Lady of the Lake: Quilted

The long-arm quilting continues to be less and less intimidating, thankfully. On Tuesday evening I loaded a small-ish quilt - 52" square. Motivating me this time was my little stack of scrap backing and batting. Throwing scraps away has always been a hard thing for me to do. Over time this tendency results in giant stacks that take up valuable space in my sewing and long-arming rooms. 

Using those scraps, though, means that I have to piece the small bits together. That's a task I dislike. So, on the one hand, I feel compelled not to waste scraps, yet on the other hand, I balk at actually putting those scraps to use. What a conundrum.

I adjusted my attitude about piecing a backing and a batting, though, and once I got into it, of course it wasn't as tedious a task as I'd anticipated. Thankfully.

The backing needed about 10 more inches added to it; and the batting required 3 long thin sections to be connected in order to suffice for the 52" quilt. Tuesday evening, as I said, I accomplished these tasks, and then Wednesday, I quilted the quilt.

Lady of the Lakes was pieced in June of 2020. I had all the fabric on hand, so this is a total "stash" quilt, which is quite satisfying. I wrote about it here, and you can see the quilt more fully on that post. 

I had absolutely no issues quilting this; I am so encouraged that I may even put another one on the machine today. I cannot believe how much practice I feel I need to do a meandering stitch. It requires concentration and planning - you have to look ahead a few inches to know where you want to end up, if that makes sense. I try to think about my needle being a bumblebee, and it is just buzzing all around in haphazard fashion across the quilt. The only rule is to not intersect with previous stitches. I do sometimes break that rule - I lose my place and it's the only way out! (Think of painting oneself into a corner - it's that sort of dilemma.)

I now have the binding attached, and my plan is to take this with me to next week's quilt retreat; I can stitch the binding down in the evenings as we relax after a day at our sewing machines. 

In keeping with the theme of using scraps and piecing small bits together, I did that same thing with my binding. There are three different fabrics used in this binding - two are remnants of the pieced blocks in this quilt, and the third is a suitable match from my blue stash. 

And, I made myself dig out that original photograph from a long-ago quilt show which inspired this quilt in the first place. The date in the corner is 8-20-96. Golly. My baby, now 29, was just 4 years old then! Perspective, for sure.

The quilt show was one I went to with my friend Kay; we drove to Michigan. Her daughter who lives there put us up for the night, and we drove on over to Grand Rapids from her house, if memory serves. I do believe it was the first time I'd ever been to Michigan, and I know we borrowed the daughter's cell phone to call her if we ran into any trouble. A cell phone! Such brand new technology back in 1996!

Well, that little trip down memory lane was fun! Now, back to Great Granny Squares and Trip Around the World blocks. I will be needing to pack for retreat, too. 

Happy Quilting, Friends!

 

Lady of the Lake Flimsy

Much, much more quickly than I ever imagined, I finished up the flimsy of my Lady of the Lake quilt. Piecing does go pretty fast when one makes quilts that measure just 52" square.

To recap the basics on this quilt, I took a picture of a quilt in 1996, bought the 4 center fabrics soon after, and then waited decades to recreate the quilt in the aforementioned picture.

Much more recently, I bought a pad of Cake Mix foundation papers - #11, to be precise - one of the blocks this featured with #11 was a Lady of the Lake block.

Those two events merged earlier this month (click here for that), and I began stitching these blocks. Here's a link for additional catching up.

When I bought the 4 central fabrics, I had no idea of how big I'd want my quilt to be, so I only bought a yard of each. That obviously limited me to a smaller quilt. I had to cut my own squares to use with the foundation papers, and when I ran out of fabric I knew I had to work with the 24 blocks that the fabric yielded. I still have papers remaining, but those will have to go for another project.

I toyed with various settings for this quilt. I did not have the blocks on point as I began, but once I did set them this way, I knew it was perfect. I'd have loved having more blocks to work with, but this will be fine as a throw or accent, maybe even a table covering.

I am proud to say that my setting triangles and border fabrics came from my existing stash. I am trying so hard to use the fabric on hand.

