Slow Stitching

I had been working on  machine quilting the Blue Roses   but found time to do some hand applique on the 1857 blocks. New blocks were released on Fri and I quickly prepped them so I would have some hand work in the days ahead.

 I found my Karen K Buckley perfect circles in the bottom of a box of unused small rulers and gadgets. I will finally use them on the circles for several of the blocks but not today. 

 I have a brand new quilt to start and have a limited timeline. Still deciding on the pattern.

 I am pulling all the fabrics in my extensive stash in the new colours. Hopefully I will not have to purchase any new ones but we shall see.

 I completed these 2. They were kind of fun. I do not especially like the reproduction chrome yellows but did use this yellow Dear Jane 2 for that crown.  Looks like either it has the pox or is covered in bugs. 

Spring is here and so is a brand new snow cover on my growing green grass and crocuses. Well, that gives me more indoor time since I cannot rake pine tree debris from under the snow.

blessings,
Chris

April OMG

And the Blue Roses quilt is finally quilted. I started making the thing in 2009 and was planning to have it completed quickly but I was doing my  masters and had started the Dear Jane quilt, so it ended up in  a project box. A friend's daughter was getting married so I offered it to her as a project and she ended up doing all the machine applique and sewed it all together. She now knows the difference between freezer paper on the back and raw edge. She prefers raw edge. I prefer needle turn hand applique, but this is her quilt to give her daughter. I machine quilted it as a whole and struggled with  tension and sore hands, broken needles and fraying thread. I had to change machines to complete it and am so glad I had the binding done half way with the big Brother machine. I also realized that you have to replace your Machinger gloves after a while.

Blue Roses

For my April OMG I plan to complete the 5 blocks for Ben Biggs that I did not get done last month. The pieces are all sitting up front here now that the tables and machines have been cleared of the big quilt.

Ben Biggs

 Blessings,
Chris

First OMG Challenge

I signed up for the OMG challenge - One Monthly Goal - thinking that it should be a piece of cake to complete these 5 Ben Biggs blocks. How wrong I was. I had too much time and did not get to it until today and have to post a blog about it by tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be sitting in a Canadian Guernsey annual meeting all day just like I was exactly a year ago when I cut out all those 140 buds and leaves out of Florianni wash a way fusible in preparation for the corner buds for  this quilt. Sigh.  To my defense, I baby sat sick little girl grand children a lot, was sick myself, took  8 year old Ava to New Brunswick to spend a week visiting Auntie Melanie and her babies, took a blogging break and had no internet for a week because of the ice storm here last week.

Ben Biggs Corner Buds so far

Also, I was machine quilting the Blue Roses quilt and having a most difficult time. My hands hurt a lot as I was trying to move the bulk around, I broke 3 needles on the Brother yesterday and finally switched to the Bernina and after resetting everything, and unstitching one of the blocks I finally completed the thing. In my mind, I could not get at the OMG because I had this thing spread out all over the tables and wanted to complete it first. Did I mention I do not do deadlines well?  

Quilting the Blue Roses

In reality I was having a too much fun working on the 1857 blocks. I had to prep a few to take with me and I ended up stitching a few extra corner leaves in preparation for the blocks to be released on Friday.The bottom 3 are not complete yet and I have not started 2 of the blocks. Those purple leaves with the hearts look a bit dark but maybe its the pink hearts that are a bit light. I am using left over reproduction fabrics from my Dear Jane journey. I did not realize just how many double pinks I had until I cut out lots of leaves using my GO cutter and custom leaf die. Those leaves are really easy to do this way and it takes about a half hour per block.

1857 Blocks so far

So, all in all, my first OMG was not an epic fail so much as I did not give it enough importance to get it done on time. I will try again next month but you will have to wait until April first to see what it will be.

Blessings,
Chris

Blue Roses

The sun is shining, Spring has arrived and so has the mud. I am taking a blogging break for  a couple of weeks. Going to visit the little boy grand children and I have some deadlines that are looming and I have been ignoring. So need to prep a couple more 1857 blocks and  finish quilting the Blue Roses. I put the binding on by machine. Usually, I stitch the binding to the back of the quilt, turn it over and top stitch it down from the front. I did not realize that I had stitched to the front until I was clipping it over. The mitered corners do turn over neater this way I found.

