My String-X Is Finished! Oh, Joy!!!!

This quilt has been in progress much, much too long.  Perhaps 2 or more years.  I finished the top then laid it aside.  I layered and began quilting, only to lay it aside several summers ago to plan and prepare a fall wedding.  I picked it up again after the wedding, only to learn a few months later that the bride would be having a summer baby.  By the time I finished the quilt for the baby, I realized that if I didn't purposefully devote time to this quilt, it would never get finished.  And here it is, finished!  Oh, joy!

It's my version of Bonnie Hunter's String-X.  I adapted her measurements of the block size and did not use a paper foundation.  I used the string strips as a leaders/enders while working on other quilts.  I'm not sure I like the way I pieced the back.  I liked the idea of repeating the strings (all the fabrics on the back were used on the front) but I think the proportions are off.  Still, it's just a picnic quilt....

This quilt measures 67" x 92".  The fabric in the front, back, and binding are 100% cotton scraps from other sewing and quilting projects.  The batting is polyester.  I had it so I used it.  The quilt crinkled more than I thought it would with a poly bat.  (I wish I'd noted measurements before I washed the quilt!) 

If, in 50, years an expert quilter looks at this quilt, I hope she will not judge it too harshly.  I hope she might recognize that it was a beginner quilt and notice that some areas of quilting are better than others.  I hope she won't fold it and realize that it's not exactly square.  (I don't mind so much that the lines of stitching are not straight but I wish the stitching itself were better.)  I hope she will be generous in her comments, knowing that every quilter improves the more she quilts.


I'm linking to
>February A Lovely Year of Finishes at Fiber of All Sorts.  Thanks for hosting, Shanna.
>A Week of Finishes at from blank pages.  Thank you, Diane.
>Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts.  Thanks,  Lynne.
>Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.  Thank you, Amanda Jean.
>2013 First Quarter Finish-A-Long at She Can Quilt.  My original post was here.

Happy quilting!
--Nancy.
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High Five for Brenna

I'm making good progress on this High Five quilt, though maybe not good enough to have the quilting and binding finished by the end of March.  I think I have to quilt faster or spend more time at quilting!

I don't know if you can see where the pins are or not....  I still have to quilt the pinned part.  I have the center finished and have about 4-5 rows of blocks around the outside yet to quilt. I've adjusted to the thinner Connecting Threads thread and I actually think I like it better.  Since my quilting abilities are not fabulous yet it's nice that the thinner thread doesn't show so much.  (Please forgive the inaccurate shading in the photo below.  The flash made the near side of the quilt lighter and the far side darker than in real life.)

When I'm not with this quilt, working on it -- when it's folded up and put away -- I'm not sure how much I like it.  I tell myself it's awful and that I overdid it with the fabrics and colors.  But when I'm working on it, I decide I love, love, love it.  It's a bright, happy quilt.  I think of it as a compendium of many of the fabrics I have or had in my supply.

I wish you good progress with your stitching.

I'm linking to
W.i.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.  Thank you, Lee.
Amy's Creative Side.  Thanks, Amy.
Small Blog Meet at Lily's Quilts.  Thanks, Lynne.
March:  A Lovely Year of Finishes ~ Goal Setting Party at Fiber of All Sorts.  Thank you, Shanna.

--Nancy.
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Crocheted Hotpads, Thrift Style

Sometimes I can hardly resist vintage kitchen linens when I find them, especially if they are a thrifty price.  This delightful pair was there last week just waiting to come home with me.  They are about 5 1/2" square and about 3/8" thick.  I know they are crocheted, but I can't figure out how they are made....

The front looks like this:

I think it is a double or triple crochet but my knowledge of crochet is somewhat limited.  The crochet stitches on the front are about 1/4" deep.

The back looks like this:

What kind of foundation would be under all these lovely stitches?  The hotpads are soft, bendable, and thick.  I think they would be a fine protection for hands holding hot pans, but I can't bring myself to use them.  At least not yet.

Here's another view of a close-up of the crochet stitches.

