #2: The Mini Quilt Retreat

 My MIL is also a quilter so when my DH and I visit, she and I also have a mini quilt retreat!  Athough with all the projects I brought with me (and one picked up during the trip) this was more of a "maximalist-mini retreat",  LOL!!  This covers the two weeks we were there so this is your advance "long post warning"!! 

As usual, I brought a lot of projects down with me as I can never be too sure what I will get to or feel like working on day to day.  So here's all the stitching and quilty doings during our stay: 

#1.  I had brought down the "Year of the Red Horse" cross stitch project I had been working on.  When I left home it was here:  

I was able to get everything including the numbers for the year (but not the orange highlights) and brown outer border line done before we left on Sunday.  I finished the highlights on the numbers and the border and center floral accents in the car during the the first half of the drive home.

Now it's ready for "fully finishing"!

#2.  I was also able to finish stitching down onto its background the last half of the "Hexie Snowflake" block I had set up before we left.

Pinned....

Stitched!

I actually brought all four of the blocks for this wallhanging project as I was hoping I could get them all done and bring them home ready to constuct the top.  Nope!  

After stitching that block, I only managed to get the papers pulled from half of the next block.  Part of the reason was that I forgot to also bring my "Sixth Finger" stilleto tool.  Ironically I saw one at the Quilt Con show we attended but at almost $20 I decided to try to just find a tapered cuticle stick to use temporarily.  That turned out to be hard to find too but eventually I got one from a manicure kit sold in Dollar Tree.

"Sixth Finger" Stilletto vs Cuticle Stick

Since it is thicker than the stilletto, it was a little harder to work the glued fabric loose from the papers  so it took longer to release them than it had for the first block.  As a result, I only got half of the papers in the second block out during our trip and then finished removing the other half in the car on the last leg of the drive home.  When we got back home was I able to pin it to its background so it's now ready to be stitched down.

#3.  I've visited my MIL enough that I had often attended her guild meetings with her if they were scheduled during our trip.  As a result, last year I joined the guild as a "long distance" member!  We arrived on a Friday and the next day was the Guild's monthly meeting.  There was a great show and tell and some of the Guild members did a presentation on one of my favorite topics:  adding labels to quilts! 

After the meeting,  my MIL and I went to purchase a ruler table and foot for her Handiquilter Moxie longarm.

We agreed to go "halfsies" on the purchase.  I had brought down with me all the rulers I have that can be used on a longarm.  

The plan for this trip had been to try learning to do ruler quilting on her machine.  To facilitate that I brought my "Modern Bohemia" project with me as I originally had plans to ruler quilt it at home anyway.  

When we got back to her house, my DH helped us install the table onto the machine.  Later we took it back off the supports that hold it on the machine as my MIL had a project we needed to quilt but would be using programmed stitches for that.  

In the end, we never did get around to doing the ruler quilting lessons so it looks like those will have to be a project for our next trip down!

#4.  Long aside for a back story:  Each year "our" Guild (still feels a little funny saying that) does a member challenge.  Sometimes it's a specific project, other times it is making a quilt in a specific color or using a specific type of fabric.  Prior to us coming down, my MIL let me know that the Guild had announced that this year's challenge is to make a Log Cabin quilt.  It can be in any design of your choosing for presentation to the membership at the June meeting. 

This is right up my alley!  Every since buying the Accuquilt Log Cabin die as my first BOB purchase, I've been obsessed with the idea of making a lot of Log cabin quilts.  I think this block is one of the most versatile in quilting next to HSTs or Flying Geese.  I believe that you could spend your whole quilting life just making LC quilts and never make the same design twice.  Heck, you could make the exact same block layout but color it different ways and still have them all look different!   

So this was my opportunity to bring down two projects that I've long wanted to make.  

Years ago I regularly followed the blog of Elaine Adair and back in 2006 she designed a quilt called a "Rebuilt Log Cabin" (the one on the left).  I always thought it was such an innovative and unique looking Log Cabin design so of course wanted to make it.  However, this was also well before I had the Accuquilt die so while I collected red fabrics for the block centers,  I never really focused on all the other cutting that needed to be done for the rest of the blocks.  However, once I had the die, I planned to make it using scrap strip cuts like the ones stored in the box shown.  

