Auction, FMQ, Tile, Design, Pillow

I was aghast to realize my last blog post was almost a month ago... March 1st! I have been busy with quilting related miscellanea, but felt nothing was major nor blog worthy. But here is a recap anyway of my March efforts in the following assorted projects.

• fabric management for my AVQ guild's upcoming silent auction in May
• FMQ on a community quilt for my DVQ guild
• tile placement efforts for our family room fireplace
• a peek at a baby quilt design for a new grandson due in mid-April
• an Easter pillow for my son.

Silent AuctionMy local guild, Amador Valley Quilters is holding a silent auction mid-May and I am one of many volunteers prepping donations to put up for sale. My area of helping is the small fabric yardages, less than 1 yard, precuts, and needle crafts. Here is an overview of what my living room looks like from the March donations. Bless his patient, tolerant soul, my husband is willing to live amidst this fabric-scape until mid-May, blithely watching TV over the stacks of fabric on the 6 foot long folding table spanning his ottoman footrest. The 4 foot long table off to the right contains needlecraft donations. February donations are at another guild member's home and April donation are yet to come.

And that 104" long dining table off to the left has boxes and bags stuffed on and under the chairs beside it.

Another 6 foot long table behind the couch, not visible in the overview, holds the pre-cuts yet to be sorted - squares, HSTs, strips, fat quarters.

Renée,  my friend from the guild, and I have spent hours and hours on several occasions folding these odd ball lengths of fabric into desirable looking bundles. It is time consuming but we do get to handle a wide variety of fabrics and we laugh and visit while folding, so the time passes quickly. Another friend Susan has joined us and I suspect she and others may do so again when the April donations tumble in.

Since it is in my home, I also throughout the day will grab a stack and fold. Here is the left end of the dining room table of progress. It is amazing how bundles of uniformly folded and color coordinated fabrics are so much more inviting and tempting than they were in the random cardboard boxes and plastic bags they had been tossed in for transport.

These photos represent only the small yardages. There is a whole other team of guild members measuring and packing the larger yardages over 1 yard. If you live near the East San Francisco Bay Area please drop by and support our sale. We guild members do not want to buy back all our own stuff. We want to share the wealth! The doors open strictly at 1:30 - there are no pre-sale viewing privileges - and the riotous event lasts for about an hour. In a brief second round, those items not sold are offered at 50% off starting bid price. There is also a small scattering of items labeled as "Buy It Now" for those who want instant gratification and are unwilling to suffer the suspense of a bidding process.

FMQ on a Community QuiltI normally do not post pictures of community quilts for charity that I work on, but I liked the way the FMQ on this rodeo themed quilt came out and wanted to share it. Another DVQ member had done the piecing and then passed it on for quilting. I am slowly gaining FMQ skills and I thought the loopy meander on the focus fabric and the lazy loops in the surrounding pale blue branding strips made for a good imitation of a lasso. I just happened to have the sage stripe for binding in my stash and liked the way it picked up the soft green in the focus fabric even though the bulk of the quilt is pale blue.

Fireplace TileWhile the living room is in disarray from fabric, the family room was in disarray from re-tiling the fireplace. The tiling only took three days, though not three months! I show this photo because I picked the tile and I think it is one meant for a quilter. I husband humored me in its selection. The installer, once he learned I was a quilter, insisted I decide exactly where each tile was to go, both placement and orientation. He was being super cautious, leery that I might not be satisfied otherwise. I will admit, it is a bit harder to move tiles on a canvas drop cloth than is it to move quilt blocks on a flannel design wall. My husband pitched in with the manual labor and double checked my position proposals.

The grouting and the wood trim is not yet complete, but here is the final layout. My husband quipped, "What, nothing is on point?"

Baby Quilt for New Grandson
I am hesitant to reveal too much of this quilt since my daughter-in-law pretty faithfully reads my blog and this is for her and my son's baby boy. But since most of this is what I have rejected, I will not compromise the surprise too much. Part of progress includes finding out what I do not like. Besides, Carrie already saw the critter fabric in my November 9th post about the Houston Quilt Festival and at least those blocks are staying. The scale of the houndstooth check blocks just seemed all wrong and too elderly masculine for a very young male. It all came from the same fabric line and although the colors went, the mood did not. I considered larger seams and uneven checks (red and brown trial block); yuk. I tried a smaller perimeter around the nine-patch (blue and green trial block); looked imbalanced. I tried an offset nine-patch (gold and orange trial block); artsy but still a failure. I will use these houndstooth blocks in another project and go back to the drawing board. This is a pity because I love houndstooth; it gives off such a male vibe.

Easter Pillow
In all that fabric sorting for the silent auction, I came across a 9" strip of an adorable bunny print fabric. Since my son Alex loves bunnies (see my Dec 25, 2016 post about other bunny pillow) I snagged it for my personal use. Volunteering does have its limited privileges. I'd bought the funky green check in Houston last November and had the primary colored dash print in my fat quarter stash. I needed to run out to the store for a pillow form and a zipper but then I had all the supplies I needed, even some batting scraps that were the right size. I sewed the three strips onto a piece of batting from the bottom up by the stitch and flip method. This gave the pillow surface a bit more body, making it less prone to wrinkle since the three fabrics were a lightweight quilting cotton. Both sides of the pillow are the same but before sewing them to each other I need to insert the zipper in the bottom seam while the two sides were open and flat. Then I could not find the zipper I'd purchased when I got the pillow form. I had to run out again and buy a second zipper. It was quicker that continuing to search the house. Once inserted I just stitched up the remaining three sides and voila... another bunny pillow.