You can imagine that my kitchen has very eclectic linens when you think of me using them together.  I would not use these colors for curtains that I see every day at my windows, but I'd be happy to use them for hotpads -- if they wouldn't wear out!

Happy thrifting to you!
--Nancy.
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A Dear Little Fellow

We visited our daughters last Wednesday.  One is married and is mom to our little 8-month-old grandson.  We (or they) make the 3-hour trip only every month or two so I was more than pleased that he didn't reject me when I greeted him and picked him up.  You know how babies get to the age when they refuse to be picked up by strangers.  Either he's not to that stage or I'm not a stranger.  I hope it's the latter. 

He wasn't feeling very well--had a stuffy, runny nose and a cough.  He was just uncomfortable, but he didn't cry much.  He went to the doctor a day or two after our visit.  It was discovered that he had an ear infection.

On the way there I stitched the binding on the String-X quilt (but couldn't stitch on the way back because it was dark).  I'll photograph and post about it soon.  It's been too cloudy to get a good photo.

I hope you're healthy!
--Nancy.
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Pinning, Stitching

I pin from left to right but I stitch from right to left.

It makes it a little hard sew in sections.

How about you?  Which direction do you pin and stitch?

This is the back of the String-X and I'm excited to be almost finished.

--Nancy.
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An Online Quilt Museum

This a screen shot of the explorer page at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum (IQSCM) website.  These are a few of the quilts that you can view there.  If you click and hold your mouse on the mosaic, you can move it to see more quilts below and to either side.  Many more!  

You can click on any quilt and learn more about it.  You will be offered the option to add it to your collection or view the record.  I don't have an account so I asked to view the record.

The whole quilt pops up on the screen with information about it to the side.  You can see below the image that there are "-" and "+" buttons.  They will make the quilt larger (or smaller after you've made it larger) so that you can see details.  

It takes a moment to focus when you enlarge it to its maximum size but, oh, the details you can see!  Not every stitch but in some quilts you can see the lines of quilting.  In other quilts the fabrics are clear enough to see well.  Sometimes it's not so easy to see details.  (Remember that the images in this post are just screenshots and they're not as clear as the real images.)

The website offers other options, too.  Enjoy Making a Quilt where you can choose a pattern, alter it, then choose print fabrics from different time periods plus solids; choose your layout; choose your border; and experiment with several quilting options.  (Maybe it's like Electronic Quilter?)  Something very fun:  you can choose to have your quilt added to their Quiltmaker Gallery and also view virtual quilts created by others.  I can see this as a potentially helpful tool for future quilts when imagining color combinations or layouts.

Go play when you have a little time.

Happy quilting!
--Nancy.
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Scrap Bowls

What do you do with your scraps -- the scraps that are really too small to use for anything else -- when you're trimming quilt blocks?  I don't have a handy place for a waste basket near my cutting table so I use scrap bowls.  These are two nesting china bowls that I found at our local thrifts stores -- several years apart!  I loved the shape and wide foot on the bottom of the bowl when I found the first one and bought it for a pittance.  Years later I found the second identical but smaller bowl and bought it for pennies, too.  I've used them to mix glue, mix paint, and hold small objects so they won't get lost.
 

They are convenient and handy and when scraps begin piling up I shift them to the bowl and empty them when they're full.  Except this time.  You can see that I haven't been cutting much since Easy Street.  Which is because I've been hand quilting, and am about a fourth of the way finished.  Hooray!

Happy quilting to you!
--Nancy.
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Boring Photo, Exciting Progress - W.i.P. Wednesday

This is the pale back of the High Five quilt (which has a highly colorful front).  It's hard to photograph light on light but you might be able to see the quilting lines if you look closely.  This was the best I could do in the afternoon sun.  I'll try to show a photo of the front when I post the next W.i.P. Wednesday but the quilting seems to disappear on both front and back.

In the past two weeks since I started I've finished about 3 square feet of quilting, so I'm probably about one twelfth finished.  In those two weeks I was quilting without callouses.  Now that I have my quilting fingers back I should be able to stitch for longer than 20 minutes at a time once a day.  Unfortunately I'm working at the candy store again through Valentine's Day so that cuts down on my quilting time.  I'm going to have to devote more time to quilting if I want to finish this by the end of March!

