Tag Archives: Pickled Ladies Quilt

Pickled Ladies and the Pastry Shop

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Sounds like a funny book title, doesn’t it?  As it’s time for the February Clamshell Club report, I’m showing the Pickled Ladies that got finished this month.  Not as many as I had hoped, but half a dozen to add to the mix is progress.  To see more clamshell reports from other participants, check in here at Cybele’s Patch to find those links.

On the weekend, a new Inklingo Pies and Tarts collection was released.  While I’ve often thought  the quilt was appealing, there was no way I was going to make anything that required English paper piecing.  Now?  Now I can make it with a simple running stitch and some continuous stitching as I’ve got perfect shapes with stitching lines marked on the back of my fabrics.

Of course, I had to start making some of the blocks and have printed enough shapes now to make a small quilt.  Mr. Q.O. suggested naming it Pastry Shop.  And that’s how the Pickled Ladies have ended up in a post with the Pastry Shop.  The back:

We had yet more snow on the weekend, but it sounds like today we’ll have rain and who knows what else.  I had a migraine Sunday afternoon that was rather nasty, but it lifted as the storm got closer.  The cats decided to find cozy spots to curl up.

Smudge’s new favourite spot is where the heating pad is.

Lester prefers the loveseat.  I think this is one of the best shots of Lester, as it shows how rich the red colour is in his coat.

6 More Pickled Ladies and a Plan

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Lots of stitching and talking on Tuesday resulted, for me, in six more finished Pickled Ladies.  I think this will end up as a large wall hanging with a narrow stop border in black and a larger border in a shabby floral.  When I have all the ones that are currently prepped done, then I’ll assess its size.

Tuesday was chilly again with temps in the mid 20s.  But it looks like we’re heading into a nice warm-up, so I’m hoping that maybe we’ve had the worst of winter and now it’s just a matter of waiting for the warmer weather to arrive.

Smudge was reaching for the kitty toy basket from the kitty bed.  Always makes me laugh when he does something like this.

Lester was having a snooze.

Rainbow Flower & January Clamshell Report

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The Cranes Circling Flowers at Dusk, aka rainbow flower, is something I can’t resist stitching!  So much so that, when I couldn’t sleep because of a migraine, I was fussy cutting six more flowers and cranes from another fabric at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday.  I have everything cut and printed now for the rest of this piece and hope to have the main piecing finished by mid-week.  When it’s finished, we’re going to have to find a way to photograph it.  The light at this time of year makes for not great photographs.  I can’t wait until spring comes and the roof garden reopens!

When I pulled out the storage container with the Oriental prints and batiks to choose the fabrics in this, I also hauled out the container with striped and directional fabrics. I have a feeling fussy cutting some stripes for this block will be the next thing I play with, although I’m also very tempted to do something with shabby chic fabrics.

I don’t have much to show for the January clamshell report.  While I’ve made lots of the black and white arcs for the Pickled Ladies, I only put together two of the pickled clamshells.  To see the list of and links to participants in the Clamshell Club, go to Cybele’s Patch.

On the weekend, I got a lot of the cream hexagons for the POTC blocks stitched.  At this point, I only need to stitch together the ones needed for two more blocks and that part will be done.  So I feel like progress is being made.  We were taking trying to take a picture of a finished POTC block when Smudge decided he needed to help. You can just see a bit of the block that he’s lying on.

Lester was having a snooze.

Two Pickled Ladies

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While I’ve made quite a few of the arcs for them, I haven’t put together many of the Pickled Lady blocks this month.  So I thought I’d best get a start on making some for January with these two.

Our weather has been incredibly topsy-turvy the past few days.  We’ve gone from relatively mild for mid-January to bitter cold  to rain and mild and now we’re heading back into the deep freeze for a few days.  At least the rain that fell got rid of most of the snow that lingered.

Smudge decided to sprawl out on the loveseat.  This winter weather definitely means sleepy kitties.

Lester was curled up in a kitty bed.

