Drunkard’s Path Variation in Rouenneries

Finishing this top was an almost bittersweet moment, as I have loved every second of working with the gorgeous Rouenneries fabrics. It was hand pieced, other than adding the two borders. While I generally don’t make square quilts, this one finishes at 54″ square. It’s large enough to use as a throw. I can also imagine it as a large wall hanging.

I made it from 5 charm packs of Rouenneries plus two larger pieces of fabrics from that line for the borders and used the 3″ Inklingo Drunkard’s Path collection. I know Rouenneries Deux is coming out sometime in the future, and can’t wait. Working with these colours/designs was an absolute joy. I’m thinking that a star quilt in Rouenneries Deux may just be in my future.

This quilt was being worked on when I finished Chintz Circles.  I knew I wanted to use the same binding fabric, so made enough binding then and it’s ready. The backing fabric I used for Chintz Circles will be used for this one too. All that’s left to get is the batting and then this one will be hand quilted. And I need to find a name for it.

The past few nights I’ve been working on hand quilting the whole cloth quilt, but everything is going to come to a standstill for a few days while I make a quilt from the flannel fabrics I showed last week. I’ve decided on a double 4-patch. It needs to be made quickly as it’s for a friend’s brother-in-law who has just been given a rather grim diagnosis/prognosis.

Baxter showing that he’s a real quilter’s cat – posing under the quilt on the temporary design wall, by the floor hoop.

X’s and O’s

While we were out taking pictures of Twinkling Stars on the roof garden, we also took a few of the top I’ve named X’s and O’s. The name has everything to do with how I plan to quilt this one, with circles and X’s.

It was made using shapes from the Inklingo Orange Peel Deluxe collection and was pieced by hand with the exception of the black inner border. The centre of the top took just over 3 weeks to put together from the time I got the idea through to its completion. Adding the borders took a while as I ended up auditioning a couple of different versions before settling on the final.

When it’s time to quilt this, I’m going to get a silk batt. The binding will be the same black ’30s print as the inner border.

Baxter getting his nightly yogourt treat.

Twinkling Stars

The top is done and is now in the queue waiting to be quilted. This one I’m going to quilt by hand with either a silk or wool batt. I’ve got some quilting ideas for the plain squares that will carry on the star theme of the quilt.

We took advantage of a sunny day on the weekend to take the photo out on the roof garden as it’s difficult to get a good shot indoors of a quilt that’s anything larger than a wall hanging. Twinkling Stars finishes at 57 x 72 inches and was made using shapes from the Inklingo Tumbler collection. This year’s baseball playoffs quilt top is done.

Last year’s baseball playoffs quilt is still waiting to be quilted.

Baxter had a very busy weekend chasing leaves as they flew by the windows and watching squirrels and birds.

Pickled Ladies Joining Up

Out came the box in which the clamshell pickles, aka Pickled Ladies, were stored and I began putting the top together.

The first two rows are almost all joined together now. They’re going together quickly and oh, so easily. I’m hoping to get the centre done within a couple of weeks. That, of course, remains to be seen as I’m so easily distracted by other projects!

The piecing of the Twinkling Stars top is complete. The two borders were added yesterday and it was finished even before the second game of the World Series began. We couldn’t figure out where to photograph it last night, but will be getting a good photo of it today.

Baxter had another very busy day on the windowsill, as we had a fairly windy day again and there were leaves flying by the window. Last evening he was posing in my computer chair – or was he perhaps plotting and waiting for his chance to get on the keyboard?

Colourful Little 9-Patches

The last pieced border for Twinkling Stars was finished last night, but the baseball game was on and I didn’t want to be at the sewing machine attaching it to the quilt, so out came the 9-patch blocks to set on point. They’re now going to become a little quilt on their own rather than be incorporated into the Twinkling Stars quilt.

As the blocks are finished, they’ll be stored in a very special box from a friend. So far 13 of them are done. Once they’re all done, the quilt will be quick to stitch together. They finish at 4.24″. I think I’ll have about 100 of them by the time they’re all stitched.

There was some great feedback yesterday on working with flannels. I think I’m going to make a double 4-patch with the flannels. Once they’re washed and ironed I’ll get started. But today my plan is to attach the two borders to Twinkling Stars and hopefully get a good picture of it.

Baxter was posing in the pink chair after another busy day on the windowsill.

Little 9-Patch Blocks on Point

The 9-patch blocks are just so much more fun set on point that I couldn’t resist. They’re very quick to stitch, and give me the look I wanted for these little blocks.

Earlier this week, two new Inklingo collections were released with the triangles needed to set 4.5 inch blocks and 6 inch blocks on point, and that helped give me the idea for the 9-patch blocks. I have a little stack of 4.5-inch blocks that were made years ago but which have sat all this time. Now that the math has been taken out of figuring out what size QSTs and HSTs I needed to set them on point, I’ll get them out once the Twinkling Stars top is finished.

I’m still on schedule with this year’s baseball playoffs quilt. Although I’ve had a couple of evenings when I really wanted to work on something else, I have managed to resist and now am really glad I did.  There’s not too much hand piecing left to be done, maybe another 25 or so of the 9-patch blocks and then their setting triangles.  The rest will be done by machine.

