Metro Sandwich

Time for some sandwiching. Metro Twist has been up on the design wall waiting for the quilt sandwich treatment for many months (since November last year).

After stretching the fusible batting and doing a bit of ironing on the front, I turned it all over and tacked down the back.

Definitely a good arm workout. I tried to switch off hands so both arms got the benefit.

Flipped back over and re-ironed the front to really make sure it's held together. Now it's ready to be quilted.

Slowly but surely working through my 2025 UFO challenge list. Yes that is a Color Coded Spread Sheet. I figured I was hanging it up above my worktable so it might as well be colorful and pretty. I'm happy that progress has been made on all but the Temperature Quilt, and one out of seven UFO's is now finished (Slopes). It was good to only pick seven projects to help narrow down the universe of things to work on getting finished.

Just Barely A Box

 

My final subscription box for the Pink Door Fabrics Tula Pink club arrived. The box itself was still barely still taped together on all sides, yikes! I was a little worried for the contents inside.

But everything was safe and sound, and there's as usual, a whole lot of goodies. This is the newest Tula Pink release of Full Moon Forest II line of fabrics along with all kinds of coordinating stuff. I love the Emperor's Wheel pattern example done in these fabrics.

The coordinating Tula Pink solids are great. and the webbing has a beautiful tree print on it.

There are a lot of FQ's and it's always so hard to untie these beautiful rainbow bundles.

A Bob-Sled was the most clever new notion I've seen in a while. It's a bobbin holder that has a little front part (like a bobsled) that lifts up and you can put needles in there. So cute, and I love the Deco-Bob pre-wound coordinating threads included.

A Tula Pink neon pink bee key fob, Renaissance Ribbons sampler pack of the coordinating ribbons,  and a long 72" of ByAnnie zipper with contrasting hardware.

An interesting bag pattern, 1"hexagon papers and these clever plastic mini bolts for organizing fabric. They included an idea of making feature parts of the fabric you'd use for the bag out of hexies which I thought would be very cute. Especially with using that printed webbing and color coordinated zipper.

The Tula Pink solids are really nice color choices.

A better view of the print FQs, quite a wide variety of big and little prints. 

A lot of these will be really easy to use in block making.

And the more interesting detailed prints will be used elsewhere in bigger pieces.

I like the inclusion of the light greys and white prints too.

Peony Day

 

It's finally Peony Day in my garden! After more than a week of buds not quite opening, today it happened.

Woohoo, so beautiful!

I'm always so surprised how exuberant they are. It might be time to plant another color of Peony. Maybe.

And they timed their blossoming so perfectly with the irises again this year. By the way, that's rhubarb leaves in the foreground.

And the Angel's Trumpet is Out of Control even though I'd pruned it back at least by half. But it smells so good so it's staying until DH cuts it down. 

Okay that's enough about flowers, back to sewing now.

Slopes Finish

 

Ta-dah! An actual quilt finish, now presenting a completely finished: Slopes. 

I started this back in 2023 when I did the Color Collective with Tara Faughan. She would choose the fabric palette which would be sent to us from Sewtopia, and then she would present them in a video class being used in a pattern. In this case, a diagonal half-rectangle design.

The brilliant thing about these color palettes was mixing the Kona solids with Robert Kaufman Essex Yarn Dyes. That combination of the true solids with the textured yarn dyes is really visually striking. 

I really enjoyed making this one, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Even the back!

Postage Parts

 As I was talking about yesterday, I picked up this quilt top kit at the BAMQ meeting from the Community Giving table. I was saying that my plan was I'd be using these units and blocks as leaders and enders for another project. Well, that didn't happen. I just did it all on its own. I think I was just too interested in seeing how it got put together. First up, I had to look up the directions for 8-at-a-time HSTs. Just checking that I had it right before cutting up any fabric.

The 8 at a time method really works for me, as long as I remember to do a scant 1/4" seam.

The HSTs turned out surprisingly accurately, but I'm still glad that I trimmed them to size.

