polaroid quilt finish

In February, I joined a color challenge.  It was hosted over on Instagram with the tag #colorexplorerchallenge.  The host gave us 29 (bonus extra for the short month) color prompts.  She is a painter and did little paintings each day to correspond with the colors.  Others did collages and drawings and assorted projects for the month.  It was fun to see what others did.

I decided to make Polaroid blocks from my stash, using the tutorial here.  Each day I dug through for a fabric that would represent the colors.  It was a fun dive into my stash with a different set of eyes to see the fabrics.

Since I decided to make the blocks look like they were floating, sashing/background color was decided up front, making the quilt assembly must easier and faster.  No bothering with fabric selection at that point, just sew it up!

The layout, however, presented a bit of challenge, as any sort of scrappy quilt will do.  There were a lot more shades of pink in there than a quick glance at the color prompts give away.  But I knew it was not worth a lot of fussing because moving one creates a whole avalanche of moving others, and I let it go here.

They already look like they're floating here on my design floor, so hooray!

Still floating here, though it's a different look.

It sat for a few weeks because I was trying to decide how to quilt it.  I didn't want to quilt through the photos and I knew just the sashings and borders being quilted would need to be looser and simpler to not make it look wierd where it wasn't quilted.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a plan.  Simple straight lines.

When I first got up, I was going to load this onto the longarm.  That would make short work of those lines, but the extra fabric needed to load and the extra time needed to prep the machine would mean that it took longer to prepare than to quilt, so I decided to give it a go on my little machine.

The cats were totally freaked out by this table set up in the back room, but it made the job easier than crawling around on the floor and probably eliminated a portion of cat hair as filling also.

Using the edge of my presser foot as a guide, I just stitched lines in the sashings on either side of the blocks.  Nothing fancy.  And since my walking foot (that honestly has never done much good for me) doesn't work on this machine, I decided to wing it.

After a few rows, I loosened the pressure on the foot and things went smoother.  It's a little puckery in places, but it's fine.  I may toss it in the dryer to see if that can work out some of the worst of it.

Quick while I was still on a roll I made and attached the binding.  And yesterday afternoon I sewed that down.  Being black, I needed to do it in the daylight because I'm getting old enough that no amount of artificial light at night can make black binding reasonable.  (Thankfully I got it done just as the sun was setting low enough to come through the window to my right in its typical evening blinding fashion - meaning you cannot see anything at all in the room for about 15 minutes!  But I WILL NOT complain about sunshine!)

And there you have it!

Pattern from the Polaroid Greeting Swap

Size: 28x29"

Pieced and quilted by me!

You'll notice the bottom right is not a Polaroid.  It is a pocket.  And you can see there is something sticking out of the pocket.  I may have mentioned this before, but I'll share again because I love this memory.  Growing up, my paternal grandpa had a Polaroid camera.  Whenever we visited, he'd get it out and take a few photos.  And then stick them in his shirt pocket to let them develop.  Now I'd seen people wave them around in the air to develop faster, but grandpa put them in his pocket.  He told us that was how it was done.  And so, as a kid, I believe that this was how Polaroid photos worked.  Or at least worked the best.  Being a grandpa, of course he knew all the things and those people waving their photos around were just wasting their time.

So.  Having an extra spot in the quilt, I made a little pocket and shrunk down the color prompt images (there were two - the one you saw above as well as one that had the names of colors that the creator must have found in her palette of paints or something) and made them look like additional Polaroid photos (though with a while background, my white frame doesn't look as prominent as it could).

I'm glad to have this done.  I really wanted it done sooner, but stalled out on the quilting a bit.  Oh well.  Done is done.

In other news, I have started the birds in the quilt along.  The assignment for this week was to make the first quarter of the birds.  As written in the pattern, that would have been six, but as I mentioned last week, I decided to go larger, which meant nine birds.

I took very few photos along the way, focusing instead on making sure the right-facing birds were facing right and the left-facing birds were facing left.

The seam ripper and I met once when I sewed the half square triangles to the background rectangle going the wrong direction.  Thankfully that was a short seam and only 9 to rip out.  Everything else went quite nicely.

This pattern, though, generates a LOT of bonus half square triangles...

I tossed the smaller ones, but kept these - all of which are large enough to be trimmed to make the "clouds."  Since the original pattern has the clouds in an entirely different color, I can see why these were not used that way.  But I wish I had known because I could have saved myself a lot of time and fabric.  Oh well.  I already have an idea for these, but will wait until the end to decide how much extra background fabric I have before trimming these and moving forward with my plan.  (I haven't cut sashings yet and want to be sure I have enough!)

Next week I'll be making another 9 birds.  And the next week.  And the next week.  These took the better part of the day Friday, but definitely doable for me in a week!

I also worked on the tiger.

You get my shoe in there because I couldn't crop it out.  Also the upper right parts go elsewhere but you didn't need to see the whole floor in my sewing room today.  That is one ear, though, in the middle.  There are 29 more sections to go, including the other ear, but mostly plants.  And then comes the dreaded sewing it all together.  But 29 is definitely feeling like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But I have also committed myself to another quilt along.

(What is wrong with me?)

This one officially starts today, but the first week is just getting fabric together.  And since I just ordered the pattern yesterday, I'm feeling a little behind, but I'll get caught up.  I'm still trying to decide what colors to use, so I'm hoping for an epiphany here soon!

And then my hubby mentioned that there is another baby on the way.  This is the daughter of a cousin and we know it will be a boy.  So I'm tossing around ideas for a quilt for her.  (Of course she will get one, just not sure what I'm going to do yet.)

Also, a coworker and former coworker (they got together after she quit) are working on buying a house together, so I feel like they need a housewarming gift.

And another coworker got a promise ring.  Not an engagement ring.  She is my age, so I have no idea what is going on except that it is a "cheap ring from Amazon" until he can afford something better.  I don't understand, but whatever.  Perhaps they should get a quilt, too?  If they ever get married.  I guess when he buys her a "real" ring I'll worry about that quilt.

And lastly, a recycled photo from just over three years ago.  Back when I had covid before anyone could get tested and I didn't realize that was what I had and I was eating a popsicle in bed because that and oranges were the only thing that even sounded like they worth the effort to eat.  Gabby was wondering what I was eating and why I was in bed doing it.  I love this photo.  The look on her face is priceless, but also very Gabby.  She may be a ding-dong that eats thread and lands like a sack of potatoes when she gets down from everything, but she is also smart as can be and wants to know about all the things.

Time to get back to the quilty stuff!

Happy quilting!

Katie