Bloggers Quilt Festival

 It's time the fall Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.
This is one of the few quilts I finished this year; getting ready to move took up a lot of my time.  It i entered in the Scrappy Quilt category
This quilt is make from blocks that my friends in the Friendship block exchange group made for me.  I asked for Anvil blocks made with "made fabric"for the center square and the half square triangles could be made fabric or not. I asked for yellow or orange for the backgrounds.  Victoria (Bumblebeans) had requested that her followers make  anvil blocks with a blue background which she makes into quilts for people recently diagnosed with cancer. My friends made one block with the blue background and one block for me with yellow/orange background to make a quilt for myself.  I think I sent 12 blocks to Victoria and I had 12 blocks for my quilt from my friends and I made the rest.
The blocks are 12 inches and the half square triangles in the borders are 3 inches.

 I used one anvil block and some "made fabric" squares along with a piece of floral fabric that I had to stretch the backing fabric of which I had not enough.







Below are 2 close up shots showing the all over quilting with rows of the Bernina # 4 stitch. This was the first time I used this stitch for spaced rows and I like the look and I will use it again.









If you want to know more you can click on "anvil blocks".
Be sure to check out the other quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival and be sure to visit all the categories.

A Finish

I wasn't sure I would get this finished this month but I kept the room set up to quilt and did it a little at a time. It should have gone faster but I had other things taking up my time.

I can't get near my design wall to hang this up to get a full picture but you can see the way it is quilted. I have used the #4 stitch on the Bernina for years to quilt across a plain square or rectangle, sometimes with variegated thread to add a little interest. I have also used it for the binding on juvenile or whimsical  quilts. I never thought of using it for parallel lines until I saw Amy Smart from Diary of a Quilter use it that way on a Churn dash quilt. I was really at a loss over how to quilt this. I did not want to free motion quilt it or quilt in the ditch. I thought free motion would be too busy and in the ditch would be physically intensive. For several reasons, I wasn't sure I wanted to quilt parallel rows of straight lines either. When I saw Amy's quilt I thought "why not". At about 1/3 of the way I was sure I hated it but I kept going and now that it is finished I like it. My rows could be straighter but this is a very forgiving technique.






This is the back and there really is no hint of green in the backing fabric. It is a nice cheerful  yellow with orange lines. I had to improvise when I pieced the back because I did not buy enough fabric (Same old story, different quilt). Now I am happy that I didn't have enough fabric. Necessity is the mother of more interesting quilts.
Below are a couple of close up shots. I thought at first that the quilting was too scribbly and overshadowed the blocks but I don't think so after all. You can see in the close up on the right how I quilted the HST border.

 I have to mention one of the best tools I have found in a long time.

Saturday I went to a NEORQC (North East Ohio Regional Quilt Council)  meeting. I won a small bucket of goodies. I can always use more basting pins and another little snipping scissors. I have wanted to try piping hot binding and now I have a tool and an instruction booklet and some cord. There is fabric with instructions for a 10 minute table runner that I am sure the little great grandsons will like. Best of all is the "Seam Fix" Seam ripper. The instructions say to use the seam ripper to cut the threads and then with the tip on the cap rub over the seam and it will pick up all the stray thread. IT WORKS! I am not a gadget person but this is one that I am in love with. Picking out all those threads is the worst part of ripping a seam.

Piecing a back etc.

I found a nice yellow DS fabric for the back of the anvil quilt and I did not buy enough. I was going to go back and buy more but I needed Jack to take me and he was busy. I am not patient by nature and I decided I would use what I have rather than wait. I pieced the center panel by inserting some left over made fabric; the 2 side panels are the yellow fabric, not pieced

I put together an Anvil block with pieces I had left over; all  of the HST's have different backgrounds. I had a piece of the print that is around the anvil block and I used all of it to surround the block. When I sewed the yellow print on the ends the center looked lonesome so I pieced together 2 strips of 4 inch made  fabric blocks and inserted them in the center of the end pieces.



Close up of made fabric sections - the color on right is true

20 inch wide center panel - the color on the left is true

The whole back is together now and it looks balanced with 20 inch side panels of plain yellow print. I can't get a decent photo of the whole back with my flash or without it. I think maybe yellow is hard to photograph and the poor light inside today doesn't help. I will get a good photo (outside) when I finish the quilt.

