Blogger's Quilt Festival - Pieces of a Rainbow

It's time for the fall version of the Blogger's Quilt Festival sponsored by Amy's Creative Side.

My entry for the ROYGBIV category got started as a request from my daughter, Drama Teen, to make this pattern, Jigsaw by Alyssa Clancy,

in rainbow colors as a bed size quilt for her room.  Here's what came out of that request.   

It took a couple of years for me to gather up the fabrics for this quilt.  Even then there was an awful lot of switching in and out of fabrics as I got to the bottom rows.  Getting the color change to flow from the orange to the red-violet from upper left to lower right as the shades moved from lighter to darker from left to right was probably more of challenge then I was really ready for.  The whole fabric selection process was an education in color theory.  I'm still not sure I got the flow quite right, but Drama Teen loves it, so it works.  

The quilting was done by Trudy Lindemann, who never disappoints.  She varied the thread colors to match the colors in the quilt. 

The free hand flowers echo the quilt back and look just as good on it as they do the front.

The colors in the backing fabric match the colors on the front and it has the same shifts in color as on the front, so it worked really well.  
 Hand stitching the binding for Drama Teen's rainbow quilt was completed a few days after she'd had knee surgery to repair a torn ACL that ended her high school volleyball season just a week before their first game.  She told me that the quilt reminded her that even while she was hurting, that she was loved.  Her quilt felt like one big hug from Mom when she most needed it.  

This quilt goes pretty much everywhere with her.  So I'm pretty sure it will be well loved.  That's the best gift she could give me.  

There's a lot of eye candy over at the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  I'm going to go get a second cup of coffee and indulge in the best quilt show one can enjoy from the comfort of your recliner.  Thanks for stopping by my entry.  Enjoy the rest of the posts.  

Something Old, Something New: UFOs and Scrap Management

Somehow I completely missed the Something Old, Something New post for September.   

Thinking back that would have been posted sometime the weekend Drama Teen had ACL surgery and we had the roof damage that caused water to leak into the sewing room.  Now I know why there wasn't a post for September.  There probably wasn't much to report anyway, so I'll just proceed on to where things are now.  

In terms of something old, Jigsaw finally became a finished quilt.  

  
Drama Teen has slept with it every night since it's been finished. She obviously loves it.  

Since Jigsaw is all finished up, I pulled out the box holding my oldest UFO and started putting it together.  All the star blocks were finished I just had to cut the alternating blocks and decide on a layout.  It looked like this back in August.

As of tonight, it only needs two more borders added before it will be a finished flimsy.

Pattern is Folk Art Christmas Stars

by Robyn Pandolph

This quilt is intended for my Mother's bed, so it needs to be queen sized.  Hopefully this one will be sent off to be quilted before the end of the month, but at the moment it's my something old for October.  

I had to really think about the something new for September.  I'm still wrestling with getting my stash organized, that includes my scraps.  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler quilt has really helped me understand how to make good use of strips that are already cut, so I'm trying to get all the odds and ends into either squares or strips.  My sewing time has been pretty limited and it's not fun to just stand and cut up scraps, but I think I came up with a workable system to "cut as I go".  I've been using this blue bin to hold the color scraps I'm working with. 

  
At the back of the bin are some plastic bags that I've labeled with the various strip sizes.  

These bags serve two purposes.  At the beginning of the month, I go through my already cut strips and pull out the color I'm working with that month.  As I cut up any odd sized shapes, I sort the newly cut scraps back into these bags.  At the end of the month the strips go back into the the general strip storage, when I pull out the next month's scraps.  This keeps all the action at my cutting table and I'm not running back and forth to my scrap storage putting up or looking for scraps. Plus I know what sizes I have available.  I did a pretty good job of getting most of the orange scraps cut up and stored without it seeming like I spent a lot of extra time cutting and organizing.  

That's my update for last month.  You can see more old and new projects over at Never Too Hot to Stitch.  

Design Wall Monday - A Finish Finally

Weekends never seem to be long enough to fit in all that I'd like to get done.  Since the sewing room was deconstructed due to the storm damage last Monday: it seemed like an ideal time to give it a good cleaning and reorganize a bit as it got put back together.  I didn't get all of that done, but made good progress.  

Drama Teen is still recovering from ACL surgery.  She's getting more mobile everyday, but her knee still hurts quite a bit.  She spent a lot of the weekend catching up on homework and with her friends

That's Jigsaw she's covered up with.  I put the last few stitches into the binding and label late Saturday night.  You can't tell from her face, but she was thrilled that it was all finished.  She renamed the quilt Pieces of a Rainbow.  

