Under the Wire

Whew! I'm sneaking a post in here today, the 31st of July in the evening. I just finished my Spokes wall hanging under the wire. The deadline to meet and post my OMG (One Monthly Goal) is in a couple hours, LOL. But it's complete, including the hanging sleeve. 

Usually I prefer to show some in-process photos, but I just decided on Saturday that I was going to make a mad dash to the finish line, and I didn't take too many pictures.  

This is how the wall hanging started the month - with the black and white background finished, as well as the bicycle, basket and the base area of the flowers all fused on.  My goal was to completely finish this wallhanging by month-end.

Last Saturday I began cutting out flowers, leaves and flower centers out of the array of fabrics that I'd set aside. Several were cut from the final mix. I played with them on the design board and got an arrangement I liked and wanted to keep. Mistake. The design wall is vertical, and the flower and leaf pieces still had their backing attached. So, I took it down, removed the papers, and began again to arrange it on my sewing tables. When I once again got an arrangement I liked, I fused it down with the iron.  Here it is back up on the design board at that point.

Here's a close-up of the flowers and basket. The basket, again, is woven strips that was completed last month.

And here is a close-up of the spokes area. I really love how this area came together!

And then I basted the quilt on Sunday or Monday, can't actually remember. Next the quilting began. It is very narrow, almost matchstick-type quilting. Each row is approximately a half inch apart. They are not precise, although I did mark the center points on all four sides and started there. But the lines themselves are rather organic. The quilting took a long time - a couple several-hour sessions. Once the straight lines were done, I did some micro-stippling in the flowers and leaves to make sure to sew all the pieces down securely. Although I don't anticipate having to wash this wall-hanging, I don't want floppy flowers!

The binding and hanging sleeve came next, and it was done! I worked on it most of today (Wednesday) and it's done!

Spokes measures 32.5" x 37". It is perfectly square although I didn't press it well enough to hang perfectly straight. I'm glad I cut the background a couple inches wider on each side, because that gave me room to trim and square it up after quilting it to death!!

I'm so pleased to have this project done and hanging up. In JULY!!  Linking up to the OMG finished goal link-up at Patty's blog, Elm Street Quilts. I so appreciate her efforts in running this program to help us make and meet monthly goals!

Spokes was also Goal #5 on my 3rd Quarter Finish-Along list. I will link up there at the end of the quarter, but my goal list is HERE.

Happy Independence Day and July Goal

Happy Independence Day to everyone in the United States! How are you celebrating?

We’re just having a quiet cookout at home, followed by neighborhood fireworks. 

We’re not much for big gatherings and goings-on.  

If you're outside of the USA, I hope your July 4th is wonderful too!

It’s time for me to name my monthly goal (OMG) for the July link-up at Elm Street Quilts.

Last month my goal was to get the background and base of my Spokes and Blossoms wall hanging completed, which I did. And now for July, my goal is to get it finished. To do that, I need to collage all the flowers and leaves over the peachy-colored blob spilling out of the basket in the picture below. I may also collage some other reds onto the handlebars.

Once that’s done, everything will get its final pressing and trim. Then I’ll sandwich/baste it to the backing (as yet unselected) and quilt it. The quilting will be very dense as recommended on the pattern. Plus it will add a bit of stiffness which is great for something that will be hung and not frequently laundered. Finally, I’ll need to add a hanging sleeve and binding... and voila!

We are days away from the full ripening of the apricots on our tree, and July is going to see us eating, dehydrating, canning, freezing, sharing, baking (etc) apricots with family, friends, neighbors, my Weight Watchers buddies, fifth cousins twice removed, and any random person who happens to stop by.

Busy Summer Days

I know many retirees ask this question; How did I ever have time to work? My summer days are filled with (morning) gardening or errands and housework, then lunch, and afternoons of  sewing and/or reading or more errands. And now the garden is coming on. We have been harvesting lettuce and spinach daily. Cousin Kim takes some and I always take packages of veggies all summer to my Weight Watcher (WW) friends. It’s interesting to plan meals around vegetables instead of protein (meat).

And the rhubarb! Yum! I chop and mix it 50/50 with chopped strawberries, simmer on the stovetop with a wee bit of water (and sugar to taste) for about 10-15 minutes. It makes a great compote that we use as a side dish (like applesauce) or on angel food cake with strawberries and dollop of whipped cream - almost like a trifle. We seem to eat half of what I prepare twice weekly and the rest is frozen for the rhubarb-less months of fall and winter.  Our poor apricot tree is so laden with fruit that we have propped up all the branches we can. When I’m out in the yard every morning, I pick up a bucketful of the still-unripe fruits that fall to the ground. Bruce will grind them up and compost them.