It will be a while before I get this quilt finished. I need a better place to layer it up and I am getting pressed for time. Quilt Camp is coming up June 9 -13 and I have some work to do for that. I am putting almost every quilting project on hold so I can get started on organizing for our move in July or August. We moved 2 years ago from one identical space 20 some feet down the hall. That was an easy organizing  and purging move. This will not be so easy; everything will be different and my sewing space is going to be a lot different.

 I start telling everyone in January

 that it is "almost Christmas"

because to me that seems to be true.

Well... July comes before Christmas

and it is really almost here.

Anvil Flimsy

I think I really missed the mark on this one. Now that it is all together I can see that I made some choices that were not the best.

Starting with the background color I requested from the participants in the friendship group. Maybe I should have given everyone fabric for one background color or maybe I should have gone with a medium or dark blue like the blocks we made for Victoria (Bumblebeans).

I seem to remember that I had decided to make  one for myself with a blue background.

Blocks sent to Victoria

 

Four block center of the directional plan

Then there is the layout, I think it would have been better to have all of the blocks oriented in the same direction. My original plan was to have the blocks in the 2 vertical  rows on the right mirror the ones on the left, then in EQ I could see an underlying square if I had the lower 3 rows mirror the upper 2. However that gets lost with  this kind of block when the "made fabric" sometimes determining the direction that is perceived.

I decided not to trim the blocks to all the same size as they were all close enough to fudge and almost all of them had enough clearance beyond the triangle points so the points would not be lost. Trimming this kind of block would result in lost points where fudging worked  pretty well. I have to admit that one of my own blocks was the worst of the bunch. It didn't line up well on any side and lost more points than it kept. Maybe this is a block I trimmed and decided not to trim any others. It is the block in the lower left of the 4 blocks center of the directional plan photo.

These colors are pretty much right on. I had a hard time getting a true to life photo of the colors in the flimsy up on the wall because the light in my sewing room is not good on this dark rainy day.

What will I do with it?

1. I will quilt it.

2. Then ???????

Jack says he doesn't want to sleep under it because

he would have nightmares. Maybe it can be a picnic tablecloth if it won't

give us indigestion.

 

So...... what do I like about this?

1. It's done.

2. My friends made most of the blocks.

3. I like the Anvil block enough to make it again but not in made fabric.

4. I learned something (that is always a good thing).
5. I really don't hate it.

 

 



Working on Anvil Blocks

I have been working on finishing up the Anvil blocks quilt top.

 I layered up pairs of  4 inch squares to make HST's for border blocks  and I spent a lot of time trimming them to 3 1/2 inches.


 Half the HST's had yellow on one side and half had orange/peach on one side. Then I auditioned strips of yellow print and strips of orange for 1 inch spacer borders
 I decided to go with the orange turned so the strips were vertical ( on the right) for the yellow strips I am using a more subtle  orange and yellow batik stripe also positioned vertical.

I am working on putting the HST's together in sets of 4 that will be stitched to the yellow or orange spacer strips and then attached to the blocks on the perimeter of the quilt top.
The yellow background blocks will get yellow  spacers and yellow HST's; the orange will get orange. The photos on the left show one corner block and 2 side blocks. the HST border echoes the placement of the HST's in the Anvil blocks.

When I make a pieced border I like to sew the border sections to the perimeter blocks rather than make  one long border piece and then attach it to the top or side of the quilt. I get better results with pieced borders doing it this way. I probably would not do it this way if my inner/spacer borders was not also pieced.

I should have had this all finished today. But I  cleaned up the  area a bit and gave a little quilting lesson to my grandson's girlfriend yesterday. This morning I had a short episode of vertigo; afterward I just rested around and watch TV for a while. Now I am back at work on the top but have considered a slight change in the layout. The orange background blocks alternate with the yellow background blocks in a checker board style.  I intend to stay with that pattern but I am thinking of turning  the last two rows 90 degrees for a barn raising set. I have already sewed  the center 2 blocks together in each row so I am trying to work out how I can accomplish this without taking out too many seams. I can't just flip them over without changing the blocks on either side or I will  lose the checkerboard. It is not a difficult thing to do but I want to get it right the first time and not have to do anything over (and maybe over again). I had worked out the layout in EQ and had discarded this idea but when I started sewing the blocks together I had second thoughts.

