Missing MOJO

Well here it is July! So what have I been doing since my last post?

After being so busy over the last year making lots of quilts, around the first of April I developed tendonitis in my upper right arm. Man! That will put a cramp (pun intended) in your style! It has been  painful but more of a aggravation than anything.

I went to see an exercise physiologist about it and she felt that 4 visits with her would have me right as rain, along with some exercises to stretch the tendon. After the 2nd visit, around the first of May, I went to a weekend quilt retreat, where I spent one whole day cutting out pieces for a new quilt.

When I returned to see her the next week, she could tell I had been doing something because the tendon was very tight.  When she asked what I had been doing, I told her "rotary cutting". She said I had to lay off that for a while.  Enter sad face! I looked up tendonitis on the internet and found that the healing process could take 2-4 months.  Well pooh! What happens when a quilter can't quilt? Loss of MOJO!

Every creative person experiences a loss of creative flow once in a while.  Along with the tendonitis, I also realized that in spite of making so many wonderful quilts I had made no noticeable dent in my fabric stash. This was discouraging to me.  Now to some quilters that is not a source of discouragement. To me it means that no matter how many quilts I can possibly make my children will have too much to dispose of upon my demise. Again to many quilters this is just one of the facts of life.  But I also had to face the fact that I have a lot of quilts.  And for me having a lot of quilts made me realize that I just don't need to make lots and lots more quilts that don't have a purpose. So I purged a bunch of fabrics that were not bringing me joy and made room for some of my quilts so I could enjoy the fruit of my labor instead of stuffing them in the closet.  The first picture is of my fabric collection a year ago. The second is after making several quilts and purging fabric to make room for some finished quilts.

I still have plenty of fabric for many future quilts and I'm sure my mojo will return soon.

 Meanwhile I am reading "real" books, looking at inspiration thru Instagram and Pinterest.

I have a spot that I display quilts and I usually only change them out with the seasons, leaving a whole lot of quilts hanging in the closet, not being enjoyed.  So I have decided that when you don't want to sew, you can just play with what you've already made.

This quilt was an online mystery quilt. I named it Dance of the Dragonflies because there are dragonflies in the border fabric.

You can find this pattern on thisandthatpatterns.typepad.com by Sherri Falls

It is a free pattern on the right side called Mystery Monday's #3

So if your mojo has disappeared, fear not, just enjoy the world you are in as best you can and one day it will show back up and you will be better for the rest. 

Scrappy Cake Stands

Every once in awhile a quilt pattern will show up that just says "make me now"! Recently a friend was cleaning out her quilt books and gave me a stack. In that stack was an old book on scrap quilts.

As I have mentioned before I had a hard time wrapping my head around making scrap quilts. So I wasn't immediately drawn to this book.  I sort of just flipped through it and set it aside. A couple of weeks later I was preparing the stack to go to a lady who is collecting books for my guilds show in the fall. We are having a used book sale at the show.  So I just flipped through it again and came across this quilt.

Soft colors and florals are my favorite.  So if this quilt had been made with dark prints I probably wouldn't have given it a second glance. But it caught my eye.  The pattern was referenced in the back of the book.  So I flipped to the pattern.

This is it. Just a grid. Well no problem. I've made lots of blocks, I got this.

So I dumped my scrap basket out on my dining table and began making "pairs" of fabrics for the cake stand and the background.

My local quilt guild has a retreat in January. So I "kitted" up the pairs I had made. Made a sample block to be sure I had the sizes and amount of pieces needed to make each block so I could be sure I had enough of each fabric.  Placed them in a box and headed to retreat.  I worked almost the whole retreat on the squares needed for this quilt.  As I made each block I declared it my favorite, until I made the next one. 

By the end of retreat I had all the blocks made.  When I got home I was so excited to see this quilt come together I immediately cut the setting triangles.

Then I got in my stash and found a border and backing fabric. Sewed the border on, loaded it on my long arm, and quilted it. 

I am so pleased! It is now among my favorite quilts.  

While hand sewing the binding down I spilled a glass of iced tea on it. So as soon as the binding was done I tossed it in the wash. It is just lovely and crinkly and cuddly! 

For the backing I had 2 yards each of 2 pieces of cream print fabric. 

I pieced together scraps of batting to make a piece big enough.

So everything came from my stash!

This is what quilting for the sheer fun of it looks like!

What I have really learned over the last year about quilting is USE YOUR FABRIC!

Use the stuff you have been saving. Get rid of fabric that you don't love. And have fun!

If you don't use it your heirs will give it away so don't save it!

Theres another pattern in the book that looks equally fun, 

so who knows, 

maybe another scrappy quilt lies ahead. 

Have Fun Quilting Today!

Mama's Bow Ties

One of the quilts I finished in 2018 was a quilt my mom started.  This is me and my mom.

We enjoyed many hours of quilting together.  We took classes and went on quilt retreats. We enjoyed going to quilt shows together. 

