mini challenge and other stuff

I left you last with the mini challenge quilt needing a LOT more quilting.  At least that's how I saw it...

I knew I wanted to do different motifs between many of the wider lines, but wanted to do something extra special in the wide open corner in the upper right.  I quickly found some inspiration in my Instagram feed from freebirdquiltingdesigns and winged it from there.

Scary quilting, but if this is going to be properly done as a challenge, I'd better up my game, right?

A few sections done in fairly simple, familiar, motifs and then it was the "big corner"...a few deep breaths and some "you can do this" talk to myself and I went for it!

Whew!

But I've invented a new quilt motif.

"Messy Pebbles"

Now don't you go telling me they're not a thing.  They ARE NOW.

Once that was done (and I am pretty proud of that flower - my first time - and that leaf that I just winged in there at the last second), it was on to the remainder of the quilt.  I worked my way towards the center, and like the work on my domestic machine, that meant buried threads instead of sewing off the edge.  But it also meant fewer motifs per section (faster) and I didn't have to figure out where to pause stitching to roll the quilt a few inches one way or another to finish without completely stopping and tying off threads!

And before I knew it, I was done!

This took less than a whole bobbin, but it's only 24x24", so not a large quilt.

I wanted to try to do a faced binding with this, but at the very edge, on one side, the orange got a little puckery.  Which meant I had to hide that with real binding.  So faced binding will be a challenge for another day.

But I did figure out how to match the binding to the top!

What did I put on the back?

Just the busiest scrap I could find.  And no, I didn't even try to match up the pattern where I pieced it.  The pieces I have are left over from the back of another quilt and getting small.  Finding two pieces that would actually match up and not losing my eyesight trying to do so...well...I'd rather be able to see.  And it's the back.

(Hi Freddie!)

The front?

Ta da!

I have yet to send in the photo for entry.  I was going to do that before I wrote this, but got stuck when the instructions said to provide a sentence or two about the quilt.  I don't think "hey, I tried new things" would be a good idea.  Also, explaining my new quilt motif might tip them off to look more closely at my work.  (Not a good idea since it's far from perfect!)  And "pick me! pick me!" might seem a little juvenile.

I have until 5pm Tuesday.

(But I would like to get it done today.)

In other news...

Yesterday I had the day off and the quilt guild had their sew-in at the library, so I got to go!  Only two other members attended, but we had fun.  We went to the local outdoor barbecue "food truck" (they do have an actual building, but it's an old gas station, so basically a small room with a window where you pay and they have refrigerators - all the cooking stuff is outside!) and I got some chicken and black bean chimis...

Yummy!  I love this place.  They're only open Friday and Saturdays during the summer.  Unless they're not.  (Like Memorial Day weekend they'll be closed.)  I love that my friends will eat at these adventurous places with me.  My hubby is Mr. PickyPants, so convincing him to try something new is much harder.  Me?  I'll try anything once!

While at sew-in, I didn't get a lot done...well, not a lot of sewing, that is!  But I managed to get a small batch of tiny stars made.  I've been slacking on these a lot lately, so it felt good to get a batch made.

And today, I went to a book store looking for a book to include with the baby quilt.  My friend's sister is throwing the shower and asked that we all include a favorite book from our childhood instead of a card.  I decided a collection of fairy tales would be fun and hopefully unique (not that I didn't enjoy a good Dr. Seuss story or a Shel Silverstein poem, too), and I found one that I'm excited to give.  (The first one I picked up had terrifying illustrations!)

Then my husband let me wander into the fiction section unsupervised...

...probably not his best idea.

I still have not made time to work with my longarm and the variegated thread I bought for my Pantone challenge quilt.  Tomorrow?

But the hubby is off work the next two weeks (he gets a LOT of vacation time and takes most of it during the summer so he can fish...if the weather isn't good for fishing, he leans on me to entertain him)...so we'll see how things go.  But I AM going to finish it and meet the challenge deadline!

Happy quilting,

Katie

more of a challenge than I wanted

The Year of the Challenge Quilts continues...

On the first of this month, I received an email about a modern mini quilt challenge.  For the most part, I ignored it.  But then one day, I decided maybe I would go for it.  I know this challenge will probably be much higher caliber entries than some of the other challenges I've done, but why not?

So while the hubby watched nonsense on television, I looked at Pinterest for inspiration.  And found some, though I don't have any links to credit.  Just a conglomeration of quilts and a color scheme I'd been wanting to try out more since I saw it in a challenge quilt a few years ago.

But I kinda stalled.  I only had a few weeks.

But with Project Quilting I only had ONE week.  And I made a whole almost-bed-sized quilt.  What's my problem?

Wednesday, the hubby went to work.  I got busy drafting my idea and sewing...

...yes, yes, this will work.

I raided my strings bin, but had to supplement with stash.  But there were some fairly skinny pieces in my stash, so that was nice to find.  (Okay, okay, I knew they were there...it wasn't an accidental finding...)

Before I knew it, I had all the blocks made!

Emma was at about 50% meltdown at this point.  It was getting close to dinner time, but what you see here is basically a 9-patch in need of sewing.  So I kept going.  It wasn't going to take that long.

