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!

Picnic Table

Here's the rail fence quilt on my dining room table.  I'm pleased with it.

Picnic Table in the Snow

My rail fence quilt is finished. I've decided to call it "Picnic Table" since it's got ants and bugs on it.  What outside picnic table is free of those? As for the snow...

Yes, that's freshly fallen snow. We got about four inches last night.

That's on top of the forty or fifty inches we've had already this winter. (sigh)

I used those new "wonder clips."  The big advantage is they don't get caught on everything the way regular pins do.  And they don't stab me when I'm moving the quilt around while sewing the binding down.

The disadvantage is that I have to remove them before the quilt goes through the sewing machine, so I have to hold the binding in place by hand. Not only is that a pain, but the result isn't the even perfection that I like. It isn't bad, and since I only machine sew bindings on quilts that are designed to get a lot of hard use, it's not really a big issue, but the perfectionist in me bristles a bit.

However I think these will be a big help when I am hand sewing the binding down by hand.

For those who asked how I apply my binding, here you go: I cut it 3 inches (7.62cm) wide and join the strips at an angle. I fold it lengthwise, wrong sides together. I line up the raw edges of the binding on the WRONG side of the quilt and sew it down 3/8" away from the edge. Then I fold it over to the FRONT of the quilt and sew it down. This way the folded edge covers the seam nicely and it's easy to sew down. Naturally I miter all the corners and join the ends at an angle so the whole thing lies nice and flat.