I did not get away from the store the second time with only a zipper. I could not resist these bunny and carrot wall decors at 60% off. Alex will get those on Easter Sunday with his pillow - and candy, of course.

After completing the pillow I came back downstairs to find the original zipper sitting out in the open on the back of an arm chair near the base of the stairs, poised to be carried up to my sewing room. I now have an extra zipper. I also have an extra pillow form since I had to buy a two-pack. That 9" strip of bunny fabric sure did cost me a lot! I am linking up now to Let's Bee Social #221. Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts has been very busy with her move and was honest enough to admit she had no sewing to show. She inspired me to show what I did spend my time on this month.

Eking Out a Backing

I recently completed a quilt top with curved piecing in a variety of blue, purple, and teal batiks and displayed it near the end of my previous post. Now I needed to search within my stash for the binding and backing fabric. I had a yard of a periwinkle swirl that would do nicely for the binding. Print and color-wise I also found the perfect backing fabric for the top. It was purple and magenta and had tiny dragonflies flitting around on it. I had just under 3 yards, but would that be enough?

When I pick a backing fabric I have some self-imposed constraints. 1) I want to use fabric from my stash and avoid buying more for the backing. 2) I want the backing to be all out of one fabric. 3) When I piece it, I want the seams to match. These three criteria often cannot co-exist. My latest pieced top is 48" X 60". Of course all you quilters realize the frustration that most quilt tops are wider than one width of fabric. Depending on how you orient your backing fabric, this means you need twice the length of your quilt or twice the width of your quilt in backing yardage, maybe even more if you want to match the seams. But perhaps not. Read on.

I measured my dragonfly print. I had 95 inches which falls far short of twice 60" and a bit short of twice 48" especially when you need some margin all around for quilting. Aargh! I calculated the area of the dragonfly print. The 95" by 42" WOF dimensions multiply to an area of 3990 square inches. The 48" x 60" quilt top calculated to an area of 2880 square inches. In theory, I had sufficient backing fabric. Now, how to make it work? I was giving myself permission to not match the seams on the backing fabric. It was a small enough print that I thought unmatched seams would be camouflaged. I was also, at this point, willing to allow myself to have the fabric run both ways, with the grain and cross grain.

Believe it or not, I puzzled about this on and off throughout the day for about a day and half. Seeing me scratching my head in frustration, my husband asked if he could help. In less than 15minutes he came up with a suggestion which I jumped right on. Cut a big chunk and then cut the remainder in thirds. Two of those thirds I kept as is and the third third I cut in half and added to one end of each of the first two thirds. I now had two strips of sufficient length to add on either end of my initial big chunk. And the grain on all pieces ran the same way. Oh, yeah! The flavor of success is so sweet!

I ran the grain of the dragonfly background the direction of the smaller 48" dimension of the top. I cut a to-scale paper model to test that the configuration would work before I cut into the dragonfly fabric. Also the paper diagram when taped together reminded me how assemble length of fabric. I was able to keep a consistent grain direction and the same up/down orientation.

Unmatched seams were quite acceptable for this small and mottled print. They were visible if I hunted for them up close but not so obvious that they jumped out at me with a casual glance.

I cut my batting and made my binding while I was at it so I have all the components ready to make my quilt sandwich. Next up is tackling the challenge of figuring out how to quilt it.

By the way I did use my special Handiquilter batting scissors that I bought at Road2CA in January. They are offset to clear the height of the batting and one tip is blunted so they do not snag as they slide along. I drew a line on the batting with a Sharpie marker and cut along it. They worked much better than trying to penetrate four thickness with my rotary cutter.

I have one 12" square quilt block left over and these two rectangles of the backing fabric. I suppose I could make a pillow. My husband laments, "How many pillows do you really need? I just wind up tossing them all on the floor when I go to watch TV." Maybe I will just stitch the extra block to the back of the quilt instead. I suppose I could also ask the question, "How many quilts does one really need?" but let's not go there.

Most likely the extra block will wind up in my "blocks to make into whatever" plastic container. Each addition to this box brings a memory with it.

The extra block from this batik blue quilt may join these recent block additions. These blocks are leftovers from a quilt I worked on as my son began stabilizing and improved from some serious health issues. You can read about that quilt in my post for June 20, 2012.

These were eight HSTs from a border I made around some pumpkin blocks I won at a guild meeting. You can read about that pumpkin wall hanging and my border in my post for October 25, 2017.

This shoe box was also a great resource for the doll blankets I made for my grandkids for Christmas in December 2016. Each orphan block comes from a memory or goes into making one!

Then there are those backing scraps to contend with. I am still pondering on a good scrap organization system. Surely I cannot just toss out those two generously-sized, dragonfly print, rectangular leftovers. Scraps, hmmm... to be continued... and continued... and continued. Linking up now with Let's Bee Social #218.