Amethyst is a Flimsy!

 

The purple quilt I have decided to call Amethyst, is now a flimsy. It measures 66" wide by79" tall. The HST's are 3" and the border is about 6" wide. The binding will be the same fabric as the border.

I also made the border for the orange Carnelian quilt. You can see both bindings hanging with all the others, above. 

I should be getting the Little Boxes, Harlequin and Kangamangus quilts back from the long arm quilter later this week. I'm looking forward to finishing them up.

Amethyst Gets a Border

 

The purple fabric for the border of the Amethyst quilt arrived and after running it through the washer and dryer I cut it in steps and set it next to the quilt. At first I wasn't so sure.

But when I set it all around the quilt and looked at it from a distance, I was happy. So I am working on getting that sewn to the quilt. The binding will be the same purple, so you won't notice it. I already have the backing fabric for it, so it will go in the closet ready to bring to be quilted.

I also ordered orange fabric for the binding of the Carnelian (orange) quilt. So I will be boringly quilty busy the next couple of days.

Amethyst Almost Flimsy

 

Here is a detail of the purple Amethyst quilt. I thought you might like to see some of the fabrics.

Here is the almost flimsy. I say almost because I plan to add a 6" border of dark purple all around, and the fabric hasn't arrived yet.

I went shopping at Home Goods for potholders (because I had a gift card). I didn't see any potholders I liked, so I got this wreath for my front door instead. When I got to the register the gal said, "I just put those out this morning!" Lucky me!

I'm eager for the weather to warm up enough so I can work outside in the yard, cleaning it up for the new year and getting things looking good. I'm planning a small vegetable garden - green beans, cucumbers, zucchini and some peppers, the usual herbs and lettuces and a sunflower or two. I bought a smallish raised bed planter last year and put chives in it. They are coming back nicely and yesterday I planted some Arugula, Spinach and Leaf lettuces. We'll see how they do.

I love Tony Hillerman's detective novels set in Navajo country in the Southwest. I've read them all, and am in the process of re-reading them. They have a wonderful sense of place and his main protagonist, Joe Leaphorn is thoughtful and conscientious. Also in the books are Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito. After Hillerman died his daughter Anne has taken up the characters and the locale and the stories continue. Anne's books focus on Bernadette Manuelito, also a Navajo cop, who is by now married to Jim Chee. The "legendary lieutenant" (Leaphorn) has now retired, but offers his expertise in this new series of books. 

Some of the original Leaphorn books have been made into a television series called Dark Winds. I am not a fan. That they have deviated from the original storylines somewhat doesn't bother me as much as what the TV series has done to Leaphorn himself. They made him do something the original Leaphorn would NEVER have done, and it really bothers me. I'll watch the series because I'm too far along and I want to see how the TV version resolves itself, but I won't watch another one.

Webbing the Purple Quilt

 

I  got most of the HST blocks up on the design wall and then worked on fine tuning the layout, one quarter at a time.

I'm webbing the quilt together, one quarter at a time too.

I have a love-hate relationship with webbing a quilt together.

Here the bottom half of the quilt is sewn together, I am in the process of sewing up the upper left quadrant and I have to fine tune the design of the upper right section. This quilt will have a wide border (I think), and the name of it might be Amethyst, unless I can come up with something better.

More Purples

 

My light purple fabrics came in. 

I ran them through the washer and dryer and made new HSTs.

I started putting the purple HSTs on the wall.

Now I have to tell you, this just wasn't floating my boat. I don't know if it was because I'm still feeling tired from my collision with the pavement two weeks ago, or that purple just isn't my jam. 

I went online and did a search of quilts made from HSTs and got an idea. I rearranged my HSTs, and this gets me worked up. I like this and will have a lot of fun playing with it.

Update

 I was pretty sore the first part of this week. I went out and did an errand Tuesday morning, and was really sore when I got home. I was so sore on Wednesday that I never got dressed, and spent the day mostly sacked out on the couch. My ribs were incredibly sore and it really hurt to yawn and sneeze.

Thursday I got up still sore and decided to take a soak in my big tub. That made a heck of a difference, and I think it was a big turning point, as I began to feel almost normal after that.

I trimmed all the blocks I made.

I put the blocks up on the design wall pretty randomly. 

The blocks that are tilted at an angle are going to go. They stick out too much and they don't "read" as purple or I just don't like them. This is quilt is the kind of quilt that pretty much can succeed no matter where I put the blocks.

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When I put the light fabric above next to blues, it looks purplish, but when it is next to the other purples, it looks too blue, not purple, so it's going.

