Good Things Happen Fast

Have you heard the saying, "Good things happen fast"? It certainly seems to apply to my Irish Change quilt as each step seems to be moving along in leaps and bounds. 

This morning I picked it up from Roberta so now all that is left to do is the binding. I have a very little bit of the paisley left over and have my fingers tightly crossed that it will be enough.

The quilting is just beautiful (a panto called Pergola) and shows up so nicely on the chain blocks...

with leafy tendrils winding their way across the quilt and adding wonderful texture to the paisley squares.

It looks equally fantastic on the back with the polka dots scattered throughout the design. Time to get it trimmed up and settle in for some relaxing hand stitching....M

Oh Happy Day!

Well, I broke with tradition this week and finished up a quilt in just over a week!

It's the Irish Change that I started for my friend. Knowing myself only too well, I was determined that this not be one that got started and then languished on the chair for months on end (possibly years!), so I kept my head down and saw to it that all of the blocks got made in good order.

Sunday I headed to the lake for a day with Jane so we had two machines humming all day - she worked on a Quilts for Survivors project and I plugged away at getting my flimsy together.

The only surprise in all of it was finding that I had six blocks left over at the end of the day. Whaaaat? I had followed my chart religiously so as not to mess up the rows, because each row had either light or dark borders on the blocks, but there they were, six perfectly good blocks with no place to go. 

I am blaming my poor layout illustration skills. I think that I counted some of my border blocks, which are two thirds the size of a full block, as a full block. Oh well, better too many than too few. They may become runners for the Holly Bazaar down the road.

Love that paisley; it creates such a softness to the overall quilt and is a nice contrast to the crisp lines of the blocks.

Monday I was up bright and early and got busy adding the borders and by the afternoon it was with Roberta for quilting. As luck would have it, I had recently picked up a soft yellow polka dot backing and I think that it's going to be perfect. The bonus? My friend loves polka dots.....M

Irish Change

I have been making up the pattern for my Irish Chain quilt as I go, using various sources for inspiration, including a tutorial from Jenny Doan at the Missouri Star Quilt Company which helped me determine the block size: 9.5" finished. She called this particular pattern Irish Change because it was a riff on the original pattern, so I'm going with that.

Jenny uses strip sets throughout to speed things up and I tried to do that as much as possible as well, but one yellow fabric has a directional pattern, the faintest white stripe with polka dots. I didn't do the math ahead of time for the total quantity of each print that I would need (I was just happy to have found coordinating prints with pieces 'that felt heavy enough' and started cutting) so I wasn't always making strip sets because I wanted to ensure that my stripes were always perpendicular to the centre mauve square. 

Over the past week I have been sewing up a storm. There are two different versions of the pieced block, one with the dark fabric in the outer edge (above) and the second with the light on the outside edge. I just broke up the task by the number of blocks/rounds in each and made great progress sewing an hour here and an hour there.

The outer edge is made of up of three quarter sized blocks, which I really liked, so I drafted a sketch of the layout and cutting instructions to help keep me on track.

The name Irish Change got me to thinking about a clip from one of Leonard Cohen's 2013 concerts in Dublin, Ireland. He was such a Canadian icon and it's wonderful to see how the audience just totally overtakes the singing of So Long Marianne and how he's so taken aback by it all. Love the Irish! Every time I watch it I'm taken back to a concert in Ottawa where I saw him. LUV! This song was running through my mind as I sewed (and maybe there was a little humming/harmony happening on my end too 😉)....M

Quilt Therapy

A little less than a year ago a dear friend of mine experienced a life-altering medical episode that has seen her suddenly become a resident in a long-term care facility. It breaks my heart. No more lunches out, no shared vacations, no whiling away an afternoon sipping a good Manhattan. 

Her home is being vacated so one day her house cleaner dropped off a bag of quilting cotton purchased in 2013 on one of our jaunts to Niagara-on-the-Lake. To help ward off my despair about her current state and our loss, I decided to use them make her a quilt. A quilt for her, therapy for me.

It's an interesting mix. Initially I thought that they were all coordinating, but a closer look revealed fabrics from a couple of planned projects (she is not a quilter but always had hopes of becoming one) so I started distilling them into piles that might work.

