Party Animal at Work

 Before

 After:

Yup, It's hidden. I told you.

In other news, in a few weeks I'm having the carpet removed from the studio and having laminate flooring installed. Since I'll have to empty the studio for the work, I figured I better start giving the room a heavy duty clean and get rid of stuff I don't need. These bags on the table contain the excess quilt batting from the quilts I have had quilted over the years. I don't use the stuff and sure as hell don't need it occupying space in my studio, so it will go. Not quite sure where, but I have heard there are places that take donations of art supplies, so I will look into that before I throw these in the trash.

Party Animal

I was going to name the White Nightingale quilt "Mourning Dove" but I was talking to my friend  Susan and she said the quilt was way too happy and cheerful. "It's a party," she said. "It's a party animal."

I liked that idea, so the quilt is now named Party Animal.

I've told you that I plan to make this quilt the way my grandmother made us quilts, and that means no batting and no quilting. I will tie the quilt with white crochet cotton.

I used a needle with a big eye, and tied the quilt in the corners of each block. 

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It's a square knot. I thread the quilt in the corners, working from one block to the next, then I cut the ties in the middle, then tie the knots, gathering the excess to one side and move to the next knot. When I've got them all tied, I go back and trim the excess threads.

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There is no binding.I trim the backing to four inches wide, fold it to the edge of the quilt, and then fold it again. up to a predetermined width, then pin it in place.

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I mitered the corners.

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Then I machine sewed it in place. After that, I ironed the quilt. (What a concept!)

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Here is the finished quilt. Later I will run it through the washer and dryer. Since the ties are 100% cotton, they will shrink, making the knots permanent.

Later this weekend, when I change the sheets on my bed, I will put this quilt on the bed, on top of the top sheet and underneath the summer blanket, and the only person who will ever see it is me.

When I was growing up, we brought these quilts to the beach, to the lake, to the fireworks. They were great at the beach because they were so cool (literally) to lie upon. They were utilitarian quilts, and they were made from scraps. We never considered them fussy. If we spilled drinks or food on them nobody got upset. The quilt would just get tossed in the wash when we got home. 

So the Party Animal is going to live a pretty quiet life, in spite of the name. It will NOT be going to the beach, or to the lake or to the fireworks.

Blitzen is Finished

I finished sewing the binding on the Blitzen quilt. I was streaming some tv cooking competition while I sewed.

Here it is on the couch. 

When I brought it to Janet-Lee to be quilted I said, "This is a very simple quilt." She gave me THE LOOK. "What," I asked? "Lynne, this is NOT a simple quilt. It is a very elegant and sophisticated quilt."

So I said the only thing I could say. I said "Oh-kay."

I love it. I love that it's a Christmas quilt that doesn't hit you over the head with it being a Christmas quilt.

Got a Jar?

What can I say? I love containers of all kinds. Boxes, jars, bins. I'm a sucker for that stuff. Since I make my own salad dressings, and often things like barbecue sauce, chili crisp and the like, I keep jars. I keep them in the bottom part of my dry sink. Lately though, I don't have any room for more. I remembered reading something from Martha Stewart some time ago. She said you don't need to keep saving jars. 

And I thought, well, I should go through mine to get rid of some. Then I thought I had better get them all out to see just how many I had. The photo above doesn't even show all of them. I found two small bins filled with jars.

Turns our WAY TOO MANY! I'd like to say I was surprised, but when I thought about it, I wasn't. I reuse some sizes more often than others. 

So I sorted through them, choosing the ones I used most often, and then checked they were all clean, had good clean tops and set them aside. I got a trash bag and practically filled it with all the others and brought them outside and put them in the recycle bin.

The remainder now fit perfectly in my small hutch. And henceforth, whenever I empty a jar of anything, I can just throw it away. 

On quilting news I am now hand sewing the binding of the Blitzen quilt and will start on the student bird quilt later this week.

Binding Blitzen

 

For the Blitzen quilt, I am alternating holiday fabrics in gold and silver.

I’ve sewn it all around the four sides of the quilt, now I just have to fold it over to the front and pin it all round. 

Nonchalant is Finished

Woo hoo! I finished the Nonchalant quilt. I finished it last night so I haven’t had time to take it outside for beauty shots yet! But soon!

 

Binding Nonchalant

 

As I get older I have had to change the way I do things. While I have no problem hand sewing, when I hold something in my lap, I can't quite see what I am doing, so now I use a card table. One benefit is the quilt isn't on my lap and the pins don't get caught on things like my couch or clothes.

The biggest benefit is the quilt is closer so I can see it, and the table keeps it flat. I can put a light directly on the quilt so it's easy to see while I stitch.

And yes, I do all my finish binding sewing on the front of my quilts. I learned how to blindstitch many many years ago. More than once a quilt appraiser has missed this element of my quilts. I find it endlessly amusing. You can read about WHY I do it here. It's kind of a fun story.

While the stitching is invisible, there are other considerations with the way I bind my quilts. I have written a tutorial about it, and it is available at my Etsy shop.

Beauty Shots

 

I finally got beauty shots of a few quilts and here they are. This is Needle in a Haystack, so named because I hid a purple triangle in the quilt.

This is the Blue Ribbon quilt.

This is the Carnelian quilt. It was an overcast day, so the colors are really true in these photos.

I've also been adding the binding to the Nonchalant quilt.

White Nightingale

 

The White Nightingale quilt is now a flimsy. Here it is on my front porch.  It's really pretty and cheerful.

There is a tutorial for the quilt here, on my Etsy shop. I've said it before, it's one of the easiest quilts you will ever make.

You can also see one of Chuck Hayes's flower sculptures. I got mine from Cherie last year. Her father makes sculptures using leftover scrap metal. You can read more about him here.

