I was totally heads down this weekend to get my second "Paula" quilt done.

My goal this year with Paula's fabrics was to design quilts that didn't require a lot of cumbersome fussy cutting. That aspect of using these fabrics turns some people off. So I wanted to show that these fabrics are really special no matter how they are used. They really do sparkle and I can't wait to share them in color with you. Both of my quilts will be veterans quilts and I will do more just like this one. It was fast and easy but has a huge impact.
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My other goal was to get the stitching done on my postcards. One day I stitched the moon and the next day I did the star.
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All three designs are through the steps to do stitching. I have to add the backs, serge the edges and add a few embellishments to finish them off. All of those things will be pretty fast to get done this week. My goal each year is to have the Christmas cards in the mail by December 10 and I should be able to do that.

There was plenty of football to watch and I get my second scarf with this yarn started. 

This week I've got to get caught up on my actual business and spend a day putting up the Christmas decorations. I also want to finish the postcards and get those out of the way. Then I have to come up with a gift for my girlfriends and get those made by December 9.

​After the 10th I should have the rest of December free to relax and enjoy the holiday.

Well, I had a post ready for Monday and I suppose that I forgot to schedule it. It's out of date now so I'll just jump in to where I am at the moment.

Working on the Paula Nadlestern quilts each year are a challenge for me. It's a challenge that I like because it really pushes me. It's really difficult for me to 1) work with a limited group of fabrics and 2) try to estimate which ones I will use and how much I need by just seeing an image of the fabric. Every year I plan my quilts, order my fabric, receive the fabric and realize that my plans won't work.

This year I made it a little more difficult on myself by deciding to make larger quilts that I can use for veterans quilts. In the past we were limited to 36" square quilts because they were sent in and displayed in Houston. Now they are being advertised in a lookbook so we can make whatever we want. I don't have a need or use for 36" square quilts so I'm happy to be able to make lap size quilts.

Here's where I am on the first one. Paula likes for us to keep the pattern simple so that we can include block and quilt layout diagrams in the advertising material. That worked out really good for this quilt because I didn't order enough fo the star point fabric to make something like an Ohio Star block. 

I've gotten the blocks done and will work on the on-point setting and triangle border blocks tomorrow between some Thanksgiving preparations. 

For the second quilt, I've worked through a couple of failed design ideas but something fun came to me yesterday and I'm excited to get to it this weekend. 

I'm also trying to spend a little time each day (only about a half hour) to do some of the stitching on my Christmas postcards. If I can get the stitching done by December 1 I will only have the backs, edges and extra bling to get done and that will only take a day. 

This design too several iterations and samples but now I have 30 of them through the stitching phase. 
The background fabric is a batik that I purchased in Maine this summer. I knew that I wanted to use it for postcards and I knew that I would fussy cut it so that a star motif would be a focal point. 

I have a finished crochet project to share Thursday or Friday and hopefully the first finished quilt top to share by Friday.

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Laura left us today. We had a great visit and already miss her but she wants to get home to her family, especially the 3 grandkids. Today I will get back in the sewing room working on the Christmas postcards and my annual sample quilts for Paula Nadelstern. I've been given permission to share my progress with black and white photos. Here are the fabrics all washed and ready to cut. I'm excited to work with them.

​Updates to come!

I consulted with a couple of my local art quilt friends and we all decided on option 2 for the orientation. I think my nephew is going to like it. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out and I even had time to make the label for this and the wedding quilt. You can click on the image to go to the page with the details of this quilt.

To make the labels I downloaded fonts for each and downloaded the music bar image and the duck frame. They were all from sites where I could make donations to "purchase".

I even had some time to work on my scrappy HST veterans quilt.

Today will be all bout baking and packing for the trip. I have to prepare a lot of my foods for travel so that my week will be relaxed. 

​Don't forget to stop here every day next week to enter the Beach Week Giveaways!

The top is done and trimmed! It's ready for getting a facing and hanging sleeve today.
I cut around 100 strips and used all but one of them! But once I got it off I actually trimmed a few strips off the left side.(on view 1).

I planned the orientation one particular way but now that it's off I'm reconsidering. I have to decide before the sleeve goes on.

​Which is your favorite?

Thanks to Gene and Patty this quilt now has a name: Soundwave! I've got a pretty good rhythm going on this now. It's moving along much faster. I'm over half done.

I have this much left to do and it will be done today! That will leave: fused facing, sleeve and label.
​I've got plenty of time!

As I was quilting I was cutting off the extra black fabric ends and tossing them in the trash. Of course I had an idea so I fished them out of the trash for a possible new project.....

I also checked on the bluebirds! The photo isn't good because I was having trouble with the bright sun and I didn't want to spend too much time here. I'll try to get one more before I leave them alone to fledge.
Aren't the cute?
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I hope your weekend was as good as mine! We had sewing days Friday and Saturday and in between I worked on my nephew's wall hanging and made really good progress on all fronts.

