Bloggers Quilt Festival 2014

It is time again for the Bloggers Quilt Festival. I thought I didn't have anything for the Bloggers Quilt Festival this year but I looked through my 2013 finishes and decided I did have something after all. This is my Giraffes Quilt; it is 34 x 37 inches and is entered in the small quilt category.

I bought the giraffe panel a few years ago at the NQA show in Columbus, Ohio. It lived in a plastic box for a long time. This was one of those things that I knew I would use but I never came up with any ideas that were right. I purchased that multicolor batik at the same time but there were only 2 fat quarters available. Everywhere I went I always looked for something to go with it but never found anything.

When I finally got started I  used fabrics that I had in my stash and only purchased the black and gold spotted fabric. The rectangles separated by zigzag fabric spacers was from a vest I made more than 15 years ago. I did not have large pieces so I had to know what I wanted to do before I cut anything.
My seam ripper got a real workout with this quilt. With each border I added I found something I needed to change. Once I started quilting it I thought I was finished using the seam ripper; but I was wrong. I did echo quilting around the giraffes and at one point I felt that there was too much echo quilting. I got some input from the Basement Diva's and I ripped out some of the echo quilting an, and as a friend suggested, I used the #4 Bernina stitch for the rest of the background in the center panel. It seemed like for every single step it was make a decision, stitch, analyze, rip, then stitch again.
When I finished I was satisfied and I can say that I enjoyed the process.
If you want to see the process as I agonized over each addition, look for giraffes in the side bar and you can follow all my steps.

Giraffes

The giraffe quilt is almost finished. I could consider it finished but I plan to add a few (very few) embellishments. I consulted with the embellishment maven when the Basement Divas met on Saturday and she gave me  some advice; now I have to do some shopping for embellishments.


I went ahead and finished the binding and the hanging sleeves and buried all the thread tales. I didn't want to end up setting this aside again due to all the odds and end of finishing.  Below are a few close up shots of the quilting.









After I had several rows of echo quilting I didn't like the way it was starting to look and I brought it with me to Friendship group last Tuesday. Laura suggested I use the chevron or zig zag pattern from one of the borders and I tried  it and I liked it. I had to take out some of the echo stitching but I was happy to do that as I didn't like it. On the last border I  used the blind hem stitch sewed in pairs from 2 directions and then the # 4 Bernina stitch between. It doesn't show up a lot but that's fine with me. It flattens out the border and gives a little texture.
It is 34 x 37 inches and hangs nice and flat. All in all I am pleased with it and happy to finally have it finished (almost). It has been hanging there in the back of my mind for a long time.

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?

Collaboration

The quilt and I got together and we agree that the patch had to go.
I do not know why all the of photos are different colors. I shot them in the same place with the same light and auto setting.  Ah well that is not the point of the photo collage (not this time anyway).


On the Left is the offending patch, not really terrible but it doesn't seem right in the overall picture.
Center is the hole where the patch was removed. I am getting good at removing small  pieces without taking out whole seams.
On the Right is the new patch.

Voila, the whole flimsy, finished, yes it is. The quilt has stopped asking for anything more.





































When I thought it over I came to the conclusion that I did not need to change anything on the lower right side of that border because it had the zig zag fabric on the right in the next border.
I had made the decision in the first border around the giraffe panel to have all the zig zag  fabric in the piece oriented in the same direction. Kind of like it was a background and everything was laying on top of it. I didn't know at the time how or where I would use the fabric again or even if I would use it again. I think I made the right decision but right or wrong it is done.

It is what it is!



Giraffes Redo

Yesterday I thought I had a finished flimsy. Not so! When I looked at it this morning I admitted that there was something about the left side that I didn't like. The quilt tried to tell me that yesterday but I refused to acknowledge it. This morning I knew I had to fix it. Where to begin? When all the borders are different, with each side added in a different order; it needs to be analyzed before taking up the seam ripper.
So, this was yesterday when I tried to tell myself it was finished.










