Wildlife Quilt for Lance

I know, I know.  My design wall hasn't been cleared for even a single day yet, and here I go with something new.  I'm gonna TRY to get this new project done for Christmas.  I think I can, I think I can!

I have wanted to make a quilt for Bob's son, Lance, for awhile now.  He is an avid hunter.  Deer, turkey, fish.  Shotguns, rifles, bow and arrows.  So that being said, a wildlife theme is perfect for this project, AND I have lots of fabrics already that will work.  Fabrics left over from past wildlife quilt projects, some of which I never even used yet!  I winnow and sifted through the STASH and pulled all the possibilities.  WOW.  I have a LOT of fabric!

  The pattern I want to use is a modified Storm at Sea, something like this.  These are 12 inch blocks, with a 6-inch pieced border to extend the pattern a little further out.  Like with Max's quilt, my eye wants to see a finished circle!  If it goes as planned, it will finish off around 72 x 96".  It should go fast, because, the blocks are large, and each block doesn't have too many patches.  I am hoping it will look good and not too "empty."  The yellow square in the 12 square-in-square blocks is where I will put 12 wildlife pictures. My prints are all leaves, tree bark, trees, etc.  I'm hoping all my selections will look good together once the quilt is done.  I'm not very good at mixing color combinations.  The large diamonds that form each circle will each be a separate fabric (I might have to repeat a couple fabrics.) so the circles are more pronounced.  It will look more like this picture I think:
The 4 smaller square in a square blocks will have some sort of green as a background.  Different greens I think.  Originally I thought all the same green, but after having made one square to try it out, I think each of the 4 small squares will be backed in the same green, so it will look like one larger green block with 4 small featured "leafy tree prints," which are tan or brown. I have a lot of green leafy batiks.  A lot of this quilt is still in the thinking-stage, and so things are subject to change as the quilt evolves during the sewing process.

 From the deer panels that I have, I was able to find and fussy-cut  12 six inch pictures.  I'm really glad I could work out all deer, and not have to use a moose or a bear picture just to fill out 12 blocks!  I'm glad to have something on my design wall again.  I have so many quilt kits I need to do, but this quilt come first!  I hope Lance will like it!

  

2-Block Quilt Top is Finished!

I have been working on the borders these past few days, and have decided to go with the darker blue.  It has that hint of purple in it, and I really like that in the quilt.  I don't think the "floral" pattern is that noticeable, looks more like Nature--leaves and grass, clovers!  Clovers are purple flowers, but definitely not a girly kind of  flower.  Here's how it looks.

Now to pin it, and get it quilted before Christmas!

Amish Error

In case you are not familiar with "Amish Errors", I will fill you in!  Amish women are renowned for their beautiful hand-sewn quilts.  But if the quilt appears that it will be "perfect" when it is finished, with no mistakes showing, Amish women will typically put a "mistake" in the quilt on purpose.  "Only God can make something perfect," and if a woman ends up with a perfect quilt, she has just equated herself with God, which is totally unacceptable! Thus, the "Amish Error!"  A PLANNED "error."  Just like I plan to do with Max's 2-block quilt!  Because...!

Well, of course, I changed up the pattern of the 2-block quilt halfway through the sewing! I decided to put all those extra half blocks (a pieced border, actually) to all 4 sides of the quilt so the quilt border will begin at the end of the "circles", with the star points touching the border.  My quilts always "morph" into something different than when I started! The  problem with doing this is that I was "3 whiskers short of a cat" when it came to the gray fabric! I needed just SIX more HST's to complete the pattern I had in mind.  SIX!!  That is such a tiny bit of fabric, but I couldn't come up with it, not even in the scraps.  What a dilemma!  Everything else was ready, all the other units were sewed.  I racked my brain on how to proceed.  Many scenarios floated through the fog of my  disappointment and I came up with this:

IF I ripped out the 4 corner HST's from each corner of the quilt, and replaced them with 3 1/2" squares of purple, the corner would look like a square corner in the border (acceptable!  I tried it.  You can see the difference n the photo below.  The upper left HST is still there and not yet replaced.  The upper right has been replaced with a purple square, and it looks just fine! )  I would gain 2 gray/white HST's by replacing them with purple squares.  That's a lot of work for 2 very small patches, but I'm desperate!! If I did that, I would only need 4 more gray/white HST's. I could substitute a different gray print very close in value.  I could make 4 HST's from that gray, and put them in 2 corners where they would not be as noticeable. ...  OK, let me try that and see how it looks... I can just call it my "Amish Error!"  Can you find the "Amish Error" in my quilt?!

I'll zoom in a bit...See it now?

Look at the Gray/White HST's in the corner!  Yes!  A different gray fabric!  BARELY noticeable!!  Here's a close-up.

I will keep this plan and finish the quilt.  There is one more set of these gray/white HST's in the diagonal corner which you can't see here.  And if per chance someone notices and comments, we'll just compliment them on their attention to detail and tell them Congratulations!  You found the Amish Error! 

When I post the pic of the finished quilt, look for The Amish Error again!   It blends in so well, I bet you'll forget all about it!

