Month: March 2023

I’m still not quite ready to get into my sewing room and fire things up. I think I’m hesitating a little because I have many backings that need to be made. I’m not looking forward to manipulating and handling all that yardage. So I think I’m procrastinating a little.

But I did spend a few minutes in my sewing room tonight auditioning some potential backings for my Jumble Starburst quilt. I had a particular piece of fabric in mind for it, but I’m not sure it’s really the best option.

I have four options. If you’re inclined, let me know in a comment which one you like and tell me why you like it. It’s fun to see what others like and learn why a particular option works for them.

Here’s option number 1 — Kaffe Layered Stripe in red.

A closer look…

Option number 2 — Kaffe Heraldic Sheilds in green

A closer look…

Option number 3 — Kaffe’s Antwerp Flowers in green

A closer look…

Option number 4 — Brandon Mably’s zig zag in the bright color way

A closer look…

Let me know which one you would choose and why by leaving a comment.

Like I said, the one I had planned to use isn’t really working for me. There are two other options I like. One I don’t like so much. It will be interesting to see how my opinions jive with others.

It was a beautiful spring day today. It was in the high 40s and we had a good deal of sunshine throughout the day. I did a short walk around my yard this afternoon to see how spring is progressing.

My daffodils have bulbs that are forming quickly. Won’t be long until these start opening up.

My flowering pear trees (I’ve planted 11 of these in my yard!!!) are forming buds nicely. They will be blooming soon.

The blooms on my forsythia are just starting to open.

For my mother, the forsythia was her indication that spring had arrived. We have many family Easter photos posed in front of the forsythia bush!

I’m already loving the light in the evenings. Look how pretty it was tonight!

The lawn has just started growing in the last few days. It seems that everything is convinced that spring is really here!

I’ve decided I’m going to take a few days away from my sewing room. That last project taxed me a little. So I’m thinking about what I’ll do next. I’m actually thinking I’ll make a few lists… things I should finish, things I want to start, and things I’m noodling on.

There are a good number of things I SHOULD do.

I SHOULD put the border on the sunburst quarter log cabin quilt I’m giving to my brother.

I should make the quilt back for my Jewel Frames quilt that’s for my bedroom.

I should make the backings for the four quilts that my friend will quilt in exchange for some quilt tops.

(Hmmm. There seems to be a definite color story in those quilts. I hadn’t noticed that before.)

OR… I could do something really fun instead.

I could pull out these scrappy blocks and toss them on the design wall and look at them for a few weeks.

I could start a new quilt.

Maybe these bright batiks made into big drunkards path blocks.

Or I could dig into this pattern in Australian Aboriginal fabrics.

OR I could start cutting into these KFC fabrics and make a blue version of the Jewel Frames quilt.

I’m sort of itching to start something new, but I really need to get those quilt backs done. So I think I’ll spend some time being responsible before I give myself the luxury of something more fun.

Spring is starting to poke its head up here in Portland. I saw this patch of crocus yesterday.

Today was a very wet day. It poured all day and my lawn is like a swamp. It did clear up after work so we got a nice evening walk in, most of it in daylight!

Bender had his own way of dealing with a dark and dreary day.

We’ve got some really wonderful weather coming up. It looks like spring may finally be arriving!

I’m going to play some pickleball tomorrow night. It will be ice to get some activity in after a long day of work.

My one goal for today was to finish this thing. I’m looking forward to not working on this tomorrow.

It measures 63 x 80 inches. That’s a good throw size and a little bigger than I thought it would be.

I’ve decided I’m going to try to figure out how this all went so wrong. I know it’s because of how I put on the sashing. But I really want to know what the solution is. I really want to know that there is an easier way to put it together… in case I can ever convince myself to make another one.

So, here’s how I made this quilt top… for posterity.

The blocks are quarter log cabin blocks. You can find lots of tutorials for them on YouTube. I started with a center block of Kaffe Fassett’s Sunburst fabric. It’s out of print and nearly impossible to find. I cut the squares to approximately 3.5 inches square. They were not precise from block to block. The strips vary in width… anywhere from about an inch wide to a little over 2 inches wide. I added strips until the block was big enough that I could square it up to 8.5 inches. You can make them any size you want. Then I set them on point and added 3 inch wide sashing. That’s it!

