A Prairie Home Quilts

Well I had all these plans. . . I ended up helping out someone who needed me to care for their dogs & horses.  They had an emergency out of town.  It is giving me a chance to do some hand piecing but I’m not getting some other important projects done.  I am posting though on a laptop that my oldest son and daughter-in-law gave me which will be nice to have when I’m house sitting in the future.  It needed a new hard drive which my youngest son put in for me but I don’t have a power cord for it yet so I have limited time to use it before the battery runs down.  I haven’t figured out how to download my email either.  All this to say that I won’t have a chance to post the tutorial yet.  You would think I’ve would have learned by now not to say I’m going to get something done by a certain time as something always comes up.  Why is that?

This week for her “Let’s Talk” Tuesday post, Mrs. Goodneedle of Strawberry Patch Quiltworks asked, “How do you decide where to spend your quilting time?”

For me, the simple answer is: By looking at my lists!

I guess the truth is that nowadays many of us are on sensory overload when it comes to quilting projects.  Between blogs, quilting magazines and patterns in quilt shops, one could easily have a To Do Project List to last through eternity. There are new techniques to try and fun ideas gathered while blog hopping. For every fabric line there are patterns designed to entice you to buy the complete FQ package plus a layer cake, honey bun, jelly roll & whatever other kind of sweet-treat-food-name the fabric manufacturers have dreamed up!  Then there are the magazines with projects galore and oh, the books.  How could I forget the books?  I can do without the patterns; I can do without the magazines. I can get carried away thinking I’m going to do all the free BOMs offered on blogs, but eventually I come to my senses there too.  Quilt books are the one thing I can’t resist. But if I’m totally honest with myself, I have way too many ideas pouring out of my own head so I shouldn’t be tempted by patterns, magazines and books!

I do make lists of my projects; and I like to work on 5-6 projects at a time so that whatever part of the quilting process I feel like doing, I usually have a quilt at that stage that needs to be done. All I have to do is pick up that project.  Usually I can finish those same projects one right after the other and feel really accomplished.  Mrs. Goodneedle’s question got me thinking about the following:

1) I needed to figure out why I was feeling like I wasn’t accomplishing as much as I wanted to/use to accomplish. 2) I wanted to figure out what I needed to purchase next for some upcoming projects. 3) I needed to revamp my lists to see just where I was with what I want to accomplish in the next 6 months.

So I listed all my current WIPs and all my design ideas.  Then I fainted.

It amazes me that I had a list with 63 projects on it!  I’m sure for some of you that’s a piddley amount; but for me, it’s humongous.  How did it get so out of hand??  As a result, I broke my list down into different categories based on whether it was just an idea, fabric had been purchased or fabric had been cut & sewn.  While I was doing this I found out why I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing that much.  It’s because 9 of my WIPs are long-term projects–projects that will take a year or more to complete because I’m hand piecing and/or hand quilting it.  (D-uh)  Then there are all the design ideas.  There’s 30 of those. Am I hopelessly addicted to EQ?  (I do love EQ!)  Anyway, they also need a separate list because experience has shown me that sometimes they stay ideas for a long, long time and some never amount to anything.  That brings my current WIP list to 24 projects.  Okay, so now I can breathe again.

Tea Totes.  A recently finished project.

I’m working on getting the tutorial for these up on the blog by this weekend. I used Inklingo to print the 3″ Drunkard’s Path templates directly on the back of my fabric to make these.  I’m hoping that finances will allow me to purchase a set of Marti Michell’s DP templates soon so that I can give the fabric requirements for those as well because I realize not everyone is on friendly terms with their computer and/or printer.  However, that may be a month or more away when all things “financial” are considered. . .

While I was sitting at my desk, I looked up at my inspiration board with family pictures and was inspired to do another four letter word block for Tonya.  I decided it would be good to do another block for more practice, and because I wanted to do a word that no one else had done.  [Something about the need to be original? Unique? Who knows.] After I finished the block, all I can say is that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do wonky letters and I’m sure it’s all the fault of my elementary school teachers.

Yes, it’ll definitely take several years of therapy for my brain to do wonky. You see, in elementary school every year I received the dreaded “N” for penmanship.  “N” as in needs improvement, not satisfactory, not up to par, not normal, nasty and a whole slew of other negative “N” words.  Once in sixth grade, my teacher held up my paper in front of the whole class as a messy example of what a paper should not look like.  I was mortified… wanted to die… felt like I was standing in front of the whole class in my underwear.  [Mr. Gross if you're out there, you should be paying for my therapy!]

So where am I going with this you ask?  Well, because I was traumatized and humiliated for my penmanship [hey, it's not like I wasn't trying to do my best!] I decided to show up those negative Nellies and Neds. In Junior High [Middle School for those of you under 50], I worked really hard at improving my handwriting. I filled notebooks with my handwriting practice. I spent many hours writing 10, 20 & 30 page letters every week to my BFF. I even spent several years graffiti-ing everything in sight with block letters. Block letters with stripes, polka dots, and drop shadows.  Lots of L-O-V-E in the shape of a heart.  [The school custodians must have loved washing my artwork off the desks everyday.]

Yup, I practiced so hard that now my penmanship is too neat and as a result, I’m having a hard time doing wonky. That’s got to be the reason. It’s certainly not because I have an organized, neat freak personality. [No offense to any organized neat freaks who might be reading this.  Really.  I have two children who are organized neat freaks and I love them anyway.]  So Tonya, here is my second, four letter, unwonky word block for you.

A nice, neat [big, fat?] KISS.

As you can see, I still like going all the way to the edge with my letters.  I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m sure it says something.

Oh, wait.  These are supposed to be Halloween noises. I guess it should be shrieking in fear. Here is my “shriek” block for Tonya’s Slither Eek Boo quilt.

