FINISHED PLAID BRICKS QUILT

I made the binding yesterday. I auditioned several colors and settle on a Kona Stone. Today I sewed it onto the Plaid Bricks quilt.

It's done!  

QUILTING BRICKS

 I loaded the Plaid Brick quilt onto the longarm and set up a pantograph, "Jax", and got it going. It's quilting out very nicely and looks great.

BRICKS QUILT TOP

 I've been sewing the Plaid Bricks together over the last few days.  I first sewed them together in pairs.  Then I sewed the pairs together.

When I got about two thirds of them sewn together I noticed the top four rows were longer than the rest.  

I let the whole thing sit for a few days while I figured out what to do.  

I finally decided to unsew a few of the rows and 'fix' them.

I hadn't pinned or worried about the how the rows were going together when I sewed them into pairs and subsequently that led to the length differentials, probably because the fabrics are so 'stretchy'. 

Only a few rows had big problems and I needed to adjust and even replace some of the bricks.

Then I measured each block and marked the center so I could line it up with the seam on the previous row.  That worked.  The rows were now the same length.

And I finished it.

 There's something very satisfying and comforting to me about some of these 'traditional' quilts, especially the ones made with plaids. 

NEW BRICKS

 I was excited  making another Bricks type quilt.  I cut a bunch of 3-1/2" by 6-1/2"rectangles from the plaids in my stash and started arranging them on the design wall.

Here it is so far:

SPIDER WEB

We've been watching Quiltfolk Magazine's Block of the Month for 2024 called "Break the Rules".  Every month they talk to Roderick Kiracofe about his book Unexpected and Unconventional.  Roderick talks about one (or sometimes more) quilt(s) in the book.  This month was the Spider Web quilt.  

That reminded me of the Spider Web quilt I made years ago.  I got it out and took pictures.

Back in the late 1990's at Pieces Quilt Shop, a group of us had gotten together to make some quilts with lots of different plaids.  Everyone contributed fabrics, so there was a lot of plaids.  We'd throw the pre-cut plaid pieces in the middle of a big conference table and we'd all set up our machines around it and pull out pieces and sew, sew, sew.

This Spider Web was made from strips of the plaids from that time.  I didn't finish it until January of 2004.  I quilted it on my domestic machine, a Bernina 1230. We use this quilt.

I had this really great weird fabric that was perfect for the backing.

SNAKE BLOCKS ARE A TOP

 I got all of the Snake blocks sewn together.  It's now a quilt top.

It is 70" by 84".

SEWING SNAKE BLOCKS TOGETHER

 I'm sewing the Snake blocks together then sewing them into columns. 

Got two done today.

I'm really starting to like how the arcs don't match up.  It gives the quilt more energy. 

MAKING SNAKE BLOCKS

 I cut out all of the center pieces of the Snake blocks and put them up on the design wall, moving them around until I like the way they flowed.

The I cut out the corner pieces and put them up.

Then I added the green arcs.

Everything needs to be sewn together now.  Easy peasy.

STRIP QUILT TOP DONE

 I got all of the sections of the Strip Quilt put together finally.  There was some head-scratching and adjustments made trying to figure out how to fit them to each other.  I used a lot of partial seams.

I'm mostly happy with it.  

I also got the binding onto the little Plaid Tumbler quilt, it's 30" by 40".  I used some 'leftover' plaid binding.  I think I made all of this binding for another project and then didn't use it.  Some of it finally found a home.

FIRST ONE DONE

 I finished quilting the little plaid quilt with a Baptist Fan pattern and pulled it off the longarm.

It's the first quilt finished on the new Q24.  

During the Monday BravePatch meeting today, we discussed a name for my new machine.  There were some great suggestions.  I'm still thinking on it.

RULER WORK

 I put the Ruler Plate on the new Q24 so I could try a little ruler work on it.

I loaded a very small quilt top I made a while ago.  It's Tumbler blocks cut from an assortment of plaids.  

I'm using the circle rulers to quilt a Baptist Fan pattern.

The machine is behaving wonderfully.  Joy.

I didn't get very far when I had to stop for lunch and then a Book Group meeting on Bravepatch at noon.

CHOREOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

 I'm attending a 4-week workshop with Irene Roderick every Tuesday this month.  I was distracted by the 'Trinity' project the first week, but I've started on a new project that comes straight from one of my daily doodles (homework she has us doing). I'm calling it Amity Prime.

It's a stylized flower.  My doodle has five petals, so I drew out one petal onto freezer paper so I would have a 'pattern' to get the sizes correct.  Hopefully, it will all fit together.

I'm not sure about the colors yet.  I'm going to play it by ear, picking colors as I go.

I'm not even sure how I'm going to piece this...or how the background will look.  It's a project in motion.

HEADACHE

Man, I woke up with a killer headache today.

I did manage a short, slow walk through the park, but, I couldn't bring myself to go to my Watercolor Class.

