Machine quilting................

The table runner made with Marcia Derse fabric has been nagging me to get finished.  Finally last night I chose this Invisafil thread and changed my bobbin thread and got busy.

I chose the easiest block to ditch quilt first.  Can't see the quilting?  That's the point with ditch quilting.  Of course you can find a couple places where I wandered a little out of the ditch.

The last block was the hardest to find a continuous line of stitching.  I had to do a few stops and tie offs to get the whole block finished.  I have the binding already cut, so all I need to do now is trim the piece.

The day yesterday started with grocery shopping and PT in the afternoon.  I also updated my finishing journal.  Usually I have 3 pages, one page for each size group.  This year, since I only had 19 tops to carry over into 2026, and the fact that I'm not making as many large quilts (81" or longer on the longest side), I was able to put the medium size and large size on the same page.  I would like to get down to 10 or less tops as carryovers for next year.

 

First quilt top for January 2026...................

A friend came over to use my double design wall in the basement yesterday so I was down there pressing several fabrics, including the alternate block fabric in this little quilt top.  This ended up 32" x 36".  I am really pleased with it, especially since it used orphan blocks and a large print that was an impulse buy on sale.  It will get quilted next month.

Last night I pulled this basket off a shelf to take a look through it.  It is 2.5" batik strips, all shorter than full width (43").  It's almost overwhelming how many pieces are in it.  It is where I put all of the leftover binding pieces as well as remainders of strips that were used in a project.  I was tempted at one time to start putting them up on a design wall in columns of 85", then taking them down carefully and stitching them together and then sewing columns together.  It would be similar to the jelly roll race, popular about 10 years ago, but more carefully designed instead of so random.

Taking inventory.....................

After posting the photo of the red quilt with embroidered squares, I decided to take inventory of my 1930 reproduction fabrics.  The 4 quilts in this photo are some that I have made in the last 18 years.  The one on the left and the top middle were the first quilts chosen when I showed a prospective new owner a group of baby quilts.  The one on the right is twin size and I still have that one.

The first box has yellows and blues and 2 pieces large enough for quilt backs.  This box is about 10" x 15" and 10" tall.

This box (same size) has the rest of the colors.  The light fabric at the left is a large piece, several yards to use as the background fabric in blocks.  There are several different brands.  I started out back in the 1990s with just Marcus Brothers Aunt Grace fabrics.  Then a lot of other companies started producing similar prints so some of them were added.  The large light piece is a Moda fabric.  There was also a small bag of scraps.

This one doesn't have any company name on the selvage so I'm not sure if it is a 30s repro.  This is where 2 pieces were joined at the factory and then the printing skipped a couple places.  I'm sure I got this piece at a deep discount.

I'm not sure of the era of these fabrics.  The one on the right is 36" wide and I'm thinking maybe 1950s.  

Now I have documentation of this group of fabrics.  I think maybe another couple quilts might be made with it but not soon. 

Choice made................

I decided to go with #3 choice from my previous post.  I not only liked it best, it is also one of those hard to use prints because of the size of motifs.  It will be perfect in 8.5" x 9.5" blocks.

While I was at it, I chose a backing fabric too.  This is a surprise project, not at all planned, started just by looking through drawers of sewn pieces.  I need to turn the iron on today and press fabrics so I can do some cutting.  I also sewed the top and bottom borders on the medallion quilt and need to press it too.

This is the quilt top I want to add to.  I have a few of the half rectangles leftover from making this top but need to cut a lot more.  It will be mostly light ones added.  Here is the post where I finished sewing this part together, with my idea of how I was going to finish it.

I'm not sure how much I'll add to it at this point.  I'll just start cutting and sewing blocks.

Here is another UFO that has been waiting for me to work on it.  I showed it just about a year ago and I still haven't made any decisions on it.  I finished the machine embroideries in December 2019.  I'm not sure when I started them but it may have been earlier that year.  Here is another quilt I made with a different size of the same embroideries.  I was going to keep it but it ended up going to a little girl in the hospital, the child of a friend of my granddaughter's.

Alternate block auditions.................

The blocks I showed yesterday could be used with alternate blocks of one fabric, so I was searching through my stash yesterday.  Fabric #1:  This is a cute little kid print and I have enough to use on the back too.

Fabric #2:  This animal fabric would work.  I have just one yard of it so I would have to look for a different backing.

Fabric #3: I realized as I got to this fabric that I should turn the bright blocks one turn so the narrow edge is going across the quilt and the longer edge is going down the length of the quilt.  I have just one yard of this fabric too.

Fabric #4:  Since the size of this quilt would be suitable for a baby, I'm not sure this print would be.  The colors in the birds aren't quite as bright as the alternate block colors.  I decided that was enough to think on for the rest of the day.

Last night I looked through the Kaffe orphan block box, hoping to find some small blocks to use in borders on the medallion quilt.  These 3 were the smallest in the box and the 4 patches could easily be trimmed down to a smaller size.

Today I think I will be doing a load of laundry so maybe I can get some cutting done while in the basement today.  I found a quit top while in the basement that I want to enlarge.  It was  finished top a couple years ago but I have been thinking about adding to it.  I'll take it's photo today.

I also hope to baste the pink and gray flannel baby quilt today.

The day that got away..................

Last night I was looking through the drawers in one of those plastic drawer units and I tried to think of what I had done all day.  I know I did a little clean up on my main table in the basement and cut 2 pieces to the right length for a backing but I couldn't think of anything else. I had PT in the afternoon but that is just 3/4 hour.

So what did I find in the drawers?  There were these 8 little pieced blocks 8.5" x 9.5".  I could make mug rugs with them, but I have a pile of them already.  Will they go back in the drawer?

I remember making this little piece, 8.5" square.  I had made a lot of little 2.5" pieced squares and I used the majority in a quilt top.  This was the leftover batch sewn together.  It is a mix of batiks and Kaffe Fassett prints.

Last night the power went out twice.  The first time I was in the middle of putting a new ink cartridge in my printer and luckily had a flashlight in my hand shining into the ink cartridge area.  The power came back on rather quickly but I had to start over with the ink cartridge installation.  The second time it was out for several minutes just as I was getting ready to eat supper.  My laptop computer was on so the screen gave me enough light to get over to the counter where the flashlight is.

It was still 59 degrees last night at 10:30.  We didn't get as much rain as areas east of us.  Some of them got close to 2" which is the normal total of rain for January in Chicago.  Now they are talking snow showers for Saturday morning, just normal weather for winter here, up and down. 

Progress on two.....................

This top was simple to finish; it just needed two side borders.  I rarely add top and bottom borders first because that just makes the side borders longer.  I think that when I sewed the first two borders on, I hadn't found the big piece of the fabric and only had enough for those 2 short borders.  Later I found a piece almost 2 yards long so I have enough of it for the back of the quilt too.  These fabrics are from the late 1980s - early 1990s and the top was designed and started in a workshop in 1991.

I looked for the gray stripe that is in the top but haven't found it yet.  I found two other gray fabrics that could be used for the binding.  This will be finished next month.  The solid colors are some of the very first fabrics that were dyed by Dawn Hall, the creator of Cherrywood fabric.  I worked at her aunt's quilt shop.

I'm auditioning this large print for the top border of the medallion quilt top.  I had a long strip left from a previous backing so I folded it to the width I think I need and pinned it up there.  All of the side borders are sewn in place now but I still need to sew on the bottom strip.