Eventually, I discovered another design that also became a "want to make priority" that could use the same scrap cuts:  Carrie Nelson's (of Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.) "Raise the Roof" (on the right).  I generally kept these two patterns sitting by each other as I believed if I had reason to make one,  I'd also start making blocks for the other.  So with the Guild Challenge in mind, I brought both patterns and the LC Strips box down with me figuring I'd see which I wound up working towards.  

At the Guild meeting they announced there'd be an open "Sit and Sew" session the last Saturday of our stay.  So I figured if I didn't get to these before then, I'd get a chance to sew some blocks up on that day.

However, I also had another "must make" priority LC design I've long wanted to do.  

From the American Patchwork & Quilting December 2020 issue.

In the spirit of Quilt Con, this one is a bright colored log cabin quilt made in what I like to refer to as "mod" fabrics.  The fabrics I put towards this came from the stash I built when I had decided to make the "Modern Boehmia" quilt referred to earlier.  I pulled some background prints from my stash to put with them for the lights.  I also added a bunch of fabrics purchased in 2024 when Keepsake Quilting had the Andover Fabrics "Century Black on White" line on sale which I thought would also work well for this.   

This project has been sitting in a project bag ever since.  When I did the Just Get It Done Declutter Challenge earlier this year,  I thought this would be an easy one to tackle in order to free up the bag.  So I also brought it along on this trip to add to the Log Cabin fun!  I should note that it is a little diffferent approach to LC as the blocks are pieced "Courthouse Steps" style and the "logs" are made using 2-1/2" cut (aka "jelly roll" but not pre-cut) strips. 

I figured the priority was to cut the fabrics for this project first but that wound up taking two days to get done.  Then busy with other things and interrupted by the four days spent at the Quilt Con Show,  in the end I only managed to leader/ender the center of one block before we went home.   I should note here that we got word the day before the "Sit and Sew" session that it was being canceled because the heating sytem malfunctioned at the meeting center they were going to hold it at.  

#5.  Also in the spirit of Quilt Con, I brought the pattern, a sweatshirt and charm squares from my scrap stash to work on a "Charming Hoodie" that I hoped to wear to the show.  I picked up some addtional supplies I needed from Hobby Lobby once we got down to my MIL's.  

However, even though I started working on it about five days before the show, I had to alternate focus on it with some of the other projects that follow.  So I only got the sweatshirt deconstructed and prepped for adding the charm squares to it.  

I did get another coordinating charm pack of tone-on-tone prints at the show so am actually happy about what they will add to this once I can get back to it.  

#6.  Another benefit of being in the Guild is that members lend out Accuquilt dies they have.  I've enjoyed making Bowl Cozies for a while now using square ruler cuts and templates to round the corners and cut the darts.  However, I've long wanted to try the Small Bowl Cozy Die to compare the finished size of it to the method I've been using before committing to buying it.  My MIL let the member who had it know and I was able to pick it up at the meeting we attended.  

I had brought fabric for four Cozies (three "Yellowstone" and one for "Bridgerton") and immediately cut them so I could return the die ASAP. 

I did get them all stitched to their batting.  I started the darts on one of them and got another one pinned and ready for stitching around the perimeter but that's as far as I got.  However, I plan to work on finishing them up them so I can add them to my next "Finished Or Not Friday" post.

#7.  For Black history month my MIL volunteered to make an "Underground Railroad Quilt" for a presentation at her church of the "Quilt Codes".  A few years ago she had borrowed the one I made and used it for a similar presentation and ever since has wanted to make one for herself.  Using the Eleanor Burns book as I had, she had been piecing it over the last couple of months but was having problems with a few blocks.  So when I arrived, we worked out the kinks on those and I helped her decide on the final sashing and border fabric.  

This was the first project to get longarmed on this trip.  We discussed potential stitch patterns to use and finally settled on doing "Baptist Fans" which I was familiar with from having quilted one of my quilts on her machine using that pattern two years ago.  This is when we took the ruler table we had purchased off the machine.  

The good news is that we spent the two days before Quilt Con getting it done which gave her time after our show days to trim the quilt and prep and apply the binding for the presentation that Sunday.  

Since Sunday we'd be at the last day of the quilt show,  my DH was given the task of delivering the finished quilt to the church and helping set it up for display.  The presentation was made by one of her church members and assisted by my MIL's friend (also a quilter) who had retired to her town last year.

