A Prairie Home Quilts

So, where have you been, I hear you all asking?  [Imagining to myself there’s at least one someone out there still listening after all this time… ] Welp, doing some house sitting, of course, and on a spiritual journey of sorts.  Yes, again.  Involving dragons again, too.  But, you know, I came away with a deeper understanding of the Hymn of the Soul and the meaning of the pearl.  Oh and the great Hydra was involved.  It was worth every minute of the journey.  Hehehe.  I will spare you the details of my spiritual epiphanies, though.  Really.  I’m sure you are more interested in the quilting I’ve been doing.  Wait, how could I forget?  There was a magical wedding and children visiting from far away lands happening in the middle of all this, too!

And I should probably fess up that I’ve been doing some writing also.  November is National Novel Writing Month, did you know that?  According to the Office of Light and Letters it is.  [Love their slogan:  We believe in ambitious acts of the imagination.]  The challenge is to write 50K words in 30 days.  I spent part of October preparing to write and I’ve written every day in November [obviously nothing for the blog!].  I’m at just under 39K as of this morning and hoping to hit 40K by tonight.  No one but me will ever read the thing, but it’s been another fun part of the journey to slay the great Hydra and let my imagination soar.

Okay, okay, on with the quilting…

I’ve been working on my .75″ hexagon project, Field of Flowers.  It was stalled.  I didn’t have all the flowers prepped.  I decided to go ahead and do that with Inklingo.  I can’t remember now how many flowers I needed but I printed and cut enough sets of flowers and centers to have 512 flowers when they’re all stitched. [I need 502.]  Then I went ahead and printed the corners and edges in the green fabric I’d purchased eons ago.

I started this project working from the middle out and then decided it would be so much easier to start from a corner as I was always getting the middle portion twisted around.  I have more than half the flowers done.  I feel like I’m making a huge dent in this project.

New starting point — bottom, left corner

Some finished flowers.

The box with the remaining flower sets.

And more of the wedding, just because…

Oldest daughter, Jessica with groom’s younger brother

Youngest daughter, Rachelle with groom’s older brother

Michelle and Jared McCarty

Daughters again…

Oldest son, Nathan and his lovely wife, Koren.

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:

I didn’t do this week’s Inklingo Sampler block and chose instead to do the bonus block that is posted twice a month.  I have Inklingo Collection #3 which is what is needed for the 6 pointed Star Hexagon.

Because I wanted this block to play nice with my others, I added the bits around the Star Hexagon so the block would measure 6″ square when finished.

The top is done.  It’s quite bright.  Probably because that’s what I’m drawn to.  I was able to add in some fabrics from Sonia’s scrap basket.  When I’m house sitting there, I can go through the scrap basket and take what I want.  She’s a long armer so she has scraps from her own quilts and customer’s quilt backings.  And she doesn’t do a lot of scrappy quilts so the scrap basket is usually overflowing.

I like the way it finished up.  I need to get some backing material and then I’m going to use it to practice a new-to-me hand quilting technique.  I would like to do another one like this with reproduction scraps and perhaps another with batiks.

I’ve whittled a few off my WIP list but added a few more ideas to my “want to do” list.  Sonia has an extensive book, magazine and pattern collection.  She works at the LQS.  I sit and wander through them sketching out more design ideas.  The Quilt Index is a dangerous place for me as well.  I found another quilt with LeMoyne Stars that has an unusual alternate block.  It really caught my eye so I now have it designed in EQ6.  I probably wouldn’t be so tempted to start on it if I didn’t already have 3 yards of fabric that I purchased for Guute’s Antique Quilt Club that I decided not to do.  Let’s see how long I’ll be able to resist the temptation to begin yet another project. . .

These are the fabric bits for my first challenge block that I’m adding to my Inklingo Sampler Quilt.

I chose to make an Aunt Sukey’s Choice block because it had flying geese units and I wanted to try them with Inklingo. I used the instructions that Linda provides in her Triangle Tips PDF to make 8 flying geese units.  Yeah, I know I sound like a walking ad [or broken record] for Inklingo but I really do love using it.

This is the block laid out for sewing after the flying geese units are made.

Next I made the 4 patches and sewed the flying geese units together.  [Man, are my photos blurry.]

The finished block.  [It looks a little wonky.  I need to do a better job with my photos or my pressing.]

I did make myself a little crazy unsewing a seam or two several times trying to be sure my seams lined up.  I seriously won’t be doing that any more if I want to get a good number of challenge blocks completed for my quilt.  I realized I’ve been spoiled by the precise seams I can get when I’m hand piecing.  I’ve never been able to sew by machine and get precise seams which I’m attributing to the way I pin because I’m a leftie.  [Any excuse will do, right?]