Blocks of the Month - July

Today I finished the two blocks for the Val Laird BOM, Gentle Gems, for July.  I don't think I showed the blocks for June, so showing all four now. 

And here are the July blocks for the Gail Pan, Bring Me Flowers BOM

I have also started a new quilt designed by Katrina Hadjimichael, called Spike and Specks.  This will be a quilt for my niece Cindy.  

All three of these designers are from Australia.  I do love the designs by many of the Australian quilters.

Coronaville Finished!

 Yes, I finished my Coronaville quilt, just wish the pandemic was also finished.  At least I do feel more protected now, but the Delta variant is bad news.  

This is the front of the quilt.  I call it a topsy-turvy layout and that is the way 2020 felt.  So much stress and turmoil is lots of areas of our lives.  I centered the block with an embroidered cross representing my faith that I relied on to get through the year and continue with all that continues even today.

 Here is one of the blocks just to show a close up of the quilting.  The little house in the right corner always gives me a smile, I call it the Nut House - Mr. Peanut lives there.

Here is the back of the quilt.  My first layout had all the house kind of going in a circle around the center block.  But that turned into a tragic mistake when I tried to get it to laydown flat for pin basting.  Intially I went ahead and pinned it, thinking I would just quilt the pleats flat.....but then after 3 hours of pinning and going to bed  exhausted at 11:00 I could not sleep just thinking about how awful it looked.  So I get up, unpin the quilt  and start ripping out the stitches...until 2:00am, and then I went to bed.

Got up at 5:30am and finished ripping the back apart, coming up with a new layout and three days later, I had the back completed.  Big sigh of relief, it laid perfectly flat and I liked how it looked. !

Excitedly I re-pinned the quilt and started machine quilting it along the sashing and wondered why in the world my pins were in upside down????  I machine two sides of two of the sashing strips that ran length wise before I realized my problem.  I was quilting on the back!!!!! Well that would be why the pin were upside down.   Sigh, had to rip all the quilting back out.  You see the blocks on the front are

 11 1/2" square and on the back the blocks are 9" square - thus the sashing on the back and front do not line up and I wanted the front sashing to be quilted.   Big laugh here - after all it is topsy-turvey. 

This is the label on the back of the quilt.  I completed making the backing on July 2, and the Covid statistics at that time were 183,526,684 cases worldwide with 3,913,586 deaths. In the United States it was 34,561,404 cases and 620,645 deaths.   Today as I write this post I checked the stats again (one week later).  Cases are now 187,501,030 cases and 4,046,629 deaths worldwide; that is an increase in 7 days of 3,974,346 cases and 73,043 deaths.   In the United States  the increase over the 7 day period was 164,855 new cases and 2,180 new deaths.  The numbers are just overwhelming, so hard to comprehend.

Here is the quilting as it shows up on one of the back blocks with no houses.  My original plan was to do this free motion quilting.  After three attempts I gave up on that method and went with my jumbo stitch handquilting using #5perle cotton and a size 20 chenille needle.  Hard on the fingers, but I please with how it turned out.  

I started this quilt on March 13, 2020; the day SC declared a stay-at-home lockdown and planned to make 1 house for each day of the lockdown.   I cutout pieces for 64 houses thinking that would be plenty, haha.  By the time I reached 120 houses, I decided to keep going and reduced the size of the house and kept on sewing.  I made the front of the house with the first 120 blocks and decided I would continue making until I received my second Pfizer shot - which turned out to be 218 days later on February 14, 2021.  And the pandemic continues, with rates starting to go up again as the Delta variant spreads around the world and people still refuse to be vaccinated.  God help us.

 

Staying Busy

 Seems like each day I stay busy either with grandkids or my quilting - but don't seem to be getting much done.

I did finish two baby quilts made with the cutest elephants.  One is yet to be hemmed, but I am taking it with me to the July guild meeting to hem there.  It will be donated to the guild outreach program. This is the pattern I used,  by Wendy Sheppard.  I did modify the design a little to make a baby size quilt and added eyes and tails to my elephants.  I also used EQ to draw the block and then created paper piecing patters, as I so have trouble when piecing to get my quarter inch seam just right.  This quilt was a lot of fun to make and I can see another full size quilt in my future.

