A project bracketed by world changing events - finished after 18 years!

It’s a finish -and a post written months ago and not published! Oh well!

I am fairly impressed that I found the blocks for this quilt in the first place and also that I was able to put them together and finish the quilt in less than a week. The blocks were the result of an exchange organized on a quilting board in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. There are blocks from 36 different states and 5 different countries. I must have put them away and forgot about them. I ran across the box In the closet a couple of weeks ago and it took me a bit to remember even having participated in the exchange.  

The official portrait

Being that the 4th of July holiday was approaching and it was my son’s 20th birthday, and seeing that he is all about red, white and blue flag paraphernalia due to his holiday birthday I thought I might try to get it finished for his birthday. I actually managed to do it!! It might be a record for me to get a bed sized quilt done in that time frame - granted, almost all the blocks were done already, but I did make a few more stars and had to resew a few of the blocks due to size problems and got them sewn together, a back made, everything layered and quilted together. Definitely a reason to celebrate! It is a quilt with an interesting provenance, considering that it was begun in the aftermath of a significant terror attack that shook the world, and completed during a global pandemic that has drastically altered daily life for months (so far), all of which is included in the label!). 

Since I finished that on Monday I have also finished quilting a very old wall hanging that has been layered  for quilting for at least two years since the last time I had a big quilting binge. More of that to come soon - I want to bind it before the "reveal" - this has since been finished along with several other things I will have to post about as well.  So, I am feeling very productive! It’s a good thing, because I have  a huge laundry list of projects in all stages of completion and SO. MANY. PLANS. for more!🤪

Speaking of which... I spent an evening sorting and ironing the scraps in the set of scrap drawers, so that was a huge step toward getting making progress on a number of scrap quilts (see this PLANS I mentioned above!) . 

The "before" - three overstuffed drawers of scraps and crumbs

Since this post was written, I have finished the wall hanging I was doing, another wall hanging, a small Christmas quilt and completed a top that had about 1/3rd of the blocks done and one that I started and finished in about 3 months.  I am also currently a little more half way through a small jelly roll lap quilt.  so much to post about! 

Quarantine Quilting

    It’s been three years since I posted on this blog and it took me a bit to even recall HOW to post (don’t count your chickens, it’s not posted yet). I thought of the blog in the first place mostly because I was working on a quilt project from the past (WAY past) and I wanted to know when it was that I started it. I knew I had posted a few times about working on it because it was sort of following along with a group that was doing New York Beauties, so I started poking around. Turns out that it was April of 2012 that I started the project. This is the original post. Well, I finished 16 blocks at the time and it hung on the design wall unfinished for 8 years while I got my MAT and started teaching high school - that was pretty much the end of regular blog posting. 

    Of course, this spring everything was turned upside-down with the stay-at-home order and teaching classes from home and generally not going anywhere.  Like many, I have had more time at home than usual. I spent some time organizing the sewing room, filing and sorting fabric, and due to this strange new world, making masks with some of that cute ‘orphan’ fabric not suited to other planned projects. I also have been working on some of those old projects, including the one that was still hanging on the design wall that I mentioned above. It now has its borders and has been quilted. The irony is that the borders themselves required 12 MORE NYB blocks in a tiny size that I had to draft the patterns for myself. I guess I remembered how to do it alright (actually came up with a new system for organizing all the tiny paper pieced parts that works great) because I think they turned out rather well. The next task will be to make and apply the binding. 

Back on the design wall after quilting because I am used to seeing it there by now! 

This was while I was marking the quilting lines

This is the back of the quilt with the label. It is interesting what you will resort to when trying to use up some of the yardage in the original set of fabrics for this quilt, in this case a set of Quilters Candy semi- solids. 

This stormy blue and grey and sea green lovely is a quilt top I put together from a set of fabric I set aside even longer ago when I made an identical baby quilt (for a kid that has likely graduated college by now) I always loved the quilt and wanted to make another just like it. When I was going through fabrics stacks In April I found the set and the printed panel and figured it was about time.  I have no babies in my life at the moment to make it for, but I finished the top, made the backing and binding and they are all hanging together in the closet with all my other flimsies, awaiting the right occasion for quilting. 

