A Marinating Mariner's Compass, etc.

If you have been with me from the beginning (bless you) you may recall that I was in the process of a Mariner's Compass, but I set it aside because as I was working on the surrounding radiating checkerboard I decided the bold fabrics overpowered the compass.

I've been marinating ideas as I worked on other things and I found a fabric in my stash that is the color I want--I'm just not sure there is enough of it. Do you think it is a better option? Or do you have a suggestion for something you think would look better? I am open to all possibilities. It is the closest match I can find to the blue background in the flying geese ring. I used every scrap I had of that to make the ring. When the t-shirt top is finished I will cut this fabric up and see if I can make it work. I will also keep my eyes open as I participate in a shop hop tomorrow and see if I can find a similar fabric, or more of this one.

This shop hop happens every year at this time and it is usually fairly close to our anniversary (our 33rd is coming up on Monday). When I don't have friends to go with, DH has often spent our anniversary shop hopping with me. This patient man called today from work and offered to take me to as many shops as we can fit in if he takes off early from work (he goes in at 6 a.m. and will get off at 10 a.m. tomorrow). Since the farthest shop is one of my favorites and it is at least a 2 hour drive, we won't get to all 15 shops, but I've been to them all a couple of other years and some of them don't really appeal to my style and interests. We should be able to fit in all of the ones I really want to visit. The funny thing about my favorite shops is that two of the best are in completely separate cities but look how similar they appear. The photos are from their respective websites. Can you believe it?

This is Corn Wagon Quilt Co. in Springville, UT.

This is Elaine's Quilt Block in Salt Lake City (Cottonwood Heights).

You are probably all tired of the t-shirt quilt--I know I am. I never dreamed it would be so much work. This is the first one I have made, and I have to say, I have made pieced tops quicker than this is coming together! Of course, the fact that since I thought I first had all of the blocks made, my son has brought me three more shirts to sub for ones I already had made hasn't helped it along any (I have to keep rearranging when he chooses to remove a block of one color and replace it with a shirt of a totally different color--the gold in the upper left corner is gone now). But I finally have it to the assembly stage--except for that hole in the middle of the top row.

DS knows he has one more shirt that he would like in it, when he can get it to me (probably not until he comes out for Sunday dinner). I actually do have this section all sewn together and I have started on the section below it.

My thanks go out to whomever it was that posted a month or so ago about assembling quilts by sections rather than rows. I think that is so helpful to me as I put together this heavy, king-sized top.  My goal is to have everything but that top row with the hole finished before Sunday. In a little less than two weeks we are headed to a family reunion in Canada near Waterton Park and then we are taking in some of the Banff/Lake Louise area afterward. I want to have this to my longarm quilter before we leave.

As I sit typing this I can feel a chilled breeze coming from the open window. The clouds are gathering--again. That is the story of our weather for about 6 weeks now. Tonight I am helping my friend at her daughter's garden wedding reception. They reserved the church just in case, but as of this morning they had decided to go ahead with the garden setting--come rain or shine!

'Til next time, from the little mountain valley where the sagebrush would grow if the sun would shine,
Janet O.

Coins, Strings and Leftover Bits

I picked up Chinese Coins from the quilter over the weekend. I made this top a couple of years ago , but felt the wide border needed something. When I was sewing up the backing for the double 4-patch leader/ender shown in my header, I realized that the gold fabric would make a nice addition to the border of the Chinese Coins. So I sliced the border up, added the gold and sent it off to the longarm quilter.

I like what she did with it. I told her I didn't want feminine-looking feathers, and that she could stipple the "coins" because there was so much activity in that area that fancy stitching probably wouldn't show anyway. I also wanted straight lines in the gold strip.

Seeing this quilt reminds me of a string quilt I started at the same time, so I dug out the blocks. I used the leftover sashing/border fabric from the "Coins" quilt to make the centers of these string blocks. I just barely had enough of the black to make the required number of strings if I piece the last few. I really like these blocks and would love to finish them, but I need to get some other quilts with deadlines finished first.

