Play it again Sam…

With my recent quilt “fail” on the Laundry Basket Quilts Mystery 2021, it got me to thinking. It actually got into my craw, could not get it out.

The green Laundry basket quilt really bugged me. I quilted this up yesterday, woohoo! And going with the theme of green and bugs, decided to quilt an old Panto called Dragonfly by Linda’s Electric Quilters. I have only had my longarm since 2018, but I had traded scraps for a bunch of pantos someone did not want. So I used this panto for the first time (the date on this panto is old, 1997 LOL). This will probably get shifted to the do not use drawer because this panto does not utilize the shadow of the design at the top and bottom of the continuous line that you follow in the center. (That may be another post entirely).

Anywho, it is quilted. I will bind it, but am not committing myself to the time schedule on that. It happens when it happens. It did quilt up nicely, and I had the perfect fabrics for the backing.

These fabrics more than make up for the pieced other side. Pretty enough to use back side up! (Thank you Matt and Amy for these fabric hand-me-downs, I have put them to good use!) Sorry I did not get a photo of this today because it was raining and far too wet. I am enjoying the rain because with it comes cooler temps. (The yard now looks like a wildlife preserve, jungle style).

So today at 4:30 A.M., I utilized my extra day as much as I could and got to work. The thought presented itself many times after the Green Mystery quilt “fail”, so I got out all my yellows, and all my blacks and got to work. Play it again Sam! I am not usually one who makes a quilt, and then makes another of the same pattern right after. This is a first for me.

Clue one is completed. Two clue is completed, Clue three needs pressed and verify if it needs trimmed or not. Same for clue 4, clue 5 is half stitched, I need to cut out the other half (I counted way wrong this morning). Clue 6 is ready for stitching. I skipped clue 7 (how did that happen…probably lack of caffeine) , clue 8 is stitched ready for press and trim.

I got halfway through this quilt in one day, can you believe that? Here are the neutrals (black) with what I had originally assigned green, now is yellow. This is really going to pop. I see success in my near future.

I suspect next weekend I may have another top to show you. But we will see how the time continuum goes for the 1st week in June. You never know what life has in store.

Even though the black fabrics show color from a distance, it is enough contrast of the main character of yellow to perfectly show Yellow off to its’ full potential regardless of the shade. And boy have I used up the fabric for this already. I have consumed complete pieces of scraps and it feels so good to move them out of my stash. I think I have sewn these pieces into 4 or 5 quilts. It will be nice to update with new neutrals/black.

Whew, I got a lot accomplished this weekend, even got a second post out to readers. Can you tell I enjoyed my time off? That one little extra day lifts the crafty spirits to great heights. And quilting is GOOD therapy!

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Quilt Fail

This title is so negative. Us quilters no matter how experienced, do come upon failures every now and again. I must say it has been a while since I have “failed”. But I ask myself if this is really a failure? I have obtained two objectives, with the 3rd missing in action. I have used fabric in my stash, and used up scraps. I have enjoyed the process of the make. The missing in action is actually gazing upon it and liking it. Those are my main quilting objectives. Use, Enjoy, Love.

Two out of 3 ain’t bad, LOL! I like the scrappiness of this. But the competition of darker neutrals with the lighter greens is the problem. I causes the eye not to see the prize. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.

The good thing about this fail, I have used up many scraps and have had a purge of green. Some of these fabrics were hand me downs. Better to be used than not.

I did have a little sense of humor with all of this. There are squares in this quilt that are called broken dish. So next to some of these squares I placed my silverware fabric. This just makes me giggle. As a quilter I can laugh about this. I think I will be sending a hidden message to all quilters. I think they would get this joke, HA!

I wonder if this quilt survives for 100 years, long after I am gone, what people would say about it. I would love to hear futuristic comments from readers. Please leave your comments in the comment section. You do not need to be kind or nice. You can be in agreement or not. 🙂

“The poor girl must have been daft”

“The person who made this, must have had gobs of fabric”

“The chap who received this probably stayed warm with all that extra seem allowance hidden in the layers.”

