Oh, my stars!

32.5 x 32.5 inches

A non-quilting friend visited recently and art directed my houses top. After trying different options, we both concluded that the top was finished the way it was; there was nothing more to add except a purple binding. ... Once it's quilted, of course.

A dozen stars so far.

Double pink was this week's featured fabric.

I've been making two versions of Barbara Brackman's Stars in a Time Warp each week. One with the focus fabric for the star and the other with the fabric as the background. I decided to use Kona Snow as the other fabric in each block. Not sure how many stars there will be in the end (I can always buy more Snow if needed.) or how I'll put them together. For now, I'm happy to search my stash for the appropriate fabric and make two blocks every week.

Fresh Cut and a selection of Grunge from Basic Grey.

Saw this post Friday night and decided to jump in. My copy of the book won't arrive for a few days, but that did not stop me from buying some fabric yesterday for the quilt. I've never been tempted by Dear Jane or the Farmer's Wife quilts, but the 1718 Coverlet spoke to me. A handful of blocks every month for 11 months seems doable. We shall see.

I cleaned my sewing room the other day. Found a couple tops without backings or prepped binding so while I'm waiting for my book to arrive, I hope to get that done and to finish putting the border section on the Grand Illusion mystery quilt. I have to "unsew" a few parts that were attached in the wrong order so I'd better get to it.

Warning: There's pink in this quilt too

Not sure why there's been so much pink in my quilting life lately. At least this one isn't a baby quilt. It's an old UFO. Four applique blocks have been finished for 10 years now. The plan had been to do six, but I decided that after 10 years of no progress, another block was probably not going to happen.

For seven years, I've kept this magazine with the blocks because I liked this pieced sashing.

But it didn't work. The scale was too big and it was too busy for the applique. But the print fabric looked good. Even my husband agreed.

I had only a yard of the border fabric. Also years old so no hope of getting more. Not that I would have. I prefer the results of making do, which pushes you creatively. I extended the sashing into the border to jazz things up a bit. And the border width was determined by the amount of fabric available.

For awhile I considered adding the sashing fabric around the edge either as part of the top or as very wide binding, but it was too much.

Instead I'm going with regular size binding in a not-quite pink shade. My husband suggested the fabric, and it is the perfect choice. You can see it on the right in the picture above. I'm surprised sometimes by how helpful he can be and how willing he is to give his opinion.

Below is a picture of the whole quilt. The colors are more accurate in the picture above. We are into that time of year where it is perpetually gray skies, and it will be awhile before I can get a better shot.

55 x 55 inches. 
Applique from the book 'Prairie Flower' by Barbara Brackman.

Now, I need to find my next project.

Get one while you can

Barbara Brackman announced this week that her book "Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns" is now out of print. How sad. I've used that book countless times.

The book was invaluable in planning my Florida quilt. How else would I have found so many Florida-themed blocks such as Tallahassee, Key West, Sunshine, Orange Peel, Storm at Sea, etc.?

I took over my guild's block of the month program right after September 11. I used this book to find blocks that seemed relevant to the events (Birds in the Air, New York, White House Steps, etc.) and then drafted them all to the same size. Each month in 2002 members could make the blocks for the drawing in that month's colors and/or for themselves in red, white and blue for a sampler quilt.

Several other quilts have been planned and countless block names confirmed with her book. Not to mention all the blocks I've discovered when looking for something else.

This book has been around for years. Before computers. You can only imagine the dedication required to gather all that information and then put it together and index it with drawings of each block. And to think she did it with a typewriter and graph paper!

Read her funny post about the book here. 

End of the year finishes

Maybe it was the threat of another year passing and these quilts not being complete that compelled me to stitch binding on six quilts. Yeah. Six. Now there's just the hand stitching to do. At least I won't be watching TV with idle hands for awhile.

