Beginnings and Endings

Beginnings ...
Another Opportunity Quilt!  The reverse side of my "17 in 2017" list is filling in faster than the front!
This little finish is a quick baby quilt for an upcoming shower in mid-March for a young couple who attended our church before moving to a neighboring city.  Since the other members of our ministry group were involved in other projects, I volunteered for this one, went home and sorted through the baby/child fabric bins and came up with this - finishing at 38-1/2 inches square.

Everything about this quilt is from stash remnants with the exception of the sweet tangerine Dear Stella print along the sides. I had purchased this fabric online a few months ago, to include in my grandson's baby quilt, but when it arrived found it was the wrong shade, and more suited to a little girl's quilt.

Just for fun, a little glimpse of my very cluttered sewing space!

The back - two very favorite fabrics I've been saving for just the right quilt. The blue remnant was probably picked up at a yard sale several years ago, every bit used in this quilt.  

A closer look at the back (colors are more true in this photo)

This little quilt was three afternoons in the making, one to piece the front and back, another to layer and quilt (love that serpentine stitch with the even-feed foot!), and a third afternoon to bind.  And I love the soft puffiness of the not-too-dense quilting with the Hobbs Polydown batting.  One last photo of this finish ...

Endings ...
This weekend we had to say goodbye to a faithful member of our little household for 13 years of his nearly 15 years on this earth.  He was the epitome of pure love, a quality we humans can only hope to achieve in our years on this earth.  So many memories, so many raw emotions right now

He was our constant companion and loved rides in the truck and walking along the Oregon beaches with us

He spent many hours alongside me as I worked in the sewing room, and occasionally bombed a photoshoot

He loved his home in the country

He loved life, and never complained, right up until the end when his heart gave out.  He gave us his all, and we tried our best to reciprocate.

A Little of This, A Little of That, Some Big and Little Baskets

My week so far has been about as crazy and disjointed as that blog post title!   The week began innocently enough with plans to finish sashing the upper halves of each little Quilty 365 block, and here they are ...

well, 313 of them anyway, as that is what I've calculated are needed to bring the quilt to the ginormous size I want it, setting the blocks on-point with at least one narrow and one wide border added beyond the setting triangles.   After considering whether to sort the blocks into piles of light, medium and dark background squares, I finally decided that a random setting might work best. But, there is no surface large enough in this house to lay out the entire top.  So, with 313 squares, what are the chances that a completely random setting will result in two or more identical background blocks showing up right next to each other?  Hmm, knowing me the odds are pretty good actually!  So, hopefully on Friday there will be time to head down to the church and push several large tables together so I can lay this out and then tag each row.   Sooo looking forward to seeing this beast finally stitched together into a finished top!

Yesterday the first hand quilted stitches were added to the big basket top pieced last year, or was it two years ago now? It has waited a long time to begin looking like a finish might happen this year. Time will tell ...

And the little baskets are progressing ever so slowly, only seven done at this point.  Though I'm loving the Old Plum Calicoes for this quilt I'm thinking a few more lighter purple shades will need to mix in to keep the quilt from turning out darker than I'd like.  Though in truth I've only cut into two of the actual plum fabrics so far, and the two lighter baskets came from scrap bin pieces. Definitely going to be a lifetime project this one ...

Oh yes, another 'squirrel' opportunity arrived on my doorstep this week, but I'll save that for the next post.

"Bee Charmer's Flower Garden" is a Finish!

Today I sewed the label onto The Bee Charmer's Flower Garden and can happily call this one a finish!

When I last posted, this donation quilt was just a completed top with a couple major seams ditch-quilted. You can see the back story of this quilt here.

A combination of free-motion and walking foot quilting was used to complete the quilting. First, I had hoped to find a tutorial for quilting some little bees in the central daisy panels, and was delighted to find this tutorial on Lori Kennedy's Inbox Jaunt blog!  After some practice I managed to create a critter that vaguely resembles a bee ...

The sashings are quilted with a few variations of easy flowers and leaves. These photos mostly depict the sashings as a pinky-beige on my monitor, when in reality they and the outer border are both a lovely golden color. I admit to being a challenged photographer!

For the outer borders I returned to the walking foot and stitched two lines of my machine's serpentine stitch, stretched to the maximum (which wasn't all that large) and am very happy with the puffy effect, not to mention the speed at which the borders were stitched!  I think it took longer to pin them closely to keep the fabrics from shifting than it did to stitch all the lines!

The back has this cute rolling hills and farm fabric bordered with strips of the same fabric as the border on the front.

I have to say I'm so happy with the way this quilt turned out, it's bright and cheerful, colorful and happy in every way!  I hope the recipient will smile every time she looks at it and wraps herself or her little ones in it.

January Review and The Bee Charmer's Flower Garden

Though I never officially signed on to Meredith's 17 in 2017 Challenge, I've dutifully filled out a list that now contains eleven UFO's that would love to see the light of day, if only for a brief moment this year.  On the back of this list is another called "Opportunity Quilts."  The ones that beckon us away from what we thought we were about for the day/week/month and say 'Start Me, Keep your Nose to the Needle and Finish Me NOW!'

So, January went pretty well, three of the eleven on the 17 in 2017 list are now marked off as Done, as in Finished and now have a place of honor on the page above titled 2015 and Later. Another project on the list, my Westering Women BOM, now has all 12 blocks completed and is simmering for a bit while I decide where to take it from there.  And the first squirrel Opportunity Quilt is also now officially finished, and was posted here.

So, February started off with our quilt ministry needing three additional quilts (that we know of at the moment).  Two are for members of our congregation who were just commissioned as associate pastors.  I think ministry quilts should bless those in need as well as celebrate special events in the life of the church, don't you?  Anyhow, I began this celebratory quilt for our youngest associate pastor.  Her grandfather passed away recently and at his memorial service we learned that she inherited the grandfather's beloved beehives!  So, what better name for this quilt than "The Bee Charmer's Flower Garden"? Here is the quilt, layered and pinned, with a bit of the ditch quilting started. An aside - the quilt top measures 64x64 inches; I started with a new box of 300 quilters safety pins, and ran out before finishing pinning the outer borders - sigh!

I'm happy for the time spent ditch-quilting the blocks since I've not determined exactly what designs to use for FMQ'ing the block centers or the sashings and borders. I'd love to find a honeybee motif that could be used in the daisy blocks along with some meandering bee-flight lines. Early tomorrow when our internet speed increases I'll be looking online for a suitable and hopefully easy motif.

A closer view

The back is mostly this sweet vintage farm fabric, a yard-sale find donated by one of our quilters.  I love it, and it's perfect for this quilt. There was no identifying information on the selvedge of this fabric, so I have no idea of its age or manufacturer.

As far as February progress on my personal UFO's, I've finally gotten back to working on the Quilty 365 top, and now have nearly half the circle blocks sashed, more about that in a future post.

The sun shines today, and the temperatures are above freezing.  A great February day, and thoughts of folks in these parts turn to fresh maple syrup and buckwheat pancakes on such days.  I hope your Monday is bringing you similar sweet thoughts.