Nonchalant is a Flimsy

 

The Nonchalant Macnas Quilt is a flimsy. It is 56" x 72". I guess there were more creamy WOWs than I expected. The sun was hiding behind the clouds when I took this picture.

But the sun came out briefly so I could take this photo of the quilt in the sun!

Binding Peonies

 

I had made the binding for the Peonies quilt just after I finished it, so all I had to do was sew it to the quilt. Regular readers know I sew my bindings to the back of my quilts, and then do the finish hand sewing on the front.

It's going to be really pretty.

A Small Diversion

 

It's not unusual for me to have a lot of things going on, but it doesn't mean they don't annoy me. 

 

The Sweet Sixteen quilt has been sitting on the chair in my studio for some time,

I decided to try it on the dining room table. I liked the way it looked, so I dug in the studio for some possible binding options.

Years ago during the selvage quilt fad I stripped the selvages from fabric in my stash. This fabric didn't have a selvage on it,so it's been in my stash for some time.

I got right to work cutting the strips and sewing them together.

Then I added them to the quilt. I'll be sewing the binding to the front while I watch TV.

Chocoloate Crinkle Cookies & Color

 

My DGD and I made Chocolate Crinkle Cookies via FaceTime yesterday. They came out great on both coasts. I can't tell you how much this simple thing lifts my spirits.

The Defying Gravity Quilt is all done. There was a lot of good tennis on TV over the last few days, and I stitched through most of it. I was quite surprised to turn the last corner.

This was my view yesterday morning. (Did you think I was joking?)

Julie saw the photo of the quilt in my lap (above) and mentioned the "scrappy goodness." Yes, this is a scrap quilt, but SCRAPPY does NOT mean RANDOM. I am always very aware of the fabrics I put together.

I thought you might like to check out all the different fabrics.

The fabrics are all scraps, but they look like they belong together.

This particular diamond is dark on one half and lighter on the other because this block sits between a light green diamond and a dark green one. So this one is a bridge.

There are all kinds of blues, light blues, cool blues, warm blues. If you want a block to look unified, you can't mix different blues too much. There can't be a lot of contrast in the block itself. You can't just slap two blues together and think it'll work because they are both "blue."

Lavenders are hard because there aren't very many of them manufactured in a particular year. Several of the ones in the block above are over14 years old. This shows the benefit of keeping small scraps. (because you can't make a scrap quilt without them.)

This block pushes the boundaries, but if you look at it and squint, it "reads" as light pink, and it fits where it is placed in the quilt, which is the most important thing.

As far as I am concerned, all other things being equal, fabric selection determines the success or failure of a quilt.

So Scrappy does NOT mean RANDOM. Scrappy is every bit as thoughtful as the most thoughtful "art" or "show: quilt. It is by no means "careless."  But then, the best quilts are never carelessly designed or made.

 

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt. If you want a fun way to use up your scraps, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Second Banana

 

Once the Going Bananas flimsy was sewn together, I turned my attention to the remaining blocks. I had a lot of blocks with a strong light/dark contrast, so I decided to start with those.

I filled the blanks with the other blocks, trying to balance the colors.

I did a bit of tinkering, and had this. I liked it, so I pulled the blocks off the wall and started sewing them together. 

I just kept going.

Here it is all sewn together. The name was obvious. This is The Second Banana. Two flimsies in two days. W00t!

Four Rows

I am sewing the All Together Now blocks together in vertical rows. There are four vertical rows sewn together.

This pattern, the every-other-same-shape is called a "counterchange pattern." It is a design in which a certain color of the motif and its ground are reversed. Here the motif is a triangle. I chose this design because I liked the graphic quality of it - the very "design-ness." I had thought that you would see triangles together making bigger and bigger diamonds, but the pattern is so relentlessly repetitive, you don't see that. It makes a great scrap quilt, and yet it is very modern and doesn't look "scrappy."

I like it more and more the more I work on it. 

 

This is a scrap slab triangle quilt, and you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop, if you want to make one.

 

 

I've been watching CNN and am impressed as hell with John King and his "Magic Board."

Black Scrap Triangles

 

I thought you'd enjoy seeing some of the scrappy black triangles I made from the slabs. As you can see I sew my scraps together, mixing prints I think look good together. Then I cut them up into shapes.

They are sewn together more or less randomly. I do not do "pure random." I put things together that look good. Pure random can look really ugly and I don't do ugly.

The gray cat above. Think he's arbitrarily cut? Um, no. Neither is the lady in the first photo.

And the rose in the second triangle from the left, above. Think that is placed by accident? Um, no. When you get a lovely shape like that, you USE IT!

By and large, the colors or shapes relate somehow. I don't get all worked up about it. This IS a scrappy quilt, but wherever I could see a little magic happening, I nudged it along.

These pieces aren't sewn together yet. I'll be working on that in the days to come.

If you want to make a quilt like this you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

MHT2MEM

Almost five years ago Julie visited me at my house, we went to see quilts from the Pilgrim & Roy collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, we visited the Zimmerman House in Manchester NH which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and we spent some time sewing this quilt. You can read about it here.

