UFO Complete — Get to the Point!

Not too long after I retired, I signed up for a series of “beginner quilt classes” at the local quilt shop.  We used two books by Pat Sloan, and made several patterns from “I Can’t Believe I’m Quilting” and the advanced book .  One project has been “fermenting” on my shelf. The pattern was called Get To The Point, and  I originally wrote about it in an early 2013 post- A Good Sewing Week.

A few weeks went by and it got mentioned – https://stitchinggrandma.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/on-point-with-borders-wip-still/  . 

Later in 2013 I started to feel a little bugged by “unfinished class projects”  – https://stitchinggrandma.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/unfinished-projects-starting-to-bug-me/ . 

That doesn’t mean I finished them all, because a few years later I mentioned this quilt again again – https://stitchinggrandma.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/such-a-follower/   and then again early the next year –https://stitchinggrandma.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/on-point-and-setting-triangles/

Looking back at all those blog posts (do that later), I realized I had multiple projects going on, and a lot of indecision about how to proceed with many of these projects. I’ve learned a lot with those projects, and one thing I learned about me is l love to piece quilt tops, but get stuck with the borders and the “finishing”.   

With this project, I decided to try my hand at “free motion quilting” not long after I put the top together and I hated the result, so the project got folded up and put on the shelf.  A few years later, it was one of my UFO challenge projects, and I took it off the shelf and worked at removing all of the free motion quilting. Oh, my seam ripper and I became very good friends.  Back on to the shelf it went to continue the fermentation process.  

This past week, I went out to my sewing room thinking I would work on my Vintage Christmas blocks, but somehow, that project caught my eye and I pulled it off the shelf and unfolded it to have a look.  I’d done some basic “stitch in a ditch” after removing the free motion quilting (or maybe that was before the free motion, I don’t remember). Anyway, I decided I could tackle this top and clear it off the shelf for good. 

Because the quilt had been well anchored with the “stitch in the ditch”, I started with the borders. After the borders I moved into all the setting triangles, while thinking about how to quilt the sashing blocks.

These big squares got a squared off spiral, starting on the outer edge of the block and working around to the middle.  The quilt had poly bat and I remember the disaster I had with “not enough quilting” on another project, so I went with a lot of stitching to really anchor this top.  (No I don’t use poly batting any longer, but I didn’t want to totally take this apart).

I spent a lot of hours at my machine this week, with the walking foot on, and did a lot of “straight line” quilting. I used at least 4 bobbins of Superior Bottom Line silver thread, as I worked my way across the quilt, down the borders and around and around the triangles points. I also used Silver (Masterpiece by Superior) on the top of the quilt.  I like the silver because it pretty much disappears into the quilt and you see the texture but not a lot of the stitching.

The back of the quilt really shows off the quilting. The original “stitch in the ditch” quilting was a different thread, so it tends to be more visible on the back, but I am ok with that. 

 I finished the last block, trimmed the quilt and got the binding on yesterday, too. 

I am SO happy that I had tucked away fabric for binding inside the folded quilt to use for the binding.   I did my favorite “binding with a flange” also known as Susie’s Magic Binding.  (The purple for the flange came from a scrap leftover from the Senior Quilt 2020 backing).

It finished at  57×74 (who knows why? Not me).  It is a great throw size for snuggling under in the recliner or on the back of the couch.  In this photo it is on top of the queen size bed in the guest room which currently has (gasp) a comforter on it, not a quilt. (It made a nice neutral backdrop.)  Before the evening was over last night, I ran it through the washer and dryer, and was able to sleep under it !  Ok, still needs a label, and I will try to do that today. 

Oh, one more thing — I assembled the Scrap Dance TWIST and put on one narrow border.  It is now an official UFO/waiting on borders! The pattern is by Carole Carter on her blog From My Carolina Home

It is 86×98 and I plan to put a 6″ border of some kind all around, but it needs some thought (oh geez) and a good pressing! (Shooting for a generous king size of course).

If you are interested in the Scrap Dance Twist pattern, it is available on Carole’s blog for another week or so, before she takes it down and publishes it for sale. Honestly, if you like scrappy patterns, this is a great one to make.  

