Quilting is in my Blood

My September 2022 One Monthly Goal is to make a set of eight herringbone place mats as a house-warming gift for my niece, Mary Frances, who bought a lovely vintage home a few months ago. She sent me a few photos of some of her decor, and I found two fabrics from the Chasing Wildflowers Collection by Juniper Row Design for Hawthorne Supply Co: Small Butterfly Dreams in Pink and Small Wildflower in Pink that she liked for the place mats. I also ordered a print from Giucy Giuce’s Fabric From the Attic Collection called Matrix in Mulberry (it has the cute pink pliers on top of it). Then I pulled some more coordinating fabrics from my stash that I think will look good in these place mats. Looking over my fabric pull, I decided that I needed more of the color rust to round out the color palette, so I ordered a couple more rust prints from the Chasing Wildflowers Collection (not pictured).

I also have a couple pretty fabrics for the back of the place mats that I will share when I (hopefully) link up my OMG finish at the end of the month.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: Sept 2022 One Monthly Goal.

I am so excited to share that I have finally finished my Murmuration quilt! The pattern is by Rebecca@Bryan House Quilts. I  first saw Rebecca’s Murmuration quilt in 2019, and I fell HARD for her gorgeous quilt especially because I am such a big fan of the color turquoise. I knew right away that I wanted to make own Murmuration quilt using similar colors as Rebecca but with some subtle differences. She used a little more blue in her quilt, and I wanted to use more teal and dark green. I initially planned to make it in 2020, but I didn’t have the time or mental space to do so. Ditto for 2021. But I FINALLY made it a priority to clear time on my quilting schedule for 2022.

I started working on units for this improv, paper-pieced project in May, and it took me about seven weeks to make the 93 diamonds and 30 triangles using these 21 Kona solids: Prussian, Celestial, Everglade, Glacier, Emerald, Ultra Marine, Caribbean, Pacific, Oasis, Cyan, Turquoise, Lagoon, Jade Green, Breakers, Pool, Capri, Azure, Aloha, Aqua, and Sea Glass. To add interest, I varied the color arrangements and number of strips and widths of strips in the diamonds. The finished quilt measured 62″ x 72″. 

I found the perfect backing fabric at backside fabrics called Soar Moody Blues which depicts a nature scene in teal.

I decided to have Rebecca at Rebecca Grace Quilting quilt this for me because she’s done such amazing quilting for me. Rebecca operates her long-arm quilting business differently than other long-armers. When someone wants her to quilt a project, she gets basic info about the quilt, puts together an estimate of costs, and enters it into her quilting schedule. When I contacted her in May, she put Murmuration on her quilting schedule for Aug 20-22nd even though I hadn’t started working on it yet! Having committed to a specific time frame really helps keep me focused!

The other reason I like to have Rebecca quilt some of my most important projects is that she is a great communicator which should not come as a surprise to her blog followers. She really considers what quilting would most complement the piecing and makes extremely helpful suggestions, sending images of quilting patterns that she believes will enhance the quilt. For Murmuration, we chose a quilting pattern called Contour Cocoon. Below is a pic that Rebecca took before she sent the quilt back to me (I absolutely love the sign that looks like it made of metal with the sewing machine and the name of her business):

I finished up the quilt top the end of July and Rebecca finished the quilting on Aug 19th. I got it back from Rebecca on August 25th, trimmed it on the 26th, and machine sewed the binding (Kona Celestial) on today—August 27th. You may be able to tell that I’ve quite excited to get it on my bed! I haven’t had time to make a wall hanging quilt to hang behind my bed so I bought this trio of blue ocean canvases (which may need to be hung a little lower) on Amazon.

On the wall to the right of my bed a sliver of a painting is visible. It is extremely sentimental to me. My parents bought this watercolor painting (probably in 1980s) that looks like a photograph from an artist named James Burr. It is of a windmill in Mykonos, Greece. I decided it deserves it’s own full-on photo:

Linking up to Kathleen McMusing: TGIFF and Meadow Mist Designs: Favorite Finish Monthly Linkup–August 2022.

