Are you a foodie? I’m a super picky eater and my oldest says I have the palate of a 5 year-old! I disagree, of course, but I do have some very strong feelings about things like onions (the texture, not the flavor), apples (must be crisp, not mushy) and pears (taste like they have sand in them!) However, the beauty of food-themed fabric is that I like ALL of it! I had a fat quarter group from our Quarterly Quilter’s Tea that was perfect for this hop. Our theme had been “Fruits and Vegetables.” I used the Stacked Bricks free pattern from over at Christa Quilts and decided to go for a “mushy” look. I kept thinking about “mushy peas” which seriously sounds much worse than it is!
This top still needs to grow a little bit in length and then I may use the remaining pieces for a back.
I had such fun finally bringing these fabrics out to play! I think another Stacked Bricks could be in my future and I’d love to play with the different layouts that Christa provides.
Thanks so much to Carla at Creatin’ in the Sticks for assembling this fun team! Please be sure to hop on over to the other bloggers and see what’s up!
So, I promised an explaination about the Cat Vomit Quilt and so….to make a long story long…
Once upon a time, I told my husband that I had heard, on good authority, that you can’t be a crazy cat lady if you had a husband. That was when we started calling ourselves the crazy cat couple. And, with one thing and another, we wound up outnumbered in our sleeping arrangements with five cats sharing the bed with us. (Griff often declined to sleep with us but Jack, Zoe, Winnie, Milo and Gizmo loved to snuggle up with us. Sharing your room with multiple cats leads to some serious laundry issues. I don’t know if you have cats but mine seem to have a rare talent for hairballs and upset stomachs…usually right after laundry day!
So there was a need for a utility quilt. Something that could go in and out of the washing machine on a weekly (at least) basis. Enter the blog post for the Scrap Vortex Quilt over at Crazy Mom Quilts! I love, love, love playing with scraps and the idea of tossing all my wee bits of scraps into a fun utility quilt lit a fire in my heart. A word of advice, do take Amanda’s advice and cut your blocks into regular-sized units. I decided to keep just improving it and it did get me into a few sticky situations!
I kept thinking that the quilt was big enough and we had several auditions like this one..
Jack modeling the CVQ
I kept thinking I had it almost big enough like in this photo. My plan was to add a to the width after this round but I managed to put the next row on the wrong end. With one thing and another this quilt got pushed to the side and then, when I picked up it again, it still wasn’t big enough!!!
I added a few more blocks and, when it wasn’t big enough yet, I decided to add a navy border and piano keys made from the 2″ strip drawer. Then, I needed a backing. I cobbled together six different flannels to get enough width and still only had about four inches on each side to spare! Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that flannel on the back of all of those seams might make for a very heavy quilt. And, by the way, adding another 11 inches to all sides of an already big quilt makes a VERY BIG QUILT!
I think I realized I might be in a little bit of trouble when I got the quilt on the frame and it took over most of my 12-foot frame. It looked big spread out on my porch stairs but it looked REALLY big when I put it on my bed!
Suddenly, my queen-sized bed looked much smaller and, in order to accommodate the quilt, I had to fold the end like this…
Yes, you could totally go right up and over the pillows with this one! I had a very real concern that my “wash and wear” utility quilt was not going to fit in my washer and dryer but, courtesy of the cats, we’ve tested that theory already. It did take three cycles in the dryer but the Cat Vomit Quilt is freshly washed and dried and is ready to conitnue it’s sworn duty to protect other well-loved quilts on my bed and to serve as the first line of defense against kitties with a hairball agenda! And as an added bonus, there’s very little chance of me ever being cold at night again!
So, there it is…the Cat Vomit Quilt explained! I hope you’ll come back soon as I’m starting a new quilt with fabric from a new line and a new designer! I’m so excited!
Happy quilting (no matter what size your quilt ends up!)
Oh my goodness, this is a first…I was sure my day was Thursday and then I got sidelined by a migraine and like the White Rabbit… I’M LATE! My apologies, my friends ans especially to our fearless leader!
I love bright colors and have been playing with them a lot lately. Here are a few
But the quilt I’m sharing for our hop has all the colors…. here’s my scrap vortex quilt aka the cat vomit quilt (long story, more later.)
Proof once more that all the colors really do go with all the other colors!
Again, my apologies for the mix up!
Please visit the other bloggers and hop over to moosestashquilting.com and show some love for our fearless leader, Joan!
Spring had sprung in the Pacific Northwest and my oldest daughter and I made a trip to the tulip farm which was chilly but always so beautiful!
