Design Wall Monday = Bargello

Here is the state of the Scrap Bargello quilt.  The segments are sewn together and then I added a scrap neutral inner border.  Next will be the red strip hanging there, and then dark blue.

This is another of those projects that just "happen".  I found three strata and just took off from there.  First I thought it would become two neonatal quilts, but not so,  it's turned into a twin.

Before I leave for the RumpledQuiltKins retreat on Thursday, I hope to have the borders on and the backing put together.
[I also found some printed panels that are pretty awful, but could go together for a BACK.]

Sara

Gratitudes:

Leftover spaghetti for dinner, so not much cooking
Medical massage loosened up my shoulder
12-hour decongestant

Labor Weekend #3

The Mom- and Dad-to-be received the bargello baby quilt, along with a lot of other baby loot this afternoon. And their friends had a good time eating and talking.

Hydrangea currently in bloom, quite pink. This was a Mother's Day gift from DD Martha a couple of years ago.

The tall grasses going to "flower", waving so serenely in the breeze.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Listening to a Lutheran preaching on the epistle of Jame

Conversation with old church friends

Hamburgers and ice cream sundaes for supper

Baby bargello finished

Last night this quilt was washed and dried, and here it is out on the deck after dinner tonight.

And here it is in the living room, showing the whole thing.

And here is a close-up of one corner.

Today I filled another two boxes for IBOL, this time with mostly worsted weight YARN from never to be completed projects of the past. Thanks to Jo Keena for contributing that argyl fabric and also some Beanie Babies!

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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So many generous people contributing to this project!

Lovely cool, sunny day at the beginning of September

Peter Seegar special on public TV

Almost done baby quilt

I amazed meself with progress on this bargello baby quilt today.
I finished the quilting in the center.
I decided on a simple wavy line on the borders.
And I got right to work on the binding.

Once again I used the method of sewing the binding to the FRONT,
turning it to the back with lots of close pinning,
and then sew in the ditch on the FRONT again.

The stitching in the ditch is pretty well hidden on the front.
I used a wider binding strip than last time, so there was more to catch on the back. Therefore I didn't totally MISS catching the fold as many times.
But I'm not delighted with the way it looks--a little sloppy.
Maybe the stitching is a little too far from the folded edge.
On the other hand it IS on the BACK. Who is going to look real hard at it?
Well, of course, any quilter would.

Not baby colors as regularly understood. It came out darker than I expected.

Now to wash and dry it.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Pleasant time with the footcare nurses
take-out lasagna for dinner was excellent
lovely orange sky at 8:30 pm

Baby quilt progress

Finished sewing the strata together, and then the border strips went on.

Found a large enough piece of flannel for the back, and layered with the batting. Pinned it all together.

Began quilting down the seams.

Quilted down some more seams.

Currently I'm half done with the quilting.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Art La Flamme received 132 IBOL bundles today

Good exercise class

Conversation with Blue Cross

IBOL and Baby quilt

Two more boxes going to Iraq. I filled them up Friday and Saturday. Now they are in the back seat of my car ready to take to the P.O. after exercise class tomorrow. This IBOL project is such a heart warmer!

This afternoon I started a bargello baby quilt for Matthew and Collette's baby girl. The shower is next Sunday, so I have one week to pull this together. Shouldn't be a problem. I'm using a "Mint" batik jelly roll and have added a couple of coral strips to make it a little more "girlie". And I will also use that color for a border.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Sun finally shone today

BLT sandwiches for supper

Dogs were hilarious during bocce game

Pink doll quilt

Yesterday I was having company for dinner, AND I was inspired to see if I could make a doll quilt in a day. Thursday I had gotten my baby doll for the Santa Claus Girls collection, and my "Mod" doll quilt didn't seem quite right for her. (No problem because the Guild needs extra quilts for the extra dolls that are turned in.)

After setting the bread dough to rise, I picked four fabrics out of my Pink container, cut 2.5" strips, and started sewing a doll-sized "Streak of Sunshine".

When I was cutting across the strips, also 2.5" wide, I ended up with a couple of odd sized end strips...2", and 1 3/4 " and 1 1/4". I decided that I would fling them into the middle of the regular 12 strips for "interest", and I also sewed them together going "down" instead of "up", making a little wave in the middle of the regularity. A baby bargello! Then I made the Apple Crisp.

Of course I forgot about this when I was planning the quilting in the afternoon! In a hurry to get this moved along, I decided to just quilt on the diagonal to make an X in each square. I soon ran into a complexity when I arrived at a set of those smaller RECTANGLES in the middle of the quilt. Two seconds of thought, and I just soldiered on, going from one corner to the next corner of those rectangles, just like I was doing for the squares. The result is a "bend" in the quilting, much like the effect of the Storm At Sea piecing of squares and rectangles. I think I like it.

However it may be a bit subtle for the doll owner to recognize!

I made the chicken casserole and then managed to make the binding before the company arrived, and later I sewed the binding on after they left. Threw it in with the regular weekly laundry this AM. So it is ready to donate and I really finished it in one day.

I feel good about taking a break from the UFOs I have been working on, but not taking on a new LARGE project.