As her health started to fail I asked her if there was one quilt that she really wanted to finish what would it be.  It was a bowtie quilt made with feed sack fabrics.

She would come to my house and work on it and we would sew together as best she could.  She finished piecing all the blocks.

She passed away in November of 2016

We belonged to a local quilt guild and every January we would go to our guilds annual retreat.

So I took those blocks to the retreat in January 2017 and put the top together. It made me feel like she had attended the retreat with me.

After the retreat I went home and got the remaining feed sacks out that she had not cut yet and there was one print that there were 2 of. Her favorite color was purple. So I used them for the border. And picked a purple out of the stash for the binding.

Im so glad to have finished this quilt in my mom's honor.  I will feel her presence with me when ever I hold this quilt.

After she passed I was blessed to clean out her sewing room and I added some of her fabrics to my stash, and I picked some of her favorite UFO's to finish, so there will be more of her quilts to share in the future.

In memory of Shelvy Miller 1939-2016

Quilting Fun

There is a "fad" right now of making quilts from 2 1/2" strips called a "Jelly Roll Race". I think it has other names as well.  You take the strips and sew them end to end and then you bring the two ends together and sew them side by side, and keep doing that until you get a lap size quilt. Well I have  containers of left over strips and squares and my bin of 2 1/2" strips was full. So I took them and made this quilt. The back was made of large pieces of fabric from my stash.        

 

Scrappy Irish chain made from the squares in my 2" bin. The back is again large pieces of fabric from my stash.



The next quilt is made from a collection of 30's reproduction fabrics that my mom had collected. I used plain muslin on the back.



This quilt is made from fabrics that I purchased or collected because they are soft pastel and floral. I had seen a quilt made in a similar pattern years ago and this was a "bucket list" quilt for me. I absolutely love it, and friends have said this is definitely a "Marie" quilt. The only problem with this quilt is that I made it a little too big for evenings in the recliner. But I do love it.

Since I have purchased a long arm machine quilting goes much faster and is way more fun!

Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Thank you! Welcome Back

Thank you to all of you who connected here from my facebook page. I have received some nice compliments about my last post. Thank you all for reading.

Today’s quilt is a quilt I also started in 2016. It’s made from a commercial pattern called ‘Laundry Baskets’ by Fig Tree Quilts. Another “scrap quilt” made with left over pieces of other quilts.

One of the struggles I had as a beginning quilter in using lots of different fabrics in a quilt, was the fear of getting a piece of fabric too close to another piece of the same fabric. I’m not sure why that is a struggle but I have talked to others who have had the same struggle. I have worked really hard on a couple of quilts to try and make sure that doesn’t happen and guess what when you close your eyes they migrate near each other and you don’t catch it until it’s quilted! Oh no! Then you laugh at yourself and realize the world didn’t come to an end and the quilt police never showed up! And actually the unplanned randomness of just picking up a piece of fabric and sewing is really liberating. The more I do it the more fun I have and actually isn’t that what this hobby is really supposed to be anyway? I am totally in love with the happy colors of this quilt.

But here comes the ugly truth of why this quilt took two years to complete - I was afraid to quilt it.  There I said it. If you quilt at all you are probably familiar with the anxiety that comes with deciding how a quilt is going to be quilted. But add to that the years of belonging to a guild and going to quilt shows and seeing all the wonderful quilts that are out there and paralysis  can quickly occur. So it sat. As I mentioned in the last post I purchased a long arm quilt machine & frame allowing me to get quilts finished more efficiently. So after considering a couple of other quilts I had finished I decided to do a simple meander and it is (in my opinion) wonderful! And better yet it is done! I’m not sure who to credit with this quote but ‘better done than perfect’ has become a favorite phrase. But I can’t honestly say that it would have made the quilt a better quilt if it had been quilted any other way. Here is a picture of it before it was quilted.

And a close up of the quilting and backing fabric. 

Now I’m not sure if you can tell but the binding matches the border on the front and the backing on the back. The casual observer wouldn’t notice that. I love solving quilting challenges and when I realized that I didn’t have enough of the border fabric to make the binding, I had a decision to make. I didn’t really want to add the backing fabric to the color story on the front. Then I remembered I had a similar challenge a couple of years ago when someone asked me to make them a quilt. There was an article in a quilt magazine about doing a two sided binding. So I dug out the article I had saved and problem solved. Here are pictures from the quilt I made for the customer.

I will be presenting this technique at my local guild in April as a program for our monthly meeting.

It is nice to have tools in your tool belt to accomplish wonderful things. 

I have noticed that my picture taking abilities need improving. I wish you could see this in person. 

Quilt making is fun!

 Tomorrow is the start of a new week. My favorite day of the week is Monday.

I know that is crazy. But I feel that Monday brings order after the weekend. I hope you all have a great day. My words of wisdom to my children when they were becoming teenagers and dealing with the choices of life is "You are the only thing holding you back". So this week don't let anything hold you back from being the best you that you can be. 

