Mosaic Back

The first thing I worked on at Sew Day was making a back for my Mosaic table runner. I had two pieces with the smaller piecing to start with. 

I used more of the fabrics that I'd used on the front. They look so different when seen in the larger chunks of them. Now to figure out how to quilt this piece.

 

City Sampler Back Started

I worked on the beginnings of the backing for my City Sampler quilt at bamq Sew Day yesterday. There will be a solid grey border put between the central snake piece and the rest of the fabrics.

Seen here is the studio assistant checking out my work.

This is my "plan", so far so good. There's going to be a lot of long seams to sew.

There was a lot of great fabric on the free table, mostly from the stash of one of our members who recently passed away. She's greatly missed and I think we all felt lucky to get to take home some of her fabrics to work with and remember her by.

 

The Last New and Circles

 

My order from Sewtopia for additional Ruby+Bee fabric to finish my challenge quilt arrived. And of course while I was there (on the website, not in the actual store in Utah), I had to order some sale fabrics, a pin and some checked webbing. That's it, no more fabric buying for the year. I'm officially full up of fabric now. 

I love Happy Sew Lucky patterns and was so happy to see this pin which I will wear during the next few months as I write my political postcards.

Two Ruby+Bee solids, Rain Cloud and Turmeric, two Carolyn Friedlander prints to add to my collection. Someday I'll make a quilt with just those fabrics, maybe one of her patterns. A button print in the oddest colors, the background is almost a match to the Turmeric solid. And a very cute tossed calendar print to use on the back of my calendar quilt.

A trip to a LQS with friend Jaye, The Granary led to two more fabrics getting tossed into the final new fabric purchases pile. One a really interesting layered print by Valori Wells, and a fabric that I'd resisted buying earlier, the completely made-up just-for-fun Crytptids of the National Parks. This will be the backing for my National Parks panel when DH and I go traveling when he retires.

An interesting table runner pattern from Atkinson Designs. I'm pleased to see it offered at the same price online and for the .pdf version too. Not sure which month this will be for in my monthly table runner rotation, depends on which fabrics I choose.

From Sue Spargo online, after resisting the Toned Down Circle Sampler pattern several times I broke down and got it. It is sold with a kit, which I didn't buy as I have a lot of embroidery threads and I don't need to exactly replicate the pattern's colors. That led to me making a database (of course) of which embroidery threads I do have on hand. That was quite a fun diversion to look through all of it! And yes, I have plenty to do this pattern. 

This wool/acrylic Ellana thread was the only type I didn't have so I bought the kit pack. I already have the Sue Spargo book, Creative Stitching, that explains the stitches that are combined in each circle.

Strips Used And Not

 

The only progress I've made on the teeny tiny HSTs is to sort them into matching sets of four. Takes up a whole lot less room. I may or may not include this in the back of the Bohemian Wife quilt, giving myself permission to move along if necessary.

I was thinking of making a block of strips something like this to echo all the strips on the front of the quilt.

But I used a lot of them to border the last couple of blocks that I had made. There are still some strips left to help fit all of this together.

Boho Back

 
Well, I got sucked back into Bohemian Wife because I was tidying up. And there are a lot of strips and bits and pieces left over. Which of course are going to need to be assembled into a backing. Instead of packing them away, I started working with them.

There were some left over blocks, which I put some sort of borders around, either strips or HSTs or both.

There were a couple blocks in the Bohemian Wife box that weren't made with the same fabrics, but made with somewhat similar ones. I left myself a note saying just that. So instead of stashing them somewhere, I decided to include them. What the heck, my quilt, my rules and all, right?

I'm liking what I've got done so far. And there are a whole lot less strips left to use.

There was, however, an envelope in the Bohemian Wife box that was labeled "Tiny HSTs". And there they all are...yikes! These are obviously leftovers from making the blocks. I had sewed them and pressed them open as I went. Do I sew them all into one (or several) giant blocks? Should I sew them together with solids and spread them out in other blocks to make up more of the quilt back that's needed? Decisions must be made, because now my work table is occupied.

Trinket Back Done

 

I'm having a bit of a backlog up on the ol' design wall, the Trinket back pieces were pinned up on top of the January-May Temperature Quilt columns. I had to take all the pieces of the Trinket back down to sew them together. While they were off, I pinned up the Trinket quilt top and then started rearranging on top of that to get an idea of the size required for the backing. It's a lot of layers and pins!

But that's all sorted now, and the Trinket quilt back is assembled. It's a skosh too small width-wise so I'll add two purple borders, one on either side. I like the almost arranged in orderly checkerboard squares but a little bit off-kilter. At one point I had to cut a few more squares for a final column and I added in more whites so either side would have a bit of white balance. They really stick out from the intensely colored squares.