And now my final disclaimer: If you make a quilt like this, I recommend that you don’t sew your sashing to your blocks. Lay out your blocks and sashing on your design wall, then sew the rows together from there. I think it would all go together much more smoothly with that approach. 

Here’s the finished flimsy.

And some eye candy…

I love looking at all these fabrics as I do the final pressing.

Next up will probably be adding the borders to my first sunburst log cabin quilt top.

Then I want to get the backing done for my jewel frames quilt and then get these two quilts off to my long armer.

I took Rico for his herding lesson this morning down at our trainers place in Molalla. He was so amazing! He did things that I’ve never seen him do before — in a good way. I really wish we had gotten him on video. Alas, it will have to live forever in my memory.

After our lesson we drove a few miles down the road for a nice hike on some logging company land. We had the entire place to ourselves. And it felt really good to get out.

Look at that sky!

That photo was taken right after Rico rolled in something nasty. (He got a good spray off with the hose when we got home.)

It was so nice. it felt like a spring day but everything is really behind this year. It’s not nearly as green as it usually is in March.

It was really nice to get to walk in some sun. I could feel the warmth on my back as we walked.

We walked until we couldn’t walk any further. I decided this was a good place to turn around.

A lot of trees and boughs were down because of our wind storms this winter.

Here’s where we were when we turned around.

We walked a total of a little more than three miles. And with some good elevation gain.

I had to stop at the top of this hill before we did the final quarter mile to get to the car. I love walks that end with a nice uphill climb!

I had to take this final picture tonight since our “sparkly winter tree” will come down tomorrow.

I always leave that tree up until the time changes in the spring. I love its light when it’s dark so early.

Have I mentioned that the day the clocks change in the spring is my favorite day of the year? WELL IT IS!!!

I took today off work just because I felt like I needed a day off. So I called a friend of mine to see if I could get a private dog agility lesson with Rico. We headed to her place for a lesson at 11 am. It felt really good to get out of the house and get some physical activity and conversation with a friend.

Rico enjoyed it too!

You can tell how much fun he had by the amount of dirt and slobber on his face.

After our lesson Bender got to play some fetch in my friend’s field.

Good grief! He’s so freaking photogenic!

When we got home I grabbed some lunch then hit the sewing room to finish up that troublesome lower right corner on my Jumble Sunburst Quilt top.

I separated it out into the sections that I needed to sew together to make the entire piece come together.

Once I got these for sections done I planned out the order to sew them together.

1, 2 and 3 were really the important pieces. The corner triangle (3) had to be sewn across both of those pieces. Once that was done I sewed on 4 and 5. It took longer than this description! I carefully checked and rechecked each pieces as I sewed. I didn’t want to have to get friendly with my seam ripper again.

So now it’s all ready to be sewn into one piece. There are five pieces.

Since the corner pieces overlap each other in different ways, I spent some time planning out how these pieces would need to be sewn together. Here’s the sequence that will make it all work.

I’ll probably get this sewn together tomorrow. At least that’s what I’d like to see happen.

Rico has a sheep herding lesson down in Molalla, OR, in the late morning. Once I get home from that I’ll probably take the boys for a walk if the weather is ok. Then I’ll dig in on putting this thing out of its misery.

It will be good to have it done.

Reminder… If you make a quilt like this, I recommend that you don’t sew your sashing to your blocks. Lay out your blocks and sashing on your design wall, then sew the rows together from there. I think it would all go together much more smoothly with that approach. 

It’s been a long time, but I actually have some Frankenbag photos made by my blog readers. Let’s get started! I’m just gonna list each maker with their photos… ’cause there’s a lot!!!

But first, because someone will ask, here’s a link to my Frankenbag tutorial.

@schmidtquilt on Instagram. Have to say, that orange and black one is pretty fantastic!

Sandee Henricks. she made some mini Frankenbags! So cute!