Speaking of UFO’s….I took down off of hangers in my sewing room a bunch of them yesterday, to do a little show and tell during a zoom quilter chat.  There are a bunch, and when my friend asked how many I didn’t count the ones in bins.  Borders seem to stop me. I don’t know why, searching for the perfect fabric to set things off?  Realizing I have been making KING SIZED quilt tops (at least 5 or 6), and the idea of quilting them maybe is what stops me.  I ordered some grey wide backing in February, and have enough to finish at least 2 king sized. Perhaps my next UFO will be one of the oldest tops .  I’ll have to get back to you on that. Don’t hold your breath!  

Disclaimer….if you go back to those old posts that I shared in the links at the top of this post, the CROSSROADS and the 9 patch CUPCAKES, Friendship Star table runner are really finished!  The Allietare is still “waiting on borders”, as are several other “Scrap Dance mystery quilts”. 

What are you working on this week?

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The Twist – A Scrap Dance Mystery -My Reveal

Last Friday (May 15) the  Scrap Dance Twist – The reveal was posted on the From My Carolina Home blog.  I have to tell you, I was expecting all those half square triangles we made in a previous step to turn into star points, so I was VERY excited to see the TWIST blocks!  Go over and take a look at the link above, but don’t forget to come back~!~

When I did Step 6 of the Scrap Dance Twist, making some wonderful 9 patches with my 4 patches and back ground fabrics, I put them up on my design wall, as there were so many, and they were now “too big” for the box.  I studied on them for 4 or 5 days and KNEW I had to take them apart and change out one of my white fabrics.  Honestly, WHAT was I thinking using that particular white fabric that was SO thin.  Honestly, how did that get in my stash…??????   Well…anyway….in the last couple of days, before I went on to Step 7 – The Reveal, I decided to rip out all those pieces.  I think what put me “over the edge” was the post Carole had done on Quilt Repair by hand.  She was repairing a vintage quilt that really had some horribly worn fabrics.  Reading that post convinced me to get rid of the inferior fabric!  Honestly….it was plain white, but was just not nice. I didn’t want my quilt shredding because of poor fabric.  Out came the seam ripper, and I spent an evening watching movies and taking out those pieces. Then I dug into my big tote of white fabrics and cut a big stack of replacement squares, and put the “Block A’ back together.  All but about 6 blocks had the crummy fabric, so you can imagine there was a lot of taking apart etc.  It wasn’t as bad as you might expect and in the course of a couple of afternoon’s work I had all my A blocks reassembled and I was ready to move on to Step 7!

As soon as I opened my box of remaining “parts” I discovered the big stack of background fabrics that also had some of that “inferior” white fabric.  I removed it all, and dug back into my giant bin of white fabric, cut some more background pieces from several different pieces, and got busy making the “B” block”.  Carole calls it the FOOTPRINT block!    My 28 “B” blocks went together nicely, and after clearing room on my design wall, I got all 56 blocks (A&B) up on the wall.  (Note; my design wall is a queen size flannel sheet, pinned to the wall with giant push pins.  I use pins to hold my blocks on the sheet, but only pin to the sheet, not the wall.)

There are a few blocks to move around, as suggested by Carole in her post.  I have some darker “center” squares and I want to balance them out a little bit more, as well as move some of the pieces that have the same prints a bit further away.  Scrappy can get tricky that way, and I could spend days moving things around.  I played with the photo on Google photos a bit, and with Flickr too.  I like to look at the blocks in black and white (B&W) to see if the darkness jumps out at me in any way.  I do find it helpful and will be using the B&W below as I start to move things around a bit.

Looking at the blocks on the design wall in a photo doesn’t really let you see much of the prints that were used.  I took some pictures of my fabric pull earlier in the year, so this might help you see more clearly how very scrappy the pieces are.

Those blocks in the above photo were the centers for all the 9 patch blocks in A & B.

Below are the fabrics I used for the little 4 patches in Block A.