Welcome 2019!

To say that 2018 was a good year for me would be an understatement!

As you can see it has been awhile since I posted here in blogland. A lot of life has happened since I last posted. Not all of life is good, as I’m sure everyone can attest. There have been ups and there have been downs. But God is faithful and I am glad that I can agree with the writer of Psalm 73:28, “But as for me, it is good for me to draw near to God; I have made the Lord God my refuge and placed my trust in Him, that I may tell of all Your works.”  So back to the opening statement of this post.

2018 brought a wonderful change to my home. My quilting studio was upstairs in my home, making it less than easily accessible during a normal day. I would try to get all my daily chores done before climbing the stairs, only to finally get there and someone ring the doorbell, or call asking for something that was downstairs. I am 58 years old and in 2017 I injured my knee so there are days when climbing the stairs is just not all that easy.

We had a single car garage attached to our home that we used mostly for storage. The entrance to our laundry room was also located in the garage. The garage floor was a step down from the house floor. So envision a trip to the laundry room (the floor of which was level with the house floor) - step down, walk to entrance, step up, do laundry, step down, walk to house entrance, step up. Not a good thing.

So in 2018 we made a decision to renovate. We closed in the garage, raised the floor level with the house, and made it my quilt studio! Oh happy day! Not only was my studio now easily accessible but trips to the laundry room are no longer a workout. And I purchased a used low end small “longarm”. By small I mean the distance between the needle and the back of the machine is 14”, where most are 18” or more. These changes have been a game changer in my world!

So not to make this blog a boring journal of words I would like to begin today posting pictures of quilts that I have made over the last year. There will be a little story of each quilt, because every quilt has a story, even if it isn’t a earth shattering one. And along the way I’ll write a little of my story. I may not have a huge blog following but somehow this little record of my quilts may be a record of me, my likes, and my quilt making journey.

The quilts will not be shared in any particular order, just that they were finished in 2018. One note - the pictures were taken on my phone and not in stunning settings. The first one was taken at a quilt retreat where I had just finished sewing the binding on.

This quilt was started in 2016. The main fabric was purchased a "few" years ago with no real idea of what it was going to be used for.  5 yards of it! Then around 2009/10 I purchased a book with the basis of this quilt in it.  The setting blocks in the original quilt were embroidered, and the border with the diamonds was different. I made it my own because I liked the basic layout. I had lots of fun making it and I finished it in October of 2018. It had a place of honor on our bed during the Christmas holiday. I am very pleased with this quilt.

I had no idea it would be so long that I would be able to pull it over the pillows! Happy Discovery!

This sweet little quilt was not supposed to turn out this way. I planned to make the four patches all line up in the same direction.  However while adding the white squares between them I didn't pay attention until I had about half of them sewn on that some were going the other way.  Well at first I thought I would have to unsew the pieces. Then I realized that I could arrange them this way and they were totally fun that way.  I was really just playing with fabric at this point with really no goal in mind.  About that time a baby shower invitation came for a young woman at my church who was having a boy.  So I put blue fabric on the back and voila a baby quilt! Such happy colors for the little guy. And I may do another quilt with this setting because it was so fun.

So back to the drawing board to make a quilt with four patches all lined up in the same direction and alternating with scrappy background fabrics instead of one fabric. Love it! Easy quilt, uses up lots of different pieces. And wouldn't you know it, another baby has arrived and needs a quilt! Yay! This one is a baby girl. To add even more fun to the quilt I put a colorful back on it.

Lots of fun!

Now you might notice that these two quilts are "scrappy". Here is where a story of my journey as a quilter comes in.  In a my very first blog post, August 2012,  I shared my first quilt, a scrappy square quilt that my grandmother helped me make.  I made a quilt with precut squares that were sold in a kit, and I made a quilt with preprinted pillow panels. Then I began "serious" quilt making by making my first ever quilt cut with a rotary cutter and a template. A fall leaf quilt with lovely fall colors.  Up to this point the quilt colors had all been determined by someone else. Not my own choosing.  Then I made my first ever strip pieced quilt where I chose my own fabrics. I used a blue and white check fabric with a muslin background.  This fabric said a lot about the quilts I was drawn to. One color and a background. I favor calm serene quilts. Not a lot of chaos or color.  My mother on the other hand was in love with what is commonly called "scrap quilts".  Quilts with lots of color and a large variety of fabrics.  I personally did not find these appealing.  Well my friends let me tell you that has changed! In the more than 20 years that I have been quilting I have truly learned to appreciate and embrace the use of lots of fabrics in one quilt. My mother isn't here to see this change in me, but I think she'd be pleased.  In the days ahead you will see many more quilts of this style. 

I hope you enjoyed todays blog post and look forward to reading more about my adventures in quilting.  I have lots more quilts to share that I was blessed to do in 2018, so check back later!