Pieces of a Rainbow
Pattern is Jigsaw by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

It's an apt name.  I have a whole new perspective when I see a quilt that has a rainbow or color fade theme.  You have to demo a lot of fabrics to get something like that right.  It was a fun, though sometimes maddening, challenge to get the colors to flow like I thought they should.  

Trudy Lindemann did a gorgeous job on the quilting.  She matched the quilting thread to the colors in the quilt.  

 Which worked really well on the back.

This is only my second finish for the year.  I hope to finish up Scrappy Stars and maybe one other quilt before the end of the year, which is coming up faster than I'm ready for.  

That's it for what's finally off the design wall and finished.  Check out Patchwork Times for more design wall Monday posts.  

Design Wall Monday - Almost a Finish

Happy Labor Day.  If you are in the US, I hope you are enjoying your three day weekend.  Hard to believe it's the first of September, three quarters of the year is over, just 4 months left.  It will definitely go fast.  

Drama Teen is still working on recovering from ACL surgery on Friday.  It's been a challenge to balance medication doses to control the pain and minimize the associated stomach upset.  She gets a little better each day.  I was able to find some time yesterday evening to get up to the sewing room and the get the binding sewn to the front of Jigsaw and begin the hand stitching to the back. 

 

The backing is just as bright as the front.  Drama Teen is looking forward to me finishing this up.  It's been three years in the making.  I should be able to finish up the binding today.  

That's it for my design wall today.  I'm linking up with Patchwork Times as usual for Design Wall Monday.  

Design Wall Monday - A Finished Flimsy and a UFO

It was another quiet weekend.  My Guy was off on a business trip and Drama Teen ended up spending most of Saturday and Sunday at a friend's house.  School starts on Tuesday, so it was their last "do nothing" weekend.  That left me with an empty house for most of the weekend.  After my household chores were done, I made a beeline for the sewing room.  I did spend some time cleaning up and running the vacuum, it desperately needed it.  Then I got busy on finishing up a couple of projects.  

The final border strip was added to Jigsaw on Saturday, so it's a finished flimsy.

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Drama Teen loves it.  Since it's her quilt, that's all that matters.  The back has been pieced.  A good part of yesterday was spent doing a final pressing and picking off all the loose threads.  Now it's ready to go off to Trudy for quilting.  

Jigsaw has been up on my design wall for months now, so it looked very empty when I took it down.  It didn't take me long to find something else to fill up all that empty space.  

Scrappy Stars

Pattern is Folk Art Christmas Stars

by Robyn Pandolph

Scrappy Stars is my oldest UFO (circa 2003).  The star blocks were my leaders and enders project earlier this year.  I spent yesterday cutting out the 6.5 inch alternating squares and playing in EQ to decide what I wanted to use for the setting triangles.  I need to redistribute some of the star blocks to better spread out the lighter ones.  This one shouldn't take too long to finish up as all that's needed is to cut the setting triangles and sew the rows together.  It will be nice to get this one finished and off the UFO list.  

That's it for my design wall.  You can share your's over at Judy's Patchwork Times.  

A Catch up Post

It's been one of those weeks.  If you want to read about the quilty stuff you can skip the rest of this paragraph and the next, if you like the drama, read on.  Two family emergencies and one rush project at work made for a pretty miserable week.  My Guy's wonderful mother was rushed to the emergency room on Monday.  They discovered a mass, which is inoperable and cancerous.  They did surgery to deal with some issues that were immediately life threatening.  She's now feeling a lot more comfortable and is in good spirits. My Guy left Friday morning to go see her.  

The plan was for Drama Teen and I to join My Guy on Saturday as she has volleyball practice and I needed to finish up a rush project at work.  That plan pretty much disintegrated when I picked DT up from volleyball practice on Friday.  DT texted that I needed to come in to talk to coach.  It wasn't the coach I had to talk to, it was the high school trainer.  DT took a bad fall during practice and over-extended her knee.  She was on crutches and hurting pretty badly.  So after an afternoon spent at the doctor's office, she has an MRI scheduled for this Thursday.  We won't know how bad the damage is to her knee until the doctor sees the results from that. She's supposed to stay off her feet and regularly ice the knee until then.  The rush project?  Well that was finally finished at about 8:30 PM on Friday.  

Here's the quilting updates that should have been written this week:

My something old this month is the same as it's been for several months, to finish up Jigsaw.  This month the blocks got finished, the rows sewn together and the borders were started.  

