Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Today I found that piece of Red Cherries fabric I brought from my shop in Wyoming when I retired early 3 years ago. I never dreamed it would wind up in the Black Forest chocolate cake quilt!

Scans 1-3 Top row

 

[freedombecki]

Scan 4 Top Row
Scans 5 & 6 New Squares on Second Row (the others just didn't look right, so I made 2 new squares with 7 different strips each).

Finally got SOMETHING finished on this never-ending quilt.

Actually, the work is a lot of fun to see the different combinations of brown, cream, red, and assorted matching prints go together.

 

[freedombecki]

For anyone who hasn't had a Black Forest Cake, I found a picture of one that looks like one a bakery shop on the way to Neuschwanstein Castle was the day I got to see it in then-West Germany (1989).

​

 

[freedombecki]

Mission accomplished!

Finished the quilt by working on and off all day yesterday joining rows. Then I wanted a piece of brown color in the border so went to the quilt store and plucked a few more reds, browns, and lights off the shelves and a darker deeper red to go around the outside, I splurged on 2.25 yards fo that.

When I got home, the brown didn't do it. It was too like the brown sashing, and I noticed. It was too much chocolate.

So, I bought a red fabric like the brown one in the sashing, and the same amount in case another quilt came into being like this one. I really couldn't stand the brown, though, so the red had it, and was perfect between the deeper red outside border and the inner cherry sets and chocolate-froth sashes.

Here's a thumbnail (click it and it will produce a new tab with a larger image so you can see it better):

 

[freedombecki]

Made a web for a senior pillow today. I have enough scraps after cutting a bazillion pieces for the chocolate cherries quilt to fill the large pillow.

Now to quilt it and get it ready for one of our community's seniors who needs a hefty support pillow to prop up feet that have swollen and need relief. It's a senior problem. The pillows I make are made with 100% cotton fabric scraps. They are dense and heavy and don't mash around, but keep whatever you put on them lifted up.

Nothing replaces good quality nursing care--caregivers who shift patients often prevent bedsores that can become lethal following weeks or even months of misery.

God bless all good caregivers and Avg-Joe for his "Along Came a Spider" thread that inspired this pillow top, and who knows, a shelter kid quilt someday, maybe.

 

[freedombecki]

Today was a happy day, because after a week of buying, cutting sorting, and finding older pieces to go in a red-and-cream color quilt, the work is done on completion of the top. "Cherries and Cream Log Cabin Quilt" measures 40"x52". All the blocks were completed by Friday or Saturday (can't remember which), and another day was spent going to Bryan, Texas, to pick out some more "Chocolate-Covered Cherries" colors for more quilts in this group. A friend of mine where I'm a mod, said he really liked the unusual colors of the quilt done before this one, so I thought a series in the same color schema might be a fun thing to do, like September, when I was doing summer greens, having been so happy our drought was broken, and things were so green through August, when we began having another mini-drought. We had furious rain yesterday evening, the first real rain I have seen in 3 months, so hopefully, we will see some mercy from the sky this season.

From my house to yours, God bless the children

Scan 1 - Row 1
Scan 2 - Row 1
Scan 3 - Row 2

 

[freedombecki]

Scan 1 Row 3
Scan 2 Two squares, joined
Scan 3 One of 24 squares

 

[freedombecki]

Here are the outer borders with their bright modern pink and red small windmill print and brilliant red cherry outer border. 41x52" (approx.) finished size

Scan 1 - Top left corner
Scan 2 - Side borders
Scan 3 - Either end borders

Quilt Top 1 for 2013 is done!

 

[freedombecki]

Just a morning of cutting light-colored fabrics continued from last night. Sometimes no news is good news. At least a stack of fabric is being reduced to the size of one of those clear-plastic containers.

So life is good, it just feels more productive on days all the cutting is done and you get to sew. *sigh*

 

[Mr. H.]

Even hung over, this is a fun thread to visit.

 

[freedombecki]

Even hung over, this is a fun thread to visit.

So yer sayin' I'm a cut-up?

Ya got me!

 

[freedombecki]

Sheeze! Cut all night, got up this morning and cut, and all I have to show for it is this darn t-shirt... (just kidding) It's much worse--24 tiny center block square starts. However, I used some time to place and color in blocks if this becomes a 2-color schema on account of grabbing some brown fabric to make a mockup of the first square. All that cutting red and cream colors, now I'm going to have to cut more browns, too. *sigh* Well, if there's a harder way to do something, I'm right there in the front of the line saying "me first!"

Scan 1 Schema for Fields and Furrows type log cabin
Scan 2 Schema for this quilt
Scan 3 a sampling of center square starts...