Thanks to Finn's shout-out in her blog I have been getting a few new visitors here. Thanks for your comments!

Sara

Gratitudes:

Meal all came together at the right time

Mexican Train game last night was lots of laughs

Memories of good times at Holy Cross

Twin sized charity quilts

Once I was in an exchange of nine-patches and they have languished in a box with other orphans. I put it together a month ago and now it is back from the long-armer, ready to go to Pine Ridge reservation to help keep someone warm this winter. I got the scrap binding on this afternoon.

And here is the back, made of fabrics I was ready to toss.

There is another one I hope to finish the binding tonight. I got the binding made during the end of "La Boheme" on NPR. Charlie is making dinner (Saturday night regular event) so I can go and work some more right now.

________________________Later

Got it done and took this photo on the deck stairs after dinner. Based on Bonnie's Scrappy Bargello, but more strips to make it bigger to make it twin/bunk size. The border is Railroad tracks fabric

(ALL of yesterday's rhubard crisp was et at the potluck. None to bring home. But I had made a tiny one as well and we just had it as a late snack tonight.)

Sara

House work

Yesterday I reworked the house block by taking the roof off and building a new house UNDER it. That's the green striped, rather tropical looking house.




Then I constructed a new roof of dotted black fabric on the old house. That's the patchwork house. Hmmm. That roof looks a little narrow, and not straight. Guess we'll just called it "liberated".



This AM while DD and DSIL were still sleeping in, I put borders on the most recent Bargello.


I had bought this railroad track fabric when a local store was going out of business, just for the fun of it. Now I can see that it makes a good striped border which looks simply brown and black from a distance.

I always slow down once I get to the borders, andeven slower when it's time for the backing...NOW.

Guess I'll sew together some of those 10.5" squares that Bonnie suggested for backings. I have collected quite a pile of them. They are of a wide variety of colors and patterns, and I have to push myself to just put them together. Unlike Bonnie, I like to offset them by a half a square so there once again aren't seams to match.


Getting ready for the Anniversary Celebration tomorrow, I took Martha over to the church to meet the cake(s) delivery and set up the reception table for our anniversary party after the early service tomorrow. We have filled the refrigerator up with punch makings and champagne, and have the dishes of Jordan almonds on the smaller tables. Now I'm ready to put my feet up for an hour before we get ready for the Family Festive Dinner at a Restaurant.


Sara


Exercise: Up and down the stairs at the church


Gratitudes:
Flowers from Sue R.
Sunshine again
39 years, 364 days of kindness

Snowstorm

This winter "arrangement" of evergreens and dry stalks was given to me by my gardening service folks back in November. It was claimed to be OK for outdoors all winter, so I set it on the deck where we can see it from the dining table. I placed a statue of a nearly naked boy reading in front of it because the wind blew it over once or twice. This is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago when we had had a minor snowfall.

And on the right, you can see what the classy arrangement looks like from the dining table tonight! Can't see the statue at all. I hope that little cave is keeping the wind off and the naked boy is warm and toasty like an Eskimo in his igloo.

The snow on the top railing of the deck is about 8 inches deep. Howevere, the wind is beginning to kick up, so it may fall off before morning.

Charlie felt it was necessary to cancel the evening Ash Wednesday service because of the terrible driving conditions. We had freezing rain so that turned to ice and then the snow fell on top of it. But there were services at 7 AM and 10 AM, so the work with the veil was not futile!

After staying in bed until 10:45 (!), I spent a wonderful day enjoying my sewing room with occasional glances out the window.

I bound the Baby bargello quilt and put it down the chute for washing.

I spent 15 minutes ironing scraps, and then 15 minutes cutting up some of them (ironing goes faster than cutting).

Then I was inspired by Patti of "Quilting is my passion" to make what she calls "crumb chaos" but I call "confetti" blocks from the scraps and strips. I just played and played with them. When I had one finally up to 6.5 inches square, I got down the shoe box with some previous confetti blocks to put it away, and I found there were already 44 blocks in there! That's the box containing the stack of blocks at the far end of my cutting table, then there are about nine confetti blocks laid out that I completed today. Plus I have quite a pile of partial blocks. I will put a couple of quilts together from these for Pine Ridge. Can you tell I have a project that I'm avoiding?

Closest to the camera is a block I made from seven orphan Drunkard's Path blocks which I also found today. Following on in Gwen Marston's liberated mindset, when squaring them up, I purposely made the circle NOT match each other's seams. I don't know what I'm going to do with that, but at least the seven now make SOMETHING. A perfect table mat for when we have a "blue moon", two full moons in the same month?

Sara

Gratitudes:

duvet

furnace that works

Slimfast when I don't want to think about food

Bargello Bowl Baby

Here is the quilt made of the leftover strips from my Bargello Bowl top. I have finished quilting it today on my regular sewing machine with a circles on each square, and diagonals in the border following the "Michigan" printed there. Our Guild supports the Neonatal Unit at the regional hospital with a quilt for each baby. I figure that some father will want to have that border for his Michigan baby. The colors are for the University of MIchigan, but, hey, we all live in the state and can say it just means we are proud of our state! I'm going to use some scrap binding that is two different navy fabrics.

