Blitzen

 The Christmas Macnas quilt is a finished flimsy. I've decided to call it BLITZEN.

Merry Christmas!

The Sticker

I was shopping at the Night Owl Quilting Studio when I saw this sticker for sale. 

Yeah. Had to take that home with me.

I stuck it on my sewing machine. I sent the picture to my friend Julie. and she asked if I could get one for her.

So I did.

 

It's in the Details

The design for the Christmas Macnas Quilt is very predictable and basic, but that doesn't have to mean boring. I have done some things to make it a little bit special. To wit: 

Notice how the evergreen trees all point UP, the arches on the red blocks point UP, at the cats with the little red caps are also right side up.

The letters in the light fabric are all right side up...

And all the cars going "over the river and through the woods" are facing in the same direction. This isn't a big deal, but your eye notices these subtleties. 

Of course, you don't want to do this. (Sigh.)

Here, the top eight rows are all pieced together into one panel. In the lower left quadrant, the pieces are all sewn together in rows.

Working Out the Kinks

 

I replaced the fabrics that weren't working. (I left the cats alone. They were fun.)

Now for the slightly complicated part. 

I like my comfort quilts 60" x 72". With this size blocks, that works out to 15 blocks across by 19 down. In the photo above, there are 14 blocks. OK, no biggie, just add a block to the end of each row. Well, thing is, there are rules.

Rules?

EVERYBODY has rules in their quilts! These are the internal rules we believe will make the quilt better, or how we distribute the fabrics, colors, or whatever.

In this quilt, there is a pattern: Red, Green, Multi (repeat). Five Repeats equals fifteen blocks. BINGO!

AND the pattern of the blocks shifts by one-half block in each row.

BACK TO WORK!!

Christmas Macnas in Progress

 

Since I wanted the blocks to be arranged regularly, and on the diagonal, work on the quilt moved right along.

A couple of days later I had all the blocks on the design wall and the design was complete.

There were a couple of things I wasn't quite comfortable with, but after a lot of intense work, I needed to take a break. I took some detailed photos, so maybe you can see some of things that bothered me.

These are okay.

.

The light fabric between the dark green and the lollipops is too bland.

The striped fabric next to the cats doesn't "read" as one color and it's distracting. And I'm not sure about the cats.

The musical notes fabric isn't working. Again, it's distracting.

OK, more work to do.

Christmas Macnas Begins

 Most of the Macnas quilts have blocks that are more-or-less randomly arranged, but for the Christmas Macnas Quilt, I thought about arranging them in diagonal rows, like a candy cane. So I cut some blocks, made some pairs and put them up on the design wall. I thought this was pretty good, so I kept going.

It looked okay, but I figured I'd need more than four rows to tell me if I really liked it.

This showed I definitely needed more rows. but it also showed some things I didn't like.

For one thing, there was a particular fabric that I just like, so I had to take those down, and find other fabric to use in it's place.

For another, I had to rearrange the blocks so they were angled more like a real candy cane.

The overall look is getting closer to what I wanted, but some pairs didn't work well next to others, and I had to change several.

For example, in a close up view of the photo above, you can see four very busy fabrics next to each other (which I don't like), and one light fabric that while a Holiday gold fabric, just looks blah.

This is the kind of thing that often looks good on your worktable, but just really bad once you get it up on the wall.

Changes will have to be made. What else is new?

The Next One

 

I've been sewing the blocks of Little Brother together. The big sections on the left are sewn together as is a big section at the upper right. I've been sewing the blocks in rows of seven blocks instead of one long complete row of fourteen blocks just because it's easier to wrangle. This might have a border, or not. I haven't decided yet. But I do have the backing on order.

A couple of weeks ago I got the brilliant idea of making a Christmas Quilt. So I ordered a bunch of Christmas themed fabrics, without really having a specific plan for them. They arrived yesterday, and I ran them through the washer and dryer.

The Christmas quilts and wall hangings I already have are red, green and white, with some gold. I don't have blues or other colors. It just isn't my thing, so I kept the fabrics I ordered in that range. I ordered some reds,

These can best be described as "multi's."

These are greens (duh).

And these are the whites and lights.

Some of these I found in my Christmas stash. It's pretty clear to me that a Christmas Macnas Quilt would work with these, so that's the next one.

I've actually got several Macnas themed quilt ideas floating around in my head.

So, Wordle. It's a puzzle. You have six tries to guess a five letter word. I like to start with a particular word. My current streak is 160. My win rate is 98%. I used to think I was pretty good, but a friend of mine consistently got the answer in fewer guesses than I did. Anyway, I don't care how many guesses I need as long as I solve the thing. 

What's really funny, is that I am MUCH MUCH better when I trust my gut. So I will put in my first guess, and the thing tells me if I have any letters that are correct. Then I have a standard second guess. I like knowing if I've got the vowels. What's funny is after that guess a word often pops into my head. I mean it just POPS! I don't know where it comes from. I have learned to trust it, because most of the time, that is the correct word. Sometimes I will consider the word that pops into my head, and look at the results in the game and my brain comes up with many other options (or it simply has no logical idea whatsoever) and I think, No, it couldn't possibly be THAT, and I will enter some logical answer only to be told it is wrong.

And then, when I give in and say, oh what the fart, I'm going to enter what my Gut says, and I do, and damn it, my gut was right.

You would THINK I would listen to said gut all the time. 

Nope. My BRAIN has to butt in and be all logical about it.

Today's World 1642, after my two guesses, my gut gave me a word, and I didn't listen. Fourth guess I enter what my gut's answer and it was right.

Too freaking funny.

Sew Me Up!

 

I've started to sew the Little Brother quilt together. It goes pretty quick.

