DJ Quilt Almost Finished and a Few Birds for Your Viewing Pleasure!

Well, birds first!  This is a Clapper Rail which is an  infrequent visitor and very shy.  He hid out awhile and then came back out.

This is an Eastern Phoebe, a frequent visitor to my daughter's back yard fence.

This is a Forster's Tern and there were a lot of them visiting down at Ft. Fisher.

This is a Kildeer which is a frequent visitor down here!

Another shot of the Clapper Rail.

This was  my second audition.  The first which is what I thought I would use was inserting a white piece before this darker piece but I just didn't like the look

Auditioning borders and this was the final decision.

It's all together except for the binding which I am in  the process of sewing down now.  I am very happy with sewing it in quarters despite the fact that this was a very difficult quilt to do this with because of stitching close to the edge.  I made a few mistakes and it is a little wonky in places but overall the picture doesn't do it justice!  I used a dark brown batik for the binding and hopefully, I will get it in the mail by the end of this week.  This will be the last picture!


 

Making Progress!!

Well, the main  part of the La Passacaglia is all sewn together.  I have already added some pieces not in the pattern and still want to add a larger chunk on the right hand side and on the bottom.  Know what I am going to do but just have to do it!

Then I have to dye some background which is now complicated by the fact that our washer doesn't work and I need that for washing out the dyed fabric!!  I want to test doing applique with the papers and glue still in to see whether I have to do the washing of the piece before or after applique.

This is the first quarter of what I am calling DJ4 all machine quilted.  I have since finished the machine quilting on all four quarters.

This is a closeup of the stitching that I am doing in the whitish areas -- it is a double arc.  I have decided not to do it in the green.  I have done a lot of outline stitching in all the little blocks which is mostly invisible as I used matching thread as often as I could.  Quilting this in quarters made the job much much easier!  

Here is the right half of the quilt sewn together.  I messed up a number of times and thankfully the back is a very busy batik which hides some of the extra seams I had to do.  I was in a hurry and it was the end of the day -- big mistake but correctible.  It was very difficult to sew the sections together as there was so much quilting fairly close to the edge where you sew them together.  Lots of pins held it together and it mostly lined up.  I didn't make that mistake today.  I finished machine quilting the other two quarters and will wait until Friday to attempt to sew them together and then sew the two large sections together.  Then all I will have to do is the borders and binding.  It will be a decent sized quilt when done!

 

Real Progress on Passacaglia Quilt and the Newest Dear Jane!

I always take pictures along the way for a good reason!  I can many times spot a booboo before it gets any further and it certainly was the case with this one although I got along further than usual!

This is the third quarter of the quilt with the correct orientation of the naughty block!

Each of the quarters is now done.  The batting arrived today so I will contemplate starting the quilting soon!  I am doing it in four separate sections so I will have to divide up the batting accordingly

The four quarters are mostly done and I only have to stitch the top and bottom together and add a couple of more rosettes to round things out.  I had to get it on the design wall to make sure things were properly aligned.

Here I was testing out a potential background color.  I haven't yet decided when to wash out the papers and fabric glue.  I also haven't decided whether to include the star points on the outside or not as they will be very difficult to applique down.

I am still finding blocks I made last summer while being laid up and this is the latest baby quilt incarnation!  I am going to put a medium blue border and then a dark blue binding to calm it down a bit.  I have made so many tops with this fabric which I picked up very cheaply in a Joann's sale!  It is perfect for stack and whacks.  



 

Getting Down to Business with My Latest Take on Dear Jane

Well, here is the whole thing spread out across two design panels!

I still have some moving around of blocks to do but am ready to get start sewing everything together.  I have decided to do the quilt in quarters as I think the machine quilting will be a lot easier that way.

Here is the first quarter one.  It takes about 2 hours to pin and sew.

This is the second quarter sewn together.  It is the top left and the above was the bottom left.  Easier to see the detail in these smaller sections.

I haven't been taking a lot of bird pictures as there are still so many people at my favorite haunts and the birds simply don't like all that company!  Rainy days are my best bet but there haven't been too many of those!  It doesn't help that I can't do  a lot of walking these days especially on uneven ground.  

 

Working on a New Quilt with Old Blocks!

 

Years and years ago, I participated in a couple of block exchanges of Dear Jane blocks which were very small and pretty intricate. They finished to 4 1/2  inches square.  I got really hooked on them and made close to a 1000 even though originally  there were only about 200 different ones.  Included in this count was another sampler set of blocks found in a 30's quilt.  Altogether, I made three quilts -- one with blocks I made in addition to the exchange blocks which were much more colorful (exchange blocks were all two color), one with batik blocks (one of the exchanges) and one with the 30's blocks.  I donated both the book and about 200 blocks to a quilt club for a raffle.  I also used about 50 as borders on two quilts I finished.  I thought I had about 50 left!  Turns out I had never used the original two color blocks from the exchange as well as the 50 more colorful blocks!!  My online friends and I got to talkiing about the blocks which is when I discovered I had 235 blocks left!!  So it inspired me to use them finally.  My original thought was to use this format but using white bocks instead of alternating the blocks but I found that the blocks with the darker edges didn't look good with the darker half square triangle blocks so I decided to use even more blocks and put the darker edge blocks surrounded by white and the lighter blocks surrounded by the darker triangles  I had originally intended to use only a few of the blocks from the original exchange but found they were almost all having light edges so i am utilizing quite a few with my multi-colored blocks.

