String Tulips 2 Quilt Positively Finished

A president doesn't have to be brilliant. 

He doesn't have to be clever. You can hire clever. 

But you can't buy courage and decency, and you can't rent a strong moral sense. 

A president must bring those things with him.

~Peggy Noonan

Quilting

My second String Tulips has more yellows in the border. {I learned that from the Electric Socket.} 

String Tulips on Blue baby quilt 

That let me choose tulip petals that are lighter in value than the first. More yellows here, too. I can see more yellow will be useful in future quilts as well. It certainly adds light and excitement. 

Detail of crossed tulips

After all the difficulties quilting the previous String Tulips this one is quilted in the same manner. I'd like to get those ideas down pat.

Detail of string tulips

I really, really, really wanted to use this blue and  white stripe for the background but it was a bit short in one direction. Even after cutting the extra from the height to add to the width, there wasn't quite enough to fill the space. So I just turned the final scrap ninety degrees. It adds to the charm. Right?

Detail of String Tulips border

The back uses a blue stripe enlarged by an insert of green. 

Back of String Tulips on Blue quilt

As always quilting visibility improves on the back. Is it because we have fewer different fabrics? The zigzagging of the border quilting is easily seen here. I stitched diagonally across each block around the inner round of the border then moved to the outer round to complete the design. The zigzags roughly parallel the strings.  

Detail of back of
String Tulips on Blue quilt

The border is the final remnant of a pillowcase made for a grandchild. Not even enough to capture the entire height of the swans but the color was a good value and I love the scale variation it adds. 

Folded String Tulips on Blue quilt

The binding caused me to pull out all my fabric {which is greatly reduced from the beginning of the year. Hooray.} This fun print was in the purples but the blue undertones {is it periwinkle?} and the sprinkling of dark blue ovals made it work very well here. I love finding unexpected solutions, don't you?

Quilt Specifics

Size: 47" x 47"

Design: String tulips and string block border

Batting: Mountain Mist Cream Rose cotton

Thread: Gutermann 50/3 light and dark blue cotton thread

Quilting: SID and FMQ

Approximate yardage: 6.5 yds

Previous posts:

1. Stringing along - the original plan

2. First String Tulips quilt finished

3. Starting String Tulips 2

4. Binding String Tulips 2

Reading

A friend recommended Reading with Patrick {The Atlantic's comprehensive review} to me and I'm glad I took her suggestion. The memoir by Michelle Kuo focuses on a two-year stint with Teach for America in Arkansas and her seven-month return to the Delta a few years later when she discovers one of her students has been arrested for murder. Michelle, who currently works for an Oakland CA non-profit, says her writing is an act of contrition. The New York Times published a conversation with her that illuminates her motives and hopes for the book. 

Enjoy the day, Ann

A Second String Tulip Started

It takes courage to live through suffering and it takes honesty to observe it.

~ C. S. Lewis

Quilting

The first set of Electric Socket blocks have been on the design wall long enough. After so many supportive comments, I've come to like the craziness, too, but still wanted to play with tulips. Fortunately there are still more blocks waiting to be sewn. Now I'm basically repeating the previous tulip quilt but with a brighter border. The blocks were arranged to flow from yellow to red to blue to green to orange and back to yellow around the border. The yellows in Electric Socket made that quilt shine so they had to be included in this one. Additionally, repeating the Tulip design should help crystallize all the techniques I learned {hopefully without all the mistakes.}

Because the border contains clear, bright strings, the tulips should, too. Compare them with the black tulips in the first String Tulip quilt. 

Green could have been used for the stems but this black and white seemed more fun and made a more emphatic contrast on the blue striped background. Altogether this is a jauntier look for the same layout. Funny what a difference a few strings make.

Reading

So many books are in my queue these days. I'm coming to realize how my "home reading", i.e., those books I've purchased, gets behind. The library has been notifying me daily of yet another hold that's available. After waiting so many months for access, I'm more aware of the queue of readers still waiting. 

The Smallest Lights in the Universe, a memoir by MIT astrophysicist, Sara Seager, recounts her professional development from a young girl awestruck by the sight of a clear night sky to a MacArthur grant recipient and lead of a NASA research team. Soon after becoming tenured at MIT her husband dies of cancer. The story intertwines the search for extraterrestrial life with the equally important ones of search for a meaningful life and search for connections with other lives. She masterfully links images and scenes from one to the other. 