I have also been working on my Coronaville quilt, trying to get it quilted.  This has been a very challenging process for me.  I think I have made the most mistakes on this quilt than I every made on all my quilts put together.  I will do a post on this one next...just need to finish the quilting process.  This is a peek on how I am quilting the blocks with what I call a jumbo big stitch.

Color Challenge

 Some of the ladies in my quilt club have difficulty in selecting colors, and thus fabrics, to use in a quilt.  So I challenged them to pull an ad out of a magazine that appealed to them - not the product - but the combination of colors used in the ad.  One of the members brought a stack of magazines for us to look through, and everyone enjoyed not only looking for their ad (as well as collecting recipes.)

Here is the picture I chose:   (Not sure if it was the colors that appealed to me, or that the little girl reminds me of my granddaughter Lorelai.)  I couldn't even tell you what the ad was advertising.

I went fabric shopping my stash and came up with what I thought was good.  I found a block I wanted to try out on someone's facebook and she told me it was an Atkinson's pattern called Happy Holidays.  Turns out the pattern was for a Christmas Tree Skirt, a good bit larger than I wanted to make.  I drafted a pattern using three inch 60 degree triangles to make mine.  Then I made the block with English Paper piecing.  I would be curious to know if there is a name for this block.  I did look in block base and could not find it there.  My block finished off at 10" x 12" hexagon block.  I used a facing finish rather than binding.

Gail Pan - Bring Me Flowers

 Its been a month since I last posted and I have managed to get a few things done - making progress, not finishing anything.

The block of the month, Bring Me Flowers, by Gail pan - I completed June blocks:

I have been quilting on the Gail Pan BOM for 2020 - Wish You Well.   Its taking me awhile to complete as I just work on it sporadically.  This is one of my favorite embroidery blocks - Follow Your Heart.  I am trying to use a variety of different quilting patterns throught the quilt.  I have finished 8 of the 12 blocks, and almost completed the 9th one.

I have started a pattern by Fons and Porter called Americana Sampler.  Each month I am teaching a different block to my quilt club.  So far have done the Celtic True Lover's Knot and the Road to Paradise. 

Sweet Daisy Baby Quilt by Sharon Burgess

I recently purchased Sharon Burgess's book A Stitch in Time. I am loving all the projects in this book.    One of the projects is Sweet Daisy Baby Quilt and I was attracted to it because of the EPP blocks and the way the quilt edge was finished.
 

As showing in this picture, the bottom edge is blanked stitched over the binding and then hand crochet lace is made in the loops of the blanket stitch.  I have seen this done on flannel receiving blankets, but never on a quilt.  

The little flowers are appliqued to the quilt, they measure 3 1/2".  The center is a heptagon which was a new term to me.  It has 7 sides.   The main problem I ma having is selecting the fabric for the quilt top.  I have 7 of the required 12 flowers completed and am working on the 8th, so I need to get busy picking out the other fabrics.

Yesterday was Mother's Day and all my children and grandchildren were here.  My brother and his wife came as well, but he is the photographer for the family picture.

All 21 of us

13 Grandchildren 

Bring Me Flowers - Gail Pan BOM

I have completed the blocks for May and put the first two rows together on this Block of the Month, or I should say Blocks of the Month as we get two patterns each month.  I am so enjoying the embroidery and lace in this project.  These are the May blocks, kind of a wonky picture.

This is the intersection of 4 blocks.  I do love the pattern of the lace in the intersection.

And finally, here are the first two completed rows.  

Gentle Gems - Val Laird BOM

 This morning I finished the April blocks in the Val Laird Gentle Gems Block of the Month.

April Blocks

January thru April

Now to wait "patiently" for May!

Grandmother's Flower Garden

Have completed the first row of my Grandmother's Flower Garden (GFG).  I had made a quilt top years ago with just the little flower centers  and not in the traditional GFG pattern.  I never finished it as it just was not what I really wanted.  So I gave the top to a friend as she loved it and would finish it, and I started a traditional GFG quilt.  I have been making quilts with more complex EPP designs and pieces, and am loving working with hexagons again and EPP a traditional quilt.

