Sunday only project..............

I didn't work on this project a week ago Sunday so I got back to it yesterday.  I had a bunch of batik triangle squares already sewn so I added them into the mix. Half of these are Kaffe fabrics, the other half batik.  There are 8 more groups of batik ready to sew but I ran out of time.  I think I have 161 strips of triangle squares made now.  The antique inspiration has 162 but I thought I might make it a row longer.  I can start designing it now though since I am getting close to what I need.

I spent 2 hours outside yesterday deconstructing tomato plants, pulling them out of the ground and getting the cages put away in the garage.  There were lots of little tomatoes falling off the plants so I pushed some into the holes where the plants had been and covered them with loose dirt.  Next year I will wait to see if some volunteers come up before I buy any plants.  I also emptied the 2 pots that had Cannas in them and broke off the dirt and then divided the rhizomes.  I will have 13 to plant next year if they all survive the winter in the garage.

There was light rain last evening and maybe a little more coming today.  They are only predicting a few hundredths of an inch.

Random decisions............

When I finished piecing the log cabin stars I contemplated adding a border...but it was already 63" x 84".  Since most of the strips in the log cabin blocks are from the 1990s era I wanted to use the print at the right for a border since it is also from the 1990s.  Yesterday I decided that the print could be on the back.  I have a 68" piece and a 14" piece so I'll have to add a few inches of something from the same era to make one panel the length of the quilt.  I will need another piece 28" wide by the length to finish the back.  That sounds like a project for November.

I was reviewing my lists of quilt tops and finished quilts yesterday.  I have made 20 new quilt tops and finished 15 quilts so far this year.  6 of those finishes were new tops from this year so I only finished 9 of my older tops.  I wonder if all of those who preceded us that left quilt tops ever counted up or even worried about how many they had unfinished and left to be passed on to the next generation.

Occasionally I will buy a layer cake by a designer that I admire to see a good sampling of their designs.  This is a Jen Kingwell group.  The prints remind me of the fabrics I used to make my grandma's aprons and my mother's housedresses when I was in high school (1954-8).  I like a lot of Jen Kingwell's quilts which are pretty fussy piecing with small pieces but I won't probably ever make any of them.  I will instead choose a pattern that is fun and fast.  I might have to add some solids into the mix here to even make a small quilt.

This is the rest of the layer cake.  This is 2 rows of squares and each piece of fabric has 2 different prints.  That means that the pattern piece or cutting die needs to be less than 5".  I have made many quilts with the 30s reproduction fabrics so this will be similar to the feel of those.  I still have a selection of the 30s prints and maybe a few of them as well as a few plaid fabrics could be mixed in with these.

We have a week of 60s and maybe will hit 70 on Wednesday and Thursday.  10-14 day outlook is warmer than normal.  That will be a real change from our colder than normal October.

2 from the same pattern...........

I finally cut the border for this quilt and and got it sewn on and pressed. It is now 55.5" x 75.5". Procrastination - 5 days, cutting, sewing and pressing - 1 hour.  If you want good directions for making this block, Anne (agilejack) has a great post on it.  I followed her directions for my 2 quilt tops.

Speaking of 2 quilt tops, here they are side by side.  I made the first "The Other 16 Patch - cool" with the block in a vertical position.  For "The Other 16 Patch - HOT" I have the blocks in a horizontal position.  Same block, 2 completely different looks.  I love them both!

This Coral Bell is the one that was red and gold all summer and now it is purple and green, or at least that is what it looks like here.  It is the prettiest Coral Bell in the front garden.

One variety of the miniature Sedum plants really spread out and has lots of blooms that look just like the ones on the big plants.  This one only had a few blooms last year.

The blooms on the big Sedums are a blend of burgundy and brown now.  I will leave them all winter and if we get snow (ha ha, IF we get snow in northern IL) they will have coneheads of white.  They resemble large mushrooms.

Last night I was looking through my 3 Kathy Doughty books and liked this quilt in "Making Quilts".  There are 48 little squares pieced with 2 triangles in every block (576 squares in 12 blocks).  So, I analyzed why I was drawn to the quilt, and would I really want to make it.  I love triangles so I thought that was what drew me in, but the dotty looking fabric in the strips in the blocks and the pebbly looking sashing fabric are pretty neat too. (enlarge the photo to see the fabrics better).  I like busy quilts and print fabric.  After analyzing I think I need to make one block.  That might be enough and it will probably end up as the center of a small medallion quilt or an orphan block.  I would be surprised if I made more than one block.