On display at the church.

#8.  The day before the first day of Quilt Con, we went to the home of one of the chairs of the Guild's "Patriotic Bee" to pick out fabrics for "Quilt Of Valor" kits.  This is also the member who owns the Bowl Cozy die so I returned that on that trip too.  

The guild had been able to purchase fabric for members to make these quilts because of a grant they had been awarded.  It was my intention to get fabrics for two kits:  one was to fill out the additional fabrics needed for a pattern called "Picture That" that I plan to use with a panel I am donating.  

I was able to get the fabrics I needed and since I only brought the panel down with me, I'd wait until I got home to add in the other fabrics I have and work on that one.  

I also picked up enough fabrics to make another top called "Freedom Stars".  My hope was to try to get this one to a top before I left.  I got it all cut and partially laid out and where I could, I pieced the star points.

I did them as Flying Geese as it was also an opportunity to give my MIL a hands-on demo of the Eleanor Burns method I use to make them.  I had also brought down the rulers I use to trim them even more quickly than with a regular ruler so I could demo those too.  

She had also looked at the "4 at a time method" and wasn't sure she was doing that right either.  I had originally learned to do that method and only abandonded it because there is less cutting with the EB method and to get the exact size geese needed, the math for that method wasn't as simple as for Eleanor's method.  

However my MIL showed me a tutorial that gives a simple math formula for doing the "4 at a time method" with oversized squares so now I can go back to using this method in those cases when I need to use different colors for the two "sky triangles" and need to control where the colors are placed.

But back to the QOV:  I did lay out the squares I cut but as I got down to the last of them,  I was finding it hard to keep the variety of prints evenly distributed which left me with a few holes in the layout and kept me from starting to stitch the rows.  

It wasn't until our last Friday there that we went to run what was supposed to be a few errands and make two fabric stops.  Well that turned into a mini shop hop as we wound up making stops at four fabric shops but the good news there was that I found another print at one of them that depicted all the armed forces:  

It was perfect for filling the holes in my layout!  So as I completed the layout...

...and while continuing to work on longarming my quilt (the other  UFO --- details to follow),  the next day I did get to leader/ender this project a bit and get four of the rows stitched up before we had to leave.

And now they are home on my design wall!

  #9.  So the only big thing I actually finished on the trip was that I got to longarm the other of the two UFOs I brought:  a quilt I call "Pulpit Tile".  

A closeup of the different stitch patterns used around the quilt.

I pieced this all the way back in 2006 in my early quilting days.  Made with "Jack in the Pulpit" and "Snowball" blocks, it has sat for so long because after I made it I could never decide how to quilt it.  In my mind, I thought it needed very traditional patterns like Feather Wreaths and other advanced patterns that were definitely not in my wheelhouse at the time.  Then once I gained some of those skills, I had moved on to other styles of quilts so finishing this wasn't a big priority.  

It came around now because I thought I might be able to actually get this done simply using stitch patterns programmed into my MIL's longarm tablet.  I was also looking forward to learning to connect continuous patterns to fill borders which is something I really haven't done up to now.  On my last visit, I had taken a picture of all the stitch pattern screens so I could sit down and figure out possible designs to use for the blocks before I arrived.  

I had my choices mapped out but things went sideways (figuratively) once the quilt was loaded!  This was a doozy that didn't progress at all the way I planned.  Due to throat space limitations and not remembering to bring the right thread for this,  I had to change my pattern choices on the fly.  However,  as usual I learned a lot of longarm lessons.  I won't go into further detail here,  I'll also save that for the next FONF post.   

CODA:  I should note, I also brought two more things that I didn't get to work on:  I had my scrappy "Magic Cube" Shoo-Fly blocks to also use for leader/enders.  

Had I got to do more sewing they might have gotten worked on but the good news is that needing to work on the two QOVs at home now (and on deadline) means they will get done now!

The second thing was that during the December Accuquilt sales,  I had lucked up on getting two of the June Tailor "quilt-as-you-go" kits to make covers for the Accuquilt Go! machine.  

