What Else....

 I've told you all that I'm working on a quilt for my son and DIL, but as I will be having the floor in the studio replaced in the next few weeks, I'm also going through everything in the studio to determine whether I want to keep it or not, and clean everything that's left.

This is the top of one of the small bookcases, Notice the dust!

I cleaned everything, the mugs, the items in them, and put it all back. Notice I put all the buttons I found as I cleaned into one of the jars I had kept.

I cleaned these two taborets and sorted through everything in them. I got rid of a big bag of sewing notions: zippers, findings, ribbons, trims, buttons and other stuff, then resorted the stuff I had stored in them, and labelled everything. (Ergo buttons in a new jar.)

I figured cleaning out this bookcase would be easy, but it wasn't. I have quilting books from when I first started making quilts, over 50 years ago. Th ere were a lot of memories in those books.

Sorting through them was tough, and I didn't keep all of them. I more or less sorted them into "historical" and "how-to" and put the ones I look at most often together. I also moved printed copies of my tutorials to this bookshelf, as they seemed to belong there.

Anyway, I've got all the stuff clean. Now I have to sort through the fabric in the bins and decide if I want to keep it. 

I've been alternating between working ON the studio and IN the studio. 

I have all the strip pairs sewn together for the Field of Dreams quilt. So that's moving along as well.

Field of Dreams

 

My son and DIL have decided the name of the Green quilt should be "Field of Dreams." 

I finished sewing all the strip pairs.

I'm starting to subcut the strips into chunks. That should take me a couple of days.

Here's a sample block, so you can all see where this is going.

I think it's going to be beautiful.

Work Begins

 

Work on my son's "No Batting Quilt" begins. I will call it NBQ until I find another more suitable name.

I started cutting strips, and then did some math. The quilt will be quite large by my standards, but hey, it's for my son so naturally that isn't an issue. I just need to make a lot more blocks, so I needed a lot of fabric. This is the first batch of strips that I cut.

This is almost all the strips that I cut. After I took this photo I added about five or six lighter greens to the mix and cut them into strips.

I matched the strips into pairs and then sewed a few together.

These are some of the pairs I sewed together before I called it a night.

This quilt is a Nightingale quilt in all but color. It is made in exactly the same way. It is very easy. You can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

We Interrupt...

 We all have special people in our lives who, when they ask, "Hey Ma (or Memere, Grammy, Auntie, Sis, or whatever), can you make me a quilt..." the answer is always YES!

My son texted me yesterday afternoon, "Are you making no-batting quilts now? Like my old one that you made for me when I went to college? [My wife] and I love those. Can you make us a sage green one?"

"Yes," I texted back, "I made one for my bed.  Of course I will make one for you two."

"Can you put some dark greens in too?" he asked, "Foresty. We have a Queen bed. We love my old one. DW wants light green and I want dark green."

"OF COURSE, I will make you whatever colors you want.

I sent this picture to them, telling them this was my entire green stash.

DIL texts back that she likes that green with the pink, and can I incorporate that fabric? Well my dear, your wish is my command, so I pulled more greens with pink.

Here are some more sage-y greens.

I kept pulling fabrics. Here are greens with pinks and other colors.

And here are some more. I'll need at least 35-40 fabrics and I think I have that number here.

Here are all of them together. Obviously if I need more darks or lights I'll add them, but this is enough to get me going.

I know I said my next quilt would be the second Student bird quilt, but hey, family takes precedence. My DIL is getting to the age where she has hot flashes at night and a quilt like this will help keep her more comfortable at night, especially as summer approaches.

Julie would say SQUIRREL!!!

I can't wait to get started.

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. 

.

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.

.

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.

.

I mitered the corners.

.

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

.

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.