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Jigsaw may actually make it to a finished flimsy in August. I've just started on the the last round of borders.  For my something new, I learned how to work with fussy cuts in EQ.  I'm still working to come up with a quilt that uses a butterfly panel I bought a couple of months ago.  Here's the latest effort. 

Modified from Bird Watching
by Wendy Sheppard
 published in July/August  2014 issue of McCall's Quilting

This layout reminds me of stained glass.  The pattern is modified from a quilt in the July issue of McCall's Quilting magazine, Bird Watching by Wendy Sheppard.  This may well end up being my something new for this month.  I will probably play some with block placement and fabric colors, but I think this quilt needs to be made.

  

July wasn't a good month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I've been playing catch up with the red blocks.  All the blocks for the Scrap Challenge Sampler are in progress, but only 4 are finished. 

 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler
By Angela Feldbush of Soscrappy

The scrappy butterfly block is also done. 

Scrappy Butterflies
Block is available in EQ 7 Block Library

This month's color is light green.  Since I don't have a lot of greens, I used pretty much all my green scraps I had when we were working with dark green. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do for this month.  

Finally, today is stash report day.  I actually have some stash going out with nothing coming in.  

Used last week:  1.36 yards
Added last week:  0 yards

Used in 2014:  11.99 yards
Added in 2014:  302.3 yards

Net stashed in 2014:  290.31 yards 

So for the first time in a long while the net stashed actually went down!  I definitely need a few more weeks of that.  

That catches me up on posts for the week and the month.  I'm linking up with:

Lynn over at Never Too Hot To Stitch
Angela over at Soscrappy
Judy over at Patchwork Times.  

Design Wall Monday - Bordering Jigsaw

I'm so not ready for Monday morning.  My Guy is headed back to Texas for the week and Drama Teen has to get going early for volleyball camp.  That's more rushing around than I'm used to on a summer morning.  It's amazing how much less chaos there is when DT doesn't have to up for school.  

It was a nice weekend.  A bit of housework got done and the towers of laundry were reduced to small lumps.  Even with all that there was still some time to spend in the sewing room.  Though it wasn't all stitching.  A bit of straightening up was needed, plus a bit of rearranging to do a better job of organizing my scraps. 

Drama Teen and I played around with border options for the Jigsaw quilt.  Our original plan to have a 1" lime green border before adding the dark blue border just didn't work.  We tried a few other bright colors and realized that what was needed was to put the dark blue first, then add a narrow bright border before adding a final border of more dark blue.  The first 4 border strips are cut, sewn and trimmed to size, only the 2 vertical borders managed to get sewn on.  

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Drama Teen is thrilled with it thus far and is ready to have it on her bed.  Hopefully I can get the borders on and a back made before the end of July so it can go off for quilting.  

That's it for my design wall this week.  You can see more eye candy over at Judy's Patchwork Times. 

Design Wall Monday - The Last Puzzle Piece

It's amazing what a quiet weekend at home can do for you.  The laundry is caught up, the house is a bit cleaner and I actually have something to show for Design Wall Monday.  It's been almost a month since my last design wall post.  The end of June was just really busy, then we went on vacation for the first part of July.  So there hasn't been much going on in the sewing room.  I fixed that yesterday by managing to get in a solid four hours at the machine.  

All of that time was spent finishing up the blocks for Drama Teen's Jigsaw quilt.  

 Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

All the blocks are sewn together now.  So all that is left is to add the borders.  Drama Teen is quite happy with how it turned out.  There are still a few blocks that aren't perfect from a color perspective, but this is her quilt and she's happy, so no more rework is planned.  

For more Design Wall Monday posts, check out Patchwork Times.  

Something Old, Something New - July Update

Last month I didn't manage to get this post up till several days into the new month, this month is no different.  June was crazy busy and after going over the extended family stuff planned for July and August, the rest of my summer is going to be really busy. Stitching and blogging time are going to be hard to come by for awhile.  I had hoped for a slow lazy summer, but it looks like that's not going to be the case. 

My something old continues to be the Jigsaw quilt.  I actually finished 6 of the remaining blocks in June.  

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Just two more blocks to finish, then Drama Teen will have to help me decide on the borders.

The something new for June has been to work up a design for this butterfly panel.  

  
I've only managed to come up with one potential layout for the butterfly blocks.  

But at least that's something for the month.  

Check out that other old and new projects posted over at Never Too Hot to Stitch.  

