quilts tops everywhere!

It seems babies come in threes.  Whenever one friend is pregnant, it seems not long before another two are making announcements.  This spring (summer, I guess?) has been no different.

And with a week on Drummond Island planned for this past week, what better place to get some of those done?!

First up is Frank's quilt.  This one was the first of the batch, so I started on it first.  You've seen a few in-progress shots, but the top is finished.  I actually finished it a day or two after my last post and had good intentions of quilting it that Saturday.  The hubby had to work that weekend, so perfect opportunity.  (So I guess this is pre-vacation quilting just yet...bear with me...I'm still on vacation brain!)

Then The Storm hit.  My area was one of the worst.  The power went out in the middle of the night, early Friday morning.  About the time the storm finished raining sideways.  With our generator, we have the water, the fridge and the furnace all running.  There are also a few outlets, in fairly inconvenient locations, that work.  But hey, running water - that's more important.

I went to work, hoping power would be back on by 9am, as the initial estimate said.  Well.  9am rolled around and I got a text updating that estimate to 11pm Sunday.  Sunday.

But Friday evening, around 6pm, the power came back on.  No text confirming this, as I usually get, but no complaints from me!

Wanna know why there wasn't a text?  It went back off again around 1am Saturday.  Again with the generator and a general what-to-do-ness, as the estimates are often quite wrong.  (Usually predicting a longer outage than what we get.)  Finally, I gave up and started hauling stuff downstairs.  Cause you know where those inconvenient outlets are?  The room with my longarm!

While I don't feel comfortable running something as pricey as my longarm on generator power (the only things I own that cost more are my house and our cars!), there's a nice big table there on the back and a lot of windows (that I love until I have to wash them) in that room.

It started out with a few things and then just snowballed as I needed more and more to keep me busy.  As you can see, the longarm also functions as quilt storage when not in use!  Not the best lighting in general, but with some extension cords, I could sew!

With Frank's baby quilt done, I had quite a few strip sets left over and decided I'd make a dolly quilt for his middle daughter.  I sort of invented this - no pattern, but I'm sure if you look hard enough, someone will have written one.

It's not sewn together here, but you get the idea.

I still had a lot of strips left over.  Doggone it!

The second quilt - in progress...

...and finished.  I just took a photo outside and it's so humid, I'm not sure how there's a breeze.  I think 9000% humidity is about right.  Give or take a few thousand percent.  (Earlier today I authorized the hubby to look into central air conditioning.  While I don't really like it, I'm tired of doing so little in the summer because of the heat and humidity.  We'll see what he comes up with.)

Oh yes, let's share the actual baby quilt, too, shall we?

This quilt is called "Boomerang" by Crazy Old Ladies.  I made it a bit smaller than the original pattern (fewer rows), but otherwise, their pattern was perfect!

When that was done, there was still no power, so keep on rolling!

Binding anyone?

These are for the sheep quilt, the science geek quilt and Frank's baby quilt.  (Left to right.)  I also cut and made binding for last month's UFO quilt.  The black and bright one.

And with a table that large, wrestling the quilt to get the binding on was so much easier!  I think maybe I'll haul my machine down here every time I need to attach binding...it's truly worth the effort!  (But no photos there - I was too busy creating to remember to get the camera.)

Around 2:30 Saturday afternoon, the power came back on.  Along with a text telling me the power was back on.  So I guess that was the final say - it was on to stay.  The hubby returned home about 30 minutes later and I'm sure he was happy to be able to run the window air conditioner!

Sunday saw little quilting, as I had a lot to catch up for not being able to do laundry or cook or anything for the better part of a few days.  But I knew my trip to Drummond Island was the following week and I knew there'd be all the extra prep the week before, so no sewing was really planned.

But I knew I had two more baby quilts to make.  I'd decided on patterns (thanks Pinterest - you're useful sometimes!), but had to get the patterns and the fabric.  So after a middle of the week mad dash, I had that mostly taken care of.  And a few hours of crazy packing and stuffing all the sewing things into a suitcase (it's on wheels, so why not put everything in there?), among a thousand other vacation prep details, we were off!

First up on the agenda was a quilt for my current boss, Jessica.  Though I had a feeling she was pregnant probably a month or more before she announced it, she's next in line for a due date, so her quilt gets higher priority.  (And since the longarm can't go with me...)

Fabrics:

I had fun with choosing these fabrics.  I'm absolutely in LOVE with the graph paper-looking fabric and bought the end of the bolt - way more than I needed - because I've been eyeing it, waiting for an excuse to buy some.  So why not buy a half yard extra if you get it at a discount, right?

This quilt has BIG blocks.  Well, I drew them big.

At 18" finished, a 3x3 block grid of these makes a 54" quilt.  Fairly big for a baby quilt, but that's okay.  I'm no fan of tiny quilts that kids grow out of.  Hopefully this will last and he (yep, a boy) can use it until he's 12.  Or something.

