Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Progress yesterday was dismal. I looked at my little pile of ready-to-sew cuttings and decided to cut a few more strips. The last day of February was truly a day of underachievement in the face of a deadline unmet. *sigh*

Tax season sucks.

Random thoughts only deserve 3 words in a paragraph! Well, it's time to forget about it and look at something pretty and purple. I'll share what the internet search engine finds below:

The purple rose that is indicative of love at first sight, thanks to stupid cupid:

Purple Tulips..

Purple hydrangeas

That's enough. Hopefully it will be enough to get my engines fired up again and producing a purple quilt for a child who needs a pretty something to comfort him while he is in the abused family shelter locally. Why do I go for days without keeping my eye on the ball? *sigh* No telling. I'm blaming tax season. ​

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks for the thanks, Mr. H. It's so nice to be appreciated.

Well, the purple quilt now has 2 rows of 5, and 5x7.5 = a width of almost 37.5 inches, as my 1/4" is consistently just a thread over for some reason on my Bernina 8 machine that has a big bobbin (yea!), a built-in walking foot, and does 1200 spms if sewing slow gets boring. When straight stitching, the single-hole needleplate comes out along with the 1/4" foot.

Oh, and that 1200 spms reminds me of a saying you hear a lot these days, It drills, baby, drills. :

And here are some of the gushes from that drilling:

 

[freedombecki]

And there was one orphan block left over that needs some sisters and brothers to make another row:

 

[freedombecki]

If that was an orphan block, I now have an orphanage! lol!

It was a lot of cutting and sticking to the program, between naps. I'm running a little temperature and have been a little tired lately. Oh, well. Here are what were sewn. I only had to take one pair of logs off, turn it around, and resew. I need to sew one more, and I can add 3 more rows of 5:

More double strip log cabin blocks:

 

[freedombecki]

Three more:

 

[freedombecki]

3 more ladies dancing...

 

[freedombecki]

Make that 3 french hens:

 

[freedombecki]

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree:

 

[freedombecki]

This quilt should challenge the most mathematical among us, Geese in a Gordian Knot by Barb Vlack:

Nice work, Barb! credits



​

 

[Foxfyre]

Progress yesterday was dismal. I looked at my little pile of ready-to-sew cuttings and decided to cut a few more strips. The last day of February was truly a day of underachievement in the face of a deadline unmet. *sigh*

Tax season sucks.

Random thoughts only deserve 3 words in a paragraph! Well, it's time to forget about it and look at something pretty and purple. I'll share what the internet search engine finds below:

The purple rose that is indicative of love at first sight, thanks to stupid cupid:

Purple Tulips..

Purple hydrangeas

That's enough. Hopefully it will be enough to get my engines fired up again and producing a purple quilt for a child who needs a pretty something to comfort him while he is in the abused family shelter locally. Why do I go for days without keeping my eye on the ball? *sigh* No telling. I'm blaming tax season. ​

 

[Sunshine]

Well, Beckums, I'm back. After I finish the current quilt block, I have 3 to go. During my bancation, I booked a condo at the beach for next winter, ordered a beach chair and beach umbrella, got a new desk chair and a Persian rug for my office. It's getting harder to work, and 2 years ago when I defied my doctor and went back to work my body was telling me I needed to go back to work. Now it is telling me I need to quit. So, I'm retiring in May. A lot of my neighbors go south for the winter. Why should I be any exception? LOL. There is still a lot of work to be done on my house, but after I quit I can work at my own pace.
And not have to worry about it. I will get it all done.

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks for kindly words, Foxfyre.

It's fun how when you go back to the bing! images search how you come up with new purple quilts in less than a week. I found 3 to die for...

First, "Purple Passion." Every life needs a little passion.... oh, my...

And this Purple Bargello quilt is definitely top drawer...

And making this Stained Glass Quilt or one like it would rate a "deep and abiding satisfaction" feeling for the passion of making and completing it to the last piece of mortar joining odd bits of sparkling fabrics:

 

[freedombecki]

Well, Beckums, I'm back. After I finish the current quilt block, I have 3 to go. During my bancation, I booked a condo at the beach for next winter, ordered a beach chair and beach umbrella, got a new desk chair and a Persian rug for my office. It's getting harder to work, and 2 years ago when I defied my doctor and went back to work my body was telling me I needed to go back to work. Now it is telling me I need to quit. So, I'm retiring in May. A lot of my neighbors go south for the winter. Why should I be any exception? LOL. There is still a lot of work to be done on my house, but after I quit I can work at my own pace.
And not have to worry about it. I will get it all done.

