Thankful Day

 

Today's the day for us to think about what we have to be thankful for in the midst of Thanksgiving celebrations and all the hustle and bustle that it entails. I'm thankful for everything that's been growing and is now ready to harvest and enjoy.

I'm thankful for the ingenuity of our fellow humans to make bridges and freeways and cars so that we can easily get from here to there and back home again, even in a big wind and rainstorm. And for all the people who work in our various government agencies that regulate all of those enterprises so that our travels are as safe as possible. 

I'm thankful for clever people who come up with new ways to make us laugh in unexpected places, especially when we really need that laugh.

I'm thankful for artists and musicians who continue to thrive and prove that they can still make magic even into their late 70's (the bassist on the right is 78! The other guys are all in their sixties)

I'm thankful for the people who get things done even when it's raining or more than a hundred degrees when I can't really function and help out much. In this picture that would be DH and his big front yard project, ongoing, but nearing completion.

I'm thankful to have the privilege of still being in the place where I had the foresight to have planted a tree years ago and then for the joy it brings us when it finally comes into its own and wows us every fall.

I'm thankful for the bluest blue open sunny skies above, and snakes guarding our oldest dashboards.

I'm thankful the trees have finally turned and the tunnel of green has become the tunnel of yellow and to have the luck and privilege to get to live in such a beautiful forest.

I'm thankful for you reading and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving or a terrific Thursday.

First Cut

Look! An actual cut has been made for the first block clue in the Old Town mystery quilt. Shocking ,right? That's all so far to report on that. I put this lovely piece of fabric from friend Tim's travels behind the cut pieces because we're not supposed to show the sizes of the cut fabrics while the mystery quilt is in process. The 'no spoilers' rule works in quilting too, mostly because the pattern gets locked and then sold after the mystery is revealed.

Bonnie K. Hunter has really great tips and tricks for block making in these mystery quilt directions, and several different way to make the block. And also using several different ruler options too. It's very thorough and well explained. I'm going to try them all out I think since I have to make so many of one block. It's always fun to learn a new way to do something and maybe one of the methods will work better for me than the usual way I do it now.

I already had her Essential Triangle ruler, which I've used before. She also suggested a new one called Simple Folded Corners that I got from her and I'll be trying it out for the first time on this project. There are some good photos in the mystery quilt directions showing how to use it, so hopefully that will help me figure it out. More later on that after I actually use it.

Old Town Choices

I've only ever finished one mystery quilt, this one above, a Weekend Whatever made in 2005 and finished in 2019. This is the year I'm finally actually going to attempt to do the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt in real time. Note the "attempt" in that previous sentence. Even though I really need a sew-a-long kind of thing right now, circumstances may potentially arise of course. I've always wanted to do one of hers as they're almost always a great sort of quilt and she presents the color choices with such nice inspiration travel photos.

First things first is picking out the fabrics that I'm going to be using. I'm going full on scrappy with mine, so there will be a lot of variety. The above are the "neutrals" that I'll be using. A mix of white and off-white to cream. Turns out I don't have enough of white on white or patterned off-white fabrics in my stash so I threw in some of the least densely black printed of the black white prints that I have on hand.

This next stack is the aqua/turquoise group. There was a lot of fabric to choose from here. Many are quite small pieces so we'll see if they will actually make it into the quilt or not, depending on the sizes that will be required. That's all a part of the mystery I guess.

Here's how the first two color groups look together. I think I'm liking it so far.

The studio assistant checked over my melon to coral choices.

Pretty melon-y and coral-ish.

Using my color wheel to narrow down the choices for the red category.

I think it worked.

Here's the giant stack all together. Now to actually move beyond this point of choosing fabrics (where I've gotten stuck before) and get to making the block components in the first clue...

One Bound

My one and only one thing I got sewn last week was the binding on this great community giving donation quilt made by friend Jaye. She calls it Green Strips Donation No. 2.

This shows off the great quilting that was done by someone else in bamq, not sure who unfortunately.

Jaye used such fun fabrics in this one, I enjoyed seeing all the variety as I worked on finishing the binding.
 

Yesterday's Mail

 

Yesterday was a Good Mail day™ because my subscription box from Pink Door Fabrics arrived. It is chock o' block as per usual with all kinds of fun stuff. But I have to say, I really really enjoy the boxes and have a hard time throwing them away. I've been using them for storing current projects, they're roomy enough and easy to move around. Better than buying even more P.O.T.S. (Plastic Organizer Thingies).

