Stalling or Thinking?

In my previous post I described my struggles with FMQing a quilt. While considering my options I made several pillowcases. I was either stalling starting the FMQ or allowing my brain to subliminally come to a decision as to how to proceed. Either way I have pillowcases to show for it. They  require little thought in their construction for me now that I have made so many, and the selection of fabric combinations and accent strips always gives me pleasure and rejuvenates me.

These first two bunny pillowcases are additional duplicates of the standard sized pair I made for my son Alex and describe near the end of  my 5/27/19 post. The post also included tutorials on how to make these pillowcases. The sea of bunnies marching side by side intermingled with the sea of carrots makes me smile.

Then I had more fun combining fabrics to make two more pair of standard size pillowcases that will go to grandchildren eventually. I could not pass up this curlicue nautical octopus print which I bought just recently at my local quilt shop. The source is Studio-e Anchors Away Tossed Octopus by Sharla Fults 4077-77. I drew from my stash for the soft, blurred, blue/white stripes .

I bought the multi-colored foxes several years ago from a vendor at a  Lowell, Massachusetts quilt show described in my 8/19/2013 post. Since the vendor had only brought fat quarters of this particular print to the show and I loved it,  Waterwheels House Quilt Shop shipped me a yard of each from their store in Vermont to my home in California free of charge. Here I am cheerfully using it six years later.

In my 5/11/2019 post I described some king sized pillows I made for our master bedroom. My husband enjoys them a lot and, remarks about them often, and is incredibly pleased that I made something for us instead of the grandkids as usual – more appreciative than I would have guessed he'd be. I made another two out of this incredibly whimsical cat print.

The mini-plaid end band is from American Jane fabrics and is the perfect shade of soft, muted blues  to blend with and echo the ocean meets sky on the horizon. I had the multi-colored stripe I used for the accent strip as a fat quarter in my stash. It is serendipitous how the coral pink, pale blue, and soft olive tones matched those in the feature fabric of the pillowcase body.

Here are some other closeups of those sunbathing felines.

The kitty fabric was a fairly recent local purchase and the selvage reveals that the design is by PB textiles.

Coming back to the title question of this post... am I stalling or thinking? Truthfully, I believe it is a little of both. But if I enjoy what I am doing while I am doing it and like the results as well, motive is not very important after all.

Quilting Malaise

Some quilts stretch you to your limits. I started piecing Whirligiggles in a class I took from Sandy Klop and my first post about it was 1/23/2016. I thoroughly enjoyed the piecing and was quite pleased that I got skilled at Y-seams and also successfully managed to have the pieces meet at points. I completed the piecing on Whirligiggles and did the sandwiching with batting in my post for 11/23/2017 - yes, almost 2 years ago. Then it sat because I was chicken to start the FMQ.

I wanted to draw attention to the secondary pattern of the big primary colored stars, outlined in yellow in the following photo. I decided to use rulers to do parallel straight lines along the points of the stars. The results were disastrous. Although the blocks I had assembled met nicely at the point intersections, when I joined the columns of blocks, the pressing directions at those intersections (along the red arrows) were not as easily controlled. Though I forced them to behave and meet nicely, those intersection left huge lumps.

My ruler rocked on those bumps and slipped, even with sandpaper type grippers. When I tried free hand straight lines, they were crooked, unevenly spaced, and had irregular stitch size. The white thread drew attention to this summation of awfulness also. Stupidly, I kept on, deluding myself that my stitching lines would get better and I'd eventually be capable of accepting the imperfect results. I could not. The proverbial "It will not be noticed by a person passing by on a galloping horse" did not hold water. That horse would have needed to be moving at the speed of light. Discouraged, I set it aside for many months. Then, over the last couple weeks I paced myself and invested an hour or so each day taking out those stitches. Some were so closely spaced they were a nightmare to remove. I took my time with a seam ripper, scissors, tweezers, and a magnifying glass so as not to rip a hole in the quilt top. It has been over a month since my last post because it is uninspiring to write about negative progress.

However, it was time to move forward once again. I humbly took the shambles to my sit-down Handiquilter club meeting that convenes every other month and asked for quilting ideas. My criteria were 1) bring out the secondary star, 2) avoid the lumpy intersections, 3) strive for continuous stitching, and 4) minimize backtracking. One of the ladies suggested this three lobed design which I liked. The curves soften the angularity of the star points yet still draw the eye outward to them. Plus, the "petals" fall short of those pesky lumps.

What to do with the inner star? The group played around with some ideas. Getting from one star point to another without going though the lumpiest intersections would be a challenge and we did not really address that aspect. We were encouraging creativity, not technicality.

I explored other ideas at home. First row left to right: one spiral per inner star point, squiggles within two arcs in each star point, spiral in each in star half-point. Second row left to right: Lazy loops in star half-points, large petals with rounded tips in each inner star point, curled tendrils centered within each star point. Thread color or colors is still to be determined. Aargh! I detest that phrase "quilt as desired".

I broke out my trusty Angela Walters book for shapes and will continue to mull this over with her ideas for triangles, diamonds, and hexagons.

I will figure out the grey and white hexagons once I nail down the primary colored star pattern. I am hopeful they will be easier. Thread color in those will be grey or white. Whatever I decide on, I am convinced it will all be free motion with no ruler, thus allowing me the freedom to avoid those ominous, mountainous, mounds at some intersections.

I did take a break and go with my husband to our local nursery's show rich with artisans and vendors. Art mediums included oil and watercolor paintings, pottery and ceramics, photography, wood, glass, jewelry and much more. For photos see Alden Lane's Art Under the Oaks 2019 . At the entrance, my husband suggested I go sit in this bear's lap. 

I tried to channel the song Baloo the Bear sings in Disney's animated feature The Jungle Book

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife

Then I went home and made pillowcases, my quick comfort project in the absence of burp cloths. Sewing them allows me time to subliminally ponder my FMQ options while still feeling productive. The pillowcases will be the topic of another post.