Evening in the Garden Quilts

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Tag Archives: finish it up friday


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Finished Donation Quilt

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I finished up the blue and orange donation quilt yesterday.  I had a lot of fun quilting it with straight lines and feathers in orange thread (Superior Highlights, 40 wt.).   The textured blue fabric was weird and stretchy to piece together, but not too bad to quilt with the walking foot.  It has great cozy texture now that it’s washed up.

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I have to admit that I like the back almost as much as I like the front.  These are orphan blocks from a double nine patch that I had made, and some from this quilt, when I discovered that too many nine patches would make it too busy.

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So much of the stash fabric I have and need to use is floral, and makes pretty feminine quilts.  I try to switch off by making every other donation quilt out of something a little more appealing to anyone, including men.  And, apparently, cats.  Lots of help.  This is headed to Moore, OK.

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You could have knocked me over with one of my own feathers yesterday when I answered the phone and it was Judy Laquidera from Patchwork Times!  I was sewing the binding to this quilt when she called.  She called several of us who had donated quilts for West, TX, to see if we minded if she sent them on to Moore.  They have all they need in West, and Judy knew of a truck with people she trusts going to Moore.  I told her I was fine with that, so I guess my pink and gray quilt will go there, too.

Doesn’t it seem like there’s been a lot of need this year?   I sorted some strings last night to start a new donation quilt for whatever comes next.  Don’t even want to think about that.

What have you finished this week?

I’m linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Color Spikes Quilt Finished

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This week I finished up this baby quilt.  The top went together very quickly, of course.  I spent much more time arranging the blocks (originally I thought all the blocks would have the color spikes, but that gave me secondary patterns.) than when I finally sewed them.  Then all the straight line quilting was tedious and time-consuming, but very worth it.  It gives it a great crinkly texture and saves it from being so plain.

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The object was to use this very bright print.  It looks like a hand dye, and like it’s crinkled, but it’s just a print.  A print that went with nothing.  I put it with two gray and white dotted fabrics.  I don’t have the selvage, but I think they were “Mix and Match Dots”, or something like that.

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I used the rest of the bright on the back.  Using the Fairy Frost and nearly the last of my Mirrored Dot is probably what started me into the new HST zigzag quilt.

 

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Hope you had a satisfying finish this week.

 

I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, where I love Amanda Jean’s new finish.

 

 

 


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It Up Friday: Projects for Boston and Everywhere

Project%20HopeThis week I have two finishes, both sewn with thoughts of hope and peace for this troubled world in which we live.  I’m very pleased with the way my Project Hope Online Quilt Show contribution turned out.  We all know how hard it can be to translate a vision into fabric reality, but mine came very close.  I puttered around and put it off, but now that it’s finally finished, I like it.  See all the Project Hope quilts on Flickr.

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On the day that I mentally committed to joining this project, the background fabric presented itself to me.  I opened the door to my fabric closet, and out tumbled a little, beribboned pack of fat quarters that I could not remember seeing before.  I mean, a sign is a sign, right?

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Me:  When were we in Grantsville, MD?

DH:  Two years ago on the way to the Buffet concert.  There was a bridge…  We ate lunch there.

Me:  And there was a quilt shop there?

DH:  Yes!  In an old school building.

So then, yes, I did finally remember Four Seasons Stitchery and the little bundle of batiks I bought there.

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I sprayed bleach to create the ray of sunlight.  Then I fused fabrics down to create the flowers, and use various threads to “paint” them.  There is also a chalk pencil involved for some of the white shading.  I quilted the sunbeam with iridescent Sulky mylar thread, the “Hope” with Sulky white rayon and the iridescent, and the background with Superior poly monofilament.  The stamens are French knots.

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Enjoy the binding on this piece, because I will probably never do it again.  Fiddly!!

My flowers are charred and gray on the outside, but are opening in the ray of light to reveal their beautiful, hopeful interior.  Nature is always renewing itself, in spite of setbacks.  The binding is my reference to Jacquie’s work (Tall Grass Prairie Studio) here and here.  Her work is graphic and cathartic, but not very hopeful to me (these particular pieces).  So, my binding is blood red, but it does open to admit the sunlight.