I gave the quilt top to Julie and she actually put  her clothes in a box to ship home UPS so she could fit the quilt top in her suitcase to take with her.

The quilt was quilted and Julie added the black and white piano key binding, but I had never seen the finished quilt. I asked Julie if I could borrow it to show at my talk to the Rising Star Quilt Guild on March 26th.

When I opened the box and unfolded the quilt I was struck by how beautiful it was.

"It's more beautiful than I remember" I texted Julie.

Her reply was a smiling emoji surrounded by hearts.

Julie and I even collaborated on the signature panel on the back. I made the letters and the numbers in the date, and she make the tall pink bird. I made the short blue bird. (I am shorter than Julie.)



By the way, the quilt's title, MHT2MEM means "Manchester to Memphis." MHT is the three letter abbreviation for the airport in Manchester NH (where I lived) and MEM is the abbreviation for the airport in Memphis, where Julie lives.

In Which Lynne Discovers Nirvana

I liked the Parade of Zebras quilt, but I wasn't in love with it. There was something wrong with it. I didn't know quite what.

I thought I'd put a border on it, so I rummaged through my still-not-organized stash to see what I might have enough of. The two black and whites on the right were an option, but no. The one on the top was circles and that just didn't seem right, since the quilt was stripes. And the one on the bottom was just... no. The quilt needed a darker border, not a light one.

As I sat in my chair looking at the quilt, I looked around the floor at the fabric I had stacked there. In the pile was this wild digital print I had bought last summer. I thought, what the hell.

So I stuck it up on the wall next to the quilt and stood back. I wasn't quite sure when I looked at the picture in the camera, but when I looked at the QUILT I knew it was perfect. It had a lot of the same colors, and it just felt right. Immediately I took it off the wall, ironed it and cut strips, sewed them together into one long strip and then started sewing it to the quilt itself.

I sewed it to one side of the quilt, cut the strip, ironed it, then turned the corner and sewed the strip to the next side, and kept going the whole way around. As soon as I ironed the first strip I knew it was a winner.

As I was sewing it to the quilt, I remembered something my son said to me once, "You know what I like about you Mom? When you go over the top, you keep going."

Now the whole quilt seems to fit together. There is a lot of purple in the quilt, and there is a lot of purple in the border fabric. In fact, the border has all the colors of the quilt in it. And the dark keeps the lighter stripes from running off the edges.

It looks good here, but it's ten times better in real life. I absolutely LOVE this quilt now.

Now I can also resume cleaning and organizing the stash.

I Changed My Mind!

When I got home from work last night, I started dinner, and then went into the studio while it cooked, and reviewed my pairs. I thought they were a little boring, so I tried sewing up a livelier set. Check this out.

OH YEAH! I liked this a lot, so I did a bit of rearranging and then cut up some more strips.

I tried to give each pair a little POP, but this is an admittedly conservative group.

These all look good, but there's nothing earth shattering here. That's OK, if we have busy fabrics in there, we need some calmer ones hanging out as well to balance it all out.

These are going to work well. A nice collection of pairs with a slightly livelier print in each than the previous ones.

The surprise here, for those that are paying attention, is the fabric with the bras in the middle. 
Must. Have. Sense. Of. Humor.

(Actually, I think all artists are somewhat subversive. I know I am.)

Every fabric in this group was originally planned to go with something else, but when I started down the busier print path, the possibilities expanded so I had to switch things around. All 8 of these fabrics are most definitely NOT fuglies. I just had a lot more of the busy dark ones than I knew I would use much of.

I love this pair.

If the fabric is wide enough, two fat quarters will give me a piece big enough to get these four pieces, and they are all different, so that's important. I have to be careful to cut enough of all four shapes so I can arrange my quilt the way I want. And right now I am NOT thinking about regular diamonds, like the inspiration quilt.

In fact, right now I'm sewing strips, so I'll get to the design part later. This is going to be fun.

A Cropped View

I haven't cropped the scrappy diamond quilt, Splendid, but I wanted to see what it looked like when it was trimmed, so I did a camera crop. I am really happy with the way this is looking and will likely enter this in some national quilt shows next year.

Splendid!

As I was sewing the blocks together I realized I would have a not symmetrical quilt. The bottom row would have quarter diamonds in each corner, but the top would have half diamonds. That annoyed me, so I went back to the stash and started digging. I pulled some darkish fabrics in the colors I thought I needed and cut some large diamonds, then went to the design wall and started tinkering.

MOST of the changes are in the top two rows, but there is one change along the lower right side.  I confess I haven't been spending as much time sewing this together as I probably should, but I have spent the last few evenings relaxing on the couch with a good beach book. I'll get it sewn up soon enough.

It isn't perfect, but hey, every single one of these 62 fabrics came from my stash. There are 65 giant diamonds, all are BIG prints, and 13 of them are left over from backings from various quilts. I consider that a big victory.  This quilt proves the value of a good stash. If you want to read more about my stash, click HERE.