Sister's Curves

My first step today working on the Sister Artists quilt top was to finish off the bird tree/bush section. I added the dark strip at the bottom and the pieced together top strip at the top.

I like this outer frame-ish thing that I've got going. It may remain on the quilt top or be turned around to the back as a facing/edge treatment, we shall see.

Here's part of the curves of the tree/bush now pieced in. I changed out the fabric sewn to the bottom left butterfly section to the darker spiral-y one. I also removed about an 1.5" of one of the horizontal green strips.

Here's my stopping point for today. It's nearly there I think.
 

Sister's Bird

Now that the three butterflies are started, I switched over to green and worked on the bird embroidered block for the Sister Artists quilt. (still in need of a title at this point)

One the way into the green.

That's how far I got with it.

Here's how it's looking with the butterflies. Now to combine them.
 

Old Town the First

 

Starting out with sewing the first up block for the Old Town mystery quilt. I'm going to try all the different ways presented to make the required Flying Geese and compare and contrast my accuracy with each method. This is the simple rotary cut version. The neutral is a square that is cross-cut and the aqua is a smaller square that is cut once on the diagonal.

Note to self, the different way of pressing these in the directions means that your Bloc-Loc flying geese ruler really really does NOT work well. It depends on both of the seams being pressed towards the corner triangles. The reason given for pressing the two seams differently is distributing the bulk better when the quilt is assemble.

The weird background is not fabric but is the new wall calendar I bought for myself for next year. This is from a collage artist I really enjoy a whole lot, Ravi Zupa.  We came across his work on matchboxes that really cracked us up and then I looked him up online and found his other work. And yes that is an old iPod in the foreground, complete with vertical lines in the screen, but it still works! In my efforts to cool it on too much podcast listening I'm switching back to music for a little aural vacation. ahhhh.

This set was made with the normal to me technique of a flip and sew (and kind of wasteful), a square on either end of the rectangle sewn on the diagonal line that you draw. Very accurate, but that's probably because that's my usual technique.

This set was made using the Essential Triangle ruler, first time I've tried it, you cut the triangles from a strip of fabric. Pretty easy. No lines being drawn which is nice. Not quite as accurate, but for a first time not bad. And no extra waste.

A few more techniques to try out, and many more Flying Geese to make, but hey, at least I've started!

October Temperature Column

 

Back to working on finishing up on piecing the Temperature Quilt.  The October column has been up on the design wall for a while. And I finally made the decision to put it together.

I used the wooden clapper on each seam sewn and it really helped to keep it flat.

I like how it looks on the back! The Wonderclips really work well to hold it together and out of the way when it's almost done.  Less stretching and holes in the fabric.

Here's how July through October is looking. Two more months left to piece together now.

Here's a closer look at the columns. After the summer introduction of hotter colors, I'm liking this more and more.

Final Bohemian Wife Blocks

 

I think I've now finished with piecing the blocks for the Bohemian Wife quilt. Feeling very pleased about having gotten there. Of course there's just a zillion blocks up on the design wall waiting to be assembled into a quilt top, but I'm a lot closer to getting done with this project. I didn't take a picture to post because they're not all arranged in the right spots yet.

Here's the last five blocks all together.

This one is a little matchy-matchy, but that's okay, with all the contrast of pattern I think it's okay. It won't stand out too much.

I've started trying to figure out the how-to's and how-much on cutting out the background strips. There's something like 60 strips of various lengths and widths. This is not very clear in the written pattern *ahem* This is one of the main reasons so many people find this quilt pattern challenging! I found a chart that another quilter has made that will hopefully help. It's a spreadsheet, which is what my mind was already heading towards making.

Back to Boho

I'm so glad to be  back to making quilt blocks without paper. It's such a relief. The teeny tiny HST's are accumulating as I make my way through the "filler blocks" of the Bohemian Wife pattern.

I like these three recent blocks, especially that middle one. The two crazy Kaffe Fassett prints as borders really work together.

There's a lot of adding borders of various sizes to other blocks, it's going to be hard to keep track of all of these.

 I have to make 36 more of these blocks.

I'm going into production mode by pre-cutting the squares that will be the centers. More and more teeny tiny HST's.  Will I perhaps make them into a block that will be swapped out for one of these square in square's? Seems likely.

Here's how it's looking, beginning to fill in somewhat. Some extra blocks are up there, they'll likely end up on the back of the quilt. There's a good mix of colors and patterns. I'm trying for a not too focused on one color or pattern with this one.

 

May Done

 

The May column for the Temperature Quilt was hanging out and getting in the way of working out how to proceed on the Trinket backing. It also was falling down piece by piece, so it was my aim to get it all sewed together today.

Instead of going day by day I filled up my pressing board with the black beginning pieces and the first three days.

I got my little Oliso project iron to sit by my machine. It worked out well sitting there on the table. The sides of it don't get terribly hot like some irons.