I have to say this pattern has been fun to work on, as are all of the mystery quilts that Carole designs.  I’ve enjoyed seeing what is happening on the Friends of From My Carolina Home Blog Facebook group.  If you are following Carole’s blog, consider joining the Facebook group.  You would be amazed at all the different background fabric choices people have made, and color choices for their blocks.  I always say mine is “all scrappy all the time”, but I do admit to cutting yardage for the background fabrics.

So, next up is moving blocks around to please me, then assembling the rows.  I was asked in the group if I would put borders on, and if so, what.  My plan will be a narrow white border to start with, then I will dig in my stash to come up with an outer border of some sort. Fingers crossed I won’t leave this one on a hanger to “ferment” while I agonize over those borders! That is where I always seem to get “stuck”.  The layout should be 84×96 before borders, so I have to play with the quilt-math, and decide how big I want to go.  I just bought some wide backing but don’t remember if it was 108 or 90 wide, and that will be important when it comes time to add those borders.

I’m really happy that Carole moved this project along to the “every two week” point with the clues.  If you haven’t done so yet, go download them from her blog. It won’t be long before the free pattern goes away and gets published for sale.

Are you doing the “TWIST” too?  How’s your progress?

A little bit of fun with the Twist and Vintage Christmas Quilt along

I took some time off from “mask making” to work on some fun projects.

I am doing the Scrap Dance Twist Mystery Quilt on the From My Carolina Home blog.  It has switched from a once a month clue to every other week.  Step 6 came out recently and I put the bits and pieces together to form  Block A.

The units are now too big for my project box, so I left them on the design wall while I wait on Step 7 next Friday , May 15th.   There are still lots of things in the project box, so it will be interesting to see what comes of the half square triangles and the other pieces.

Another bit I have worked on is the Vintage Christmas Quilt Along

This is a once a month quilt along on the From My Carolina home blog.  Two blocks each month.  The April blocks were the Ornament Block and the Twinkle Lights block.

These blocks had LOTS of pieces.

(The Vintage Ornament block before assembly )

(Backside of the Twinkle Lights block).

So now, I have eight blocks (12″) ready

and we have 4 to go on the quilt along.  I have everything cut and labeled for the next 4, and I am considering adding in some other blocks from the Lori Holt book too. I look forward to seeing how Carole decides to set her quilt.  I used 3 different background fabrics to add to the “scrappy look”.  If you have been following along, you know that this is 99% vintage fabric.

Have you worked on anything fun lately?

Windowing stabilizer, The Twist and more

I’ve been doing masks on my embroidery machine and was going through large amounts of tear away stabilizer. I realized I had gone thru about 20 yards of my 12″ stabilizer and I had a stack of 100 sheets of 8×8 tear away in my bin.  After doing about 20 hoopings, I had a light bulb moment!  My storage retrieval system (aka quarantine brain) suddenly remembered a video I had seen through a blog post LAST year!  Lisa Capen Quilts shared a video about windowing stabilizer when doing the same pattern over and over. Some call it “framing” the stabilizer and others called it “windowing”.  Lisa’s video was exactly what I needed to use!

I’ve been using my reposition-able hoop for the Janome 11000, called the MA hoop. It is essentially an 8″ x 12″ hoop so I can do two masks at a time.

So, now I hoop a piece of tear-away stabilizer and do the first stitch out.

The trick is to remove the mask “gently” from the hoop without tearing the surrounding stabilizer.  Then I replace the torn away piece with a “square of 8×8” over the top.  I use the Elmers glue stick to anchor it to the “frame” of the stabilizer remaining in the hoop.

They don’t have to overlap, but I was too lazy to cut it perfectly and I vary the overlap. The glue stick takes a few minutes to dry, and I use the heat of my iron in the frame to speed it up. My big iron fits perfectly in the frame with room to move it around.  In my small 5×7 hoop I use my mini-iron to dry the glue.

This is what it looks like on the back of the hoop.  You can see the very first ones were rectangles, then I switched to a different pattern about the same size.  The stabilizer was starting to wear  on the left edge of the frame, so I glued on a patch!

