 Yay! It's done! I got the 4th side border on and added a 3" blue final border. Those 2 solid blue borders really made the difference in helping the proportion of the zig zag border. Ont he bed the dark border will be hanging off the edge. I have no idea how I'm going to quilt this but I hope to get it done by the end of October.
Happy weekend everybody and be sure to come back Monday for Giveaway week!
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 Every once in a while a quilt comes along that is so much fun to make that you just can't stop. This quilt is one of those. I'm having the best time working on it and I'm going to miss it when it's done.
It's soooo close now!  Remember last month when I went through the Drawer of Magical Things to find something to make Mom's birthday card? Well, like you, I have more than a drawer of magical things. During a border sewing break I decided to look through a bin that hasn't been opened in years to see if there was anything magical in there.  We'll just call it the Bin of Magical Things! It has a lot of my old embroider stuff in it and I did find some magic.  These are some little cross-stitch flowers that I stitched AGES ago. These are going to turn into 6 quick and cute postcards.  But here's some serious magic. I used to do a lot of Hardanger embroidery. I really love the look of Hardanger and I enjoyed that style of stitching. I made at least 10 of these with the intention of making ornaments for gifts but I never did it. I think these will be my first Christmas postcard designs for this season!  It's possible that my Mom or someone else made these but they are going to be 2 new Christmas postcards too.  In the 60's and 70's Mom made a set of 6 of these chair covers. They covered the dining room chairs for years and years.  I turned 4 of them into pillows for the guest house bed and another into a rocking chair pad. I'm not sure what I'll do with this last one but it's probably not safe from becoming a future postcard.  I also found this cross stitch kit still in the bag. If anyone wants it please let me know. I'm certain that I'll never stitch it.
There's lots of stuff left in the BOMT but It's cool to have found a way to use some of the magic.  It won't be long before the puppies are totally fenced in. I'm really happy with the border and so glad I added the additional 2" dark blue inner border. It makes a huge difference. The white triangles were needed to reference the white on the puppy faces.  The only other thing I have to show for my weekend are these potholders that I made for a gift. I have a tutorial here. People LOVE these potholders.  Don't forget that summer giveaway week starts a week from today!
 Boom! The first border is done. I'm really happy with it.  Here's my set up for foundation piecing. I like having a cutting mat close by so I can quickly trim the pieces.  I bought this cheap little table from WalMart last year when we wanted to sew in a hotel room. I almost didn't even bother to bring it home but I'm glad I did. I use it all the time as a side table for quilting and I set the serger on it for the rare times that I need to bring it out. It folds flat and hides behind the ironing table when I don't need it.  I lay the blocks out on the floor as I make them. They get trimmed all at once. I think I'll be able to get the borders done pretty quickly.
The center of my quilt is done. Here are the last 3 puppies for the pound!    Aren't they cute? I'm going to miss making the puppies. I really had a lot of fun picking and fussy cutting the fabrics.  This pattern has 4 rows of dogs with sashing only between rows. It finished off with a 3" border for a 60" finished quilt. I designed this to have a lighter center and dark outer border so I dyed a medium blue for this first border.  This is where I left off with the border design and I'm going to basically stick with it. But I'm not totally happy with it so the next step is to spend a few days in EQ refining the design.
So far, though, I'm really happy.  Every new puppy block has it's own personality. I'm particularly fond of this one.  This one looks like he could get into some mischief.  But this one is just crazy.  Here's the puppy pound so far. I only have 3 more to make and I can sew the center together and get moving on the borders. I actually spent most of the weekend working in EQ to plan a sample quilt for Paula Nadelstern's new fabric line. I wasn't able to make a quilt for her last year and I really missed doing it. I love that the sample quilts are only 36" square. You can see others that I've made here. I ended up with 4 possible designs and I expect that I'll make 2 of them.  Then I worked on the puppy quilt to finish off these blocks and that got me thinking about the cat blocks + symmetry fabric. Chris thinks this is really cool so this might be a future quilt!
 I love making these dog blocks! The color part of the faces are from my hoarded stack of "waste fabrics" and it's fun picking which ones I want to use for each block.  This one is the waste fabric from the Georgia Peach Gradient.  This one is from the Southwest Gradient. After I posted took photos I saw my error on this one. Don't worry, it's fixed now!  Here are all the puppies so far. If you need to make one the pattern is from Sew Fresh Quilts. You can find them on Etsy.