I just don't like the way this block looks in the quilt. It doesn't really feel purple, so it is going too.  I have placed an order for some light purple/lavender fabrics. So I will be waiting for those to come in before I go farther with this.

I have something else I'm working on, and I'll show you that later.

I'm due for a new set of glasses since I have a new prescription. You know I like frames that are different. I am old enough that I can do whatever the hell I want, so I am getting pink glasses. They will be ready in a couple of weeks.

A Good Day

 The first part of Saturday was terrific. I went to Night Owl Quilting Studio, my LQS, which had a whole lineup of demos and games. It was great fun, but I forgot to take pictures. 

I bought this thread cutter, which has now become my favorite quilting gadget. 

Although I have been resting since my fall on Saturday, I have been doing a bit of sewing. These are the HST's that are ready to go.

These are the HST's that I have yet to trim.

I have 73 unique fabric pair combinations. Here they are on the design wall. Some may work better than others, but I can't tell unless I see them all together.

The fabric for the backing has arrived and is currently making the trip through the washer and dryer. I think this quilt is going to be good.

Although a fall doesn't sound like a big deal, if you are a bit older, like I am, and you smack your head and  some ribs, you are considered to have suffered a trauma, and you have to take it easy. I don't have my usual energy. I've been taking it easy and taking naps. At my age my body will need more time to recover, so I'm not trying to hurry anything along.

National Quilting Day

 

It's kind of annoying when that AWFUL TASK you were putting off for so long turns out to be easier than you thought, and took much less time than you expected.

Such it was with my taxes. Instead of the ordeal I expected, it only took an hour and was relatively painless. I had, however, made sure to have all the documents and information I needed nearby.

Oh well.

That meant I could go into the studio and play with purple. My finished HST's will be 3" so I knew I needed 480 of them. Since I could get 8 HST's out of one square of fabric (above) I calculated I'd need 60 squares. I had 20 dark purples, so that part was easy. (3 of each). I didn't have so much light purplish fabrics, so I scoured my stash and did what I could to get the right number of light squares. I got them all cut out pretty easily. 

Then I paired them up, which you can see in the photo above. I didn't want any group of 8 HST's to be duplicated. No problem there.

Then I mated them and drew the cutting lines on them and clipped them together. I grabbed a random stack and sewed and cut triangles.

This is a sampling. I got them all pressed, but only trimmed one of each,

because I was eager to see them on the design wall. 

Oh yeah, I think this is gonna be good.

I have work to do before I can design the quilt in earnest, but that's OK. I can trim these blocks while I "watch" television.

I won't be doing much of that today, though. I'll be celebrating National Quilting Day at my LQS, the Night Owl Quilting Studio. They have a whole slate of events planned so I will be there having some fun.

Purple Plan

 You all know that I don't start any quilt unless I kinda sorta know where I am going to go with it, and I don't work on more than one quilt at a time. With the Carnelian quilt done and its backing ready, it was time to start thinking about the next quilt, the purple one.

Just like I had never made an all Orange quilt, I have also never made an all purple one. So a few weeks ago I ordered a stack of purple fabrics. I ran them through the washer and dryer and pressed and folded them all, but I had no idea what I was going to do with them. I did know I wanted to do something I had never done before.

Turns out the inspiration for the quilt lt was living on the back of my couch. That is the Partly Sunny quilt. It has quite a story. Julie designed the top, had second thoughts, redesigned it, sewed it together and then had third thoughts. It languished in her studio for almost a year. It took me that long to get up the nerve to tell her I liked her original design much better and that I really, Really, REALLY liked it. It got to be quite a joke between us. After many months of good natured ribbing, Julie sent me the flimsy and I added the wide border and had it quilted and finished it.

ANYWAY... I thought, HST's! What an idea!

I know that a lot of quilters use AccuCut to cut HST's, but I do not have one, and I knew there are spiffy ways to make multiple HST's so I searched the internet to find some. Naturally, that was easy as pie.

I found a nifty way to make 8 of them at once. After I tested the technique, I started cutting my fabrics.

Here are the light purples. My HST's will be light and dark. I have about 20 - 24 darks and 15 lights I will use. I have some others that are a bit too dark to be light, and some that are a bit too busy. Some of these might push the envelope, but I don't want a humdrum quilt, so we'll see.

Now I might be a few more days before I get to blogging again because I have to do my taxes and we all know how much fun that is.

by the way, this is the jigsaw puzzle I'm working one. QUITE a challenge, this!