(Re)Started Quilt Blog

This blog started as a way for us to share with our family what we were up to after we moved out of state. But over time, as we remodeled our craftsman home in Laurelhurst, it morphed into a historic house remodel blog. It was a way for me to save info I had researched and as a way to record progress on our projects. But I have shifted a lot of my leisure activities to fabric crafts now and they don't really fit into the Laurelhurst Craftsman house theme. I will still use this blog for our gardening and woodworking projects since they still benefit this house.

Once the weather warms up we do hope to do another round of woodworking. I would very much like to finish my master bedroom closet. We decided to try and make the cabinets ourselves but the pandemic brought our progress to a halt. I'm hoping we'll get back to work on the project later this year.

Anyway, since I am seriously considering starting a long arm quilting business, I decided I should shift my sewing-related posts over to my long-abandoned quilt blog. Once I figure out a new name, I'll change the name of the blog, but I will leave it as it is for now.

If you're here primarily for the quilt posts, I would encourage you to follow that blog. I will start using that blog to post about project progress and challenges I am participating in.

I have posted a new post over there.

Queen's Jewel Quilt Finished

I actually finished this quilt binding before the other two quilts, but it took me a few days to take photos, which are not great. The master bedroom is a bit of a mess.

I ended up making four sets of matching pillowcases for this quilt because Jeff likes LOTS of pillows on the bed and if I wait until the first set of cases wear out to make more, the fabric will likely be gone. So I decided to make more pillowcases right away and store them in the linen closet until we need them.

This pattern was inspired by the Queen's Jewel pattern from Quick Quilts from Your Scrap Bag by Patricia Wilens. I removed the outer border from each block and replaced it with a sashing. 

This quilt was finished with the Dragon Tails pantograph.

And recently I realized this is nearly the same quilt block design I declared was "next" in the queue in April 2018 (but it obviously wasn't). Perhaps that is why the queen's jewel pattern attracted me when I found it. Also, I ended up with nearly the same color scheme (green, blue, and purple); a happy accident. 

Fire Dance Quilt Finished

For this month's Friday Night with Friends, I decided I wanted to try to finish the binding on my Fire Dance quilt. I started at about 5:30PM and I was done by 9:30PM. I don't think I'll ever go back to sewing bindings by hand; I used to take weeks to finish them. (The trick is to sew the binding to the backside of the quilt and then flip it to the front so the "messy" side is on the back. I found several good videos showing how to do it, but this is the best one.)

I made two sets of matching pillowcases for this one.

I had it quilted with the Lorien's Dragons pantograph, which I love.

This quilt pattern was inspired by the quilt of the same name from the Batik Beauties book by Laurie J. Shifrin. I designed some half-blocks to make it larger for my bed.

This was the quilt flimsy laid out on my bed before it was quilted.

Lenton Rose Quilt Finished

I finally finished the batik flower quilt I started in October 2019. I had hoped to take Long Arm Quilting classes so I could finish it myself, but I finally got tired of waiting for the pandemic to end so I paid someone else to finish it for me. 

This is one I designed myself using Electric Quilt 7. I made it using the Providence Block and added a bit of sashing because I thought it looked better. I'm not sure how I came up with the name Lenton Rose but I suspect I named it last spring when all our hellebores were in bloom.

I sorted through the fabrics I used for this quilt and found enough fabric to make three sets of matching pillowcases. I used the burrito method to make the pillowcases and it worked quite well, though I am not exact in my measurements. I tended to make the cuff a little bit wider and the trim a little smaller (or I would just use a scrap I had leftover from the project).

I had it quilted with the Flutterwings quilting design.

Snake River Log Cabin Flimsy

And it is done. I've finished it faster than I expected, but I am glad to get this project off my to-do list. And I more than finished my One Monthly Goal.

This is the cover project from Judy Martin's Log Cabin book. I had a lot of fun making it, but it was a lot of work. Each block has 48 pieces! I tried to pre-piece strips and then cut them up, but that didn't work as well as I hoped. I would have been better off just making rust and cream strips and then adding the other fabrics. If I make the other quilt I'm tempted by in this book, that's what I will do.

(For folks who are interested in the finish, it is here at my quilting blog.)

WOOFA 2021 List

Sea Swept Quilt

Unbeweavable Lap Quilt

Since I got started on the WOOFA UFO challenge late in 2020 and didn't have twelve months to finish my projects, I think I'll try and get started sooner this year. I'm going to also add some new, not-started projects to my list that I feel like working on. This list is somewhat in order by priority, but I am likely to take projects out of order as I'm in the mood to do them.

• Snake River Log Cabin Quilt
• 4 More Masks
• Sea Swept Quilt
• Unbeweavable Lap Quilt 
• Crazy Quilt
• Bind Batik Flower Quilt
• Bind Harvest Gathering Quilt
• Bind Xmas Quilt
• Bind Queen's Jewel Quilt
• Bind Fire Dance Quilt
• Pillowcases that match all the new quilts
• Finish 3 Denim Tote Bags
• Finish Jeff's Overnight Bag
• Jeff's Georgian Coat
• Louisa dresses that match quilts
• Stack & Whack Quilt
• QAYG Quilt
  
• Halloween Monster Wreath

I'm hoping someday this year
I'll be in the mood to make this coat for Jeff.