December Clamshell Club Report

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The months are flying by — I cannot believe it’s already time for another Clamshell Club report!  The Pickled Ladies had a few new additions in December, but nowhere near as many as I had hoped.  The count is now up to 56 Pickled Ladies made.  I’m going to keep going until I hit around 110 and then lay them out and decide how much, if at all, bigger I want to make it.  It’s hard to think of not making them as they are so much fun!  I’m clearly out of design floor room to lay these out now, so next month will probably only show the new additions.  Once the numbers are up to 110, I will then start working on fussy cutting and printing the setting pieces made up of vertical half and horizontal half clamshells.

To see what other members of the Clamshell Club have reported for this month, go to Cybele’s Patch blog post here.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the others have done.

It’s hard to believe that this is my last post for 2010.  The year seems to have flown by.  Thank you to all who have shared my quilting obsession this year and I hope to share more with you in 2011.  I wish you all a safe and healthy and Happy New Year.

Lester is going to ring out the old year in typical laid-back Lester fashion; having a snooze.

While Smudge is going to treat us to one more of his classic almost headless cat poses for 2010.

Five Pickled Ladies

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These are probably the last of the Pickled Ladies I’ll get done this year, as I’m trying to limit myself to working only on the baby quilt until it’s done.  But I couldn’t resist making a few more of these blocks.  I have another 15 or so of the arcs ready to stitch to clamshells as soon as the baby quilt is finished.

The baby quilt is growing rapidly.  I didn’t quite meet my goal of finishing the piecing on Tuesday as I spent some time starting to sort out the pieces I’ll use for the edges.

The vet called us on Tuesday and is pleased with Smudge’s progress, as are we. We’re to try not syringe feeding him in the morning today and see if he eats enough on his own.  Once he’s eating enough on his own, our big hurdle is going to be getting him back on better food than the Kitty McDonald’s. We’re convinced he’s decided that syringe feeding is quite all right and would probably be content were we to continue doing that indefinitely.  Here he is resting after one of his feedings.

Lester was curled up in a kitty bed.

Arcs for the Pickled Ladies

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One of the things I’ve been working on is stitching the arcs for the Pickled Lady blocks.  I’m trying to get lots and lots of them ready as stitching the arcs to the clamshell body takes next to no time.  Unfortunately, my wrists are still not cooperating so pressing the arcs wasn’t possible before the picture was taken.   All the black triangles are cut for at least another 40 arcs while the white pieces are being cut as I need them.

It was bitterly cold here on Wednesday.  So cold that the first cold weather alert of the season was issued by the city.  It seems awfully early for this horribly cold weather and makes me wonder what January and February are going to be like. When it’s bitterly cold, I resort to my mice slippers.  They are toasty warm and I really don’t care how ridiculous they look.  My mother bought these slippers for me well over 15 years ago and I treasure them.  They only come out in the winter so they’ve stood up quite well.   Watching the cats’ reactions to the oversized mice on my feet makes me laugh.  The sight of them makes Mr. Q.O. laugh.

Smudge greeted me Wednesday morning by chirping for his breakfast and doing figure eights around my legs.  Huge improvement.  Getting him to eat on his own has been a challenge, so hearing him ask for breakfast felt like a huge achievement.

Both of the kitties were spending time either in the cat beds or on the couch, staying warm.  Lester looked at the windowsill ever so briefly on Wednesday afternoon but I think he could sense it was chilly and decided to head for the couch.

Pickled Ladies Again

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While I have been working on the pink and cream quilt and playing with the irresistible Storm at Sea blocks, I’ve not been ignoring the Pickled Ladies.  Four more ladies were completed Thursday night and I have a stack of pieces cut and waiting to be stitched for another 15 or 20 of the pieced arcs.

Making the Storm at Sea blocks has taught me something — that I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to stitching those blocks!  Once I had printed the shapes on the third fabric, I just had to make some of the blocks with that fabric.  So now I’m thinking that printing the shapes on the next fabric is something that I will only do when I’ve finished off the pink and cream top and at least another 8 or 10 of the Pickled Ladies.  Otherwise, I just know that I’ll want to drop everything and make a few blocks with that fourth fabric.