We had one day in May where it hit 90F, so I finally got to put in a hot color, this red-orange. It was terribly exciting which is dumb I know but I love how that little splotch of red looks in the first five columns.

It's all together except for the very end black pieces. I asked my studio assistant to pose for size comparison. Doesn't this pose look like one of those hysterical photos on an old magazine cover of Cat Fancy? What's he looking at? Is he thinking deep thoughts? Why does he have a yellow ribbon on his back?

This look says to me,"Seriously, if you have to ask all those dumb questions maybe I should be in charge of doling out the cat food from here on out."

Anyways, May is done, and I'm halfway to being caught up on the year, hah!

March Column

The March column for the Temperature Quilt went together pretty quickly. I think I'm learning and getting a little more comfortable with this kind of assembly process.

Here's the first quarter of 2023 up on the design wall together for the first time. It's hard to remember now in the heat of summer, just how crazy cold it was. I mean it snowed and it stuck around for days! It will be fun to see the next quarter's worth of columns/information. It's going to get a lot more varied pretty quickly. Some people are embroidering the name of the month at the top of the column. I'm considering it but likely will not. I like the abstraction of it, if you don't know it's a "Temperature Quilt" then it's just shapes and colors. 

Moving On To February

 

February looks pretty different to January, as one would of course assume. It was a whole lot colder on the low side, that's when we got the snow (snow!wow!) but it was also slightly warmer on the highs too. Very unstable towards the end of the month which makes for an interesting interplay of the colors.

As you can see, the tail end of the February column will employ a few more black background half hexies to make up the difference between 31 days and 28 in the two months. And yes, in the Temperature Quilt pattern, Julie accounts for leap years.

Now that I can see two month's worth up on the wall, I think using my hand-dyes is working out okay. Not as clear of a data communication tool as using solids is though. 

Looking ahead to working on the months of March, April and May, I knew that I needed to cut the next few temperature ranges. Yes we really got up into the 90's pretty quickly. Also, I couldn't help but notice the warm color story happening on my worktable. These yellow, yellow-oranges are really going to pop out visually.

The next two color ranges (91°- 95° and 96°- 100°) I will need to dye the fabrics for, that would be orange and red. The fabric colors that I initially selected from my stash are likely not going to be nearly close to big enough to cover the rest of the year. Fingers crossed that the dyes I've had all this time are still viable. Just in case, a Dharma Trading order has already been placed.

Halfway Through January

 

Sewing has commenced on the Temperature quilt. Beginning with January 1st. I got setup with a little mini pressing station right next to my machine. Including the clapper for extra pressed-open seams.

Don't mind the water spots, only temporary. Boy is it ever not fun sewing black on black like this. Remind me never to do this again. My eyes have either seriously deteriorated or I need more direct lighting. 

The accuracy of the speciality ruler cut out pieces is really working out for me.

Here's day one of January represented. How exciting to finally begin.

Onto January 2nd!

Here's how the first week of January looks.

A lot left to go for the month.

I stopped sewing for the evening once I reached day 15. It's going pretty slowly together, but I'm trying to stitch slowly and accurately so that the column doesn't get bendy or off.

Long January

 

I've finally managed to do it, I've laid out the first month of my Temperature Quilt. As you can see it is quite looooooong before being sewn together. All 31 days of January represented with a high and a low temperature per day. Looking at it up on the design wall, I really really hope the darkest blue doesn't blend in too much with the black background sashing that goes between months. 

I had to make little paper markers to pin up on the design wall for every five days just to keep myself on track. It was pretty easy once I had put up a few days worth. Going from consulting the January daily chart, choosing one piece for the high temperature, and one for the daily lows temperature and then putting them up on the wall. It was easy to lose track. I went back over it to make sure I selected the correct colors. It's interesting how easy it its to see that January was s a fairly boring month temperature wise, until the last week where we had the highest highs and lowest lows. There were these wild swings in daily temperatures from 70° down to 28°. That's because the majority of January was rain rain rain which keeps the temperature pretty steady.

Eyes Have It

 

Over the last couple of days, I got the fussy-cut Rock Candy table topper all sewn together and quilted. Mostly because I really want to put the blocks for the Slopes quilt up on my design wall. Here's how it looked when I got started.

The six triangles being assembled. I love how easily this goes together, having those diamond and triangle corners notched off really helps me.

The two halves are all ready to go together. I reminded myself how to sew this bit as it's the hardest part to get right by re-watching the very helpful video that JayBird Quilts put out.

Tah-dah! After playing around with this for so long, I'm so happy that it's all sewn together, woohoo! My eye-centric version, of course I'm calling it "Eyes Have It".

I added the borders and got to quilting and am putting on the binding right now. I went with just outline quilting as it's so busy anything fancy would be lost in the happy color chaos.