Some more of those 23 photos..........

Somehow yesterday I missed that I had 3 close up photos of the On Point 16 Patch quilt.  My quilts are all about the variety of fabric used in each one.  There are some very early Kaffe fabrics in this one.

Even though this quilt is red to me there really are a lot of other colors in it.  Mostly red, orange and yellow but since most of the prints are multicolor, a lot of other colors show up too.

This one really shows off the binding fabric.  Click on the photo twice for the largest view.

This little chest was made by my great-grandfather for either my mother or my grandmother so it is over 100 years old.  I was doing a quick hand off of it to my daughter-in-law and didn't get a chance to wipe the dust off.  I wanted a photo before it left because I have owned it all of my life.  I refinished it back in the 1970s.

Yesterday it made a 6.5 hour trip to my 3 year old great-granddaughter for her birthday.  She is checking it out here.

The dresser over by the window is one I gave to my granddaughter when she was having her first child 8.5 years ago.  I bought it somewhere around 1962 from the Sears catalog, unfinished ready to stain or paint.  It came fully assembled back in those days.  My husband added some mahogany trim to it and stained it walnut color.  52 years later it was painted gray to go with the nursery colors.  Just a little nostalgia there.

My big maple seemed to turn color overnight.  I decided I had better go out and take a photo before it dropped all of its leaves.  The sun was on the other side of the tree so it is backlit.

The leaves  are multicolor in some areas.

I love the dark bark contrasting with the colorful leaves.  This tree planted itself and is a fairly fast growing tree.

This photo was taken yesterday morning from the kitchen window with the bright sun hitting the leaves.  That is a bare Redbud tree in front of it.  

I spent the day studying the list of quilt tops and trying to decide what to finish next.  I also got the border fabrics out for 2 of my tops that I want finished before the end of the month.  I also tried to do some clean up on the table where I measure and cut my borders.  And then the day was over.

I have some more photos taken in the front garden that I'll show tomorrow.

I took 23 photos yesterday.............

6 of the photos were of this finished quilt but I narrowed it down to the best one.  I have made over 25 sixteen patch quilts and this is the only one with the blocks on point.  That was mainly because I would have had to make more blocks to have them in straight rows so on point made sense, adding the 2 beautiful florals as the setting triangles and corner triangles.

The fabric on the back is named Luscious and is a Philip Jacobs design.  The binding is Creased by Brandon Mably.  The fabrics in the top are all Kaffe Fassett collective.  This one finished at 56.5" x 80.5".  Quilting is straight lines vertically with pink/orange/gold variegated thread on top and rust Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.  Hobbs 80/20 batting.

I finished the rearranging of blocks on "the Other 16 Patch - Warm" (as compared to a 16 patch made with squares).  I debated if it should be called - Hot instead of - Warm.  It is 65" x 81" right now.  It will shrink a little with quilting.  It has one Martha Negley fabric and one of Kaffe's original stripes hand woven in India in the 1990s.  The rest of the fabrics are from the Kaffe collective.  I turned the blocks to horizontal in this quilt top, they are vertical in my cool color version (which I need to add a border to before I can show the quilt tops together).

This is what it looked like when I took the photo above, too big to put up the other direction.  I rotated the photo above in my photo editing program.

One of my Compact Burning Bushes is close to all red now.  The other 2 are still mostly green with just a little red showing.

I opened the shoeboxes yesterday morning, 6 days after placing the green tomatoes in with a banana with a little green on the ends.  I needed one of the bananas for my breakfast smoothie so I switched out both bananas with 2 new ones that are green on the ends.  I also took out the tomatoes that had the most orange color.  I have a few in the garage that are starting to turn too, no bananas out there.

Two of my porch pots still had flowers yesterday when I went out to check the gardens.  There was supposed to be a frost overnight so I don't know what I'll see this morning (I write the blog post around midnight and schedule it for 3:30 a.m.).  I'll have some more outside photos in tomorrow's post.

 

Finished one..............

I finished the hand sewing of the binding on this on point 16 patch but it was too late to take its full photo.  I'll do that today while there is daylight.  Here you can see the 2 fabrics I used for the setting triangles and corners.

The last 2 strip sets were sewn and then all 6 were pressed and cut into the 2 strips for the blocks.  I'll sew that center seam on them today and try to finalize the arrangement of all 36 blocks.

