This past week

 "Mustard & Ketchup"

Because of guild stuff and Easter preparations this past week, it was difficult to motivate myself to work on my UFO's so I tried once again to master the first border of "Mustard & Ketchup". This is the closest I've come to getting the pieced diamonds fussy cut and the diamonds to actually look right. However, the camera doesn't lie and I see some rework needs to happen. 

One thing I've been challenging myself to work on lately is to become more spontaneous in quilting. In other words, don't drive myself and others crazy by over thinking fabric and design choices!

  I'm trying to do that on this quilt guild BOM and am not sure I like this approach at all. I'm reserving judgement until the project is finished but that's at least 5 months in the future. I would love to go back and make every thing match, fix mistakes, choose better fabrics, etc. Guess I want to be in control and not be surprised!

For some reason, I also can't motivate myself to finish binding Pumpkin Peel. I'm about half done and think I'm going to have to make myself do a little every day. And then there's the sleeve...

The bird is still in the quilt. No decision on my part yet and I think I'm avoiding it. If I don't do something soon, this project will go back into the UFO box.

 Why I thought I needed to get another UFO out, I don't know but here's another one. All I need to do is finish hand quilting the border and tack down the binding. Is that all, lol? I admire hand quilting but because I don't choose to do it very often, I'm not proficient or very fast at it.

When I began this project I don't know how long ago, I hadn't discovered reproduction fabrics yet so this wall hanging has a little bit of most everything in my stash at that time. I'm surprised I used so much yellow which is a color I don't use very often. It has quite a few creases from being folded and put away so for now, I've pinned it up on my design wall hoping that the creases relax.

As you can see, my quilting this week has been a little of this and that. I feel like I'm jumping from one project to the next making little progress. I'm looking forward to more productive quilting time this coming week!

Have a happy and meaningful Easter, Mayleen

Mustard and Ketchup anyone?

Do you remember Mustard & Ketchup? I'm still struggling with accuracy on border #2.

 I was so happy I'd gotten those pieced diamonds together until I realized the borders were too wide.

So, off they came. 

The story of the borders:

Borders not the same size.

A really bad oops! Borders not the right length. By this time, I'd pressed the border fabric so much that it was scorched and I had to find new fabric which coordinated with the red diamonds in the star.

It was really difficult to find that red. Somehow I don't think the maker of the original quilt would have cared if the reds matched or not which is one more reason to admire her.

For the past couple of months, this is what Mustard & Ketchup looked like.

There was a sad pile of rejects which seemed to grow every time I tried to piece a new border. How difficult could figuring out the correct math be? Math people, be kind to those of us who struggle!

 This week Monday, I decided I was going to EPP the correct size diamond. I decided to EPP because I wanted to fussy cut those little sprigs on the yellow diamonds.

When it was finished, it was too small because someone told me the wrong decimal equivalent of a fraction. That just made me more determined to get this right!

Tuesday - I think I did it but I've got a problem. I'd read about glueing the fabric to the paper pieces so I tried it. Yes, it saved a lot of time and it worked great, a little too great. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get the paper pieces out of the diamond after I add the setting triangles. Somehow the school glue stick I used is holding as well as Super Glue!

I should have known better than using glue because this is not the first time I've had glue adhere too well. No amount of soaking fixed my previous quilt so I don't know what will happen this time.

Wednesday - I took the day off. The sun is shining, the temperatures are above freezing and the snow is melting! After the really cold weather we've been having, its too nice to stay inside.

Tomorrow, its me, the diamonds and the glue.

Next week I'll let you know if I got them apart or if I had to start completely over!

Mayleen

In Pieces

Life certainly can change quickly, can't it? Just when I thought my life was getting a little predictable and boring, wham! To try to catch up, here are a few pictures and short explanations. Believe me, the story behind the story is too long.

First of all, Mustard and Ketchup -

I think this is the last image you saw of it. Since then, I decided to take the borders off because the pieced diamonds were too wide by about 3/8 of an inch. I could have lived with it but the mistake would have just become worse with every subsequent border. 

So, off they came and I experimented with sewing the seams in a tiny amount.