Design Wall Monday - Still Puzzling

Sunday was a rainy day, just perfect for sitting up in the sewing room and listening to the rain.  I did get there eventually after seeing to a bit of laundry and household chores.  There was actually more cutting going on then there was sewing.  But I did finish up a few more blocks for Jigsaw. 

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Just 4 more blocks to finish up, then we'll need to figure out the borders.  Hopefully that won't take me as long as it did to work out the colors for all the blocks.

That's it for my design wall this week.  For more works in progress check out Patchwork Times.  

Design Wall Monday - Putting Jigsaw Back Together

We had a quiet weekend, which makes for a nice change after the hectic week of travel.  Saturday was dedicated to laundry,  housework and a shopping expedition to replace the built-in microwave.  The microwave died last weekend. After finding that all the new microwaves on the market won't fit in the existing space without extensive modification, it's off to the shop to see if we can get it fixed. 

We all stayed home on Sunday, which allowed for a full afternoon of stitching.  A couple of the Jigsaw blocks have been restitched with their new "tabs" and blocks for the last row have been cut.  It's starting to come together again. 

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

I'm much happier with the block placement, all the un-sewing of last week was definitely worth while.  

The last of the green blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Sampler project were also cut and sewn.  

 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler
By Angela Feldbush of Soscrappy

The sampler is definitely colorful. The final setting will be different, but this one works for now.  I'm thinking of using a thin white sashing between the blocks.  There's still a half year of blocks left to make for this project, so there will likely be other thoughts as to the setting once those go up on the design wall.  

That's it for my design wall this week.  For more quilters eye candy, check out Patchwork Times.  

Something Old, Something New - June Update

I've been out of pocket the last few days as I've been at a conference in Denver.  Due to a delayed flight, I didn't get home till about 1 this morning.  I'm off today to take Drama Teen to a volleyball tournament that starts today and will run over the next 3 Thursdays in June.  

Since it's still the first week in June, I don't think it's too late to post my May progress on the Something Old, Something New Challenge.

Nothing new has been started, though I have started playing around with design ideas that use this panel. 

On the something old front, finishing up Jigsaw has been the primary focus the last few months.  I managed to finish up all but the last two rows before the placement of a few blocks started to bother me.

So after much dithering about it, I finally decided that the x marked block had to move.  While I was at it, I decided to completely rework the last row of fabrics. I wasn't happy with the color progression.  So after a bit of un-sewing and a couple of fabric orders, this is where Jigsaw was at the end of the month.

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

It may not look like much progress, but all that un-sewing took some time.  Now that I'm happy with the final plan, I'm hoping this will go together quickly and I can move on to something else.  

So for June the goal is to get Jigsaw to the finished flimsy stage and come up with a quilt design for the butterfly panel.  More old and new stuff is posted over at Never Too Hot to Stitch.  

Design Wall Monday - Fixing Jigsaw

Not a lot of sewing this last weekend.  I didn't feel well on Saturday and Sunday I had other stuff to do for work.  Though I did spend a fair amount of time in the sewing room looking at options for the Jigsaw quilt.  Last week I pointed out one block for the Jigsaw quilt that was just bugging me.  There was another block in the very bottom row that was bugging me too.  After some debate, I was able to relocate a few of the existing blocks into something that I liked, but the third block in the last row still wasn't working.  After in infusion of few new pale batiks, I was able to remove the offending fabric and find a flow that works reasonably well.  

Here's where I was last week:

Here's where I ended up after the weekend.

The problem block (marked with the X in the first photo) has switched with the 3rd block in the middle row.  The 2nd block in the last row has been replaced with a new fabric, as has the 3rd block in the last row.  I think the over all color shift works better with the new choices.  

All the blocks unsewn, now I just have to resew them with the right "tabs".  Hopefully I'll have more blocks back up on the design wall next week.  

Check out more design walls over at Patchwork Times.  

Monday Design Wall - Fixing Puzzle Pieces

It's been nice to have some down time this weekend.  Yesterday we took off for Tulsa to do some much needed summer wardrobe shopping.  Unfortunately Drama Teen wasn't feeling her best, I think she's caught a summer cold.  Thankfully she doesn't have to be anywhere for the next week, so she can just rest.  Which after the madness of finals week, is probably exactly what she needs.  

I've made some progress in the sewing room this weekend.  I finally got back to working on Jigsaw and pieced three more blocks.  Then  I realized why the project had gotten stalled.  There was puzzle piece that just didn't seem to fit.    