We had rain starting in the early morning hours yesterday and off and on all day.  There was supposed to be some rain overnight last night so I am waiting for the total amount in my rain gauge this morning.  It wasn't heavy rain most of the time so I don't think we got what they were predicting.

Still hand sewing........

I finished hand sewing one short side and all but 15" on the second long side.  So...15" + one short side and I'll be done.

This is 4 more strips sets waiting to be pressed so I can cut the sections for the blocks.  Just 2 more sets of strips to sew.  I hope I can be sewing the top together on Thursday.  Then I need to get the border cut and sewn on the cool version of "the Other 16 Patch".

Binding...for days..........

I chose this Brandon Mably Creased fabric of which I only have one yard for the binding of the 16 patch on point.  The stripe runs crosswise so I had to decide if I would cut the strips crosswise or have shorter strips cut lengthwise.

I laid it next to the edge of the quilt and decided I liked the stripe running the long way (crosswise cut strips).  Since it was an irregular stripe I didn't have to worry about fussy cutting it along the edge of a stripe.

Here is a corner where the stripes actually lined up.  Bonus!  I have one long side hand stitched and it will take a couple days to finish it.

I added the 3 blocks I finished yesterday.  I have the strips cut for the last 6 blocks so I'll alternate sewing them with working on the hand stitching of the binding.

 

Slowly, so slowly..........

I thought I would have the binding chosen and cut but all I got done was trimming the quilt in preparation for binding.  The backing has an orange background and one setting triangle fabric has an orange background and the other one has a red background.  I'll be trying some candidates today.

There are 3 blocks for "The Other 16 Patch" ready for their last seam and I chose 5 more pairs of reds/oranges to sew.  That leaves one pair of fabrics yet to be chosen for the last block.

The tree straight across the street from my front door is fully turned color now and has dropped a lot of leaves.  It is so pretty in the sunshine.

I have some combination hydrangea blooms for my winter bouquets.

This bouquet is the latest Zinfin Doll hydrangeas I cut for a bouquet.  They have more of a beige cast than the ones in the other bouquet.  The cold nights did that to them.
  

27 out of 36 blocks............

I added 10 more blocks last night to the design wall.  It will be 2 rows longer so the last row will be on the floor.  I  need to make 9 more blocks and I have the fabrics chosen for 3 of them.

I worked on a little outside clean up since it was in the 70s yesterday.  Continuing on the red theme, one of my 3 compact burning bushes is showing more color.

The perennial pinkish red Dianthus is still blooming.

My red shaggy Coneflower which I showed a couple weeks ago when it first started blooming.  It was yellow then, turning orange next and some of the bottom petals are beginning to look red now.  I don't know if the second bud will bloom but we have a lot of warm weather predicted for the 8-14 day forecast.

There are many more petals on this variety than on my native purple Coneflowers in the back garden.

One more red for you, my neighbor's pink-red burning bush and his other tree, not sure what kind it is.
   

Quilting day...............

The month is slipping away and I need some finishes.  I got this one quilted yesterday afternoon.  I unpinned it from the leaders but haven't trimmed it yet.

I found a spool of dark pink, orange and yellow variegated thread to quilt it.  

I turned the red blocks to the horizontal position which makes the rectangles vertical.  Confusing, right?  I added the 7 new blocks that I pressed.  I will be using some fabrics twice in this one.

Here is the next batch in progress.  I need to find some more dark reds today as well as more oranges for the light colors.  Three of these are Brandon Mably prints.  He does more that read mostly one color than Philip or Kaffe do.

 

Lots of red................

I pressed the strip sets from Tuesday and cut the strips for the blocks, then sewed the blocks.  Also I cut more strips and sewed 7 more strip sets which now need pressing before I can proceed.  I need 30 more strips for 15 more blocks to make a 64" x 80" quilt top.  I plan on turning the blocks to a horizontal position for this quilt.

Yesterday was grocery shopping day, 2 stops, so I didn't get around to picking thread for the next finish or cut borders for my last top.

I have given up trying to save the tomato plants.  When I removed the sheets the plants were wilted under them.  I think it got down to 26 degrees here.  I picked a big batch of the largest green tomatoes and hope that maybe the rest that are left on the plants will survive the 31 degrees tonight and ripen as we go into several days of 60s and 70s.  I read last night about ripening the green tomatoes with a banana.  I had to look up how green the banana should be.  It suggested a shoe box with a loose lid and a banana with just a little green left on it.  Put the tomatoes in a single layer not touching each other.  We'll see how many of them will ripen.