I did at least 7 set ups using this method before I ran out of Elmers Glue Stick!.  I tried liquid white glue and I had to let it dry overnight.  (Not expedient!)  I over applied and it wasn’t drying with the iron so I gave up for the night.

The masks in the above photo are from Creative Appliques pattern https://creativeappliques.com/

I took a break for a few days from “in the hoop masks“, while I worked on the Community Mask Project for the local chicken processing plant. Got my 28 done for that request using the sewing machine and the information I shared about the pleating and ties – Fast Masks with Ties

Can I tell you how I got excited with the things in the photo below?

On the left are the directions for the mask project, and peaking out was Step 5 for the Scrap Dance Twist, which had to wait until my 28 masks were done. On the right, in the basket are two treasures!  My order of elastic arrived!  And I found another glue stick in the kitchen drawer!  (I’ve used 2 up so far windowing stabilizer, so I am pretty excited to find this one!).

I got busy with my Scrap Dance Twist Step 5 chain piecing the units for a king size quilt!  This is my FUN sewing time!

The directions on Carole’s blog post From My Carolina Home – Scrap Dance Twist remind you to “try to make the units as scrappy as possible”.

This step went together quickly. If you haven’t started, it’s not too late. Go check out Carole’s blog and look for the Scrap Dance Twist button on the right side of her blog.

I’ve got everything back in the container, with the directions and the units, waiting for the next clue which comes out on May 1st.  If you are sewing along, be sure to go back to the blog and check for some corrections to units for a couple of the sizes.

Next up on my sewing schedule is working on the “senior quilt” for my church.  This is a group project that we started in February, and since the quarantine, it’s been a bit of a “round robin”. The group made most of the blocks in February –

I finished up what didn’t get done during our group sewing and got it laid out on the design wall.

One of the group members lives nearby and offered to assemble the quilt top.  I took pictures of the layout while it was on the design wall, and numbered the blocks /rows for her.  Once she got a break from “mask making” she assembled the top and delivered back to me. Now, it is time for me to “clear my cutting table” and do some measuring for the borders and get them sewn on.   One step at a time, but nice to be able to work on something fun.

Making masks has eaten up a lot of sewing time for many quilters, and taking a break to work on a couple of quilt projects has been fun. My sewing room is a full blown disaster (as evidenced in many of these pictures!) and some “clean up” time is also in order.

Stay well, keep stitching!

 

A new MYSTERY quilt – The TWIST!

January is always more fun when Carole Carter releases the “cutting” requirements for her next MYSTERY quilt.  This year; the project will run from January through August, with “clues” coming on the 3rd Friday of the month.  I love the name of this mystery…..she calls it The TWIST – Do go take a look and maybe dance along! The cutting instructions are in a PDF on Carole’s blog, From My Carolina Home – Scrap Dance Mystery 2020-The Twist

I went for the scraps of course! I had fun playing with the scrap bin and this is what I chose for my 4 1/2″ blocks –

I have “extras” so I may discard the ones with the white background when it comes time to do something else with the pattern.

And for the 5″ squares, I have a similar variety –

It is not all floral, I threw in some tone on tone and a few geometric pieces too.

The background fabric uses a lot of material.  I started with scraps, but quickly moved into yardage to cut the number of pieces required.

I chose white on white/cream for the  5″ and threw in a huge variety of pieces for the 4 1/2″.  Small and not so small prints on a white/cream background.   It will be interesting to see what we do with all of these pieces.

Anyone who knows me knows I cut for a king size….. I enjoy cutting; and piecing quilt tops~!~

Are you doing the “TWIST” ?  It’s not to late to start – hop over to Carole’s blog, From My Carolina Home and tell her I sent you~!!~ 

 

Paper (Thread) dolls

Greetings from winter hibernation! I’m certain I have been in “blog” hibernation for several months.  Maybe I can crawl out of the den and write a few words.  Honestly, I have been busy every day for months and the blog has taken a back seat. Thanks for sticking around and still popping in to read when I finally set words on the page.

