Bound and Gagged!

Perverse as the title would lead the imagination, it is not what you think.

If I were to bind a book, it would be bound.  If I signed a contract, I would be bound by the terms.  If I bind a quilt, the past tense of bind is bound, right?

The quilt is bound and the gremlins gagged.  Green Lemonade is now ready for it’s utilitarian purpose.

This is the corner of the quilt.  Notice how differently the circles come together with 4 melons vs. 3 melons.  The 4 melon stitching was tricky.  I figure if I did not do it right, the only good thing about it is all of the raw edges were bias so it would never fray/unravel.  And I got a little scrappy with the binding as I had floral black left over from the front and a long length of fabric left over from the back.  I thought that would be a good way to incorporate where it has been and where it is going.  I would like to thank my fellow bloggers for the suggestions given as this was greatly appreciated and to the forum members at M*QC for getting out their pom-poms and cheering me on to the finish line!  Bernadette and Gramma Babs you are terrific ladies!

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I am such a quilting rebel!

Bonnie Hunter is having a mystery quilt event and today was the first day!

My day started off with fabric at midnight waiting to see what M*QC had to offer for black Friday (glad I did as they were sold out of much by noon).  Then off to Joann’s doorbusters in the morning for more fabric stashing.  When I got home from shopping before 8 am the mystery quilt instructions were available for our first baby step in this new and exciting quilt.  My color choices have changed.  The paint chip idea behind this quilt is genius, and a great help at the LAQS to get the exactly right fabric hue/shade.  Here are my revised choices.

I am not sure if I have made the selections too bright????  However, if it becomes loud that is ok.  Since the children are loud creatures, it will fit right in with their atmosphere.

I guess I am a quilting rebel.  The instructions said to press to one side and nest seams.  But I know I can be a whole lot more accurate with my iron using my pressing dowel.  It took me a good 6 hours to get these 4 patches done.  I believe there are less than 50 complete and the instructions say to make 200+.

I started binding green lemonade yesterday and got the binding sewn on.  Because I chose black on black it is very hard for me to see with the lighting I have, so that hand stitching, tv watching, goodness is about 1/4 of the way completed.

Moving on to another project, adding to the stash, and completing a quilt (hopefully before the weekend comes to a close) feels oh soooooo good.

Quilting DNA

When one makes a quilt, sometimes a pin prick happens.  And then the dreaded pin prick gets on the white fabric of your quilt.  Usually if you haven’t pre-washed your fabrics, it will come out.  If you have starched the dickens out of the fabric, it will come out.  All the sud technology of today, the stain is a thing of the past.  I am not sure about any of you, but when I quilt sometimes I notice hairs of mine or the children’s that have drifted to the quilt top to be forever stitched into the quilt as well.  While quilting the Green Lemonade quilt which is someone else’s UFO, I came across someone’s blood borne pathogen in this quilt top.  The pins were in this quilt for so long that some had rusted (probably because the former owner does like me, puts pins in their mouth in lieu of pinning the material).  Hair, mine, the children’s and a complete strangers stitched with love and perserverance.  Bloody, Rusted, and Hairy, I suppose this quilt is a lot like me, stubborn, rusted, and hairy hehe.  A brand new quilt with all of these DNA extras.  If they do not wash out?  I am kind of over that idea.  This quilt was such a lemon to start with ripping out all the work to put it back together.  The DNA will add to the provenance of the quilt one day.

Take aways:

• Perseverance pays off
• Tolerance is a virtue
• Queen size can be done on a DSM
• Listen to the body and the mind, it will tell you when to rest
• Gremlins can be stitched down forever, never to escape
• When there is a will there is a way
• you can never have too much thread
• Mind-numbing monotony teaches joy in other chores

Lots of seam ripping left lots of bits of thread.  I was to the point of not caring and left them in the fabric.  So occasionally I would stitch over these little stray fibers.  I have forever captured the essence, and maybe these bits of thread will tell a story 75 years from now when I am long gone and my children are old.  Perhaps these tid bits will add to the warmth of the quilt.

I also learned that if you have a solid that is overpowering the quilt, you can use a darker or lighter thread to break it up a bit.  I originally got this quilt top that was already sewn together back in 2015 from an auction website that did not take pictures of the back.  Had I seen the back, I would have passed with my $30 plus $18 for shipping.  My logic for this was, “Oh boy I get to sew curves and they are already cut out (I loathe cutting).”  A precut curves quilt top ready for sewing enjoyment.

Looking back now I can say that the frustration is long gone, replaced by determination and humbleness.  Someone had a cardboard template, traced around it, and cut everyone of these pieces out by hand with a scissors.  Some of these were hand stitched.  The stitching of the quilt told me that one person I know worked on it with possibly two sewing machines or someone else picked up the project after the first person gave up.  The quilt has come to fruition and I can only guess the originator is looking down from heaven smiling that someone pushed through to finish what they started.  Who knows maybe the future trend of old quilts is to do an DNA test on the fibers to see how many people worked on it and who all owned it.

