Circle Dance done and given away

     I made it in time for Christmas gift giving. My daughter and son in law's quilt was completed and wrapped in time. I chose the dark binding because it did frame up all the circles. Thank you, Wanda, for the advice! They both loved it. Some of the quilt designs I used were water molecules, Pac man, candy swirls, pebbles, and other motifs that mean something to them. I did not put designs in regularly, because the circles were not in a regular pattern. They used it when they were here overnight and is now on their bed. Yay!

The whole quilt done!

The one piece backing

The sun burst center motif

PacMan

Pebbles, swirl candies

Small CIrcle quilting

Quilting showing on back

Home in another state!

Circle Dance binding dilemma

     Well, I did it. The queen size Circle Dance is all quilted. I used Glide thread on my Bailey Home Quilter. I used adapted designs from The Inbox Jaunt and Leah Day. Now, I am trying to decide the color of the binding. I have narrowed it down to three choices.
    This has to be done, under the tree (which is not cut down yet), by Christmas.

Progress was sometimes impeded by my beta tester

Why are all these machines in my way?

Multicolor hand dye

Batik colorwash

Batik print

Lots of miscellaneous stitch ramblings

    Sometimes, the way my brain works, I can only work on something for not very long, when I have to stop and change because my thinking is racing somewhere else. Yesterday was like that. My husband was due to arrive at the airport from a business trip at 5 pm, but did not arrive until 1:30 am and I had to make an airport run with toothpicks to hold my eyes open. Which means I never knew, minute by minute, when his flight would be a reality. So, I skipped around trying out some ideas.
    First, I spent a couple of hours quilting Circle Dance and am about half way. Just lugging queen size quilts through the machine is wearing. Here it is in a heap on the machine.

    I fell in love with a pattern I saw in the Keepsake catalog, but I hardly ever buy kits. I found the pattern on Craftsy, Bright Birches. I probably could have figured it out, but I bought it because I always think everyone else is much smarter. I was disappointed to see the blocks were from 15" blocks. This is not a size I have a lot of different colors in. However, I had some 10 x 10 solids, and pulled them out. I tried one block. I love to sew small scraps by chain stitching and then cutting them into useable fabric. Here is one block. I will have 30, 5 X 6 arrangement.

      I had bought a small Lemoyne Star template from Victoria Findlay Wolfe at QBL in July. I had cut out a star with made fabric and it was sitting on the wall. So, last night, I pulled out fabric for the edges. When I had sewn it together, I realized that the background fabric was so busy, that the star disappeared. So much for working past my bedtime. So, I ripped it all apart and used the yellow scraps. Much better. Because the autofocus went south on my lens, I did not take a picture of the wrong fabric. I am using manual focus which is just about impossible to get right. In my old film camera, the center for focusing were prism rings that came into focus when it was right. This Canon Tli has none of that. I have emailed a few places about repair costs, but no one answers me so far. So, I apologize for blurry photos.

This is about 20 x 20. I am wondering if I can just add border ideas to make this lap size. I have no more of this particular yellow to make more background for other stars. Or would it matter?

    I also continued to polish Grandma's 66 and am making slow progress. There is a shine that emerges. Yay for TR3 and elbow grease and cotton balls.
     Lastly, someone generously gave me scraps that were triangles of pumpkin/fall fabric. I sewed the triangles into squares and made a small quilt/table runner. I have finished FMQ it on my 301. It just needs a binding. My daughter in law loves fall decorations, so it will probably go to her. Just love using up those precious scraps.

it is about 14 x 20

Circle dance rolling along

    Ah, the queen size Circle dance. I ironed the extra wide batting I bought and smoothed out the batting, and pin basted the whole thing. Although I have 3- 6' tables, it was not big enough and I had to do it in sections. I used the grapefruit spoon as shown before, so the skin on my fingers is intact. The yardstick in the photo is used to smooth the batting down, using the side edge from the center of the quilt. It then also smooths out the top to the edges. A woman from my guild showed me the trick and it is very useful. So now, the quilt is all pinned and sitting next to my Bailey Home Quilter waiting for me to wind many, many bobbins. 

All sewn up!

    Circle Dance is hanging by threads no more. It is all sewn together. It needs to be pressed and assessed to see if I botched any seams. Thanks to Wanda, I learned to pleat up the rows that were not being sewn with safety pins. That helped a lot to handle all the chain pieced rows. I did pin every intersection of seam and circle, right through the seam, yet many of them still moved. GRR! 
    Now to choose the backing. I looked at some wide backings, but there is not a lot of choice. I have to stick to something not real feminine as it is for my daughter and her husband. I looked online an shot a few links to Ria so she could think what she wants. Boy, queen size is big when you do mostly lap size. I could not find a place to take a decent photo so it all could show or get decent light. It is sideways in the photo, the top is to the left.

  Another finish is a kid's comfort quilt, done in the 3 dudes pattern. I only had a small number of kid strips, so I had to add lots of borders. I FMQ on the Bailey and did a slate pattern in the yellow and a sunshine in the blue border which from some reason, has a moire pattern in the photo. Both designs were from Leah Day's list. Now onto the backs from the quilts I made at QBL.

