One of the waste areas after cutting the Hunter Star blocks was large enough to cut 1" finished triangles. Since there were 4 alike of each fabric I decided on pinwheels that will finish at 2"
So far I have cut 20 combinations for the Hunter star so there are 20 pinwheels. I'm not done cutting the blocks yet so there will be more. If I sewed this right now it would be 8" x 10", about mug rug size. I'm thinking about alternating with 2.5" squares of another Australian print that isn't going to be used in the blocks. I also sewed some more parts for the Hunter Star blocks and pressed all of the pieces.
I also started basting this quilt for ditch quilting with my straight stitch machine. That is the leftover piece of backing fabric laying on it.
Today is the big day for the eclipse and the Chicago area is supposed to have clouds. Hopefully there will be some breaks between them.
This little improv piece has been waiting to be finished for over 10 years. I decided it might be a quick one to finish....and then as I was basting it I realized there would be a lot of decisions. Do I leave the edges crooked, should I put binding or a facing, and what type of quilting did I want to do on it. I went ahead and basted it anyway.
I knew I needed to ditch quilt along the seams before I would do any other quilting so I got all of that done last night. Now I have to make all of those decisions. If you have been a reader for awhile you might remember I asked "which way is up?" on this one and asked for votes in April 2016. The majority of the votes went to #2. See that post here.
I'm helping a friend baste her monster size quilt. The table top size is 60" x 96" so it holds a little over half of the quilt. Here is a closeup of one section of it.
I also went outside while it was nice, about 50 degrees, and raked leaves off my back flower beds. I couldn't bag the leaves because they are wet so they are in piles along the edge of the flower bed. I hope we get enough dry days that I can take care of them.
I found a few more black and gray fabrics in the stack of batiks in the basement and added them to the assortment I showed yesterday.
Several people left comments about black and white quilts yesterday. I put 4 black and white prints on top of the batiks so you can see the difference. With regular fabrics the black prints all have white in them whereas the batiks are black and gray. The regular fabrics have a crisp contrast where the batiks have a softer allover feeling. Anytime gray is added into the mix it becomes softer. When choosing regular print black and whites the trick to keeping it crisp is only a little white in the black prints and only a little black in the white prints. If you have a 50-50 mix it will look gray from a distance.
Last night I basted the small quilt I'm making for a friend.
Here is my first cactus bloom of the blooming season. The red ones usually don't bloom until the end of November so I was surprised it was the first.
This is the pale pink plant and it is loaded with buds. I have others that are closer to bloom time and I'll show them soon.
I couldn't decide what I wanted to work on yesterday so I started basting this quilt and am about half done. I have another already basted. I never fold the quilt after I baste it so I need to start quilting on one of them soon.
Last night I was ready to sew while I watched TV so I sewed the 16 blocks for one of the Stack and Slash quilts.
Then I sewed a bunch of the spiky pieces for the medallion quilt. All of these need pressing and then they will be trimmed to the right size.
After Christmas I bought an Amaryllis that was marked down to $3. The blooms on the first stalk are opening and the second stalk continues to get taller. This is the only bloom in the house right now. I have several large buds on 2 cacti so they should be blooming in a few days.
Even though ideas for new quilts were floating through my head, I continue to work on some finishing. This is one of my favorite small quilts. A portion of it was the header on my blog for several years. I'm ready to baste today.
I chose a back for this quilt and cut the 2 lengths and also cut the batting. A full size photo of it is here. I will get this one loaded on the longarm today.
Yesterday I finally made a decision about which quilt to baste first. Since this one would fit on my higher cutting table, it is the one I chose. I want to quilt it on my straight stitch machine but I don't like to be in the basement at night so I'll start quilting it this afternoon.
I have just 3 more half rows to baste and then I can start quilting. This is one area I especially like.
This is another area I like. I have purple handled scissors and kept losing them on this area.
I needed some standing up straight time as a break from basting. I had these 3 trays of squares that never got put away.
I decided to see how far I could go on a design with just that limited batch. I need to pull out other trays of squares now and fill in the value spots that aren't right.
I started basting this quilt yesterday. It will take a couple days because I don't stick with it for more than an hour at a time.
I started quilting this 42" square wallhanging. I am quilting 1/4" on each side of the seam and the strips are 1" wide so it ends up as rows 1/2" apart. I'm doing all of the light strips first and then I'll come back and do the colors.
This is the time of year when the basement is cold. When it gets up to 60 outside late in the day the heat doesn't come on and it gets too cold to work down there. In the mornings I pop the heat up to take the chill off so that is the best time to work down there.
I cut backings and batting for three quilts, and this is the backing for this one. I also spent an hour looking for the backing for the flannel quilt top I just finished. No, I didn't find it.
This is the second wallhanging I basted to quilt on my straight stitch machine. This one is about 40" square. The other one is about 42" square. I have quilted 13 quilts so far in 2015 in 13 weeks. Now I need to get the 4 ready for this month to keep up that pace.
The blooming area in the living room was bathed in sunlight yesterday morning. I have 4 other plants that each have one bud on them. One is a baby plant started from a piece that fell off one of the big plants. I never know which one they are from and it takes a couple years to get a bloom on them.