There can now be no more goofing off and playing today. It's entre dans le sewing room!

C-yas!

 

[freedombecki]

So, having divided the red centers with light tans, pinks, and red-on-white all 'round into two piles, I decided to skip the browns chore for now and go ahead and sew onto the red side. This row is the ugly duckling stage, but oh, well, six of them fit on the scanner screen if you ooch and scooch them a little, overlapping the light colors:

Scan 1: 6 of the red starts
Scan 2: 6 more of the log cabin red central logs

Now, I have to get up tomorrow morning and cut 50 or 60 browns. I put the browns from the other quilt someplace, but wherever that was, they're not gettin' up and waving any red flags saying "here I am!" Nope. Hard way, step right up.

 

[freedombecki]

Finally! A show-n-tell with ONE block completed to size (11.5" square) and 23 others in various stages of mid-way construction, which took all afternoon. Getting the corner foundation square block done portends the idea of completion, soon, Lord willing and the Creek don't rise. I'm about two bobbins away from a completed top, with a little bit o' luck.

A couple of unfinished placement rows and The chocolate corner:

 

[freedombecki]

Today, I was cutting and almost cut my left index finger off. Fortunately, I have good bones, which stopped the blade. I have no idea what idle-brained thing I was thinking when it occurred. Rotary blades are sharp as scalpels, and this one plowed into a bone joint. Fortunately, I've had first aid and used pressure for 5 minutes. Standard bandaids didn't work, and the butterfly bandaids box was empty, and the wound was oozing an hour later, so it was a trip to the pharma to get a new box of butterfly bandages. 2 of them stopped the oozing of blood, and it was immediately washed with hydrogen peroxide, which I keep in every bathroom in the house, and Neosporin is always around, too, It will need to be dressed 2 or 3 times a day initially, then will hopefully be ok.

That said, it slowed my work down on the chocolate cherries quilt, but I did get all the brown blocks done and one mockup red one. They have a lot of logs per block, so thread use has been extravagant with all that sewing.

Here are some blocks completed today:

 

[freedombecki]

On the light side, I wanted to show this one off after I was so fascinated by a piece of fabric that came from an estate sale that may date back to the 50s or 60s. It's the outer pink and brown fabric in the lights on this block, lower right:

 

[Mr. H.]

You best get that finger looked at.

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks, Mr. H. i cleaned it up immediately with hydrogen peroxide, watched it ooze for a couple of hours, then placed some butterfly bandages on it and redressed it once with neosporin, took my usual vitamin at night and gently exercised the other 9 digits twice for 5 minutes each to keep the blood flowing right. This morning there is zero swelling, so it looks like if there were any microbes hanging around, they were zapped. Three days of that, and the wound will be a memory. I promise if there are any problems the ER is a destination.

My college work in microbiology, nutrition, and First Aid is still with me. You get rid of the bugs, be sure your body has the nutritional backup to engage in healing, don't overdo anything for a couple of days, keep the wound covered until the skin re-knits itself, and you're generally good to go. The absence of rubor and calor today is a good thing.

Since I went to bed early last night, I was wide awake by three and worked a couple of hours to finish the red squares, too, so there are 12 finished brown and 12 finished red squares to complete the quilt. I'm taking one more nap this morning before heading back to join the squares, and will loaf as needed. I'll probably take a low-dose aspirin to make sure no clots form and any resultant aches are relieved. I didn't take aspirin last night so that any thought of oozing more would go away. Time for more neosporin.

This is a great day for finishing the quilt. Seems like it took a week to do all that cutting, but there are plenty of strips cut into the right lengths for more log- or courthouse-steps log cabin squares in the future. This makes the third quilt done in cherries and chocolate colors. I'm starting to like the combination.

 

[Mr. H.]

Well that beats a $300 doc visit for stitches LOL.

Nurse beckers.

 

[freedombecki]

Yay! Just added the last border and took a scan of the Cherry Chocolate Furrows quilt that measures 58x88" which is a twin coverlet size for a shelter kid. So Glad to be done!

Why some quilts take longer than others is a mystery to me, but there are 17x24 pieces in this quilt, which makes 408 pieces in the log cabin blocks alone, and there are 3 1/2 borders. I added an inch at the top and bottom, then couldn't find the rest of the plaid I'd used, and I did want to finish this today... it did give the recipient of this quilt an extra two inches to grow, though, so that is a good thing in the case of a child. The cherry reds and chocolate browns are an eyeful of color when you look at it. I'm just so happy it's done. This page may appear on another page, so I'm just going to add the scans of the plan, a block, and the finished border as a reminder to me of how this quilt panned out.