More Comfort Quilts and Challenge Quilt Beginning!

 

These next three quilts are all for our guild's Habitat for Humanity donations.

This and the next quilt were originally to be a king-sized quilt but I just didn't need another king-sized quilt and wasn't all that crazy about them either so I decided to go with 2 twin sized quilts that I will donate.  They are each about 45 x 90 so would go great in some shelter.

Another comfort quilt with the blue stripe fabric and blocks made several years ago when teaching some ladies how to do a "disappearing 9-patch".

I managed to get 17 blocks of the QAYG type done at our sewing day on Monday.  My back may never be the same so will have to bring a pillow to back me up the next time!

I have started the challenge quilt which will be for a show in 2024 at one of the historic houses in Wilmington.  The theme of the challenge is the Cape Fear River.  I frequently photo sunset scenes down at Ft. Fisher so decided that is what I would use for the challenge.  I like the ones I take through the trees the best but wasn't up to tackling the trees so decided to go with a picture taken at sunset looking out from the very end of Ft. Fisher.  The view shows the historic breakwater that was built in the mid 1800s and it separates the Cape Fear River from the ocean.  

This was the beginning of the sunset.  I struggled to find some of the exact colors I wanted to use.

Here are all the layers of the background sunset and it looks very bright and overwhelming to me here.  I am making everything oversized at this point as the final piece has to measure 30-36 inches tall and 24 - 30 inches wide.  I am cuttently skirting around 36 inches tall and 30 inches wide.

This is my current iteration of the piece where I have  cut off some of the top.  

The further black line is the opposite shore and the blue between the two black lines is the Cape Fear River. The closer black area is of course the breakwater which is pretty flat on top but craggy on the bottom.

The foreground is the inlet of the ocean.  There will also be scattered reeds which I will machine quilt coming up from the bottom of the piece.

I haven't decided yet whether I will do some painting as well as the machine quilting I will be doing.  

I am feeling like I am on the right track now and have some time to get this done as it doesn't have to be finished until January.  My biggest fear is that it will be too different from anyone else's and just won't fit in.

Making Up For Lost Time -- But First the Houses and Some Current Stuff!

I finally finished the three Habitat for Humanity tops which I will quilt when I get back down south as the club provides me with batting.  These are the three.  The first two have 2 small trees and one wide one and the third ones has 2 wide ones and 1 small one in each row.  I randomly made trees until I ran out of fabric so wanted to use what I had.  I did have to make a couple of more trees to complete that quilt though.

 

In trying to destash, I came across a bunch of mandalas I did a few years ago.  I am planning to sell a bunch of my hand dyes and mandalas at our club garage sale in June -- I will be selling them super cheap and probably donating the rest that I don't sell.  These are all 45 x 45 inches.  These were some of the first ones I tried with ice dyeing quite a few years ago.

This afternoon I decided it was time to start putting together the Farmer's Wife blocks that I did.  I have two sets of close to 100 each.  I decided I would put half in point and half as is and started the process this afternoon.  There was A LOT of trial and error trying to decide what size to cut the half square triangles and then what size to make the borders on the regular blocks.  I guessed wrong a number of times.  The blocks will be 8 x 8 inches when finished.  Without the borders, they are 6 1/2 x 6 1/2.  The half squaree triangles were made from 5 1/2 in squares and the borders will need to be 1 in wide finished or 1 1/2 inch strips.  I can't begin to tell you how many times I did this simple task wrong.  Should have done it at the beginning of sewing, not at the end!

Tomorrow and the next couple of days will be pictures of quilts from my last Genesee Valley Quilt Club Meeting.

`It's Been a While Since My Last Post!

It's been a tough month to say the least.  We had a bit of a health crisis in the family which caused us to leave our beach house in a hurry.  Things are returning to normal but I didn't have much time for doing much sewing, dyeing or bird watching!

I am very  much trying to get rid of a lot of fabric including batiks, hand dyes and just normal fabric and hopefully I will be able to sell a bunch of that in our June garage sale at quilt club.  The challenge is getting it out to the car!!  I am continuing to destash as much as I can.  I was hoping to make the move south permanently but doesn't look like that is in the cards for now but want to get rid of as much as possible to enable that!

I have been making quilt blocks for "Habitat for Humanity" quilts which Quilters by the Sea supports in the Wilmington NC area.  I have enough houses now for three quilts and am diligently working on some trees.  I generally have 15 houses per quilt and they end up measuring about 40 x 50 which is a nice size.  I adapted the pattern from one that was posted on the Missouri Quilts site.  They had added some triangles around the ouside.

You can see here the two different tree sizes I put into these quilts.  The trick is to add the same number of bigger and smaller trees to each row.

 To make thsse 7 1/2 blocks (finished which uses 2 inch strips), you need the following:  Using 2 1/2 inch strips would result in a 10 in house but you would need to adjust all the sizes below.  I may do this at some point!

5 2 1/2 inch squares in blue for the sky

2 2 1/2 inch squares in red for the chimney

1 8 in strip incn brown for the roof

1 8 in strip inch in any color you want to use for the house

3 2 x 3 1/2  inch strips in the house color

1 2 in square for above the window in house color

1 2 x 3 1/2 inch strip in brown for the door

1 2 x 2 inch square in yellow or some light color for the window

The trees are done by sewing 4 2 inch strips together and then using either a 45 degree angle ruler for the larger trees or a 60 degree angle tool for the smaller trees.  I use these two rulers to also cut the sky background.  The trunk is another 2 inch square piece in brown.  I then cut 2 inch strips to fill in the sky  next to the trunk.  For the larger trees, I cut these 3 1/2 inch long and for the smaller trees, 3 inches long and then I trim.  

To finish them up I sew trees randomly between the houses making sure I always have two small and one big in each row and then I use green 2 inch strips for the sashing between the rows.  To make it longer, you could use strips of blue on the top if you want to.  I use all sorts of random scraps of the greens, browns and light blues.

Some Boring Quilts and an Update to the Farmer's Wife Blocks!

These are the three quilts I have made for our Habitat for Humanity program at quilt club.  We donate one to each new house that is built for this charitable organization.  They are all pretty much alike except for the different scrappy fabrics that they use.  Everything is made with 2 inch strips and the trees are basically 4 of these strips sewn together and then using a 45 degree or 60 degree template to made the top.  I am going to incorpate some different trees in the next one I make as well as add a row of sky on top of the houses.

 

Here are just a couple of the blocks I have done since I last posted.  Lots and lots of half square triangles in this last batch which took a lot of time and patience!

Here is the latest status of the blocks done.  There are 66 here so I still have about 45 to do to get the book done.  I disciplined myself not to do anymore until I finished machine quilting the above quilts as well as basting and starting the machine quilting on the Passacaglia quilt.  I have made some progress on that as well.  The quilting will not show for the most part as I haven't particularly cared for the ones I saw done that had hand quilting (which I would NEVER try on a quilt with pieces this small!).  It is easier than I thought it would be as I don't have to make big sweeping movement of this largesh quilt as the "blocks" are all pretty small.  I am free hand stitching in the ditch for the most part.

I will get back to my Farmer's Wife blocks after a day of dyeing tomorrow with friend Dianne.  I am going to experiment a little tomorrow so we shall see!

One last block!