Fying Geese Border

My "stitchin" this week was to get all the borders around the Wing and a Prayer quilt.  What did I accomplish?  Got one on.  I seem to have this problem of planning more than I can accomplish or is it that my regular life seems to take more precedent than my quilting?

Sunday my dear cousin, my daughter, and I went to the Women's Fair here in Wichita.  We got smart and parked for free at the nearby stadium, riding the free party bus to the fair.  Loud 70's music played and strings of lights decorated the bus.  One woman, who had to stand in the aisle and hang on to the overhead bars, commented, "Hey, we ought to dance.  We've got the poles."  Gave me a giggle.  The fair itself basically was a big sales event for clothing, jewelry, make-up, etc.  But I did find a good black leather purse to replace the one that was stolen last week.

My daughter started a new job this week at a relatively new career college.  She gets to wear scrubs to work.  Now how cool is that.  She works from 9:30 am to 10:30 pm three days a week.  She discovered that she really needed another lab coat so I spent yesterday running around to the local uniform shops, finally finding just that perfect one.

Okay, excuses done.  Here are some pictures of the border I was bragging about earlier.

The border is made with 2 rows of flying geese.  I started out making all 48 geese for the tan/brown border.  Man, was that boring.  So I made just 12 of the green/brown geese, put the geese together to make one of the borders.  Much more interesting.

I really was pleased how the two rows made the zigzag pattern.

As I was pinning the border to the quilt, my chief QI, Cinnamon, came to do her job.

She takes her job very seriously, pulling up each section for carefully scrutiny.

Her job is done.  You can tell what an exhausting job it was.

Finally after the great job Cinnamon did, and my persevering to get the border pinned and stitched, one border is complete.

I really want to thank Cinnamon for all her help (even helping me type this).  She turned a rather boring blog into something a little more interesting.

The Color Red

I adore red!   It is my favorite color.  I've been noticing that the majority of my T-shirts and sweaters hanging in my closet are red.  I just went to a big winter sale and came home with two new red sweaters.  I don't shop planning to buy red, it just happens. 

Last spring when I moved into my new house, I bought the pattern for the Wing and a Prayer quilt.  I've always wanted a quilt with cranberry red as a main color. Then I noticed that the master bedroom where I will use the quilt had pot shelves 8 feet up along one wall, and the shelves were back lighted with florescent lights.  I began to envision a collection of cranberry red glass with the lights shining through them.  So I began to hunt and collect pieces, even long before I would have the quilt.  As of yet, the pieces are decorating my living room as I need many more pieces for the shelves to look right.  Oh, darn, more trips to antique and thrift stores or places like Hobby Lobby.

Here are the pieces I've collected so far.

 These were the first two pieces I purchased at Hobby Lobby--just to get the collection going.

 
These two were gifts.  The square piece came with a bouquet of roses sent to me by my brother-in-law and his wife as a house warming gift.  The tall vase was a gift for my birthday from my dear cousin.

This little pitcher was a find at an antique store.  I loved the red body with the clear glass handle.

These are my latest acquisitions.  My cousin, once again, has contributed to my collection.  She recently remodeled her kitchen and found these stuck back in a cabinet.  She says they came from her mom's house and thinks that one of them was given to her mom by mine.  I have always had "thing" for cruets.  I was so delighted to get them. 

This is my collection so far and I'm looking forward to seeing it grow. 

To see other people's great favorites, hop on over to Shay's Favorite Things Friday .

Glorious Geese

I've been in the geese business this week--flying geese that is.  In order to join the sampler blocks together, 48 flying geese had to be constructed.  The three colors used were green, rose, and red.  And, of course, by the time I got to the 37th one, I finally got the technique truly down. Which is really good since the rest of the quilt has mucho, mucho flying geese used in multiple borders.

The geese were sewn into geese units and then sashed.

Then the fun began.  These geese units were used to join the sampler blocks made previously, and then the blocks were attached to the medallion.

When the quilt is completed, this section is set on point.  I was unable to get it in a photo with it turned.  It now measures 49 inches on a side. 

Also the color is a little off.  The areas that appear white are actually tan.  (More the color shown in the pics of the flying geese sections)  Again so much for my photographic skills.  Hey, one thing at a time.  I'm learning new quilting techniques and learning to blog.  I'll work on photography later.

