Village Quilt

I have finally finished the Village Quilt!

I completed the top back in 2018.

Then it sat on the back burner for several years so I could make some graduation quilts.

I decided that 2021 would be the best year to get this one done before I had another round of graduation quilts to make.

I made myself a goal and got to quilting.

The closer I got to my self-imposed goal I realized I might not make it.

It just so happened that one of the quilt bloggers I follow had created a challenge to get stuff done.

The challenge was to use the last 100 days of the year to finish some unfinished projects.

I thought this is the perfect way to keep up with my goal.

And it was.

I finished hand quilting on Christmas Day.

That left me six days to get the binding done.

(WIPS: Work In Progress)

PS- All the blanks in the "S" were from when I had Covid. I worked from home everyday, except one, while I was sick. I used all my energy for work and was too wiped out to quilt that week.)

There's this unspoken "rule" that you're supposed to hand sew the binding to the backside of a quilt. It's traditional and I get that. However, since the beginning of my quilting adventure I learned how to sew it by machine. It's much faster. So that is how I do almost all of my quilts. 

I can confidently conquer corners now.

:)

 I chose an old world map fabric for the back.

I learn a lesson (or several) with each quilt.

One of those hard lessons was this backing fabric.

I measured and purchased what I needed, or so I thought.

Upon cutting the fabric I realized I didn't have enough because I failed to remember that it is a directional fabric. Meaning it has to face a certain direction as opposed to any which way.

That makes a difference in how much fabric you need.

So this really cool looking fabric is sideways on the back...and I still didn't have enough.

To make it work and not have to purchase more fabric (and wait for it to arrive) I needed to turn the fabric sideways. Not my first choice...

Even with that change I still had to add a strip to make it fit the back.

Pride swallowed.

Lesson learned.

This is one of my favorite quilts.

Except for the outermost border, binding & backing, it is all scraps.

I had so much fun making this.

A lot of the fabrics came from the remnants of my first 40 quilts.

This is quilt number 41!

Lots of memories sewn into this one.

Some of the many crazy houses.

This was way out of my comfort zone. It was also my first true scrap quilt.

It was a lot of fun and by the time I finished I loved it!

This duck (there are several like him) is one of my favorites.

He standing all puffed up like our drakes do at times.

This house cracks me up. The egg fabric is upside down from all the others.

Which is funny because that's how you're supposed to store eggs in a carton.

Point side down.

I decided to keep the "mistake".

Another of my mistakes. I decided to leave it.

It's fun to look for it.

There is also a dog that's wrong side out.

I haven't found it since I finished the quilt.

;)

Village Quilt

#41

84 3/4" x 81 1/2"

machine pieced & hand quilted

Hand Quilting stats:

quilted 125 days (6/27 - 12/25)

136 1/4 hours

Not Much

 Not much going on around here. Eat, sleep, work/school, repeat.

Connor's school picture.

I have joined a quilting challenge. It's called "WIPS be gone"

WIP stands for Work In Progress. I have several.

The goal is to finish as many WIPS as you can by the end of the year.

Pretty much my only goal is to finish my village quilt.

Anything else will be a bonus!

The beautiful sunrise from this morning.

Now Loading

I finished this top a few years ago. It may be my oldest UFO to date. (Quilting lingo: UFO - unfinished object.)  You can read about it here. This is probably one of my favorite quilts. I love royal blue! Unfortunately, I had to put it on the back burner so I could make two graduation quilts in two years. I have one "spare" year before I do two more graduation quilts in two years. With that being said, I am now attempting to load it on the hand quilting frame.

 

I say attempting because I pinned the backing to the wrong rail and had to start all over.

Not fun.

I was frustrated with myself and thought that I'd write down the instructions to prevent this from happening again. Upon getting my quilting notebook I discovered my notes from before. This reaffirmed my thought that I had loaded the backing wrong. At least I know how to do it now!

I made myself laugh...go ahead and laugh with me...or at me, if you like.

Armed with my instructions, I proceeded to load the top on it's rail.

It's not difficult but very tedious.

Pinning the quilt top to the leader fabric is the first step.

Then rolling, smoothing, checking, repeat...SEVERAL times.

Once I got the top loaded I decided to give it a rest for the evening.

I had already done this twice by this point...

The loading process will be repeated two more times.

Once for the backing and then the batting.

I'd like to get it loaded and ready before the end of the week.

We'll see.

Quilt Repair Done!

I have finished the quilt repair!

I'm thrilled to have this done.

It took way longer than anticipated but that's OK, I learned a lot.

Repair patches on the backside.

Pin basting a recycled flannel sheet to the quilt.

Instead of removing the old backing I covered it.

This is how the original quilt was made, by adding new layers.

In some places I think I saw two layers inside.

Which is why it's so heavy!

This is the second quilt I have backed from our old moose flannel sheets.

The material proved challenging to pull a thick needle through.

Pliers to the rescue! (Thanks to a tip I read.)

It took about a week to untie and re-tie.

I did the binding in the same fashion as the original by folding the back over to the front.

It took a little over a week to sew the binding down.

Before (bottom) and after (top).