There are two beautiful paisleys from the same line, one in winter white and the other in a beautiful rich blue and I was keen to use at least one of them. Originally, I thought that there was blue in the white paisley, but as you'll see in a bit, it's more mauve/purple.

I've found an Irish Chain pattern that will show the paisley off nicely (hence the pattern drawn, literally, on the back of an envelope, above), so my mission was to find enough in my stash to make things work. After several tries I landed on this combo but decided to make a test block before going too far. I'm so glad that I did.

There are two versions of the same block, the only difference being the placement of the light and dark yellows. When seeing them made up the whole thing was just too intense. Back to the stash.

This is where I've landed, but not until I had let them sit together for a while. It will be much more restful....M

I'm Doing A Happy Dance Too!

It looks like January was a good month to make a flimsie as over the weekend I too finished putting one together. It's Wintersweet, and it's in the same record-setting territory as Anne's flannel beauty Home Quarter. 

I don't know the last time that I would have put a quilt top together in under a month, but I'll take it! As a reminder, the pattern is from Cakestand Quilts and it's free; she also provides an easy-to-follow tutorial. 

There hasn't been any movement on Halo so no design wall for me - laying it out on the floor outside the sewing room was my only option. This is the view from the top of the stairs. I like!

I'm so glad that I included the low volume neutrals with the white - it's given the entire thing a nice soft feel. Crisp and soft all in one.

Just noticed the two green and white polka dot squares sitting side by side. Despite shifting and rotating strips to avoid this it looks like a there are a couple of spots where it happened. Ah well, I was getting dizzy making all the changes so one or two were bound to squeak in there. Just chalking it up to 'scrappy'.

Now it's time to contemplate a backing. I have several in my stash but I'm not certain that they are quite right. There is also a beautiful green botanical tone-on-tone from Laundry Basket Quilts that's been waiting for the perfect quilt so I'll give that a look too; just not sure that I want the backing to be too dark. We'll see what we see. 

In the meantime, I'd better lay it out on a bed to see if it's big enough - I didn't think to measure it.....M

Snow Day Sew Day

If you live in the eastern half of either Canada or the USA, the last day or two has likely been something like ours - LOTS of snow. The huge storm that is rolling through proved to be the perfect excuse to sit tight. Better yet, why not sit at your sewing machine? Suddenly the rows for Wintersweet were piling up just about as quickly as the snow! Just three more to go.

You can see that my design wall is still filled with Halo blocks and pieces so I've been draping the rows over the top of a smaller one in front of it to keep track of them, which is probably a good sign that it's soon time to apply myself to Halo and move it along as well. All those curves make for a much slower go of it compared to the straight runs of four and nine-patch blocks, which has a lot to do with why it's still on the design wall.

I didn't realize until I had most of the white cut for the four-patch blocks that not all of the white was to be white - the pattern shows several low volume prints mixed in to make it even more scrappy. How could I have missed that??? 

It's going to be a lovely, delicate touch. I've stayed to several white-on-white fabrics and the odd pin dot in red and green, and also included this very delicate pink floral. It is really pretty but a much tighter weave than the others, almost a polished cotton. Hopefully it plays well with others when it is all washed.

So my piles of blocks are getting smaller and my strips longer. Guess it will be back to using the 'design floor' when it comes time to laying this out.

Given how hard the snow was coming down at lunch it seemed like the perfect excuse to pull out the snowman placemats and enjoy a hot bowl of soup. Love me a good snow day....M

Finally, Off My TO DO List - Almost

I'm not sure what it is about me, other than a strong case of procrastination, but my projects can have extremely long gestation periods. Even when it looks like they are headed for the home stretch they can take forever to get there. Such is the case with my Irish Chain. It has been quilted since the end of March but getting that binding on just took forever.

Part of my excuse is that I no longer seem to have a memory. When Betty was pulling fabrics to use in her Fruit Salad this blue fabric was included in the pile, a fact that was immediately forgotten by me. So then when I went looking for it I was at a loss. And it's not like it was a small piece that I was looking for - there are a few metres of this blue left so the bundle is not easy to miss.





In August I finally figured out what I had done with it and then brought it home to work on. Or so I thought. It went into the piling system in my sewing room, seemingly never to be seen again. After a little 'dumpster diving' and a call to Betty to see if I had in fact brought it home with me, I found it, so I decided that I'd better get the binding cut before I lost it again. Sheesh.

