Quilting is in my Blood

Anja with Anja Quilts gave us our  fourth border prompt for the SAHRR2023 which is the Flying Geese. My regular followers are aware that I’ve made my share of flying geese when I made three temperature quilts last year–read about them here. So what’s another eight flying geese! I’m moving from the warmer colors to the cooler colors in my Alison Glass Color Gradient Wall Hanging which is my SAHRR2023 project. I decided to make eight 1.5″ x 3″ finished flying geese units in turquoise/green fabrics with some gold and yellow accents to tie into the last two borders. With the fourth border completed, it now measures about 17″ square. See the details below about my center block and first three borders as well as a link to my SAHRR2022 project.

I had been looking forward to participating in  SAHRR2023 since I finished up SAHRR2022 last year because it was so much fun customizing my design and stretching my piecing skills. See my Blue Dog quilt here and a similar one I made for my stepson, Drew, here.

For my 2023 Stay at Home Round Robin project, I decided to make a color gradient wall hanging using Alison glass fabrics and coordinating Kona solids. I made the center block with one of my red-orange Alison Glass prints along with Kona Coral and Poppy. I used the center of Kitty Wilkins’s Fierce block which she designed for the 2019 Summer Sampler to help participants strengthen their tiny paper piecing skills. See the complete Fierce block made by Kate@SwimBikeQuilt here. My SAHRR2023 center measures 4.5”square.

Roseanne with Home Sewn By Us gave us our first border prompt which was the Spool Block. I paper pieced the tiny strips of “thread” using 1/4″ graph paper. It was about 7″ square after the first border.

Wendy with Pieceful Thoughts gave us our second border prompt which was Stars. I paper-pieced four Sew Tiny Arkansas Stars, pattern by Kitty Wilkin. I added strips of a gold Alison Glass Trinkets fabrics, and with my second border complete, my SAHRR2023 project measured about 9.5″ square.

Chris with Chris Knits gave us our third border prompt for the SAHRR2023 which was the Hourglass Block. I opted to just make four hourglass blocks in yellow/green fabrics. With the third border completed, it measured about 13.5″ square.

I’m already excited to see what Emily has in store for us on Monday!

Linking up to Anja Quilts: SAHRR2023 Fourth Border Prompt.

Chris with Chris Knits gave us our third border prompt for the SAHRR2023 which is the Hourglass Block. I opted to just make four hourglass blocks in yellow/green fabrics. With the third border completed, it now measures about 13.5″ square. See the details below about my center block and first two borders as well as a link to my SAHRR2022 project.

I had been looking forward to participating in  SAHRR2023 since I finished up SAHRR2022 last year because it was so much fun customizing my design and stretching my piecing skills. See my Blue Dog quilt here and a similar one I made for my stepson, Drew, here.

For my 2023 Stay at Home Round Robin project, I decided to make a color gradient wall hanging using Alison glass fabrics and coordinating Kona solids. I made the center block with one of my red-orange Alison Glass prints along with Kona Coral and Poppy. I used the center of Kitty Wilkins’s Fierce block which she designed for the 2019 Summer Sampler to help participants strengthen their tiny paper piecing skills. See the complete Fierce block made by Kate@SwimBikeQuilt here. My SAHRR2023 center measures 4.5”square.

Roseanne with Home Sewn By Us gave us our first border prompt which was the Spool Block. I paper pieced the tiny strips of “thread” using 1/4″ graph paper. It was about 7″ square after the first border.

Wendy with Pieceful Thoughts gave us our second border prompt which was Stars. I paper-pieced four Sew Tiny Arkansas Stars, pattern by Kitty Wilkin. I added strips of a gold Alison Glass Trinkets fabrics, and with my second border complete, my SAHRR2023 project measured about 9.5″ square.

Now let’s see what Anja has in store for us on February 13th!

Linking up to Chris Knits: SAHRR 2023 Border 3.

I’ve been looking forward to participating in  SAHRR2023 since I finished up SAHRR2022 last year because it was so much fun customizing my design and stretching my piecing skills. See my Blue Dog quilt here and a similar one I made for my stepson, Drew, here.

For this year, I have decided to make a wall hanging using Alison glass fabrics and coordinating Kona solids. I decided to make my SAHRR2023 a color gradient project (Big Surprise I know!), so I started with one of my red-orange Alison Glass prints along with Kona Coral and Poppy. I used the center of Kitty Wilkins’s Fierce block which she designed for the 2019 Summer Sampler to help participants strengthen their tiny paper piecing skills. See the complete Fierce block made by Kate@SwimBikeQuilt here. My SAHRR2023 center measures 4.5”square.

During the last weekend of January, I got the first border done for my 2023SAHRR project. Unfortunately I was too late to join the linky party. Roseanne with Home Sewn By Us gave us our first prompt which was the Spool Block. I paper pieced the tiny strips of “thread” using 1/4″ graph paper. It’s about 7″ square after the first border.

On Monday Jan 30th Wendy with Pieceful Thoughts gave us our second border prompt: Stars. Over the weekend I paper-pieced four Sew Tiny Arkansas Stars, pattern by Kitty Wilkin. I added strips of a gold Alison Glass Trinkets fabrics, and with my second border complete, my SAHRR2023 project is about 9.5″ square. There is no doubt that the wonky factor increases with tiny piecing, but overall I’m happy with how this project is looking:

Linking up to Pieceful Thoughts: SAHRR2023 Second Border Linky Party.