We asked relatives as to when grandma made this quilt.

The best guess was sometime in the 50's.

This is a HEAVY quilt. We dub it the "lead" quilt because of its weight.

I weighed it before I started because I was going to add to it.

It started out at 9 pounds.

It now weighs a whopping 10.8 pounds!

Repaired size:

66" x 78 1/2"

The Dragon Quilt

 I finally finished Nolan's graduation quilt. AKA the dragon quilt. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and took photos. However, I didn't pay attention to the settings on my camera and none of the photos turned out well. I've had to wait a couple of weekends for good weather to do another photo shoot. (It's too dark by the time I get home from work.)

This quilt makes lifetime finish number 36. It's the first (but not last) finish of 2020.

It took over a year from start to finish...longer if you count the research and design time I put in as well.

Nolan gave me some suggestions of what he wanted and I went from there. I found a free-for-my-use dragon image that I imported into my quilting software and traced. He wanted Celtic/rune letters as well as a dragon. I did some research and did not like the meaning behind the typical ones I found. So I used the rune letters from the How to Train Your Dragon movies to write his name. Nolan loved it.

This is the fourth full-sized quilt I have hand quilted. I spent 201 hours over nearly 7 months to quilt this one. I'm not sure why it took twice as long as the others. Maybe it was all the curves in the quilting. I chose not to pre-draw the quilting pattern. All the wavy lines around the dragon were drawn free hand as I got to the area. That was something completely outside of my comfort zone. I like patterns and uniformity. Making it up as I went was a new process. I was a bit nervous as I couldn't see the final product until I took it off the frame. I'm pleased with how it turned out.

This quilt has traditional patchwork piecing, foundation paper piecing (sewing by number), and hand applique. It challenged my quilting abilities. I enjoyed every step of the process.

This photo shows the closest match to the right shade of blue for the blocks and dragon.

The others are a bit off.

Letters for Nolan.

Letters for Schultz.

Someone wanted to play.

She ran over the corner of the quilt at one point.

Silly dog.

If this quilt panel had been in the stores before I designed the front it would have been the front!

Nolan really liked it too so it became the center of the back.

Quilt stats:

#36

79" x 91"

hand & machine pieced

hand quilted

Pepper photo bomb!

I called her to me so she could get out of the way.

Almost.

Goofy mutt.

Dragon Quilt Update

Still not much going on around here.

Same old, same old… eat/sleep/work/e-learn/repeat

We’re stuck in that pattern and that’s okay.

Nothing much except a dragon quilt update.

I’ve finished quilting along the bottom border and have rolled the quilt.

I love my new-to-me quilting frame.

It was difficult to roll the old one by myself.

Not the new one!

This stencil fits perfectly in the top and bottom border spaces.

Upon rolling the quilt I began the task of figuring out how to make the Celtic stencil work in the longer border sections along the sides of the quilt.

I didn’t want it too difficult because I have to repeat it on the other side spaces as well.

I simply added points to the top and bottom.
It was super simple and I think it blends well with the pattern.

I even made a little template for the added part.

After collaborating with Nolan regarding the quilting around the dragon in the middle,
we’ve decided to go with free-flowing “wind” lines.

I’m a little nervous about the free-flowing part. I like patterns and ruler work.

I’ve done some research on Pinterest and have some ideas to work with.

I'm outlining the dragon and Nolan’s name. Then I'll have the wind lines go through them.

I’ll keep y’all posted on my progress!

I usually draw the lines on a quilt before it’s sandwiched and basted.

I didn’t do this because I didn’t need to baste it before loading it.

Plus I naively thought that I’d just draw the lines as I go… and I didn’t have my stencil yet.

While it is possible to draw the lines as I go, it’s much easier to do on a flat surface!

Oh well, lesson learned.

Quilt Quack 14

Nothing much going on last week...or this week for that matter.

School e-learning and working.

Eat, sleep, repeat.

This photo quacks me up because I thought I had all of my ducks in a row.

Turned out that one was hiding in the corner.

Silly duck.

The ducklings are growing like weeds.

They’re almost getting too big for our tank.

The three oldest ones had enough feathers to be evicted.

:)

That leaves five ducklings in the house.

They're all the same age.

Pekin ducks, the yellow ones, grow faster than other ducks.

The darker ones are our Welsh Harelequins.

They're so pretty!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I quilt during my lunch break at work.

Here I managed to sew a hexagon wrong side up.

You'd think it would be easier to not make mistakes when hand sewing.

Apparently that's not the case.

Oops.

In my defense, I hold them like this to sew them together.

It's easy to flip one the wrong way.

All fixed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I’m trying to get into a quilting groove.

Sometimes it’s hard to sit down and quilt.

Dwayne and the boys are super good at making sure I get time.

I just don’t always use my spare time to quilt.

It took me about four months to hand quilt my last full-sized quilt.

I need to get down to business!

I found this cool Celtic border template.

It fits perfectly between the blocks on the top and bottom borders.

I will need to figure out how to make it work on the side borders as they are a little longer.

Yay! Two sections done.

There are four sections across the bottom

Basically, I've almost quilted half of the bottom border.