I have plans to try to get a quilt on the long arm by week's end. The weatherman tells us that we are in for a stretch of hot, sultry days, so holing up with Tin Lizzie sounds like a good indoor activity.

I have also begun a new hand-stitching project, which I will share soon.

Hope you are enjoying some beautiful summer days! It's been gloriously beautiful here lately, and I can't get enough of being outdoors.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

More Lady of the Lake

I lacked a few details in yesterday's post about starting this project. These details do not aid in the how-to's for making this quilt, but it does fill in some gaps in the back story.

First, I mentioned that I am using a pad of Cake Mix papers from the lovely folks at Moda. Designed by Carrie Nelson, one of my favorite quilt pattern designers and authors, she created a whole series of these foundation pads for use with the pre-cuts known as Layer Cakes - 10" squares from a line of fabrics. You can see that I am using recipe 11, and there are 5 variations that can be made from this recipe. I am making the third example.

Yesterday's post referenced an old photograph that is my inspiration for this project. I guessed that it was at least 20 years old. I was close, but didn't go back far enough. Here is the photo  from 1996, believe it or not. Goodness gracious!

 Isn't is remarkable that 1.) I still have this picture, 2.) I still like this quilt enough to want to make it, and 3.) I have the fabric!? I say the stars are aligned for this, wouldn't you agree?

I can see now that my blocks are not the same as the blocks used in the inspiration photo, but I don't think I am going to fret over it. I am confident that my blocks will look fine and will be my "interpretation" of the quilt in the photo.

Now, I mentioned that sewing these is made more palatable with an audio book playing nearby. This would also be true for cutting, removing the papers, and pressing. Below is a picture of what one has after cutting just three blocks.

My plan is to take the block parts downstairs in the evening when DH and I are watching television. Pulling off the papers would be easy to do while watching a show. So I am trying to get a lot of them sewn and cut for now.

Steps. Making quilts is a series of steps, right? The first step of this quilt was taken in 1996. Mind-boggling. I took the picture, saved the picture, bought the fabric, revisited the picture, waited 24 years to find the cake mix #11, and finally have begun the construction. And that construction is a series of steps - cut the fabric, pin on the paper, stitch, cut, remove the paper, press, repeat 40+ times, construct the rows, then construct the quilt top. Steps, steps, and more steps.

This is a gorgeous Sunday here in southern Ohio. We have turned off the AC and opened up our windows. The skies are a glorious clear blue, and I am headed outside to enjoy it.

Hope you are having a pleasant Sunday wherever you are.
Happy Quilting, Friends!

Lady of the Lake

Yesterday I began working on a project that I don't believe I have ever mentioned here on the blog. And even though it may not ever have been mentioned, you can be sure it is one that has been on my radar for a very long time.

Exactly how long, I cannot be sure. I took a picture of a quilt that I admired at a quilt show at least 20 years ago. I still have that picture, and occasionally I come across it and think about attempting to replicate it. In a future post I will try to provide the picture. For now, just imagine a blue quilt made with blocks that are similar to Lady of the Lake.

I even bought fabrics for it - also probably 20 years ago, as well.

These are the four fabrics, all in blue that give the appearance of water. As I recall the quilt in my picture was based on the theme of the Great Lakes, and the blocks look like Lady of the Lake, so blue watery fabric made sense. (Are you following this convoluted line of thinking?)

Now, I have one pad of Cake Mix papers for use with layer cakes. The fabrics are all 1-yard cuts, but would be easy enough to cut down to layer cake size. One block is completed, so have a look at my latest project. It isn't the most exciting stitching I've ever done; actually, it is rather mind-numbing, but it does result in a pretty block. It works nicely with an audio book queued up.

The Cake Mix pad has 40 or so pages, and that will determine the size of this quilt, I suppose. I'm not really thinking that far ahead at this point. When I run out of papers, I will see what makes sense from there. Not gonna stress about it, that's for sure!

Hope you are having a wonderful Saturday!
Happy Quilting, Friends!