Blue Roses Binding

I love using these wonder clips for this. They do tire my hands though. It takes a bit of pressure to squeeze them open and my arthritic fingers do not like that.  I started the quilting by stitching in the ditch all around those sashing strips. Then I measured the border, marked it and basted all the way around and trimmed it before  putting on the binding. I still have all the free motion quilting to do in the blocks. This will be a simple scribble of hearts and flowers. I often do it in this order so there is less bulk around the outside for shoving into the machine opening. Sometimes I have a deadline for the quilt and quilt until I run out of time, but the binding is already on. This way, I only have to change the presser feet once. I started out using the walking foot. I will now drop the feed dogs, put in the see-through darning foot and go free motion. I am using a WonderFil wt 80 thread for the first time. It is finer than I am used to but it seems strong enough since I have not had any thread breakage so far.

When I get home I have my one monthly goal of completing 5 Ben Biggs to get done. I still have to prep 20 buds and 20 leaves to machine applique in the corners. I have 3 weeks to get that done. I can do this. 
Also, I have to get another wedding quilt going. And No, it will not be  hand appliqued.

Blessings,
Chris

One Monthly Goal

I have been seeing this OMG logo around blogland lately and wondered if I could join in and be successful. First of all, I have to understand the rules. Set one quilting goal for the month, write a blog post about it and link at the beginning of the month. Then write another blog post at the end of the month to show the completion of this particular goal. I could try it once. I might even succeed.

I found this out on Feb 8th just after the Feb link was closed. Okay, I will aim for March 1-7. Now to choose a doable goal and do it. That sounds easy enough. But what one quilting goal will I choose from the 471 things I am presently doing? It's not like I have to complete an entire quilt during the month. I can choose a doable chunk. I will have to be accountable. My integrity is at stake! Well, maybe not.

So often, I operate out of impulse. I might jump in and start a new quilt because I have all the fabrics and pattern sitting here, forgetting that I have done this a few times in the past couple of years, and  as a result, forgetting that I have many unfinished quilts on the go. When does a work in progress become a UFO? Let's just say, I have a few of each.

Or I operate out of necessity. I committed to completing a specific quilt for a specific person for a specific date. So I put everything else on hold and get it done. Or, I hop on a plane to visit someone and take along a few hand applique blocks. When was the last time I used the sewing machine? Oh, yes, back in November I sewed together all the CCCQ blocks and machine quilted it and bound it and gave it to my aunt for her 90th birthday. That's something I planned and worked towards for a year.

My One Month Goal for March will not be to complete anything. It will be to advance one specific quilt. But which one?   Since I wrote on my 2016 goals to complete, quilt and bind at least one quilt and that being Ben Biggs, then my OMG for March will be to complete 5 blocks that are already started. That is doable. It is machine applique work. Something I cannot take on a plane with me.

These are 5 blocks in progress. I pulled the pictures from my blog.

There will be no less than 4 buds and leaves in each corner of all 25 blocks. That's 100. Each.

I am using a wash-away fuseable called Floriani. I cut out the shapes, pressed them to the back of the fabrics, cut them out, then turned under a scant 1/4 inch and glued the edges under. Yes a lot of work. And I thought this would be a quicker way of doing it.Some of these are already applique down. Now to complete them.

Blessings,
Chris

Tutorial for Melon Points

I do not pretend to be the best point maker but I have managed to get a few of them nice and pointy so decided to write up how I am doing them now. I wish I had been so attentive in the past. There are 256 melons in the 4 corners of each of the 64 blocks the 1857 Album Quilt. I chose to do the melons instead of the diamonds partly because I could cut them out in minutes with one of my custom GO dies and partly because there are exactly half as many points as there are in the diamonds. My granddaughter had a long weekend sleep over at the farm and she was my photographer and my nurse.

Each block has either a melon or a diamond in each corner and they will come together as a flower.

I gently creased each block on the diagonal then placed the melon in the corner lining it up with the crease on the inside and the corner on the outside. I have decided to cut the blocks the exact size including the seam allowance and plan to stitch them up so the points just touch to create the flower. In other words, I will not be trimming them later.

Using matching thread with a knot, I come up behind the melon at 1/4 inch from the point.

I  crease the point under, pinch with my thumb then take the first stitch through the background.

Now, using the #10 Milliner's needle, I use the point to grab just in the crease and roll it under.