I took 2 kits to sewing and finished both! Each is based on a panel and I have no idea where these panels came from. I don't enjoy working with panels because they are never square but I do see the appeal. I got two quilt tops made in 2 days! I used a lot of leftovers to finish them so I didn't have a ton of options for coordinating fabrics. This one was really awkward because the orientation is landscape and it was almost to our max width for the quilts so I just had to add strips to the top and bottom to bring it to 60" long. It will have a blue binding. 

I added some hand dyed borders to this one to bring it up to size. I'm really please with both of them.
It doesn't look it, but both are 48" x 60".

​The rest of the weekend was spent working on the wall hanging.

After sewing Friday I came home and cut all of the 1" strips for the wall hanging.

I spent Saturday afternoon and evening Preparing the backing and batting. I decided to mark my pattern right on the batting with washable markers. I'll mark the spike lines to follow and will align the middle seam of the strip on the spike lines. I marked the top and bottom edges so that the print part of strips do not run off the edge of the quilt.

I marked the spike lines and then arranged some strips to see if I liked it.

I made a couple of changes to my spike lines and I was ready to go!

I got started quilting/piecing yesterday and I'm 30% done. I sure love the channel locks!
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Pretty much every update this week will be on this quilt. I want it done with the sleeve attached by Friday night!

Benartex is finally presenting all the sample quilts for Paula Nadelstern's new fabric line and I can finally share my quilt. Of course, the schedule was haywire for the 2020 release. Where we usually receive fabric in September with quilts due in time for Quilt Market at the end of October, this year we received fabrics right before Thanksgiving and we only had to send quilt images. 

The new line is called Duets and you can check out the fabrics here. I always try to pick a name for my quilt that is a gesture to the name of the fabric line. Endless Love is one of the most famous (and sometimes most annoying) duets of all time.

​This year the fabrics are digitally printed and, to be honest, I had some issues with the printing of symmetry so that meant that I needed to scrap my original plan and go with something simpler.

There's nothing simpler than a giant log cabin block! I'm so glad that I had to make the change of plans because this simple block really let the fabric show off it's potential.  

The center black square is one of these medallions cut into quarters. I did have to add some extra black fabric to the outer edges to make the block big enough but, seriously, the impact of that one element was soooooo simple! It's the medallion in the middle of the bottom row.

Here's one block. I got this quilt put together in one afternoon. I spent some time auditioning the fabrics and selecting the section that I wanted to cut but the rest was so incredibly simple. That's the magic of these fabrics. The fabric pattern does all the work. It's taken me a long time working with them to relax and let the fabric do the work.

Quilting them is easy too because you can't see the quilting on this fabric. These quilts only need utility quilting like straight lines or stippling. 

It's late Thursday evening while I write this and my allergies are messed up but I want to get this posted before I turn in so pardon me if it's a little disjointed or full of typos. But as a consolation there are lots of photos! I spent the day getting the cat quilt ready for quilting and that turned into quite the grueling task.....because, you know, I get IDEAS.

The cat quilt has 3 borders. One blue border was already added, then there's a print border and finally another blue border. Simple, right? It was until I got the great idea that the print border had to be totally symmetrical. These 2 photos are of the same print fabric with strips of the blue positioned to highlight stripes so I could choose what I wanted. The left is lengthwise and the right is crosswise. I chose the left one in the right side photo.

I needed 8 strips, 2 for each side. I think those 2 spots look like cat eyes. This border had to be planned from the corners to the middle so that meant that the whole border had to be constructed like a frame and then stitched onto the quilt. It was a little overwhelming but I just took it one step at a time.

First I made all 4 corners and they are stitched to within 1/4" of the inside corner so that I can stitch it onto the quilt like a Y seam. Next I had to do a bunch of math, some of it really bad, to figure out how long each leg would need to be to meet up with the next corner so that the join was a symmetrical design. My brain was hurting during this part and I made a bunch of mistakes and I completely forgot to take more photos. I was smart enough to make all of my join seams with a long stitch length until I knew that I had it just right. I even stitched two wrong legs together once and wound up with and S shape instead of a frame.

Here's I've finally got it all the frame seams basted and the frame pinned to the quilt top. As I sewed the frame in sections I'd stop to stitch the join seams and trim the excess fabric. 

Here are the joins: corner, top/bottom and sides. It's PERFECTLY symmetrical. I will admit that this border ended up a little wavy but I was able to reign it in with the final blue border and a good steam press.

Aside from some early morning grocery shopping, this is ALL that I accomplished Thursday. I'm really thrilled! I'm glad I took the extra time to do a symmetrical border. I may be the only person who actually notices it but I don't care. I now know that I can do it. I can't wait to get it quilted and bound and I hope that happens in the next week.

Today I think I'm going to load 2 veterans quilts to quilt up really fast and screen print some tea towels.