My weekend plans went awry. I was looking forward to 2 sewing days with my Country School Quilters friends but when I got to the meeting room it was clear that someone had recently cleaned it. That's all good except that they used about a gallon of Pine-Sol. It's mold season here and I'm having enough allergy challenges. The Pine-Sol was just too much. I visited for a little but packed up and came home.
Not to worry, I had plenty to do! At the club meeting last week members gave me 13 more veterans quilt tops! Then I got 2 in the mail from my friend, Patty. With the 3 that were already there I now had 18 quilt tops hanging in the guest room closet. The ones on the left are paired with backs. The ones on the right need backs. I got those backs dyed last week. So I decided that instead of poisoning myself I would come home and work on these veterans quilts.  I quilted 2 quilts but realized that I can only share one. The other is a sample quilt for an upcoming Barbara Brackman block of the week/month. Becky does sewing for Barbara and the new quilt finished at 48" x 60" so she turned it into a veterans quilt.....a REALLY nice veterans quilt. All I can tell you is that it's a really cool quilt for those of you looking for a challenge! I have so many quilts to quilt that they are getting the fastest possible quilting. The Loose Leaf panto is perfect for that. This one is another one that Gwen mad with 4-patch blocks. This is the 3rd I've quilted for her and there are 2 or 3 more! Puppies! Then I was able to start making dog blocks. Is this puppy cute or what? I don't buy a lot of patterns but I'd surely buy more patterns from Sew Fresh Quilts. This one is really well written. The fact that I had to unsew something in ever block is only commentary on my sewing skills. I have 3 of them done.   These blocks are big, 18" x 12" so the hand dyed fabric makes a nice impact.
I made some more progress on moons too. I almost have another set of 4 ready to share. Today and tomorrow I'll be sewing with my quilt club and that means I'll be working on my 4th of July quilt again. I'll have an update on that Monday but for today I'm excited to share what I've been working in all week. I can't hold off any longer. I need to start a new project.  Just like you I have a dozen pattern and ideas for new projects. But my friend, Lora, has been not very subtle about her "need" for a quilt. She volunteers at Richmond Animal League and she is also owned by 2 dogs and 2 cats. So the quilt had to be about dogs and cats. Plus I was interested in doing a quilt with some sort of animal block. I like Elizabeth Hartman patterns and her Penguin parade quilt is also on my list. But Lora loves Pit Bulls so this pattern from Sew Fresh Quilts was perfect. This quilt is 60" and I wasn't really interested in a queen size quilt of only dog heads. So I picked up her cat pattern with the idea of doing cats in the border. Look at that blackbird quilt. Isn't that cute too? I'll just add that to the list too. Lora knows that I'm making this for her. I knew as soon as she saw the first block in Instagram that she would know the quilt was for her anyway.  Since it's not a surprise she got to pick the background color and she picked blue. I didn't have a true plan last week but I had enough of an idea to go ahead and dye fabrics. The background of the dogs will be the light blue, then a 3" border of medium blue and the outside border in the dark blue. The fabrics for the blocks will be my "waste" fabrics that I love so much. The dogs and cats will have a tie dye look. Then it was time to put this in EQ and see how it looked.  So I started with the center and, of course, the dog s look great. But then I got to the border and I didn't get very far before I realized that these cats would not work. Egads, that hideous! The cats look menacing.  I tried dozens of really bad border ideas. Here are just a few. I tried several ways to keep those cats but Lora and I eventually realized that they just didn't belong. The bones were just too juvenile. That zig zag at the top was a border block from EQ and we liked that one.  We both liked this one so I let that marinate in my brain overnight.  In the end I decided that there was too much white in the border so I took off the outside white triangles. After I get this together I might consider adding a 2" dark blue border at the end but this is what I'm going forward with for now.
The pattern instructions for the dog blocks are very well written so I'm looking forward to jumping into this project next week. Dogs and cats are going to sleep on this quilt so I'm not going to stress for perfection. I just want it to be fun. |
About Vicki
I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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