At PIQF This Year

Heads up, at this year's odd summer-time PIQF, I've got four quilts that will be on display at the Santa Clara Convention Center from July 24-27 as part of various exhibits. 

In the New Quilts of Northern California exhibit, be on the look out for my "Safe At Home" quilt.

Over in the SAQA exhibit, we'll be showing off some of the rejects from the now touring Prism Play show, and two (out of three) of mine will be displayed.  It was hard to say yes when they asked, but I did, so I hope you'll have a chance to check them all out.  This one above is named Aqua Centrum.

And this one is named Chartreuse Sinister.

And finally, in one of the special exhibits, Stretching Art & Tradition 24, my quilt 5-4-5-7 will be displayed.

Illustrated May Monthly To-Do

 Here's the current state of my design wall, it's a little, no, it's a lot better now compared to the start of last month. Last month I wrote out a list of what I wanted to prioritize doing, and I referred to the post many many times over April. So it really did work for me by helping narrow down what to work on when I actually get into the studio.

The following is my Illustrated To-do/Priorities list for May:

Cut out and sew on first circles on orange bullseye squares

Finish the swing cushions. That cut-up memory foam is taking up a lot of space in my studio.

Put binding on Safe At Home and add a label.

Finish quilting the Dotsy table runner and bind it.

Finish quilting the B/W baby quilt and bind it.

Pin baste the Courthouse Steps, quilt it, and bind it.

Sandwich, baste and quilt the Kitchen Sink quilt

Make more Japanese Houses blocks.

Start making Pantone project blocks

Press and take the Blue Squares quilt to the long armer. No really, do it!

I think that's enough variety for me this month to A) Have variety to choose from and  B) Is Work I Want To Do

Grey Decisions Gray Decisions

Here's Safe At Home up on the design wall after having completed all the grey area quilting. (ooh that would be a great quilt business name! ™™™)

By hanging this up on the wall, I was able to see which if any areas need quilting. I think this is ok on this block because the grey is dispersed through the block.

This, however is much too saggy looking to me, It' too much unquilted real estate.  I will outline some of the rectangles, almost stitching in the ditch.

These yellow centers are a bit on the edge. I think I'll extend the lines of the star edges to make a bit of a net across the yellow, but I won't quilt the star points. I like how they pop off the background being unquilted.
 

Quilt Tails

 

Only three rows left to go of quilting the grey spaces! I am getting A Lot of "help" of course. I totally forgot I'd added the cat tail to the Safe At Home quilt. It's going to make it harder to put the binding on.

 I'm still deciding on whether to quilt the non-grey pieces. I think I'll put it up on the design wall when I'm done wit the last three rows and see how it looks over all.

Gray Stitching

I'm still going going going on quilting. So far just gray used. 

It's looking okay on the back too. Still deciding on whether I need to quilt the non-grey pieces in the quilt. 

 I'm using the grey Glide thread I got in the next to the last Quilty Box. It's lovely thread, flowing smoothly while I'm free-motioning. The first thread I tried was on a big cone and not feeding smoothly enough for all he free motion action.

Under The Needle

 

One of my April To-Dos has gotten underway today. Safe At Home is finally under the quilting needle.

This was one of the quilts that I spray basted with Odif 505 back in October. It's been folded up and ready to go since then. And finally I was ready to go too. So far the spray baste is working out just fine, there's no movement and no gunk on the needle either..

Safe at Home- More Backing Work

 

I pulled out my Safe At Home bits and bobs and sewed together a bunch of the half square triangles into various sorts of blocks to put on the back of the quilt.

There were a lot of options and it was fun to play around with the pre-made pieces.

If the strip had been the same size as the HST I might have gone with this idea.

Here's what I've got put together so far. There's a whole lot of strips of the various colors used in the quilt top that are cut out that I'm going to sew together in a hopefully interesting manner. Maybe I'll just do a bunch of log cabins or one giant log cabin like the Lone Round Robin idea.

On The Back

 Now that the Safe At Home quilt top is finished, I'm working on using up the scraps for the pieces that will make up the back.

There were a lot of leftover half square triangles, some due to the way the blocks were made and some due to me misreading one of the row instructions.

So there are a whole lot for me to work with.

I take a picture when I like the layout and use it to make sure when I'm sewing I get it together correctly.

It's going to be hard to get myself to stop playing with these "scraps", I'm really still happy with using these fabrics and colors. But I am running out of the grays that I used for the quilt top.

Safe At Home Finished

 

After months and months, my version of the Safe at Home quilt is done. Well, at least the quilt top is finished. I'm very happy with how it turned out. And I actually like how the last row turned out.

Now I'm deciding on whether to quilt it myself or take it to the local long-arm quilter that I used last time. And I'm working on making the back, more on that later.

Safe At Home Visual Decision Making

 

Here's how the final row in the Safe at Home quilt looks as originally designed with the rest of the rows all sewn together.

I really dislike the solid stripe of yellow, and the absence of the background as in all the other blocks. It looks like it belongs on another quilt except for the same colors/fabrics.

Turning some of the orientation of the blocks helps a little, breaking up that big yellow line is better. 

But it's still missing the grey background.

Adding a bar of grey and reorienting the blocks to have the purple which is a thinner rectangle helps.

But it's still just too much yellow. Adding in some more grey instead of the final yellow logs in the block might work. I still haven't decided. Maybe I'll take one block out and frame them in grey if I can work the math out. Or maybe I'll just make a different block altogether... It is my quilt after all, right?

Last Row

 

Jumping backwards to finish the final row of the Safe At Home quilt. This row is an offset log cabin. And  my first decision was whether or not to include some of the grey background in the blocks. As it's designed, there wasn't to be any background. 

After 'making visual decisions visually,' I went with using none of my background color, grey. Of course this is just a single block and not a row's worth of blocks, so I'm still a little unsure of how it will look with such a background intensive design for all the other rows in the quilt. 

Visually it will be quite an "anchor".

The colorful chaos of my worktable. The box has all the cut pieces not used from this project. Presumably I'll assemble them into something that goes on the back of the quilt.

Row 7 Done

 

I pushed through and got the seventh row all done for the Safe at Home quilt. The Wonky Stars are kind of fun to make, I like how most of them turned out.

Here it is all sewn together and with the row moved into the right order as per the pattern. 

Now it's time to move on to the final row.

More Safety

 

The paper pieced row of the Safe At Home quilt is all done now. And I really like how it turned out.

Here's part of it with the blocks not sewn together yet.

I guess I just don't really like all the excess left over from paper piecing. It's whole new scrap pile, and just from making one row of a quilt!

The next row requires more background fabric of course, and I've run out of the three grey solids I've been using. This is an audition picture to see if this will work and I think it does.

Here's how one of the Wonky Star blocks looks when it's slapped up in the middle of everything else. The background fabric is a little different but it's not terribly off. I think it'll work out.

 I like this Wonky Star, block it's fun and freeing to use the flip and sew method especially compared to the tediousness of paper piecing. After this row is done, just one more left to do!

I haven't sewn the rows to each other yet, as I'm waiting to see if I like how they look as the designer plotted them out or if I want to change it up. Depending on how the new background fabric plays out I may mix it up a bit. But I shall "Make Visual Decisions Visually"

Still At Home

 Still at home, still safe, still working on the Safe At Home quilt.

This row of paper piecing, phew, it's kind of a lot. I'd forgotten how fiddly paper piecing is. It has good results of course. And if I did it more often I'd probably be faster at it. I do like coloring the reverse side of the paper so that I don't have to think about which fabric goes where.

I'm loving how this is looking so far, especially with the other completed rows.