#2018 Planning Party Update

Joining in with the 2018 Planning Party over at Quilting JETgirl.

So almost one third of the year has gone so let’s see where I am!

What do I hope to achieve in 2018 in terms of quilting?

• Complete my Grandma’s Kitchen quilt by quilting and binding it.  ♥    Completed 
• Complete the I Love Dirt quilting and binding   ♥    Completed 
• Quilt about three tops that I have   Next in line is one of these.
• Finish off a QAYG project that I started in 2017 and lost interest in, by doing a half size quilt
• Bind another couple of quilts waiting for that to happen
• Biggest goal is to piece up 40 more Splendid Sampler 6 inch blocks and then join them into a top and quilt, most likely using the same method for quilting as Grandma’s Kitchen.   ♥    Completed 
• Finish piecing my log cabin hearts and sew into a top.  ⇐  Working on at present. I have all the blocks complete and will now put them aside to work on something else. 
• Plan a quilt and look for fabric that will suit it, one in memory of my mother, when planned start it. ♥    Planning started, fabric being gathered.
• Link with my sister to make a memory quilt for my Dad – we did save his clothing and my sister has  prepared pieces.  ♥    Off the list as my sister is well ahead with this.
• Take a trip north to visit some quilt shops – and family of course. ♥    Completed 
• Learn some photography skills for both quilt and book blogging

So even though it has been the summer months I am rather pleased with where I am, plus I have started on a small baby quilt too!  Still those tops though waiting to be quilted.

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Baby Quilt Top

In a couple of months there will be another little grand nephew so I have been making a simple little quilt that he can use perhaps to lie and kick on.

In the meantime here is my young Aussie grand nephew wrapped up in his “I Love Dirt” quilt that I sent him.  I am sure he is looking forward to his new cousin.

This one is much simpler and I used some Baby Jungle by Makower fat quarters that I had.

The blocks are …..

Top finished… or is it?

I’ve sewn the bottom border wrong way round! So leave it for a few days, unpick it and resew!

Next will be to organise backing. I am going to go scrappy as I want to use up some of the fabric from this quilt plus some left over backing I used for the I Love Dirt quilt. I’ve decided I need to use fabric up rather than leave pieces lying about.

Joining Up the Splendid Sampler OMG April

Joining up with Elm Street Quilts

• This month my goal is to quilt the final piece of my quilt. This is the largest section – it goes diagonally across the middle of the quilt.
• Join each section together – at this point two sections are joined and I have two more to do this to as well. As it involves the largest section – might be a bit of a mission.
• Place it on top of the bed I want it to go on and see what I want to add to it in terms of borders.
• Add the two side borders using the method “stitch and flip”.  Which means sewing on the border material to the quilt – the backing and batting are in place already. A step I have never done before so we’ll see how I go.
• Decide what I will do about a bottom border. Probably no top border.

The two pieces that are joined!

Icing on the Cake  Quilt

This would be getting the binding sewn on. But not making it a “must” for this month’s goal.

Quilting Splendid Sampler OMG

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts

My one month goal for March was:

• the sashing finished on the blocks of the Splendid Sampler
• place the corners on each row because it will be an on point diagonal setting
• sew the rows together so that I have 4 pieces in total. I intend then to use a QAYG method for joining as shown by Marti Michell in one of her classes on Craftsy.
• Pin one section to backing and batting, working out how much batting and backing at the edge so that I can add a border later. This is all pretty much new to me, so it will all hopefully work out!
• Quilt that one section.

I have achieved all of the above and a little more.  I have three pieces quilted.  I mostly stitched in the ditch, around applique etc, and a little fmq here and there. I like a puffy kind of quilt so I don’t like too much quilting.

It has been good to focus this month on one thing, when I was tempted to continue piecing another top, I just put that temptation away and kept going on the Splendid Sampler.

I broke a couple of needles and gave up counting how many times I stitched the backing to a piece of quilting, which meant quite a bit of unpicking!

Top Left of Quilt

Bottom right and next row up.

These will be the first two that I join. The wide pieces of batting and backing will stay so that I can add a side border. With the size of my bed I think I will be only able to add two side borders and one bottom border possibly.  As I have never done this before it is all an experiment.  Guidance thanks to Marti Michell from one of her Craftsy classes.

Finally two bottom sections of quilt joined.

 

 

Putting the Splendid Sampler into Rows OMG

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts

My one month goal for March will be to get all

• the sashing finished on the blocks of the Splendid Sampler
• place the corners on each row because it will be an on point diagonal setting
• sew the rows together so that I have 4 pieces in total. I intend then to use a QAYG method for joining as shown by Marti Michell in one of her classes on Craftsy.
• Pin one section to backing and batting, working out how much batting and backing at the edge so that I can add a border later. This is all pretty much new to me, so it will all hopefully work out!
• Quilt that one section.

The above is what I aim for, if there is time at the end I start pinning and then quilting the second section.

This is what it is looking like at present as I start on this goal

Finished Grandma’s Kitchen Quilt

My Grandma’s Kitchen quilt is completed. I used a quilt as you go method to quilt it and learned that it is a good way to go when dealing with a large quilt. I did it in three rows of two. I discuss how this went in my QAYG post  It has wool batting and so will be nice and warm in winter.

So good to have a quilt finished!

The Magic Number of 83 Splendid Sampler blocks.

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal event.

I set my goal for February to sew 10 six and half inch blocks to add to my Splendid Sampler pile.  With possibly the hope that I’d get another 10 completed as well and reach the total of 83 that I had decided to finish at.

I am happy to say as you can see from this picture I have reached 83 blocks. I am as I write this putting the last embroidery stitches into the last block.

I even started sashing some of the others already completed, so I am feeling good about reaching this point in the journey.

Once they are sashed I intend laying them out on point and moving on to the next stage.

 

Experimentation QAYG on Grandma’s Kitchen

So I have pieced the three pieces of Grandma’s Kitchen quilt and pinned ready to quilt as Pat Sloan suggests. I am a little behind her so she says first of all to leave one side not quilted to about 1 inch, but then when she quilts her second piece she quilts right to the edge. Okay I think – following like a sheep!  And as it turns out – led to the slaughter!!

Here is her way.

And that was all great, but here’s the thing – I had used nice puffy wool batting and Pat has used nice thin cotton batting so this method was great for her but when I did it, it was just far too bulky so I had to adapt.

This is what I did with piece one to piece two. Luckily I had left a wider piece of backing than Pat had so I mucked around and first of all got some of Marti Michell’s one sided tape and ironed it over the seam.

I then folded the back flap over and sewed down one side. It just didn’t want to go right over in one go so this then had to be a two step process because I didn’t want any speed bumps!

Then I sewed over the second side and it was nice and flat feeling on both sides of the quilt.  However I did not want to do this when joining the third piece so I left a one inch gap on the bottom of the piece as I quilted. I also chose to put the bottom piece on the top of the quilt as that was an easier section to leave open.

So when I was ready to put on the third piece this is what I did, having learned this from a Craftsy class by Marti Michell.

The backing and batting is cut 1/8th of an inch larger than front of quilt.

Now cut away the batting by 1/2 inch with the front and back out of the way.

Iron on one sided sticky tape to keep batting anchored, pressing to to the backing.

If you want pin the front out of the way.

Match the two pieces together just like Pat shows in her video. This is going to be a far less bulky seam.

Join up the pieces.

And now all is left to do is bring backing over and stitch down by hand, turning a 1/4 inch to neaten as you go.

And it feels good and its difficult to see where it was joined!

I am hand sewing down the binding at present.

When I come to quilt the Splendid Sampler I will certainly be using this method.