And here you can see I managed to sew some things in there backwards from the original plan.  While it's not exactly to my liking, I wasn't going to rip it out.  Not yet.  I had to FEED EMMA!!!!!

(I was also kinda hungry.)

Note that the grey is NOT wrinkled.  It is a muslin that has been crinkled up and overdyed.  Remember that whole bolt of fabric I bought while at retreat in January?  This was my first cut into it.  And while I'm not sold on the ray-of-sunshine look in that lower right corner, I do like the overall effect.

At this point, I stalled out a few days.  I had a baby quilt that needed to be quilted, so I decided to work on that.  Remember this one from my Closet of Shame (also featured on my "Parade of Tops" page)?

I quilted this on Thursday, but will save that whole saga for another post...

The weekend got busy between two shifts at work, two family gatherings and all the other things that go with adulting.  (Stupid adulting.)

Monday, the hubby headed back to work, and another day off for me, so I decided it was time to get that mini quilted.  Or at least started.

In chatting with three quilting friends, I had figured out not only the motif ideas, but that I wanted to use high loft poly batting to get the definition in the quilting.  I wasn't sure two layers of the 80/20 I usually use would cut it, so I bought a small poly batt.

FYI: spray baste does NOT stick well to high loft poly batt.  It, however, does stick well to your clothing while you're trying to sew.  And your ironing board that is next to your sewing table.  And pretty much everything that you don't want it to stick to.

I tried to baste the edges of the quilt first, figuring it would help stabilize it.

Bad Messy idea.

Fire up the longarm and baste it that way.

Hard to see here, but poofy!

I had purchased a purple, air-erasing marker and marked lines prior to trying to baste.  You can't really see them here, but neither can I.  They got lighter with time.  I think the perspiration from my hands (there was probably more than usual...) did not help, as the pen is also water-erasable.  Another good-to-know thing I learned with this project.

But...there was NO WAY this thing was going to behave under a domestic machine.  (Why am I using the domestic, you ask?  Because I want to quilt straight, diagonal lines.  And I am no good on the longarm with rulers.  Also, my machine does not like to go diagonally well.  If I had weeks to practice, not days, maybe.  But I can get a more reliable straight line on my little machine.  And this is only 24x24", so doable.  Or so I thought...)

So, this challenge is becoming way more of a challenge than I wanted.  I dig out my safety pins.  The things I packed away when I got my longarm, thinking "so long, little torture devices"...yeah...

Yep, there they are.  My trusty safety pins.  I only put in a few at the start, figuring if it didn't work, I'd have fewer to remove.

But it worked.

It worked well.  I actually like how this is looking.  Of course, there are a LOT more lines to go, but the nice thing, as the squares got bigger, was that I could start sewing from the edge and not have to bury threads any more.  Much faster!

I moved safety pins and added more as necessary.

I was going to do a faced type binding on this, but one edge has a few little puckers as I quilted out to the edge, so that will need to hide.  Or be trimmed.  I'll have to decide.

For now, the quilt is here...

...I really like it!

My plan is to now put it on the longarm for real and do some doodley stuff in the wider bands.  (That was the plan all along, so the back is bigger enough that when I needed to put it on the longarm, it wasn't much trouble.)  I can do doodley stuff way better on the longarm...and not just because my little machine doesn't have a table.

I'm not sure what the larger, corner, parts will get.  It depends how daring I get between now and next Tuesday, when it's due.  I was going to work on it tonight after work, but once chores were done (and a few extra fun ones, like planting some new lilacs) and dinner was eaten, it's gotten late.  Tomorrow?

But I still have to keep in mind that my Pantone challenge quilt is due soon, too.  I added fabric to the back so that it will load easily onto the longarm, but now I'm trying to decide how to quilt it.  And I need to load a practice piece to play with tension for the thicker thread I bought because last time I used that kind, my machine threw a hissy fit.  And it's been throwing those too frequently lately, just using the same kind of thread I use almost all the time.  

I don't have any more cat photos, but I found this squirrel in my Closet of Shame.  I was looking for...um...sewing machine oil?...and there it was, just sitting in a box.  I'm pretty sure it was a Christmas decoration (short version of that story), but it made me laugh pretty hard when I found it.  So I sent this photo to my friend and then yesterday, got silly, and added a caption...

Also in the realm of squirrels...I was shopping the other day and saw these shoes.  So I bought them.

(I've been kinda wanting a pair of Chucks, but wasn't ready to commit.  These are off-brand, but super cute and a better price for shoes I can't wear much because they have no cushion or support...not good work shoes!)

And finally...

...YUCK!

You might like it.  I do not.  They ruined orange, vanilla and Coke all in one bottle.  I'll be sticking to regular Coke in the future.

The baby quilt, shown above, is quilted and the binding has been sewn down - the machine-sewn side.  The shower is in a few weeks, but I'm not sure I'll be going.  Either way, I'll plan to blog about it soon.  I don't think my friend reads the blog (if she does, well, she knows what the top looks like!), but I kinda want to get it to her first.  But it's cool.  And there's some drama on the longarm to share with the quilting efforts, too...

Off to snuggle the kitties!

Happy quilting!

Katie