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

It's the block marked with an X in the photo. It's too light for the row it's in.  It looks even worse with the addition of the next blocks (which I completely forgot to photograph).  After staring at it for a couple of days, I realized it might fit better in the row below. 

I think that works much better.  I've un-sewn the 5 blocks affected by the move. I'm waiting to sew them back together until I get in some lighter batiks for the next row.  There's another fabric that just doesn't work and nothing in the stash works any better.  Jigsaw's not getting finished this month, but at least there's been good progress.  

That's my design wall for this week.  I'm going to grab another cup of coffee and check out all the other design walls over at Patchwork Times.  

May UFO Progress

It's the beginning of a new month so Lynne over at Never Too Hot to Stitch has her monthly linky party for the Something Old, Something New challenge. 

Not that I really have much to post in terms of progress for the month of April.  Jigsaw grew by a few blocks. 

 Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

I didn't start anything new this month.  With so many WIPs and UFOs, I don't really have space for a NewFO this month.  

I'm hoping that May is a better month.  I was doing really well this week until I came down with a cold Tuesday night.  After two days of pretty much round the clock napping, I'm finally feeling better this evening.  

What are my plans for May?  I do hope to finish Jigsaw and get it shipped out for quilting.  I'm not planning to start anything new in May.  Once Jigsaw is done, I'd like to move on to Scrappy Stars.

 Scrappy Stars

Pattern is Folk Art Christmas Stars

by Robyn Pandolph

All the stars are made, I just need to cut the plain squares and setting triangles, then sew the rows together.  This is my oldest UFO, so it would be nice to get if off the list.  

Those are my plans for May.  Hopefully things will slow down enough to let me make a bit of progress in the next 3 weeks.  

Monday Design Wall - Puzzle Pieces

It was nice to have a breather this weekend.  Laundry is caught up and a few other household chores got done as well.  The nicest part was spending the whole of Sunday afternoon in the sewing room.  The only disappointment was that the NASCAR race was rained out.  

So what's up on the design wall?  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler blocks take up most of one design wall. 

 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler
By Angela Feldbush of Soscrappy

I'm still working on finishing up all the teal blocks from last month.  

Jigsaw is still up on the big design wall. 

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Only three blocks have been added since my last design wall post.  Just two more rows to finish up.  But I'm starting to wonder if some of the blocks are going to have to move.  I'm going to finish up all the blocks and then consult with Drama Teen.  It's her quilt, so it will be up to her if changes are made.  She's accused me several times of over thinking the color placement.  

That's if for me this week.  For more design wall posts, check out Patchwork Times.  

Catching Up

It's been a very long week.  Other than checking email via the I-phone, there's been no contact with the Internet since last Saturday.  So this weekend there will be a lot of blogs to catch up with as well as email responses to write.  Why no Internet the last week?  Let's just say I needed a break.  There was a point last Saturday where I hit overload.  Too much work, too much running around; just too much stuff!  Writing the blog became something that I "had" to do on top of everything else, not something I "wanted" to do.  So I took a vacation from the computer and the sewing room this week.  I spent the evenings with my family or reading some fun and frivolous books.  

Now that I've recovered from the overload, there's March's NewFO to show off.  

Plus fess up to my less than steller performance on March's Something Old/Something New goals. 

My Something Old goal for March was to get Jigsaw to a finished flimsy stage. 

Jigsaw didn't that far, but it did progress.  Just two more rows to complete.  Hopefully I can get at least that much done this month.  Drama Teen hasn't decided on borders yet, so I'm not sure I can get those added this month.  Jigsaw was my NewFO for October of 2013.  

My Something New/NewFO  goal for March was to not start something new.  I started 12 NewFOs last year and felt that a few finishes were needed before I started something new. But then I saw Kevin the Quilters QOV block drive.    

All Kevin asked for were 5 blocks of a very simple pattern.  Having just finished Mon Ami, I had some nice red and blue fabrics that would fit in with his fabric guidelines that just begged to be made into QOV blocks. 

So even though I had said no NewFO this month, how could I pass up the opportunity to use up some fabric scraps, make some fun blocks that I didn't have to make into a quilt, plus contribute to a really great cause.  If there is a reason to do something you said you weren't, I think that last one is a really good one.  

So though I didn't meet my March goals, it wasn't a bad month.  Since Jigsaw isn't done, it will be my Something Old for April.  At this point I'm not planning to start something new.  But maybe another block drive will pop up and inspire me.  One never knows.