Tee hee.

Okay.  It’s really Ludo sleeping on my “shriek” block.  All fabric is fair game for him as a prime sleeping spot.  My plan for “shriek” was to make it with long, pointy-type letters.  I sketched out my original idea on a piece of scrap paper shown at the bottom of the picture below.  Then I drew the letters out a little larger and gave some thought as to what part of the letter to form first, second & third because most of the letters had three parts.

You’ll notice in my drawing that I forgot the “r” so youngest DS drew an “r” for me at the bottom of the paper.  I made a note for myself about remembering to allow for the seam allowance at the end of all my points because I didn’t want them getting chopped off.

Here are my letters in the order that I stitched them together.  The “e” was the most difficult.  Actually, not difficult but fiddly.  It didn’t quite turn out as I had planned in my drawing but I didn’t want to keep messing with it.  It’s an “e” and it’s got pointy parts.  You can see from the “r” that I started with straight pieces of fabric.  I sewed the background fabric bits on at an angle to make the points.

Here is “shriek.”  It’s pretty large — about 9″ x 24″.  Another important thing to point out is how much more background fabric it takes when you are being fiddly with the letters. It took more of the purple background fabric than I thought it would to make the block.  More seams equals more fabric used.  I really like how the block turned out though, and I only chopped off a very tiny tip at the bottom of the “r.”

Tonya, this was a lot of fun to do and to see what everyone else came up with!  [You can see more blocks here and here.] I have more word quilts planned in the future.  Thanks for letting me play.

Here is my “home” block for Tonya’s four letter word quilt.  You can see some of the wonky words she’s received for the quilt so far here.  As you can tell by looking at my block I was still having difficulty doing wonky after the unwonkiness of “pray.”  [Yes, I'm making up words now.] The letters are still quite uniform and pretty much the same size across the block.   It was a bit harder to put these letters together because Tonya wanted all the blocks to be fairly uniform in size so she gave a block measurement to use as a guideline.  I do like going all the way to the top and bottom of the block with the letters for some reason. I probably wouldn’t  have put the strip on the bottom if it weren’t for the block needing to be 6 1/2″ tall.  It is much easier to make the letters and let the word be the size it ends up.

I was inspired by Lucy of Quilting with the Past to make some HST from the scraps in my basket of 2″ squares.  It was mindless sewing and before you know it, I had enough HST to make three mini quilts.  [I hadn't planned to do that many.] I made my youngest DS put them together into sets for me so I wouldn’t make myself crazy over-thinking the layouts.  [I know I'm not the only one who does that.]  I finished two of them up while I was house sitting.

The third needs binding.  I’d originally cut one that matches the border but found I liked the red binding better so I need to cut & sew a new binding for it.  Mom has taken these two to put in her booth at the antique/craft shop to sell.  I’m going to put the third one with one of her bears.  The bear sits on the bench in the dining room.  Let’s see how long it takes for her to notice it.  [Tee hee]

And using wonky letters to make wonky words.  While I was house sitting, this was the perfect diversion from all my hand pieced projects.  Well, that and looking through quilting magazines and books that lined the shelves of the quilters’ houses where I was house sitting. . .  Not only did I take more projects than I could complete in the time I was away, but I came back home with even more projects floating around in my head.  And, thanks to Tonya of Lazy Gal Quilting, several of the new project ideas are for word quilts. I had TOO MUCH fun making wonky words!

I volunteered to do the word “shriek” for Tonya’s Slither Eek Boo Halloween Noises quilt but never having done words before, I thought maybe I should practice a bit first.  Tonya was also looking for 4 letter words for another quilt project.  The first 4 letter word that popped into mind was “pray.”  It looked like no one had signed up to do the word “home” either so I thought I’d do both “pray” [for myself] and “home” [for Tonya].  [Tonya has since received a couple of blocks with "home" but I didn't know that because I don't have computer access while I'm house sitting.]

I started out by printing the words in block letters on plain paper as a visual clue for piecing. That was really helpful for me when I was piecing. I can’t find the piece of paper at the moment.  I wish I had it to show you the difference between my original word layout and what I ended up with. In the original my “r” was a bit longer and my “a” was slightly under the “r”.  One lesson I learned was to pay attention to where the 1/4″ seam allowance should be before whacking off  bits from the letters. This was important because I planned to do “shriek” in long, pointy letters and I didn’t want my points getting chopped off.  You can see where the top edge of my “r” got whacked off.  I decided from the start I was not going to get hung up on perfection though and work with my letters however they emerged from the scraps of fabric.  So I just kept on going.

Another thing I learned was how hard it is for me to vary the position of my letters. I tend to want to make them all even across the top and bottom.  Something to work on in the future. . . House sitting for these 2 quilters is a lot of fun because basically I get to sit and quilt  all day for days on end and no one cares that that’s all I’m doing because I’m the only one there [except the dogs]. It’s BLISS. At one of the houses I get to play with all her quilting gadgets and comb through her pile of scraps that’s been accumulating for 6+ years.  I even have permission to take some of the scraps home and I did — for my Apple Core Charm Quilt.

I thought that since I was making wonky letters into wonky words I should experiment with hand quilting Tonya’s Fantabulous Freehand Fans also.  The only problem was I couldn’t remember if she quilted right over the letters or not.  I decided not to but wish I had. I like the way the fans came out and for the most part was able to hand quilt without getting hung up on my stitches being perfectly uniform.

So the third thing I learned is to go ahead and quilt the freehand fans all over. I ended up doing a bit of quilting about 1/8″ inside the letters.  Not a perfect solution but suitable.  I do like my block though and, hey, it’s DONE!