I got one for my MIL and one for myself and had gotten the fabric bundle of the Accuquilt fabrics.  We split the eight fabrics in it between us (she took the light/white/blue fabrics and I took the lime green and orange fabrics).  We both had to add two additional fabrics to our sets because the kit requires having six fat quarters to make the cover.  I added the white and grey and the turquoise prints at the top to fill out mine.  Both of us also made some cuts at the Accuquilt booth "make & take" station at Quilt Con that we hope to add to our covers.  So that too is another project for future sewing or the Fall trip back!

So a lot attempted but definitely not as many things finished up as hoped.  Our next visit in September will be quieter as the annual NC Shop Hop dates have been changed to May/June so we won't have that to participate in.  We will be coming in time for the guild meeting that month.  If DH and I come down on the Friday before as we did this time,  that will also lessen the impact on the rest of the time spent there.  And thus ends the maximalist-mini retreat report!       

Finished or Not Friday: One Quick Finish and One UFO

Happy Friday and welcome in for another edition of "Finished Or Not Friday"!

As always we are hosted by the lovely Alycia at Alycia Quilts, well known for her work making, quilting and showcasing quilts awarded to veterans through the Quilts of Valor program.

This week I have two finishes to show:  one that was quick and one that has been a year in the making!  Okay, maybe it's actually just been sitting around for a year but that's all water under the bridge once it gets to the "finished" stage, LOL!!

The Quick Finish:  A Mug Rug Gift

I have a friend that I have made a number of things for, most of which she had used to decorate her work cubicle at her office.  Since the pandemic, her job has retained the policy of remote work so she only has to report into the office once a week.  As such she was recently attemping to spruce up her home work space.  She mentioned she planned to pull out all the things I had made for her and put them into service there.  Of course that led to a discussion of the very first piece I made her:  a mug rug replicating a Kaffe Fassette design:

I made this because she attended her first (and only) quilt show with me back in 2013.  She is not a quilter but fell in love with Fassette's quilt "Girder" that was hanging in the show with all the other quilts from his "Shots and Stripes" book.  Unfortunately, that rug was taken from her desk some years back!  

While I did make her a "keyboard" themed one a few years later (which is pictured later in this post),  she asked me if I might happen to have an extra mug rug laying around that she might add to her setup.  I didn't but then was inspired to make one for her (in secret) when she showed me another new addition to her desk setup:

As soon as I saw this lamp I was like: "Oh, I've got to do this!"  First of all, I have never made a "stained glass quilt" although I've always wanted to try one.  What better way to take a first stab at a technique than a small project like a mug rug?  In addition, I had recently purchased these:

I had this set of Creative Grids "Crazier Eight" templates on my Amazon wishlist for a few years.  It just so happened that about two weeks before our conversation, a Warehouse "Used But Good" set came up for half the normal price.  The  prices on Creative Grids products are tightly controlled so are almost never on sale.  Needless to say as a "Gadget Fanatic",  I couldn't pass that deal up!   Now I could also immediately see trying out the templates by using them to make the stained glass piece.  So I dug through my batik stash for yellows and other fabrics that ombered to that color and came up with this:

 

There are five templates to make this eight inch finished block but I split the piecing in some of the templates in order to be able to use a few more fabrics and make the stained glass effect come through a little more.  The "leading" print also came from stash.  

I also wanted to give a nod to the butterfly featured rather prominently on the front of the lamp and I knew just how to do that:

I have an old compact Bernina Deco embroidery machine that I purchased used off of eBay a while back and love when I get an opportunity to make things with it.  The great thing about the purchase was that it came with a full set of embroidery threads in a rainbow assortment of colors and so far for everything I've made with it, I've had the color threads needed.   

To give you an idea of how old this machine is, I am unable to download designs to it so have to purchase dedicated "design cards" for it.  It did come with one of those blank card readers but my laptop (which at the time of purchase was running Windows 10, that's how long ago this was) didn't support it.  So now I regularly troll eBay for low priced design cards that have images I am interested in using.  I also lucked up and was able to start the collection of ones I have when I was able to pick up a whole bunch of them at a guild destash sale from someone who had a newer machine so no longer needed them.  

The butterfly design I used came from this card:

First I ran a test of it using what I had that was close to the prescribed colors.  That allowed me to test the size adjustment I made to the design to fit the template section I wanted to stitch it on and see how it stitched out.  For the final design, I chose threads closer in color to the butterfly on the lamp.  Then I layered and quilted it and this was the finished piece:

After she received it, she sent me a picture of her set up!

