The hand finished binding is done. To refresh details on this quilt, most of the fabrics are Hoffman batiks from their first years of production in the early 1990s. This was about the full range of colors in the early batiks too. For the quilters who just started using batiks in the last 10 years, you have an unlimited range of colors now compared to the limited range we had back then.
The backing is from that time period too but the binding is a recent batik. It is about 40" x 53.5", a small throw quilt. (or it could be a wallhanging in a neutral gray room)
The binding print has fairly large motifs but the fabric worked really well with all of the older batiks. It has a charcoal gray background.
I took a walk though my main hosta bed last night and found a huge Lungwort plant with huge spots on the leaves. It is thriving back there in the deep shade.
I kept finding other things to do and didn't get a lot done on this binding. I have a little more than 2 sides done, stitching by hand. I will finish it today. We got a little rain yesterday and now it is supposed to be cooler with low humidity for a few days. That is going to feel great. We had a hot weekend.
I finished the hand stitching on the binding of the colorwash rail fence quilt last night.
The backing and border are the same pansy print.
The binding is the same fabric as the inner border. It ended up 33" x 39.25".
I call this one Squares and Frames but I have seen it with 2 other names. The fabrics are all Marcia Derse, front, back and binding. It is 49.5" x 66.5" which I consider a medium size throw quilt.
The backing fabric is a nice compliment to the fabrics on the front.
The binding fabric is a repeat of one of the frame fabrics in the piecing on the front.
Yesterday morning I quilted the 1990s batik rectangles quilt that I loaded on the longarm Friday night.
It is all trimmed ready for binding which I cut yesterday afternoon.
I also cut the binding for this Marcia Derse fabric quilt and finished sewing it on all by machine. Info about the pattern for this quilt is on this post.
The binding is sewn onto the colorwash rail fence quilt too and I'm hand finishing it. I have 1 1/2 sides done.
My red petunias in pots are doing great. I have to water them every day. We might be getting some rain soon which they will like better than city water.
My friends and I had a fun day yesterday. We each work on our own projects and spend a good amount of time solving the problems of our town and the rest of the world while laughing about all kinds of silly things. After lunch out we had ice cream and fresh blackberries thanks to one of the friends. I worked on the blocks shown here. I sew a left side and top strip plus corner square onto each of the blocks.
Once I have that done on all of the blocks then I add the corner square and end strip on each end of row block. I add a corner square and strip to the bottom of every bottom row block and then the whole quilt is ready to sew together.
After they left I got out my new roll of batting to cut for two quilts.
This is the new to me batting I mentioned that I used on the quilt I showed yesterday.
Here is a close up of the facts about the batting.
I got the next quilt loaded on the machine but was too tired to quilt it after pulling weeds for about an hour.
Since the longarm table is cleaned off I might as well keep going. This colorwash rail fence is small and didn't take long to quilt.
I used the same medium beige thread that I have quilted the last 3 quilts with. The prints are so busy you can barely see the thread.
All trimmed and ready for binding.
The binding will be one of the 2 border fabrics. Right now I'm leaning toward the inner border fabric.
I got the seams sewn the other direction on the last 4 blocks for the postage stamp quilt.
I think my goal of 7 blocks a week was a little ambitious and now I think I'll plan on 6 blocks a week. That means I'm done for this week so I'll have time to cut some more print 1.5" squares to prepare for the next 6. My 2 friends are coming to sew today and I usually get some cutting done while they are here.
I remember how excited I was to get my longarm machine 10 1/2 years ago. My shoulder had been giving me problems for a few years and now I knew I would get a lot of quilts quilted. Then after a few years reality hit; I still had to decide which thread color to use and figure out how I wanted to quilt to quilt the quilt. I have never used a panto, always just did free motion or channel lock straight line stitching. After a little more than 100 quilts it seems harder each time deciding on the quilting so I just don't turn the machine on for months.
Yesterday I loaded this Marcia Derse fabric quilt and decided on the straight line or channel quilting with irregular spacing.
The medium beige thread that was already on the machine looks good with these fabrics.
It is Superior So Fine thread so it hardly shows up. I used a new to me Hobbs batting. I think it is called Plush but I'll have to look it up to be sure.
It is all trimmed ready for binding and hopefully will be a finish for this month.
I mowed the other half of my lawn yesterday and pulled some more weeds. It feels SO GOOD to have a cool breeze and low humidity. Too bad we are only getting 5 days of it before the heat moves back in. These lovely petunias are in one of the pots by my garage.
The Coreopsis continue to bloom in the back garden. I got another postage stamp block sewn in one direction. I'll turn the iron on when I get 4 of them done so I can sew the seams the other direction.
The weather was so beautiful yesterday that I mowed the front yard and did lots of weeding in the back garden. I did get one postage stamp block sewn in one direction, cut a lot more little squares and laid out the next block ready to sew.
Then I started looking for more suitable small print scraps. I tend to keep one project's scraps together in a plastic bag and found these Liberty prints that were colored by Kaffe. They are the end pieces from cutting equilateral triangles. I can get one square out of each.
The Tiger Lilies are starting to bloom. I have some in the front and some in the back garden.
I have 3 pots of red Petunias on the front porch.
I have 2 batches of these Lilies, one group in the front and one in the back garden. We have a new Cable company putting in fiber optic cable in our town. As I drove north yesterday morning I passed their truck 3 houses from me and there was a funny smell. When I came home I found out they had cut the gas line. I feel very fortunate that they didn't blow up our houses. I was worried that they would cut through my Comcast cable but didn't even think about them cutting a gas line. I sure hope they have qualified people on this job from this point forward because it seems to me that this crew didn't know what they were doing.
I completed 4 more of last week's 7 postage stamp blocks.
That makes a grand total of 6 out of 7 finished for the week.
Here are all 20 blocks so far. My original plan was to make 63 blocks for a quilt 56" x 72". Now I'm wondering if I would be happy with a quilt 48" x 72". That is a good ratio for a rectangular quilt. Decision will be made later.
The number 7 block was laid out but didn't get sewn last week.
My backyard garden is just starting to bloom. Last year on this date it was in full bloom and my daughter took pictures of me with my quilts among the flowers.
It was fun to read all of your stories about your UFOs or fixes for my dilemma on this project. If you missed that post go back here. Jan suggested sewing the units as triangles (look down the center of the photo) rather than the Y shaped pieces at the left. Two triangles could then be sewn together as diamonds and rows of diamonds would be sewn together. There is still one Y seam making the triangles but the sewing together of pieced parts wouldn't have any Y seams. There are 2 different triangles, mirror images of each other, with dark. medium, and light strategically placed.
Sharon S suggested making a half hexagon quilt like I have done with large half hexagons. They are sewn in vertical columns, easy sewing. She suggested unsewing the pieces that are done but there are several hundred loose half hexagons in the plastic bags so I wouldn't waste my time unsewing anything. Now I just have to decide if I want to work with these fabrics.
It finally started cooling off a little around 5 last night but the humidity was still there and it was hard to breathe in it. I pulled weeds for awhile and then gave up and will go back at it today. Here are blooms on my Blackie Sweet Potato vine. I remember how surprised I was several years ago to see the blooms since the green ones hadn't ever bloomed.
My Rudbeckia is late blooming this year and the plant is much smaller than in previous years. It is Commonly known as Black Eyed Susan.
There are many varieties of Brown Eyed Susans and this is one of the plants my friends gave me. There are buds forming on the top of all of them.
My Tiger Lilies are late blooming this year too. There are only a couple flowers open so far. Hopefully we will get a little rain with the cold front coming through so there will lots more blooms.
