Third Saturday of February 2021

For "Hang Your Quilt Day" this month, the theme was "Hearts" or "Love".  Shown from left to right the quilts are Four Hearts and It's a Party. I think it is fun the way the Welcome sign and its shadow are in the first photo.

Four Hearts (25" square)

Four Hearts is one of the first quilts I made during my Debbie Mumm era, a decade or so ago. It pre-dates my blogging, so it was made prior to 2011. I do still have the pattern I used, ©1990. Hmmm. I just might make it again in greens for St Patrick's Day in March. It would make a great four leaf clover.

It's a Party (47"square)

It's a Party was made for my fourth granddaughter and this quilt is definitely embedded with love. Posts on this quilt for its assembling, FMQing, and completion are dated 2/11/21, 2/15/21, and 2/19/21 respectively. It is my most recently finished quilt.

Hang Your Quilt Day Beginnings

Beginning April 2020, my quilt guild members began a tradition of hanging quilts in the front of their homes on the third Saturday of the month as a source of enjoyment for the community and as a thank you for the essential workers during the pandemic. My initial post about this practice is dated 4/22/20.

Quilt Completion for Sixth Grandchild

The label and binding are all that remain to complete this quilt. Before binding I attach my two grosgrain ribbon labels diagonally on the back lower quilt corners, one with the quilt name and one with my initials and year; therefore, before I can bind the quilt, I must decide on a name for it. I'd been contemplating several name choices but none quite hit the mark. I name a quilt for its features and not for its recipient. Reviewing the prints in the fabric selections I reflected on my favorites. I liked the little elfin people and bunnies dining around a small table like at a tea party. The small creatures – foxes, hedgehogs, pixies, and more bunnies –  who are happily gathered in the fields amongst the bright red mushrooms seem ready to socialize and have fun. The houses also look so inviting – the one in the upper left with its beckoning banners and in the one in the lower right with its welcoming path. The birds twittering on the telephone line up in the sky seem to be immersed in cheerful conversation. Perhaps they are on a "party line". (Readers too young to know what a party line is – or rather was –  are invited to check out this Wikipedia link on telephony.)

 

All these festive features led me to the name IT'S A PARTY. The name also has a double entendre. Since this is the fourth child in my son's family, I see them all trooping into a restaurant as a family, requesting a table by saying "Party of six, please". So, indeed, "It's a party".

Placed diagonally in the lower corners of the back, the labels were overlapped by the last-minute addition of the quilted corner circles. Seeing how perfectly centered those circles were, I can't help but believe that the quilting gods were smiling on me, rewarding me for avoiding perfection that could have angered them (... unintentionally...). See previous samples from assembling and FMQing this quilt as cited in 2/11/21 post and 2/15/21 post respectively.

On the back of the quilt are those blue-toned blocks that did not play well on the front. In the upper portion of the back, they serve as a sort of home base for those blue foxes frolicking about and add a spark of interest. By default, the blue-toned blocks are quilted in thread from the bobbin which is coral. Though the coral stitching is not as aligned with the block fabric sections as the pale yellow stitching is on the front blocks, the back quartet sports a lot of hearts, assuring baby Irene that she is loved.

It was a beautiful day for photography with blues skies, puffy white clouds, and little enough breeze that a bit of patience paid off in getting photos. There was just enough shadowing to display the quilting to advantage, so I also added some close-up shots in this lighting.

I am glad I was brave enough to try out some new FMQ stitches on IT'S A PARTY. As soon as I've washed it so it crinkles up a bit, I will be sending it off to Irene who is five weeks old now. I like to imagine her being attracted to the pretty colors and running her little fingers along the texture - not quite yet, but very soon. Due to COVID-19, I have not met Irene yet, but I hope to in April. Then it really will be a party.

FMQ on Quilt for Sixth Grandchild

After piecing my backing, I cut out my batting from the last of my roll of 100% bamboo batting. I guess I really did make more quilts than I realized. The batting roll started out 96" wide and 10 yards long. Every time I cut off a section for a quilt I mark it on the label. Then I mark the remnant dimensions on a slip of paper and taped it on the random size rectangular pieces. These I store in plastic bins for use on smaller projects. From the dates on this tag, I learned that I consume a roll of batting per year.

I got out my reliable, easy to use Odif 505 temporary adhesive to spray baste. I tape the backing to the floor and layer first the batting and then the top above as a sandwich, smoothing out any wrinkles. Then I peel back the layers, half at a time and proceed to spray each side of the batting. I learned from an instructional video that it is more effective to spray the batting rather than the top fabric or backing fabric. I protect my hardwood floor from overspray during the process with pillowcases that I then toss in the wash afterward. I completed the spray basting on January 25, when Irene was two weeks old.