I came across this stack of Tumbler plaid pieces the other day and left them sitting out.  They are from way back, when I owned Pieces Quilt Shop.  We had an exchange with the intent of making a bag from them (one of the teachers was teaching the pattern).  

I sewed them together today.  It was a somewhat mindless project.  There were about 120 pieces, so I figured 12 across and 10 down would be about right.  I should have made them a little wider and shorter.  Oh, well.

I added these navy blue pieces to the edges.  Now, to figure out how to finish it.

I love plaids.

NOT GREAT

Well, I'm going to say that this almost works.  What makes this 'Plaidish' quilt (pattern by KitchenTableQuilting) work is the placement of lights, darks, and mediums.  If I do this again, I'll be more discerning about what are lights, what are darks and what are mediums.

But, it is interesting and looks sort of retro.

I've got the Bona Dea quilt back and label made, and it's off the wall and onto the longarm.  I haven't decided on how to quilt it yet, though.

SEWING BINDINGS

I sewed on two of the bindings today.

This one I sewed onto the front and will hand sew the back down.

This one I sewed onto the back first, then sewed it down on the front.

 While I've been purging and cleaning I found this treasure.  It's a bag of 500 4" squares of plaids.   I'm going to use them as enders and leaders. 

SOLSTICE QUILT QUILTED

It took all week, but I got the last of it quilted this morning.

I took it off the machine and trimmed the batting off and squared it up.  It turned out great.

I started thinking about binding - what was I going to use?

My fallback was using the ugly plaid I put on the back - it sort of matches, but not really.

As I was making the binding (what a pain flannel is) it occurred to me that maybe a print would look good - especially a toile, a white with blue toile de Jouy.  I have some, somewhere.  When I looked through my stash I came up with 3 or 4 that might work, but I did not have enough to do the whole binding.  What about a solid?  I looked through my solids stash - nothing.

But I have a sample card for Kona Cotton Solids.  There are 303 color swatches on it - there's got to be one that matches, right?  Well, as it turns out, there is one that's sort of close.  That means I have to go order it and wait for it to get here.

LAST THREE SOLSTICE BLOCKS

 I got behind, but I caught up today making the last three blocks for the Solstice Challenge.

#23 Eureka!

#24 Lucky Girl

#25 Summer Rose

I need some fabric to use as sashing.  The only thing I have at the moment is pure white flannel, which is not the same as the white in these fabrics.   It's much to white.  I need more of an ivory.  I was thinking I should dye it.  But, how do you dye white to ivory.  I googled it, they all said use tea dye.  That seems wrong for several reasons.  I've heard tea dye is so acidic it will eventually eat up the fabric.  Plus, it seems the wrong color to me.  Too brown.  Ivory is not brown.  But, I'm not sure what it is either.

Maybe I should go to the fabric store.  

SOLSTICE BLOCK 22

Here is the shrunk down version of this week's Solstice Challenge block.

The block was supposed to be 24" square, but I'm making all my blocks just 12" because I have a limited amount of fabric -- and it's dwindling fast.

Even on this block, I used a different background in the corners because I didn't have enough of the other.  That pretty much finished off that little striped fabric.

This is Weathervane:

They came and installed the new countertops today!

The backsplash tile will be installed tomorrow.

SOLSTICE WEEK 21

This one has a lot of little 2 inch squares.

I'm not so sure it works with all these plaids and their lines going every way and not matching up!

I would have used a less busy background if I had had more choices.

WORK FREE THURSDAY

I had to take today off from work to make a decision about tile for our kitchen remodel and get it ordered.

I had a very busy day.

I got a little sewing in first thing in the morning. 

I made the latest Solstice Challenge block.

It's called "Board Games" and was designed as a 24" block.  I have a finite amount of fabric and haven't been able to find any to add to my group.  So, I had made the decision early on to just make 12" blocks instead, and then sash them in a simple setting.

I pared this block down to the basics and made it 12" instead.

After that I took the dogs for a walk in Lincoln Park.  They were so excited!  We haven't been to the park for a while because of my schedule lately.

I took the dogs home and then headed down to the area around the Seattle Design Center and went to several tile dealers.

I thought I had narrowed it down to the one I wanted, but I found another I like even better.  I got a sample and filled out an application to be able to buy from them.

I came home for lunch with the DH, he likes this new tile better also.  After lunch I realized that the quarterly taxes are due on Monday.  So, I sat down and got that taken care of.

I had about an hour and a half until I had to get dinner started so I went back upstairs to start on a new project.

Yes, I said 'new' project.  [What is wrong with me?!]

Hard as it is to believe, I actually bought a kit.  Yes, a prepackaged kit with fabric and pattern.  This is first for me.  It looked so fun I couldn't help myself.

I prewashed the fabrics yesterday.  I ironed some of them and got them organized and then cut out and sewed together the first block today.

It's called Wallflower.

There are two blocks, this is the simple one.  They are 18" blocks.