Thursday, October 22, 2015

October Finishes

October has been challenging on many fronts.  I have many quilts to get done before Christmas, some quite large and some very detailed.  I also have two of my own in the works, or I should say "in the finishing stages".  There are always other stragglers that are being stitched on but not at the quilting stage.  October has been a wretched month though for the stay at home worker.  The kids have had 3 days off, and have a 1/2 day next week.  We are very busy with soccer, and gymnastics, and homework - making me have not enough tine to process and think about designs.  Being scattered and disorganized causes stress.  I have an 8th grader -- he creates WAY too much of that anyway.

Here's a few finishes.  This is a redwork quilt.  I would have loved to have had more budget to do custom quilting on the pieced stars, but that is life.  This was the only place to realistically cut the cost down, so they are E2E.
 The redwork scenes were custom quilted with simple details.
 Looks like this one uploaded upside down...dang.  Guess you get the idea tho!
Another in red and white... Ohio stars.  It has budget-friendly custom quilting, with some ruler work and lots of feathers.
 It has a cotton 80/20 batting, and Glide white thread.  The arc feathers create a pretty secondary pattern.

The only area of this quilt that was challenging was the sashings.  The striped fabric didn't always meet at the same place in the print, and some of the intersections were not ideal -- making most conventional designs for sashing quilting not good choices.  I needed to choose a design that drew the eye away from the sashing piecing. The next pic shows what I mean... Most intersections were decent, but half a dozen or so needed adjusting.
I chose this red stipple-filled square/diamond to bring the red into the sashing.  This is a traditionally-pieced quilt using more modern fabric choices, so I felt that I could juxtapose the traditional feathers with a more modern sashing.  I think it worked, and draws the eye away from the piecing.

 The back is completely white, and the only non-white thread is on the sashings.  It looks really cool.

Last quilt - from a couple weeks ago.  This quilt is all in Westminster prints and coordinating solids.  The prints are challenging to quilt, as it is hard to get patterns to show effectively.
I used line work, some feathers and free-handed continuous curves.
 The center has a panel of hand-stitched hexies.  Fun to see everyone's interpretation of the newest craze!  Remember this picture...I'll refer to it in a minute.
 More continuous curve and flowers that are stitched by following the print on the fabric.
 The thread of choice for this quilt was a lavender Glide.  It blended with nearly everything.

This is the first quilt in ages that I got off the frame, was pleased that I made the estimated budget, photographed, and then stood back and said "hmmpphhh? I don't like this".  The next morning I reloaded it, and added a good hour of stitching to the grey square border.  The puffyness just wasny sitting well with me, and the quilt didn't lay properly.  This area was underquilted.
 See how much better this looks compared to the photo I referenced above?  All I added was dense filler in the gray triangles.
This quilt is home already, and the first two left here yesterday, en route for the west coast.

I have a monster 100+x100" quilt loaded presently that I am doing my darndest to procrastinate the quilting on.  I am currently 15% done, with little motivation to get through it quickly. Sigh... I am going downstairs to work on my hexagons for a couple hours.  I have taken off the star points I showed a month ago, and with newly dyed silk in hand, am redoing these blocks.  I will add that I just love how they are coming out.  The backtracking is worth my effort.  These will be gorgeous set on the champagne-colored silk, someday!
I'll leave you with a glimpse of New England's fall color, taken a week ago, and my pretty littlest bunny.  I, personally, refuse to believe that fall is ending because that doesn't leave me in a good mental state for what comes next.  I'm just not cut out for this climate.  Just wish my husband could get it.


3 comments:

Tomomi McElwee said...

Just beautiful as usual. Thanks for sharing. They are great inspirations.

Amy @ Amy's FMQ Adventures said...

Your work is always wonderful! Love how in that gray border, you carried that stitching along the edge of the triangles all the way into the seam instead of turning and echoing it which for me would require marking to get the turn perfect. Things for me to remember when developing a plan-- for less marking, and fewer stops and starts/backtracking.

As far winter in Maine, too bad it's pretty impossible to winter over down south when you have kids in school. I had a friend move to Maine and I remember her showing me her house and I wondered why her roof was part metal, part shingled. When she said it was to help with the snow, I knew she was in for some serious winters.

Wesley said...

I just ran into your website and I want to say, oh my, you do such truly beautiful work. I'm just in awe of the details. I doubt that anything I could put together would do justice to your work.