Something Quilty for my Birthday

We are still in Sarasota for another month.  Today is my birthday.  I got a wonderful surprise this morning when the FedEx truck pulled up.  My sister Katy sent me a package with this cheerful apron and potholders!

Upon closer inspection, some of those fabrics looked very familiar!  When we moved from our Raleigh house, I gave Katy several huge bags of fabric scraps.  She works with an organization that helps disabled adults with careers and living arrangements.  The recipient of my fabrics made this cute set.  The pockets and potholders are my fabrics!  Now look what I could have been doing!

She also sent me this beautiful card that matches the apron, and also looks like patchwork butterflies.  Be prepared to see these again, perhaps on my Bible journal pages!

Charlie took me shopping for my birthday at the Apple store.  He said he has not been able to shop for me because I am always with him down here!  No complaints, I have this beautiful Apple watch with a ribbon watchband.  It is fun trying to learn how to use it.  I have this flowering watch face that changes to different colored blooms.

I bought him an i-Watch when we were down here in 2015 for his first radiation.  So now I have an expert on hand to show me how to use it.  He also bought me this nice product that we were introduced to at the Table restaurant.  Their restrooms had this great-smelling hand scrub made from salt filtered from the gulf waters in this area.  We found some of the product when we were looking for a gift for our sister-in-law who is coming down tomorrow.  

Tonight we are going on a party boat cruise around Sarasota Bay at sunset.  This was a gift from my children before they left last week.  There will be a musician playing Jimmy Buffett music, live palm trees, and a bar mixing up some birthday margaritas, I hope!  

I feel very grateful to be in this beautiful city for my birthday, even though I have to be away from home.  Healing for Charlie, and wonderful experiences and memories for both of us.

Peek-a-Boo!

So, having finished the last of the customer quilts required before Christmas, I started a little patchwork project of my own, hoping to finish in time for Christmas giving. Guess what...regular old patchwork is pretty boring when you have been making nothing but art quilts!  I did enjoy choosing the fabrics.

I decided to use a birthday gift from last June to cut out the squares...a Big Shot die-cutting machine! 

Yes, the very same type that was used to make all the flower applique quilts that I have quilted in the last year.  (And no, I am not planning to make one for myself!)  Mine is the electric version, which means no cranking.  It will cut about eight layers of fabric in each pass. I have a template that makes four different sized squares, one of which was the two-inch size I needed for this project.  After a while, I figured out that I didn't have to cover the whole template, just the part I needed.  I have lots of extra squares cut for other projects now!

It wastes some fabric, but saves some time.  And my wrists...no rotary cutting for all the squares in this project.

So... after a couple days I finally finished piecing the top yesterday.  The pattern was more complicated than I thought.  And when I was all finished, I discovered...

THE MISTAKE.  You know, when you see that you reversed a patchwork block?  And you have to decide...

Do I leave it in as a Humility Block, as the Amish supposedly do?  You know, to show, nobody's perfect?

Or do some "unsewing?"

Can't show the whole quilt yet, but you can see the decision I made.

There is hope of getting this done, cleaning the house, making lasagna, and packing for the Christmas weekend...maybe!

Have you finished making your Christmas gifts?

More "It Doesn't Matter" Patchwork

I made a little more "It Doesn't Matter" patchwork yesterday, and put some more blocks together per the instructions on Del's blog. Here are four of the constructed blocks on the design wall. Busy, aren't they?

I decided to try some sashing strips. These are not sewn yet, but I like previewing with the digital camera. These are predominantly white print strips.

Better, but still too busy. I like the predominantly black sashing strips better.

I have two more nine inch blocks that I have not made into the larger units yet. Here is how they look with black sashing.

Patchwork in Progress

I love to read comments on my blog, and am especially grateful when my blog friends help me by alerting me to bad links or offering suggestions. Many thanks to Del and Cathie who recently let me know about some links to nowhere. I will be more careful when copying and pasting URL's into the link box, because by default there is already an "html://" in the hyperlink box. The bad links were because of double "html://" code in the links.

And also a big thank you to Hilal of New Moon Studio Ceramics for inspiring me to higher levels of photography. Her blog and Etsy shop indeed have very lovely photographs, in fact, I would say, magazine or gallery catalogue level. And what beautiful and unusual pieces of art she creates!

My husband has a very good quality Sony camera with what longarm teacher Nichole Webb once dubbed "a big honking lens" when I used it at one of her classes. I will re-photograph my Etsy pictures with it at higher resolution and try to improve their quality.

Yesterday, I happily spent an afternoon doing something that has been increasingly rare for me- piecing quilt blocks! For the past year, I can't think of any traditional quilt tops I have made. With my increased interest in art quilts, my long-arm quilting, and a sewing room in transition, I just have not been making much patchwork.

However, I am excited about making the nursery bedding for my niece. I have the dust ruffle completely finished, and started cutting and piecing some simple preliminary blocks. This is the quilt from the ensemble that she liked.

This is from the Julia Bedding Crib set by Kidsline. At first I was trying to duplicate the quilt, but there are a couple of obvious problems with that. Numero uno, all these blocks and the whole set feature heavy embroidery. Another is that some of the fabrics look like shiny polyester.

I don't have an embroidery machine, don't feel like doing all that hand embroidery or even applique on a quilt for a baby, and don't like polyester for babies. I also don't like fat batts, and like lots more quilting. So, after being reassured from my niece and my sister that I should do whatever I like, I started trying out other ways to create a quilt that would coordinate with the color scheme if she chooses some of the other accessories from this set.

Here's another problem for me: everything is the same pale value except for the dark browns. I am strongly inclined to throw in a few zingers to brighten it up, but I have not got the desired effect yet.

I will keep experimenting today. Melinda wants more lavender than pink, and has sage green walls and the dark brown crib. I think I will save the blocks with the strong fuchsia and purple for another project.

Notice the dappled sunlight at play in that photo? The sun is out today! Yippee! It has been a dreary gray week until now.