Improv on Point ~~ finished!

This quilt is already one of my favorites. It was a struggle for a while, but once it started coming together, I fell in love. 

Turns out, all it wanted was to be turned on-point, which made it a little more difficult to piece together. 

I made large chunks of red pieces and larger chunks of neutral/brown/gold with a little red mixed in and built most of the chunks using a modified log cabin technique.

Since the front is all improv, the back should be. Right? So it is. I used more of the linen, but didn't have enough for this 71" square quilt, which means I was forced to add other fabrics. Those cute cherries and a burgundy paisley were just the fit. 

I had such fun quilting small improv motifs across the quilt. No rules, all improv! And then I bound it all up with a burgundy solid that I've had for a long time. That means I made "Improv on Point" entirely from scraps and stash!

		Quilt Stats
	Name:	Improv on Point
	Size:	71" X 71"
	Fabrics:	scraps from stash
	Pattern:	my design
	Backing:	cotton and linen from stash
	Batting:	100% Cotton
	Binding:	burgundy fabric from stash
	Quilting:	improv with various motifs
	Completed:	2020

SLW is quilted

This quilt has been a worrisome thing. I've enjoyed the celebrations, but the fretting parts have not been fun. There's so much to it though, that I feel compelled to deal with the parts, good and bad.

The sun makes a stained glass illusion.

After the Sherry Lynn Wood workshop, I thought seriously of abandoning the chunks of fabric that I'd put together but guild sisters said to keep going. I decided to take it on as part of the Cotton Quilters "Finish on a UFO" challenge. 

I like the purples, which may be blue in reality.

I tossed in AHIQ's hourglass challenge--because what's a challenge without a challenge and I'm an idiot, sometimes--and found that I really liked how the hourglass blocks helped to make sense of it all. Then AHIQ helped again when I remembered the old Chinese coins challenge and used that to come up with a setting. Ann and Kaja, thanks for the help!

a row of hour glass blocks

The idea of quilting this was overwhelming. I folded it up and put it in the "to be quilted" bin, where the possibility of never looking at it again is kind of real. But where would that get me after all the other challenges? So a week or so later, I made a backing, loaded everything on, and tried to make a plan. 

Some of the original pieces

I should have known better. I don't make plans! Those are throwbacks from the old teaching days when everything was planned, or schemed. :) No, these days I have to plug in the machine and hold onto the handles. Something happens. Some times I have to rip out the stitches, but mostly I just play along with the muse that is the machine. (Doesn't that have a poetic ring?)

The neutral has a green undertone that may influence the binding.
But it's too soon to tell.

The quilting is rather unconventional. I mostly followed the shapes, but occasionally added some sort of motif in areas that needed additional quilting. I like that quilting it this way tends to draw people in because the motifs are a surprise. The kids started looking for circles and other shapes. They asked a couple of times how many to look for. I haven't the slightest idea! Ask the muse.

Linking up with
For the love of geese #47 Thanks, Denise!

Ruby Snippets ~~ first finish of 2020

Yay! A finish and we're still in January! Of course, this is a top that I made last year, though I don't remember when, exactly. Anyway, I loaded it on the long-arm and away we went, despite the shoulder injury. 

We are getting the dreariest of weather this week, so going outside to take photos is not happening. That requires trekking through a mini-marsh of soggy grass and mud. These photos were taken inside on the living room floor while I stood on the coffee table, trying to avoid the ceiling fan. 

Ruby Snippets is made from scraps and large pieces of fabric. At some point I realized that there was a diagonal / angular thing going on. So I ended up cutting most of the already nicely stitched rectangles into whatever those long triangles are called. Maybe right triangles? 

Anyway, I paired those angles with neutral pieces and scrappy neutrals and filled in the holes with more neutrals. Some of the reds are intermixed with yet more neutrals and create a fractured, broken glass appearance. 

To make the reds more definitely angular, I quilted uneven straight lines at about 60 degrees, which follows the shape of the red. The neutrals I quilted in rounded or circular motifs to soften the hard edges. 

 I backed it with some of the linen that I've been using. This is a pale apricot color. At 60" wide, it was just a little too narrow, so I added this off-white flower linen that had been left from a previous project. I think there was an 8" square left after I pieced it in. Close, right? 

The solid color of the back shows the different quilting motifs much better than the busy front. Still, I like playing with different motifs and quilting improvisationally, so even if it doesn't show, I play.

In my mind this is the correct orientation for the quilt, but honestly because it's mostly square, it could be placed however one would want. 

		Quilt Stats
	Name:	Ruby Snippets
	Size:	62" X 65"
	Fabrics:	various neutral and red fabrics from stash
	Pattern:	my design
	Backing:	reclaimed linen from stash
	Batting:	100% Cotton
	Binding:	neutral fabric from stash
	Quilting:	Long-arm--round motifs and straight lines
	Completed:	January 2020
	AFU:	7½ to 8 yards from stash

What the heck is happening here?