 

On to the FMQ. I started four days later with the sashing strips because I knew what I wanted to do in them. I knew I wanted pink circles and worked up a spacing layout in a PowerPoint file for an 8 ½" square with 2" sashing on all four sides. In the sashing were eight 1 ¼" circles on each side nested between parallel ⅜" channels.

 

I put in the ⅜" side channels using Angela Walter's ruler Slim and started my first "L" of circles, using HQ's Swiss Cheese template for 1 ¼" circles. The circles kissed perfectly in the corner as planned. So far, so good. I was quite pleased. That pink really did liven up the beige.

What I realized, as I proceeded to FMQ more of the bottom half of the quilt, was that the squares were offset and although some sides were 12 ½" long, others were only 10 ½" long. I needed to rethink my circle spacing. I noticed my error when the corners of some of the squares had some overlapping circles and some had tangent circles. Before doing the top half, I figured how to compensate for the length difference by eliminating two 1 ¼" circles and inserting a smaller circle ¾" circle midway in their stead in a line of six 1 ¼ circles. Doing so allows all corners to have kissing circles, not overlapping. The top half is shown with the circles correctly sized an spaced. I will admit, sometimes those kissing circles do overlap just a bit like a Venn diagram, but as long as they are symmetric about the diagonal and not overlapping in some random offset position, I am content.

I marked lines in the bottom half that were "wrong" with safety pins; I needed to pick out the stitches of some of the circles in the 10" long sashing sections. I have heard that to become better at quilting you should quilt; picking out only makes you better at picking out. I could not leave it as is though. Since the circles are formed by circling a once-and-a-half times within the template, half of each circle has been double stitched. It took me 10 minutes per circle to remove the rogue ones. I luckily had to pick out only half a row of circles, four instead of all eight. I put on some music and let my thoughts wander as I picked away. It took me four sittings of a little over one hour each, but I persevered.

I use masking tape with tape measure markings to help me with even spacing. I needed to have two strips: one for 12" sashing with eight 1 ¼" circles and and one for 10" sashing with six 1 ¼" circles and a central ¾" circle. The results are much improved but they are not pristine. I do not need to worry about angering any gods with perfection.

Now I moved on to FMQ within the squares themselves. The circle template work was so intense I needed to take a break by doing more freehand stitching. I also choose a more subtle thread color, a pale yellow, because I did want to detract from the cute prints. I decided to do loop-de-loop in each birds-on-a-wire section. In the other sections I was going to do hearts or a four-petal motif. Initially I was going to do the wide center of a block in hearts, and the narrow sides of a block in the four-petal motif. Then I changed my mind. I reasoned that area size should not determine the quilt pattern; rather the scale of the fabric prints should dictate. Really whimsical prints deserved an open pattern of hearts, revealing more of the print. Less interesting mini-florals, dots, or stripes would be covered in the four-petal motif, a denser pattern with more texture. I made myself a diagram to remember what would go where once I'd decided. The script e's are for the loop-de-loop lines. The spiky suns stood for the four-petal motif, and the hearts, logically stood for hearts.

The following photo shows a sample of all three FMQ patterns used within the blocks: four-petal motif in the coral mini floral, open hearts in the animal critter scenes of white or aqua, and loop-de-loops between the birdies on a wire. After the overview photo is a closeup of each pattern.

The hearts were the motifs I did last and although they were the least dense, they were the pattern I found most difficult. I made myself paper templates in PowerPoint, oriented both in horizontal rows and vertical columns, and used a ByAnnie Stiletto to poke holes at key points. I made faint pencils dots on the  quilt top through each hole as registry marks so I could space out the hearts evenly and make them uniform in size.

In the next photo heart rows are stitched in the aqua print and heart columns are stitched in the coral print. The hearts are not as uniform as if they'd been computer guided; rather they look as if they could have been drawn by a somewhat steady-handed child. I deem this style acceptable for a baby quilt. Once again, there is no perfection here to anger the gods. I believe the politically favored term in the quilting community for non-uniformity is "organic".