Quilt As You Go Lap Quilt

My 2021 Quilt Queue

Amy Bouchard at Cascading Quilts is quilting all my outstanding quilt flimsies for me. She actually tried to make them double-sided, but it won't work; the vertical seams on the back layer shift too much when the long arm goes back and forth. I'm very sad because I was desperately hoping it was possible to make double-sided quilts because I could have twice as many quilts for the amount of storage space (and the cost of quilting). So now I've had to spend a bit of time the past couple of weeks trying to come up with backings for them, which has been surprisingly difficult. (I've had to reorder two backings because the original fabrics were out of stock by the time they got around to filling my order.) I suppose there are worse problems.

I got the train lap quilt back from Amy at the beginning of the month and I put on the binding the same day I got it back. I am so happy I learned how to apply binding by machine; it goes so much faster now.

I have been obsessing about the projects I'd like to make in 2021 so I spent quite a bit of time in Electric Quilt trying to come up with plans and get the fabrics right.

First, I am going to make the Queen's Jewel quilt again. I think I've got a pretty good idea of how I'm going to arrange the fabrics within the blocks so I won't have the same problems with arranging blocks as I did last time.

Queen's Jewel from Quick Quilts from Your Scrap Bag
by Patricia Wilens. I reduced the block size from the original pattern.

Next, I found a pattern that I thought would be perfect for William Morris fabrics. I entered it in Electric Quilt, but the border had to be changed a bit because the software couldn't deal with all the pieces in the original pattern. I will follow the original directions when I make it.

Snake River Log Cabin from Judy Martin's Log Cabin Quilt Book, page 50.
The border is missing pieces from the original pattern.

Then, I am hoping to make the Sea Swept quilt that was on my 2020 WOOFA list. I worked on the design in Electric Quilt some more and I think I have all the paper templates printed out for the sashing diamonds.

This is based on an image I found on Reddit. Unfortunately,
I don't know who originally designed this pattern.

Finally, if I have time and energy, I am going to make an Unbeweavable lap quilt with 4" squares. 

This is another quilt design I ripped off the image from the Reddit quilting list.

I believe this one is normally made with a special clear plastic template for cutting Xs out of pieced strips, but I am just going to use paper templates because the plastic ones don't come in a small enough size. 

Four more quilts, that should be more than enough. Only time will tell if I manage to make it through these projects next year.

WOOFA 9 Month Update

I joined the WOOFA challenge in late February when I cleaned up my sewing room and realized how many unfinished projects I had. Since joining, I've made good progress on my list, but I will admit I've gotten a little bored recently. I want to work on new projects! =)

I reworked my list by removing several projects that I've decided to delay until next year. Now that I've made so much progress on old projects, I'd like to focus on just a few remaining projects to finish/start this year.

I finished the pieced panel for the harvest quilt. And I finally found a new long-arm quilter and dropped off all of my outstanding quilts to have them machine quilted. There were three of them. With any luck, I will get them back in time to finish them all before the end of the year.

Along with my quilts, I dropped off my Pfaff sewing machine at the spa for some rest and relaxation (and some cleaning). I am fortunate to have a wonderful Bernina I inherited from Jeff's aunt as a backup machine.

9 Month Update:

Bind Batik Quilt

Bind Holiday Quilt

Harvest Placemats
Jeff’s Georgian Coat

Stenciled Pillow (panel stenciled already)

I also started some brand new projects. Since the last WOOFA update, I added the train quilt project and it was dropped off with the other two quilts for machine quilting.

I also got distracted by a new project. I am making three new denim tote bags. I had way too many pairs of old jeans so I spent an afternoon cutting out circles.

These two and a third. I have chosen the fabric for the third, but not cut it out yet. I often find it faster to make projects like this using an assembly line technique. 

Finished:

Bind Dinosaur Lap Quilt
Canvas Bag Repair (replace handles)
Denim Circle Quilt
Denim Circle Tote Bag

Harvest Quilt
Jeff’s Lumbar Pillow
Log Cabin Quilt (started decades ago)
Louisa’s Dress Y-P
Louisa’s Dress: Remodel sq. dance skirt to Louisa Dress
Mug Rugs
Navy/Gold Placemats
Rag Quilt Floral Y-G-R-P
Recover Living Room Furniture
Sharon’s Lumbar Pillow
Summer Placemats
Tie/Quilt Scrap Lap Quilt
White Brocade Napkins
Woven Denim Tote Bag
Xmas Placemats
Xmas Quilt

Delaying until 2021 list:

Halloween Monster Wreath (started)

Louisa’s Batik Dress
Rag Quilt Grey: I've made too many rag quilts recently. We don't need more now.
Rag Quilt Solar System
Rag Quilt Xmas

Sea Swept Quilt
Square Dance Skirt (elastic, eyelet): Since I'm not currently dancing, I may as well wait until I reach my goal weight.

