Loosely Woven - a finished quilt!

The evening's over the last week have been spent hand stitching down binding.  I am not the quickest at hand stitching, and I find I am only able to sew relatively small sections before my hands get sore.  So I was really pleased last night to sew the final section of Loosely Woven to complete the mammoth task of binding.

Just to recap, the quilting plan was feathers in the striped columns, and interlocking boxes in the plain squares and border.

The backing fabric is a beige wide back, and I used a beige Seralene bobbin fill which blended nicely.

A narrow binding and label to finish it off.  As you can see, the quilting has great texture.  This interlocking boxes design is going to reappear on my Patchwork City quilt when I get to that stage (still a few more seams and backing decisions to make yet).

And some beautiful Aurifil threads to complement.  The FMQ does gobble through the thread!

This quilt was started in December 2018 after a couple of test blocks made in November.  Christmas holidays were mostly spent with piecing and I finished the top in late January 2019.  I had thread delays which resulted in about 8 weeks down time... so all in all, not bad progress (for me anyway). 

This quilt was commissioned so I will be very happy to hand it over to its new owner tomorrow, and get my sewing machine set up for blanket stitch again.

End of month roundup

It wasn't until today, the last day of the month, that it seemed at all possible to get some of my monthly tasks finished. 

The month started with 6 tasks:

I made great progress with the Meadowland blocks... Love this floral and neutral spot!

And to top it off I got these bonus units sewn... not quite finished, but a good start for next month.

Huge news is that I finished off the last of the FMQ on Loosely Woven... so I'm all ready to start binding over the weekend.  Finishing this corner was the best feeling ever!

I wanted to get one more Dash to the Finish block done...

And almost  finished a bonus second one as a leader ender project!

And finishing two Patchwork City blocks seemed impossible on Monday, but a few seams here and there... and the addition of a sneaky stripe in this block...

... meant I got all the units finished today for block 24...

... to add to block 23...

... and June is going to be a busy month finishing the last block - 25, a little bit of sashing, borders and finishing touches and this one will be a top!

Wiggly quilting...

... and binding... this quilt is so close!

So yeah... 5 out of 6 and it felt so good to get those stickers on!

Almost All the things

I've been doing a little bit of not quite everything... but certainly lots of things.

Like Meadowland blocks...

Walking foot wiggly lines on my modern applique Buggy Barn Blooms quilt...

That was after this diy attachment of the seam guide to do my straight zigzags... good old sticky tape!

Then wiggle wiggle I went!  Discovered that your organic lines still need to be somewhat horizontal, resulting in some fix ups along the way 😤.  Also that while they may seem wiggly while you are doing them, sometimes they come out pretty straight.

 After that I developed a method which seems to have worked well for me, stitch lines that are relatively straight about 3 or 4 inches apart to use as guidelines, and work from the centre out to the edges (I did end up marking a starting line and using the seam guide to do these).  Then go back and fill in a straightish line between each of those lines, but having a lot of variety in their widths (this line I just eyeballed and didn't worry too much about)... then finally, doing wiggly lines in each irregularly spaced gap, using wiggles of different wiggliness!

I've only got a strip about 10 inches wide left to quilt on this... woohoo!!

And finally back to some good old free motion as I start the border on Loosely Woven.

With an 8in border, it is going to take some time!

Steps in the right direction

Sometimes it just feels like you are getting nowhere... maybe even heading backwards... and then you turn a corner and think Yes... I can see that light at the end of the tunnel.

Last month was not so good in the ticking off of lists department.  Partly because of the items I had chosen on my hit list.  Really... make significant progress on two major applique projects??  Like was that ever going to happen.  After feeling like a failure for two seconds, then reassessing and altering my goals meant that I changed one of the overall block goals into just finishing sewing down the bias stems, and completely wrote off the second project.  Manageable chunks!

With this under my belt, April's goal was to get the fusing side of the applique finished for the second corner of the Timeless Traditions BOM and get two of the wreath blocks fused also.

So good to stick that smiley face on!