My last region to FMQ was the 4 ½" borders. I decided to brave ruler use once again, this time with a classic clamshell pattern and this HandiQuilter ruler. The length of the inner side of the outer border measured 41 ½" so, if I finagled a bit, I could fit fourteen 3" clamshells along an edge. I was pleased with my choice. The ruler work went smoothly and I did no picking out of stitches. Also, the clamshells filled the space nicely without being too dense as seen along one edge. I know the stitching pattern is technically called clamshells, but they look like puffy clouds to me floating along. For a baby quilt that is a better fairy-tale type way to imagine them.

I still need to figure out what to do in the corners since clamshells do not round a bend very well. I considered a four petal motif or heart in each corner but they would be larger than those in the body itself and did not seem to flow. I plunked a corner photo into PowerPoint and tried overlaying different combinations of circles and straight lines. On the left in the first pair of photos is a plain corner. I had considered terminating the outer row of clamshells with a half shell but decided to hold off. The end seemed too abrupt. In the right photo I considered some 1 ¼" circles , the same size as in the inner sashing, but I dreaded the thought of more picking out should I space them incorrectly. 

On the left in the second pair of photos, straight lines on a diagonal into the corner would be fairly easy to do but nothing else in the quilt was on the diagonal and I felt it looked out of place. On the right, I explored easily implemented straight lines again but this time at right angles, following the rectangular focus of the rest of the quilt. This was better than straight lines at a diagonal but then how far along the edge should I continue them?

Next up was a design that incorporated more circular stitching in the corners. Instead of terminating the outer row of clamshells mid-shell, I proposed having two complete shells meet. They filled in the corner as shown in the left photo. I delayed filling in additional straight lines as in the right photo until deciding if it needed it. Ultimately I chose to leave the outermost corner area unstitched pending further consideration. Once the ⅜" binding was folded over in place, there would be less blank area remaining.

When I put in the two extra corner clamshells I used a piece of masking tape to help me be sure they intersected along a corner diagonal. They joined up very well. I could have saved myself a fair amount of time restarting and stopping had I been decisive enough about how I was going to handle the corners from the start. But isn't that always the case?

Started on January 27 and ended on February 9, the FMQ took me two weeks. For comparison, the assembly took a few days. I am still on the learning curve for my FMQ, plus I need lots of pause time to make decisions, and to humor my stubbornness to pick out what I am not satisfied with. I've adopted the motto on the foil wrapper from a DOVE® Promises Milk Chocolate taped on the wall of my sewing room, "Don't stop until you're proud." (It is this chocolate that got me in trouble in my previous post dated 2/11/21.) I still have the binding and labels to go.

After adding the binding on the quilt, I did decide to add something in those corners. A single circle would do the trick. I cut out some pieces of paper to get a feel for what size - either 1 ¼" circle like most of them or ¾" circles like the central substitutions on the shorter sashing sections. The larger circle seemed to dominate and so I put only one smaller one in each corner to fill the awkwardly empty spaces.

Adding those circles is equivalent to dotting my i's and crossing my t's when I write something. I can exhale with a sense of satisfaction. It is like the cherry on top! This quilt will need one more post for naming, labeling, and photography of the completed quilt.

Assembling Quilt for Sixth Grandchild

I began this post on December 21st, before Christmas last year and had completed the block assembly by December 31, still in 2020. Progress slowed to a stall over the holidays plus I did not want to publish before the intended recipient was born. Those are my main excuses for the delay in this quilt and I am sticking to them. Irene Jane was born on January 11, 2021 at 8 lb. 11 oz. Today is her one month birthday so I will begin to release my posts on her now completed quilt. Irene has two older sisters and an older brother  – a regular party. A layer cake of Moda's fabric line Enchant seemed appropriately little-girlish both in color and in tea party theme. Plus, during a FaceTime call, I had shown it to older sisters Vivian, age 6 ½, and Lillian, age 4 ½,  and they had both approved of my fabric selection. The layer cake has eighteen 10" squares, which would make up into a 3x6 block set. Wanting something not quite so skinny and long, I added two squares of fabric from my stash to make a 4x5 block set out of twenty blocks.

For the pattern, I picked a 2010 Thimble Blossom pattern called Piece of Cake {2}. Using this pattern, I'd made a Christmas quilt that my daughter-in-law (Irene's mom)  liked. Images of that quilt can be seen in my post for 9/10/14 and my post for 9/17/14. The way the blocks seem to float free-form, rather than being lined up regiment style in rows and columns, appealed to me. The pattern had called for thirty blocks arranged as a 5x6 block set but I was cutting down the size to a 4x5 block set. 