I haven't even trimmed and pressed the last block I made.

You can see that the middle strip is the same as the fabric
in the Chinese Coins quilt.

I'll end with these blocks You may remember the first one that was a block from a vintage quilt featured over at Collector With A Needle. When I made it I cut extra thinking I might make two of them. Ended up there wasn't enough of everything for two full blocks, but I played around with the leftover bits and pieces and came up with the block on the right, which shall be nameless.

'Til next time, from the little mountain valley where it is raining and in the 60s today (in the middle of June!!!),

Janet O.

Fussy Cutting Finished--Skinny Strings Anyone?

Finally I got all of the fussy cut plaid sashing cut for my son's monstrous t-shirt quilt. It is all stuck on the design wall. Now I need to finish bordering the one piece blocks and then start sewing this thing together.

In the process of fussy cutting I created a pile of checkered strings. My question is this, does anyone have a use for these skinny strings? I've made string blocks, but haven't worked with pieces this narrow.

They are only 7/8ths of an inch wide. Every now and then I sliced into one, but most of them are solid.

 They vary in length from over 50" to over 70" long and they are lengthwise grain, so they aren't stretchy. The fabric is from South Sea Imports, and it has all been prewashed. I'm really okay tossing these if no one wants them, but there are so many string quilters out  there that I thought I would offer them. Maybe it would help if I show you how many I have. There are 6 of the longer length and 12 of the shorter. Any takers? Just let me know and I will send them off to you.  

Here they are folded and lined up. If you look closely here and in the photos above you can see that it is  a scribbled checker pattern. 

'Til next time, from the little mountain valley where the sagebrush grows,

Janet O.

T-shirt Quilt Time Again

It is time to get back to the t-shirt quilt for my recently graduated son. He is our third child to graduate from my Alma Mater and our fourth child is currently enrolled there. Our graduate, pictured here, was just hired last week by the admissions office of said school to work in recruiting. He will be great--he is such a people person and has worked in new student orientation since coming to college, so he knows all about the school and all about talking to groups of people about it.

This is definitely the largest quilt I have ever made. It is king-sized and I didn't realize how HUGE that would be. He'll have to get a bigger bed. You can see the blocks along the bottom row have to fold onto the floor, and my design wall is 7 1/2' x 8'. 

There was still a laundry basket full of t-shirts
after I was finished cutting out these blocks!

Since it is big I want to keep the sashing small. I really like the way the plaid sashing gives a uniform place for the eye to rest, but I feel like it needs to be fussy cut in order to keep the check pattern in the narrow sashing consistent. That makes the cutting of the sashing a rather time consuming effort.

I had over 50 t-shirts to choose from when I started this project, from every organization my son participated in during his undergraduate days (he didn't join 50 organizations, they just had alot of t-shirts per group). I ended up using almost 40 of them and most of the blocks are pieced in order to use more t-shirts in the 30 blocks. 

 I took logos from the sleeves, the fronts, and the backs of the shirts.

A 9-patch of sleeve logos.

 Some blocks are created from several t-shirts, others just took one. The blocks that have been made from just one shirt have not been bordered yet, but they will also have a solid navy strip around them. The school colors are navy blue and white, but there are a handful of brightly colored shirts in the mix. I tried to balance their placement, along with the spacing of the light and dark backgrounds. See, I can't just let the chips fall where they may!

Interfacing on the back.

 Pressing thin woven interfacing on the back of each shirt design before cutting it to the desired size, combined with the cotton borders, keeps the blocks stable and easy to piece without stretching. 

I placed a few cornerstones, as you can see in the photo. I was trying to get a feel for whether I liked it better with or without--and I think "with" wins.