Backing for the White Nightingale

 I've been putting the blocks together for the White Nightingale quilt. I haven't quite determined the final layout, but I'm close. I figured I use fabrics from my stash for the backing. I had some very specific fabrics in mind.

I always tell my students never to buy fabric they fall in love with UNLESS they have a specific plan for it.

Sadly, none of us listen. I have had a great weakness for J. Walker Frish fabrics, and bought large chunks of it. It has been languishing in my stash. I'd cut very small pieces of it, but I had a LOT of it. So I decided I would use it for the back of the White Nightingale quilt. In the photo above I have laid out a lot of it on the floor. I need about 84" wide (or 2X WOF) by 100" long.

I set these pieces out so the darks would not be clumped at one end. But then I got to thinking...

Now, I know this is going to sound positively HEATHEN to many of you, but I am planning a quilt like my grandmother made for us - patchwork, with no batting or filling, tied to the backing with crochet cotton and the backing folded over to the front for a binding. This very light quilt will live on top of my top sheet and just below any blanket I will use on the bed (cotton in the summer, washable wool for the rest of the year.)

Since the top is mostly white I didn't want anything dark from the backing to show through, so I went rummaging through my stash to see what else I had that worked stylistically with the J Walker Frisch fabrics.

These worked. So I got to work sewing them all together. Please note that my LEAST FAVORITE task of making quilts is getting the backing ready.

Anyway, that's done. I should have the top done over the weekend, as I now have 20 3x3 blocks ready to assemble.

More White Blocks

 

After I made all the components I sewed the first batch of blocks together and threw them up on the design wall. It looks about like I thought it would. 

After another power sewing session I had enough blocks to cover the design wall. Again, these are not rearranged in any way.

I've decided I want this quilt to function exactly the same way the original black one does - tied but not filled with batting - and living above the top sheet on my bed and underneath the blanket. To that end it needs to be large enough to cover a double bed mattress and be long enough to tuck under the mattress at one end, so I'll be making this (and it's okay, you can laugh at me) 72" x 90".

When I made the original black quilt I made panels that were 24" wide by however tall I liked. Then I arranged them and sewed them into long columns. and then together into the quilt. Here I have decided to make them 18" square, or 3 x 3 blocks. That way I can arrange them in five rows by four to get the size I want. So I have been making these larger 3 x 3 "panels."

So far I have made nine of these, and again, here they are just on the design wall. I'll rearrange them later.

I think this will look really good with white sheets, and it will be summery.

Rainbow Crush Final Thoughts

 

I'm glad I made the Rainbow Crush quilt smaller. It would have been unusable that large.

This was the 3x3 version, and while I could have sewn that up, I'm glad I didn't. This was simply okay to me.

This is the final version. The blocks are smaller and the pattern that runs through the quilt is more complex. I love the irregular zigzags and the blocks blend into each other.

The take-away point is that any quilt you make only needs to satisfy YOU.

Quilt PickUp

 

I drove out to Janet-Lee's and picked up Blitzen, the Christmas Macnas quilt, and Nonchalant, the white one, which had been quilted. They are quite glorious.

What I like about the Blitzen quilt is that it's a Christmas quilt, but it doesn't hit you over the head with the idea of it being Christmas. And for me, Christmas colors are red, green, gold and white, which is why those are the only colors I used in the quilt.

The Nonchalant quilt is one of my favorite quilts. It's ridiculously simple and yet stupidly gorgeous.

I love the quilting design. True and funny story: When I first started getting my quilts quilted, I did not like closely quilted designs. My pal Julie told me I might be wrong about that. Over the years I have changed my mind and once again, dear Julie, you have proven correct. When I tell you all that Julie and I influence each other, I am not joking. I have met the most wonderful friends through blogging.

I am probably going to make another one of these. This quilt will fit anywhere, and everyone who sees it falls in love with it.

The Macnas series, which was Julie's inspiration, proves that a simple shape, with its basic repetition, can be more than a "scrap" quilt - it can be elegant and sophisticated  - as both the quilts above show.

The White Nightingale Begins

 

After I cut the strips for the White Nightingale quilt, I matched them into pairs and in a session of what my pal Julie calls "power sewing" I sewed all the pairs together, then I pressed the seams open.

Then I subcut the strips into smaller chunks.

This does not take long. In the tutorial I wrote that this is probably the easiest quilt ever to make, and I am not joking.

After another session of matching chunks, sewing and pressing, this is a selection of the blocks randomly arranged on my ironing table. This is all looking exactly like what I expected. A happy riot of color.

That's the good part.

In the middle of this - because I don't spend all day every day in my studio - I was working on the spring cleanup in my front yard. Experts suggest you do not rake up the leaves in the autumn but wait till spring to allow the good bugs a place to live, so I do that. Since I am not as young as I used to be, I tend to work out of doors in small bursts. I'll rake for about an hour one day, then bag the leaves another. Works just fine.

Except.

The other morning I woke up with what I thought was a bug bite on my forehead. When a couple of days later the itching went down into my eyelids I got a little nervous and contacted my pal Susan, a retired trauma nurse who also happens to be a quilting buddy. I took pictures (no I am not sharing them with you). She suggested I go to Urgent Care, because it was a Saturday.

Turns out it was Poison Ivy.

Good thing I wear gloves when I work out in the yard. Naturally I have taken all the precautions - discarded the gloves and washed all bedding, clothes and related items in hot water in the Sanitizer setting on my washer. I've also contacted the maintenance department in my development and they will spread weed killer to the area.

I was prescribed antibiotics and steroids, and told to avoid the pool and my swim class until it cleared up.

So that's that!