This would have been quilted with a Baptist Fan but I felt the need to begin in the middle, mostly because I didn't have a lot of extra batting or backing on three edges, so I'm working outward in fan/semi-circle shapes.  I was wondering the other day if this might be a hand quilter's version of free motion quilting.

I'm linking to W.i.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced which is being hosted by Jenelle of Echinops and Aster this week.  Thank you, Jenelle.  And Lee, too.

In February, I Intend to . . .

. . . trim and bind the edges of this String-X -- and be done with it!

It's already been the subject of too many blog posts and if I don't finish it this month I will never, ever again mention it on this blog!  I know I can't wait till the end of the month to work on it like I did with my January goal or it won't get done in time.  Maybe I should begin tomorrow?

Anyone else want to join me and commit to a finish this month? If so, write a post about your goal then link it to February:  A Lovely Year of Finishes ~ Goal Setting Party at Fiber of All Sorts.  Thank you for hosting, Shanna.


Happy stitching!
--Nancy.

Another Liebster

Toye from Quilting Adventures of a Ginger nominated us -- my blog and me -- for the Liebster Award again.  I didn't want to hurt her feelings by ignoring it but I didn't want to nominate another 11 blogs and compose another set of 11 questions for new recipients to answer.  She and I agreed that answering her questions would be enough this second time. But I want to say, go look at her blog--it's so cute!

Her questions for me to answer:

1.  What is your favorite meal to make at home?
Anything easy.  I'm not a great cook and don't enjoy cooking too much.  But if you want to talk about what I like to make because I like to eat it, that's different.  I love hamburger/shepherd's pie, homemade tortillas, cheese strata, roast beef/chicken with garlic mashed potatoes, beef and mushroom stew (known by others as beef bourguignon), French onion soup....  Yum!

2.  What is your favorite color?
I love red.  And green. 

3.  Mountains or Ocean?
Ocean in the spring and summer, but only for playing in the water and walking on the beach looking shells and other finds.  I love the beauty of the mountains in the fall.

4.  What would be the first thing you would buy if you won the lottery?
If I came into a lot of money I'd probably save it until there was a need.  I'm more of a saver than a spender.  On second thought, I could help my daughter and her husband with their home repairs....

5.  What is the name of your favorite teacher in school and what made them special?
Gosh, that's been a lot (a LOT) of years ago!  My memory's not that good.

6.  If your house was threatened by a wild fire, what would be the first thing you would pack in your car besides your family and pets?
Great question because in the event of a wild fire there would be a little more time than a house fire.  I'd take an emergency kit (which would have food and water) and as much of my family history research as I had time to pack.

7. Rock or Country?
Ummmm, well, maybe more classical, or bluegrass.  My daughter went through a time where she really enjoyed country music.  We were painting a bedroom together one day and she turned on the radio to a country music station.  We listened all day and I think they repeated the songs every two or three hours.  By the time I went to bed that night several of the songs played through my dreams and I awoke the next morning singing about beer for the horses (or some such strangeness).  Funny how that happens.

8. What is your biggest accomplishment?
Probably being a mom.  It's not that I can take a whole lot of credit for the wonderfulness of my daughters but I think I helped put them on the road to become the wholesome, self-reliant, generous, thoughtful, beautiful young women they have become.

9. What is your favorite song from the 1980's?
I had to go look up songs from the 1980s.  My daughters were little then and we mostly listened to a classical music station on the radio so I didn't hear many popular songs.  I just googled 1980s songs.  I remember hearing "Total Eclipse of the Heart."  I like it so maybe it's my favorite.

10.  What was the name of your first pet?
When I was about 3 our family got a Boxer.  Her (uncreative) name was Lady.

11.  Bungie jumping or Sky diving?
Heights take my breath away but I've always thought bungie jumping would be a fun experience.  At least I'd be attached to something and not in free-fall.

There you have it -- a little more about me.  Visit Toye's blog to learn more about her and find some blogs that may be new to you.

Thanks for the award, Toye!

--Nancy.
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