                 

Also tonight I pulled out the patriotic fabric to find some for the pillowcase gathering going on over at Brown Quilts. I have been collecting red/white/blue fabrics for a quilt so I thought I would have plenty, but I realize since I was going for a scrappy look, most of it is FQs or scraps. I did find a few pieces from remnants so that I think I can get three made with what I have on hand, but I wondered about the
one really busy, bright fabric. Could you get to sleep with your head resting on that?

Finally, if you haven't been there already, hop on over to Bonnie's post "Australian Homespun Giveaway" and leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of the Australian mag. with one of her great patterns in it.

"Til next time, from the little mountain valley where the snow in the mountains is melting and flooding is an issue, 

Janet O.

In A Bind

Used a bamboo/cotton batting in this
quilt and tied it with cotton yarn. I
really like the feel of this batting!
I took this photo w/out a flash and it
came out very blue, but the quilt isn't
here anymore so I can't get a better shot.

My youngest grandson's birthday quilt was finally bound and delivered yesterday--and may I just say that I am the world's slowest binder. This is confession time. When I first started quilting almost 25 years ago I couldn't believe how long it took me to bind a twin sized quilt. I worked on it every night for a week. My mother told me to be patient and that I would get faster with experience. Well, I have, but just barely. I think I spent as much time on this crib sized quilt as Mom would on a queen sized. It can be embarrassing.

A few years ago a woman in our community who was battling her second round of breast cancer, was troubled with the fact that she had never got some quilt tops her mother had left her made into finished quilts for the family. A mutual friend took the tops to the LQS and chose backing and binding fabrics. She arranged to have one of our local longarm quilters do the quilting and then rounded up quilting friends to get them bound. She was very familiar with my binding frustrations, so when she approached me with a request for help, she immediately let me know that she would make sure I got the smallest quilt. Some women had bound 2 or 3 quilts in the time it took me to complete the one.

Two years ago at Christmastime I was giving a couple of quilts (a tumbler and a 16-patch) as gifts to my daughters' friends who had helped them through some difficult situations. The quilts were made and quilted in plenty of time, but I knew that with all of the holiday craziness and my tortoise-speed binding skills, they would end up being Valentines if I didn't do something.

Daughter #1 is holding up the tumbler quilt. I made this
from my scrap box and my Mom's. My neighbor bound this one.

So I paid a friend and one of my daughters to each bind one and we were all happy. The quilts were ready in time and my friend and daughter each made a little extra holiday cash.

The sixteen-patch made primarily from leftover strips
from a Trip Around the World quilt. The daughter holding
this quilt did the binding.

I have to admit that I have repeated that offer to my daughter and friend on another occasion since then--and they have taken me up on it. But I was determined to bind my grandson's quilt myself. I just wanted to give it to him for THIS birthday, not next year's. So I even went online and looked at tutorials on binding a quilt, to see what I might be doing wrong. I've decided my only error is that I am so darn picky that I go so slowly to make sure everything looks perfect. And like the woman mentioned in another blog lately who made two scrap quilts--one planned and the other using the "just grab and sew" method, and they turned out looking the same--my slow, precise binding method does not yield a result that looks any better than anyone else's speedier method. I just need to lighten up and stitch!

The double four-patch quilt shown in my header (my first leader/ender project) needs binding now, but it is a gift for a neighbor of daughter #2. She helped me make the small 4-patch units and she wants to bind it. I got it trimmed and will be machine sewing the binding on today. Then it is all hers and I'm fine with that.
Next up, that king-sized t-shirt quilt for son #1--there are issues. It is so large, but I think it needs sashing. And then there is the question of "to cornerstone or not to cornerstone?" More to come.

'Til next time, from that little mountain valley where we will only be in the 60s today--in June!!
Janet O.

Vintage Stuff

I loved the vintage quilt Dawn has been sharing over at Collector With a Needle. It is called At the Square Variation. I had to try it, but to simplify the math just a little I made mine a 9" finished size. I really like this and would love to dig in and make a scrappy quilt of it right now, but it will just have to wait in line.