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Also finished is my flag for To Boston With Love.  See others at their page on Flickr.

I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday on Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Finish It Up Friday: Flower to go with Elephant

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This little quilt with the floral fabric and flower and leaf quilting took very little time to make.  This was great and sad, because I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of making this, especially the lucious colors, and I wanted to keep gazing at it forever.

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Don’t you love these spontaneous little quilts where you just pull fabric madly from your stash, cut with abandon (partly because it’s such a small project), and have it mostly pieced  before you have time to second-guess yourself?  These are my favorites.  It also felt good to work on something small after the queen quilt.

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When I made Elephant, I was throwing some stash fabrics together to put a bright, boy’s quilt in my shop, but I decided to keep it.  While I worked on other projects, I kept my eyes open for more feminine stash fabrics that might do for the girl’s quilt.  My first grouping was too pink and floral, though I still want to use those fabrics together soon (for one thing, they’re still grouped in a basket under my cutting table…).  When I found this aqua print, I knew I had a companion quilt that would coordinate with Elephant without being matchy matchy or sickly sweet.

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The cabins are Kona Salmon, Coffee, and Azure, with a green Grunge.  The solids aren’t dead matches to the print, but they work.  The sashing is an off-white grunge.  Every block has a quilted flower in the center (Sulky white rayon), and the sashing is quilted with leafy vines.  I know, leaves again, but I love to quilt them almost as much as feathers.

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My twin great niece and nephew aren’t due till August, but these little quilts just happened and they feel right.

Of course, my studio is a mess because all the pulled fabric is still out (but I did cut up and put away all the scraps!), plus I have a pile of orphan blocks I want to use on the back of the new scrap quilt I’ve started, plus someone contacted me about making a baseball baby quilt, so that fabric is out…  It looks…creative!

I’m linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.  Go there to see lots of finishes!

 

 


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Finish It Up Friday: Nicey Jane!

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Yes, Nicey Jane is all finished and bound and ready for our bed as soon as warm weather truly arrives and we can put away the down comforter. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out. The colors are certainly perfect in our bedroom.

 

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Yes, I have a light green bed and raspberry night stands. Doesn’t everyone?  I’d say it was the quilter color thing, but actually my DH picked out the nightstand color and painted them and a vintage dresser.  The walls are light green, too.  I rubbed glaze into existing tropical leaf wallpaper.

 

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The wool batting.  Hmmm.  It did shrink some, which is all right.  The quilting isn’t as poofy as I was hoping, but it’s fine.  Bearding!  Wow.  All over, both sides, really a lot.  If you see any in the photos, it’s after I spent quite a while with the lint brush.  I guess it will resolve over time?  I’m very glad I used white batting with fairly light colored fabric.  It would be a disaster on a dark quilt.

 

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In the end this wasn’t nearly as much work as I built it up to be and put off finishing. It was unwieldy, especially the last day when I had joined the two halves and had to drag the whole thing around. It fit under my machine harp okay, but every rearrangement was cumbersome and hard on my shoulders. The binding seemed to go on forever. I am glad that I had enough of the bright pink to bind it. It’s perfect.

 

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I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Finish It Up Friday: Pink and Gray Donation Quilt

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With the 4 x 4 pink, gray, and white blocks completed, this quilt went together quickly, and the solid gray offered a good place for some fun quilting.

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It’s all from stash, and a lot of 2 1/2″ scraps from many previous projects that were fun to revisit.  I made the blocks back in December or January when I was unfocused and needed some mindless piecing to keep me moving forward.

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I knew the fuscia hand dyed fabric was the right design choice for the binding, but I was pretty nervous about it bleeding, even though it had been prewashed.  I used three Color Catchers when I washed it, but didn’t have a bit of bleeding, so that was a relief.   (Reused those C C s later to prewash newly arrived fabric, and they picked up some dye there.)  It’s actually two different pieces of hand dye, but we won’t tell, will we?  This binding was a lot easier to photograph than the one on my last quilt, so I took photos as I did it for the machine binding tutorial.