And I can already see next months goal will be to finish the blanket stitch on these sections.  I may not be whizzing through this process, but it is getting there!

Also progress has been happening on the Loosely Woven quilt.

Woohoo!  I have finished the quilting on the striped sections of the top.  Working these feather designs pushed my boundaries as far as the width of feather I am comfortable quilting... there are definitely some weird shaped ones in the mix, but luckily the worst are hidden in the most thread blendy areas.

And I actually got a small amount of tidying accomplished so I can once again see my cutting mat and surrounding area.

Partially due to packing this stuff away into a box.

April? Really?

Just a few goals on the list for April:

Now that I have my thread sorted for Loosely Woven, my main goal for the month is to get some serious quilting done.

I decided to do large feathers through the striped sections, working the design to emphasise the woven effect.

I have a few areas where I have both the warp and weft lines quilted and it does kind of work.

In Meadowland news... I have a couple more blocks done...

And I had a play with alternative layout options.  I quite like how the blocks look on point, as they are almost unrecognizable from the straight setting.

But, to do this layout I would need to work with an uneven numbered grid to keep it symmetric, but a 3x3 grid is too small, and a 5x5 would be too big.  I need to keep thinking about this, but might just go back to the pattern layout, and consider this alternate layout with a smaller block size.

I'm aiming to get 2 of the Patchwork City blocks finished this month... only 5 left all up, so this project is getting closer to completion.  So far I have chosen and ironed fabric for the first block, and chosen which units to sew.

I would like to get some new borders sewn onto my modern applique quilt and possibly get it basted.  On the drawing board at the moment are which fabric where and how big decisions... and working out if I have what it takes for a pieced backing.

 And I really would like to get the 2nd applique corner fused on Timeless Traditions.  My applique has definitely taken the back seat in the last couple of months; so achievable goal set... and locked in.

Almost mid month update

Progress has been cracking along in the All The Good Ones shed.

On my diary/calendar I have ticked off all of my monthly goals apart from one... and there's still some days left.

After listing out my goals for the month, I wrote in the calendar space some key tasks that needed to be done to achieve my monthly goal.  BUT, I haven't micromanaged every single activity, just those things that have been holding up the works.

After I finished the first grouping of mini tasks... I added in some more BUT those 8 odd tasks took a good two weeks to complete.  On the positive side... some of those goals have kept growing and I have achieved much more than I expected.

For example the Cross Tile quilt my monthly goal was to finish the machine quilting, which I did AND  I managed to get binding sewn on and three quarters hand stitched down! 

My goal for Timeless Traditions was to get the second corner section sewn together (which I had been majorly putting off) AND I managed to get this sewn as well as hand stitching a section of bias stem.  I have added a mini task to trace out the applied shapes, which is a nice job to do while suffering from the summer heat.  It has also been transferred to the design wall!

My super duper goal for January was to get the Loosely Woven quilt top fully pieced... and this got completed on Monday.  I added my own borders for this one, using off cuts from the strip piecing and it worked out perfectly for the king size required.

And the North Star borders that were giving me conniptions has also been finished!  Adding the pieced sections to extend the outer squares was not what I really wanted to spend my time doing... but I also knew it would be so worth it.

Loosely Woven and Timeless Traditions

My big goal for January is to finish piecing the king sized top that I have been requested to make, using the Loosely Woven pattern, and using a mix of purple fabrics to achieve it.

Surprisingly... it has been a lovely top to put together.  I changed the construction of the blocks as it was a stack and whack pattern, with organically spaced strips cut from squares.  But, knowing the intended recipient, I chose to have regularly sized strips and alter the size of the blocks to suit.

The blocks kept growing, until finally there was enough!  And I started sewing them into large chunks.

And finally all together!

The subtle changes in colour really do add to the illusion of woven strips.

I have started putting together border strips and all going well I should meet my target by the end of the month.

Taking advantage of my empty design wall I started placing the completed components of my Timeless Traditions BOM, to see how it was looking.

And get that next little bit of sewing completed!

Happy to report that it is looking Fine!