Sherry Hunnell. That yellow spot square in the middle is sort of everything!

@quiltygirl on Instagram. Love those watery batiks!

@mmiloudesigns on Instagram. I love those big old cabbages!

Marion Wolf. Love those dark color with the stripes!

Liz Washburn Mandelkow. How cute is that moose?

Lindy Gibbons. She made this for a friend with a matching jacket. Her friend seems to LOVE it!

Laura Hillier. Love, love, love those pastels!

Karen from Alberta, Canada. Sometimes a white lining is pretty special!

Angie House. She added vinyl to the bottom. A big old beach bag!

Cindy Doucette. What a fun idea to use whole cloth on one of these!

Elizabeth Hedges. Fun fabric combos. Love the blue and orange!

@Emma_made_lemonaid on Instagram. What a great way to us up left over triangles!

Phew! That’s it. So many bags! Thanks to everyone who sent in photos. If you sent me photos and haven’t seen your bag here, better email me!

I actually think I’m almost there. After another hour or so in my sewing room tonight and some judicious use of my seam ripper, I have all the sections of this quilt sewn together with the exception of that pesky lower right corner.

But the really good news is that that lower right corner is actually ready to be sewn together!!! I almost can’t believe it’s true!

So here’s what I had to do tonight to get it to this point.

First, after looking at it and figuring out how the different sections were going to go together, I decided to sew the row of four blocks on the lower right corner to the center rectangle. I figured out that I could do that to actually HELP the construction of that pesky corner.

The large diagonal space between the rows in this photo is the seam I sewed together.

So that means that the lower right corner only has two rows in it… the row of three blocks and the corner with one sunburst block.

Then I decided to dig into the upper right corner and get it put together. The construction on this one is pretty straight forward, but the way I had sewn the sashing onto the blocks was making putting this together in a way that would join nicely with that lower right corner very, very difficult.

So I looked at it very carefully, determined what the issue was, and made a plan of action.

To make this section join nicely with the corner, I needed to remove the sashing on the bottom of the three blocks in the row of three blocks. That space in the middle of those blocks is where I removed the sashing from two of the three blocks.

This meant rekindling my relationship with my seam ripper.

It’s not a relationship I cherish.

Once I had that done, I measured and cut a long piece of sashing and sewed it to the row below this row of blocks. Here it is all pinned in place and ready to sew.

So, here’s what that little adjustment made possible. It made it so that those corners of the blocks and setting triangles will all be sewn in one straight line, rather than having to do Y seams to get it put together. . . and probably some terrible mistakes if I took that approach.

Once I had that sashing moved to the row below, I was able to sew this upper right triangle together and put it aside for the final assembly.

I’m feeling pretty confident that the final pesky, irritating, challenging, swear-inducing corner will be done tomorrow night! Can that really be true???

I don’t think I’ve ever had a quilt top that’s been such a puzzle and brain challenge to get put together. I’m really wondering how much of this pain and frustration would have been avoided if I had put the sashing on the way I intended. It may not have completely alleviated the challenges, but I’m thinking they might have been simpler to solve. I’m thinking I want to make some 2 inch paper blocks and lay them out to see what difference that would make.

And now, a recommendation. Several people have commented that they want to make a quilt like this.

If you make a quilt like this, I recommend that you don’t sew your sashing to your blocks. Lay out your blocks and sashing on your design wall, then sew the rows together from there. I think it would all go together much more smoothly with that approach.

I’m going to restate that with every remaining post about this quilt. I may even go into older posts and add it so people who want to make this can avoid all I’ve gone through.

It was a beautiful spring day here today. I swear my daffodils have grown four inches since they were covered with snow a couple weeks ago. I’m even seeing buds forming!

We had a lovely walk in the sunshine this afternoon.

It was raining tonight so we didn’t get a walk. My boys were not happy about that.

I forgot to share this video of a bird singing in my back yard yesterday. It was so loud and I’m sure he was letting everyone know that spring has arrived!

I hope he knows what he’s talking about!