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This quilt has no current destination.  I wanted, for once, to have a quilt ready made for the next quilt drive or disaster, so now I do.

I’m linking up to Finish It Up Friday on Crazy Mom Quilts.  (Check this out, I’ve met a lot of fun people over there!)


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Finish it up Friday: Sultry

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The “Sultry” fabric quilt is finished, and it sure is girly-girl!  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s a little different for me.  This quilt turned out light and bright and pink and lime, and perfect for a girl of any age, I think.  It doesn’t have an intended recipient, so it will be available in my Etsy shop.

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48″ x 72″

Made almost entirely, front and back from Moda’s Basic Grey “Sultry”, with just a few stash additions, including the aquas, which I think perk it up and save it from being too sweet.  This is an old fabric line.  I said 2010 before, but now I’m thinking 2009.  I didn’t quite manage to use up my stash of it, so it may be popping up again.  Some of the prints are really pretty.

Quilted with a diagonal grid on the body of the quilt, and hearts in the border triangles.

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What have you finished?

I’m linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Finish it up Friday: Deep, dark donation quilt

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This is one of those quilts that is hard to photograph because of the contrast in the colors, but up close those rich, dark boxes are really very interesting, something someone can look at for a while.

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Some of the darks are brown and navy prints from the “Japan” line by Robert Kaufman.  I love them, but they never went with anything else.  The one with the gold overprinting is “Cultivated Cottons” from Andover.  There’s some “Madrona Road” orange in there, and a couple of In the Beginning fabrics I forgot to check before I cut up

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I’m happy with the way the back came out.  It’s very warm looking, with all those browns, but also very interesting.

IMG_1526IMG_1525The quilting…  I like what it did, but I wish it were a little more accurate.  It does give a lot of texture.  It also brings the aqua back into it and brightens it up.  I guess I am just used to using very fine, blending thread, so this looks pretty bold to me, but there it is.  All in all I’m happy with it.

I’m sending this off to Luanna’s 5000 quilts for Hurricane Sandy campaign.  I know it’s almost spring, but there’s still a lot of cold weather, and they keep running out of quilts.

I’m linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Finished the Pink “Quiet Quilt”

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This week I finished up the second (last) baby quilt in my “almost low volume”  experiment.  I have wanted to use the black and white print of little girls with umbrellas for a long time, and I still have some left for a future project.

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I used some pink Kona solid, some random stash stuff, and some pieces from a broken layer cake of Basic Grey “Sultry” that’s been lying around for way to0 long.  I cut up the rest of that, and have some four and nine patch blocks made for another quilt.

 

 

IMG_1507This is a disappearing four patch, made with 5 1/2 ” patches.  The backing is a great pink and gray houndstooth stretch cordoroy that is SO soft.  I bound it with a sweet gray with pink rosebuds fabric.

 

 

IMG_1505I quilted a 1/4″ from all the seams, so it took awhile, but I think it looks great.

 

 

It washed up nice and soft, in spite of all the quilting.  This quilt did turn out very pastel and feminine, and I’m happy with it.

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What have you been finishing?

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday on Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Quiet Quilt Finish

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The consensus was that this quilt didn’t make it into “low volume”,  but I’ll accept the adjectives I received:  “quiet”, “soothing”, “restful”.  I quilted it entirely “in the ditch”, between all those 2 1/2″ squares.

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It’s lovely crinkly/puffy (Warm and White batting), and the backing with silvery moons and stars as well as clouds and planets, is very happy.   I like it a lot, and think it will make a great baby quilt.

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The effort to go low volume was an interesting exercise, proving just how garish bright and saturated my regular palette is.  I pulled the very lightest squares from my scraps, but I was afraid there would be not contrast or interest if I didn’t add some from the mid range.  It does have interest, just isn’t quiet enough.

A check of Pintrest shows that folks usually use prints with white or cream backgrounds for these quilts.  Turns out I have very few of those.  The saturated thing again.  I did pull out some black and white, and am trying again.  Hmmm.

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Do you know about lilies and cats?  This was news to me, so I want to share it with you:  http://tinyurl.com/apmwws6

I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.