There's always a pattern included and this one is super intriguing to me, I've always liked this block but have never tried it (due to the curves and needing to make templates. Well, it includes the acrylic templates, and equipment for doing it EPP style. There also directions for piecing it by machine. We shall see. I quite like the examples on the pattern cover of the fussy cutting these great Tula Pink fabrics.

I'm excited about the Renaissance Ribbons that were included, they're so pretty and match the fabric so well. Another Sewline fabric glue pen is always useful, now I can have one in my to-go box and one in my workroom, some very pointy butterfly scissors, John James Milliners needles, a spool of DecoBob for hand sewing. Oh and a package of seeds, alyssum.

There was also a swatch deck with pictures of each of the prints in the Untamed fabric line. Not sure what those are really for, maybe I can use them in a collage?

Untamed is all about flowers,  there are no animals included in any of these. Except for the check and houndstooth fabrics, it's all gorgeous flower or plant related shapes like seeds..

I really enjoy the variation of patterns used in the backgrounds of the florals.

I'm really into the rainbow houndstooth fabrics. And the patterns on the seeds (or water droplets).

The neons are Very Neon.

A lot of these would play very well with other Tula Pink fabric lines, there are similar motifs that are similar and the colors would work together.

The Tula Pink solids are super pretty. The fabric quality is very good for a solid.

The neon checkerboards are super stinky with the heavy neon print. It's very stiff and plasticky as well. I hope that it washes out and softens somewhat.

Always fun to check out the selvedges.

I like the colors on the selvedge being represented in water droplet (or seed) shapes.

I used my laundry marker to write in the names of the solids, just in case I end up needing more of one color.

Green Giving

 

Adding binding to one of the BAMQ community giving quilts. The front and back of this one was made by friend Jaye, not sure who quilted it. The quilting is very nicely done.

First I stitched around the outside of the quilt edge before trimming the excess backing and binding.

Went on pretty easily, now to either hand stitch while watching the 49ers game or maybe machine stitch it with some green thread in the top and bobbin.

Friendship Back Bits

 

Time to use up the scraps and bits left over from making the Friendship Star blocks for the back of the quilt.

Those are some long seams to sew. At least I got some of my scraps sewn together in time to be included in the quilt back.

Maybe just maybe I'm on a roll with quilt backs at the moment. Hopefully I am so I'm ready to bring a quilt to the long armer next week. 

Actually Metro Twist Back

 

The Metro Twist quilt top now has an official backing made. I had worked on this at the last Sew Day and without measuring had made a quilt back that was just shy of fitting. The width was just a little bit too small. I'm still very pleased with how close I came just intuitively sewing pieces of fabric together. And I don't mind the addition of the orange strip along the right hand side. Now to make the binding out of the strange blue from the quilt top background.

Gone in Circles

 

Back to hopefully finishing the walking foot quilting on Running Out of Raincloud. I want to do some piecing and I need to swap over the feet, so time to get this done.

Even though I didn't get it done in time to submit it to the quilt challenge, I still want to see where I'm going to end up with this one. After alllll those straight lines, it Needed Circles.

Yes, yes it did. It was hard going at some points to follow and echo the correct line of stitching.

The complexity of all the lines of quilting intersecting is really fun to look at.

Am I now done with quilting this thing? Maybe. Probably. 

Most of the quilt has more than one direction of quilting line, some more than four. But there is some space that only has one line of quilting. I think it's okay. It lies flat enough and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.

Really like the look of this circle. I think I"ll put the facing on and sit with it for a bit.

Sister Artists Butterflies & Bird

 

I got the other two butterflies and the one bird embroidered pieces inked up. This is the only piece that was on a cream colored background. I was little concerned that the blue color would end up being drastically different. I think it turned out just fine. I still need to figure out what this brown flower (maybe?) is, although it looks a bit like four yams arranged together.

The embroidered initials are signatures of the artists. I kind of like them hanging out there like they're smaller butterflies or other insects off in the distance.

My current plan is that the bird will be pieced into a tree sort of situation.  I'll continue the brown of the tree branch and blend in greens with the rest of the background.

On the bird I used some yellow in the background and instead of inking over it with blue, I added dots of green fabric pen for more texture.