project quilting 11.2

It's done!  It's done!  It's really done!

The prompt for Project Quilting this week is "Team Colors."  It doesn't have to be a sports team, just something that represents a group of people.  From what I have seen, a lot of quilters do not define themselves as sports fans.  I can't say I'm a sports fan exactly, but having attended Michigan State University, I tend to root for them when they are in a sporting event.

So my first idea was to to do something with MSU.  I mean, I've made another MSU quilt for my niece a few years back and it did cross my mind to drag out that pattern and make another.  Perhaps smaller.  Or something.

But I just wasn't feeling it.  I can't say why.  I was discussing this with my hubby some (he was captive in the car as we headed north 25 minutes to pick up 300 bags of Fritos - yeah, we do some odd stuff...) and realized I have been green and white since kindergarten.  Every school I have attended had chosen green and white as their colors.  So it seemed perhaps something green and white would be necessary.

And then, as I was driving home and the hubby was silently playing his fighting game on his phone (the phone was not silent...), I remembered these fabrics:

I'd found them at a garage sale that was happening during a quilt guild show.  I bought two bags of "scraps" and came home with a lot of yards.  At first I thought maybe they were Cherrywood, but as I worked with them, I think they may have been a home-dyeing experiment.  Not that they weren't good, just varied some in the fabrics - enough to make me wonder.

Anyways, the original idea was to make a forest from these.  Small, free-form trees.  A bigger quilt probably.  And then they went into the Closet of Nonsense, in a stack all by themselves, away from the main stash.  And were forgotten.

All of this came back in a rush as I was driving and I was excited to get home and get started.  But first I wanted to do a little tree construction research.  A video I'd recently seen outlined the steps.  A little more research and I was ready to start cutting.

Of course, I had to sew some things wrong and go rewatch the video, this time actually paying attention, to learn how to sew things back together...  Before long, I had a few trees!

I even used the wood grain print left over from the Sasquatch quilt for tree trunks!  I debated back and forth with myself over that and finally decided "whatever" and rolled with it.

This gave me confidence to cut more!

And before you knew it, a forest was starting to emerge.

At this point, I had to decide how many more to make.  I had visions of a large quilt with varying size trees and all sorts of whatnot (even maybe a cabin in the woods - which I honestly forgot until the whole top was together a few days later!), but I decided that, in the interest of time, I needed to keep this on the smaller side and needed about 14 more trees.

Though the trees aren't made of many pieces, they seemed tedious.  But I kept sewing.  I liked where this was going and was happy how things were going at this point.

Once all the trees were completed, I played around with them on the floor for a while.  Originally I thought I would alternate darker then lighter backgrounds, but the randomness of putting them down as I finished and where I had room appealed to me more, so with some adjustment to keep those more blueish ones apart, I ended up with a random layout.

Gabby helped, of course.  She actually got into a few wrestling matches with Finn and tried to recruit her brother Freddie to help also.  So much extra effort led to me using six sheets from a lint roller to clean them up as I pieced the rows together.  All this from fabric that had no cat hair on it when I started!

Freddie's biggest contribution was pre-wetting the thread when I was trying to sew...

I had to take a break to go to work Tuesday, but Wednesday I was back at it.  The blocks were all ready, waiting to be sewn into a top and that didn't take as long as I anticipated.  (No complaints there!)

I still had a fair amount of fabric left, so I pieced some together for the back.  I'm over this fabric and was happy to use it up this way.  (And if you keep watching my blog, when there's not a challenge happening, it just might be given away!)  I layed it out on the floor (sunlight!) to make sure the back was bigger enough for the longarm before calling it a night.

Today was longarm day!

I'll be honest here.  I'm over this quilt, too.  I loved the idea.  The trees are fine.  But somehow once it got to this stage of being a top, I'm not so in love.  I thought quilting it would help, but my idea for quilting didn't go as planned or look as good as I'd hoped, so I think it made it worse.  Or at least I didn't fall back in love with it, as sometimes happens after you quilt something.

But onward!  Binding!  Quilt, a photograph before it gets too dark.  (It was snowing earlier, so I'm glad I missed that...)  Try to get one where the colors are almost accurate.

I present to you "Pine Ride."

About 38x56"

Designed, made and quilted by me.

Why did I name it that?

Remember how I said I was green and white since kindergarten?

This is one of my school yearbooks!  Fifth grade to be exact.  Apparently somewhere between the publication of the 3rd grade and 4th grade yearbooks, we became the Panthers, as you see depicted here.  I have no idea how someone decided that panthers live in pine forests, but apparently in elementary school, these things can happen.  (There was a huge stand of pine trees right behind the school, which I expect is how the school got the name?)

Actually, I do vaguely remember voting for a mascot.  I don't remember what the other choices were, but did peruse a few of the yearbooks and find my mom's photo in there more often than my own.  (She was involved with the PTO and stuff.  I, on the other hand, only had opportunity for extra photo ops if I was on the student council.  Which I was not.)

Anyways.  Now you all wanna see a photo of elementary school me, right?

5th grade and I feel like I look a lot the same now.  And I have no idea why, but I wore glasses starting in 2nd grade.  Can't see without them still today.  So someone must have told me to take them off for this photo shoot.  (I just went back further and it seems I never wore my glasses on photo day...guess that must have been a photographer thing?  Because I am not so vain that I am going to take off my glasses just for a stupid school photo!)  But hey, less nerdy, right?!

So there you have it.  My entry for this challenge and some fun stuff behind it.

Happy quilting,

Katie