Second thoughts are the bane of my existence!

Anvil blocks

 I was unable to stand the bare horizontal surfaces yesterday so I decided to make the rest of the anvil blocks need to make the top.

 the one on the left has made fabric for the HST's; in the one on the left I used made fabric and plain squares for the HST's. For the center block I used all plain fabric (if you can call Laurel Burch fabric plain). I have had this fabric for a long time and hard ever use it because it is too wonderful to cut up for just anything. I have used it one in a while to cut small squares for something or other. I have to remember that nothing is so wonderful that it should live in a box in the closet; if it stays there long enough one day it will turn out to be not wonderful at all.

These 2 squares are 6 1/2 inch made fabric to be used for the centers of anvil blocks. I had 2 squares that I decided to "fix"; one was too small and one had a black and white 4 patch in the center that I had trimmed wonkyas a starter center. I didn't like the black and white. Sometimes you need to leave well enough alone. I am not enchanted with either one, especially the bottom one. I slashed it across the center in two directions and added the orange and then I didn't like it so I slashed it again and added the yellow. Now I am having a talk with myself trying to decide whether to use them or not. I sometimes get really compulsive about the last one or two  blocks I am finishing and work them over and over trying to make them perfect. I think that is what I am thinking here.

Who was it that said "Make peace with imperfection"?

Some Knitting and one anvil block

I am not much of a knitter. I started knitting again about a year ago after many, many years ( my first attempts were not stellar). I made a stack of dish cloths, like 25 +, I considered them practice. My daughter recently told me that my dishcloth knitting looked pretty good and that I should try knitting something else. I  bought and downloaded this "Hitchhiker" scarf pattern on Ravelry and I went out to buy yard and needles. This is really the same stitch as the dishcloths but a different gauge.  I know nothing about yarn types and I had no idea what fingering yarn is. Another shopper gave me some advice and I bought the yarn for the color. I am about 1/3 of the way finished now. There is an increase of 4 stitches in width for every notch
and there are 42 notches. I think there are 2 mistakes but because of the variegated yarn it is really hard to tell.

I made one Anvil block yesterday. I thought it would be quick as I had all the background squares cut and the "made fabric" squares ready. I am almost never quick. Here it is with the other 12 yellow/orange background blocks in back on my design wall.

I think I had a problem because I was using a different machine and the quarter inch foot has an attached guide on the side;  my light was not positioned to light up that edge. My seams were not straight and not 1/4 inch so there was a lot of unsewing going on. I finally realized what the problem was and moved my lamp.

Here is a close up of the finished block. At our Basement Diva meeting in October Fran gave me some made fabric blocks and that is what I used for this block.
I have more yellow and orange background squares cut so maybe the next blocks will be quicker.
I really have to get my Bernina in soon for service; yesterday I kept moving my right leg to lift the presser foot. Once you get used to the knee lift it is hard to get along without it.

Made Fabric work

This morning I wanted to clean up my work area a little and I had some pieces and parts all over my cutting area.  Well... I might as well make that one block and add it to the orange and yellow Anvil blocks.

The print that I use for the HST's would have shown up better with a darker fabric for the background but I like it anyway and I had it and the yellow squares cut. That was part of the cleaning up so that's what I made.








I had that large piece of made fabric that I acquired from Fran last Saturday and I cut it up into 6 1/2 inch squares and 4 inch squares to make more anvil blocks. I took the pieces I cut away and sew some of them together and I added some parts I had cut away from previously cut up made fabric. I got  3 - 6 1/2 inch squares ( I already used one 6 1/2 inch square for my blue background block) and 10 -  4 inch squares and a few extra pieces to add to the odds and ends to sew on to something else when I am making fabric again. I still  have to clean up the area a little but I have something accomplished and I didn't have to drag out anything from my bags of scraps, which would have made a lot more to clean up. I am going to need 10 to 15 more blocks and I will  just make them one or 2 at a time when I am taking a break from something or need to clean up the cutting area. If I have a ziplock bag with 4 inch and 3 1/2 inch yellow and orange squares it should be easy to make the blocks I need.