Baxter seems to have decided my computer chair is a favourite spot — after walking over the keyboard on his way to the chair, that is. A couple of times he has almost managed to send an e-mail while marching over the various keys and the trackpad, but none have been sent … yet.

Help Needed Finding Fabric

When I started the red and white feathered star/sunflower blocks, I thought I probably had enough of the white on white but wasn’t really worried about it as it seemed to be a staple WOW fabric at the LQS. That was, as it turns out, a silly assumption on my part and I had totally under-estimated just how much I’d need.

Over the past few months, the owner of the LQS has been trying her best to find me more of this particular white on white but hasn’t been having any success. Now I’m thinking that perhaps it’s out of print and my only hope is going to be that someone has it in their stash and is willing to part with it or knows of a store that has it in stock. I’ve put some of the other white on whites that I have next to it and they are just not going to work — the difference is quite obvious.

This picture is really only for scale with the penny on it as the colour isn’t quite right, although white on white is next to impossible to properly photograph anyway. It’s a very small-scale all-over print.

This picture is a bit closer as far as the tone of the white on white goes. It’s made by Santee Print Works and is what I think of as a very icy white on white. There’s almost a bit of a shimmer to it, although it’s not a metallic.

Six of the blocks are made but I need at least 6 more yards of it to make the remaining 7 blocks and pieced border to finish the quilt. I can use anything from FQ size on up, so if you can help and/or know where I can find this fabric please let me know!

Baxter was resting after another busy day on the windowsill, watching the squirrels and birds and falling leaves. We’re not sure what he was calculating, but his paw was firmly planted on the calculator.

Pickled Ladies Layout

The stitching of the centre blocks is finished. There are 72 pickled ladies in total, although there will be a number of half pickled clams added around the perimeter to square it up.

Once the rows are together, I’ll audition fabrics individually for the half pickled clamshells that will go around the perimeter. I know there are lots of florals in my stash that will work perfectly as half clamshells and have enough of the black and white triangles already printed for the partial strips of triangles that will be needed.

It took ages to take them down off the temporary design wall as each one is labelled with its placement so that when I start stitching them together I won’t get them mixed up. I’m really excited about this one and can’t wait to get started stitching on it as soon as the baseball playoffs are over. There’s a rich blue floral in my stash that may be perfect as the border for the Pickled Ladies. There may need to be a small stop border as well, but I’ll sort that out once I get the centre of it completed.

There is no way I would have attempted this without Inklingo. With the 6-inch Pickled Clamshell collection, I knew it could be done. Having the perfect stitching lines and matching points is going to make putting the rows together a breeze. This is one quilt top I want to finish for sure before the end of the year. I’m already thinking of the quilting possibilities, perhaps quilting around each flower and possibly the white triangles.

Baxter discovered how to get up on the windowsill in the living room on Thursday. There was lots of activity out on the roof garden for him to watch as the birds and squirrels seemed quite busy. He went back and forth a few times and then settled down to sit and watch.

Printing and More Printing for Quilts

What’s that?  It’s the stack of fabrics I printed over the weekend for the Scrappy Star, Twinkling Stars, Summer Picnic Dish, Harpsichord and Joseph’s Coat quilts. The last couple of weeks I’ve been identifying the size I want certain projects to finish at. WIth the size of each determined, it took only a few minutes to figure out what I needed to print to reach that goal. Sometimes I print only a few of each shape for a couple of blocks until I’m sure I want to make it into a quilt. Once that decision is made, I prefer to get everything printed at once and get the shapes cut and into a box ready to stitch such as I’ve done for the Stormy Seas quilt.

This gives you a glimpse of the some of the shapes I printed for the Harpsichord, Joseph’s Coat and Summer Picnic Dish quilts.  Using the various Inklingo collections to prepare my templates makes it so easy to print on any number of fabrics, even black fabrics as most are markedly lighter on the back than the front and the templates will show up perfectly with one of the many choices of ink colours.

Almost all the shapes are now cut and ready to be put in a box, along with the matching threads, for the Twinkling Stars quilt, which I plan on trying to finish between now and the end of the World Series.

Because it was such a beautiful day on Monday, we took Scrappy Star out to the roof garden to photograph. It’s growing and is now 24″ across.  It will be at least twice that width before I’ll stop adding rounds. I needed more of the squares, which was another reason for all the printing that was done on the weekend.

The back after pressing.

Baxter is starting to look like a grown-up kitty in some photos, although his antics are still pure kitten antics. I think he was trying out his hypnotic kitty look in this photo.

Getting Ready to Finish Some Projects

One of the things I did last weekend was go through projects and identify ones that I want to get finished sooner rather than later. Then I got fabric ready to print.

The gold tone on tone is for the Harpsichord Quilt. The green, floral and white fabrics are for the Summer Picnic Dish quilt. The off white is for the Shabby Coat. The oriental shirting is for the scrappy star. Over the next few days I will get all the shapes printed and cut for each of those quilts.

There are a few things going on that need to be taken care of that are going to limit my time for blogging over the next week or so, but I will be popping in and out and hopefully visiting some blogs.

While we’ve had some absolutely gorgeous late September days, the evenings are cool and Baxter seems to be enjoying his kitty bed.