Blogger's Quilt Festival

I was so excited to see that it is time once again for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  It is always so much fun to see so many beautiful finished quilts all in one place.  Inspiration overload!

It didn't take me long to decide that I should post about OMG.  It was the last quilt I finished before Irma, back when life was simpler.

I was lucky enough to find two volunteers to hold it up outside on a nice sunny day.   It can be hard to get good pictures of big quilts.  

 The border gave me no end of grief and had me dumping the whole quilt in a corner for months before I was brave enough to try again.  It looks great as long as you don't get too close.

This quilt started in 2014 as an attempt to put tiny scraps to use.  I was inspired by The Birthday Quilt and Omigosh to try making nine patches from 1 inch strips.   Making tiny little nine patches is a tiny bit addictive.  Once you start, it gets hard to stop.

After several years of making nine patches, I decided to try out an alternate block or two.

I worked up a few trial blocks and took votes before deciding on a churn dash block with a tiny nine patch in the center.

That led to a couple more years of making alternate blocks.  Look how cute and little they are!

 Eventually they moved to the design wall and I planned a layout using graph paper and colored pencils.  Truly my favorite design tools ever.  

 Thanks so much for reading about my quilt, be sure to visit Amy and enjoy lots of eye candy.  Get an icy beverage first, it can take a while to enjoy it fully.  

A Labor Day Finish

 After a day and a half of nonstop stitching, OMG is done.  Hoping to get something other than the traditional receding rectangle photo of a quilt on the ground, I enlisted a couple of quilt holders with a ladder.

 They were happy to hold it for a split second, long enough to snap a quick photo.

 And then, they were off again!  We were lucky to get in the quick photo shoot before the rain started to pour.

Here is the back.  A nice paisley print with some pink peacocks.  One end was just a touch short, and needed to be stretched out with a tiny bit of extra border fabric.  

Things are not looking good for Irma.  As soon as the rain lets up, I should head out and make sure the hurricane supplies are restocked just in case.  

Binding Time

I just pulled the OMG quilt off of the quilting frame for the last time!  Finally!  The colors are way off, but it is very dark now.  I'll take a better photo once the binding is all done.

I was completely bogged down on the border.  I used a stencil, but the quilting was too uneven and looked really bad.  I thought about ripping it all out and starting over.  Instead I piled it in the corner and ignored it for a few months.  

Then, I filled in the background with a stipple.  It evened out the quilting density with the middle section and camouflaged some of the imperfections.  Not perfect, but better anyway.  It is all ready for binding now.  I am thinking lime green.  I wonder if I have some of that?

I've been organizing my fabric stash.  There seems to be some green in there.  I've been stocking up on backgrounds, can you tell?

 This cabinet is full of backing choices and fat quarter sized pieces.  Most of my stash in in scrap drawers, but sometimes scraps need to have friends.  Without slightly bigger cuts here and there it gets hard to find borders and bindings and such.
I'm not long for the world tonight.  Kurt came home from work sick and has been passed out in a chair most of the evening.  I'm supposed to run 10 miles in the morning so I'd better schedule the morning post before I turn into a pumpkin.  Sitting and hand sewing binding will probably give me a great excuse to rest my legs tomorrow afternoon.  A nap always feels good after a long run too.

OMG Quiltng progress

 Lizzie was ready to try out the new quilt the minute I pulled it off the frame.

 I quilted the top border first thing, but wasn't crazy about it, so I haven't done any of the other borders yet.  I am thinking of leaving the braid, but filling in with a stipple in the background to distract from the less than pefectness of it.

While I ponder those choices, Lizzie will help me to by inspecting the rest of the quilting.
The laundry is done and it is time to shift into school work.  I think I'll just sit here first and procrastinate a bit longer while I admire my quilt.  Sydney is off at lacrosse practice while Anna and Ryan are both working on makeup work for school.  Anna's is from being gone for her concussion, and Ryan's is from being gone for his robotics tournament.  Going to school is so much easier than being absent.
First though, I'm linking up with Oh Scrap.  Because nothing could be scrappier than a quilt made primarily from 1 inch strips.  

Backings are the Second B

 I really wanted to use this turkey print on the back of OMG.  It didn't play nicely with any of the other high yardage fabrics in the stash, so I went searching and found a nice aqua and lime paisley print at the fabric store not far from the binding fabric.

