I got this quilt quilted yesterday afternoon. Once again it is a meandering pattern.
I should call it Double Cross Meandering. I crossed over twice just in this area. This is a message to everyone who won't try free motion quilting because you know you can't do a good job at it: the world didn't come to an end and the quilt police didn't come and put on the handcuffs AND I will have a finished quilt this week.
Since the back is mostly pink the binding will possibly be pink. I used both batiks and regular quilting cottons in the blocks so the binding does not need to be a batik. I will most likely hand finish this binding.
Here is the photo I promised yesterday with the half triangles in the end positions of the rows. I still only have half of my lights in this studio so the photo is a little dark. I still need to add 2 rows to the bottom but there isn't any room so I'll start sewing the top section and then design the bottom 2 rows.
I found some backing fabrics for my pastel 16 patch top that I finished late last year. The 2 pieces on the left are from my "long strips" box and the one on the right is full width. I got it sewn after I took this photo and loaded on the longarm and cut the batting. No excuses now, it needs to be finished.
When I started cutting strips for my last Kaffe Fassett Trip Around the World quilt I cut the strips from the first 8 fabrics at 2.5" instead of 3". I didn't catch my mistake until I sewed those strips together for all 5 stratas. I let them lay on a shelf for over a year until this week. I pulled out my Kaffe 2.5" strip box and looked for options for the rest of the fabrics for the quilt.
I ended up pulling yardage to cut the right number of strips.
The 8 strips at the left are the ones that were already sewn together. Last night's TV sewing was finishing 2 of the stratas. I think I might look for 2 more fabrics to make it a little larger.
While my friends were here I cut the side half triangles for my Australian triangle quilt. I'll take a photo and show it tomorrow before I start sewing it together.
I have an 8' bulb burnt out in my main floor studio so I took the yellow blocks to the basement to play on a design wall. I had one smaller block that just needed one more strip so I added that and trimmed it. I pulled that black with white print that looks like it would be a good addition to the mix. I'll continue playing.
I sewed the table runner top that I showed in pieces about 2 weeks ago. I think I have about 5 or 6 table runners waiting to be quilted. I know I have batting already cut for some of them so maybe I'll look for backings today and get some of them finished.
Meanwhile I'm spending an hour or so every day cutting for a future project.
My 2 friends are coming over today. I plan on cutting the half triangles that I need for my Australian triangle quilt. I'm sure there is other cutting that I will get done too.
Wednesday night is another TV night and since the yellow, black and white scraps were still spread out on my cabinet I just continued working on them. 3 hours, 3 blocks finished from the beginnings the night before. There isn't much contrast with yellow so I had to add in gold and a couple that were almost yellow-orange. I think this project has just shrunk in size. Since I only want to use batiks in this project I don't have enough variety to keep my interest.
I will figure out what I'm going to make with 7 10" blocks. I will probably still make a few 5" blocks with the rest of the scraps and then I can move on to the next project.
Yesterday was the make up eye appointment in Chicago for the one I cancelled on Oct. 30 because we had an icy storm. It is always a long day because the driving time is over 3 hours both ways combined. Traffic was good yesterday. Everything was good and I didn't need an injection. The tumor is stable (and shrunk). It has been 7 years now since I had the radiation treatment on that eye. The dilation didn't wear off until about 5 p.m. so I wasn't able to do much in the afternoon.
Last night I spent 2-1/2 hours making crazy pieced blocks.
I got 2 of them up to the size to be trimmed and have 4 more started. I'm already bored with the small assortment of yellow scraps. I will search through my batiks and see if I can find some to add. I'm trimming these blocks to 10.5" and the red quilt I made was 6.5" blocks. I think part of my boredom is trying to make large blocks. I think I will make a batch of 5.5" blocks to use with the 10.5" ones and see how it goes.
I was walking through the kitchen just at the right time to catch this sunset. It was even more intense than it looks in the photo.
I had question from 2 people during my decade favorites posts about whether I had ever made a pastel quilt or a low volume quilt. I have posted several pastel quilts over the 12 years I have been posting but since they are in the minority they aren't remembered. Sometimes the photos enhance the fabrics to look darker than they look in person too. So the answer is Yes.
There were several favorite small wallhangings but I'll concentrate on the larger quilts for this favorites tour.
I have a huge selection of striped fabric so I decided to use a big variety of them as sashing with Kaffe Fassett prints in this favorite quilt of 2015. One of my favorite Martha Negley prints is the border fabric, tree rings.
My first X and + quilt was made in 2015. I used both light and dark backgrounds and just kept making blocks until I had more than enough to make this quilt. I played for days at the design wall and eliminated the blocks that weren't working. I love the riot of color in this one.
I have never been able to get a good photograph of this favorite large wallhanging. This one hangs in my living room. It is called Many Moons. The blue around it is my grayed lavender living room walls so you can see how far off the color is.
This one from 2016 is the size of a baby quilt or could be a wallhanging. I had a plan to cut up a bunch of batiks that I didn't like very well into squares and triangles. Since I love star quilt, my plan was to put the triangle squares and large squares on the design wall and see what happened. It was a surprise when the stars started joining in a diagonal pattern. I loved the top so much I didn't quilt it for years for fear it would leave my house.
This 2016 favorite was a surprise. I had made the stars as my nightly sewing, all scraps, and no quilt in mind. One day I was looking through my stacks of blocks and realized the Kaffe fabric 16 patches were the same size as the star blocks. I'm sure the quantity of red plus stars is the reason I love this one so much.
The last one from 2016 is my Marcia Derse fabric tall triangles quilt. I love Marcia's fabrics and I love triangles so it's easy to see why I love this one.
2017, a year of so many favorites but this one is at the top of the list. The plaids are all shirting weight and some of them are the Roberta Horton yarn dyed wovens from the 1990s. Others are from yardage purchased over a period of 40 years. The blocks were cut with my 7" Drunkard's Path acrylic templates. I know 2 people who would love to own this one.
2017 was the year I finally cut into all of my indigo Dutch Wax fabrics. I made it modular style which is explained on my blog, click on Modular quilt tutorial on my Label List.
This is my favorite 2017 colorwash made with 1.5" x 3" rectangles. I love the irregular shaped light center.
I'm sorry but there is a fourth favorite from 2017. I like this one for many reasons, the Marcia Derse background and border fabrics, the Kaffe Fassett yarn dyed stripes for the sashing and the large prints, some of them from 30 years ago. It's all about the fabric for me. The block design came from a Kathy Doughty book.
2018 was a year of mostly wallhangings but this one is a larger quilt. I used the last piece of a lot of the African fabrics in this quilt so it can never be reproduced exactly. This is my third half hexagon quilt and my favorite of the 3.
2018 was the introduction of a new style quilt called Colorburst, not a blend like Colorwash but contrasting colors touching.
I created my first larger Kaffe Fassett fabric colorwash in 2018. It has a lot of his early out of print fabrics in it and I really like it.
2019 has already been published on my blog on January 3. Click here to see it. My favorites for 2019 are ones I am keeping whereas a lot of the favorites from previous years have been sold or gifted to special people. I tend to want to hold onto the newest ones for awhile and after I have made some new favorites I can sometimes part with an older favorite.