Here's one of the borders I thought I'd fixed. Not sure how I could have made such a big blunder! Its way too short and if you look carefully, you'll notice that I've scorched the fabric. I was so disgusted with myself because it meant looking for new border fabric to match the red in the star.

Border on the left - too bright red

Border on the top - too dark red and I don't like the bright yellow flowers.

Border fabric on the right - maybe it will work. I haven't had time to try piecing it yet.

Would the maker of the original quilt struggled with this? Probably not. She would have just used what she had but not me. 

About this time, I was reminded that way back in early summer I signed up for an online nine patch swap Barb is hosting.  With only 6 weeks to go, I hadn't even begun stitching the 100 3-inch nine patches yet! So glad I was able to put them in the mail to her last week.  

However, my ultimate craziness happened when in a moment of weakness I agreed to be president of our quilt guild, Prairie Quilt Guild for the next fiscal year. Since then I've been immersed in details, meeting board members, appointing committee chairs and realizing how little I know! Traditionally the president makes name tags for her board and committee chairs and the picture is a sneak peek at all 40 of them.

OH yes, other big news. Two of my quilts were juried into the AQS Des Moines show coming up October 1-4!

"The Cotheals at Home" (Phebe) and the "Selvage Star of Bethlehem" will be there and so will I! Looking forward to it very much.

One last thing. Our son and his family are staying with us during his job search. Tell me this, where does a two year old get all his energy and can I get some!?!

Until next time, Mayleen

Mustard & Ketchup Border 1

Finally, the first border of Mustard and Ketchup, maybe. As soon as I was done pressing the back side, I flipped it over and realized I'd sewn the last border on upside down. Since the small pattern red fabric is directional, its noticeable. I'm trying to decide if I can live with it or not. I think there are a lot of things I'm going to have to learn to live with in this quilt!

I didn't start quilting until 2000 because I felt I couldn't be an accurate enough piecer. A good example are the above borders. Yes, I measure, measure and measure again before I stitch and trim. I've considered becoming an improvisational quilter but I can't be inaccurate enough! 

I was able to decrease the amount of border length discrepancy but there will still be issues when I add the next border. Looks like this will be another opportunity for a quilt judge to say, "Long lines must be straight." I'm assuming short lines should be straight too, lol.

Are you wondering which quilt I'm trying to reproduce?

Dawn at Collector With a Needle has written about the Denver Art Museum's exhibit, http://denverartmuseum.org/exhibitions/first-glance-second-look-quilts-denver-art-museum-collection, of more than twenty quilts. If you follow Dawn's link, she's included several pictures of the Competition Quilt which is the inspiration for my Mustard & Ketchup quilt. The maker of the quilt is unknown but after making it through only the first border, I have a deep respect for her and what she was able to accomplish without modern quilting tools!

Until next time, Mayleen

Mustard and Ketchup

I didn't accomplish as much as I'd hoped for this past week. Would you believe that one border took me one whole day?!? Without a pattern there was a lot of trial and error, mostly error for a little while!

Originally, I wanted to paper foundation piece the border and cornerstone because I thought it would be more accurate. I soon gave up on piecing the diamonds that way, very fiddly.

Here's that first border which I strip pieced. I was so happy that I'd finished it and it looked fairly good until I measured it. It's 3/16 of an inch too long. I don't want to make it over so I'm going to try stitching a slightly deeper seam between the diamonds. If that doesn't work, I'm going to try to block it smaller.

I cut out the rest of the pieces for the three other borders from the red Jinny Beyer fabric. This is all of it that I have left but guess what, I still need it to make the star cornerstones.

How tiny are those pieces? Keep reading and please forgive my sadly lacking camera skills.

I'm pretty sure I need a new cutting mat. Because I don't have much of that red fabric, the star legs are going whatever way I could get fabric to fit.

That's how tiny those star cornerstones are - 2 inches, OK, due to my piecing approximately 2 inches square. I have never made a star that tiny and am glad I'll only be making a total of four.

Here it is, so far - the star medallion which I won't trim until I have all the diamond borders and star cornerstones ready to stitch to it. The fabric on the left is being auditioned for the next few borders.

Every time I look at my quilt colors, I think of mustard and ketchup. Come to think of it, a hot dog (I like them burnt) with mustard, ketchup and relish sounds pretty good right now!

Until next time, Mayleen