Looking Back and Looking Forward #5

This is a quilt I made out of strings. It was my very first string quilt and it started my thrilling addiction to string quilts. I named this one "Sting Obsession." You can read the story behind the quilt by clicking on the Provenances tab above, then just scroll down until you see the title of this quilt.

Provenances are a very important step in quilt making. I know we mostly put a label on the back of the quilt; hopefully with the date made along with any other information you want. But a provenance provides the background on the quilt. It can be as short such as when you started and ended the quilt and who you made it for and why. Others, like me, who like writing can go for the gusto by writing all about the quilt:  how you found the fabric and/or pattern, the making of the quilt, and any cool stuff about the quilt. My Aunt Marie, who is my muse, left me 12 quilts when she passed. If you go to the left column and scroll down to labels, click on Marvelous Marie, you'll see some beautiful quilts she made. She made almost all her quilts totally by hand: cutting out pieces with scissors, sewing pieces together and quilting by hand. The one thing she didn't do was leave no information on the quilt. There are no labels and I wish I knew the stories behind them. The message of the day is: Label your quilts and keep a provenance! So now, I will get off of my soap box and start reporting progress for the last week.

Looking Back

My only goal for last week was to start cutting the fabric for Firstest. Let's have a big round of applause for ... ME! I did it! I nailed it, or rather, I cut it! I sewed it together!

Firstest is my grandson who is graduating from High School this year. His favorite color, since he was a kid, is orange. Just recently he added aqua to his favorite colors. I found a great pattern called "Boomerang" that I thought would fit his favorite colors.

It looks complicated but the good thing is that it doesn't have Y seams!!!! Repeat: NO Y seams!!!! It could have C, or P, or even T seams and that wouldn't have mattered---all that matters is....NO Y seams!

Did I tell you that it didn't have any, zero, zilch, no Y seams.

I had my fill of Y seams when I made a Lone Star quilt.

I decided to use solids for the quilt, And here are some pictures to amaze and delight you, especially since there are no Y seams.

I have 3 shades of each color: orange, aqua, and grey. And now I see it! There are only two shades of orange in the picture. Well, there you have it. I'm not perfect. It's so embarrassing!

I think I can live with it.

Maybe.

And now, to your surprise and delight, here are more pictures of the ongoing quilt.

Sew together two strips of different colors. Cut into 60' triangles.

Sew two of the triangles together.

 

This is a sample of how they will look together. Of course I had only cut up 2 strip sets. It's going to look a lot different with 9 colors.  I think they look like a school of fish. Do you?

I've already cut out 10 strips and sewed them together in pairs. I've cut a 2 strip sets into triangles and have just started pinning them together to sew.

I got a lot farther than I thought I would. Which is very good. Very encouraging.

And now, without further ado...

Looking Forward

Keep sewing on Firstest's quilt. I have to make 143 fish (full blocks). I'm going towards a single bed size. It doesn't matter if he uses it for his bed; my go to size for "lap" quilts is a twin size. I like a quilt that can cover you from the toes to the nose. I guess it's more a body quilt than a lap quilt! 

I'll aim for, ummm, let's say 45 blocks. That would be one-third of the blocks done. That's a hefty chore, but it would be great if I could get all the blocks cut in 3 weeks. It would leave time for quilting it.

Announcement:

There's a whole lot of fun happening on Thursdays in my blog! It's a new feature on my blog! It's Throwback Thursday, a chance to re-visit a blog from my posts from years ago! It's new! Lots of fun! Fun for days! Give it a try! Here's the link for yesterday's post, jump on over to there! 

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good night!

I'm channeling Sound of Music!

I'll be posting in the linky parties listed in the left column. Mosey on over and have a great time seeing other quilter's makings.

Nyd din dag  (It's Danish!)

Bookends of the Week: Design Wall Monday and Whoop Friday

It's a great Monday, the first of my Spring Break. It's a real burden this vacation time...all I have to spend my time on is quilting. Poor me!

This past week I've mostly been hand quilting a string quilt I made. It was the first string quilt I've made. I did it as a L/E and it took 2 years to make the top. It has some beautiful plain fabric squares among the string blocks. I wanted to do hand quilting there.. I took it first to a LAQ to quilt all the string blocks and borders, leaving me the plain squares. I figured it would take me about two years to get it hand quilted...sure, yup, I was certain another two years would do it.

Someone want to help me get this egg off my face?

By the way, did I mention to you that it's a king-size quilt?

Uh-huh, I thought that would garner sympathy.

It's been more like four years. That's what? Double the time I estimated? The first excuse reason I found was I can't quilt it in the summers. Too hot with that humongous quilt on my lap. Even more sympathy!

I'm closing on the finish line--yippee! I only have 10 more setting triangles to finish, then it's on to binding. I'm doing about 3 setting triangles every 3 days.

One of the precious parts for me is that the plain fabric is from my Aunt Marie's stash. It's a lovely shade of lavender. It was a very difficult time finding border fabric. If you put blue next to it, the plain fabric looks purple. Then if you put purple next to it, the fabric looks blue. Silly me, I actually like that kind of fabric. Looking at the picture you can see I finally found green worked great.

Close up of handquilting in square

Close up of hand quilting on setting triangle

The other thing I'm working on for a quick change is three blue-and-white blocks for my everlasting blue-and-white quilt. I first started it when I was in charge of BOM for our guild. Every block I chose I would make a sample for the guild and then a copy in blue and white. The blocks are 12 inch. did that for a year and since then I've been on my own. I've made 29 blocks and have 7 left to do. After these three, I'll only have four. It's big. It's beautiful. I've really enjoyed working on it. I'm really trying to stop using really as an adjective! It's difficult!

Here's the block I worked on today, after 3 hours trying to make a collage for my Family Blog. It's our Anniversary and I am trying to make a collage of my hubby and I. It's not done yet. Really. The program kept crashing. I found out that saving the collage didn't save the layout, it just saved the collage as a picture. Each time it crashed I would also have to go back and upload my pictures again. It's really been a devil in the making. Really.

This explains how in one day I didn't even finish one block. Here's the one laid out and ready to sew together. It is called Bridal's path.

Bridal Path

Progress in 2012

You can check out other cool quilter's share their design wall over at Patchwork Times. I'm also hooking up with Can I Get A Whoop Whoop Friday.  Click on badge in right column.  Really