One of her many skills is the ability to explain her projects clearly to amateurs and non-technical readers. She simplifies without speaking down. She also conveys an amazing awareness of other people, why and how she built a family/community of people vital to her life. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Working on the String Tulip Quilt

"We're all just walking each other back home."

~Ram Dass

Quilting

Delightful as I find this quilt it was set aside while I finished some that needed to be gifted sooner. Finally I can get back to it.  For smaller quilt like this, doubling my folding tables makes the perfect basting table. They fit perfectly with no time wasted moving and re-stabilizing the quilt package. 

A few lines of quilting hold the petals. None of the fabric behind them was cut away. Slow, steady sewing was key to getting this part done.

String Tulips pin basted

Combined with stippled background the tulips now push forward a bit. I considered echo quilting but stippling is easier for me and the strong Xs in the border and the crossed stems are enough straight lines. 

Stippling the background of String Tulip quilt

Next up is the border.

Around the House

Less sewing than some weeks but we are busy with several chores around the house. Not exciting to write about but definitely nice to carve out a bit more breathing room. It's amazing how many old, tired items accumulate wherever we set down roots. 

Enjoy the day, Ann

String Tulips

Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over

what impression he is making or about to make.

~Bruce Lee

Quilting

As if the first set wasn't enough, here's a second set of the Electric Socket strings. {Thanks for the perfect name, Julie.} Not so much yellow here and the green blocks aren't resonating. 

More string X blocks

Leaving them on the design wall gave me lots of time to arrange and rearrange all those string blocks. I moved something every time I walked by but they were just too crazy together. It could be the mix of fabrics {completely mixed up} or the angles of the strings themselves but it never gelled. What to do? What about taking out the center to make a medallion? 

After a while, I realized scrap tulips have been on my wish list for years. Tulips remind me of our dear sister and always make me happy. This will be my #AHIQPositiveThinking prompt. Just when I need a smile. 

Now I've looked at hundreds of tulip quilts over the years - antique stores, online auctions, blogs, etc. - but some of my favorites come from Audrey at QuiltyFolk. There are three general block types: a single tulip with leaves, one or more tulips in a basket, and crossed tulips. {Audrey has made all of them.  Another reason to follow her blog.} The center petal can be another string set or a single fabric. 

Most often the petals are strung crosswise but I saw one years ago in Dallas where the strings ran the length of the petal. That's what I chose to do with mine. 

Angled string blocks as a border

The tulip are sized so one petal fits inside one of the already sewn blocks. No reason to add more work. It also uses some of the blocks that were removed. How nice is that!

Now to choose the background fabric. Loads of greens and a few blues came out of the stash. These four are too busy, too bright, or too strong.

Possible center background fabrics

This funky green with gold crosses and x's blends nicely with the melange of colors in the border. Lighter tulip petals faded into the background. Using blocks with some dark strings {like the one in the bottom left} makes the tulips pop the most. It reminds me of Black Tulips such as Queen of the Night and Black Hero. 

String Tulips baby quilt top

I was going to add leaves but there wasn't room once everything else was sewn so circles using Kay Buckley's Perfect Circles templates were the backup plan. My circles always turn out well shaped with this tool and there's a lot of choices in the set. I just put different sizes on the top until it looked right. Then it seemed to need another set of circles at the petal points. 

All the appliqué has turned under quarter-inch seams topstitched down using an edge foot... even the circles. {My previous appliqué used a blanket stitch.} Only when sewing across the bottom of the tulips did I have any trouble. So many seams. Just slow down so the stitch length stays even. 

The stems are binding remnants. Their chunkiness fits the large scale of the tulips. 

Monthly FUR (Fabric Use Rate) 

Despite my goal to finish more tops, nothing was completed in July. Again. YTD = 111.75 yards.

Voting and Census

Our national election scheduled for November 3 is 98 days away. Help someone register and encourage everyone to vote. Everyone needs to participate in a democracy - both in becoming informed on issues and candidates as well as actually voting.

And just as important, the 2020 census is still ongoing. Everyone residing in the US of every status needs to participate. Our constitution requires an accounting each decade of every person in the US and its territories as a way to determine congressional districts and apportion Congressional seats and allocate federal money. Please make sure you and your neighbors are counted. Check here for more information. 

Reading

Poems by Mary Oliver have been my latest evening reading. After weeks of randomly reading her poems online I started her fifth collection, American Primitive. Her reflections on nature and her joyfulness at life draw me in every time. 

Enjoy the day, Ann