Small element, big difference

Isn't it funny how a small thing can make a huge difference? I've had a love-hate relationship with this little quilt.

I loved my fabric choices and loved making the blocks.  I hated the way the fabrics played together IN the blocks. (Blocks are from "Chic Sisters" by Sew Kind of Wonderful.)

The pinwheels didn't pop as much as I had hoped. The white and grey prints seemed to disappear where they met the light aqua and yellow.  These blocks were supposed to be joined to make a table runner for a shop sample, but I thought it just looked like a busy mess.

I toyed with a square layout, and tried to figure out what to put in the middle.  Another pinwheel? An applique? An hourglass block?  In the end the blocks sat in a drawer for a few months.

Over the summer I wasn't very inspired to sew.  It wasn't just because summer activities beckoned.  I just couldn't think of anything that I really wanted to work on, and there were no ideas at all percolating in my brain.  At the same time I missed sewing. I finally decided I needed to just push through and finish a few things and see if "clearing the decks" would spark a bit of inspiration.  This project definitely needed to be "cleared"!

My boss at the shop suggested a 3 x 4 block setting with some sort of diagonal element tying the two halves together, so I played around with a few layouts, with different shapes to fill in the extra 4 blocks.  What I came up with was OK, so I sewed it up. Next I struggled to decide what to quilt.  I wanted something simple that wouldn't compete with the pinwheels.

You can guess that I used my trusty walking foot again.  My first thought was to quilt parallel vertical lines top to bottom, but in the end I decided the quilt needed a little something more so I switched to horizontal lines behind the light pinwheels on the teal/yellow background. Then just a wee bit more: how about diagonal lines in the yellow slash?

By this time I was liking the quilt a bit more, but still wasn't excited about it. I had planned to use "faux piped binding" to bind, just to add a little something extra to a borderless quilt.  The tutorial gave me a wider binding than I usually use and it ended up covering up points on the edge of the quilt.  At 10:30 pm, I was frustrated, back to the "hate" part of the relationship, and I took out the seam ripper to take it off, trim the binding to a narrower width and sew it back on.  But, at 10:31 pm I decided ripping could wait until morning and I went to bed.

In the morning, rested and refreshed, here's what I noticed:

Cute kitty cat faces peeking over the edge of the quilt.  Oh yes!  The binding stayed just as it was!  Those cut off points were really not central to the quilt design anyway.  They were just part of the background.

And there we go.  The kitty cat binding saved the quilt.  It was just the right width and cuteness to pull it all together for me.  I'm back to "love"!

Resetting

Why is it August already?  Did time steal a few days (weeks)?  I guess I've been too busy enjoying summer and family to notice the time go by.  But it is in fact August.  The profusion of blooming Black-eyed Susans in my gardens proves it.

Black-eyed Susans:  my reliable August bloomers

We made a lovely road trip back to Canada, swinging through southern Ontario, then through Québec on our way to family in New Brunswick, and since we were up there we thought we might as well go on up to Prince Edward Island since the kids had never been there.  DS got to visit the Stanley Cup in Toronto, DD enjoyed Green Gables and the Anne of Green Gables musical in Charlottetown and DH and I enjoyed the unplugged family time.  I won't give you a stop-by-stop review of our trip.  I'll just say it was fabulous.

Back in the sewing room, I have been uninspired so I worked on clearing my small pile of UFOs.  To start, I finally sewed the binding onto my very yellow quilt and it is now on my bed. I added pillow cases to match.

I like it and DH likes it, but now I have a "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" situation.  (That's a great kids's book, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure!)  The quilt looks great, but the blue walls don't go as well as I thought they would, so I need to repaint.  The blue wall hanging won't look great against the new paint, so maybe I'm thinking about a new quilt for that wall.  Then of course the blue runner on the dresser will be the only touch of blue so maybe that will need to be replaced too... I'll keep the pooch though!

I made a quick little purse to replace my previous one, which had a frayed strap and holes in the corners. It was time!  I'm a fan of small purses, just big enough to carry my wallet, phone and keys, and I like them to have a cross-body strap so I don't set the purse down somewhere and walk away without it.

New purse

I also finished up a variation of Sew Kind of Wonderful's  "Chic Sisters" pattern.  Last spring I offered to make shop samples using the Quick Curve Ruler for the shop where I work. I finished the runner and table topper a couple of months ago, but this Chic Sisters one stalled at the block stage.  My boss didn't want the full quilt, just something to show the curved blocks.  The original plan was to make a runner, but the blocks didn't pop in that so they just sat for months. We finally decided to turn them into a baby quilt, I played around with a couple of layouts, and I finally have a finish. Looking at my pictures I see that most didn't turn out very well, so I'll leave you with a small taste and go take more pictures to share tomorrow.

 

Blooms finished and gifted

Now that the blooms quilt has safely arrived at its destination (and 3 days earlier than I expected...how often does that happen?)  I can share the finished quilt.  Ta da!

I bet you didn't see the elephant coming! Apparently, when you administer CPR and you do it right, you leave the lucky person feeling like an elephant ran over their chest (which is good even though it sounds awful, because it means the person is still alive to feel).  That is why the person who performed CPR last January gets an elephant on her quilt.

 

 

Most of this quilt was quilted with my trusty walking foot.  I considered trying freemotion in the sashing, but in the end I preferred crisp straight lines that remind me of a trellis.  Next I considered freemotion in the petals.  That was the part I picked out several time before settling on straight lines radiating from the flower centers.  I'm sure in some other hands FMQ could have worked out beautifully, but it just wasn't soaring in my hands!  Have I mentioned I love my walking foot?

The only part of the quilt that has free-motion on it is the elephant, and I forgot to take pictures of that.  Ooops!  Trust me, the paisley pattern is gorgeous and flawless...

Now I'm off to do something with this little guy:

Gotta have backyard security to chase the rabbits away from the blooms!