Here is a detail so you can see some of the fabrics. The eggs are from the leftover backing of the Flight of Fancy quilt and the grey with the butterfly is from the leftover backing of the Partly Sunny quilt.

These are the extra yellows that DID NOT make it into the quilt. Pretty sure a Yellow Macnas quilt is in the not-too-distant future.

Owlfan wanted to know what I will do with the blocks that did not make the cut. Good question.

Normally I throw them in a box marked "Leftovers" for scavenging later. Sometimes I "harvest" fabric by unstitching it from its partner and using it again. Sometimes I use extra blocks in the backing of a quilt. I don't generally get all worked up about them. To me they are often simply "the cost of doing business."

~  ~  ~

OH! I have a funny story. My buddy Julie and I frequently exchange calendars we make of our quilts. She wrote to me asking me if I needed a calendar for 2026, then later I discovered she was planning a calendar of all her Macnas quilts for 2027...

"WAIT," I texted, "You are planning a 2027 calendar ALREADY????"

"Guilty as charged," she texted back. "...LOL, go ahead and laugh."

"In the great scheme of all that is Julie," I wrote back to her, "I have to say I am not surprised." 

(Julie always impresses me with her organization and planning. She actually has a list of quilts she PLANS to make and WHEN she is going to make them. Me, I normally have no freaking clue what I am going to do next much less when I am going to do it.)

Little Brother Grows Up

 

I did some power sewing to complete enough blocks to cover the design wall and then I put them up.

So this is what I ended up with. This is only okay. It needs a lot of work and fine tuning.

The next morning I gave it a good look and pulled out some blocks where I thought the gray was too light or not "gray" enough.

These are the blocks I removed. I loved the prints across the top, the floral print, the letters and the cream print. The ones on the bottom row were simply too light. Sometimes you have to "kill your darlings;" get rid of the things you love if they don't work. These didn't, so they had to go.

This isn't it, but it's getting closer.

More blocks got removed and new blocks replaced them.

Eight versions later, this looks to be it, and what I will sew together.

Little Brother Progress

I usually go to my Arthritis Swim class on Fridays. I had an appointment on Friday morning, and then I headed over to the Y. As soon as I got into the Women's Dressing Room, I was told I had to leave and use the Family Dressing Room next door. They weren't kidding. Somewhere a pipe had bust and was leaking into the Dressing room.

So I moved my stuff next door, and tried to find a locker to stow my gear and my big puffy winter coat. That wasn't happening. The only lockers available were the tiny ones. While I was hanging my coat on one of the rows of hooks available, I overheard one of the lifeguards saying they had had to notify the folks in the pool that they had to move their belongings. I started to wonder.

I looked down the hall to the entrance of the pool, I noticed a puddle of standing water. Back in the dressing room, I took off my shirt (I go to the Y already wearing my swimsuit under my clothes.) I thought for a minute. What was it going to be like AFTER the class was over, and twenty ladies were looking for places to change? The family dressing room did not have a sauna (a really great place to dry off after swimming.)

I decided I didn't need to be a part of that mess, so I put my clothes back on, got my coat, and went home.

Where I matched up more pairs, sewed them up and then tossed them on the design wall. I would have liked to have got more done, but at this time of the year the sun goes away mid-afternoon and given the temperature outside was 23 F and the windchill brought the temps down to  6F, and it was getting chilly in the studio.

Bear in mind, I haven't done any tinkering with the blocks on the wall. I just threw them up there. I'm happy in the direction this is going.

Happy Birthday Mary L!
 

Little Brother Gets Bigger

 

I have been having fun making pairs of yellow and gray. These are just tossed on the design wall willy-nilly. I can't really start designing the quilt until I have enough blocks to cover the design wall.

While you can't see it in the photo, a lot of the grays look very light, and I wanted to add a few middle-range grays, so I chose these. In the end I didn't use the second one from the left, because it looked closer to purple.

Since the quilt is supposed to relate the the Partly Sunny quilt, I set that quilt on the floor so I can look at the two of them together. I'm having a lot of fun. This won't take long.

Little Brother

 

After my pieces were all cut I had to see what they looked like, so I paired up a few and sewed them up.

I threw them up on the design wall, and it's clear this is going to work.

I took my Mom out shopping and then we had lunch. I showed her this quilt and when I said I wanted this quilt to relate to the Partly Sunny quilt she commented, "Like the new quilt is the little brother, right?"

Thanks Mom, for naming the new quilt.

Partly Sunny - Partly Cloudy

Here are my golden yellow blocks.

Julie gave me a boxful of grays, and I added these from my own stash. I waned a few grays that had some extra colors in them. One of the things that makes Julie's Partly Sunny quilt so special is her use of a wide variety of grays - lights, medium and darks. So I made sure to add some light grays and some dark grays.

Here I have randomly set out the gray blocks on top of the yellows just to see if I have an equal (or close)   number of yellows and grays.

Next up: I get to play matchmaker!!

When it Doesn't Work

 

I made a few gray and those jewel toned blocks and put them up on the design wall. I wasn't too thrilled. It would have been "okay" but nothing special. I always tell my students that when we get it right, we know right away. When it doesn't work at all, we usually know that too, but it's that in-between time when we are not sure that is the hard part. In this case it simply fell flat. 

So if I want to use the jewel toned colors of purple, blue and green, I'll need another color other than gray. Creams and whites with colors would also work, as shown above.

The grays with lights would work also, but I'm not much interested in making a mostly gray quilt.

This is a detail of Partly Sunny, the quilt Julie made for me. Yellows would be a great pair with the grays. It would also be a quilt I could use as a table quilt when I display the Partly Sunny quilt in the living room.

So I pulled warm yellows out of my stash, and will use those.

Now I am excited!