I also told Dawn about a vintage log cabin quilt I have that is quilted in the Baptist Fan pattern. I will share it here so she can see it. It is hard to see the quilting pattern on the front. I could only get one photo of the back that seemed to show the pattern.

If you click to enlarge this you can see the quilting pattern better.

If you look closely at the edge you can see this has
been bound by wrapping the backing around to the front.

There are no conversation prints in this, but there are shirtings, double pinks, mourning prints, and other interesting period prints.

This quilt hangs over my loft bannister, along with a few other vintage textiles. I had thought I would collect old quilts to decorate my home, but decided that they were usually out of my price range. After that first quilt I bought this 1930's quilt top in the Dresden Plate pattern.

This wasn't a constant search for antique quilts (though I love to seek them out in antique stores just for inspiration) but when I happened upon something I liked, if I could afford it, I would purchase it. I bought these hand-stitched Carpenter's Wheel blocks on the internet. They sat for years before I bordered them with coping strips and set them on point in this top.

Finally, I bought a very scrappy and very old Trip Around the World from the internet. Some of the fabrics were very delicate, but that was okay because I was just going to hang it over the bannister. The problem was that the original maker had not been precise. The squares were not uniform in size and they had been stretched as they were sewn together to make them match up, which made the top ripple and bunch. I pondered this one a long time as to how I could remedy the problem. It would not hang nicely no matter how I folded it. Finally, in the words of Liz Broussard in Lynn Roddy Brown's Simple Strategies for Block-Swap Quilts, I "cut it into submission".  I made blocks out of the top, used a matching fabric for the sashing and leftover squares from the top became the cornerstone.

I still want to put a blue border around it, but haven't found the right shade to match the era of the other fabrics. Some will not be comfortable with such a drastic action taken against a vintage textile, but as Gyleen X. Fitzgerald says in Quilts: Unfinished Stories With New Endings, "not everything old is rare or valuable." This top now hangs proudly from my bannister, rather than sitting in a box in a dark closet somewhere.

 On another note, spring has finally come to Northern Utah. Usually by June the iris and lilacs have long since bloomed and faded. Right now these bouquets from my yard are filling my home with lovely spring fragrance. Snow on Memorial Day and lilacs in June--global warming hasn't hit our area yet.

Some of my favorite iris--River Hawk, Sostenique,
Edith Wolford, with a few others.

Click to enlarge so you can see the striped lilac.

'Til next time, from the little mountain valley where lilacs bloom in June,
Janet O.

P.S. Just wanted to let people know to hop on over to Subee Sews Quilts for a chance to win Bonnie Hunter's book, Adventures with Leaders and Enders. I've blogged about it before and it was actually this purchase that got me into the world of blogging. The giveaway is in celebration of the 200th follower on Subee's blog. Congrats Subee, and good luck to the rest of you!

Eye Fooler Update, Updated!!

Hey folks, remember this quilt? I have had so many people ask about the EYE FOOLER pattern after I posted about it. Nothing comes up in a google search, but I just bought it a year ago, so I didn't think it would be out of print that soon. I just called the shop where I bought it and they say it is a local woman who developed the pattern. They order a couple of dozen of them at a time and yes, it is still being produced, just not marketed online. Can you believe such things still exist? Anyway, the nice man at THE STITCHING CORNER in Orem, UT said you can call them at 801-426-6900. You can order it over the phone with a credit card (that is actually how I bought mine last year) for $8.98 plus shipping. They also carry the Tri/Recs rulers, which are needed to make the quilt, if you want to order them together (the rulers are $13.98 plus shipping).
So the mystery is solved. If you want this pattern, give them a call. As I said before, I am doing mine as my current leader/ender project and it is coming along nicely.

ETA: A couple of hours after posting this I heard from the designer of the Eye Fooler pattern (as some of you probably already have). Good news is that you can order directly from her. She said you can get the pattern if you send a check for $9.00 to her at ...

Krisanne Watkins

1428 Pheasant Run Drive

Springville, Utah 84663

Janet O.