Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Koshergrl, it's still a treasure! Thanks for bringing it up again. The quilt makes the eye happy.

 

[koshergrl]

I think so too!

 

[freedombecki]

A few years back, I had the privilege of touring New Hampshire in peak season, along with several other New England states. What stood out in my mind about New Hampshire were the lovely reds of the maples. Natives there said it was the best and most colorful year they could remember, but all I can say is that around every corner, the next link of roads was prettier by far than the one before, and so it went all through the Granite State. It cast such a spell on me, when I got home, I immediately dove into my stash of reds and made a lovely autumn leaf quilt top that is still somewhere(?) unless I gave it away *sigh* can't remember, but red is one of the hardest colors for me to give up until I realize, "hey, kid, you can't quilt anymore, remember?" Well, anyway, I made four extra "autumn leaves" and put them into squares for a set of placemats, put them away a few years, pulled them out one day, added a row of squares along each side, then tucked them away and forgot about them. When we moved 4 years ago, one day I got a bee in my bonnet, pulled them out again, and put "finishing" borders on all four of the leaves, and even quilted one of them, tucked them away when I had to go out of town for a month, and that's the last I remember of them until this morning. I was feeling a bit blue, and decided that red would be just the ticket since red is such a pick-me-up color, and it got me through my day until I remembered to take the fibromyalgia medicine for muscle spasms, listened to some Richard Clayderman piano, and whistled a reasonably happy tune for the rest of the afternoon. It will take a bit of work, but it is now just the medallion center for another charity bees quilt, and 3 rows are around. More rows need to be added top and bottom to make this quilt work for a child. My stack has 8 quilts on it, and none of the dominate in red. Last year's shopping spree spread over 4 months left me with enough red fabric to quilt probably all 100 quilts for 1 year of charity donations, but, I can only take monochrome colors for so long except for turquoise and hot pink, it seems.

With no more ado, here's what has been done around the outside borders of the placemat that will become center of a little quilt for a sweet baboo born with a birth defect that the gals donate generously to each year from our mutual quilting efforts. I think they call them "hugs" quilts. I tried to line them up, but had them twisted every which way to get the best scan details I could, which reversed the numbers, so instead of 1-2-3-4, it's gonna be 4-3-2-1 scans if you mouse over the thumbnails to read whatever details were written, if any this time.

 

[freedombecki]

And the last one:

Got a lot more work to do on this one. I'm looking forward to it tomorrow. It'd be a great weekend if it got finished somehow. It's really detailed, and not sure where this little scrapper is going yet. Was thinking about making some half-square triangle "maple leaves" to go around, unless I could actually find some little log cabin half squares already done somewhere...

 

[freedombecki]

Today, the lower row of small squares was attached, and borders were added. I noticed it would look better 90 degrees turned, so I set it aside to think about today. It means it would have to be trimmed from its present square shape of about 30 inches to something like 20x30, and then four rows of small squares attached all the way around...That'd be a lot of work. In the beginning, I envisioned making smaller different-type squares to fashion small "maple leaf" traditional half square blocks, and may yet return to that, but oh, the math. Well, think I'll sleep on it and decide mañana.

 

[freedombecki]

Was not in the mood for making red squares today.

It's Spring of the wafting winds, field flowers have all but faded, it's time for warm-weather fun, and what better way to celebrate favorable winds than to go fly a kite?

Here's the first one, and I was so excited about peeling the paper off the new shiny templates and starting to cut kites out of some old striped materials, and from one of the church bins, someone had cut a huge circle from a 1.5 yard piece of cream on cream print, which had scads of leftover room to cut the smaller templates into negative kite spaces:

(This was really fun.)

Edit: Adding Block A2 and A2back.

 

[freedombecki]

Three more kites.

 

[freedombecki]

Well, finally! It's been a struggle lately to deal with senior issues around the house plus FMS. Even so, I eked out 12 red blocks for the Red Maple Leaf of New Hampshire quilt top, to go around the red border added, which still has not been appropriately trimmed yet, and may or may not ever be. I just can't make a decision lately with stress from my sweetie's increasing confusion in spite of taking his medicines every day.

Here's the last few days of work, and it is tedious, although hopefully will be a pretty little quilt when it is finished.

Scans 5-7, six four-patch, 16-square blocks:

 

[freedombecki]

Scans 8, 9, and 10 - Six more four-patch, 16 square blocks.

 

[Mr. H.]

Just stopping by to see what Becki's been up to today.

 

[freedombecki]

Just stopping by to see what Becki's been up to today.

Oh she's up to about 5 foot one, and wondering how she can stand two more days of making 24 more of the above red 4-patch, 16 square quilts. Other than that, looking forward to getting back to the kite template quilt. it's a lot easier than it looks when you have a bazillion pieces of strips sewn together in a box somewhere!

Well, back to the sewing room!

 

[freedombecki]

Well, 10 down. *whew!*

 

[freedombecki]

Unfortunately, the rest of them don't have a single seam on them. When I started early this morning, most of the squares were in various stages of completion, but I had machine issues until I cleaned the whole table off, threw the machine on its back, got down and dirty cleaning the bobbin case, twice, then replaced the race after thorough brushing, oiling and rubbing. It was so good when it started acting like a new machine again, and all the pieces went together like magic, and they were straight and true. I also had to "unsew" and put back together an entire block, which ate away at the clock.

The upside is, bad problems usually result in at least 2 days where things go well because the machine works best after cleaning and oiling and when your mind is keen on doing everything right, at the same time.

The last 4 blocks:

Oh, yes, and the last one is one I found online that someone had .made with regard to maple leaves, quite a bit different but similarly fun

 

[freedombecki]

And another lovely effort from someone who said a lady in her community taught her how to do this one:

Red Maples and checkerboards! ​

 

[freedombecki]

Oh, beautiful for flying kites...

 

[freedombecki]

Kites on different backgrounds...

 

[Sunshine]

Found my new Primax Optima embroidery scissors. The cat had them behind a chair licking on them. Now, to find the first set that disappearred!

 

[freedombecki]

So glad you found the embroidery scissors, Sunshine! Wonder if you put a rosemary sashet attached to one of the rings with a silk ribbon, kitty would be nonplussed enough to leave them alone?

How to make homemade cat repellent

 

[Sunshine]

So glad you found the embroidery scissors, Sunshine! Wonder if you put a rosemary sashet attached to one of the rings with a silk ribbon, kitty would be nonplussed enough to leave them alone?

How to make homemade cat repellent

I could try. I have rosemary growing in my herb garden. It wouldn't offend me at all, I LOVE the smell. I think I'm just going to keep them in the drawer. It will be a day or two before the cat learns to open that!

 

[freedombecki]

From time to time, I sew with a charity group and have little identification embroideries attached to them like a ribbon. It wouldn't take all that much to sew a little one-inch square filled with rosemary leaves, ginger, lavender (there's a much longer list on the above link). The cat will learn to associate the smell with the scissors and perhaps make the educated decision that it is not desirable for him to practice selective larcenies against your scissors. Just sayin,' so it doesn't happen to you again.

I don't know why, but I CARE!!!!