This is the area that bothered me.
 On the left is where I started and I took out the seams back to the black border.
In the center , I had added another of the bright batik and separated the motifs with strips of the zigzag fabric. Still not quite right.
On the right, I had changed the bottom leaf motif for a more colorful patch from the same fabric and added the zig zag strip. What!!!
I added a strip going in the wrong direction.

So I took up the seam ripper again and fixed it. I considered adding a zig zag strip to the top of that border strip in place of that hot pink section above the leaf motif. I had not added one to the right end of the horizontal border strip with the same fabrics and I don't want that zig zag fabric at that end next to the same fabric in the next border on the right. The jury is still out, I might add that strip at the top after all. I will wait till tomorrow to see what the quilt tells me to do.

Let me tell you, this has been one bossy quilt. Every decision I've made about what comes next has gotten an argument from the quilt; and the quilt has won every time. I am about ready to tell this piece that I am the boss.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Giraffes coming along

I started this early last week and I worked on it on and off as far as actual sewing goes but I had it percolating in my mind all the time. This has been improvisational all the way so there has been a lot of stopping and thinking with each piece I cut and stitched. All of the borders are different widths and the border fabrics do not follow in a four sides the same order. Many decisions here, I guess that I what improve is.
The spotted fabric borders on the top and left are going to be trimmed  to about 3 inches (I think). I cut them 5 inches  but that is too wide. The bright fabric shows up true to color here but everything else looks washed out which is not how it really looks.

After I got his far I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the binding. I have to know what I want to do before I cut it all up as there is not enough of the bright batik fabric to experiment. I scanned all my fabrics and sent them to EQ7 and worked out the quilt in EQ the way I had put it together. This EQ version looks a lot more straight than the piece on my design wall looks although it actually is nice and straight.

I decided that I am going to use the right batik for the binding on two sides and black on the other 2 sides and add some prairie points in the lower right corner to brighten up the zigzag stripes.
the colors all show up better here in the fabric that was scanned than in my photo of the quilt. The prairie points are too small to show up the other colors in EQ but I will make sure I cut my squares to get the purple and hot pink as well as the orange. I do not plan to add any prairie points in the upper left but I colored a couple triangles there to see how they look and forgot to change them. Who knows though, I have changed my mind from one addition to the next several times. I am ready to layer this and quilt it right after I decide on a backing;  I can save the decisions about the binding and prairie points till last.

Giraffes - A start

This start has been a long time coming. After I finished the T shirt quilt I cleaned up and cleared off all the horizontal surfaces and dug out these fabrics.  I've had this 18 x 19 batik panel for at least 3 years. It's another one of those fabrics that I was so excited about when I bought it that I could hardly wait to get home to start. I  am not sure why my enthusiasm waned.  I bought this at the NQA Quilt Show and2 fat quarters of the bright batik fabric, on the right. That was all they had and though I looked everywhere on line I never found more.
I must have brought it to a quilt guild meeting once because one of the members asks me every time I see her if I have started something . Lately she has been telling me I should sell it to her if I am not going to use it.

I pulled two of these fabrics from my stash and I bought the spotted gold fabric yesterday

 I also found some pieces of the fabric on the right, that I intend to use but I will have to be creative with it as it has been chopped up and these are the two largest pieces; there are mostly small pieces left. Maybe I will have to "make fabric" for the border.




Here I have 2 border strips sewed on. For some reason I thought the zigzag striped fabric would look good turned cross wise on the top and bottom and I took great pains t make the corners match. I don't like it and intend to take it off and put the zigzag stripes going the other way. I am not sure if I will leave that print in place where it is or not. I had to go out again last evening and buy some solid black to go in there too.





The last photo has border strips auditioned on the side and bottom. I am still  not sure where this is going. I still like the batik panel but I need to look at it and think about it for  a while. Once I cut up those left over scraps I will be committed and that is the one fabric I am sure I want in there somewhere