“Green does nothing for this quilt, she might as well have just sewn whites together with other whites and tans”

Antiques roadshow “The quilt was an average quilt of the time, but much of the color has faded and is worth $50,000″…hehehe (a quilter’s fantasy/legacy eh?)

There is a design in this. I would entertain the thought of re-making this with a black background and yellow for the color. I still lack three rows before I can call this a top.

Am I being hard on myself? No, I think I enjoyed getting rid of some loud neutrals (there are rainbow cats, Christmas trees, brown moose, little house on the prairie, V8 logo, circuit board, and silverware in this quilt). I guess I am forgetting the most important thing, eh? It will bring warmth when needed. A hug with it’s use. Appreciation from those who know not this craft.

A quilter’s fail is still a win!

This is a risk we quilters take when we join a mystery sew long. We only know fabric recommendations and yardage. My last fail was also a mystery quilt. The pinks, lavenders, and blues were muddied by their piecing. This was months worth of work, whereas the green quilt above was less than a month.

I like the black contrast of this. This started black friday and this photo was snapped in the following summer (and yes this was worked almost every day from mid january thru march).

The news of the fail for me allows me to grow as a maker. Will I do this again? Fail, that is? Yup, probably. I just hope it is far less frequent than once every 2 years (the time span between these two quilts). The best thing, not everyone sees with my eyes. They will gaze upon this and love it. That makes me happy!

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog!

Mystery/Flowers

This weekend was a whirlwind! It was like something sucked the time continuum to go FASTER! Whew!

Today when I was driving home from work (yes I worked overtime), I stopped to snap some photos of flowers. These flowers catch my eye every year. But in previous years I have never stopped. I do not know what these are it is a bit of a mystery, but BOY HOWDY, they smell good! A good fragrant perfumed flower smell is good at 6 foot away. They must be old (old flowering plants always smell better than new).

Can anyone tell me what these are? They certainly are a vibrant lavender color! April Showers bring may flowers and my goodness the Queen Anne’s Lace in some places is as tall as the hood on the ford! We have had oodles of rain in the last two weeks. I think the sun made a minor appearance on two days. The rest of the days it has rained.

These flowers hang out in the low spot in the ditch, not the high spot. They must like water???

Perhaps before it dries out and the mowers remove these beauties I can get more of a closeup. I was afraid I would sink in the mudd!

And speaking of flowers, I got two more flower blocks sewn for the Corriander Quilts sew along. I am making all my flowers different, including the backgrounds, for a good scrappy affect. We will see how it turns out. Not so sure after I sewed this one:

The neutral gray print is kind of loud!

I do like how the flower turned out below:

And speaking of mysteries, I have made good progress on the Laundry Basket Quilts mystery quilt 2021. I lack cutting some corner pieces from the economy block and sewing those together. And tomorrow will probably be oodles of info to cut the remaining blocks out of just 4 1/2 inch squares in neutrals. I failed to snap photos. You will probably get to see great progress on this next weekend. This reminds me I need to re-install my miniature design wall so I can sew, LOL.

And the last two evenings, I have kicked my feet up and started a new doily. I am using a light pink Lizbeth thread. After not using it for the last doily, I struggle with that darn twist. I need to investigate how to remove the twist out of my rings, because my thrown rings are suffering as a result from this ailment.

This is the center of the doily. When I get to part of the outer rim, it is filled with these rosettes. This time I am remembering to do front side/back side tatting so I don’t suffer from the gapsosis. The next round is several oblong pieces that attach to the outer thrown rings. Crossing my fingers that this will turn out. I find that I know enough to make the stitches, but sometimes have a failure of execution to make it look right. Made by hand is naturally made imperfect. The beauty of this lace is one person could tat this up and it end up looking totally different because of the picot loops being smaller or larger. I am also using a picot gage to keep them uniform. That has helped much. I have also graduated to the large tatsy sized shuttle so I do not have to keep filling my shuttles. I am now also using a crochet hook since my shuttle dolphin nose is ginormous and this is pretty dainty.