However, the very next day, we had a snow day! In April!
I was excited for the extra sew day, though and thoroughly enjoyed it. By 5, it had melted, the sky was blue and school went off without a hitch the next day.
This weekend was our quilter’s tea and we got to see some terrific finishes! The black and white quilt blocks were ones we made for our youngest member when she got engaged. The blue and yellow is a quilt that is headed to the Ukraine and is wonderfully quilted with words of hope in both English and Ukrainian. We opted to postpone our Easter brunch because one of my younger daughter’s housemates was ill so we will be celebrating next week instead.
Now that Project Quilting is done, I’m working on rehabbing the sewing room. In keeping with my “tiny tidy” approach, this week was the ironing station. Here’s a little before, during and after. I love, love, love my Oliso irons, by the way (and, no, I’m not affiliated, just a fan!)
So, the Wonderful World of Color Blog Hop starts today! My day is later in the week but get ready for lots of fun and inspiration!
The last prompt for Project Quilting Season 13 was Flying Geese and I can tell you that ideas flew around my heaId like crazy! There were literally flocks of ideas but they didn’t colalesce until Wednesday and the serious sewing started on Thursday. I was inspired by a quilt I saw on a Fons & Porter page while I was googling flying geese. I loved the idea of “super sizing” my geese…they are finished at 12×6″. While I was pulling fabric, I made a whole bunch of false starts until I remembered a stack of fat quarters that had been stocking stuffers from my youngest and my husband. I will admit that I’m a bit of a fabric snob and these “big box’ cottons were a tad on the thin and papery side so I had shelved them together and thought I would put them all together in a quilt. That way, the fabric should shrink at a similar rate and wear about the same. I’m delighted with how this came out and even managed to get a photo in the last dregs of daylight! This measures 64×64” and contains 50 flying geese units. Fun fact, if you are using fat quarters, you can get all the pieces for three geese (centers and sides) out of each fat quarter. I pressed and layered them up and then sewed pairs of geese. By reversing the placement, you can use two geese to make a chevron. I would love to try this again and play more with the color placement but I’d need more than a week!
Fresh off the long-arm machine and unbound but I wanted that daylight shot!OK, maybe dusk is a more apt description but still….;
The leftover binding bin came into play again this week and I put three together to bind the quilt
Milo is tired from supervising! And, a pile of quilts is great for napping.
So, thank you so much to the whole Project Quilting Team! I feel like a winner every challenge because I have done something new and pushed my comfort zone out just a bit.
I had so many ideas for this blog hop! I love the look of hourglass blocks and they’re so fun to piece and so quick to stitch when I cut them with the accuquilt…bonus, no dog ears to trim! I had been making the 16-patches out of the leftovers from the string border on the Cat Vomit Quilt (still waiting to show you that when it’s quilted.) It occurred to me that if I sewed my piano key strips (2″ strips from the scrap bin) into sets of four, the leftover bits could be sub cut into a row of four squares. Four strips sewn together gave me sixteen patch blocks! And, to my amazement…the 2″ strip bin actually started to diminish! So, I decided to throw together some hourglass blocks and a quilt start was born! Now, I didn’t quilt this because I have decided that I’d like to make it quite a bit bigger. This section is 48×48 and, if I make four of these, I’ll have a nice queen-sized quilt. This is just the kind of scrappy quilt I love seeing on a bed. Bonus, if you can’t sleep, you can spend hours looking at all the different prints!
Of course, I noticed after I took the picture that I had managed to put one hourglass block in the wrong position but it will be an easy fix with the seam ripper. If you’re not ripping occasionally, you’re not actually sewing, right?
I’m excited to be sharing this day with these great bloggers…
Wow, if I could really bottle time…what would I do…well, more quilting of course! (I mean, what answer did you expect?) Well, we didn’t really bottle any time but I’m having a grand time working on my hourglass project and Carol at Just Let Me Quilt has put together a great lineup of “time turners.”
Come back to see me Thursday but in the meantime, check out these wonderful blogs:
More late night photos…. update in the morning! Sunflowers, approx 58×58
But, we all know that daylight changes things!
