A Prairie Home Quilts

A Tale of Love…

One hundred Dresden Plates. It started with one and then I added ninety-nine more.  Because I couldn’t resist. A quilt top and five sets of placemats in progress.

Is it possible that the Floral Winding Ways quilt top snuck off with the Plaid Streak of Lightning quilt top when my back was turned and reproduced?  How else could 2 projects become 7? It defies logic and probably most known laws of the universe.  At least this is the way it happens at my house…

I’m asked to teach a class at the LQS.  I decide to kill two birds with one stone (probably should have left the bird killing out of the equation) and make a class sample that I can give to my mom as a birthday present.  I decide to use floral fabrics.  Florals are nice but not really my thing so I have to buy fabric.  I create this…

Then I have leftover floral scraps to deal with.

I think back to this project and I remember the boo boo I made with the setting triangles for this Plaid Streak of Lightning and think, “Hmm, these floral scraps would look good with the brown setting triangles I cut wrong.  Perhaps with a nice antique-y pink tone-on-tone for the other half of the HST blocks.” Since I have to buy that pink tone-on-tone, I add a few (cough) more floral fabrics to the cart.  [Side note:  If you followed the link to the post about the boo boo, did you notice that I mention that the Plaid Streak of Lightning also morphed into Bold Streak? Yeah.  Projects. Multiplying.  Exponentially.]

The lovely floral scraps and the antique-y pink tone-on-tone became these.   Oh, how hard I have fallen for these floral HST blocks!  I thought I was in love with the Plaid Streak of Lightning. Oh, no.  That was just a passing fancy. It’s a good thing I cut enough floral HST for 2 quilt tops.  Yet I still have enough floral fabric to get a head start on another project. Hmm.

I dream up this in EQ7…

Sixty pretty floral Dresden plates swirling across a 5-step gradient gray background. Lovely. Sixty different floral fabrics ought to be enough variation, right?  Let’s go with 80 just to be sure.  I can always use the extra petals in another project…  Oh, and the scraps! Enough to make at least 2 more Floral Streak of Lightning quilt tops, I’m sure.

I’m not even going to bother explaining what happened with the plaids.  All I did was buy a few plaid shirts at the thrift store.  Really.  It’s worse than the floral fabrics.  I need an intervention.

I finished up the freezer paper templates for the quilt. The ocean at the bottom isn’t done yet. The only thing I might do is something rock-like in the ocean but that can be the last thing I do, if need be. Here’s how the design wall looks tonight and a closeup of the hills:

I’m going to start sewing the pieces together tomorrow. I’ve never used this particular template method before so we’ll see how it goes. :) If it doesn’t work out like planned, I’ll switch to fusible applique. I suppose I *could* hand applique the whole quilt but really was only planning on hand appliquing the details and words. I’ve added a page with the words to Psalm 8 over in the sidebar so you can picture how it all fits together.

Piecing: 14 days of 23

I started the freezer paper templates for the top half of the background.

I’m still unsure of how I want the hills to look in the bottom half, and I definitely have too many green fabric choices that are muddying up my thinking. I decided to just go ahead with the top half of the background for now.

Late last night this is how things looked on my design wall:

I’ve decided for one thing I need a bigger design space! Hmm… but where to *put* it? LOL The idea for a tree doesn’t work for me when I see the fabrics on the wall. It makes the scene look too crowded or something. I’m not liking my large rock formation at the bottom of the sea either. I *do* love the fabric though and want to use it somehow. We’ll see what I come up with… I’m off to do some machine quilting and piecing.

Piecing: 14 days of 22

I got the full-sized drawing for my Psalm 8 quilt top done. Here’s a picture:

I realize you really can’t make out the details very well… you’ll just have to wait for the fabric unveiling in stages. :) I picked out quite a bit of the fabric for the major portions of the background from my meager stash. I’ll only have to get a few FQs or 1/4 yd pieces from the LQS to get started on the background.

I’ve been reading through some of my landscape piecing books for tips to get me started. Ruth McDowell’s book had a tip on piecing the “S” curves for the two sky fabrics that will be a great help. In Mary Hackett’s, A Bridge to Landscape Quilts, I found this bit of wisdom:

“You have the quilting skills. The rest is simply the willful act of allowing your mind to let go of what you think you can or can’t do. It entails getting past what is “right” when it comes to quilting, of training yourself to really see the natural things around you, and employing well-loved quilting techniques to simulate them.”

And, so, let the process begin!

Piecing: 11 days of 17