I have had a bit of insomnia lately, waking up at around 3:30 and then dozing off about 4:45. The alarm goes off at 5:00. I can say I need a nap in the middle of the day. That did not happen, so I struggle to stay awake now. I will probably be wide awake in the middle of the night. I so wish I knew what was interrupting my serotonin levels….?

The words of this post happened within a matter of about 20 minutes. As this 20 minutes goes, my eyes are getting heavier and heavier. Wish me luck in the sleep dept!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

Field Of Clover Finish!

Folks, I have a finish! And it feels like such an accomplishment! I have only worked on this for months….Feb to now, with gaps and pauses of activity and rest.

I got out my bobbin lace pillow and some wax paper and pins from the pin cushion. I started to block this doily. I really worried that it would not block well because of the squirrels in my tatting skills.

My worries were for naught!

I am pleased as punch!

I worried a bit on how to capture this in the camera. I do not have a reflective white surface large enough to get me where I wanted to go. So I got out some Christmas wrapping paper with santa hats on it, and rolled it wrong side out to snap the photo. It worked!

I have put the doily thing to rest….or have I? I had actually planned to start another doily by now. But life has gotten in the way. Perhaps this weekend I can give my Jan Stawasz pattern book a good narrowing down. I have my colors picked out, I have my large shuttles loaded. I am just waiting on father time to permit my next build of knots in thread.

I have tried to keep up with the LaundryBasketQuilts quilt along. I am not going to say my attempts have been unsuccessful. Any stitch placed is better than none at all. I lack a few clues from being caught up. What I really like about this quilt along, on any given evening, I can complete one whole clue. One night this week I completed two clues. Tomorrow is the last clue. I am uncertain if that is when the reveal is, but she has revealed placement of each clue each day, so it will not really be a surprise where this is headed.

Here are some of my blocks which are in the green color way. Half square triangles and 9 patches. Not shown are 4 patches, broken dishes, economy block, flying geese, quarter square triangles, and some I cannot name off the top of my head.

And Corriander Quilts has updated their website to include the next flower in their free pattern stitch along. The new flower pattern has the same stems, leaves, and outer petals. The 9 patch on the inside of the flower changes every month. This month the center will be a churn dash.

Well, I certainly have my work cut out for me on all the goals I have set for the coming weeks. We will see what goes into the finish pile soon. The long weekend is coming! And THAT will certainly help to itch that need to stitch!

Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading my blog!

Orphan Scrappy Blocks

I cannot believe it is already the middle of May! What has my scrappy dept been up to in the last month? A recap:

I have started rosettes for the La Passacaglia Millefiori quilt. This is harder than I thought. One rosette down, one still in progress, not much to go for that one’s completion.

I have joined in two quilt alongs, one offered by CorrianderQuilts and is FREE! I have two blocks done. Each month you will sew two more flower tops. You can finish the stems and leaves ahead of time as this is repeatable throughout the quilt. May 17th a new block posts, join in the flower fun!

Edyta Sitar has a free mystery quilt along, and so far this one has been easy. Making 4 patches. And guess what? I had to cut so few pieces to get to this point! My scrappy tubs filled with 2 1/2 inch squares and 1 1/2 inch squares are getting used. These are trimmings that happen with scraps with various projects along the way. I suspect the clues in the coming days will require me to get to the bigger pieces and work from those.

I am working diligently to get my doily tatted! I am on the last round and ready to start a new doily as I have new books with lovely patterns. I would be done with this but ended up cutting out what you see below amount wise. Tsk tsk, I thought I followed directions, but turns out I forgot one while ring to attach to the fourth chain on the previous row’s rosette and I did it twice!!