Take a stitch

Pull the point back out making sure it is sufficiently pointy.

And now take the next stitch  holding the crease in place with my thumb.

Photographer selfie.

When I get to the other end, I fold under enough seam so that it is 1/4 inch from the edge of the background.

Then stitch it.

Stitch up to 1/4 inch from the other background edge.

Now take an extra stitch to secure before turning the corner.

Sometimes I clip a bit of the point off. Sometimes I snip off too much. This will make it less bulky.

Getting ready to turn the corner.

Using the tip of the needle, I grab the crease near the last stitch and turn it under being careful to not grab too much or grab the background. Then pinch this crease in place. 

Now holding the crease with my thumb, I take use the tip of the  needle to turn under a second bit. Here it is easy to mess up so be patient and keep going. If you mess up one, there are several hundred more to get it right.

Now, before taking the next stitch, I carefully pull out the point of the double stitch I had already made.

Guess I wasn't quite as careful as I thought. I felt the needle prick my thumb, but Ava spotted the blood and helped me avoid a mess. Speaking of which, if you do get blood on your fabric, your own spit will take it out.

I hope this is helpful. Blessings,
Chris and Ava

Love Entwinrd: 1790 Marriage Coverlet BOM

I first learned of this amazing coverlet in June 2013 and promptly joined the group and started collecting the free patterns for the next 18 months. I initially thought I would use many of the Morris fabrics that I have but thought they needed some more colours. I bought some bright prints that I saw used for some of the applique and Broderie Perse.  I obsessed about background fabric and bought a few rest-of-the-bolt options. I even considered taking the class when I was in Australia last year. Sigh.

 In the end, I never started the thing because I could not decide what colour to make that center mariner's compass. Now I have made one mariner's compass in my quilting journey, but this one is much more detailed. Speaking of details, quilters around the worked posted their progress and each one was more beautiful then the previous and I was still in a quandary. I could not decide so never actually started it. Instead, I started the CCCQ, Ben Biggs,  1718 Coverlet AWS, Dear Jane 2  BTCT, Morrell and 1857 Album and  GORF. However, I did complete my Dear Jane quilt and CCCQ.

And then it occurred to me that I could start with the next stages and add the center compass later since it is appliqued on. A logical thought I have is completing just one block per month per project. That is about 2 blocks per week. It also occurred to me that if I keep starting more quilts, the likelihood of actually completing them gets dimmer and dimmer. And then in the middle of the night I think about stopping work on ALL quilt projects and take a month to focus on other things, like completing the coursework for my doctorate. Remember that? It is self paced with no deadlines. In a week and a half, I am flying out to visit my daughter and the little boy grand babies and this time I am taking 8 year old Ava with me. I figure that she can entertain Jonathan, I can snuggle David and my daughter can get some rest. Maybe. 

1857 prep

I prepped a few more 1857 blocks and stitched down corner melons. These are going to look great when all 64 blocks are eventually connected. Some of those appliques have to be layered so I have the first 6 on the go. I finally moved a card table into the living room and have been stitching while watching tv with my Sweetie. Actually, I was home alone the other day, sick and bored spitless with no internet so watched some daytime tv sit coms. And finally found where to watch American idol since CTV did not pick it up this year.

1857 blocks in progess

 Another project this week has been machine quilting the Blue Roses quilt. So far, I have been stitching in the ditch around all those blocks using the walking foot. Not my favourite part of machine quilting. I moved two 8 foot tables to make an L and have the Brother machine in a craft table in the  middle so there is a flat surface. The tables support all that weight making it easier to move the quilt around.

Blue Roses

Another challenge I am in the middle of is the 40 Bags in 40 Days of getting rid of stuff. So far I have filled 7 really, really big bags with stuff from the back kitchen; got rid of the bread maker I never used and the juicer; several hundred quilt magazines are going out in this week's recycle bins and many items that have an expired best before date. Several bags of unused clothes and  finally threw out my barn clothes since I have been retired from that for more than 4 years. Whew! That's a lot of stuff. 

So now that I have had my rant, a cup of hot honey lemon and a reality check, I do not think I will start the LE BOM right now after all. Esther's progress on LE will be posted on her blog the first Friday of each month and I already belong to the facebook group so can follow along, again. 

Blessings,
Chris