hands2help 2020 fourth quilt done

Yes, you read that right.  Fourth quilt.  The third is one of the quilt-along quilts and I want to wait to share it until the official sharing period happens.  Soon, I promise.

The quilt I'm sharing today doesn't seem to have a lot of in-progress photos.  Or I can't find them.  Probably I didn't take them.

It started out with some jelly roll pieces given to me and a quilt I saw at a show.  The layout and blocks seemed like it would make a good charity quilt.  So slowly I made the quilt.

I remember sewing the blocks at a quilt show my guild had a few years ago.  I'm not sure which year, but I do vaguely remember sewing them.  And struggling because I didn't have much yellow.  (Yellow strips that were later found hanging out elsewhere among my stash...)

And then a trip with the blocks to the local quilt shop, looking for a fabric to use for setting triangles.  I vaguely, again, remember finding something that would work, but not what I had in mind when I got there.  But I'm sure you all have been there.  You have a great idea that a light pink will work there and when you put the blocks and fabrics side-by-side, you know it's all wrong.

Finally, in April of 2017, I got the top together.

As always, I had help.  This was obviously taken in the cramped quarters of my sewing room, so I cropped it heavily.  So the cats sorta lost body parts.

I had the top together soon after...

...held, I am sure, by a complaining husband for this photo.

As I was perusing the sale racks at JoAnn's a while later, I came across a backing that would be perfect, even if, again, it wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

(This photo, take just now, outside, makes it look a lot brighter than it really is!  The earlier photos in the post are more true to color.)

And then this week happened.  The Week of Longarming.  This was quilt #7.  My hubby was on his way home - a 5 hour drive - and I decided I would go for it.  The quilt is lap-size, and I wanted to do a fairly open quilt motif, so I expected it would go fast.  What I did not expect was how much my arm would hurt!  The quilt I did the day before had a lot of stops and direction changes...I was sore!

But I got it done in plenty of time for his return!

In fact, it went so fast, I forgot to take a photo until after I started to unload it from the longarm!

I quilted it with a swirl flower and it took only three passes on the longarm!  It didn't even use that much bobbin thread.  But it is well-quilted.  It's not like every 12 inches or anything, just much less dense than what I did the day before.

I had enough time still to sew down the binding - at least the side that goes on by machine - before I had any worry of the hubby pulling into the driveway, so I did!

I felt like I didn't have a lot of binding, but assumed that since I made it as I was finishing up the quilt, I had calculated right.

Apparently I did not.

But I still had some of the fabric, so I made a small piece and added it in.  Not a big problem, just an annoying one!

About the time I had things tidied up and started pinning the binding around in preparation to do the hand-sewing, the hubby pulled in.  So I paused there and went through the whirlwind of starting laundry and unpacking the cooler back into the fridge and all of that.  He arrived hungry, so we ran out for some lunch, and then, once all was settled, he headed up for a nap and I got some time to work on sewing down the binding.

And I finished.

Seven quilts in seven days.  And only quilt #6 had binding work stretch into the next day.  (Without that, I would surely have been well on my way binding #7 when the hubby arrived.)

I think you can kinda see the quilting in this photo, but it's nothing too fancy.  But my machine did not like the back.  It has metallic gold outlining pretty much everything and metallics are thicker and my needle went "thwap-thwap-thwap" with every stitch.  Thankfully, I knew what it was (because the day before I threatened to put my machine out at the curb with a "good luck - for sale" sign on it for about an hour!), but it was still disconcerting to hear.

As I said, the design is inspired by one I saw at a quilt show, but have no additional information.  I decided the size and number of blocks based on the fabrics I had and did the math to figure out setting triangles.  The border was added to stabilize any bias edges and give it a bit more size.  I just measured and it's about 46x60, so it should make a nice lap quilt or maybe something for a young lady.

Yesterday it was nice to do things that did not have to be scheduled in around longarming!  First up, my friend who moved north decided, with her hubby, on a spur-of-the-moment trip back down here late Friday evening.  He was dropping her off in town Saturday morning and continuing to their barn and property to do some maintenance for the realtor.  (House sold, property still waiting.)  I met her at the local quilt shop, with plans for lunch and whatever, along with my 14-year-old niece.  The niece was also heading in to town with her dad and younger sister to do school shopping for the sister.  Pretty boring, right?  So I asked her to join us and she did.  She is not a quilter.  She does not know my friend.  But anything to get away from picking out erasers and unicorn backpacks with a 7-year-old seems like a teenager thing, right?

After the initial shock of walking into a quilt shop for the first time ever (and the sales room at the back, no less - easier parking back there!), she got into it.  I, of course, introduced her to my friend and the shop owner (also a friend), and she joined right in on the shenanigans.  Before long, she was asking for a quilt to put on the bed at her mom's house.  Oh, gee, twist my arm!

I showed her where the big stash of patterns were and was moving between her and my friend (opposite ends of the long, skinny store), and she picked out a pattern all on her own!  And then we started on fabrics...

...we ended up heading to another quilt shop about 30 minutes away for lack of lights at the first, but didn't do much better there.  But this is a good start and the local shop had a few prints we bypassed that could work.

But today, before sewing anything, I raided my stash and found two that I could add.  With her permission, of course!

They match perfectly and both came from the local quilt shop.  I saw one of them yesterday and the second might still be there as well if I end up needing more.

But about the time we were done shopping, I realized I had neglected to look at how big the quilt would be.  And compare that to how large she needed.  Well...55x81 is not going to work.  (Or whatever the measurements were - it was close to that.)

So I opened the pattern to see how large the blocks were to start the math.  No block size.  What?  So today I made a test block - thanks to Twirly, the curves were cake - and all went well.  The blocks finish 7x8.5", so I'll be doing some math later tonight to figure out how many blocks I need.  But I am thankful that the templates drawn into the pattern were accurate and went together easily.

And the next debate with myself is whether or not to wash the fabrics.  The stash fabrics have been washed, so I probably should follow suit with the rest, but I am going to see how the templates fit onto the pieces I bought and decide if washing them might compromise a bunch with shrinkage...

Also in the sewing room today, another of the 100 blocks has been completed.  I haven't shared the last few, but I'm up through #42 now!

This one, I just decided to use a scrap in the center.  But it reminds me of the cages at pet stores that claim to have snakes or chameleons in them, but you can't find them.

And this one.  I just went "whatever" and made it crazy.  I think it's worse in person.  But it will be okay with all the others around it.  I hope.

And a few other odds and ends of photos...

Mt. St. BattingScraps:

I need to make a pet bed shell to stuff these (or most of these) into soon.  It's getting a little overwhelming to even look at!

And we can't have a post without an official cat photo, right?

This was as I was tidying up after finishing quilt #7 and he just posed there like a little cutie pie.  He doesn't even look angry, which I seem to be able to do to all black cats when I take their picture.  He looks annoyed, but not angry.  I think mostly he wanted the sunshine.

And I put together a collage of the quilts I longarmed for Instagram, but it's kinda cool, and a sneak peak of upcoming posts, so I'll share that as a parting photo.

Happy quilting!

Katie

PS Looking at the niece quilt fabrics and pattern, I wonder if I should have thrown in some more blue blues or purples...opinions?