And my biggest scrappy announcement, orphan blocks! All us quilters accidentally make one two many blocks and then it just sits there or gets turned into a potholder. Some of us try to make it into one big quilt. Things that I have would NOT marry well together in one quilt. Way too many odd shapes and sizes. So I decided to finish my orphan blocks like I would if it were a pot holder and then hang them on the wall together, to create padded walls hahahaha. I mean our hobby is therapy, so why not add a little touch of the padding to help us with the crazies! Some of these are orphan blocks, some are starts with no finish in sight (that would be the bargello). I have moved much off that “orphan” shelf. All of these finishes have happened in the last two weeks.

This was left over from this:

This boot did not make the cut for this baby quilt:

And these baskets I turned to face the inside and this was left overs from this:

And my favorite block was this one, which did not make it into the quilt because it was the first block I engineered and it came out smaller than all my other star blocks from the quilt below:

And even though this wall hanging looks like a ribbon, it is actually a spool block but because this is all the spool blocks I had left, you only see one spool. This actually looks like a scrappy ribbon, eh?

And this was left overs from this!

And here is my padded wall!

As you can see I have room for more! I can even go over the door, or all the way to the floor (It would seem dr suess is in the house, LOL). As you can see my hanging system is just some push pins. This will enable me to add easily and move around the orphans. Just think you could do this for your Christmas orphan blocks and change your wall out with the seasons.

Taking a little detour here, but have you ever heard of acrylic pouring? It is a painting method of masterpiece! I took a local art class and learned how to do this. I decided for Mother’s Day, we could all do a painting for mom. Acrylic pouring is quite scrappy and random. Here is a masterpiece example in youtube form (ours were dry pours, so very different from what you see here.)

I used Dollar Tree paints with some metallics from Hobby Lobby. Certain paints really dominated our paintings, but each is a Mona Lisa from us to Mom. Here are ours:

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I have certainly had fun in the last month especially with my scraps. Let’s see what everyone else has been up to:

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Tracy Jill, Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Gwen, Bekki, Sue L., Sunny, Kjerstin, Vera, Nannette, Ann, Noreen, Bear, Carol, Pretti, Edith, Hayley, and Me.

As this posts, I have had a migraine for days (thank goodness I do not procrastinate and worked this post last weekend!). As a result, next week’s post will probably be meager. Thanks for tunning in and reading my blog!

Happy Mother’s Day

Today was not a perfect day, but as a Mother, what day is? It started out rather foul, but turned into a wonderful day. Family gatherings, can we get a hoorah!

My Mom made this for me, a free in the hoop design. I have a wonderful new coaster to set my drink on. Isn’t it pretty?

I am preparing a post for the ScrapHappy middle of the month post. There is some nice eye candy coming soon!

In the meantime I will share the tatting doily I am working on. I am on the last round, round six. I sat down yesterday and got all focused and started stitching only to find out, in my knotting, I skipped one whole loop on the previous round on the rosette. How disappointing. I did not catch this until this morning. There is no un-doing. So I cut out all my work and started this round over. I figured out, with the enormity of this, you now have to work on it at the table. That was part of my problem. Trying to keep this untangled while working is difficult. The table helped immensely. I am just a bit past where I was when I cut all this round out. I gave it a good press with the iron. I am very pleased as this one winds down!

This doily was not difficult. It is actually a pretty beginner friendly pattern. I had trouble with round 3 and it shows. I guess I should not have worked with the ball and should have wound a second shuttle. Ah well, such is life!

Happy Mother’s day! Treat yourself to something you love. You have definitely earned your title!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

The Awe of the week

Us quilters like to gaze upon eye candy. We love beautiful fabrics, and we love to gaze at beautiful quilts. This week, I came across something entirely different and I was in total awe. More on that in a minute.

The quilting dept has been busy here LOL. I got several wall hanging sizes quilted, and some bound!