Update: If you make a quilt like this, I recommend that you don’t sew your sashing to your blocks. Lay out your blocks and sashing on your design wall, then sew the rows together from there. I think it would all go together much more smoothly with that approach.

After way too many days of looking at this Jumble Starburst quilt on my design wall, I dug in this evening and started sewing.

I got quite a bit done. I sewed the top and bottom left corners and sewed the center rectangle section of blocks.

I’m thinking I might be able to sew that row of four blocks in the lower right corner to the rectangle above it. But I’m not sure. I need to get the upper right corner put together first so I have a better idea of how that lower right corner will join up with it all.

So, I would guess that I have about 2/3 of this top sewn together. Unfortunately, it’s the easy 2/3s!!!

I have the blocks for that upper right corner on my small design wall. I’ll work on it tomorrow night. It’s pretty straight forward.

I don’t love pressing quilts. But there is one thing I love about it… it’s this view!

I do have a little bit of regret on this quilt top. I wish I hadn’t been so obsessed with figuring out how to make it come together and had spent a little time thinking about my setting triangles — auditioning different options. I think a different color of Jumble would have been really fun for the setting triangles. And that way I wouldn’t lose those jumble sashing points. I’m feeling a little sad that those points have gone missing.

But it’s too late now. I’ll have to live with my regret.

I’m pretty sure I have that pesky lower right corner figured out. It s going to overlap the upper right corner when it’s all put together. I’m not exactly sure what that’s going to look like. But this corner will probably be the very last piece that’s sewn onto the quilt top. At least that’s what I’m thinking right now. Who knows… I might have a completely different plan tomorrow.

It feels good to finally be taking action with this beast! I might even have this all put together in the next few days.

My boys are usually really good at hanging out while I work from home every day. But at around 4:00 every day they lose their patience. Even if we’ve had an afternoon walk like we do most days.

Bender gets really close and usually keeps bringing toys to me. I often have to shoo him out from under my desk as he likes to get under there and get tangled up in all the cords. Sometimes he just looks really hopeful…

That dog could stare a hole right through me!

Rico can be more demanding… barking and barking to get my attention. Sometimes he looks damned cute when I ask him something important like, “do you want to go outside?”

I decided I’m going to take Friday off. I have a few things I need to get done that can’t be done on the weekend. I’m looking forward to a long weekend. Maybe I’ll shirk my obligations and take these boys to the coast if the weather is nice.

Update: If you make a quilt like this, I recommend that you don’t sew your sashing to your blocks. Lay out your blocks and sashing on your design wall, then sew the rows together from there. I think it would all go together much more smoothly with that approach.

I’ve been busy this weekend and out and about so I didn’t hit my sewing room until tonight about 9 pm. I didn’t have a lot to give but I did get a few things done.

I’ve been thinking about this quilt even more over this weekend. I’m pretty sure I have it figured out so tonight I went ahead and cut the setting triangles and corner triangles and got them all up on the design wall.

It’s sort of a mess of stuff that’s overlapped, not aligned and haphazardly pinned. But it’s making sense in my head.

I got on a FaceTime video call with my friend this morning and showed her what the issue is and what I was thinking for a solution and she thought I did actually have it all figured out.

So here’s the solution. I sure hope it works. On each of those blocks on the right side of the design wall I’ll sew the vertical sashing (upper left in photo below) to the setting triangle.

The sashing that’s missing on the right side of this block (above) will be attached to the setting triangle that will fill that space.

Here’s how it comes together with the blocks around it.

Each row in this section will be completed from the left, moving to the right and ending with the setting triangle. Then those horizontal rows will be joined.

The good news is that this lower right corner is the complicated one. The other corners are much more simple and straight forward!

I still have to cut a few pieces of sashing. I was just too tired to night for any more thinking. I’ll probably start sewing on this tomorrow night. Wish me luck!

I took Rico for his sheep herding lesson yesterday morning. He did a great job, again! The field we were working in was really wet and muddy (and there’s more than dirt in that mud!!!), so he got a good spray off when we were done.

He’s gotten pretty accustomed to being sprayed with a hose after herding!

