The Table Quilts & A Few Ideas

When I visited my pal Julie in 2013 I was surprised to see a quilt covering the table in her kitchen. I thought it was a good idea to protect the table and a nice way to show off a quilt. I inherited my grandmother's mahogany dining room table, and I have to keep it covered to protect the surface. A quilt would do that quite nicely.  Over the years I have made seven.

I use the rail fence quilt, Picnic Table in January.

I wanted a red and white quilt for February. This is Peppermint Swirl.

I made a black and white Slashed Squares quilt for the month of March. I call it Terrazzo.

I like using "Hidden Treasure," the quilt Julie made for me using my leftover bits for April.

The Tumblers quilt, Easter Basket, is the one I use for the month of May.

I like using the Blue Deco quilt for June, and the rest of the summer.

The Fall House Top quilt is the one I use for November and the big Thanksgiving Feast.

The Christmas Random Plank is the quilt for December.

I like having different quilts for each month, but if I do that, I am missing quilts for July, August, September and October.  So I had to think about that. Do I really want to have a quilt for each month of the year?  YES! What would I do for those? My birthday is in July, so I knew that would have to be something special.

The quilts I have tend to be seasonal colors, so according to that August should be hot colors or red orange and yellow. September is probably my favorite month of the year - the weather is perfect, and October is peak fall foliage season, so that means reds, yellows and oranges with some greens and blues. Well, ok, but August and October aren't anything alike, and I don't want them to have the same colors. Maybe August could be beach colors - sandy tans for the beach, light blues for the sky and blue greens for the ocean...

I like that idea for August, so that's a go.

When I started looking at fabric shops online the idea for July came to me like a thunderbolt.  

I like Pink, and although it isn't necessarily my favorite color, I wear a lot of it because I look good in it.

 So the quilt for July will be Pink. (Then I bought about 13 yards of 28 different pinks!)

I like the quilts to be different designs too. I want to make a scrap slab quilt for one of these, and when the Wavelength quilt showed signs of looking three-dimensional, I got out my little notebook and did this drawing. It looks like a honeycomb, and as soon as that word popped into my head I knew that would be the theme of this quilt and that it would be the quilt for October.

And for that quilt, I may very well use White on Black fabrics for the dark side triangles instead of just darker Black on Whites. I'll experiment, of course, and see. I've got plenty of time.

That leaves September, but I'm not going to worry about that at all. I only have color ideas for July and August, and that's never stopped me in the past, but I do have a very specific idea for October, so that's where I'll start.

The next quilt is: Honeycomb, in Golds, Oranges, and Yellows for October!

It's That Time of Year...

As much as I'd like to deny it, summer is ending. The air is cooler in the morning, and I need a light jacket to keep me warm on my way to work. The leaves are beginning to change color. 

It's time for the Fall House Top quilt on the dining room table. Last year it was a flimsy, this year, it's the real thing.

I've also got some plants for the garden. Some ornamental grasses for the front steps, some Yarrow and some Hyssop for the side garden, a ground cover for the rock garden and a couple of things to add to my shade garden that didn't make it in this spring, some Goatsbeard and  a Black Eyed Susan.

The cooler weather also means I'll be making more soup. This is a batch of Roasted Vegetable Stock that's simmering on the stove.

It's supposed to be cooler tomorrow, so I'll spend tomorrow in the sewing studio.

Fall House Top Beauty Shots

It's Saturday and it's sunny. I've painted my front steps (finally. I've been meaning to do it since I moved in) and did the groceries and other errands. So I grabbed the quilt and the camera and set off...

Fall House Top Finish

When I bought my sofa last year, the last thing I was looking for was a dark gray one, but this charcoal sofa looks good with anything, and the Fall House Top quilt is no exception. While watching tennis last night I folded the binding over to the front and pinned it in place. Then I sewed it down.

I'll take beauty shots this weekend.

Cheryl, this is what my table looked like the night before Thanksgiving last year. Everything was ready for a big family dinner. (The quilt was only a flimsy then.)

 Overnight we got about 20 inches of heavy wet snow that knocked out power to my house for three days.

Fortunately my sister had power at her house, so we simply moved the feast over there. 

"Make sure you bring that quilt!!!" she told me.


One of the reasons we love quilts is the stories they tell. This quilt has a good story.

Fall House Top and a Pin Rant

The big Fall House Top quilt is back from being quilted. I trimmed it and made the binding last night.

 I'm going to use it as a table covering in the fall (and particularly for Thanksgiving dinners) so the backing fabric is all food related. The quilt is 54" wide and 109" long.

And I have officially decided I do NOT like those binding clips. I much prefer pins. Julie and Sharon both say I use a lot of pins.

I say "Tant pis!" (It's French. You can go translate it if you want.)

Why pins? They hold the layers together, without anything shifting and you can sew over them!

Later tonight I'll fold the binding over to the front (yes, you heard that right) and sew it down. Since I'll be using this as a table cover, I'll sew the binding down by machine.