This is the progress after day one.  I am so glad I discovered the easy way to make half-square triangles -- eight at a time as this made the process much easier.  The darker triangles are cut from leftover backing batik fabric that was extra-wide.  The lighter fabric is (believe it or not) another really really light extra wide batik that I bought figuring it would be great for hand dyeing!  The coloration is so faint, it looks pretty much like the muslin that had been used in the original blocks!

And this is where it stands today!  I am trying to decide what color to use in the next rows of half square triangles as I want to save the darker fabric as  borders.

I was able to use up all the multi-colored blocks and quite a few of the original two color blocks.

Here are the two versions of the disappearing rail fence pattern.  I thought i would like the on point version better, but I don't!  I am thinking I will make the next one using all blue for the outside strip and all green for the inside one.  Then it will be on to using some of the red, orange and yellow strips I have.  I hardly have any purple strips left as that is one of my favorite colors.  I haven't put borders on these yet but will get to it!

Although I don't have a picture here, I have sewn the top part of the Passacaglia quilt together and will start on the bottom two quarters tonight.  My design walls are both filled with the above quilt pieces so no option for taking pics right now!  I am hoping I don't have any big winds too!



 

Playing a Bit...

I have had online friends for probably close to 30 years now.  Way, way back, we did a couple of exchanges of blocks for a "Dear Jane" quilt.  I overachieved big time and ended up with many more blocks than I needed for a king sized quit that I made with blocks that were not in the exchange!!  

I have donated probably 200 blocks, and used probably 50 as borders on two smaller quilts and still have 51 blocks left which are pictured here.

We recently got in a discussion of these blocks on line so I dragged them out and now am planning to do a quilt from them.  I surprised myself by realizing that I had never done anything with the original blocks from the exchange so I have 185 of them as well!!!  Sigh... As I am a compulsive finisher, these will get used before too long!

One of the quilt club members down here posted a picture of a quilt she was making which I think she called disappearing rail fence.  I really like the look of it so decided to go into the huge bags of 2 1/2 strips and see what I could come up with.  

You basically sew three strips together with a light at one end and then whatever you want for the other two.  I chose to use a medium value in the middle and a dark on the outside and limited my palette to green and blue shades.  After I sewed the strips together, I cut then into 6 1/2 inch squares -- you get six per strip.  Then you cut half of those diagonally from left to right and the other half right to left so you end up with four piles that look like this.

I always make one block first to test the pattern I had figured out.  Too bad my first block was wrong, wrong and wrong.  Couldn't figure out why I was only using half my triangles!  So rip apart I did!  

This is the correct format.  I actually managed to sew them together wrong a second time but finally stacked the pieces as you see above so I wouldn't do that again!  The rest was fast and uneventful!

Here it is up on the design wall mostly done -- have one row to go!

Here it is all sewn together just waiting for borders now so it will be the official 40 x 40 inches.  It is 34 x 34 now.

I turned it on its side to see what a diagonal set would look like and really really like that so I have a bunch more blocks done and have to make a few more and that will be done!  I do have a thing for diagonal sets! 

I do have some more ideas for different things I can do.  It is really good to find something I really like to do with the bags of 2 1/2 strips that I have besides making 4-patches!

 

 

 

An Idyllic Setting for Creating!

These are "the boys" looking out my living room window. George is the orange tabby and Cheney is the black one. George came to us with that name but Cheney was Butterball which didn't fit at all. We figured that wherever George was, there must be a Cheney lurking nearby and since the black cat was a bit of a lurker......

Well after so much time away, I headed out to Marcia's for a sewing day at her home set in the most wonderful spring (or anytime for that matter) setting. Again the colors of the lilacs just beginning to bloom along with her remaining tulips -- the deer trimmed the rest of her tulips rather well, she says.

This is the view towards the back of the pasture where a herd of deer now spends time grazing along with a very well fed ground hog, who was immortalized on an earlier blog.

This is the view toward the pond which is sometimes alive with Canada Geese but not today. Spring colors are almost as good as fall colors!

Marcia is working with a very different pallet since coming back from her last Nancy Crow workshop. I am in love with these new pieces but then again, anything with purple...... She made good use of many of the hand dyes we have made together.

