Shindig 2017

I should have posted these a few weeks ago, but we got busy moving out of our house and back in (the floors were refinished).

The Mountain Jam Circle quilting collaborative did it again - cut the pieces out together, then Alice and Ann pieced the chain blocks and put them together in four big chunks with the setting triangles and blocks.  I pieced the Carolina Lily and put the top together.

And then I quilted it.  Alice and Ann got it back to put the binding and label on it.  You can click on these photos to see them a little larger or I have a closer photo below.

The quilting did not take very long - I used a stencil for the baskets and Lisa Calle's Pro-line rulers for all the verticle parallel lines in the setting triangles as well as the lily block.

As always, we hope the Folk Heritage Committee sells a lot of tickets!  They still have photos of last year's quilt on their website - but as soon as it is finished, this one will replace it.

Five symbolic blocks

My dear friend Dorry pointed me to a fiber art blog and  The 70273 Project.  I'll let you read about it there.  I decided to make five of the smallest size block -

I see there were stray threads in my photo, but the blocks are already packed up to go to the organizer who is here in North Carolina so no new photos will be taken.  I'm not sure how to describe the feeling I had while making these, but I feel better that I participated in the project during this weekend of the Holocaust Remembrance.

It's not like me to make anything like a quilt block that has this sort of loose, hand-drawn appearance, but I felt like that was what I needed to do.  My favorite of the group is the fourth from the left - made with a blotchy darker red print I had only a scrap of.  The center one is made with gros-grain ribbon, which I was going to use for all of them, but I really like the rest made with regular quilting fabric better.

The Hexathon quilt with stars and flowers

When I chose the yellow fabric for the background of the first block, I envisioned a lot of the blocks would be star patterns and always intended the setting to be a starry sky.  Then one of the earliest designs looked like it would make a nice flower, so that was a step away from the plan.  And then something went totally awry when I came home with a fat quarter of a lively floral print that had all the colors I was using.  So I have a melding of the stars and flowers with the final product.

The palette started with a set of fat quarters Joyce gave me for Christmas.  I thought the colors would make a very lively baby quilt and since she's going to have some grandchildren some day, that was the intended purpose for these blocks as I made them.   There were a couple of blocks I didn't like very much after I made them, but once that floral became the setting fabric, I decided I could include them after all.

This photo of the back shows my quilting plan.  When I did all the block outline stitching, I also outlined all the plain yellow background pieces, so some of the hexagon blocks have additional quilting lines in them.  I changed my mind about quilting each block per the piecing once I got all of that done, and went with a star-flower to simplify things.

The backing is pieced with this gradient blue and green and the lattice that I used for the middle border. Norris says he likes the starry sky fabric which is also used for the binding.

Westering Women - Block 12: Road to California

This block closes this series.  It's an easy one to construct, but I took my time choosing fabrics from the selection I had set aside for this project so that I was sure to include two I hadn't used before.

I probably made this last weekend but didn't get the photo done until yesterday when the light was not very good.  I think the block is much prettier than it appears here.

I've been too distracted with my own family history to appreciate the stories behind this series as much as I might have.  Quilting has been taking a back seat this year, but my family discoveries are mostly not as colorful as my quilts, though I may some day do like some of the genealogy bloggers and tell a success story or two.  But I have finished quilting the Hexathon quilt and am ready to stitch the binding on, so that one will show up here fairly soon as a finished project.  I still have the blocks from the previous Civil War series to put together in a quilt before I'll work on this one. And there's a quilt for a family member who already had a quilt but has recently upgraded to a larger mattress, so I've got some sewing to do!