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Got these two quilted and bound. These are ready to hang on the wall. I will hang them exactly as they are here. How does one hang something on such a small scale? I suppose you could drive a nail right through all the layers (I just heard you gasp, lol). Better than that when you install your binding you add a couple of folded squares to your corners. This will create a pocket in the corners and a dowel rod will slip right in. You would then hang that on a nail.

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This is the backing of this:

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And there were more quilted, but I did not get the binding applied.

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This is the disappearing baskets quilt block made from the disappearing pinwheel which was left over from this:

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Amazing how turning the layout different totally changes the look. I will be binding this sometime in the next week.

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I am calling this Bargello Ra. It looks a lot like the character named Ra from ancient Egypt. This was supposed to be a baby quilt over 10 years ago. I stalled big time. This is just the snippet of it that I had done, so the orphan block project is getting me some UFO progress too!

I will bind this one as well in the coming week.

Two things happened in the last few weeks which have changed up my sewing routine a bit. I have started watching/sewing along with SewBecca on youtube. I find the longer you watch her, the silly’s come out. Usually by 11:00 pm on Friday evening, she is giggling, and I am tired so I get the giggles, and I just can’t stop watching LOL.

A couple of Fridays ago she led me to a free pattern given by Corriander quilts. This is a sew along where you sew two blocks a month. The design is a mystery. But they will all be flowers. The stems stay the same, so you could sew those up. The flower themselves change. So I sewed a couple of these. Cute! You can click this link for the free pattern. There is a link once you get to her page that will bring up the PDF. This block is called Larkspur.

I decided to go very scrappy and random for one.

First you make the center, then the petals, then the stem.

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Sorry about the flower chop off. For some reason my devices are not talking correctly to one another. I will get this fixed soon. In the meantime I will remain frustrated LOL.

And because the pattern calls for two I decided to make another with a sunflower theme.

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I realized in the making of this you need almost a fat quarter for the neutrals. My neutral size pieces are smaller than this so I am on the hunt for a bundle. Which brings me to my second find in recent days.

How many of you follow Sew Yeah on youtube? On Tuesdays and Saturdays they have a live stream where you can buy fabric!!!!! Pretty clever set up they have. Tuesdays are the new stuff. Saturdays are the bargain stuff. All is quilt quality fabrics. A new place to buy fabric, yay!

For my goals set last week, I have failed to finish my rosette 4 (which is my second rosette). I have the papers glued and some of them stitched, but it is not finished. I aim to do this in the coming week too.

I have been tatting on my Field of Clover doily and am working the last round. Not sure if I will finish this. But I so want to start another doily. I got new books in that have some gorgeous doily patterns. I will refrain. I do not have enough thread all matching anyway to start one. So I will continue to lust with my eyes on the pages of the books. 😉

And you are probably wondering what has caught this quilter’s eye this week? Of all things, on a sprinkling Thursday morning, I saw the most beautiful sunrise. I see the sun come up every morning in my commute. No surprises, it does it everyday. But the hue it cast on the trees in the west really grabbed my attention, trying to figure out why the trees looked red. Magnificent spectrum trick in the rainbow scheme of things. So I drove a tad down the road and waited for a clearing that was not tree line, and ooooo’ed and aaaaahhh’ed over the rise of the sun.

I was amazed by this color! Usually I never have a camera on me when I come up on something like this. But, I had my phone. I pulled over, and in the blink of the eye, the sun is just a sliver up. You gotta love life with the little things like this. Such insignificant, significance!

Goals for the upcoming week:

• Celebrate Mother’s day with my Mom and my Children. We are gonna get crafty!
• Bind the disappearing pinwheel basket wall hanging
• Bind the Bargello Ra wall hanging
• Work on finishing the La Passacaglia Rosette 4
• Watch some Youtube of Sew Becca and Sew Yeah to name a few
• Purchase a new stockpile of neutrals!

Life is good! Have a great weekend, and thank you for reading my blog!