My February 2023 One Monthly Goal is to make a quilt top using the Easy Bargello Quilt Pattern by Busy Hands Quilts. Below are the fabrics I’ll be using along with a coordinating Kona solid. This will be another fun color gradient project!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: Feb 2023 One Monthly Goal.

My January 2023 One Monthly Goal was to turn the Daisy Sashiko panel I finished in November (see 2nd pic below) into a pouch. Several months ago I purchased this Pouch Kit from BeBe Bold. I finished the pouch with just a couple days left in January. I ran into a snag earlier in the month because I had inadvertently cut some of the striped fabric across the width rather than down the length leaving me with not enough striped fabric for the lining. I did have more of the gold fabric with black flecks so I added a piece of it so the lining fabric was long enough and placed it at the bottom of the bag, so it’s not visible unless someone peeks inside the bag. I’ll be using this pouch to hold Sashiko supplies.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: Jan 2023 One Monthly Goal Finish.

New Mexico is on the left, California is in the middle, and Washington is on the right.

In late 2021 I decided that I wanted to make three temperature quilts: one for my town in northern New Mexico, one for my stepdaughter who resides in a city in the Bay Area of California, and one for my stepson who lives in a city in the state of Washington. I decided to use the same Kona solids for each quilt to depict each temperature range to be able compare the different temperatures for each state. I used 2″x4″ finished flying geese in all three quilts, paper-piecing all the flying geese (daily when possible so not to get too far behind) using Lee@Freshly Pieced’ Perfect Flying Geese and keeping track of the date, state, and colors on the paper to keep me organized. I used Accuweather to track temperatures. I designated the large triangles (geese) for each day’s high temperature, and the small triangles (sky) represented the low temperatures. On January 1st, I pointed all the large triangles for all three states up, and then for subsequent days, the direction of the large triangles was determined whether the temperature increased (pointed up), stayed the same (still pointed up) or decreased (pointed down).

These are the Kona colors with associated temperature ranges: <0 Orchard Ice, 0-9 Violet, 10-14 Magenta, 15-19 Geranium, 20-24 Dark Violet, 25-29 Purple, 30-34 Noble Purple, 35-39 Surf, 40-44 Ocean, 45-49 Celestial, 50-54 Mediterranean, 55-59 Cyan, 60-64 Glacier, 65-69 Clover, 70-74 Kiwi, 75-79 Chartreuse, Citrus 80-84, Papaya 85-89, Torch 90-94, and Coral 95-99. There were no temperatures in 2022 for any of our cities in the 100s. I use Kona Charcoal to sew rectangles to the end of the columns for the months that don’t have 31 days. I only had one day the entire year where the high and low temps were in the same temperature range which was WA Jan 5th Surf 35-39.

Early in 2022, I decided that I wanted Rebecca of Rebecca Grace Quilting to do the quilting on all three temperature quilts, and I knew I wanted to use a Charcoal Minky backing, so in September I ordered seven yards of Shannon Minky Solid Cuddle in Charcoal and had it shipped to Rebecca who was nice enough to store it for me until she received my quilt tops about three weeks ago. I have to tell you that the back looks AMAZING. Here’s a pic that Rebecca took of my New Mexico temp quilt before she returned it to me:

The bobbin thread is grey and wonderfully highlights the quilting on the minky backing, but the thread that I am most excited about is the thread we chose for the front of all three quilts which was Glide Sprout:

At the top of this post I have photos of all three finished temperature quilts taken outside mid morning on 1/28/23 (click on the photos to enlarge them). The sun was shining brightly which tends to wash out the colors, but I definitely wanted to include some outside shots. I also took pics of all three quilts on my bed. Here is New Mexico:

Here is California:

And here is Washington:

Finally here is a close-up of some of the quilting on the Washington temperature quilt with the awesome Go With The Flow Quilting in Glide Sprout done by Rebecca (which shows up better on the Charcoal border above):

I had Spoonflower print up customized labels for all three quilts (for info about the process see this post here). Below is a pic of my New Mexico label sewn in:

I started binding the quilts on Jan 21st, the day after I got them back from Rebecca. I ended binding them all a little differently. For my New Mexico temp quilt, I machine stitched the binding on both sides and thought that some of my wobbly sewing showed up too much on the binding on the front of the quilt. For the Washington quilt, I sewed the binding to the back (because I thought I was going to machine stitch it down on the front like I did for NM but then changed my mind) and hand-stitched the binding to the front. For the California quilt, I machine sewed the binding on the front of the quilt and hand-stitched it to back which took a lot of time because hand-sewing with minky fabric is NOT fun! It’s difficult to get through the fluff to fabric underneath. If I use a minky backing in the future and want to hand-stitch the binding, I will definitely do it like I did for the Washington quilt–machine stitch on the back, hand-stitch on the front.

I wrote a lot of posts about these temperature quilts over the past year. If you want to read in more detail, please use the Search This Blog box and type in temperature, and more posts than you likely will want to read will be listed.

I am SO pleased with how these temperature quilts turned out, but I have to tell you all that making three temperature quilts at one time is CRAZY!!! But now that they’re finished, I’m glad I did!

Linking up to Stitching Cubby Hole: TGIFF.