A Visit From the Ghost of Quilt Tops Past

I’ve noticed a lot of posts lately about WIPs lingering into 2014.  To be certain, I’ve got my fair share…Farmer’s Wife, half of Lori Holt’s Row-Along, and then numerous (and even basted!) quilt tops ready to be finished and find a forever home.

Then I was checking out what Rachel of Stitched in Color is up to and saw her beautiful Ikat blocks and that reminded me, I have a few quilt tops I made in 2013 that I never shared on my blog.  I made this quilt top last spring, out of a bundle of Indian Summer, a collection by Sarah Watson for Art Gallery Fabrics.

This quilt top is made entirely of 5” squares I cut from each fabric, not having any idea how I was going to put them together.  Arranging them on the floor in our bedroom at night, with just the light from the hallway (since my husband was sleeping at this point), a pattern started to emerge.  Really, I think it was the low light that helped me to “see” the values in the fabrics and make this pattern pop out.

I’m not sure if this is an Ikat pattern or not, it just reminded me of something I might see on a Native American rug  or woven basket.  Rachel’s post just reminded me that I have this beauty waiting to be quilted.

Now, why am I bringing up this WIP?  Because I’m finally going to get around to quilting it….on my new longarm machine that is arriving in less than 2 weeks!  You see, back in September I got to try out my friend Allison’s Innova long arm machine.  These are pictures I always meant to post, but (cough cough) never got around to posting.  This is me trying not to grin like a Cheshire cat.

And this is what I quilted!  I was had to have one the second I saw those even stitches.  She let me doodle around with it for a few minutes and I loved how easy it was “drawing” on the fabric. 

I only have one book about fmq, Angela Walters’s first book, so I wanted to get a few more to help me learn fairly complex designs.  I picked up three books on Amazon Saturday night, and they arrived this afternoon!

I’ve already thumbed through all of them and am happy to report there’s not a stinker in the bunch!  If you are looking for a good fmq book and you have some experience, the Cheryl Malkowski book is probably the first one I’d start with.  I like her methodology and think once a person’s followed her book, learning designs from other books or making up your own will be a piece of cake.

We are still in the midst of remodeling our bedroom, but the drywall was fixed, the closet built, and everything painted.  Now we are just putting together the furniture and figuring out what will go where, and thank goodness, hanging up wall art that’s been sitting in a corner collecting dust for years and years and years.  And then the next Herculean task—the long arm has a 12 foot frame, so I’ll be moving my entire sewing operation from upstairs to downstairs in the next week!  Photos to follow…

Festival of Strings Part I

Rachel at Stitched in Color is hosting a string challenge.  When I saw the original post and the rule that strings had to be 3” or narrower, I knew exactly what I would make.

These are leftover strips from a quilt I made from a 1/2 yard bundle of Indian Summer.  I had a few inches of each print left over from another quilt I made, so I cut the pieces into 3” strips and used my design wall to try to balance out all the prints in a somewhat improv kind of manner. 

I used Kona Essex linen in natural for the background.  As an aside—the Kona linen in natural is a slightly lighter color than the wide Kona linen in natural, but just a tiny bit.  You might be able to tell in my photo that some of the linen looks a shade lighter than the rest.  I ran out of linen about halfway through the quilt and ordered the wide since it was only a dollar more than regular width.

At first I didn’t want to repeat any of the strips, so I cut a few other prints from my stash, but I ended up repeating anyway.  This quilt is destined to be a gift for a birthday boy on June 15th, so it can’t languish for long!  I’m not sure what the exact size is, but definitely twin or larger.  It’s so big it doesn’t have enough room to hang down from the clothesline.  I’ve got the backing already made, just have to get it basted now.

I hope everyone had a wonderful, long weekend!