Unpinned - a string pieced quilt

Here's my latest quilt finish. This top went together really fast. I pulled the string pieced triangle and square units from my basket of pre-made string parts, and found they fit together perfectly. I played around with the positioning of the pieces and finally decided on the pinwheel effect.

The background is quilted with feathers. I made a template for the spine of the feather and marked it in each section. The feather lobes were stitched free-form to fill the space around the spine.

That red print with the yellow apples in the photo below was left over from a blouse I made back in 1975, and it might be the last little bit of that fabric that I had. I left it un-quilted.

This border print worked great as as a backing fabric.

My photo helpers had a bit of fun during the photo shoot. 

This short wall behind our barn has always been a favorite place for climbing and jumping. 

The finished size of this quilt is 60" by 84". 

This quilt and others from my book, Every Last Piece, will be hanging in a special exhibit of my work at the STITCHES midwest show in Schaumburg, IL, August 2-5.

Wordless Wednesday - the quilt photo session edition

Summer

Summer seems to be chugging along at a speedy clip. Every spring I think that I'll have SOOOOO much more time for sewing when school is out. Then once we are into summer we are busy with camps, gardening, vacations, reading, lazing about and a bit of travel teaching for me.  

You would think I would have learned by now to just sew when I can and relax about it. I have so many projects turning in my head and I'm eager to work on them. 

I'll have time to make them when school starts back up, right?

Thoughtful Sunday

"Teach us Delight in simple things, 
And Mirth that has no bitter springs."

"Children's Song," The Puck of Pook's Hill, Rudyard Kipling, 1906

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I thought I'd bring back the Thoughtful Sunday posts I had on my blog a few years ago. The premise is a quote from a children's book paired with one of my photos. I'd like to get back to daily photo sessions with my fancy DSLR camera and thought this might give me some focus. We harvested our garlic this week but I didn't take any photos. This is a photo from 2011. Previous Thoughtful Sunday posts can be found here. 

Unconventional Update

My daughter-in-law helped me pin this string quilt this week. Now I need to decide how to quilt it. It definitely calls for something simple. 

More Baskets

When packing for my teaching trip to Vermont Quilt Festival last week, I flipped through my demonstration notebook to make sure everything was in order. Look what I found in there - a stash of basket blocks and parts for more baskets. I guess I could have made my little quilt a bit bigger. Now I have some starter blocks for another project. Go me!

Wordless Wednesday - La Passacaglia

Unconventional and Unexpected

I seem to be in a finish and clean up mode and that led to prepping this king size quilt for quilting. 

A friend's sewing clean out and purge unearthed this fabulous large scale vintage print. Can you believe? It's PERFECT for the back of this quilt.

The large flower print is wide enough that two strip of it will cover the width of the quilt. It lacks about 8 inches to make two full height strips. Whooop!  I'm over the moon thrilled to be adding this quilt to the pile ready for basting and quilting. I hope to get it quilted this summer. 

Last Minute Hoodie

With one full day before she had to leave for music camp Miss P decided she wanted to make herself a hoodie. She searched the web for a pattern, printed it out and got right to work.

We decided to take the project to the studio where there is air conditioning and fewer distractions. She worked on her hoodie and I build a back for that king size quilt on the floor and then did a little hand stitching. 

I have to say this is the fastest she has ever completed a garment for herself.  And of course she had to include a pocket because we all know there are never enough pockets on clothing for girls and women. 

I hope she has a great week at camp!

Entomologie

Have you seen Betz White's new Entomologie fabric? She sent me some small pieces to add to my La Passacaglia quilt and I am smitten. I especially love that bug and butterfly print. I love that it's a print of some of her felt embroidery; and those bugs and butterflies are the perfect size for fussy cutting.

I ordered some yardage of that one and you can too! Here's a link to pre-order directly from Betz.  I am eager to cut all of these prints and add them to my fussy cut quilt. Those supporting fabrics also go with all my others in this quilt. It's like she made the whole collection of fabric just for me to add to my quilt! 

The pre-order ends on June 22 so act fast.