I'm glad that I isolated and "floated" the special teeny-tiny show-off-y paper pieced squares in their own section. I'm unreasonably chuffed (proud I guess) about how they turned out. Showing off, but on the back isn't too braggadocios of me I suppose.

I keep trying to flick that piece of thread off the screen↑↑↑ 

But alas, it's just in the picture. 

Hopefully I can get the Trinket quilt spray basted and layered before the rain starts next week.

PIQF Fabrics & More

 During the class I took at PIQF I realized that my fabric selections weren't serving me very well. I brought a lot of very high contrast typography fabrics, some other random mostly brights and some of my hand-dyes.

So I dashed downstairs during lunch and bought some FQ's to work with. They are all browns and some are quite ugly, yes, but I used all of them.

And I also bought some small sharp scissors, as the Kai ones I brought were not sharp enough and not small enough for the tiny pieces of fabric we were working with. These Sookie Sews micro tip scissors ended up being perfect and they were on big sale too. Bonus is that the handles actually fit my fingers which was a surprise. Usually small scissors do not fit me well. I notice that the package says "Large Ring Scissors", I guess that's what I need.

And then on Monday morning, I got to pick up the mail and my order from I💗TulaPink was here. They had a sale on quilt backs so I bought this HissyFit one, it's an enormous (54"x72") blown up digital print of one of my recent favorite Tula fabric prints. 

My plan is to use it as the back of my City Sampler.

I also had to. get the unicorn pins that were on sale, because pink unicorns. They're really nice pins besides the novelty aspect.

Yesterday I picked up my two PIQF quilts and "had" to got to Golden State Quilting. I was much "better" this time and "only" bought 2 yards of white Painter's Palette to use in more dyeing for the Temperature Quilt. I now see one of the reasons why they volunteer to organize collecting quilts, haha. No picture, because it's just white fabric. And yes, I'm going to machine embroider the selvedge before dyeing.

Stitch Happens Layered

On this hot day, I braved the steamy iron and got my Stitch Happens quilt layered up with my favorite fusible batting (Hobbs 80/20).

 Once again, there's just enough to go around on the back. I always cut it too close. It's annoying when you're quilt layering/basting, but yet I keep doing it to myself. Memo to me: Make Bigger Quilt Backs.

Tomorrow I'll layer/baste the Slopes quilt and then it's time to switch over the sewing machine into walking foot mode.

Back Addendum

 

I was going to sandwich the Stitch Happens quilt top, but then I remembered that the backing I made was a skosh too small. About 2 1/4" too small in one direction.

I added a strip of scraps from making the quilt top with a little of the background solid on either end. Then I added one more small strip of the background to seal in those scraps. This will be the straight edge that I begin with when I do the sandwiching to make sure that line of scraps doesn't get trimmed off.

I really like this combo of the green orange red/magenta and purple pink in this picture. Striking.

Did I like the quilt backing as it was before? Yes. Should I have just added a big width of just the background solid instead of the pieced column of scraps? Maybe. But I think it looks just fine.

Still a bit unnaturally obsessed with how the teeny HST's turned out.

Now I can get to some sandwiching.

Goldilocks Situation

The back that I made for the Stitch Happens quilt was bugging me as it was pinned up on the design wall. There was something missing. Turns out that it needed some solid purple all the way around the outside. That's better.

And I added the same purple around as an interior border to the Stitch Happens top. The final border will be squares of the fabrics used to make the machine. That'll make the whole thing a bit closer to lap-sized. This is not just a bid to put off sandwiching the quilt, I want it to be a useable size. It was too big to hang up on the wall and not quite big enough for a lap quilt. A Goldilocks situation for sure.

And while I had the purple fabric out on the cutting mat I also cut out the binding strips and assembled them. Here they are with the binding for the Japanese Houses, and Orange Bullseye.

A somewhat nicer photo of the three, my BindingBaby being a bit judg-y about the binding backup happening.
 

Two More Backs

 

Now that the weather has turned, I'll have a chance to do the spray outdoors basting thing. So it was time to get the two backs finished that I'd started at the retreat last month. First picture is of the back for the Slopes quilt.

And second is the back for the Stitch Happens quilt.

Playing a bit of "thread chicken" while stitching up this last one. My cone of piecing thread is finally almost done! 

Partial Slopes Back

 

Another thing I worked on at the retreat was using the scraps from making the Slopes top to start on a back. I had to arrange the badly trimmed blocks in such a way that it wouldn't matter at all that they wouldn't be matching up. The blue frame is made of a different fabric from the rest of the scraps. It was one of the grunge prints that I brought along with me. I'm think that I may add big pieces of various prints around this to make it big enough to use as a quilt back

The squares and rectangles around the outer edge are very random, but I'm very pleased with how the colors still work together.