One of the included squares for the Postage Stamp blocks was cut a little too close to the selvedge and had a white strip showing. So I used a fabric marker to add some color. Otherwise it was going to look like the white square was too big and a rectangle instead. It would have thrown off the pieced pattern.

This is a good example of the power of HSTs in a quilt pattern. Now all the pieces are constructed so it's time to sew it together the rest of the way into a quilt top. 

Postage Stamp Quilt

At the BAMQ meeting on Saturday, over at the Community Giving table, the ever organized Peggy had handy-dandy irresistible kits put together for making up a small quilt top. Included along with the helpful illustrated instructions are five already completed Postage Stamp blocks, enough fabric to make the big HSTs, and squares for making the partial Postage Stamp blocks seen in the pattern.

I'll be using these as leaders and enders while I do some more piecing on another project.

And over on the free table, I at first resisted, but then gave in and took this FQ from one of the recent Alice in Wonderland fabric lines to add to my "words on fabric" bin. I thought the little illustrations and coloring were super interesting. Yes, I've already added this to my Fabric-IN spreadsheet for the 2025 Fabric Tracker.
 

Quick Community Binding

 

I attended the BAMQ meeting yesterday and picked up this Community Giving quilt that needed binding to made and applied. Isn't this a fun one, I really love these zingy colors. And since I'm on a roll with binding things, I figured I'd get one done for the group.

First I stay-stitched the edges of the quilt, just because it helps the seams that hit the edges not pop open.  Then I trimmed off the excess of batting and backing.

I found a fabric in my purple boxes that I thought worked really well, ironed it, cut it and sewed it up into some 2.5" binding. After all that, actually sewing the binding on was pretty easy and quick.Now to try and remember to bring it along to Sew Day to turn it in. 

Hey, that's another amount for me to add to my Fabric Tracker for the year. With this addition it means I'm at 4.23 Net yards of fabric. To be specific according to my calculations, 34.78 yards Bought - 30.55 yards used so far. Meaning I've added 4.23 yards of fabric to my stash so far this year.

Spring Speaking to Summer

 

Finally, the binding is completely attached, the sleeve is added, and Spring Speaking to Summer is dropped off for display in the BAMQ group challenge exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair.

I think the binding turned out pretty good on the display side. Not perfect on the back, but it's a table runner so I don't really care too much.

It's a weird one for sure!

It turned out so curvy, it almost has a waist. 

The bottom section (the "Summer") is my favorite part of the whole thing. Guess I like Summer?

Seasonal Binding

 

Welp, the binding I posted about for my BAMQ challenge quilt, Spring Talking to Summer, had to be removed. I didn't remember to give myself extra folds to make it around those big curves when I turned the binding around and over the quilt edge. Yes, it was a lot of "un-sewing" but it will be worth it. I pinned the whole thing folded bits and all.

And I even went to the extreme measure of first basting it to really make sure it'd work and look good.  I just didn't want to have to un-sew the whole ding dang thing again. So....now that the binding is stitched on for real, tis finally time for the hand sewing and finishing. Ack!

The Tie Issue

While clearing out my folk's house, we of course encountered my father's ties. This is only a selection of the older ones. I displayed them spread out on the floor like this just to document them.

There's such a huge array of different styles from all the different eras he lived through. Very very skinny and long 50's style, extremely wide and short 60's, wild fabrics and prints 70's, and boring 80's.

Look at the extremes in styles here. 

Some truly wild stuff.

My mom politely declined my offer to make her something with all of these. I agreed, it would have been Too Crazy to wear. 

I don't think I could have made these all work together in one piece. My mom said that my dad would get positive feedback or interaction from people when he'd wear unusual ties, so it kind of became a thing for him.  I think he figured that if he had to wear a tie, it might as well provoke conversation kind of thing.

We all picked out one or two ties to take with us to remember him by. My DD took the really skinny ones to wear at her bartender job, my DS took the Tweety Bird one, and I took the Peace & Love one at the top in this picture and a couple of the wilder paisleys. 
 

A video version of the above photos, just for fun and dizziness.