Celebration of Life ~ Donna Jordan of Jordan Fabrics

 I was shocked this morning to hear of the passing of  Donna Jordan of Jordan Fabrics.  She was a quilting rockstar to so many and will be deeply missed.  Her husband posted her last video this morning, click image below to watch.

My heart goes out to the Jordan family.  

~ Lea Anne Brummett ~

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Delightful Daisies Finished

 When I started this quilt 11 years ago, I never dreamed it would take this long to finish.

Way back then my mind saw this quilt as quilted to death with tons of feathers and swirls.

She's been pulled out many times over the years.  Each time I would stare at her for a few days trying to come up with the perfect quilt it to death plan.  And then back in storage she would go.  My love for quilted to death quilts is still there, I just lost interest in doing all the hard work.

These days I'm just as happy with light custom quilting.

If you look at the daisies in the pictures above you will see they are not quilted like the one below.  The one below was the first quilted.  This daisy quilting felt too heavy for the large crosshatched background quilting.  A perfectionist would have removed the stitching in this daisy.  I did not, for no other reason than it doesn't bother me that it is different.  It's my quilt and I don't care if one daisy has a little extra quilting. 

The backing was made from scraps of a previous quilt back and Pioneer Woman fabric yardage.

Since the quilt is fun and kind of whimsical, I opted to have a little fun with the label by using a different color thread for each line.  I like it!  It gives the label a little character. 

As for the image below, there's nothing to say other than I love the daisy quilting.

The green striped binding felt like the perfect ending for this quilt.  It makes me so happy to finally have her finished even though it's not exactly what I had planned. 

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Juggling Quilting Projects Chaos

 The weather in Podunk has been absolutely beautiful the last couple of days.  Sunny and 70 is perfect for opening the windows and doing a little spring cleaning.  And that's exactly what I did for a couple of days. Then I was ready to get back in the Studio and play with some fun spring projects.

As you can see above the Delightful Daisies quilt binding is almost finished.  All that is left to do is hand stitch it to the back of the quilt.  Getting to this point was not easy due to juggling multiple projects and every station of my studio is full of projects.

 The Daisy quilt was quilted and the backing fabric needed to be trimmed but my cutting table was full of HST's needing to be sorted into blocks.  Instead of moving them and possibly messing up the counted HST's I decided to finish the sorting process.

By the way....under the quilt in the picture above is the fabric for the pillow shams I planned to make.  Maybe this weekend the shams and curtains will make into the rotation. 

Back to the cutting table mess.  The HST's on are bonus HST's I've been collecting for many years.  This batch of HST's will be used to make 169 cake stand blocks.

It took about two hours to clear off the cutting table.  The HST's were sorted onto design boards.  Below is (169) sets of (4) matching HST's for the basket handles.

The next board is (169) sets of (2) matching HST's for the base of the basket block.

The last board is a bunch of 3 inch HST's for the basket body.  I still need to make more but can't find my scribble paper with the amount.   I mentioned the amounts in my last blog post so when it comes time to make more I can look there for the number needed instead of counting again.

I stacked the full boards and added them to the works in progress cart.  The cutting table was finally ready to trim the Daisy quilt.  I thought is rolling cart would help me organize my projects better.  And it would if I would stick to the rule of no more than 3 projects in rotation.

Right now, I have 6 projects.

1.  Old Town mystery - top of the cart

2. Cake Stand Quilt - middle of the cart

3.  Bumpkin Baskets - bottom of the cart

4. Pillow shams and curtains - pressing station

5. 2 bucks a block BOM - in a block storage tote(I've only made Jan. blocks)

6. Delightful Daisies - ready for hand stitching the binding

Instead of working out a plan or setting a goal to get back on track with just 3 projects.  I'm going to just let things happen organically.  When I get to them, I get to them.  No muss no fuss.  Quilting is my hobby, not my job.  I like a to be organized but I don't like feeling like I MUST do this before that.  It takes the fun out of quilting. 

I would like to start hand stitching the binding on the Daisy quilt today...sometime.  It's going to be sunny and 75 today.  A great day to be outside prepping the flowerbeds for the soon to sprout spring flowers.  Now there's a plan!

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Bonus HST's Quilt ~ 5 Inch Cake Stand Block

 Hi Quilty Friends!  It's time for me to start using up those bonus HST's of which I have thousands. Just how many?  Well, I counted them about 3 years ago and there was about 3500 but I've added many more since and didn't count the additions.  So, my guess would be around 4,000 ranging from 1 inch all the way up to 5 inches.

The Cake Stand quilt will require (1014) 1.75" HST's and (169) 3" HST's.  The three ziploc bags of 1.75" HST's have been sorted by color into stacks of matching pairs.  In retrospect I should have counted all of them while sorting but I didn't, silly me.  After pulling all that is needed for this quilt, the remaining will be counted and the total added to the outside of the bags. 

This cute little block will finish in the quilt at 5 inches.  I would have preferred that all the HST's background to be a low volume print or all white but I'm working with 30 yrs of bonus HST's.  So, it's going to be a mishmash of both.  All of the 1.75" squares will be cut from my low volume scrap bins.

The test block went together quickly.

At this point in the block is when I remembered there will be an alternating block and my pressing was wrong...fiddlesticks!  