What have I been up to?  Well, that embroidery machine and I have had fun.  I shared the Christmas gifts last post.  I left out one particular project.  I found a sale one day at one of my favorite embroidery websites, and bought some designs that I had my eye on for more than a year. The price was amazing for the sale, and I knew exactly who was getting this particular gift.  In fact, if you are reading this today, Jan 17, 2020, you will find a very similar sale – Julia’s Needle Design

I purchased both sets, Patty I and Patty II for a “paper doll” done in embroidery thread.

I wanted the doll to have some “stiffness” and used a pellon craft product called peltex in the hoop.  After the doll stitched out, I fused the back of the doll to some “In-r-form” by Bosal, and then trimmed around the entire doll.

I was so excited when this doll turned out so well, I brought it in the house to show the hubby. We had fun checking the “size of the doll” compared to other toys we have around the house.

I decided a doll needs some outfits.

This outfit included a shirt & shorts, a tummy, legs and shoes.

The pink dress also included legs and shoes. I was able to do the stitchout of both outfits in one hooping and that saved me a lot of stabilizer.

If you are familiar with machine embroidery, you will see I have a little “bobble” going on near the foot of the design on the right.  I had my challenges with this!  I might have been able to do a 3rd design in that hoop if I hadn’t had a stabilizer problem.  Do you see the pins on the edge of the hoop?  The idea is to help keep your stabilizer from being pulled too much in the hoop. The pins go between the inner and out hoop.  For the most part, it works. In the case of the “bobble”, I had a bobbin problem and made a mess with that one show, and it pulled the stabilizer.  I was able to fix the design, but knew I wasn’t adding a 3rd design to that hooping.

I decided to make a little “sleeping bag” for the doll, similar to the one I posted about in November in  Practicing with the new machine

I decided the clothing was fairly stiff, but I wanted to “cover” the back where all the bobbin stitches show, so I used so light weight fusible pellon interfacing.

I added some more outfits to the machine and had fun stitching out some pants.

More outfits; more stabilizer and LOTS of thread, and pretty soon the doll had a wardrobe.

These were stitched out on my Janome 11000 and all done with wash away stabilizer. These had very heavy stitch counts.

You will notice that the doll has a velcro dot in the center.  I found “velcro for fabric” stick on dots at Michaels in just the right size. These are way to “thick” to use sew on, and I figure if the dot comes off, Grandma has an extra package.  It was recommended to adhere the dots and then let them sit for 24 hours before using them.  All the clothing has the “soft side” of the velcro on the back.  The logic is velcro sticks to everything (the sofa, the rug etc), and only have one with the hook and loop side reduces the number of “stuck objects” to the rug!

These doll clothes and the doll are each very heavy thread/stitch count, but I don’t have a shortage of thread yet.  75% of that thread on the rack was a gift from my daughters one Christmas, and stitching out things for their kids is a lot of fun!  I really feel confident now with the embroidery machines.  I am FINALLY using the embroidery machine(s) and all that thread!

My 3 year old granddaughter was the recipient of the project, and I will plan to make her one or 2 more “doll friends” and a few more outfits. She has a birthday coming in a couple of months. Then, when she has a human friend over to play, they can each have a doll friend to dress.  I’m still working my way through Paper Doll Patty I set.  I wanted to make certain she liked them before overwhelming her with “more” outfits.  This is a real “portable” toy for a child who may have a trip coming up, fun in the carry on baggage for a long airplane ride or time away from home.

These were SO much fun to make, and I loved the results.  I gave my granddaughter the clothes in a little vinyl zip bag, upcycled from some other product. It was just the right size to slip in the sleeping bag with the doll.  I can see a “carry bag” down the road.  This Stitching Grandma has been having fun. 

Next up on my agenda is a departure from the embroidery machine.  I am going to get out to the sewing room today, and tackle some scraps, with PURPOSE.  My friend Carole Carter  is starting a new mystery quilt today on her blog, From My Carolina Home!  Go take a look!  Scrap Dance Twist Mystery Quilt 2020

The mystery quilt will use charm packs, fat quarters, yardage or SCRAPS…..so you know, it is right up my lane.  Look for a future post with my fabric choices!

What are  you having fun working on this month?