I was so excited to finally get all these separate blocks together.  Don't you just love it when a plan comes together.

Wing and a Prayer Medallion

My objective for this week was to complete the medallion for the Wing and a Prayer quilt.  I did finish it, just a few days later than planned.  I was going to whip this puppy out and post about it by midweek.  Well, I made it by Sat.  After reading P's post "Where Does the Time Go?" I at least know that I'm not the only one who is challenged when appropriately scheduling plans with reality.

The work on the medallion was done in three separate sections.  The first section was an eight point star requiring multiples of sewing in the Y.  I always approach this with trepidation as I've had problems in the past getting the Ys in so that they lay smooth.  However, I was able to do them all with little problem.  I was really feeling full of myself.

This picture, however, was the third try.  If you look carefully, you will see that the gold sections have traces of a bright green.  The first time I made it, many of these sections had large areas of this shade.  I began to realize that that shade of green would clash with the more subdued gray/green in the rest of the fabrics so I decided to rip out the 4 sections that had a predominance of that bright green, fussy cut new ones, and stitch them back in.  All went well, colors much better, but then the darn thing wouldn't lay flat.  So (third time's a charm), I ripped it apart again, did a little resizing of the pieces and the final result was a 13 1/4" block.

The second section was the red half stars also requiring Y seams. Again all went as planned. Now my medallion had grown to 18 1/2"

The third section was a border requiring diagonally cut rectangles and sewing the triangles from 2 fabrics so that half go one way and the other half go the opposite.  I worried that I'd miss cut or sew, but took my time and they, too, went together as planned. Only one problem arose when trying to attach the border to the block.  Some of the points were a little off and on first try I cut the points off.  Oh, yes, "The ripper is my friend."  But finally the medallion was complete.  It measures 24 1/2"

This will be the center of the quilt and the previous blocks that I've blogged about will go around it.  Onward I go.  Maybe this week I can improve my scheduling.

My Original Landscape

For today's Favorite Things Friday, I'm sharing something very special--an original landscape done with acrylics.  It is special for two reasons.  For one, it is just plain beautiful, and two it was made especially for me by my cousin's husband.

When I moved into my present home last spring, I had a large bedroom with no furniture.  I spent time collecting just the right pieces of furniture and then, of course, I had to make a new quilt to cover it.  I've written about my Asian quilt in previous posts.  But the room really needed some art work.

My cousin's husband had dabbled with painting through out his life, but after retirement, took it seriously.  His home is like his own gallery and seeing his work from his early pieces to the present show how much he has grown.

Before I had even finished the quilt, I asked my cousin if Mr. Cousin would consider letting me hire him to do an Asian themed landscape.  "Oh, he's already said that he wants to do a painting for you."  After asking about what he would charge, she said, "For you, nothing."  It was after the holidays before he had time to get to it.

One day, I was talking to my cousin on the phone and I hear in the background.  "Tell her I hate her and her painting."  Mr. Cousin has a great sense of humor and this was his way of saying the painting was really frustrating him.  Anyway, after 3 canvases, much sweat, and I'm wondering about a few tears, the painting is born.

Mr. and Mrs. Cousin brought it over and presented it to me this week.  The painting cost me $1.  That way he can tell others who are trying to get him to paint for him that I commissioned him.

Pretty cool, huh!

Samplers Complete

This week I actually found some time to quilt.  I finished all of the eight blocks for "Wing and  a Prayer" that go around the center medallion.  Here are the last three.

This is sampler block 6.  Looks fairly simple, doesn't it?  But did you ever have one of those days when you manage to turn around pieces and have to have "do-overs"?  I can't tell you how much ripping I had to do.  My daughter tells me to say this mantra, "The ripper is my friend."  But by the time I finished this block, the mantra had become, "The ripper is my @&!%---!."  Finally I got it right.

Now sampler block 7 had 77 pieces.  You'd think that this would be the one to give me fits.  However, it went to together like a dream.  It was a bit time consuming, but was so much fun to do.

Lastly, block 8 came into being.  I really like the colors and design of this block.

So now it is onward to make the medallion center block this week.  It is 18 1/2 inches.  I'm so looking forward to seeing it come to fruition.