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 have internet access here.  Yay!  Finally a Friday update. This is an EQ6 drawing of Streak of Lightning.  I’m using scraps of plaids from a few FQ collections from long ago and some men’s shirts from the thrift store. I plan to add some applique — funky stars or flowers or something.  I haven’t quite figured that out yet.

Here it is starting to come together.  But wait…  It’s not really coming together.  It looks kind of wonky.  Those large setting triangles aren’t fitting in so well.  UGH.  I did something wrong here, I’m sure…

This is The Setting Triangle ruler.  I really like this ruler.  I don’t have one yet, but I used one at the last place I was house sitting. (There are great advantages to house sitting for fellow quilters…)  When my setting triangles weren’t fitting just so, I suspected the ruler…  but no, it was the person wielding the rotary cutter that was in error.  Yup, four yards of fabric all miscut because I didn’t read closely enough where it says UNFINISHED SIZE on the ruler.  I used the markings based on the FINISHED SIZE of my square not the unfinished size.  DOUBLE UGH.  This one project will now become two.  [I certainly need more projects in my Parade of Projects lineup, don't I?] I’ll continue making the scrappy triangles and get some more fabric (maybe I can find a black I like this time) and I’ll make smaller HSTs to put together to go with the setting triangles I have cut from the brown fabric.  [sheesh]

On a somewhat related but different quilt topic, the EQ6 design above morphed into another idea while I was playing around with the orientation of the HST.  Here’s a glimpse of the progress of that project.  I’m calling it Bold Streak.  And, yes, the setting triangles for this project are cut correctly.

While I’m sewing together these two tops, I’m working on the blocks for a third top made with Variable Stars. These work perfectly as leader/enders as I only have to pin the last two seams.  The picture shows the first 16 blocks. I’m making this Variable Star and several other quilt tops with the same scraps as Streak of Lightning above. I actually have 25 or 26 done now…  more than half of what I need.  Soon I’ll have another project to the point of putting the top together.  I have three others in my Parade of Projects (listed in the post below) to that point.  I am making progress!

I purchased one of the latest Inklingo collections shortly after it became available — The Deluxe Orange Peel.  The blocks that can be made — Improved 9 Patch, Alabama Beauty & Orange Blossom – were just too tempting.  I printed some shapes and am hand piecing a small project.  [Still adding to that Parade of Projects!]  This is the start of the first Improved 9 Patch block.

And because I like when Cathi shows them, the back:

Because I know that I’m more productive in the long run if I work on multiple projects at the same time and taking into account my current need to be more productive, I’m finding it necessary to work round-robin-style on the following projects:

1. Leftovers Again
2. Plaid Bargello
3. Striped Shirt Boxes
4. Crooked Path Table Topper
5. Scrappy Patchwork of the Crosses
6. Nevada
7. Baby Girl Bug
8. Variable Star
9. Plaid 9 Patch
10. Rocky Glen
11. Streak of Lightning
12. Bold Streak
13. Field of Flowers
14. Rose Basket
15. Layer Cake

Beginning this week, here’s to being more productive.  Stay tuned for updates. . .  assuming, of course, that I’ll have internet access during my next two house sitting jobs.  Have I mentioned how frustrating it is not to have internet access while I’m house sitting? Otherwise it’ll just be an update. Singular.

• Machine quilting done.
• Miles of binding being prepared and pressed.
• Also eating many homemade oatmeal butterscotch chip cookies.

The basket of machine quilting was overflowing so I decided it was time to tackle some of it.  The basket is now half empty and I’m in need of a shoulder massage and some dark chocolate.

I’ve been working on my Crooked Path [aka Drunkard's Path] Rose Basket.  It didn’t turn out as I’d envisioned.  The roses came out smaller than I’d imagined and the basket came out larger.

This just wasn’t going to work.  The flower arrangement is suppose to overshadow the container not the other way around.  These roses really underwhelm the basket.  I was using the Clover medium-sized rose maker for the roses and switching to the large size was only going to add about 1/2″ to the rose — still not large enough.  [A side note about the Clover roses. . .  I really do like them. They're quite cute and easy to make. I will have to dream up another project to use them.]

I needed to play around with some different ideas so I hung up the basket on the design wall to percolate.  I wondered if I made a wider, longer tube and twisted and turned it while wrapping it, would it give me larger rose that would still look nice?

It kind of looks like a cabbage rose.  I think.  So there it sits on the design wall.  We’ll see how I feel about it in a few more days, but now things are looking  a bit rosier.  [tee hee]