Miss Porter and a Mountmellick update

As I said in my last post, my word for the year is Focus. Already I can feel myself wavering, but a quick look at my list and I decided that a new start at the beginning of a new year was in order. One of my favorite quilting books is Primarily Quilts by Di Ford. I just love her attention to detail and working on one of her quilt designs pushes me both technically and in fabric selection and that is what I was searching for in this new start. That and the fact that I wanted to work in a certain color palette that suits my need for calm after the busyness of the holidays. While many of my quilts are made for the process only, I really do like displaying them in my home. I felt I was needing/wanting a quilt that would fit into my main living space during the winter when I like to use a more monochromatic color scheme. Here is my winter blooms hanging in the space.

As you can see the space is very open and as I love all shades of teal and aqua those are the only permanent colors in the space. I love changing out the pillows and quilts by season to change the feel of the room and was looking to make something to hang over the couch which sits opposite the TV and my Winter Blooms quilt. The Miss Porter quilt is one from my list and I had been collecting the fabrics for awhile.

I began with the feathered star block and just let me say that while I have been working on improving my piecing, something went wrong. I will save the specifics for another post as I am happy to say I was able to salvage my mistake and here is the block without the shark tooth border. I had fun picking the motifs for the broderie perse in the center. The original had flowers but I wasn't happy with my selection of flowers as I really wanted to bring a bit of teal into the block. My finished block before the addition of the shark tooth border.

Here is the block on the couch with the border ready for applique - I am loving how pretty this looks in the room.

Next up were the 5" star blocks and while making these I decided that it was time to double check my seam allowance as they were ending up just a tiny bit too big. I could trim the finished blocks but I really prefer to adjust my needle position and see if that helps. Sure enough by moving it just one potosion to the left my block size improved and I had discovered one of the problems in the creation of my feathered star. So here is where I am right now on the design wall. The feathered star shark tooth border is awaiting applique and then this can be sewn together.

At the same time I am working on this leader ender project made with 1 1/2" cut squares of my bright scraps. My sewing machine is having issues picking up the first few stitches of a seam so having a leader ender project on the go is a must. I am getting ready to turn these blocks into something useful soon!

And finally a quick peek at the continuing hand quilting on Mountmellick, Quiltmania magazine's 2014 mystery by Di Ford. I have not done much hand quilting in the last few years and I am enjoying this so much. It is fun selecting a new quilting pattern for each round and I love the dimension achieved with this wool batting. I really hate marking a quilt so I do as much free hand as possible. However, this round I am marking as I go by simply tracing around a plastic template that I made to fit the space and it seems to be working out well.

Time to get back to stitching!

 

 

 

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Some quilting, some embroidery and some blue and white

Another road trip is behind me and I am finally back to some fun stitching. This was a trip to check in on DH's aging parents and all I can say is that I am so happy that I have my sewing to keep me going during these times! This trip I worked on this little embroidery, Welcome Home by Kathy Schmitz. The original embroidery was done in all black but I decided to add touches of teal to go with the border fabric. I ended up hand quilting it and think it is sweet on this little stand.

I have also been working on the hand quilting of Mountmellick, the Quiltmania mystery quilt by Di Ford. I ended up doing an echo quilting for the background fill. I was originally planning a crosshatch but decided I didn't feel like marking. Hmm, now to decide how to do the first border.

And I have completed a few more of the blocks for the Antique Wedding Sampler by Di Ford. Here is Block 17.

And Block 19. I was thrilled to be able to find a place to use this Asian toile, I love the pagoda style building. I think those little butterflies need to antennas added.

Today I finished the last machine pieced block in the quilt, Block 23. Unfortunately there were a few errors in the directions for this block. Two of the templates were marked with the wrong dimensions and the layout diagram was incorrect for one of the HST units. Fortunately I figured out the measurement issues as I was figuring out the rotary cutting measurements but sadly did not notice the incorrect HST unit until I showed it to DH who noticed right away that the block looked weird. Oh well, all fixed now.

 

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Mountmellick is a finished top

Whew, back from our trip to Oklahoma to move our son and The Texas to visit family. All went well and I have spent the last several days trying to get back into the routine of things and trying to get motivated in the sewing room. Though I was feeling the urge to start on something new, I resisted and put on the borders for Mountmellick, the mystery quilt by Di Ford that was in last year's Quiltmania magazine. I am so glad I did as I love how it turned out.

Part of what took so long is that I couldn't use as much of the strip as I wanted as there were not enought full repeats of the pattern to cut it the way I needed. So after much deliberation and advice from quilting buddies, I ended up just using the darker portion of the stripe. Turns out that was the perfect solution, but in future I guess I better check the stripe repeat before getting my heart set on how I want to use it.

Next up, the hand quilting. I am trying a wool batting for the first time and my LQS only had Quilter's Dream Wool in the size I needed. Seems a bit puffy so far but hopefully once I add the fill around the appliqe I will like it better. Still deciding between echo quilting or grid work as the fill. I like the look of grids but hate the marking and stitching. I love doing echo quilting though so it may win out once again!

 

I did get this month's Quiltmaker bitty blocks done. These finish at 4" and were a fun way to get back to my machine and use up more of my scraps. This will end up as a cute row quilt at the end of the year and hopefully I will see a dent in that scrap basket by then!

Finally, you may remember a quilt, Science Fair, that I finished quilting a few months ago. It was draped across the bed in the room that our son was expected to live in at the end of the summer. However he was only here for a few nights before moving to his permanent job and I had forgotten to remove it from the bed when he arrived. He saw it in the room and said how much he liked it. The next day he sheepishly hinted that he would like to have it to hang in the office/sewing room in his new apartment and I was thrilled to gift it to him. After all, isn't that the best purpose for our quilts, to surround people with our love. I was delighted to get this picture of the quilt hanging in his room, haha, a constant reminder of mom!

 

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