At the same time, I’m trying not to start another Winding Ways quilt.  I’ve wanted to make another since I made this wallhanging back in February and have ideas on my “want to make” list.  But lately, Wanda at Exuberant Color has been showing the Winding Ways quilts she has been making and it’s very, very hard to resist!

Lester was lounging on the loveseat Thursday night.

While Smudge was snoozing on the couch.

Fussy Cutting/Printing – Lots of Photos

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There have been a few questions about how I fussy cut and print the florals for the Pickled Lady blocks so I thought a short tutorial might be the best way to describe the method I use.   Lester is watching rather intently.

When I decided to make the Pickled Lady blocks, the first thing I did was print one of the clam shapes on a piece of plain paper which I had cut to the size I would be using.  Once that was done, the interior of the shape was cut out along the stitching line and I had my window template.

I identified a few flowers on this piece of fabric that were going to be perfect for fussy cutting.  Once that’s done, I start looking for one of the flowers that’s near the edge of the fabric.

This is where the window template comes into play.  Once I’ve found a flower that I want to fussy cut, I place the window template over it and move it around until the flower is in the centre of the clamshell.

If you look closely at this shot, you’ll see that I’ve got the quarter-inch line on the ruler placed on the printed ruler line on the paper.  When I cut out my window template, I cut off about an eighth of an inch along two of the edges of the paper so that I could use the printed ruler line on the paper to line up with rather than trying to line up the edge of the ruler with the edge of the paper.

Here I’ve cut along two sides of the fabric, once again using the quarter-inch line on the ruler lined up on the printed line on the fabric.  The printed line is directly above the cutting line of the shape and that gives me the perfect placement when it comes to ironing the fabric on to freezer paper and getting it ready to print.

The selvedge is still attached.  I leave it on when I’m fussy cutting as sometimes there will be a flower at an edge that I want to use and I will need a sliver of it to have a large enough piece to iron on to the freezer paper.  I know it will be cut away once the shape is printed, so I don’t worry about it.  In this case, the majority of the selvedge will be cut away even before pressing it to the freezer paper.

Once I’ve cut the top and right side, I remove the window template and cut the bottom and left side of the fabric piece.  At that point, all I need to know is the size of freezer paper I’m using to cut the fabric to the right shape.  Then it’s simply a matter of pressing it on to the freezer paper and printing my shape.  Here you can see that while the selvedge was still attached, once I cut out my shape there will be none of it left.

Once that’s done, it takes only a minute to cut the shape out and then start stitching.  Smudge hopes you found this as relaxing as he did.  In fact, he was unimpressed when the printer started as I think it woke him up.

A bit of stitching and a  few minutes later, I had a Pickled Lady block finished to add to the stack.

The back.

Very Little Stitching

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That’s what has been going on around here lately — very little stitching.  Lots of printing and cutting, though.  And one pickled lady to add to the mix, but that’s about all there is to show.  It seems like November is prep month.   Made myself laugh thinking about it, but it’s as though I’m getting ready to hibernate for the winter and want all the preparation work done so that I have lots and lots of pieces printed, cut and ready to stitch.

One of the things I’ve been working on  is printing the Storm at Sea shapes.  It’s a good thing that the initial idea of going with the 4 batiks got changed to using 11 fabrics as I found one of the original four has a flaw that runs the entire length of the piece.  There’s an area that’s about half an inch wide that has less than half the thread count of the rest of the batik.  I’ve had the batik now for months and wouldn’t even contemplate taking it back, so I’ve cut the fabric to get rid of the flaw, but it’s possibly going to make it tricky to get the number of shapes I want from that particular fabric.  Seems like my Storm at Sea quilt is undergoing some changes yet again.

There’s a group of florals that need to be fussy cut/printed for more Pickled Ladies. Two more of the large pink stars are done for a total of five finished, so there’s only one left to piece and then printing the shapes for the small pieced cornerstone blocks. More preparation work.

The weekend paper comes with lots of catalogues from various stores, particularly at this time of year.  I had been looking at them while Smudge was curled up at the other end of the couch when Lester decided to join us.  He wanted attention so made sure that the catalogues weren’t accessible.

I’m not sure that Smudge was all that thrilled about having Lester’s tail draped over his.