After his lesson we had two hours to kill before my Italian potluck dinner with friends. So I took a little drive around the countryside, then took the boys for a nice long field run. They had a great time playing with a really big stick!

I’m lucky they didn’t break my leg with that thing.

I was really impressed with our Italian pot luck meal! All the food was really good, and that’s not always the case! A couple people weren’t able to be there, so we were missing a couple of dishes. But still had tons of food.

We started with my Canederli and a pizza.

That was followed by some ravioli with creamy cheesy sauce and some gnocchi pan fried with butter and garlic.

It all wrapped up with a fantastic lemon tiramisu. It had limoncello and lemon curd.

Soooo yummy!

My friend’s young Briard Leica kept us company while we ate. She was such a good girl and got a few treats when her mom wasn’t looking.

She had her head on my lap a good portion of the meal.

Leica is big! I can stand up and scratch her head without bending over!

I was so tired last night I didn’t even take the boys for a walk. They were not happy about that.

But we got up this morning and went for a nice 3.5 mile walk after breakfast. I saw the first daffodils in my neighborhood.

It’s so wonderful to see them! Spring is just around the corner. And I saw another blooming shrub. My plant identifying app didn’t know what this was.

Then after some puttering around the house and getting few things done, I was off to play pickleball. I played for two hours and had an absolute blast! It might be the best I’ve ever played! And I felt great the entire time and feel great tonight. I even had enough oomph left to take the boys for another walk after dinner.

Another work week on the way. Yippee!

Throughout my meeting filled work day today I found myself taking the short walk back to my sewing room for a gander at my Jumble Starburst quilt. I’ve been preoccupied by solving the construction issues that I found last night.

And I think I have most of it figured out. I just might have my head above water on this one.

During my short visits to that design wall today I played with the blocks and separating out sections that would work in getting this quilt top done.

I was actually afraid those sections wouldn’t show up very well in that photo so I unnecessarily put some painters tape up there to show it better.

I’m going to have to get the sashing put on the final few blocks before I can completely figure out the corners. That lower right corner is especially troublesome. It’s like all the weird issues with this layout slid down and pooled in that corner.

I’ll just have to be very deliberate in how I layout my sections with the setting triangles. I’ll need to have a detailed plan and follow it carefully. That’s NOT going to happen tonight!

I have a feeling I might have to do at least one partial seam to get this thing done. Egads!

I didn’t actually get any sewing done this evening because I had to run to the grocery store and buy supplies to make a dish for a friends potluck tomorrow. We get together every couple of months and cook food from a designated country. Tomorrow’s meal is Italian. My mom’s side of the family is Italian… in fact, her parents were immigrants form Northern Italy.

So I chose a traditional family dish: Canederli. It’s basically balls made from bread and other yummy stuff simmered in chicken or turkey stock. Here’s an online recipe that gives you an idea of what it is.

Here’s my mom’s recipe.

I love how vague this recipe is. Add some salami. Add some parsley. A lot of my mom’s recipes are like this. Luckily, that’s how I cook so my mom’s recipes work for me.

I got the canederle all made and on a cookie sheet in the freezer.

Since I have to transport these tomorrow, I thought it would be a good idea to have them in a state where they can weather that a little better. Plus, I’ll keep a few for myself. They freeze well and I can just pull a couple out of the freezer, drop them in some broth and simmer for a few minutes, and voila… delicious lunch!

My kitchen smells like bacon and onions and salami and parsley. Yum!

I have some turkey broth I pulled out of the freezer for this. I’ve been saving it for something special.

Weekend!!!!

After our evening walk I hit my sewing room to finish up the sashing pieces on my Jumble Starburst quilt top and have run into some interesting challenges.

I think the challenges may be due to the fact that I added the sashing to the wrong sides of the blocks. But I’m not positive of it.

I had intended to add the sashing pieces to the two top edges of each block, like this.

But when I started adding the sashing pieces to the blocks, I mistakenly added the one to the lower left first and added it to all 26 blocks before I realized what I had done. So I just added the second sashing piece along side it, not anticipating the issues it may cause.

