Finishing Frenzy, Week 2

It was a great week in the sewing studio and at Chez Kizerian in general. Bruce passed his CERT training (Citizens Emergency Response Training) through the Murray Fire Department and his ham radio club. YAY! Yep, even being one-armed he can tote training dummies, etc. This week I lost the last of my Covid weight gain (finally), and am now on track to begin losing the “older” poundage, LOL. The weather here has been crisp and cold, with occasional rain and even snow. Beautiful! Just like the old days. Maybe we’ll have a normal, snowy winter!

So, let’s talk quilting. Over the course of the last week or ten days I sewed up 28 black string blocks (that will finish at 6” each) as I try to whittle down my dark neutral scraps along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Down the center of each block is a strip of black-and-bright fabric. These 28 blocks joined 28 other blocks of bright solids and a “carpenter” print that had the same colors. This is the resulting quilt top:

I am so totally in love with this top! But the best part is the backing fabric, which was the inspiration for the whole color scheme and pattern. It was in the batch of fabric and scraps that sweet Wanda sent me a couple months ago. A match made heaven, I say. 

This cutie will be basted and quilted in the next week. Also serving as inspiration from Wanda was these bright cat strips below. At least I think they were from Wanda. I received so many scraps from several directions in October that I’m not entirely sure. But I’m thinking this looks like so many other cute animal scrap fabrics that Wanda has bestowed on me for Quilts for Kids, so I’m going with her!  

These width-of-fabric strips are just pinned on the design wall for now. In this month’s continuing effort to pare down some of my black scraps, I made two rows of vertical black strips with an occasional black-and-bright strip thrown in. The backing will be more of the cat fabric and some Tula Pink cat-eye fabric from her old Tabby Road line. I’ll show that next week. This top, like the first one, is slated to be finished up in the coming week. Then I have one more quilt planned for the black scraps for later this month. 

I did finish off the quilting of three other little quilts this week, which puts my Finishing Frenzy tally at 6. These first two were sent to me as tops by Jo Kramer (Jo’s Country Junction) to quilt, finish and be donated to a charity of my choice. As you know by now, Quilts for Kids is my choice.

The first one is a Dr. Seuss-themed quilt. I quilted it with loops. It measures 40x50”.

The backing was this cat fabric, which I felt was necessary since The Cat in the Hat was not represented on the front, hehe.....

The second quilt was this bright daisy-themed number, which measures 41x56”. Bruce likes this one best because..... RED. It’s his favorite color.  

I practiced some different free-motion quilting motifs with this quilt. Yes, I did do stipples in the red and blue strips, but the daisies were outlined with scribble-style quilting (my term; I don’t know what it’s really called. Do you?) and the borders were done in a wishbone pattern.

I find the kids quilts to be a good opportunity to practice new things on now and then because no one really cares if it’s only “meh”. 

My third and final finish for the week was this little basic patchwork quilt. I cut it out in Blue September, but never worked on it until this week. The lavender blocks stand out more in the photos than in real life, but other than that you can see it’s just a sweet mash-up of miscellaneous 4” blocks.

I used my machine’s walking foot to quilt a basic grid pattern. The backing is an older piece I’ve had laying around for awhile.  This soft little quilt finished at 40x48”. 

That’s it for this week. I’m hoping to concentrate more on finishing 5-6 quilts next week as I’ve got two basted and ready to go (an elephant quilt and the blue and red checkerboard), and four more tops that will be ready for basting by the end of today. 

Let the Finishing Frenzy Begin!!

For the month of November, I’m focused on finishing up quilts in my studio. I have such a backlog of quilts that are either pin basted and waiting to be quilted and bound; assembled tops waiting to be pin basted; groups of finished blocks that are waiting to be sewn into a top; and groups of blocks that need just one or two more blocks sewn to move them along. As my time and attention span permit, I’ll be flitting about the various piles and tasks, with a goal of finishing up at least 12 quilts this month. That equates to about three per week, totally doable. Some of these quilts will be Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts, either personal or going to Quilts for Kids. Some are Community Quilts that were sent to me by Jo Kramer (Jo’s Country Junction in IA. She runs this national program to move along quilt tops into finished quilts for charity), and some are just quilts sewn by me for our own gift-giving.

Here is my first finish. I sewed these donated scraps (triangles) and strips together into a top last month. The solid green and purple were from my stash. The edges look wavy here, but it’s really a flat and even quilt. I just didn’t take the time to straighten it before the photo. My bad.

It’s a wacky quilt that measures 38.5 x 46”. The quilting is a mixture of serpentine stitching, loops in the print outer borders and a stipple done in the nine center blocks. I used the last of my favorite green fabric for the backing.  

Next I began quilting up - and completed - two of the four Community Quilt tops from Jo. I’ll do the other two next week. The first one is farm animals alternating with a pastel checked fabric. This little quilt measures 38x38” and was quilted with loops.

The third and final finish for this week was the same checkerboard pattern (also finishing at 38x38”) with bright yellow fabric and colorful jellybean-like alternating squares. This time I quilted the print squares with loops (I knew it wouldn’t show up) and the yellow squares with some free-form floral motifs.

Here’s a close-up that shows it off a bit better. 

And then it was on to assembling one of several elephant quilts that are waiting patiently in the queue. Gotta love those elephants! My friend Nann sent me this awesome elephant print fabric. There was enough to use as the outer border and the entire quilt backing. Thanks, Nann!! This top is now ready to be basted and quilted next week.

And finally, I had some 4.5” pastel blue blocks (60 of them) from Blue September in the RSC that I had paired with other pastel (-ish) miscellaneous 4.5” blocks that had been in my stash for far too long. The colors are way darker in the photo than in real life, but it’s the best I (read: the camera) can do. I had intended to sew this top together in September, but then sciatica struck and it was set aside. Anyway, they’re all sewn together now, and this will be the fourth quilt that I intend to finish off in the next week. Stay tuned!

I’ve also determined that my crumb tumbler RSC project needs two more rows: a brown row before the dark red and a gray row at the bottom below the purple. The solid-fabric tumblers are cut, so I’ll take some time (hopefully) this week to sew up the necessary scrappy tumblers to finish this top off. 

Yesterday I sorted my drawerful of black (and black/white, black/bright) scraps into crumbs, chunks, strips of 2.5” or wider, and strings of less than 2.5”. I will be sewing black string blocks this week. I plan to pair them with solid (or tone-on-tone) bright colors for a hopefully lively kid quilt. I don’t have a particular setting in mind yet - we’ll see how many string blocks I get out of the black first. The wider strips can wait another week or two. I’m hoping to get at least two quilts with the black scraps done, although there are probably enough to do four or five. 

A group of my WW (formerly Weight Watchers) friends came over last Tuesday evening to play the card game Hand and Foot. It was organized by several of us who have grown into great friends, and several  others were invited. Even our leader Kris joined us, and she lives up by Park City! There were seven of us all together, and we had a blast. The snacks were all fruits and veggie trays, with some little WW snack bars (2 points) for anyone wanting a hit of chocolate. Several of the ladies are also quilters, so that was fun to have them playing along in the studio. I had moved two of my  four sewing tables aside. We played our games on two of the other tables and it was perfect!  Fun fact: Kris grew up in this neighborhood, and her boyfriend was Kurt S, whose family lived in this house (for 40 years) before us. So, she knew the neighborhood and the house, although we’ve remodeled or changed every room as well as the exterior of the house in our 20 years here! It’s a small world! 

Have a great week. Are you in a finishing frenzy before the hectic holidays arrive?