In under 24 hours, including sleep, I finished this top!

The quilt is called "All in Knots" and was created for a Fons and Porter publication in 2015 by Wendy Sheppard.  I used a little creative liberty and removed a grey fabric, but that was mostly because I couldn't find a grey that looked good and the blue graph paper worked just fine.

I think I want to bind it in the darker blue, but don't have enough.  So I'm trying to decide if I want to do it with orange or not.  (I have enough of that.)

And after typing all of this, I sure hope Jessica isn't reading this.  If she is, well, it's not a surprise any longer.  Sorry.

So afternoon of day two of vacation, I dug into this pile of mostly scraps:

Many of these were also in Frank's quilt.  I purchased the lighter of the purples and another pink (that didn't make the final cut) for this project.

I was too busy sewing to take photos of the in-progress, but realize now I made the block wrong.  I'll admit, I drafted both of these patterns myself.  I'm giving credit to who made them first, but if I can figure it out in 10 minutes on my own, well...

Anyways, the finished top:

The pattern inspiration is Cluck Cluck Sew's "Spin Cycle".  If you click the link, you'll see what I did wrong.  It's okay.  I like this, too.  And Traci, the friend getting this one, will never know.  Unless you tell her.  Or she finds my blog.  But let's just go with not telling her if we can, okay?

This took a bit longer than anticipated.  Those square-in-a-square blocks fought me every stitch.  They didn't want to be square.  They didn't want to be the right size.  They didn't want to be trimmed to the right size with a 1/4" seam regularly around each side.  Let's just say I hate square-in-a-square more than flying geese.  I don't see a lot of these in my future.

Now that all the projects for other folks are at a point where I can't go further, it's time for me!

What's first?

Well, I'm terribly behind on the wonky stars, but had dozens of little baggies with sets of 8 squares along.  Plus quite a bit of grey fabric needing to be cut up.  Though I'll admit I wasn't excited about these at first, I got into it.

First I made four at one time.  My iron kept shutting itself off just as I was about to need it.  So either I need to sew fewer and keep the iron hot all the time, or sew a LOT and just let it roll.

Well.

If I make 3 per day, that's 21 per week.  Let's shoot for 21 total and see where that puts me with time.

Done?

Let's do 21 more.  Plus that half-done one because I only brought 7 squares of yellow...

Done!

And here is a very blurry photo taken with my actual camera that seems to mostly take blurry photos any more.  There are 42 stars in that stack and about a dozen more baggies to sew next to it.  Lots more fabric in the stash to be cut, too...

Wanna see the whole stack?

Sure you do!

Oh look.  Blurry again.

At one point, I had counted them into stacks of 10 and knew how many there were.  Not any more, but I think I'm around 200.  Maybe it's 150.  But adding 42 this week helped!

On to my last project.  We're getting close here.

I'm finally going to cut into these beauties!  I'd spent HOURS the weekend before we left working with the free pattern.  There was a photo with these fabrics used, but no actual instruction of what to use where.  There are five background fabrics and 27 prints in this quilt.  And they're fairly scattered, but kinda going from light to dark across the quilt.  I sat and assigned numbers to each fabric and then put those numbers on the blank layout sheet.  And then figured out each color background and where it went.  My brain (and back) hurt after that effort, but I knew it was going to be worth it.

The pattern is called "Bird Seed" by Tula Pink.  And it's a combination of flying geese (birds) and orange peels (seeds).  The "seeds" were to be machine-appliqued down, but I'm no fan of that technique, so I planned to hand-applique them.  Guess what I forgot?  Freezer paper - my applique template medium of choice.  (There's a grocery store on the island, but everything costs way more.)

So first I'll make those darn geese.

But, hey, they're kinda big...they finish 3x6".  That seems huge after the wonky star bits!

I even had time to trim them all up neat and tidy.

And I still have half a day left...I guess I'll break down and buy another roll (I now own three) of freezer paper so I can work on the "seeds"...

I only got six seeds sewn, but it was getting late and the light wasn't great any more...plus sewing black fabrics...it was time to quit.

But I did cut most of the backgrounds (minus white, as I ran out for Traci's quilt and used the white for this project in hers...) so I'm in a good place to continue once I get caught up from being gone a week.

We had wonderful weather.  Not too hot, as in years past.  Not much rain.  And cool nights, which are a blessing, as you can sleep without the fake cold of an air conditioner.  The hubby didn't catch many fish, but had fun anyways.  And we don't eat them (he does catch-and-release), so it doesn't even matter if he didn't catch many.

Tomorrow it's back to work for me.  And plans to try to get some of these baby quilts quilted in the near future.  And maybe my UFO for the month.  And maybe sew some blue cats, as that's the color of the month.  And maybe finish binding some quilts?  (The sheep quilt is done-done and graced my bed for the entire week of vacation!)  Oh dear, the list seems to grow every time I finish something...

Happy quilting!

Katie