(Oh, by the way, I have decided to use that royal blue "floral" print for my outer border after all! Looks nice, don't you agree?)

Floral Borders?

I have all the blocks and the rows sewn together for the 2-block quilt.  But now, when I put up the fabric I had planned to use, the darker blue,  I am wondering if the fabric is too "flowery" for a boy's quilt.  The blue color is perfect, a rich royal blue with spots of purple blended in.  Used for the star points, you don't notice the floral pattern too much, the floral design is all cut apart and it looks more like a Nature print as opposed to a floral print. Here is a swatch of the fabric (it looks lighter in this picture):

I have asked a lot of people for their opinions, and it's a mixed review.  Some just point blank said no, it's for a BOY, you don't use florals for a boy!  Some said, Use it, it's fine.  Boys like flowers, and true, some boys do.  But this is for Max, a 12 yr old grandson, Boy through and through! He plays 8th gr. football and he's still in 7th gr. for goodness sake!  Someone said boys don't notice details like that, and another said you can barely make out the flowers, so go ahead, use it!  Gahhh!  How to decide!?

So I auditioned a couple of fabrics.  The medium blue in the 9-patch (on the left), and the dark blue (floral?) in the star points (on the right..)  I have enough fabric to make borders from either.  Here's the audition:

I'm gonna have to think about this some more, but personally, **I** like the darker blue on the right...

Progress

I have been plugging along with Max's Christmas quilt. Bob has been sick this fall, and so I haven't had as much time to sew as I wish.  But the 2-block quilt is very nice  to work on, it's not a complicated quilt, but very pretty, and I find it an easy way to relax after a stressful day.  Here's how it looks up on my design wall so far:

I have all the unit pieces cut out and sewed, now it's just a matter of sewing them into 9-patch blocks.  I have all of the B-blocks done and am now working on the A-blocks.  

2017 Darlington Quilt Show

The Darlington Quilt Show was this weekend.  There were over a hundred entries, I entered Something Blue, Whirligigs, and the Pot Holders.  VERY EXCITED to say that Something Blue won the Viewers' Choice Award, so I have a second award winning quilt! (The Harry Potter quilt won in 2013.)  We had a good turnout for the show, the raffle quilt was won by someone in Darlington so it stays local.  AND  the Author Quilt was also taken off the wall in the Darlington Public Library and put on display in the quilt show as well!  So I'm very pleased with the show this year.

Here are MY entries in the quilt show:

 

 

One thing different about the quilt show this year was that we had a quilt appraiser, Sandy Schweitzer, do a "Quilt Walk", where anyone who was interested could walk with her at a scheduled time through the quilt displays, and she would talk about certain quilts that she thought were outstanding, or interesting, or had something to teach us about "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of random quilts on display.  It was all very interesting, and I learned a lot.  She stopped at both Something Blue and Whirligigs on the Quilt Walk and had a little bit to say about each:

     Something Blue--the "style" is very popular in this day and age, and even though the quilt is beautiful, well-constructed, and is challenging to make, it would probably not raise much money in an auction as it can be purchased at a lower cost in many places. You would probably not get your money's worth, not even to cover the cost of materials in making the quilt, to say nothing of your time and effort.  The market has a glut on these kinds of paper-pieced quilts.

     Whirligigs is a "fun" quilt, but hard on the eyes.  "You cannot look at it for too long" because the colors are so bright and the background black offers too much contrast. (bright against bright).  "There is nowhere for the eyes to rest, so they will tend to drift out of the quilt, perhaps to the wall, or a neighboring quilt."  You want to have good contrast, but also something that will bring the eyes INTO the quilt, not out of it,  

Also, neither of these quilts have labels. (bad!)  

That's ok, I still like my quilts!  :)

Pot Holders

Now that I have finished the Something Blue, and the Fan Quilt is still on the design wall, I decided to do a fun little project before I jump into the heavy duty quilting projects again.  I saw this really cute "beer" fabric at Heidi's quilt shop and couldn't resist.  I've been thinking about pot holders as potential Christmas gifts, and the beer fabric would be perfect for the men chefs in my family!

I've never made pot holders before, but Heidi was helpful in telling me what I might need.  Only thing I didn't have was "Insul-brite," which is the heat reflective material that is used inside the pot holder to protect your hands from the heat.

Heidi didn't have this particular kind, but something similar on a bolt, so I bought a yard of it and some beer fabric, and came home to play!  Little projects like this are fun because they finish up quickly, and are easy to do.  And you have a quick gift.  The only tricky part was making a loop with the binding.  I'm sure there must be a simpler way than how I did it, but I am satisfied.

The pot holders have 4 layers:  the backing, the batting, the Insul-bright, and the top which can be a pieced block. (This would be a good way to use up orphan blocks.)  I started my potholders with 10" squares and after all was said and done and trimmed, they ended up just slightly larger than 9".

Here they are, 4 so far.  I will be giving these in pairs, so  I have 2 gifts done for Xmas!  (SHHHHH!  Don't tell!)