Top: Forever Fairy Tales

I finished a quilt top! I’ve posted some small in-progress shots of it here, and at my Instagram, but I wanted to properly share it here.

I sometimes get hand-me-down quilt magazines from my mother-in-law. Her apartment complex is full of seniors, some of whom share my love of quilting, and who are happy to mass their magazines on after they’ve been read.

I just so happened to have been paging through one of these hand-me-down magazines shortly after I received my half-yard bundle of Fibs and Fables by Anna Maria Horner. I already knew that I wanted to make the quilt top out of just that line of fabrics, and I was looking for inspiration. I found it in the December 2006 Issue of American Patchwork & Quilting (Issue 82). Their pattern was called Diamond in the Rough.

I immediately knew that it was the pattern I wanted to work with, despite nearly all the pieces being sixty degree diamonds. A lot of starch, and a lot of pressing, and I was set to cut everything!

Being the ADD crafter that I am, I got so far, and then stopped. So, the top sat for a bit. First, because I needed a little more fabric to come in. Then because I was making sampler blocks. Finally, I determined that I was going to finish the top, and devoted nearly all my sewing time to it.

I got this far and thought… maybe I’ll just stop here. It’s done right?

WRONG!

I slept on the matter, and decided that it absolutely needed another border.

You’ll notice that there are two fabrics used in the border… I wanted it to be the same fabric throughout, but I really didn’t want to buy more fabric from this line, so I made do with what I had.

Now, I’ve just got to figure out a backing. Binding fabric is on hand – I have enough of the black print that forms the inner border to bind the beast. And, I’ve figured out the name for this top – Forever Fairy Tales.

It’s a nod to AMH’s inspiration for this fabric, and the diamonds that make up this quilt. Because diamonds are forever, right?

Anyway, I’m extremely pleased with how it turned out, barring a couple of prints landing too closely together as I was piecing, but I’m not ripping things apart to fix that.

365 Challenge Quilt Sampler – Week 04

22. Broken Dishes, 23. Small Triangles, 24. Mixed T, 25. Lost Ship,
26. True Blue, 27. Jacks On Six, 28. 28_Shoo Fly

In order to work on this last batch of blocks, I ended up cutting into a bit of my stash – small WOF strips no wider than two inches each. Altogether, it came to be about a quarter of a yard that came out of my stash, so that’s being logged as part of my stash use for the month.

As I work on these blocks, I continue to piece odds and ends of fabric bits together, making what I call ‘found fabric’. Others might associate the words ‘scrap vortex’ with this sort of piecing. I’ve three panels in progress, though two of them are no bigger than my hand. The largest panel is about 12″ X 12″ now:

The bottom half of the panel includes from of my smallest scraps left over from piecing the 365 Challenge Quilt Sampler blocks, while the top portion are larger strings left from cutting my scraps down into easily usable sizes.

It’ll be interesting to see how this grows. I would like to end up with a lap quilt from these odds and ends.

The Fibs and Fables quilt is moving along… I’m at a stopping point until I can starch and press several yards of fabric in preparation for cutting and chain piecing. I did, however, piece together all of the sub-units for which I had already prepped fabric. I also pieced several scrappy four patches for another project that’s been designed for quite a while.

Lots of things in progress and moving, though I need to get off my duff and work on the Fibs and Fables project. My One Monthly Goal for January is still to get that top done, and that gives me through Sunday to get it together. Not sure I can get there, at this late date, but I’m certainly going to try!

2016 Finish Along – Q1 Goals

It’s that time of year again – for me to set some goals, and to plan a bit ahead, with some help from the online quilting community.

I participated in the 2015 Finish Along with some success – I completed four quilts over the first half of the year, before losing steam and then becoming buried by the holidays.

I’m participating again, because it was a great experience for me, and it held me to some goals. I’m competitive (even against myself) so it’ll be fun to see how this year stacks up against last year.

I’d already done some preparation for the 2016 Finish Along, without realizing it. I took a good, long look at my projects, and eliminated a few that were never going to be finished, because I’d fallen out of love with them. Now, my WIP list for 2016 is updated, even with brand new projects that I started in the last couple of weeks.

Without further ado, my goals for this first quarter of the year:

To finally quilt and bind ‘Charmed, I’m Sure’. This beast has been sitting in my pile for too long. I’d like to get it quilted up and into rotation sooner rather than later.

To quilt and bind this scrappy baby quilt. I pieced it on a whim, and even started quilting it. I just need to finish the quilting, and then I can bind it.

To quilt and bind ‘A Swirling Sea of Stars’. I’m so excited to have completed this quilt top, finally! I just need to decide on backing it, and figure out how to quilt this monster. There are A LOT of seams to conquer here.

To complete my Fibs and Fables quilt. It’s not even a complete top at this point, and has a lot more piecing to go. And I’m still waiting on fabric to arrive, so that I can complete cutting.

I’ll leave it at just the four projects for this first quarter… Somewhere in all of those, I’ll need to get a leg up on piecing the rest of my projects.

Fibs & Fables Fabric

Not all that long ago, I won a gift certificate to fatquartershop.com. I used it towards a half yard bundle of Fibs and Fable by Anna Maria Horner.

Being that I’m an impatient type of person, I wasn’t content to let it sit in my stash for very long, so on the last day of 2015, I started starching, pressing, and cutting.

A couple of evenings ago, I was able to start piecing, and I am so very, very glad that I have converted to starching my fabrics:

When choosing which fabrics to cut at what size, I decided I wanted to preserve the integrity of the large scale prints in the collection. As I piece, I’m attempting to keep them spaced across the quilt, and to disperse the color groups.

So far, so good, even if piecing is slowed by my running between the machine and the design wall.