I’m not completely positive that this is what’s causing my issues, but I’m pretty sure it is.

So, here’s what’s happening. Basically, the sashing pieces aren’t lining up from block to block. The way they’re applied means that the blocks will essentially have to overlap.

It’s not an insurmountable problem. It just means that there’s really only one way to put the blocks together in rows. And it’s going to be an issue in all four corners. It just means that I can’t assemble the entire quilt top row by row.

It looks like I’m going to have to put it together in five quadrants. One for each corner, and then a large square in the middle. This picture shows how the two upper corners will be put together as a piece, with the main quilt body below them.

God only knows what’s going on in that lower right section. I still haven’t figured that out. But I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to remove the sashing pieces from some blocks and add them to the adjacent blocks to make it all work.

Hmmm. Maybe that lower right corner needs to be bigger than the other corners. Maybe that will solve the confusing issues down there.

My brain hurts from trying to figure this all out. I’m going to look at it tomorrow when I’m a little fresher.

And now I’m thinking the issue might be because my sashing method that works really well for square set blocks just might not work so well for blocks on point. I might actually draw some sketches to see if on point is the issue.

I do think it’s likely that I can start putting the quadrants together tomorrow night. As long as my brain has stopped hurting.

We had a nice variety of weather today. While I was in a meeting this afternoon a huge hail storm raged for about 10 minutes. The entire yard was turned white.

And five minutes after it ended, the sun came out.

I spent the rest of the meeting listening to Bender snore as he slept in the warmth of the afternoon sun.

I noticed my daffodils when I got home from our walk this evening. I think they’ve grown two inches since our snow storm last week!

When I accepted my current job and made the decision to move to Portland, I first looked at my house and made an offer around the end of February. The daffodils were in full bloom at that time. So they’re pretty late this year! They’d better get moving!

Work has been hectic this week. Any time I take vacation I usually pay for it with a plethora of meetings the week I’m back. I’ve been sitting in Zoom meetings all day long the last three days. I didn’t finish going through all my emails until around 6:30 tonight. Phew.

After an uninspired dinner of leftover chicken made into some sad and half-assed chicken salad, my boys let me know it was time to get a walk. So I put on my bluetooth headphones, got the dogs lighted and leashed up and me bundled up and reflected, and we called a friend and headed out. headed out the door. My weather app said it was supposed to rain, but we stayed dry throughout our three miles.

Once I got home I hit my sewing room to get the sashing cut and sewn onto the six starburst blocks I made last night. First thing I had to do was press my jumble and get the sashing cut.

I just LOVE that jumble fabric. I’m so glad I have way too much of it my stash!

It was clear that I was tired when I chain pieced the sashing onto six blocks and ran out of bobbin thread half way through the first one.

I usually detect a slightly different sound my machine makes when I run out of bobbin thread. I don’t know how I missed this. So I sewed it all again, making sure I was actually accomplishing something.

I did manage to get the six new blocks sashed.

Then I grabbed the other 26 sashed blocks and tossed them all up on the design wall.

I moved a few things around. I doubt I’ll do too much more with this arrangement. I’ll look at it for a few days before I start sewing on the sashing pieces on the edge blocks then cutting the setting triangles.

I did adjust the photo to black and white to see how the values look. I see a few things I’ll switch around before this is finalized.

I’m going to use the same jumble for the setting triangles and will probably add a 3 or 4 inch border of the jumble to get this to a good size. I’m thinking it will finish at around 65 by 75 inches or so. That will be a good throw size.

This should all sew together pretty quickly…. nice big blocks, not a huge quilt top.

Here’s some eye candy…

And a little more…

And two more, just to be safe…

My yard guys came by today for their regular maintenance and I asked them to blow out my rain gutters. I feel like I just had it done, but look at all the crap they got out of them!!!

I LOVE my yard guys. They do such an amazingly nice job and just see stuff that needs to be done. They are really keeping my large lot looking good all the time! And by keeping my patio clean, the dogs and I don’t drag in as much flotsam and jetsam.

Two more days and it’s the weekend! I’m exhausted!