UFO Finish ~ Snow On The Farm ~ Test Block

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Oh yes, quilty friends, I’m a total snow fanatic and eagerly anticipate that first frosty flurry. In my dream winter wonderland, the boring brown Podunk landscape gets buried under a fluffy white blanket from early November straight through to March.  Of course, I wouldn’t want blizzard conditions.  Just enough snow to make snow angels, build snowmen, and craft snow forts to hide a stockpile of snowballs for launching at Mr. Podunk when he gets home from work... HAHA! 

Quilt measures 45 x 45

And let’s not forget sledding! Unfortunately, the only hills around here are packed with trees, and at my age, trees and sledding don’t mix well. The next best thing? Taking the truck into town and spinning some glorious donuts in the snow covered Walmart parking lot. That’s classic Podunk entertainment, something we may or may not have indulged in back in the day!  But these days we tend to keep our winter entertainment simple with no chances of crashing or visits from the police.

Since I see snow as one of life's many simple pleasures, I thought it only fitting to keep the quilting on this quilt simple.  The crosshatching lines were drawn on the quilt before loading it to the quilt frame.   Doing ruler work typically takes longer than free motion but not on this quilt due to the large scale of the quilting.  She was quilted and off the frame in a little over an hour.

The quilt back was made (not one solid piece of fabric, more on that in a bit) using the leftover fabric from the quilt top. By the way, it's old Walmart fabric from back in the early 2000's.

I usually like to store my quilt tops with backing and binding so they're ready to go without any hassle when it's time to quilt. But for some reason, this quilt top bundle ended up in the chaotic mess you see here. Clearly, I must have been drunk on the day this was stored and I don't even drink!  Thankfully, trimming off the wonky edge gave me just enough fabric to piece it into a quilt backing.

When I say just enough, I mean teetering on the edge of disaster. I thought about adding a strip of white fabric at the bottom of the backing but decided to live dangerously instead and leave it as is.  She was carefully loaded onto the quilt frame with scraps of 100% polyester batting, and she quilted beautifully, leaving just a tiny sliver of backing fabric at the bottom of the quilt.

As always, a simple label had been added to the backing before quilting.

 In my opinion this quilt needed a simple white binding.  Anything else would have taken away from the beauty of the snowflake.  To keep things quick and easy the binding was 100% attached by machine.

Remember the title of this post said test block?  Well, I designed this block in 2015, original post here.   I never planned to make a larger quilt using the large snowflake block, but a friend suggested it could be a simple and quick Christmas quilt pattern back when I had my pattern writing business.  I reluctantly put together a pattern and quilt, and honestly, it looks pretty dull, doesn't it?  You’re probably thinking, why a black snowflake? Well, no deep reason, black and white Christmas decor was just all the rage back then. I was trying to sell quilt patterns by making them trendy and not my normal happy bright colors.  It worked!  I sold a ton of this quilt pattern.

Full Quilt 71 x 71

And here's the photo that made this pattern fly out of my shop.  Add a little of my favorite color(red) and a few pillows, then put the quilt on point on the bed and TADA!  She looks pretty cozy and inviting, doesn't she?  These days, this quilt and the black pillows are with my son, adding a cozy touch to his couch during the holiday season. 

Yep, I love to play in the snow!

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Small UFO Finish ~ An Ugly Duckling?

 Back in 2012, yellow and gray took the quilting world by storm. Weak-willed and utterly clueless about my quilting style, I dove headfirst into the trend, scooping up bargain yellow and gray fabrics for an upcoming HST BOM (half square triangle block of the month). If my memory serves me right, these prints are all Walmart fabrics, while the white-on-white background came from Joann's.

By month five of the BOM, I realized I got hooked on the yellow and gray trend because I adore yellow, but gray? Not so much. No offense if gray is your jam! For me, colors radiate a vibe, an energy. Sure, we could dive into what the experts say about how colors influence people, but honestly, I think they sometimes miss the mark. If they were right, this gray and yellow fabric wouldn’t make some of you feel all cheerful while leaving me feeling, well, bleh.

I may not be head over heels for this quilt, but she does have her redeeming qualities. That bold, dark gray star block in the center, steals the show and mercifully distracts from the chaotic floral explosion in the background. Honestly, the floral print was a "let's get rid of this because I can't stand it" kind of deal.

The other blocks seem to vanish into the floral background, but honestly, I think it’s more like they’re playing a fun game of hide-and-seek!

The big scraps of fabric became the perfect quilt backing, because scrappy backings are just the best, aren't they?  In the last few years, I've leaned towards wide backing fabrics.  Sure, they save time, but wow, talk about being as exciting as plain toast!

When it came time to make the label, I knew I wanted it to stand out against the backing, this quilt needed a cheerful little touch of sunshine. I remembered using the yellow print in my Bow Tie quilt but couldn’t recall if I had any left.  A quick dive into the fabric scraps and YIPPEE a bright pop of color for the label!

The label was kept simple. At the time, I just wanted this "ugly duckling" done so I could move on to something more appealing. Naming her didn’t seem important, but now I regret that decision. Every quilt is beautiful in its own way. She has her charm and will surely be cherished by someone. As I write this post, a few cheerful names come to mind. Maybe I should handwrite a name? What do you think? 

The dark gray binding was the perfect finishing touch for this quilt. My usual choice for bindings is a stripe, gingham, or plaid, but any of those would have created total chaos on this quilt. The dark binding provides a spot for the eye to rest, slows down the design, and makes it feel less busy.

Usually, fabric scraps go straight into my scrap bins, but not this time. I'll keep the dark gray used for the binding, but the rest are set aside to create a small donation quilt. Another positive for fabrics I don't love!