No use crying over spilled milk and definitely no reason to rip out stitches. Pressing the seams open on both blocks would solve the pressing issue without changing the quilt.  Sigh...something to think about while prepping the basket blocks for assembly.

The block looks a little wonky to me but she measured almost perfect.  Just a few raveled threads were trimmed.  The main thing is my seam allowance was good and I won't lose any points on the HST's when it's finished.  Maybe I should say, I shouldn't lose any points on this block.  Sometimes it happens anyway.

With the test block out of the way it's time to start sorting this mess into blocks.  The 3" HST bag was pulled and counted.  Just as I thought, I'm to need to make more.

But before making more let's trim down the larger HST's in the stash.

And... I'm still short 87 HST's.  HAHA!  The plan was to use up the HST's not make more...HAHA!  Reducing the size of the quilt to throw sized crossed my mind...but I'm dead set on a queen size.  No worries, my scrap bins are full of fabric and ready to assist.  But not today.  Playtime is over and it's time to get the Daisy quilt finished.

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Wordless Wayback (2014) Wednesday

 

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Quilting, Sorting and Ignoring

 A lot of quilty goodness is happening out here in Podunk.  The Delightful Daisy quilt is looking pretty cute.  I can't wait to get this girl off the frame and on display.  By my unreliable calculations it should be ready to share here on the blog by next Monday or Tuesday.  I'll blame the quilting design for my slow progress because the quilting is 99% ruler work.  The only free motion quilting is the stems and leaves of the large daisies.  

But let's be honest, this quilt shouldn't even be in the rotation. Remember me setting up a new plan to only have three projects in rotation on this cart.  Maybe I need a cart with more tiers. HAHA!  In order to get closer to my goal, I will be removing the Heart Pops project out of rotation. The one block will be moved to the orphan blocks box because I just don't feel like making the B plan for this project.

As for the Old Town Quilt I'm ignoring it right now but it will stay in the rotation.  A couple more blocks have been made but I'm not seeing any progress on this until after Delightful Daisies is finished. 

What will take the place of Heart Pops?  HST's! A bunch of them.  I've decided to start tackling the THOUSANDS of HST's I've been collecting over the years.  This is my second session of sorting.  The first sorting session of HST's was the bag of 1.5 inch.  It came up short of what was needed for the planned project.  So, I grabbed the bags of 1.75 inch HST's. 

After they were sorted by color, I started sorting by prints and how many I would need of each print.  Oh my, what have I started!  This is going to take forever! But I already have more than what is needed for the quilt.  Yippee! 

The quilt will have 169 blocks.  Each block will need (4) matching hst's and (2) matching hst's.  The singles are extras not needed for the block.  

I bet some of you are wondering what happened to the green gingham project.  Well, the ruffler foot I order was not delivered on time.  As you all know when things get lost in the mail you never know when they will arrive.  So, I carefully folded it up and placed it on the ironing station and that's when I decided to start the HST quilt.  As soon as all the HST's are sorted and carefully placed in the cart of projects the gingham project will be snuck into the rotation.  It's a quick project that should only take a day to make.  Well, that's the plan...HAHA!

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A Gingham Kind Of Day

 Yesterday was my weekly trip into town to run errands and do the weekly shopping. On the way home, I had to drive right past Hobby Lobby. Instead of driving past it, my car somehow ended up in the parking lot. It is funny how that happens.

I purchased several items for the grandchildren's Easter baskets. Then proceeded to the fabric department, where all fabric was 40% off. A few weeks ago, I had bought a lovely light blue gingham and hoped to find more so I could use it as a quilt backing. Unfortunately, it was sold out, so I bought six yards of green instead because I'm planning a new project.

Well, I might as well use the blue gingham I have on hand.  So, I decided to use it for recovering my ironing board.  It needed recovering a couple months ago.  The picture is nicer than real life.  Most of the white background is scorched brown and tan.

When recovering my board, I don't remove the old dirty fabrics until I get about 4 or 5 layers.  Well fiddlesticks! The gingham will be layer two and the old fabric is showing through.  UGG.  I can't leave it like this and I don't want to remove a gazillion staples that hold the fabric to the board.

My solution to the problem is to double up the gingham. 

And 15 minutes later the board is looking pretty cute!

Then it was time to deal with the green gingham.   It's was cheap 100% cotton.  $5.99 a yard at 40% off made it $3.60 a yard.  

  The lack of a selvage edge is a good clue that this is not a quilting cotton. I think it could be a woven or homespun. To be honest I don't know the difference between the two.  My plan for the fabric is to make ruffled pillow shams for my bed and curtains.

Prewashing cheap fabric is always a good idea since it could bleed and shrink more than good quality fabric. Raveling can also be an issue with cheap fabric.  But this one held up pretty well.

After ironing and starching the entire 6 1/2 yards of fabric I planned to put it back on the bolt.  This makes it easier to deal with on the cutting table. But for the life of me I could not get it the edges lined up without puckering. 

After about an hour of wresting with the fabric and not being able to get it to lay flat it was time for plan B.  I'll just fan fold the fabric at the end of the table and deal with the puckering as the fabric is cut. 

Today's plan is to quilt on the frame and cut the green gingham for the curtains and pillow shams.  If my ruffler foot is delivered today I'll start making the shams later in the day. 

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