This is the beginnings of the new lillies piece I am doing. I have made the drawing, traced it to tissue paper, numbered everything, colored it in and then transferred it to the freezer paper and have done all my markings! Now I am rethinking the lillies themselves as they look a bit complex but we shall see. I have a habit of changing things as I go!! I want to make sure that the petals are well differentiated without the use of too much thread work. We shall see.


I finally finished the quilting on this quilt, the binding is done and I am DONE. It is far far from perfect but I am far from perfect, so that is okay. I realized when I couldn't find the binding that I had set aside, that it became the green border!! So I had to come up with a new vintage binding so yellow it was!! Oh well, it is by far the most complex quilt with the most quilting that I have ever done. Some of the blocks (they are all 4 inches square) have more than 100 pieces and many have more than 50!! Quilting by hand was not fun...... This is one of those quilts best viewed from about six feet away!! It is about 90 inches by 85 inches. Double clicking will show more detail!

Back to the Studio for the New Year!

It was so good to get back to Marcia's and join with Priscilla in a wonderful day of solving the world problems and getting some sewing done. Unfortunately, her beloved horse became very ill while we were there so we didn't see as much of Marcia as we would like but Bill kept us up to date on what was happening.

As we left, the full moon was brightly shining through the trees even though it was still daylight. I couldn't resist a couple of pictures.

This is Priscilla's Wolf quilt which is just beautiful and a stunning tribute to this beautiful animal. I was lucky to see one in the wild in Alaska (although not at Yellowstone). I had to capture the Singer Featherweight which is also my machine of choice for this travelling piecing!



This is a closeup of one of the cross-stitched pieces on the quilt. Notice the wolves all facing to the left.

This wolf is looking right at you and is definitely the focal point of the quilt. She had to eliminate some of her selections because the wolves were facing in the wrong direction!!


This is the front of Priscilla's "Jacket from Hell" as she affectionately calls it. She was desparately trying to give either Marcia or I the pattern for the jacket yesterday but we weren't falling for it!

This is the back of the jacket. The jacket is literally just one piece and therein "lies the rub".

This is a piece that Marcia recently finished quilting and I love the colors and the feeling of the piece -- very soothing.

This is the first of my two hexagon tops. If you look closely (by double clicking), you will see family pictures in the hexagons as well as many different critters and "stuff". I tried to add things that would be meaningful to the family in both of these two hexagon quilts. Different novelty fabrics were included from local as well as email pals! I must have had close to 600 different prints in the end!!

This is the depression quilt put back together. I quilted by hand 70 of the blocks so far and now just have to do the blocks on the outside and the two middle rows -- this adds up to 62 blocks and I also have to add the borders yet and quilt those. Hmmmm -- will it get done in time for our quilt show? Double click to see the detail of these blocks. As I have mentioned before, all but the backing and the natural colored muslin were vintage fabrics. The blocks are all 30's era blocks as were derived from a quilt I saw on ebay and the patterns sold by http://www.sentimentalstitches.com/. I never finished all the blocks in the original quilt and added a few of my own that I got out of Electric Quilt's Barbara Brackman CD which contains the derivations of all the blocks.

A Lazy Sunday

Well, finally I have gotten the more than 150 9-patches done for the cornerstones for the Depression quilt which contains 132 blocks. Double click on the picture to see it bigger. It is in two pieces as I want to quilt the sections separately and then put them together so that I won't ruin my shoulder for another year (like the huge one I did a couple of years ago). I will also add the borders after the whole thing is quilted as well. This quilt was inspired by one I saw for sale on Ebay. Linda Franz (one of our club lecturers) knew the woman who owned the top and said she had self published a pattern which I bought. It was much like the Dear Jane book in that it only presented black and white line drawings of each of the block but did give the Blockbase source for most of them. I redid many of them for one reason or another. I decided to declare this quilt done after doing 139 blocks even though there were many more in the original. It is time to move on to more non-traditional styles! Doing these small blocks is like eating potato chips, you can't just do one. The workmanship is FAR from perfect but some of the 4 inch blocks have more than 100 pieces and many of them contain 50 or 60.


Can't seem to make up its mind out there whether it is winter or spring. It snows and then it is sunny. Feels like a good day to have at my sewing room which looks like a tornado recently went through it! At least I have managed to clear off most of the stuff from the sewing cabinet so I can get down to some machine quilting which is next on the sewing agenda!

It will be a busy week with Lisa coming home on Wednesday night and me also having a three day class with Priscilla. It will be another jacket making class so I look forward to it and will try to make a black and red jacket this time. I have picked out most of the fabrics but still have to get some "stuff" together for embellishment. Soon after Lisa leaves, Marcia and I will spend a day dyeing and then quickly I will be heading to Las Vegas for a few days. My main goal for the trip is to see the Grand Canyon so I have booked a day tour which includes the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and Lake Mead (been there already!). It will be a LONNGGG day but will be my highlight. We are also scheduled to see one of the Cirque shows one night as Warren has always wanted to see one of those (Mysterie).