Star and Slate design

Free motion kind of follows the blocks

The back in flannel for snuggling

The Front

Circles hanging together by threads

     Since the Circle Dance quilt was on the wall and spilling onto the floor, I needed to get it off and in order. Wanda recommended taking off by column and clipping the columns together. I did that and put the first column pile on the left and second on the right. Taking one from each column and sewing them together and then chain piecing the entire 2 columns. I certainly hope I understood her directions. I sewed columns 1 to 7 together (should have stopped a row sooner) and then 8 to 12. I have to iron all the seams and then pin the rows together. The last will be to sew that last column seam. It is rather unwieldy and I have been procrastinating ironing and pinning. I also have been watching the grandkids due to some family emergency. I am also packing for Quilting by the Lake next week; I won a scholarship and will be taking 5 days of classes with Victoria Findlay Wolfe. A bit nervous about it. Since I will living in a dorm, I have to bring everything for that and sewing stuff. And this for one who hates to pack.

Inching along progress quilt-wise

   With a lot of quilts going, and on a variety of machines, I am progressing, but slowly.  The Circle Dance quilt for my daughter as a wedding present (last May), has tested my curved piecing and I have tried a variety of methods: pinning (they slip), gluing the beginning and ends (time consuming and still not accurate), the CurveMaster foot (drags on the 301 fooling with the tension), and the regular foot with the old style original equipment screw down guide (done with holding the fabric like with the CurveMaster). I have all the large blocks done and over all the quarter size ones sewn and pressed. I find that Best Press did the best job in ironing. Wish it wasn't so expensive. My goal is to get them all sewn by the end of the week so I can schedule time with my daughter to arrange them the way she wants.

A pile to iron

The large size blocks

The small blocks

    Also, I have sewn a veteran's quilt for my guild that was kitted up. I need a border, so I have to find some patriotic fabric. It was a very easy pattern to sew, but I do not like the shape of the pinwheels. For some reason, I do not like this quilt, but I will do a nice border and quilting.

   My grandson won't stop sleeping with the fleece truck quilt I made him even though he is sweating to death, so I bought some truck fabric, two kinds, front and back and am making a whole cloth quilt with extra light batting. I started to do the FMQ, but marked all the lines so it stays even. Normally, I never mark as I follow the blocks for inspiration, but this is just one piece of fabric.

   In addition, but no photos, I spend hours with other guild members cutting pieces for our raffle quilt which will be paper pieced. We still have cutting to go and bagging up fabric and patterns for each block (100 Blocks). 
   And, I keep organizing fabric and cutting squares. 

Getting the values right

    I have been sewing, well mostly fighting with sewing machines. I have been having migraine issues which make it hard to get these blog posts written. However, I want to pass on a tip to get the values organized with a quilt. I am working on my daughter's quilt that is all curves (Circle Dance from January 20th)  and have to line up the values. I used the camera set on B&W to see the values and rearranged the fabric until it flowed from the darks to the lightest values. I find that the red cellophane window works mostly ok, but the turquoise values will read as really dark with the red. This value chart will help when I sew the curves together so I have the most contrast to keep the eye moving. I still tweaked a couple after the photo.

The two parts of the drunkards path from dark to light

You can see the progression much better in black and white

All kinds of bits and pieces

      I have not made significant progress in any one area. In the crumbs, I have now 40, 6.5" crumb blocks. I don't want to do just a sashing (boring) or another attic window pane. I don't know what to do. Someone at the WNY Modern Quilt Guild meeting mentioned doing skinny strips of black like stained glass and offset the rows. Hmm, I am not sure.
     The other crumb strips are 2.5" by 8.5", paper pieced on newsprint. Bonnie Hunter showed them on her quilt cam, showed a block made out of four, and then I never heard mention of it again. I jumped on it because I can use all the tiny pieces left over on these. So, now I have these nice strips and no ideas. I don't want to set them all against each other because it would be too jumbled to the eye.

6.5" Block pile all done on the Singer Treadle

2.5" x 8.5" Strips, 2 whole blocks, sewed on the treadle.Where do I go from here?

 

This is all I have left after my crumb blocks. I don't throw anything out bigger than this.

     I am also continuing on my wonky quarter log cabins. I finished another 4 quarters. I did not sew any of them together yet, so I can rearrange when I get all of them done. I am planning on 3 complete big blocks wide by 4 blocks long to make it a comfort lap quilt. These also sewed on the Singer 15 treadle. I am telling you, the treadle is real relaxing and comforting to sew on.

Two big blocks arranged, the quarters are 8.5" unfinished,
so the big blocks will finish 16"

First big block trimmed

     Finally, I took the plunge and am cutting out my daughter's wedding present quilt. It is going to be loosely based on Circle Dance by Elisa from Backporch Designs. A little while ago, I bought the 7" template and thought I could make the 3.5" one. Nope, I broke down and ordered it yesterday. I did start cutting out the batiks that Ria picked out. I am going to have to at least make 70 sets of the quarter circles and about 35 sets of the small circles. Well, at least I started. I am planning to sew them together with my Curvemaster foot that I bought.

Cut with the 7" Crazy Curves template