 A framed square is my favorite pieced backing.  It looks like it is on purpose, but can be used with a nice combination of whatever lengths are available.  Lizzie came to help of course, she is a great fan of quilts.

This was her helping me with the borders yesterday.  She's great company.

When all was said and done, this is how much extra fabric was left.  Yikes!  Maybe I cut that a little too close?  I any case,  I sewed.  On a school night!  Shocking I know.  Kurt is out at volleyball and he will bring Ryan home from Robotics on his way.  Anna is starting to drive herself now and Sydney decided to skip lacrosse.  Just another nice calm weeknight.  I guess I'd better get everything up off the floor before everyone else decides to start traipsing across the family room.  

Border Patrol

As soon as a quilt get spread out on the floor, Lizzie is right there to help with the final inspection.  Both borders are on and the back got partially pieced before pizza showed up for dinner.  Sunday is usually pizza night, but we postponed it in honor of the three day weekend.  

After the pizza was safely away, I pulled out the broken dishes quilt to take a few more stitches.  Even though all the center blocks aren't quite done, I cheated and got a start on the borders.  I got quite a bit done while we enjoyed Alice Through the Looking Glass as a family.  

Sunday Funday

 I spent most of yesterday pressing OMG.  SO many seams!  I should have planned better how they would nestle while I was making the blocks.  That failure led to a lot of manual seam turning during assembly, which meant that all the seams needed to be re-pressed in the flimsy so that they would lie flat.  Planning!  So over rated.  Thanks to lots of spray starch and many hours with a hot iron, it is now flat as a pancake and stiff as a board.

I initially pulled a traditional red and blue for double borders.  Now that I am looking at the picture of the finished flimsy though, I see a huge lime green band on the large central diagonal with hot pink bands on either corner.  I might pull something along those lines and see if it is too bright.  

 First though, I might finish another broken dishes block or two.  It is a three day weekend, which leaves me with an extra day to sew!  Yesterday lost a lot of time to putting away Christmas and catching up on laundry.  Today the kids are asking for movies.  Tomorrow is all for me.  I wonder what I will be able to get done?
I am linking up with Oh Scrap and Slow Stitching Sunday today.  You should visit and see what everyone else is up to before you get going on your day.

I Exist!

Life happens. Even with nothing special going on, just a home and husband with three kids and a job and a lot of normal stuff tends to take all the hours out of the day. All of it is good.  I am so thankful for every minute.  It is nice too though, to have a little bit of empty time to fill with beautiful fabric and creativity.

I started this quilt a very long time ago.  At first it was just a stack of tiny nine patches.  I can remember planning it in my head on a family vacation when the kids were just tiny.  They are giant now, how does that happen?!   It comes from the humblest little strips of leftovers.  1 inch strips and 2 inch strips.  But look what they can turn into with a little patience and perseverance.
In honor of the happy scrappiness, I am linking up with Oh Scrap!  at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.  

I was happy after returning from all of the recent travels to pull out this small broken dishes quilt and take a few stitches.  There is something so calming about those little quilting stitches.  I think that the kids want to see Finding Dory this morning.  I have two gallons of paint calling my name.  Nothing is urgent though.  I might just go and fondle some fabric first.  The calm before the day begins.  I'm also linking up with Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts.  

Back into Home Mode

 How wonderful it feels to be home again.  Back in my own bed.  Caught up on laundry.  I got the first two sections of OMG sewn together.  Just one more section to go......  I am hoping to be able to settle in and get quite a bit done before we have to be off again for our family vacation later this summer.  

 Anna and I had a great time at Genius Olympiad.  It was quite chilly in upstate New York.  A nice change really from the summer baking of Florida.  Anna thought that staying in dorms and eating dorm food was quite exotic.

They had chipmunks!  So much cuter than our squirrels, though they had those as well.  

Anna met a nice group of girls from Florida.   They were mostly from a private school in Orlando.  Also, two sweet girls from Kentucky who were in the short film category.  Kelly came alone from Pensacola and she joined us later for the college tours.  

After getting an only an honorable mention last year, Anna was so excited with her gold medal this year!  I'm so proud of her for sticking with it and improving her project so much.  

Niagara falls was quite damp!  Because we had done the boat tour last year, we went into the caves this year and enjoyed the view very much. 