And now the reveal for this long held UFO.  It will ever be my ufo because of the backing I chose for this quilt.

I have not sewn binding on the quilt as I am still researching and figuring out the right way to go about that inverted angle.  This quilt will give me good scallop lessons as I bind it.  I hope you have enjoyed seeing my trials and tribulations with Green Lemonade.   When you are given lemons you make lemonade right?   Over the Thanksgiving Holiday I declare my thanks to the originator.  Their hard work finally paid off, and the hardest part is behind me.  This will be used and abused with its imperfections, puckers, and tucks and will keep us warm for years.

Trapesing along with green lemonade

Well I made a goal to finish this by Thanksgiving and it may just be as planned, for once on this quilt.  The gremlins have been stitched into the fibers, and caged forever to never come out to play again.  Now I need to figure out how to bind it.  I would like to traditional bind it with 2 1/2 inch strips folded.  However if you can imagine where the melons intersect, this is a very abrupt inlet junction.  Perhaps I will just turn it under 1/4 inch.  Or I could do some trimming to get an easier bias edge trail.  I also thought about using that spot as a start and stop for binding.  All binding would be cut and turned under at that one critical spot.  I could even make a sloppy binding effort somewhat fudging on the actual raw edge and covering it up with a yo-yo.  Whatever I decide, I will be DONE!

2016 Quilting in Review

This year was a bumper crop of effort for my quilt abilities.  So many people became fruitful and so many baby size quilts were made.  My goal for the year was one a month.  It looks like the time sucker of the bunch is the green lemonade quilt.  If I could get my big girl pants on and just continue with my quilting, that one will be completed this month.  But regarding this quilt, I have a bad case of the I don’t wanna’s.

Here are pictures of my completed quilts:

It would seem that my productivity was maxed for the beginning 7 months.  When I started blogging my productivity went down drastically.  Now I understand why bloggers have so many hop, skip, and jump posts.  Keeping the reader coming back for new and exciting creates a bunch of UFOs.  I will continue with this green monster and will be moving to a brand new project baby quilt size within the next month.  I will also be working a bit with bonnie hunters mystery quilt which starts in 2 weeks.

Green Lemonade sneak peak and a requested picture post

In a recent post Quilting is in my Genes!, I told of a quilt that was mine when I was young.  I don’t remember this quilt as my mother must have put it up early to preserve it, Thanks MOM!  Now Mom is old (sorry Mom, your memory has what I call white noise) and she cannot remember things correctly.  I found out this quilt was made for my birth more than 45 years ago (ssshhhhh don’t tell).  One of my followers was curious to see the quilt so I have gotten it out of the cedar chest.

As we age and look at ourselves in the mirror everyday, you just don’t wake up and you are grey, it is a gradual process.  When I looked at this quilt I realized it’s absence in use, I was remembering what it did look like (perhaps I am now not remembering things correctly like my mother) and it is faded with a tad of color here and there.  I had remembered it to be very colorful and bright.  I have used and abused it in the last 5 years of rearing the youngins and now it is put up to preserve what is left of it.  By looking at the quilt, I suspect my Great Grandmother thought I was a boy and then added a girly backing.   As a quilter who loves a great quilt story, it is most spectacular that my children have slept under a quilt made by their Great-Great Grandmother!

The reds are still vibrant.  This is just a simple patch work quilt and quilted with straight stitching in the ditch.  Additionally this quilt has a flannel batting.  This quilt is so soft.  And after the photo process, is back in the cedar chest to take out and admire and tell a story about it to my children or grandchildren one day.

Now posting a little progress.  It is proving to be a very complicated quilting job because of it’s size.  I would say I have quilted about 2/3rds of the green lemonade quilt.  Funny, the first green melon I quilted I wanted to quilt with feathers but did not want to have the nightmare of keeping the feathers running in all the same direction.  When quilting on a 6 inch throat space you have to twist and tug in all directions so I wanted to prevent a directional pattern in that space.  I call the green quilted areas Turtle Abs.  I then change up thread and quilt the black and white space with white thread and make my feathers there.  Here is a sneak peak.  I will try to get to my mothers soon so I can use her nice Janome machine which has a huge throat space, which makes the central regions of the quilt much easier to keep steady in my FMQ.  My goal is to finish Green Lemonade this month probably over the Thanksgiving holiday when I will be enjoying more time at home.

From the Quilt Stack

This was made a couple of years ago for a co-worker expecting a boy.  It is the illusion pattern and went together quickly.  I do not recall how I quilted this one as I have done so many in the last couple of years.  If you take noticed, I used a jelly roll I had for the grays and a couple of these were a shade lighter.  The baby didn’t care, and the mother to be loved it.