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?
​

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!
​
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.

I'll admit right up front that making masks isn't a fun task but it's also not fun to be a nurse, delivery person or store cashier right now either. Calls for masks started coming in last week and have continued all weekend. I made this group of 30 Friday night and Saturday morning and they were all gone by Saturday afternoon. 12 went to our local pharmacy and the rest went to family and friends and families of friends. I give one to every delivery person who comes to the house too. Many of these were mailed but we actually got to "visit" with some friends who came to pick theirs up. It would have been funny to watch us all dance around in the driveway passing off a bag of masks but is was good to see friends and chat for a few minutes.

But this batch didn't sate the need so I got back to cutting Saturday night and sewing Sunday morning.

Saturday night I cut out 60 more and got 30 of then sewn together Sunday. I'm down to using tshirt strips for ties but they work just fine. I think people are starting to accept that wearing a mask is the new reality and will be for several more months to come. I'll keep making these as long as they are needed and I know many of you are doing the same. It feels good to be able to do SOMETHING/ANYTHING productive. The next 30 are all in that leaf print fabric. My batik fabric collection is actually getting pretty skimpy.

Over that past week I was able to set aside some time to start the a new quilt.

Now that the penguin quilt is done for my SIL, Carol, it's time to make a quilt for my SIL, JJ. JJ LOVES cats and she liked my cat wall hanging that I made last fall. So I'm doing a large version for her. 

First I had to work out the pattern. These are going to be some giant cat heads.finishing at 8 x 10. The pattern that I used for the wall hanging is on the left but I wanted to avoid the trapezoid between the ears. I re-drafted to the one on the right. This way I can cut squares for all the HST pieces.

I split the face into 3 pieces on each side and the symmetry will be straight down the middle on all of them. I'm not going to get into any complex piecing. Here are the pieces cut for the first cat.

Here's the first block. JJ's favorite color is blue so the background is a blue Marbella fabric, also designed by Paula Nadelstern. This will be a total Paula quilt.

Here are the first 4 blocks just placed on a length of the background fabric. I sent this to JJ to get approval before proceeding. She loved it, Mom loved it and Chris loved it so I'm moving on this week to focus on this between mask making sessions.

While I have these fabrics spread all over the sewing room I'm also cutting pieces to finish this quilt that I started a few years ago. All the blocks are supposed to look like they are spinning. This will be a larger version of my Pleiades quilt. 

But wait, there's more!
When cutting into the symmetry fabrics the fabric is left looking like Swiss cheese. When there are bits left hanging on the edges that aren't really useful I'm cutting them for a Blockade veterans quilt.We'll see how this goes.

I've also been doing some crochet but just haven't gotten around to taking photos.I'm almost done with the ripple blanket so might get motivated to at least take a completion photo later this week.

Today Chris is going grocery shopping early and taking some masks to the grocery store and then I'll take groceries to my Mom. Her apartment complex is locked down pretty tight. They had a confirmed case last week but, so far, no others. They said that the resident didn't use any of the common facilities (like the restaurant) so I'm guessing that she had some in-home health care. There are a couple of nursing homes here that have had serious infections. Mom is staying in except for a daily walk outside and coming to the gate to get groceries from me. I got her an r95 mask from my craft supplies and goggles.She was a nurse so she knows how to protect herself and she's doing really well and sewing a lot. I'm not feeling very optimistic about the family vacation in May. Although it's a dedicated beach house and there's only 10 of us (in a giant house) I don't know if North Carolina will have the Outer Banks open by then. There's no need to worry about it.

The pollen has been horrendous around here. It seems like everything came out all at once. I'm hoping for rain tomorrow so I can get out in the kayak Wednesday. 

​I hope you and your family and friends are all safe and well.

This quilt was so much fun to make and I'm not even a cat person! But after making the puppy quilt I felt that the cats needed some representation. The only hard part about this one was deciding where to place the template on the fabric. 

This is the second quilt that I made for Paula Nadelstern and this one is for her Where in the World fabric line. You can see more photos and get drafting information for the block in my gallery.

I like this quilt so much that I'm going to make a sofa size one for my sister-in-law, a full-fledged cat lady. I've already purchased the blue Marbella fabric for the background.

Quilt market has finally started and I can now share the quilts that I made for Benartex for Paula Nadelstern's new fabric lines. She has 2 lines this year and this quilt is from one called Artful Snowflake.

It's acutally a quite simple quilt made with 9 9-patch blocks. All of the work is done by the fabric. They have produced that border fabric in other colors in previous lines and it's so wonderful to work with because that's just a simple "slab" border made spectacular with her fabric.

​If you want to see more details about this quilt you can check it out in my quilt gallery.