Twirl Around Flimsy

It is finally a flimsy! (I got a little delayed when we took in a senior dog last weekend who was on death row at the shelter. I guess nobody wanted to adopt an overweight 9-year old herding dog, so we took her in.)

This is the Twirl Around pattern from Bonnie Hunter's Addicted to Scraps book. It was a fun and easy pattern. I definitely need to remember this one when I finally decide to make a dent in my tub of triangle scraps.

I now need to turn my attention to ripping out quilting from a quilt on my long arm frame. The row started out fine, but then the tension somehow got messed up. I'm not sure what happened, but the quilting is not acceptable. It's a friend's quilt so I want to do a good job.

This is Miss Brandi. She is around 9 years old and probably needs to lose 10 pounds but she is a relentless treat beggar so it may take a while.

New Scrappy Quilt

I was tidying up the scraps leftover from my Jade Garden quilt and I realized I had a rather large pile of triangles. At that moment, my brain told me I needed to make something to use up these triangles. I should have taken a photo.

I poked around and found Bonnie Hunter's Twirl Around pattern from her book, Addicted to Scraps.

Except for one 2" strip from the green fabric yardage, this has all been cut out from the leftovers. One downside of using the Cricut to cut out projects is there are often extra scraps generated because you cut off 12"-wide WOF strips to put on the cutting mats and there are often portions leftover (large hunks, but smaller than fat quarters). Those are what I used to cut this quilt out.

I'll be finishing the current border and adding two more. The two outer borders will be cut from yardage.

One reason why I don't often make quilts with so many triangles is because I am such a perfectionist I tend to cut the triangles too large then have to trim down all the blocks to the correct size. I spent 3-hours yesterday trimming these.

This has been a fun, quick project. I should be able to finish the flimsy in the next day or two. I actually have a customer quilt on my long arm right now, so I won't be quilting this right away.

Linking up with:
Design Wall Monday
Sew & Tell
Monday Musings

Jade Garden Ensemble!

The past week was spent making the bed accessories to match the Jade Garden quilt. First the pillowcases, then the matching dress for Louisa.

I spent way too long on that dress. I made a bunch of piping and did a lot of hand-basting to keep the eyelet from getting caught in seams.

Jade Garden Quilted!

It is done!! It is an oversize queen quilt (96"x96") and too large for one person to hold it up. (I do hope I'll be able to get a better photo sometime soon.)

For the most part, I followed my quilting plan. These pantographs are primarily from the Spring Sunrise Set by Christy Dillon, though I edited one of them slightly to better fit my design.

I spent about three days quilting it. Those blocks were really large! They were actually as big as I could fit in my stitching area and I had to rotate it on the frame all 4 ways to be able to stitch it out. The center block was too large and I had to stitch it out by pausing the long arm and forwarding it to stitch out the last portion, as shown in this Handiquilter video. I do also wish I hadn't skewed the outer borders, but despite that, it still turned out pretty well. 

For this project, I used Quilter's Dream Blend 70/30 batting because I was hoping it would breathe a little better during hot weather. I used Glide thread in the Mulberry color. It is extremely difficult to see the quilting because the fabric is so busy, but I did take a few detail photos.

I'm so happy it is nearly finished; I just need to sew on the binding. I'll set it aside for now until I make the next batch of quilt labels.

Jade Garden Quilting Plan

Our weather has been hot this week and my quilting "studio" is upstairs where it has gotten uncomfortably hot, so I've spent the past couple of days in our cool basement working on a number of quilting plans. I think this is the one I'm going to go with once it cools down enough to work upstairs. 

These pantographs are primarily from the Spring Sunrise Set by Christy Dillon.

I'm hoping I have enough fabric for the backing but I haven't taken the time to check yet.

Jade Garden Flimsy

The Jade Garden flimsy is finished. 

This is a large 96" square quilt. It's too big for one person to hold it up, but I'll try to take a better photo once my husband returns from his business trip.

I pulled an all-nighter to get this one done since it was too hard to stop sewing once I got started on the borders.

I had thought to quilt it with an edge-to-edge but my husband convinced me to come up with a custom quilting plan. It may take me a while to settle on a design because I often make several options before I decide I like one well enough to stitch it out.

Linking up with:
TGI Finished Friday

Jade Garden Blocks Assembled

I paced myself the past couple of days and finished sewing the Jade Garden blocks together. I love the colors and it will be beautiful when it is done.

While doing it, I realized I'd made the kaleidoscope blocks incorrectly. I just used a correctly-shaped block from Electric Quilt rather than use the specific templates provided with the pattern. Obviously, they had to be replaced.

I'm also not happy with the border blocks. I cut the triangles that go on the points the right size, but the 6-inch "arrow" pieces are ending up about 1/8" short. Not acceptable for my perfectionist-self, so I'll be spending a few hours ripping and resewing these pieces. I think I'll also cut some new oversize triangles that sew onto the top pointy edge and then I'll be able to cut them down to the perfect size.

These are the three borders I need to add before the flimsy is finished.

Linking up with:
Design Wall Monday
Monday Sew & Tell
Monday Musings