Quit? Retiring is not quitting! It's passing the bar to the next generation of care givers! And life starts afresh when you retire and can decide what you want to do and when you want to do it. For the last couple of days with a little winter fever, that's been between long naps.

That's wonderful that you'll be enjoying the beach in your condo! That salt water is a well, a day at the beach! I love it!

 

[freedombecki]

Well, between naps today, I got the rest of the strips cut for the 10 remaining squares, and between naps this evening, they were all sewn up. I'm now sweating, so I think that's a good sign with a fever and it may be on its way out. It's been 4 days and interrupted progress on the purple quilt. To whoever sent up a little prayer thanks.

 

[freedombecki]

This morning the quilt got finished early.

Here are some things that got finished up:

 

[freedombecki]

Seems some of the prettiest fabrics were last. That's not usual.

 

[freedombecki]

More blocks:

 

[freedombecki]

The borders were a breeze. And Quilt #20 for 2013 is done!!!

(and I have no idea how I will do 10 quilts between March 5 and March 31.

Sometimes things go quickly, and sometimes they just drag on for over a week. It just doesn't look like there is much of a chance of doing the 10 March quilts in so short a time. *sigh*

If you click on one with borders, you can see little dragonflies.

 

[freedombecki]

While making the purple quilt, there were a stack of postage stamp twosies to sew up, so they were sewn between segments of the purple quilt. As the stack grew, there were about 21 or 22 16-patch postage stamp squares for "a future quilt start." Believe it or not, you use less thread when sewing into something, whether it's a useless half-inch piece of two selvages sewn together that winds up in a pillow someday or actual pieces to the next or a future quilt. Postage stamp twosies are made from sewing 2 strips together, then cutting them at a 90 degree angle to make two postage stamps apiece, then placed into about 20 different sacks, one per each sack. Then when you have a thousand pieces in 20 sacks, you have 20 postage stamp quilts or enough pieces to do sashes, sets, borders, and things that show you worked your fingers to the bone at one time or another doing the heavy-duty job of sewing a bazillion squares. You may not have any replications of fabric if you play your cards right, which results in the rare quilt known as the "charm quilt" which can boast having no two pieces alike. Not important? A textile afficianado who knows how valuable having a cross section of a person's lifetime made into a quilt knows that it is. Lay people would not know this. But the quilt could someday be worth its weight in gold bars. Of course, it might take ten quilts to weigh the same as a gold bar... but I'll leave that to the textile specialists of 100 years from now of any of my quilts that are rescued before destruction and saved because someone had a collector's head for what is and is not valuable. I could be mistaken, but the work of 50 factories around the world between 1930 to 2030 in one quilt could be the apple of a collector's eye in 2230, who was researching the last homemade quilts of olden days.

Well, didn't mean to get into THAT, but anyway, I found a piece of fabric a child might like of big cats and notice the male lion's mane was the color of an old rusty nail, and there was a lot of black in the quilt. So for some reason, my box of rust evaded me, but I did find one solid rust that seemed about right, and certainly right on a galloping horse. Also, found some spotted dark material that could pass as a panther or dark spotted big cat somewhere on the globe. Then, while looking for rusts, I found a bit of something that reminded me of a savannah, and the color of it was right for the quilt, maybe. Unfortunately it only contained a half yard which means it will have to be cut into 5 strips to go around to barely be 3 inches, the quilt better not be too big, plus, no mistakes allowed. Can it be done? We'll see. Seems the fabric travelled with me, but it also is torn, which my local shop did up until about 6 months ago, when they started cutting due to the shop owner's torn ligament in her wrist. So not sure where the piece is from. And where are all those pesky rusts that used to be always underfoot? They're somewhere, but my fibrofog is not helping find them. Oh, well, you can't have everything.

Two fabrics and the first square that started out as purple thread-saving go-betweens:

 

[UKRider]

That's some very lovely work indeed becki. I can see why you design, you've got a good eye.