You can also see the keyboard mug rug here as well!

The UFO Finish: "Roaring Waves"

My other finish is that I finally quilted a top I made up in March of last year.  After making two blue and white quilts back in 2022 for winter decorating,  last year I decided I wanted to make a few more to use for decorating into Spring.  It started with this fabric bundle purchased on the Annie's Attic (then Annie's Catalog) site during one of their fat quarter bundle sales (and is still available now here):

After purchasing it, I happened to see this "color option" design on the American Patchwork and Quilting website:

I could immediately see almost all of the bundle fabrics plugged into the bargello-style design.  I raided my batik stash and a few project stashes to come up with this array....

...that eventually became this top!

I even layered and basted it that year.  And so it has sat until I could figure out how to quilt it.  I was definitely considering going along with the "waves" theme and did try to sketch out something along those lines:

But it wasn't until viewing Angela Hoffman quilting on the #3501 episode of the "Fons & Porter Love of Quilting" TV show that I found something I really liked.

However, I wasn't totally confident about being able to free-hand quilt the waves evenly.  Then I remembered I had a wave ruler:

However I didn't want that deep a wave and the spacing wasn't right.  Doing a little research, I found out that Handiquilter actually has a few different wave rulers and it turned out that they had another one that was perfect for what I wanted to do.  The peaks and valleys of it lined up perfectly with the piecing on this quilt.

It took me about a week to complete the quilting:

And now it's done! 

Front

Back

It's a square quilt and will be used as a wallhanging.  As usual the lesson here is that sometimes a quilt takes a while but it is always satisfying in the end to get it done!

There are many more finishes and progress reports over at Alycia Quilts for this week's "Finished Or Not Friday" so go check them all out!

Finished or Not Friday: A Big Gift Project Is Finally Done!!

I am thrilled to start May off with a report on a big project completed.  Join me as I and other quilters check in at Quilty Girl Alycia's for this week's "Finished or Not Friday" projects! 

I will admit April closed with a lot going on and I must say that quilting was a haven in a storm of health and home repair issues.  For a couple of years now, I have been trying to finish a big project:  making gift quilts for three members of my community garden's Steering Committee.  

I have displayed my quilts at the Art Shows our garden has hosted and the Committee members had been as enthusiastic about them as other attendees of the shows.  The last one we held was in 2023 and I had provided a quilt to raffle off at it.  

When the winner of it was one of the four Committee members,  I immediately hatched a plan:  now was the perfect time to make quilts for the other three members!

I actually had a head start on that since I had originally set out to make two quilts for raffling off.  I had used what has become my "go to" and favorite "simple to piece" quilt:  a "9 Fat Quarter Disappearing Nine Patch" quilt that I learned how to make from a You Tube video.  Despite the quickness of the piecing, what I have learned over time in making these is that, at least for me, it takes me a good bit of time to make the fabric choices and decide where to place them within the top.  As part of the "disappearing" technique, some of the fabrics wind up getting flipped or turned from their intial orientation in the starting nine patch layout.  Once pieced back together to create the top,  I then sometimes get hung up on how I want to quilt them.  

Edited To Add:  I realize that for the rest of this, it would also be good to join in over at Andree's "Quilting and Learning - What a Combo!" for this week's "Free Motion Mavericks" link up!

In the case of the second raffle quilt, I had decided to stitch it in what I believed would be a simple stipple variation called "Square Meander".  

I've since found demos of it here and it done in borders here.

I have done Stippling before but not this variation of it.  I thought it perfect for the quilt and I was excited to try it.  I got a late start quilting it right before the show but half way through got a little into my head about whether I was doing it "right".  Also since I was quilting it with a last minute deadline, I was also tense about whether I was filling the quilt space fast and evenly enough.  As a result I decided not to continue to stress myself out and abandoned finishing the second quilt in time for the show.  Of course the good news was that when the Committee member won the quilt that I did get finished and I decided to make more,  it meant I already had a half-finished quilt underway!

Well the plan was to finish it and two more for the other Committee members by the end of that year in the hopes of presenting them at the garden's annual Holiday Party.  Yeah right, that didn't happen!  Then time, tides and "squirrel projects" meant I didn't pick back up on finishing the quilting on that second quilt until the start of this year!  

