Basting

The Pineapple quilt is small enough for me to be able to baste it on the wall in my sewing room, so last night I got it up there had it finished in no time. While putting the pins in I thought about how I wanted to quilt this - I think it'll definitely need to be something with straight lines, and I have a plan in mind. I think this will be my weekend project!

Frequency: Border Three

I started working on putting the blocks together for the 3rd and final pieced border in the Frequency quilt. Like the rest of the borders, these came together fairly quickly as they're made up of simple half square triangles of varying sizes. Since there were lots of biased edges, I used elmer's glue to baste everything together before I sewed them, and that worked well. It takes a little longer to do that, but then you save time when it comes to the sewing part because you can just run them through the machine without having to stop and adjust fabric layers and keep everything together.

I was able to sew it all together and add it to the quilt last night, and the final step was adding a thick grey border to finish it all off. It's hard to get a good look at the whole thing in the picture below, but I think this is a really neat quilt with lots of visual interest from the colors and varying shapes. I'm going to try and get this quilted up right away!

A Little Embroidery

During my recent trip to Florida, I pulled out some of my CozyBlue stitch club projects and finished a few. Embroidery is the perfect thing to take while traveling - it doesn't require lots of bulky supplies, and since the pattern is printed on the material, you can work on it bits and pieces without lots of concentration or dedicated time.

Frequency: Border 2

The 2nd border for the Frequency quilt came together so fast I didn't even have time to take pictures during the process! You cans see in the picture above that it's getting quite a bit bigger as I go, and I really love how it gets like this by sewing each border around the quilt in a square vs. row by row like in a normal quilt. I find sewing rows together my least favorite part of quilt making. It's tedious, and there are usually lots of seams to match.

The downside of medallion quilts is that if your measurements or seam allowances are off a little, it makes it really hard to construct the whole thing so every border fits. I'm please to say that so far I've been right on the money with this one!

Friday Finish: Luminary

Finally! This one has been really close to being finished for two weeks now. Once I put the binding on, I decided to finish it by hand. This is because I THINK maybe this one might go into my solo show this fall, so anything that might get shown is getting a hand-sewn binding. Those take a bit more time to complete, but it's something I do enjoy.

This was pretty improvisational sewing for me, and I'm proud of how that went, as it's not something I'm very comfortable with. I think the clean lines of the quilting nicely complement all that's going on with the star. I debated over the binding, and finally decided to use the same grey linen as the background for a seamless look.

The backing is a weird Rowan print from a collection they did a few years back. I've had a bunch of yardage I've been hanging onto for awhile now to use as a backing, and decided this was the quilt for it. I'm not sure that it completely works, but whatever - it's the back.

I'm storing all the possible quilts for my solo show rolled up vs. folded to avoid creases, so this is getting rolled around a pool noodle and stashed underneath a bed for now!

Frequency: Border 1

After finishing up the center star, I was ready to move onto the first border in the Frequency quilt. This one is coming together fast, as it's just sewing strips together of varying lengths to make sets. No seams to match, just quick easy sewing!

I do two sets of these in each colorway, and that's it!

Frequency

With the quilting finished up on the "Luminary" quilt, it was time to start a new project. This one, called "Frequency" is one I've had my eye on for awhile. It's another medallion quilt, meaning it's built from the center outwards. Cutting all the fabric was two nights worth of work, and I finally got to sit down and actually start sewing the center star last night. All the angles make this a bit tricky, plus there are y-seams to make it even more difficult, but I think this is the hardest part and should get easier from here.

A Little Vacation

I spent a few days on the gulf coast of Florida/Alabama this week enjoying sunshine and temps in the 70's every day. While I was gone we got 8 inches of snow back here in MN, so that was fabulous timing!

I did some reading...and that was about it!

I was so close to having a Friday Finish to share today, but ultimately it didn't happen. I finished up the quilting around the star on the "Luminary" quilt, and when it was time to start on the star itself I started doing my usual little swirlies, but they just didn't look right. I did about 1/4 of it before deciding to stop and rip it out. Let me tell you, ripping out all those tiny stitches is not fun, and no amount of TV watching makes it better.

I think with the strong straight lines around the quilt the star needs more of the same, and I'm going to try straight lines radiating out from the center and see how that goes. Shouldn't take too long once I make up my mind, so hopefully NEXT Friday will be a finish day.

The last bit of swirly stitches to get ripped out