 Then we were off for a New York, DC and Ivy league tour.  I had never been to the city before.  It was quite stimulating.  We had already done the DC tour not too long ago, but there is always more to see there.  I learned quite a bit during the college tours.  It was a glimpse of the road not taken.  I was so thankful to be going to college at all, and fancy out of state schools were never on my radar.  It was all very enticing though, so much opportunity for the lucky few.
Now it is back to real life again.  Anna and Ryan both have summer courses to work on.  Sydney seems to be wasting her summer away on Netflix.  Maybe I'll go and see if I can get them moving.

ScrapHappy Saturday - Hot Cocoa

Just one more brown Saturday after today!  I hope that is enough time for everyone to make a dent in the brown scraps.  For the most part brown is not nearly as overwhelming as blue in shear volume of material.  I did manage to finish off enough churn dash blocks last weekend, though not much else was sewn.  I was thinking that this weekend was going to be a good opportunity to sew, but it is starting to fill up with sleepovers, lacrosse, robotics and power lifting.  Life is pretty full right now, but is all good and happy.  Hope you are finding some time to sew.  Misterlinky is below for all your brown progress.

Relax and Enjoy

I can't be sure when I started these blocks.  It was after we moved to this house 10 years ago, but well before I started this blog 5 years ago.  I remember taking blocks along to hand sew when Sydney was taking karate at age 3 and when Ryan was going to chess tournaments at age 6.  The last blocks were finished in August of 2010.  It was going to be a full quilt, but I got sidetracked with Midgets before starting a rainbow version of Jane.  The center blocks are all done for that one and I am actively working on the border blocks again after a break during the rainbow sampler quilts of 2014 and 2015. 

 Jane is hand quilted of course, with individual designs chosen to accent each block.

 It took a bit longer than I expected, and she was taken along on many long car trips and family outings.

After all that time, she needed a good wash, which I did in the bathtub this week.

 The border doesn't show up all that well, I guess the thread matched a little better than I thought.

 I spent yesterday working on the OMG Churn Dash quilt.  I had pinned all the blocks together in groups of 10.  The quilt top is all sketched out of graph paper and I did a count of how many of each color it will need.

So all the blue blocks are officially done! I needed 20 of the O blocks and 22 of the X blocks.  I worked on a few other colors as well in a marathon session of sewing that went into the wee hours this morning.  Much digging through the scrap bins occurred as I had to find more 1 inch strips to add to the nine patch pile along with 2 inch strips for the churn dash blocks.  Today will be a nice calm day of catching up on my circles and grading some essays for school.  I will link up with Kathy for Slow Stitching Sunday as well as Cynthia for Oh Scrap!.  

Summer Projects

 Yesterday was the big cupcake wars battle.  For those people wondering, cupcake wars is a TV show based on baking cupcakes, not a battle where you throw cupcakes at one another.  That might have made an even bigger mess, but I can't be sure.  Anna, Ryan and Sydney each had two hours to bake four each of three kinds of cupcakes.  They were required to use at least three of five mystery ingredients.  The mystery ingredients were caramel, pecans, chocolate, strawberries and graham crackers.

Anna won the award for presentation.  She made a bunny/turtle out of the pecans, caramel and chocolate.  Most impressive.  The girls had to make their cake batter from scratch, but Ryan was allowed to use a mix.  Given that he has never baked anything before, it seemed like a reasonable handicap.  Cleaning up again took most of the afternoon, but everyone was happy and busy.  Can't ask for more than that, right?

 So I spent the morning with my Costa Rica Team planning our camera trap deployment for Costa Rica.  The afternoon was open though, except waiting for the bug guy to come and try to get rid of the giant bugs that seem to have invaded lately.   So while I waited, I did some major organization of the OMG Churn Dash blocks.  There were so many bits and pieces made, but I didn't know if it was enough of the right colors for my plan.

So I pinned the nine subunits needed for each block together.  5 nine patches and 4 backgrounds for the X blocks.  4 HST units, 4 striped bits and 1 nine patch for each churn dash block.  Here they are all ready to go.  After sorting and counting those, I realized that I only need 137 more blocks for my finished quilt.  I'm not sure when I'll get back to it, but at least I'll have a note to remind me when that happens.