This time I was determined to get all of the remaining quilts done before our season opened at the end of April so I finally got back on the horse!  What also helped with that was seeing someone demonstrating at a virtual quilting workshop the exact same stitch pattern I had done.  Of course it was immedately confirmed that I had been doing it "right" all along and getting a grip on myself,  I finished quilting it in one day back in January.

Okay one down and two to go!   Later that month, I pieced the next two quilt tops and finished the backings for both of them right before we made our annual winter visit to my MIL's during the week of Valentine's Day.  I swore when I came back I would quilt them up and try to have them done by the end of March, well before the season opening.  

However, at that virtual summit I had also learned of two ideas that I wanted to employ on one of the quilts.  To start, in the center of the quilt I wanted to stitch a detailed echoed Heart motif with additional "Ribbon Candy" motifs stitched between the echoed areas.  I was hoping to take advantage of a Ribbon Candy workshop by Esther Frenzel of IPatch and Quilt.  I signed up for it in the hopes of learning more about this motif which it turns out is infinitely more versatile than I had ever imagined.  This quilt could then be one of my practice pieces.  

Again, yeah right!!  Given that this was a gift, maybe using this as a practice piece was not the best idea and I remained terrified of "messing it up"!  So instead it took me a couple of weeks to let go of that idea and just go with the other motif I learned at the Summit and had already sketched out so knew I could easily and quickly execute:  a large "Ribbon Stipple".  

Once I defaulted to the simpler all-over pattern,  I quickly stitched up the second quilt in one day rather than the two I thought it would take.

And with that Quilt #3 was done!

For the last quilt,  I had already planned to go a more traditional route with the quilting by doing another familiar all over pattern: "Baptist Fans".  I have stitched this design on four prior quilts using four different methods.  The last time I did it on my MIL's longarm using a programmed stitch pattern.  Prior to that was when I made my civil war repro "Piecing the Past" quilt.  For that one, I ruler quilted it with Westalee templates (and you can see a demo of them in action here).  So I had no concerns that this was doable using a free-motion method and could be completed in two or three days.   

The quilting in progress.....

However, in the end, this one took me almost a week to get done!  The reason it went so slow is that I used 80 wt Wonderfil DecoBob thread to quilt it and it took a while to figure out what my Juki machine needed to work well with that thread.  As it turned out, I had purchased something very helpful when I was first introduced to this thread at 2024's Quilt Con show:

These needles made all the difference!  With the HX-5 high-speed machine needles I normally use on the Juki, I was having trouble with frequent thread breakage.  Then I switched to these and it was "swoosh!" and super fast stitching straight through!  I had spent a day each on the first two rows of stitching but after changing the needles was then able to do four rows in about the same amount of time on the third day, another three rows the next day and finished up the last row on the final day of stitching.  

I had picked up a whole bunch of Wonderfil spools in various colors during a recent eQuilter sale so needless to say,  I will now have to stock up on these needles for all future sewing with this thread!  Problems resolved,  I quickly finished trimming up and binding the quilt and now the last quilt was ready to go!

With the last two finished, all three were now ready for gifting which was done last Thursday and as you can see here, everyone was happy with what they received!

I had asked the committee member on the right to bring the raffled quilt that she won two years ago so I could get a picture of them all together.  I was thrilled to have finally had the chance to honor these ladies for founding our garden fourteen years ago and continuing to work very hard to keep it a going concern ever since!

I had pushed to get the quilts finished and gifted before our garden's season opening which was scheduled for the last Saturday in April and would be our garden's "Earth Day" celebration as well.  Although I got the quilts gifted in time, unfortunately we had to postpone the opening day event due to rain.  We had rescheduled it for tomorrow but rain is now forecast for that day too so we will be trying again the Saturday before Mother's Day which as of right now is forecast to be a sunny day.  

Thank you for joining me on the recap of this latest quilt journey.  I hope you are as excited as I am to see what has bloomed out of everyone else's quilt studio for "Finished Or Not Friday" this week over at Alycia's!  Also get some ideas for approaches to finishing your quilts with Andree's "Free Motion Mavericks" at "Quilting and Learning - What a Combo!"