I have no idea where this is going. It was supposed to be a quick little quilt made with scraps just to give me something to do while I was between "real" projects. Sometimes I just can't get going. I resolve that problem with a new project. Every time. I resolve to work on finishing something. Anything. But the new project just happens.

I guess the Red as a Neutral just isn't out of my system, because when I went to the scrap cupboard, they somehow followed me to the worktable. Anyway, there were some large chunks of scrap fabric in both bins, so win! I tried mixing it up a little and put some pieces on the design board. No, that was not working.

So I cut some pieces, trying to tone it down a little with larger pieces of neutral (left), making these rectangles cut on the diagonal and pieced together. No, not really working. I tried to make them into windmills (right). Still not a plan. 

An attempt at taking the lazy way out and not ripping what was obviously a mess, I started making more of those half-rectangle triangle thingys. Are they right triangles? Whatever. They were keeping the seam ripper at bay. So I continued.

So now my theory became if I just keep going something good might happen. And I started to see something of a pattern emerging. I can't tell you how many times I moved those pieces. Actually I can: 15,000 times!

But I got here and I like what I have. It's a long way from done and red is not the neutral but why not just keep at it, right? 15,001 might be the magic. And I think I have some kind of magic going.

Pin It Weekly #293

Welcome to Pin It! 

These cuties are from my "pincusion" board.

And from my "low volumes and neutrals" section of "heart, quilts."

Thanks for visiting!

Red Is a Neutral ... more blocks

There are not many more blocks, but I put in a couple of afternoons to get these done. Tuesday's work: 
I made these Dutchman's Puzzle blocks. I needed only one but it's an easy block, so I thought I'd make two. As soon as I sewed the final seam on the second block, I realized that I had not arranged all four sections correctly. One was turned the wrong way. What an annoyance!

Once I started ripping the sections apart, I decided to play. Why not? I needed only one block. So now I have two different blocks that sort of match. 

Wednesday's work included these two. When Richard came into the studio for a visit, I told him, "I'm running on stupid." That tickled him quite a bit, but I was not laughing at the time. I cut the wrong size patches. So I cut them again, correctly this time, but I cut twice the amount. 

The one on the bottom is the correct block, but since I had extra pieces, why not? Play I did. I ended up with the block on the top. It looks familiar, but I haven't had time to look it up.


Yesterday I made the Card Trick block. Now that was a mess! I kept getting the pieces mixed up. I pressed seams open and laid them out in the right order, then took a picture. Good idea! I needed it. I think I could make a second one without the visual aid, but I won't.

These five are the blocks I'll have to show on Monday at the guild meeting. I think I should have five different ones but, oddly, I didn't get instructions. As it is, I didn't have the directions for the Card Trick block, so I improvised. Not well, mind you. My center patch was just a little too small, which means my block isn't quite 12". This quilt... I don't know.

So to sum up, very few blocks match in size, some are not blocks at all--just extras from the miscuts, I'm behind on the BOM and don't have directions for the missing blocks. Yes, that's how we do it in "typical Mary fashion." 

More on "One Big Finish"

Last week I wrote about this whopper of a quilt! A king with a little extra drop on the sides because I almost could. Almost--meaning I really couldn't but I tried anyway and then improvised.

I decided that we needed a new quilt for our bed since the bed is new, the floor and paint are new, and well, almost everything thing else is new. Why not the quilt, right? But the bed is a king and I've made only one of those before. 

After thinking about it quite a long time, I decided that I should go with something easy and settled on wide strips. Every piece is a chance to make a bad cut, sew an off seam, turn things around, etc. The smaller the pieces, the greater the chances of making an oops! 

The real fun came after I loaded it on the long-arm. There was room to play, experiment, learn, and surprise myself. That happened a couple of times and was wonderful every time. All along I'd planned to quilt it using as many motifs as I could come up with. I also wanted to play around and figure out a few new ones. 

Now I have a record of motifs that I know I like and a few I'm not crazy about. These pictures don't include them all but most are here. My very favorite one is this set of five interlocking circles with feathers and lotus flowers. It was rather serendipitous to start with one circle and some feathers and, in no time at all, have a couple more that looked pretty cool. So for the heck of it, I chose to have five.

One other thing that I like about this quilt is that every inch of fabric and batting came from my stash, so all it cost me was my time. And I love it! 

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: neutrals

I've been working on a couple of projects. All of them use neutrals so I've been had neutrals on my mind for the past week. Well, neutrals and Christmas--there's a conflicting proposition. I suppose one sort of offset the other because I wasn't all antsy and worried about getting everything ready. In fact, we have a wedding in Houston tomorrow and other than to clean house, shop, and finish up gift wrapping, I haven't been worried at all.

Neutral quilts

There was another SQI on neutrals back in 2014. I hope you enjoy!

More on those neutral projects after the gift-giving on Christmas. Shhh, don't say a word.