Got the binding on one of the twin's monkey quilts done. Finally. I used a blue satin (which looks white in this pic, but isn't really) and made the binding extra wide so there'd be a good bit of it for them to touch. I've noticed that little kids like the soft feel of satin. The blue center squares are flannel, and the browns and light blue monkey print are regular quilting cotton. Hope they like the textures. The pattern is my own invention to show off the monkeys.

Here's the back. Leftover monkey fabric and a couple of very cute prints with monkeys I found after the quilt tops were done. One more identical quilt to bind, and these can be mailed. Well before their second birthday!

Also finished the binding on the orange stars for Luke. Soon as I get the binding on his brother's quilt, I can put these in the mail too. Well before they graduate from college!

This is the back of of the orange stars quilt. More orange.  Of course.

I wasn't planning to do anything more with this pinwheel top, but something about it was bugging me. I used the last bits of the black with gold print to border it, and it looks much better. I'd love to add another border in red or purple, but there's not enough of either color for that. I'll just leave it on the wall for awhile to see if I'm inspired what to do next. If not, it will go into the cupboard to keep some other tops company.

Barbara Brackman has started a new blog, Civil War Quilts, where each week she'll give a pattern for an 8-inch block related to the American Civil War. There'll be stories and pictures too. A block a week. That's doable, and I could use up some of my reproduction fabrics that I haven't touched in awhile. Hmmmm. 

A busy couple of weeks

I made these newspaper placemats as a retirement present for my friend, who I met on my first journalism job more than 20 years ago. She was the cops reporter when I started, and when you went somewhere with her she would point out crime scenes along the way. She got me more interested in cooking and to subscribe to Bon Appetit, which I still do. Her party was great, and I got to visit with people I hadn't seen in decades, and we told lots of stories of my friend. Those were such fun times. I guess because we were young and had the energy to try anything. 

I was, of course, stitching these placemats up the night before I flew back to New England for her retirement party! I adapted the pattern from Penny's napkin tutorial at Sew Take A Hike, changing the dimensions to be placemat size instead of napkin size, and using two layers of newspaper fabric so the placemats are reversible. I used solid fabrics from my stash for the border, but because I didn't have enough of one fabric for all the borders, I used a different blue for each.

I'm still plugging away at the Aboriginal blocks. This is what they looked like before I took them off the design wall to work on a Halloween table topper.

I searched through Barbara Brackman's "Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns," looking up words related to autumn (fall, leaves, pumpkins, etc.) to find a block that would work for this project. I found Autumn Tints (1103c), which seemed perfect: simple construction that could be arranged into an interesting composition that matched the tone/mood of the fabric.

I made some sketches and started piecing. The center was to be a solid piece of fabric so that if you set a vase or something on the center, it wouldn't wobble on top of a seam or cover up the piecing. The black fabric seemed too stark, and the orange was perfect, but I didn't have a big enough piece.

So I cut the biggest piece of the orange I could, and then cut out the pumpkin stripe from Minick & Simpson's great Halloween Night fabric and mitred it around the edge. When I was done, I realized I hadn't calculated correctly (looked at the finished size instead of the unfinished size when I was cutting!) so I had to add some coping strips to make it a bit bigger!

The plan all along was to use the pumpkin stripe as a mitred outside border, and I like the way it looks even though the pumpkins don't match up on the mitres. I used Harriet Hargrave and Sharyn Craig's book "The Art of Classic Quiltmaking" for a refresher on mitring.

If you've made it this far, then you get to see the lovely little bouquet of flowers my neighbor brought me yesterday when she came to check on me. I was hit by a car Friday night walking home from work. I was in the middle of a crosswalk, when a man who was stopped at the stop sign decided to drive through the intersection. He drove right into me, knocked me down and stopped on my foot. Amazingly, nothing seems to have been broken. I don't know what is more shocking: seeing a car tire parked on your foot or having someone drive into you so purposefully! I've been trying to stay off it and keep it elevated, but it is my sewing pedal foot, and I have a whole long weekend of stitching planned.