Stack & Whack Quilt
Tie Large Disaster Quilt (or just ditch it): Postponing it for now. I'm hoping to take a long arm machine quilting class and this would be a good practice quilt that I won't be devastated about ruining.

Halloween Sewing

Happy Halloween everyone. I hope you all found something fun to do. I miss pre-pandemic Halloweens. It's our favorite holiday and we enjoy having parties, when possible. Oh well. We can only hope next year will be better. Instead, we watched Hunt for Red October in honor of Sean Connery's passing.

After I finished making the backing for the train lap quilt in the morning, I thought about making a quick Halloween lap quilt, but then I shifted into finally working on my Harvest Gathering Quilt from my WOOFA list.

My feet are tired from spending half the day cutting out most of the pieces. If I am motivated to work on it again tomorrow, I should be able to finish cutting everything out in another hour or two.

It would be nice to finish another big project before the end of November.

Xmas Placemats Finished

And they're done!

The 120° corners were actually really easy to sew. There are tons of videos out there that show how to sew them.

I'm starting to run out of projects I'm excited to work on. I think I'll take a break from my WOOFA list and work on something new temporarily. I'm thinking about making a really small denim quilt to put on the bed for Bailey as she always sleeps in the same spot. It would be nice to have something a little more washable than the queen size quilts.

Aug Friday Night w/Friends

For this month's Friday Night with Friends I decided to make more progress on my WOOFA list and work on Xmas placemats out of the leftover fabric strewn throughout my sewing room.

I originally planned a very complicated set of Xmas placemats but when I saw how much of the poinsettia border I had leftover it reminded me of some placemats I had seen ages ago on etsy.

I thought I could probably figure out how to make these so I started with scraps to test the process.

I am happy I had a 60° triangle ruler.

It went together pretty well with the poinsettia border but because the border was only about 5"-wide it was too small.

I decided to add some of the leftover holly border fabric around the outer edge. It was a bit of a process to do all those mitered corners.

Finished. The first one has a bad corner with a small crease that I will rip out and resew.

The second turned out better. The hardest part of these was figuring out the pieces. If I were to make more I would cut out pattern pieces and then they would go together quite quickly.

The two fabrics I'm debating on for the backing. I'll probably choose the cheap one on the left just because I think the poinsettia fabric on the right is too nice to waste on a backing.

Six Months of WOOFA

I'm six months into my year of trying to finish sewing room projects. I joined the WOOFA challenge in February because it seemed like a fun way to focus my effort. July has not been a great month for me because I got distracted with house stuff and it's been really hot which tends to make my upstairs sewing room too warm to work in.

I finished recovering the living room furniture. It feels good to check off this task.

I also finished my Xmas quilt in July. It's King size so I can't take a good photo of the complete top.

This is the first time I have ever sewn on a border with mitered corners.

Here's my WOOFA list to date. I've finished more than half the list! Yay me! Now that I have plenty of Xmas fabric scraps, I'll probably make some placemats before I put the leftover fabric away.

Bind Batik Quilt (when returned from quilter)

Halloween Monster Wreath (started)
Harvest Placemats
Harvest Quilt
Jeff’s Georgian Coat

Louisa’s Dress Batik

Rag Quilt Grey
Rag Quilt Solar System
Rag Quilt Xmas

Sea Swept Quilt

Square Dance Skirt (elastic, eyelet)
Stack & Whack Quilt
Stenciled Pillow (panel stenciled already)

Tie Large Disaster Quilt (or just ditch it)

Xmas Placemats

Bind Dinosaur Lap Quilt
Canvas Bag Repair (replace handles)
Denim Circle Quilt
Denim Circle Tote Bag
Jeff’s Lumbar Pillow
Log Cabin Quilt (started decades ago)
Louisa’s Dress Y-P
Louisa’s Dress: Remodel sq. dance skirt to Louisa Dress
Mug Rugs
Navy/Gold Placemats
Rag Quilt Floral Y-G-R-P
Recover Living Room Furniture
Sharon’s Lumbar Pillow
Summer Placemats
Tie/Quilt Scrap Lap Quilt
White Brocade Napkins
Woven Denim Tote Bag
Xmas Quilt

Quilt Sashing Finished

I spent the last couple of days cutting out and sewing the parts for the sashing on the Xmas Log Cabin quilt. I used the cheater method shared on this website to sew on the points.

This fabric is the Holiday Flourish line from Robert Kaufman.

Time for some assembly!

June Friday Night Sew In

I went and retrieved my dinosaur lap quilt from Bent Needle Quilts yesterday so I was able to finish the binding on it for the Friday Night Sew In.

It was quilted with Dino Jungle from Urban Elementz.

Unfortunately, I didn't save any of the print fabric for the binding, and I didn't have enough of the rust-colored batik, so I dug through my stash and found a dark teal fabric that matched pretty well.

Since I learned how to do machine binding last year, I don't bother to hand sew them anymore. Though, I have decided it's worth taking the time to hand sew the corners on the backside before I go through and finish the second pass. The corners turn out much more tidy when I take that time.

I prefer to make my bindings a little wider, but I didn't have enough of this fabric either.

This also completes one of my WOOFA tasks.