As in the Vintage Ornaments quilt, fabrics have a directionality and I wanted all the prints to be "right side up". It was critical how I oriented each pair of 10" squares from the layer cake and determined which slices should be horizontal and which should be vertical. Here are the fabrics paired, oriented, and numbered before cutting. Top row (#1 through #5) would be the side-to-side blocks and bottom row (#6 through #10) would be the up-and-down blocks.  The stripe of #7 and both the dots and mini-numbers of #9 are fabrics I added that were not originally in the layer cake. They worked color wise and scale wise, though. 

Zooming in shows off the cuteness of those little mini-prints from the layer cake squares. Each central top band is one of the 10" squares folded in half and laid on top of its partner. I think my favorites are the tea party and the little birdies on a wire. I like the striking boldness of the dark blue in #0 mini-floral but I have my doubts if it will add pizzazz or stick out like a sore thumb. Yet to be determined ...

After having making the two slices in each pair of 10" squares, I lined them up to chain sew the two seams and press. Then I trimmed each to a square 9". I trimmed both ends since I dislike working with those pinked edges of pre-cuts. The second photo shows my leftover scraps. These were too small for even me to save.

In the pressing I noticed... uh, oh ... how had I managed to get a tan spot near the bottom of one square? I will admit, I do sneak a bit of chocolate while I am sewing but I am usually extremely careful to keep it away from the fabric. Did I drip melted chocolate out of my mouth? Gross! I realize that the baby will most likely spit up on this quilt but, even so, that would be her spit and not mine. I tried scrubbing out that dot, imagining that, perhaps, I had at least lightened it a bit and then telling myself more might come out in the wash. Odd, though. The spot was perfectly round. Then I noticed other perfectly round spots coming out of other chimneys of other houses in other blocks. Whew. I had not desecrated the quilt. Dots are design features, puffs of smoke, not flaws. The white "dots" were obvious but the tan "spots" were not so easy to dismiss.

I put the twenty partially completed blocks up on my design wall without their sashing and stood back to evaluate. No matter how I arranged them, the two blocks with the dark blue were obnoxious. I even tried the old trick of shoving less desirable blocks to the edges and that did not work. They had to go. Since they were both vertical format, I would have to remove two horizontals or make two more verticals. I would let that decision marinate while I added the sashing – a sashing whose fabric choice was in question. To coin the phrase of precision quilter/teacher Cindy Needham, this quilt top was definitely in the "puberty phase" – awkward, gawky, imbalanced  – but bound to get better. My husband pointed out to me that, in his experience, with every quilt, I go through a dissatisfied period; but I always pull out of it and he always puts up with me during it.

I tried to be judicious in my choice of that background sashing fabric, so as to complement without overwhelming the Enchant fabric line, and yet not be too blah color-wise. I had to eliminate white or any of the coral, aqua, or green background colors of the layer cake prints because they would touch. I picked a beige with pink and white dots from the same fabric line; I needed to order it from Etsy since the fabric line was several years old, from 2013. I was initially disappointed that the yardage read as too beige, but I consoled myself with the idea that I could spice it up and draw out the pink with quilting thread in a strong pink color.

I added the 2" wide dotted sashing on two sides of each block, then dutifully placed the twenty completed blocks up on my design wall once again. Forgetting that adding the sashing makes the blocks bigger, it did not register with me that a 4x5 block layout quilt would be over 60" long. Although I usually like to make grandchild quilts big enough to spread on the floor to play or do tummy time, this was way too big for a baby! Even a toddler would have trouble dragging it around. Whatever was I thinking! My blunder truly sunk in when I calculated the size backing I would need once the borders had been added.  I then realizing my overly zealous error in my "I'm-on-a-roll" block assembly-line production.

At least this size "oops" answered the blue blocks question. I would remove the two blue vertical format blocks and remove two horizontal format blocks as well. Which ones? Then I noticed something about the blue dots blocks. The dots were printed off-grain. Although I did not notice this drift initially, once I saw it I could not "un-see" it. One disadvantage of pre-cuts is that there is no extra fabric to fussy cut around these type of anomalies. At least I knew which two other blocks had to be removed. 

When life gives you lemons make lemonade. I decided to put these four blocks on the back. Doing so also meant I will have enough yardage of my backing material. No only did I shorten the quilt by 12" but I added 12" to my backing yardage. Here is the wrong side of the backing showing the four blocks inserted.

Here are four of the sixteen blocks that remain on the front of the quilt. Clearly they need some touch-up ironing to get out those wrinkles. The coral pink, lime green and soothing aqua just make me want to smile. The beige still makes me dubious but I will have faith and push onward. Next up is sandwiching and quilting.