And yes, I'll use six million four hundred twenty three thousand eight hundred ninety five pins.

LOL


PS. I've added a couple of things to my Tutorials page for your reference. 1. How I blindstitch and 2. How I add the hanging sleeve to the back of my quilts. 

Back! Back!

The thing I dislike most about making quilts is getting the backing ready.  The Fall House Top quilt is 56" wide by 110" long, so the backing has to be 68" wide by 122" long.  THAT'S BIG!

(My longarm quilter, Chris, asks that the backing be 6" bigger than the quilt on all four sides. Since I love Chris and the work she does for me, I oblige her.)

Here are the fabrics I found (in my stash) that I'll be using for the backing. Since the quilt is going to be used as a tablecloth, the food themed fabrics are appropriate. There will be a panel of the black martini style fabric, then a strip of the forks, then the coffee themed fabric, then another strip of the forks, then the martini fabric.

At least in my new living room I have space to lay out a piece of fabric 122" long.  My goal for the weekend is to get the backing all done.

Fall House Top Flimsy is Complete

The Fall House Top quilt flimsy is complete. It's 56" x 110" or so. Here it is on my fully extended dining room table.

Normally a quilt like this would have a border, but this one won't. It already hangs down 8" on all sides, which is enough for a tablecloth without being a pain for the people sitting at the table. When the extra leaves are removed and the drop leafs are lowered, the quilt still looks good.

After Thanksgiving I'll send it to Chris for quilting.

Pat wanted me to take pictures of the Thanksgiving table when it is set. The table will look great. Do you know I have Fiestaware dishes?? (You're not surprised at all, right?)

Nine

Here are nine Fall House Top blocks sewn together with the sashing and cornerstones.

Here it is laid out on my dining room table, to get an idea of what it will look like when it is finished. 

When It's Wrong, You Know It

I've finished sewing the 18 blocks needed for my Autumn table cover.  Then I calculated how much fabric I would need for the sashing.  Hmm. I didn't have enough of one fabric, and I didn't want to buy more. This is a scrap quilt, and I wanted to use what I had. 

I had quite a lot of this martini fabric. I expected it to be wrong, but I had to give it a go.  As you can see, it was an epic fail.  But nothing ventured, nothing gained. I tell my students it's easy to tell when it's wrong, and it's not hard to know when it's right. It's when it's so-so that we have difficulties.  The secret is to recognize, and admit that it isn't doing anything for you. (See "The Value of Meh")

After a lot of agonizing, and going through my stash to find something big enough so all the sashing pieces would be made of the same fabric, I said "The hell with it. It's a scrap quilt," and I started cutting the sashing pieces out of two separate dark fabrics.

I started laying the blocks out on the floor to get a feel for how to arrange them and quickly realized it didn't much matter, that they would look good no matter how they were arranged.  So I lay out some of the sashing strips to see what that would look like, then I lay out a few little squares to see what color I wanted those to be. Did I want them to show up (in which case I would make them gold) or did I want them to disappear (in which case I would make them brown) or did I simply want them subtle (in which case I would make them green.)

I think I like all three. What the heck. When you're going over the top, keep going.

Fall House Top Blocks 13 - 18

Woo hoo! The last six fall house top blocks are finished. These blocks are BIG - about 18" square.

Closing in on the Fall House Top Blocks

I'm almost finished the Fall House Top blocks.  I've been using the strips I cut, rummaging through the pile on my cutting table.

I've been keeping all the little bits I cut off from the long strips, so I sewed some pieces together to add some variety to the blocks.

Since I've only got six blocks left to finish, I figured I better use these right away.

These need one row on each side to be finished. I've also checked through my stash to find fabrics for the sashing between the blocks and the backing and binding. I think I've got them all worked out, but you know how it is. You never know until you actually put stuff next to each other.

Anyway, I'm getting there and I'm happy.



PS, my quilt, The Black Box, was accepted into the AQS Albuquerque show in January 2015. W00t! 

Fall House Tops 9, 10, 11, 12

I finished four more blocks yesterday.

 I have no particular plan in how I arrange the fabrics in these blocks.

 I only try to vary the pattern, color and scale of the fabrics.

The biggest rule is to try to avoid BLOBS (which are any place where there is TOO much of the same thing in one spot. Too much dark, too much BRIGHT, too much BUSY.)

Hah!  Look at the upper right hand corner of this block. I goofed, but so what?

By the way, all these fabrics came from my stash. Some of these are years and years old, some come from fat quarters I've picked up over time, some were given to me by my friends, and if you can believe it, at least two are my absolute FAVORITE fabrics.

You know what I say, "It's only fabric, it isn't GOLD, and it isn't doing you any good on the shelf."

What are you keeping it for? If you leave this earth before you use all your favorite stuff, do you want it to go in the trash or donated to some careless quilter? Use it, or lose it.