The other news of the day is that I made a new Lenten veil to cover the figure of Christ on the cross at the front of the church. Charlie, who is the Rector of HolyCross, wasn't able to get it to stay in place and recruited some help from the Junior Warden, Ken Race. First they tried again with the long bamboo pole from the basement.

The reason for the pole is to avoid having to get out a long aluminum ladder out from the shed on the other side of the parking lot, and then SOMEONE having to climb the ladder, which creaks and wobbles.

Well, here is Ken on the ladder, leaning his right arms against the wall for security. This project took all of 45 minutes because of all the attempts to get the darn veil to cling to the wire crown on Jesus' head, and hang evenly on each side. The Altar Guild has no idea what a good time they missed by getting all the other work done on Sunday after church and leaving this to Charlie!

Now with the veil in place, we are ready for the Ash Wednesday services tomorrow, beginning with the one at 7 AM in the morning.

However, there is a prediction of sleet and 3-5 inches of snow tonight, so maybe everyone will stay home waiting through the morning for better weather later in the day.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Toenails cut and feet checked by nurse today

Finished quilting the Baby Bargello

Supper with the Reunion group

GOEs and Retreat

My smiling partner for reading the GOEs was Jim Young from Northfield, Minnesota. You can see the papers on his left, and he is typing our paragraph of evaluation for this particular question into his laptop, from whence it magically zips to our supervisor and then to the Editors, and then finally to the candidate's Bishop and Commission on Ministry.

We had an evening and full morning of training for doing the evaluating before we started on Tuesday afternoon. We read and wrote reports on 35 three page essays, finishing by about 1:00 on Thursday afternoon. We sat at this desk together roughly from 9-12am, 1-5pm, and 7-9pm each day. It is certainly a good thing to have a person with whom you work easily! BUT I never left the hotel except to walk between buildings during the four days. I did do some hallway walking on two days.

I managed to get on an earlier than planned plane out of Baltimore, but could not do the same in Detroit. Luckily the snow in Chicago was not yet affecting Grand Rapids, and Charlie picked me up at midnight Thursday.

After a quick packing up of my quilting projects, I drove north to a retreat group on Friday and was set up in my corner by 3 pm.

That afternoon and evening I sewed together 2.5" strips from a swap to make a Scrap Bargello quilt, following the suggestion of Bonnie Hunter that SuperBowl weekend could be celebrated with a "Bargello Bowl". It was fun to think about other women all over the country working on this same idea on Saturday and Sunday. I finished the top about 1 AM Saturday. And Sunday afternoon I put the leftover loops into a neonatal quilt top.

Off and on I worked on the layering and pinning of the Carolina Crossroads sections. And I finished stitching one of them "in the ditch". That top is so busy that I don't think any quilting is really goinig to show up.

One of the reasons going on a quilt retreat is so much fun is the collaborations, or opinion-giving that is going on around the room frequently. Jan Lewis has just laid out the blocks for a "Turning Twenty" quilt and Sandy DeCarlo is giving her reaction to the placements. Carol Kuypers is looking on as she works on her own hand project. You can always get lots of "help" with decisions, but you have the final Veto over it all.

Sara

Exercise: very poor this week, except for the days I walked through airports

Gratitudes:

My OWN bed

Interesting meal conversations

Charlie's chili and Ray's hospitality for the SuperBowl supper

Quilt at Auction

Here is the quilt as it was displayed at the Grand Rapids Women's Chorus auction. The size is 74" x 104", which is a double bed size, or a topper for a queen or king.

I made it from four "jelly rolls" of fabric. These are pre-cut strips of 2.5" x the width of the fabric are are usually a complete line of fabric. They included all the green, orange and red/purple. I added one strip of yellow and one strip of blue.
When I had it all together I took it to Mary Davis for machine quilting. Then it came home again for the binding--also machine sewn on both sides.

I found this to be enjoyable at almost all stages, and was SOoo delighted that it fetched a good price for the Chorus! I'll do another quilt next year.

I have started cutting strips for the quilt that Bonnie Hunter is leading as a Mystery right now over the next several months. I am attacking my box of plaids for the darks and the lights, and at the moment think I will use a yellow homespun for the Accent color. Or maybe I'll use red, my continual favorite.

GRWC Winter Concert

We, the Grand Rapids Women's Chorus, had our Winter concert last Saturday. I was pretty nervous about not yet knowing some of the music, like 3 out of 8 songs. We had commissioned a new piece this year and the composer came from Lansing to direct us. The title is "Salmon Run" and much of the music is an imitation of the sounds and feel of the river water as the salmon fights upstream to spawn and die. Since the water keeps doing much the same thing, it was hard to keep track of where we were in the repetitions! However, I don't think the audience was aware of our difficulties.

After the 45 minute performance we have a reception and Auction to raise money for our music (and pay our accompanist). I had donated a double bed sized quilt. Two previous years I had donated smaller quilts and they had each sold for $250. This bargello pattern got a lot of compliments from the crowd, and sold for $450! Hurray for the Chorus' music fund!