A New Old Quilt

This is a quilt I started I think before the “modern quilt movement” started! I started out making Ricky Tim’s folded flying geese. Here, I found a video for you if you’re interested! The video was made in 2009, so that’s how long ago I started this quilt.

I made a lot of those flying geese blocks and then thought, what else am I going to do? So I made some fancy blocks, and then I filled in with some simple 9 patch blocks of one patch and four patch.

Here are the extra blocks I made:

I enjoyed quilting it. I think I found something like this image on Pinterest, and I quilted all the big blocks that way.

I like this quilt a lot. I love the colors that I chose, and so I will keep it. Its just the right size for a lap quilt or to top my double bed.

Ta Da!!

This turned out to be such a fun project! It went well beyond “stupid sewing” 🙂 While I was sewing the little blocks together I noticed a sparkly thread on my sewing table that looked like it went with the blocks. So I thought I might try a meandering thread through the piece. Then I added some black lines and some french knots. Yesterday morning I got up and put a binding on it. Finished, I thought! But then I thought it would be fun to add some words to it. This time, instead of a Bible verse, I wanted to add a saying that a good quilting friend had shared with me. Thanks, Catherine!! I really love this saying.

She was unstoppable. Not because she did not have failures or doubts but because she continued on despite them.       –Beau Taplin

The really finished quilt:

A close-up:

Today I’m planning to get back to some rug hooking, work on my big PEACE rug for a bit, and get the dye studio ready for a session of dying tomorrow. I LOVE a free week!!

A Do-Over

 

Remember this quilt that I started way back when? And then I got the top put together here? I mentioned in that post that I was considering adding perle cotton embroidery to the ovals. And sure enough, I did do that.

I thoroughly enjoyed just adding my simple random embroidery to those pieces.

But after I had finished six of them, I still didn’t like the way it looked. I tried again, using only the running stitch, and connecting the ovals. Nope, I didn’t like that either.

So I took all that embroidery out. And then I tried to figure out what I was going to do with this quilt. It was on the wall when I took out some little oval pieces to play with on a different quilt top. When I do my zig zag appliqué, I often cut the back out carefully and keep those pieces for a future project. So these were the leftover pieces from this particular quilt. And I thought, Hey…..

So I tried putting these ovals on top of the other ovals. And I liked it!

Since the quilt sandwich had already been made and partially quilted, these motifs were zigzagged through all three layers of the quilt. I finished it with some “scribble circle” quilting.

P.S. I realize that those pieces are not “ovals.” But I don’t know what to call them. My BF says it looks like a Fleur de Lis now. I think that name will stick!

The Value of Journals

I am a journaler. I’ve got the journal collection to prove it. Mostly they are journals of my spiritual life, with some daily rubbish musings thrown in for good measure. When I started quilting, I started doodling designs. And when I started the housetop quilt series, where I combined God’s word with my quilts, my journals overlapped. I take my daily spiritual journal to church to take sermon notes, and more often than not, there is a quilt idea in there–a verse or a new theme I can explore, or a beginning doodle design. Sometimes I have the start of an idea already in there, and it gets filled out while I listen to the sermon. Sometimes I go to a quilt seminar, and I have another journal or notebook with me, and a new idea gets started in there. That’s the trouble. I have a lot of journals. More than one going at one time. And they all have ideas in them. Oh well. As long as I can find them when inspiration hits, I guess that’s what counts.

So here’s an idea progression. I actually had to find three journals to see the evolution of this idea that I wanted to share with you.

Remember the little 7X10 quilt I did in January? I liked that quilt. So I played around with different ways to include a cross and a circle in the same quilt.

Then, when I was at the Ricky Tims’ Quilt Seminar, I was doodling. I had done this once before, and I really liked it. The idea was to stitch different sized squares and make a feather that would just fit within the confines of that square. I was having so much fun drawing these little feathers that it was very hard for me to make the decision to put the cross-hatch designs into the drawing. Once I did, I loved it.

Then I was at a conference called Intersection of Faith and Art. Again, a lot of lectures, so I had ANOTHER journal with me. And I drew the design with the circle behind it. I liked it!

And then I noticed that there was a contest online. I could do this design on this hand-dyed fabric. Lovely. I’ve been working very steadily on this quilt (its 26X32.) I’m about 3/4 done, and now I don’t like it. The contest deadline looms. If there wasn’t a deadline, I would take a break and think about what needed to be done to make it better. So now I have to decide whether to abandon the contest, or to finish it as is, and enter.

Either way, I do need to finish the quilting that I have started. Yesterday I took a break from it. I did not make one stitch on it. But today I will get back to it. Who knows? Maybe when its finished I will like it again.

A Little Diversion

This week I’ve gone a different way. I’m still quilting and sewing a bit. Like I said in the last post, embroidering the perle cotton to the cross quilt is slow work. Its a little boring, but its also very pleasant to do in the evening, when the only decision I have to make is what color of thread to use and how long to make the line of stitching.

So I’ve been dipping back into a couple of my other fiber hobbies. I got a new electric spinning wheel that I LOVE. I can sit in my easy chair with my leg up, and spin and spin. It even has a mechanism on it called a “woolie winder” that winds the newly spun yarn evenly onto the bobbin. So I’ve been spinning up some of the fiber I bought at the Black Sheep Gathering back in June.

Two four-ounce skeins:

And then I really started back in on my rug hooking. This is probably due to the fact that the big rug hooking conference is coming up in September. I’d love to show off the rug that I started a year ago. I designed it around the verses in Psalm 96. ( Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!  Let the fields and their crops burst out with joy! Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise before the Lord, for he is coming!) I’ve finished another fish today.

And I also decided to finish up a little doodle rug that I had started for fun. The theme of the conference is “Color My World.” And since I love color, and this doodle rug has colors that I love, I thought I would try to finish it for that particular category. I drew the idea of a grid for the background in my sketchbook. More easily drawn than hooked! But its coming along.

Close-up:

And just so I don’t forget how to use the sewing machine, I’ve been playing around with this group of fabrics, making a variety of blocks.

A couple days ago, I followed this blogger’s lead, and did some patchwork scrap doodling. It was fun, and I was pretty happy with the results.

So that’s how its gone around here this week. A lot done, but it leaves me feeling like I haven’t accomplished much. Maybe its time to FINISH a project!