I was able to get a lot of scrappy sewing this week, and am linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog.  Our color for June is blue, from mid-tones to darks. First, I finished 10 anvil blocks.  I just noticed that they are rather randomly placed in the picture, but that’s OK. They’ll be mixed up with all the different colors soon enough!

Then I finished the garlic knots - 10 of those, too.  The garlic knots use a plain Kona White background.

And finally, 16 nine-patch variation blocks (courtesy of Jennifer C). They are the various blues plus black and white. I haven’t decided on the final arrangement, so you will see (and may have already seen) me play around with these as I sew them every month.

Next week I’ll be tacking blue strings, making some International Sister blocks (thanks to Preeti for the pattern and some dark complexion fabrics!) and then maybe get to crumbs...

I also have made some progress toward meeting my One Monthly Goal (OMG) for June. This is the pattern I’m working from, called Blossoms & Spokes by No. 2 Abbey Lane.

Over last weekend I got the nine blocks crazy-pieced and sewn together. I’ve made them a bit larger (1” wider and 1” longer) than the pattern calls for because I want more background around the flowers and tire.  I randomly pieced more than half the blocks (because I used to be a crazy-quilter and I like that sort of thing), and then used her template to make the rest.

There is one fabric that I think is too dark (I don’t need to tell you because it sticks out like a sore thumb). But I placed it where it will be covered up by the basket and flowers, so it doesn’t matter.

Once the background was sewn, I cut out a basket shape on some solid fabric. Then the instructions had me fuse some web to two fabrics, cut strips and weave them. They were placed over the basket base and lightly fused to it. This is what the basket looks like so far.

That took a long time, and I needed to get more fusible web. JoAnn Fabrics had it on sale for 60% off, so I went and got some. They had so many partial bolts of the Pellon double-sided fusible, and I grabbed all the nearly-gone bolts. The salesgirl thought some pieces weren’t good enough to sell because they were torn up or missing instructions, so she just threw those in. (Heck, some of it is going to get torn up anyway in the collage process). And since I cleaned up bolts, she was only loosely measuring. Somehow, I ended up with over 7 yards for about $8.50. SCORE!

Anyway, this is a picture with the background, basket and the next pieces - the bike frame and flower base - pinned on. My goal is to get those done this next week. After they’re in place, I can get the tire and spokes done, which will complete the entire base, which was my goal for June. The flower collaging will likely not happen until July.

I got the wall painted in our library/Africa bedroom, and that room got put back together. When Bruce cleans up his remaining mess (music stuff - I don’t fiddle with it, no pun intended), I’ll get a picture. The next painting will be the baseboards, closet and ceiling in the other guest room. But probably not this coming week - I have to pace my shoulder!  And we are still waiting for the new back door and storm/screen door we ordered for my studio to come in. We got a notice that the manufacturer has shipped them to the installer, so we are just waiting to hear from the installer to schedule that. Do you spend your summer doing little projects around the house too? 

Setting a Goal for June

I’ve been dithering about whether I wanted to set a sewing goal for June. Last month I set a goal (and met it) of finishing the Stringy, Starry Night quilt. And I even blogged about it here, but then I forgot to link up! Oh well, the purpose is really to motivate us, isn’t it? And so far this year I am 5 for 5.

Therefore, I’m going to go for it and link up to the One Monthly Goal (OMG) goal-setting linky party over at Patty’s Elm Street Quilts blog. That is, If I remember to actually LINK UP, hehe.

So, here is my goal. This is a collage pattern I’ve had for almost a year, and I really want to make this cute wallhanging. It’s called Blossoms & Spokes. These are even the colors I want to use. When you have a mostly-neutral color palette in the living room, these bright punches of color help to keep things lively.

Now, I don’t expect to finish the entire thing with quilting and binding (necessarily) this month. My goal will be to piece the low-volume crazy-patch background and get the bicycle body, tire and spokes and basket pieces sewn on by the end of the month. That will leave the flower collage part to be done later. 

I’ve got a variety of floral fabrics for the basket flowers as you can see from my fabric pull above. It will take some experimentation to see what I like and what will work best. Maybe solids cut into flower shapes will work better.  I just don’t want to have to rush through it. Of course, if it just plays nicely and all comes together, who knows. Maybe the entire thing could be done by the end of the month. We will see!