My August 2022 One Monthly Goal was to make a Break of Day quilt top (pattern by Erica with Kitchen Table Quilting and her Break of Day layout). This was an extremely satisfying project to work on though I had to painstakingly check that I was selecting correct fabric colors. When making this quilt top, I did much less chain piecing than I usually do and took many in-process photos of blocks to make sure I was accurately following Erica’s 18 color gradient layout.

Of the 18 solid fabrics used for Break of Day, Erica suggested using 13 Kona colors, 2 Cotton Couture colors, 2 Pure Elements colors, and 1 RJR Cotton Supreme color. For the non-Kona solids, Erica suggested Kona equivalents. I used all Kona colors for my Break of Day quilt. While Alison Glass Kaleidoscope fabrics are my all-time favorite solids due to them being woven using two different colors resulting in a luminous quality, I often choose to use Kona solids because of the wide range of 365 colors. I also like that Kona solids fray less than Kaleidoscope solids. The 19 Kona colors I used are Raisin, Hibiscus, Lupine, Plum, Cerise, Gumdrop, Valentine, Honeysuckle, Carnation, Camellia, Creamsicle, Persimmon, Papaya, School Bus, Cheddar, Corn Yellow, and Canary plus Titanium for my background fabric.

I am diligent about labeling my solid fabrics when they arrive in the mail. I generally buy my Kona solids from Stash Fabrics who always label their solid fabrics and Hawthorne Supply Co. who do not label their solids, but I can look at all my past orders with excellent photo images of fabrics ordered, so I make my own labels from little squares of paper safety pinned to the selvedges of the fabric. I will say that even though Hawthorne Supply Co. is in New York, I get orders from them very quickly.

The stars below are made from the more vibrant fabrics.  Nectarine, Papaya, and Corn Yellow are on the top row, and Honeysuckle, Cerise, and Hibiscus are on the bottom row.

Erica’s original Katie pattern uses strip piecing for the sashing, but that was not possible with the Break of Day layout since the sashing provides the complex transition of the more muted colors to the brighter colored stars. The pic below shows a portion of the sashing strips. I made 168 flying geese for this quilt using Lee Heinrich’s paper-pieced Perfect Flying Geese templates. Not only are my flying geese more accurate, but I can label my units on the paper side with the color of the fabric used. I know there are people who hate tearing out paper from paper-pieced projects, but it doesn’t really bother me. I often find ripping out the paper to be oddly satisfying!

For the back of my Break of Day quilt, I used a pretty digital print by Windham Landscapes 2020 called 5 O’Clock Somewhere purchased through FabricUtopia on Etsy bordered by a wide border of Kona Lupine and a more narrow border of Kona Hibiscus (though it doesn’t look much narrower since I have allowed extra inches that will be cut off after it is long-arm quilted).

I sent this quilt top/backing off on Monday to Melissa at Sew Shabby Quilting. She’s going to quilt some spirals with a pretty variegated sunrise-colored thread.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: August 2022 OMG Finishes.

My August 2022 One Monthly Goal is to make a Break of Day quilt top. If you have been following my blog for awhile, you know that I LOVE color gradient quilts. I probably have at least 10 more color gradient quilts on my Quilty Bucket list. Back in 2018 Erica with Kitchen Table Quilting shared a blog post about her Break of Day Quilt using her Katie Quilt pattern. I immediately pinned her blog post, and occasionally it has shown up in my Pinterest feed. When it popped up again a couple months ago, I decided to take a look at how many of the Kona solid fabrics she used in this quilt I had in my stash (BTW she offers the list for free in her shop), and I had many of them. I struggled with whether I could fit this quilt in this year but then I decided to shift a couple projects to 2023. Here is a photo of units that make up the six different colored stars made from the following Kona solids: Nectarine, Papaya, and Corn Yellow, Honeysuckle, Cerise, and Hibiscus.

Below is a pic of some of the flying geese I’ve made along with fabric for the nine patch plus blocks for this project. I’m waiting on one more fabric to complete the sunrise look which is Kona Lupine–a very pretty light purple fabric.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: August 2022 One Monthly Goal.