I have many more projects on that to do list. Maybe I will keep a record of things I am working on, as an once did, so that when I finally get around to finishing them I will have a place to go look up what dates to include on the label!

Unexpected time off...

string for the second one

The recent nasty weather that has swept through the South Eastern US gave me two unexpected days off (county canceled school rather than have students out in the weather and potentially out of power at school).  Of course I had spent nearly the whole weekend helping to try to finish the roof project we have going and being distracted by the progress of Irma toward and then through Florida. So, I have spent about half my two days catching up on laundry and getting some grading done!  However, I managed to stay up much too late last night drawing and so have these to share... two squares for a string, as suggested by Laura over at I am the Diva.

  

The better of the two.

I like the outside parts, the inner triangles did not go as planned and then the swirls
on the inside were a big disappointment... but it is what it is, maybe it will grow on me. 

I also will go ahead and share this one which I did a few weeks ago but never had time to post about. Sadly it sat out on the side table and got a drip of something on it before I got a good picture. I like how this pattern looks like coral.

I hope that everyone weathered Irma OK, if you were in the path. It does seem like there will be lots of people out of power and a good many that have lost their homes and/or businesses. Some of my family had to evacuate to friends at the last minute, but their home seems undamaged, if without power for the time being. We were reading about the devastation in the Caribbean and the heavy damage on St. John hits particularly close to "home" for us because we have spent several very good vacations there and know many of the locations pictured in the news well.  Our thoughts and what support we can send are with all those recovering.

Everyone needs a little Dance once in a while!

This was my second week of work for the school year, first week with students back... it felt like Thursday night after a long week by Tuesday morning when I woke up! I definitely need a little Dance in my life this week. I only have enough energy to make it some Diva Dance, however, so I am glad that that was the challenge over at I am the Diva. I don't use this pattern a lot because I am a little too planned most of the time and it ends up not random enough... however, I really like it in this one. Of course I left out the Lisbon... I have used that pattern before but it was called something else... Navaho, maybe?  I am going to have to try for another version of this some tim this week including the Lisbon, maybe coming out of some Mi2.

 Have a great week, and have a little dance sometime!

Pre-first day of school de-stressing

This week was crazy busy. I worked hard all week long and seemed to only stay in the same place... I felt like I was walking the wrong direction on one of those moving walkways at the airport (oh, it would be nice to be at the airport... that would mean I was going somewhere or meeting someone who was coming to see me!). By Friday night at 7pm, still at school, knowing full well I was no where close to being ready for students on Monday morning all I wanted to do was go home, eat dinner with the kids, maybe consume an adult beverage and draw something simple that needed no thought whatsoever. The Nzepple guest challenge over at The Diva was just the thing. I don't normally think of Nzepple as a focus tangle... it is something that I would use in the background to fill in. So using it for a mono tangle would be interesting. I did not try to get creative, I did not try anything fancy - remember, I just wanted something simple, clean, mindless...

It is a little simplistic for my taste, but it is what my brain needed at the moment.

I hope to be able to keep up with challenges as the semester unfolds. Right now I need to finish a big assignment for my endorsement class that is due tonight... the weekend before school starts.. who planned that deadline?! Have a great week!

Back to school, back to posting?

I cannot believe that it has been so long since I posted here. Facebook has been the Bain of blogging in my opinion. I van still post and get feedback without the need to blog about it... however, there is less reflection then as well. Faster, but not as rich - isn't that always the way. I would really like to get back to challenge participation as it gives me a 'problem' to address which makes for a better result than if I am just stumbling around on my own.

So, with that in mind, here is an entry for the Peanuckle challenge over at "I am the Diva".

I was able to get together with my sister for a few days earlier this summer and we worked on quite a few tangle peices, even one larger cooperative piece. I think it turned out rather well.

Two tiles are mine, two are my sisters - can you guess which is which?

I have a lot of other work from the last year and I will have to work on posting some of it here. But for now, I will leave just this one.  Have a great one!

Making my own jewels.

Around the turn of the year in late December or January I became interested in the "gems" trend. Mostly I like to figure out the 'how to's' of a new technique and then I can use it when I want but don't usually get hooked for too long. Such a thing happened with gems. They are interesting, and a bit of a challenge at times, but not something I would use all the time. I made these two pieces and then was kind of over it.