Anyway, it's now trimmed, binding sewn and on the quilt and I am really happy with it. I love blue & white and I love two colour quilts.

I was a little leery of using the blue to bind it because I thought that it might be too heavy, but it's narrow enough that it doesn't weigh it down. And it works really nicely with the prints on the back. You can only see one here but the back is pieced in three panels with the middle panel a white with tiny blue & beige dots.

And just when you think that you are finished you take a closer look at the photos and realize that there is a row of quilting missing - do you see it? There should be three horizontal rows in that one block in the left side of the frame. So it's done, but it's not really done. Today, hopefully....M

Duh....

You know how sometimes you just don't see the obvious? Well, that happened to me lately. I've been trying to figure out how large to make Martha's Star and what to do about borders, if anything. I've decided to make it 5 stars wide by 6 long and not put a border on it because I don't think it needs one, but also because the quilt will be plenty large without a border.

Anyway, I was on a bit of a roll making the red & white Irish Chain blocks when I came to the realization that if I wasn't putting a border on it then it would be best to end the half blocks in the centre of the block rather than two thirds of the way through, like I had been planning (like the two half blocks on the bottom right as compared to the block on the left - like my slippers?). I was bummed out about having to rip out a portion of about 14 blocks, but it was doable, so I undid one just to see how long it would take.

Then I went back to sewing full blocks, which was a good thing, because my brain had time to process things and I realized that rather than rip out what was already sewn I just need to make the existing 2/3 blocks into full blocks and make all new half blocks. No need to rip. Sheeesh! Amazing how your brain works sometimes (or doesn't!), isn't it? Anyway, I'm back at it, and sewing rather than ripping.

And, since it is going to be a big quilt me thinks that I'll need to make more stars before this is all finished too. I do like the way it is filling in though, don't you? Still targeting Easter for completion but that might just be completion of all the blocks and not necessarily having the top sewn together since I've just realized that Easter is NEXT weekend. Yikes!...M

Stars In My Eyes

Lately I've been doing daily trips to Ottawa but before I get into the car I try and fit in a bit of this...














And then some of this...

As a result, Martha's Star is really filling in nicely. Happy, happy, happy! (If you want to see a larger photo just click on it.)

I really do need to get a design wall so that I can get a better perspective and take better photos, but for now this will do. My sewing room also happens to be the one room in the house with no natural light so all the pics come up dark. Who did that planning???

I had hoped to have this top finished by the time the snow melted but Mother Nature has pulled a fast one this year and the past week to ten days have been incredibly warm, sunny and beautiful - mid summer weather rather than late winter/early spring - so the snow left us a few days ago. Oh well. Maybe I'll target Easter. Either way I'm really loving the way that this is coming along. I need to do some measurements to see what the final dimensions will be; I suspect that it will be 5 stars wide and 7 long, but we'll see. I have lots of star blocks so I might make up a second small quilt with just blue stars but I want to work on something brighter between then and now...M

Lets Hear It For The Church Ladies

Single Irish Chain

Today my heart is going pit-a-pat. The gals at the quilting group from the church have finished quilting my Single Irish Chain and it is just beautiful. Their work is so clean and precise - I couldn't be happier.

The pictures speak for themselves so I will say little and let you take it all in.

I think I will bind it with blue. What a great way to celebrate the first day of Spring!...M

Stars Are Starting To Fill In

I've made some great progress on Martha's Star. Slowly but surely those strips and tiny squares have been sewn into a few Irish Chain blocks and I've now got enough to lay out several with the star blocks to see what things are looking like, and I LIKE it!

When I first laid it out it was looking good but seemed to be missing something. A quick peek back at my sketch showed that I had forgotten to lay out half blocks around the edge so that the diagonal grid extended beyond the stars. So, back to the sewing table.

What a difference! It just ties everything together nicely.

More 9-patches are starting to pile up and the more I make the faster they seem to come together, so that's been a bonus. It's like everything else - set up a system and before you know it you have several blocks made. I think I will try to keep the quilt laid out on the floor for a while so that I can keep seeing progress as more blocks are finished....M