Anvil blocks

Saturday I was given a large piece of "made fabric" by Fran, one of the Basement Divas. She doesn't really like making fabric. I was only too happy to have it.
I cut some 4 inch squares and some 6 inch squares and I made one Anvil block.
This will round up the number of Anvil blocks with blue backgrounds that I am going to send to Victoria (Bumblebeans) for the cancer quilts that she makes. I had the Friendship group make blocks for me in October and I asked for half of them with blue background. I wasn't sure why I had only 11 when there are 12 in the group. Oh.....I had left out myself so I used Fran's fabric to make my block. Most of the Friendship group is in the Basement group and most of the Basement Divas are in the Friendship group. Fran is one of those who is not part of the Friendship group however her fabric worked out very well.



These are the 12 blocks I will be sending after I clean up all the extra threads and shreds. Everyone always does a good job of cleaning up their blocks but they have been in my sewing room a while and on and off the wall where they pick up threads left behind by other things that were on the wall.



Alas! All but a handful of leaves are gone from the tree. This will be the last tree report until spring unless the winter brings some really spectacular snow art to the trees.

Friendship blocks etc

Friendship group was on Tuesday and it was my turn to receive blocks. I had chosen the Anvil block from "made fabric" and had asked for two 12 inch  blocks, one with a blue background and one with a lighter orange/yellow/gold background.
 I had asked for half of the blocks with blue backgrounds so I could send them to Victoria (Bumblebeans) for the quilts she makes with donated blocks for people recently diagnosed with cancer. I love these blocks. I especially find the block in the upper left corner endearing. It reminds me of myself; I will fix it before I send it. I didn't get blocks from everyone  this month, it was a very busy month for everyone. I will wait to get them all before I send them to Victoria.









Theses are the blocks in the other colorway and I love them just as much. I will  be keeping these to make a throw size quilt. I have one or two of my own somewhere but I didn't look for them because I won't be  putting these together for a while.

I have been quilting the giraffe quilt and it is on hold right now while I decide what I want to do with the background around the giraffes. I am not entirely happy with the echo quilting and I want to add something to it. That may require some unstitching. I took it with me to Friendship Tuesday and asked for suggestions. One of them was to repeat the chevron stitching from the zig zag fabric. I drew a pattern in one corner with my white Sewline Fabric Pencil (I love that pencil). I am still not sure what I will  do.

As I sit here and ponder what to do, this is the view from my sewing room window on this rainy overcast day. In real life the leaves are a bit more yellow. Those blue blurry spots are the raindrops on my window. There is NO blue in the sky today.

 This is the view from the living room of our second floor apartment. That close up view of the green leaves shows the leaves that come up and brush our window when the wind blows. There is much more yellow on the other side of the tree and the other maple trees around are all yellow, it must be the proximity to the building that makes the difference.

 This carpet of leaves under the tree is much thicker that it was earlier when I shot these pictures. It is quite breezy and all the branches are waving and the leaves are coming down like rain. Soon the trees will be bare and the lawn people will come and gather up all the leaves.
I will miss them.

"Peak" color was late this year in our area of NE Ohio. We thought that this year the color would be nice but more subdued, then, last Thursday, everything seemed to burst into glorious color overnight. Who would have expected peak to come the first weekend in November?

A Flimsy and some Anvil blocks

I finally sewed all the HST's  together and got the borders on the baby quilt.

I still have to piece the back. I am sure there is a rule of some kind: If you have a large piece of fabric for a long time and audition it many times and eliminate it many times, right after you think you will never use it for a border or backing and cut a hunk out of it, you will find a use for it that requires extra piecing because you took a hunk out of it. I have some striped fabric that has all the colors from the border fabric and I will use that to extend the backing and also use it for binding.

 I finished a couple  more anvil blocks. I intended doing it on Saturday at the Basement Divas meeting but I did not get around to it. I really didn't get anything done but I took a lot of photos. It was a good work day and everyone was busy. the block on the lower right is Lynn's block. I will  be mailing these to Victoria (Bumblebeans).
We all decided that we like these blocks best set on point. I am going to  have the Friendship group make Anvil blocks for me next month and I will be setting them on point.