Wednesday, September 16, 2020

The Three Misfits

An appropriate subtitle might read "She thought she could but she was wrong!"  The story begins a year or maybe it's two years now, anyway quite a while ago when I read one of Bonnie Hunter's posts about her delectable mountains quilt and her free pattern for same.  It looked easy enough, and I proceeded to cut a huge pile of squares in hopes of making some sort of "purple mountain majesties" quilt of my own.  Long story short, try as I might, I kept messing up on the final cut to complete the blocks, and my mountain majesties were quickly turning into a one-way spiky trek up the same l-o-n-g mountain.  Only a few blocks turned out right, and they will show up eventually in the photos below.  So, what to do with all the uncut large HST's still sitting there?  Arrowhead blocks maybe?  Made two of those but didn't care for them, so the final option became hourglass blocks.  By this time I was thoroughly tired of messing with them, hated looking at the fabrics, gave away all but a couple of the purple HST squares to a visitor at one of our quilt ministry meetings, and threw the remainder together into three small wheelchair lap quilts for one of our local nursing homes.  Thus, the finale:

These quilts are smaller than they appear in the photo, the largest is about 40x40 inches, the smallest one around 34 inches square.

The backs:

Some closer shots:



The center panel of this last one is a piece of fabric from our ministry stash that has a coated shiny, almost crinkly texture.  Pretty, but it created havoc with the machine tension on the back of the free motion quilting.  There are a few little messes of dark thread on the reverse behind the panel, but with the coated shiny texture I was leery of unstitching and redoing because it seems certain that the original needle holes were going to remain.  Too bad, because it was overall the nicest of the three quilts.

So, there endeth my long sad saga with The Three Misfits.  You gotta show the bad along with the good, right?  

The past couple days have been spent slowly cutting lots of tiny pieces for the next four blocks of my Diamond Jubilee quilt.  I'm making a version of the Sunflower Quilt shown in Betsy Chutchian and Carol Staehle's book 19th-Century Patchwork Divas' Treasury of Quilts.  Hoping to have all four blocks completed by the end of the month.  I really want to devote much of my time now to making this quilt, so I may end up linking the three little quilts above as my mini(s) for the month with Wendy at The Constant Quilter when she posts her mini at the end of this month.

The trees are beginning to color up on the higher hillsides, and we had our first real frost night before last.  Autumn will be in full glory very soon.  Our skies are hazy with the smoke from the western wildfires and we just heard that remnants of the smoke plume have reached Europe.  The sunrise today was an exceptionally bright orange in contrast to the beige-grayish sky.  Eerily beautiful, but the knowledge of the destruction left in the wake of the fires is so very sad.  Our prayers go out to all those who are enduring the terrible air quality conditions as well as those potentially in the path of the wildfires.


20 comments:

Robin said...

It's so frustrating when something doesn't turn out as planned. I'm glad you figured out a way to make these three become useful. Nice job~

Ann said...

What a shame that your beautiful purples didn't work but how nice to spread the fabric to many helpers and still have all these finishes. Sorry about your center panel. I think you made the correct decision - those holes would probably remain.
And hourglasses were a previous AHIQ prompt. Hooray!

Kyle said...

Well, I'd say, you made delicious lemonade from you challenging sewing. Each one was unique and is a celebration of using those fabrics up. All of those firefighters are the heroes.

Happy Quilter said...

You’ve made a great save! Now you can enjoy your Sunflower quilt, and I hope to see the progress here!

Sandy said...

I like your misfits. Especially the quirky mountain one. :-)

Needled Mom said...

Good use of your boo boos. That is a great pattern IF it is cut and rearranged properly. I’ve done the same thing.

Debbie said...

lol...the pattern should come with a warning label. My first block was just that.....both halves the same. But I learned and have made 3 of that pattern. Anyway, love your version in purple. It looks great.
We are covered in rain from the hurricane for the next day. But the weekend is suppose to be wonderful fallish weather.

Barbara said...

Well, I like what you ended up with. I tried making a tree quilt once, but it required templates. I thought I could get it done without the templates. I never could get it going and ended up giving the blocks I made to a friend.

FlourishingPalms said...

Well, to me it looks like you made a silk purse out of a sow's ear! These are three, very pretty donation quilts that you can be proud of. And aren't you persistent to make use of everything you cut out? That's an admirable quality. Interesting that you've seen evidence of the fires out west. Not us, but then, we experienced the fringe rain from Hurricane Sally. Our weather sure hasn't been normal this year, has it? It's nice that you're seeing signs of autumn. That IS the season we miss. Sleeping with the windows open would be divine. Take care, and enjoy this season.

Lizzy D said...

I think the Misfits are all quite beautiful. I wonder why you had so such trouble w Delectable Mountains tho...a confusingly written pattern, maybe?

Hazy skies here..I find it hard to understand that this is smokkke tho.. What a terrible event the fores are.

Wendy Caton Reed said...

Well, I think this trio of minis is fantastic despite the angst of the "Purple Mountains"! I will be proud to link them up at the end of the month. I wish I had as many finishes this month. Just seem to be rambling off in different directions. Looking forward to seeing your jubilee blocks too.

QuiltGranma said...

I like them! And with the size you indicated I think I have some left over quilts... as in blocks left over from making a bigger quilt that I made into smaller quilts (and got them quilted too)... that I can give to a local care facility. They need a home, and to get out of here. Space is filling up.

Quilting Babcia said...

Thank you for visiting!

Quilting Babcia said...

It's definitely a fine balance between having all the quilts we need vs. those we "want" - every once in awhile we have to clear out and there are always places where our quilts will be loved and appreciated. Great use for the orphan blocks too.

Cynthia@wabi-sabi-quilts said...

Very successful outcome to a rocky start. Way to go, using the pieces you had to make three useful and pretty lap quilts.

Janet O. said...

It may not have gone as planned, but you ended up with three useful quilts in one of my favorite color combos--purple and green. They are a good size for baby quilts, too.
So crazy that the smoke is crossing the continent and the ocean!

Barb said...

I think this story has a happy ending. the three quilts look very happy blowing in the breeze.
WE're getting color here in CT too. Yay fall

Ruth said...

I love them all! The green and purple look great together. We have clean air here after a good rain last Thursday night and Friday. Very refreshing after the super bad air and smoke. We had to keep our windows closed all last week.

Nancy said...

It's hard when we keep having problem after problem with a quilt. I think you recovered nicely with three fun quilts. I especially like the green hourglass blocks with the one purple block. It's an interesting setting. I say well done!

Binsa said...

Enjoyed your post, glad I am not the only one that has issues with fmq