Rhythem & Repetition was the prompt this week and with the Ukraine on my (and everyone else’s mind) this week, I decided to try my hand at a Sunflower Quilt. This block is a variation of a block I used for my Sunshine blog hop but I upsized it to a 16″ block and changed the corner. I’m not sure I’m quite happy with the corner yet but that is the beauty of a one-week challenge. I don’t have time to overthink it, it’s just a “grab an idea and go” situation! If I’d known when I started that this would end up with 1050 pieces, I might not have taken it on but it sort of took on a life of it’s own. The biggest trick I have up my sleeve is my Accuquilt. Between using it to cut all the squares and triangles and the strips for subcutting the rectangles, I saved a whole bunch of time! It was a gift from my daughter and I am so glad to have it! I have to admit that the power supply issue is ongoing (I’m on my third one but I’m hoping they’ll get that resolved soon.)
So, having spent the week in the sewing room, I need to spend today catching up on the rest of life’s mundanities…laundry, cleaning, cooking…well, making salads in a jar for this week and a pot of soup. And, of course, more quilting!
Ah, there’s nothing like the morning after of a successful quilt finish! No hangover, just an intense desire to get back in the sewing room and play some more! Unfortunately, after focusing on this quilt all week, there’s a little requisite housework that needs doing! I also need to catch up on some putting away and scrap management work in the sewing room. So, here’s the “morning after” photo…the wind was not my friend this morning so I had a tough time getting a good shot.
Project Quilting Challenge 13.4 – Mining for Diamonds
Here is the badly lit picture from last night. It’s so interesting how lighting changes what you seen in a quilt.
Another late night photo!
This is one of what I call my “free” quilts. The top is entirely made of stuff that was on-hand. The pink was leftover from my Tickled Pink Blog Hop project. The strips all came from the 2.5″ strip bin. I have to admit that the strips were all the ones left over from the pull of the Tickled Pink project and there are still a really large number of them left. I swear those strips multiply like rabbits when you turn your back for even a minute!
There was no rhyme or reason to my fabric choices in the block other than “is this long enough for two sides?” Since this is a one-week challenge and I know I could get stuck on the arrangement piece for DAYS, I only allow myself about 20 minutes to arrange blocks once they’re finished. So, of course, I look at the quilt and think of things I might have tweaked in the block placement. But overall, I really, really like it!
I’m so very grateful to Kim Lapacek and the whole team at Project Quilting for the work that goes into organizing this. I love starting the year with a chance to stretch my creative process and try things that I might not have otherwise done!
So, with that in mind, I’m off to install the idler rail on my Qu’nique system. This whole “I finished a quilt” energy is so much fun that I think I’d like to repeat the process. What’s the old saying, “Cut, sew, repeat”?
I LOVE Pink! It’s my all-time favorite color so of course I wanted to play along on the Tickled Pink blog hop! I love pink in all it’s shades from the brightest fuschia to the palest baby pink. (I even love the singer Pink!) I never have to look too far for pink fabric in my sewing room but for this project I did make an excuse, ahem, “force” myself to pick up some nice deep pink Kona solid. The rest of my project came from my 2.5″ strip drawer (thank you, Bonnie Hunter for your Scrap Users System) and from a free pattern and video from Jordan Fabrics.
Here’s my project (sorry, just a top but I’m hopeful I’ll finish it soon…and, I had to hang it sideways because it was just a smidge too long for my fence.
So, along that theme of not knowing the quilt’s size, I thought I’d share the No-Measure border technique I use. I’m sure I learned it somewhere along the line so if I remember who it was, I’ll happily give them credit.
First, I give myself an idea of how many border strips I need per side and cut those (I used 6 3.5″ strips for this border.) I join them with a mitre seam and make one long strip.
Then, I fold the quilt in half either vertically or horizontally depending on which border you want to put on. Frankly, I’ve done both, I’m not picky. Fold carefully so that the edges line up neatly. Then lay the border strip across the middle of the quilt and fold it to match the fold in the quilt. I like to go ahead and do both strips at one time. This quilt had a seam right at the top so I made sure I lined the fold up with the stitching line and not the edge of the fabric. Then I trim the pieces on a small cutting mat that I slide under the end of the piece. I use a pin to mark the center of both the borders and the top and pin before sewing. This way, you don’t stretch anything out of shape. Press your borders and then repeat the process by folding the top the opposite direction and cutting your next pair of strips. Pin and add your strips and, voila! A math-free border solution! With the possible downside of having no real answer when your friend asks, “How big is that?” And, of course, if you have additional borders, just repeat the process after each addition.
So, please make sure to check out the rest of this week’s Tickled Pink bloggers and be sure to say thanks to Carla at Creatin’ in the Sticks for putting all this together (she, Carol and Joan are cat-herders extraordinaire to pull all this fun together!) There are lots more fun blog hops to come….watch this space for updates!
Words & Stitches 