The blocks below the first row are just pinned to give me an idea of how it will go together.  This is not the arrangement they will be in the final quilt.  When my mother made her quilt, she used the diamond connector pieces so I wanted to make one as she did.

 

Quilt Shelf

I ordered a shelf for my quilts as I was beginning to run out of closet space.  Finally found one at Wayfair.  My wonderful brother put it together for me.  I also moved my quilt ladder to the same room and put antique quilts made my husband's Grandmothers, Great Aunt and one by his mother. I love having them displayed together and I know he probably enjoys seeing them all together too.  His great aunt made the postage stamp quilt top on the bottom rung.  His mom gave it to me to mend as it had set of so long that the threads were starting to come apart. I sewed all the rows back together and my mother hand quilted it for me.  Then I put the binding on.  In one place the fabrics had deteriorated so bad I could not mend them, so I made an embroidered quilt label for that space.

  

Bee Pillow

I found this embroidery pattern by Gail Pan and offered free on a facebook page called Love and Hugs from Australia.  I joined the group as I do admire the Australian designers.  This pattern was perfect for a friend of mine facing heart surgery next month.  She loves all things "Bees" and I have always heard it helps to have a pillow to hug when you have had heart surgery.  I did modify the embroidery a little, maybe too cutesy.  It had the sayings " Bee Brave, Bee Strong,  Bee Together."  I wanted to let her know she had friends and family that love her and will be praying for her.  

Wish You Well - Starting the Hand Quilting

I have been looking at my Wish You Well Quilt (Gail Pan BOM) for several weeks now trying to decide how to hand quilt it.  Finally, I decided to just do quilting on a block by block basis and each unit in the block inspire what needs to be quilted.  This is turning out to be more fun than I realized.  I guess it is kinda of like doing custom quilting when you machine quilt.   The following are just a few pictures of different areas I have quilted.  So far I have 2 of 12 blocks completed.

I am getting some ideas from these books:  (I have quite a few others to look through, but these are a good start.)

Gentle Gems - March Blocks

 This morning I finished the March blocks for the Gentle Gems Block of the Month by Val Laird.  I am enjoying this BOM as Val uses lots of different embroidery stitches in her designs.  In this one, the outline of the Beehive is a Palestrina stitch and the flowers are Bullion stitches. She refers to one of my favorite sites, NeedlenThread for guide on how to do the stitches.

Bobbin Lace

 I asked and received a beginner's bobbin lace kit for Christmas.  I have been interested in this craft for quite a few years and was excited to learn.  I know no one that makes bobbin lace, but I have been watching YouTubes and also purchased a Beginner's Guide to Bobbin Lace by Gilian Dye and Adrienne Thunder.   I have not gotten very far in the book, but have learned some basics.

My work so far is very much the work of a beginner, but someday I hope to have become more proficient in making this lace which I have always considered works of art.

So, I am going to show some of my beginner works just so hopefully I can look back someday and see improvement.  

These are the bobbins that were in my kit.  They were not marked in anyway, so I purchased some 1/8" color tape to mark pairs.  The patterns I have been starting with have you work with pairs of bobbins that stay together throughout the project and I was getting them so confused....so I marked them and now I can keep it straight much easier..

One of the first projects in the book was this little bookworm book mark. this was my third attempt.  Still far from neat or even close to perfect - but I learned a lot in making it.  I need to go back and try again just to see if I have improved any.

This morning I started another bookmark (actually my second attempt of this pattern,)  

I found the progress going so much better than the first one I tried (I will spare you how that one looked)

Here is is finished.  I actually did pretty good although I seem to have dropped a stitch somehow on the left side.  I did not master how to finish it off.  

One more try and maybe I will get it right.

Bring Me Flowers - Gail Pan BOM

 Completed Row 1 this morning.  Enjoying the Block of the Month by Gail Pan.  My favorite so far is the whimisical bird.