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Strawberry Shortcake Quilt Finish ~ UFO Quilt

Hello Quilty Friends!  After nearly three weeks of blog silence, I’m back! Where did I go? Absolutely nowhere! I’ve been right here in Podunk, buried under a mountain of quilting ideas and plans. Hopping from one project to another, rummaging through fabrics, planning, sorting, sewing, snapping pictures of my progress, and even managing to finish a couple of quilts along the way. I was deep in the quilty zone! This week, I’ll be sharing all the quilty goodness I’ve been up to during my blogging hiatus.

First up is the Strawberry Shortcake quilt.  This quilt top has been waiting to be quilted since April 24, 2012.  

I love everything about quilting...except for the feathers. It’s one of those classic cases where the design looks amazing in your head but turns into a hot mess on the quilt. Sometimes you nail it, and other times you just power through because ripping out stitches is a royal pain in the keester.

The rest of the quilting tickles me pink. I was shooting for a traditional quilting look.  Mission accomplished.

The backing is two pieces of yardage.  The purple is Joann fabric purchased from estate sale years ago. I bought two truckloads of quilting supplies for $200.  The white is not the bright white I normally use.  It's called Kona Bone, sent to me by mistake.  I ordered two bolts of Kona White from MSQC, they sent one White bolt and one Bone bolt.  When I pointed out the mistake, they sent the white bolt free of charge and let me keep the Bone bolt. I'll keep using it for quilt backings.

I discovered some of the pink border fabric hiding in the scrap bin and used it for the label. I named this one Strawberry Twirl way back in 2012 but totally forgot to add the name to the label. Geesh...I suppose I could write in on the label.

 Originally, I planned to use the same solid purple as the inner border for the binding, but I wanted something with a bit more flair. After searching two local quilt shops without success, I decided to check out Walmart's fabric. It felt like fate to find this purple plaid since the quilt top is made from cheap and upcycled fabrics. The purple plaid added a nice pop to the final look.

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13 Years Old ~ Partially Quilted Lone Star UFO

 Over the last month I've been watching the "Quilty Christmas in July" series on the Sew The Distance Youtube Channel.  Kris has been posting a video a day with great tips and ideas for sewing up Christmas gifts or projects for yourself.  One of the tips she shared was to finish up those UFO's and give them as gifts.  Most of the work is already done so it would be quick to finish.  

As you all know I recently went on a quick finish quilting spree for a couple of months and thoroughly enjoyed the feel-good boost I was getting from finishing them.  Kris's video reminded me of a couple Christmas projects in my UFO stash.   The first one is this Lone Star quilt I started back in 2012.  It was pulled off the quilt frame about halfway through the quilting because I was not happy with the quilting I chose for the border.  When I decided to pull it out of storage the other day, I thought I still needed to rip out the border stitches but much to my surprise I had already ripped out all the stitches!  YAH!

All it needed was a lint roller to remove a few stray threads.  I also needed to relax the creases left from the previous quilting.  The cutting table was cleared off for this monster sized quilt (96 x 96).

The best way to remove those lines is to spritz them with water and give it a gentle rub with your hand. 

This is before...

...and this after it dried.  TADA!  Works like a charm!

The next hurdle was the thread.  Remember, I was new to quilting on the frame, so I was still learning and trying new things.  At the time I was using embroidery thread for quilting, the same thread I used with my embroidery machine.  Seemed like a good idea at the time and I liked the way it looked on this quilt.  Unfortunately, I don't think there's enough of this light-colored thread to finish this quilt.  No problem, I'll order more.  Guess what?  In my online search for this thread I found out this company no longer exists.  OH NO!  The online search began.  Searching Ebay, Etsy and any shop that mentioned ARC thread.  Somehow, I stumbled upon a PDF for ARC Poly to Isacord chart.  Yippee! The thread was quickly ordered and should be here sometime next week.  I don't plan on quilting this up anytime soon, but I would like to have it finished by Thanksgiving of this year.  Just in time put on the bed during Christmas.

The quilting around the applique is a bit heavier than I would do these days but I'm not ripping it out.  The applique was my design and was machined stitched in place with clear thread. These days I use Superior Threads Mono-Poly for invisible machine applique but I'm pretty sure for this quilt I used whatever they had at Joann's.

Before loading this back onto the frame, I need to add a quilt label to the very busy back.  My goodness, that backing is awful....LOL!  I'm not a fan of poinsettias but it's what I had on hand.  It's fun to go back and look at our older quilts.  Styles change and so do our taste in fabric and quilt designs.  Just wait until you see the other Christmas themed UFO quilt, it's a hot mess!  But at the time I thought it was just too cute. More on that in a week or two.

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Let's Quilt Another UFO

 This week's two small finishes lit a quilt finishing fire in the Podunk Sewing Room.  Might as well feed the flames by pulling a small quilt top from the stash. 

The quilt top is the small version of the Moda Love quilt pattern.  My original plan was to use the blue floral print for the binding and the two orange/peach fabrics for the backing.  

But in the spirit of quick and easy I'd rather not stitch together the two orange fabrics.  So, it was time to dig through the fabric stash for piece of fabric large enough for the backing.  As quickly as the stash cabinet door opened, I saw the perfect print for the backing.

The overage of this fabric from quilting on the frame can also be used for the binding.

Another quick dig, this time in the batting scraps, produced a piece of 80/20 batting perfect for this project.  Then in no time I had the label printed and ready to go.  My goodness, I'm impressed with how fast all this came together.  Not one hiccup in the plan!  Oh, what a beautiful day!  

See you soon with another finish!

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