Melon Patch Baby Quilt Finished

You cannot follow both Christ and the cruelty of kings. A leader who mocks the weak, exalts himself, and preys on the innocent is not sent by God. 

He is set to test you. And many are failing.

~Pope Leo XIV

Quilting

That was quick. It's done - quilted, washed, dried, and ready to gift. All while we took a couple of {short} vacations. Of course I quilted a spiral. By now it's easy and it matches the rounded feel of the Melon Patch blocks. 

In keeping with the "use it up" mentality I used the last of the plaid on the back. As usual it was needed to widen the WOF fabric used for the back. There might have been enough plaid to make both stripes but it might have needed some of the outer border trimmed from the front. So, an extension was wanted. I like it. 

Quilt Specifics

Size: 45" x 45"

Quilt design: Snowball or Melon Patch

Batting: Mountain Mist Cream Rose cotton

Thread: blue Superior Masterpiece cotton

Quilting: Spiral with a walking foot

Approximate yardage: 5 yards

One of our vacations was a trip to San Francisco to visit friends, watch the Giants, eat great seafood, and walk the city. The California Academy of Arts has a sphere enclosing a rainforest that you view by walking up a spiral ramp. Fish, parrots, and butterflies. Small terrariums had even more animals. 

Walking to dinner we finally saw the parrots of San Francisco. These bright green conores have red heads and loud squawks. There must have been thirty having a raucous meeting. We watched them for half an hour and they never let up. 

When we returned to Houston we went to an exhibit on the craftsmen heading the restoration of Notre-Dame at the Julia Idelson building. Although a small exhibit, it was quite interesting. Among other things, they highlighted finding examples of the original carpentry tools and the blacksmiths who recreated them. There were many artifacts but also lots of video interviews which are also on YouTube in French with English subtitles.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Blue Melon Patch Quilt Gifted

What makes a movement Fascist is not ideology but the willingness to do whatever is necessary - including the use of force and trampling on the rights of others - to achieve victory and command obedience.

~Madeleine Albright

Quilting

Quilted, washed, dried, and gifted. Melon Patch looks very traditional. The corner octagons give the overall quilt a bit of curve. I considered a pieced border but know this quilt will be tucked in on the sides so chose an easier plan. 

Diagonal lines with a walking foot make the quilting in the center. I started with SID along the Melon Patches then infilled with parallel lines.

And eventually finished by quilting midway through the octagons. That was enough. 

A wave is FMQ in the dark border and a half feather in the outer white border but I forgot to get photos of those. 

The back is a blue plaid from Michael Miller. I bound the quilt with more of the same blue as the inner border. 

Quilt Specifics:

Size: 64” x 81”

Quilt design: Snowball or Melon Patch

Batting: Hobbs 80/20

Thread: blue and cream Superior Masterpiece cotton

Quilting: Walking foot and free motion

Approximate yardage: 13 yds

Reading

When I couldn't find a readable copy of this book I listened to an audiobook. Denise writes about the development of the our Thanksgiving holiday, the search for community, and the joys of family and friends.  The book may seem out of sync with the time of  year but the topics are always pertinent. 

Enjoy the day, Ann

Blue Melon Patch Top Complete

A pessimist, they say, sees a glass as being half empty; an optimist sees the same glass as half full. But a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty.

~G. Donald Gale

Quilting

Because I knew this quilt would be counter-paned and have a light outside border, I cut all those pieces first. They are the largest; the others can be cut from the remains. I rarely use one fabric for all the background. Although I calculated what was needed several times, I still got it wrong. That entailed a second trip in the rain to my LQS {which is now 30 miles away} to get more before it sold out. Again I calculated how much was needed. Fortunately I added another yard "for good measure". Only 24" left. I guess I needed that good measure. ;)

The Melon Patch block looked good 

 

but the first layout was less than inspiring.

That seems odd since the carpet and the counter pane blocks are very similar shades. Once those were added, the quilt looked much better. Now it’s ready to quilt.

Grandson1's choice of a very simple, quiet quilt means this quilt looks old-fashioned (or is that classical?) to me. I'm still pondering how to handle the borders. Fortunately I won't get to that for a couple of weeks... or more. 

Reading

The Goodbye Cat is a collection of seven short stories by Japanese author Hiro Arikawa. I especially enjoyed the second tale about a manga artist whose adoption of a kitten teaches him to parent his own newborn.  Phillip Gabriel is a masterful translator. Imminently readable. 

Enjoy the day, Ann

A Blue Twin

We all get to be young but only the lucky get to be old.

Quilting

My eldest grandson requested a new twin quilt in blue and cream with more lights than darks. Ok; counterpane blocks. But the blocks can’t be too large because the quilting will be something simple like curves or parallel lines. 

I’ve been mindlessly making four-patches of scraps… so while a four- or nine-patch sounds good, it needs to be changed up. What about a nine-patch of snowballs? They could be fairly small. Six-inch blocks sound good but two-inch snowballs do not. Two-and-a-half inch snowballs make a 7.5” block which will work.

Years ago I made a nine-patch snowball and used snowballs in the border. In the first example, the snowball square is divided into thirds to locate the triangles. The snowball border used scraps for the corners so none are exactly the same. In fact, there was no planned corner size. This time I want the snowball to have a smaller, but uniform, corner. What if the corners each take one fourth of a side length? The corners would finish at five-eighths inch. Small but possible. 

The snowballs are cut 3" and the corner squares are 1.25". Because they are so small I didn't mark the diagonals but just sewed across. There are five dark centers and four light centers in each octagon nine-patch. 

Each seam is pressed to the dark then the extra bits are cut off. This let me butt seams easily which in turn kept the bulk down. I'm so glad this block will be counterpaned.

Next I laid out the nine-patch and grid sewed it. Melon Patch is a similar block found in Jinny Beyer’s Patchwork Patterns from 1979 that alternates dark and light centers. Her block is an eight-pointed star, the same grid as Kaleidoscope, but I just used a four patch for drafting individual octagons. Of course, this is not a new block either. It was first published in the Kansas City Star in 1930 as simply Octagon. I like the name Melon Patch better.

Here’s one block. The corners are a bit larger than than expected. I've seen snowballs with very tiny corners and love the effect. Some time I'll try again. Forty-seven more to go. Fortunately all the pieces are cut out.

Reading

Charles King wrote an intriguing book about the history of Handel's famous oratorio. Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah introduces many of the people involved in the first performance of this work and their search for consolation and redemption. From the hypochondriac librettist Charles Jennens through contralto Susannah Cibber who was trafficked for sex by her husband each person highlighted was searching for restitution, reconciliation, or peace. 

There were so many characters it took attention to keep them all straight, especially since I'm not British. My knowledge of royal succession and the life of Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels and dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin where the Messiah was first performed are stronger now. 

King sees the oratorio as an admonition to "live bravely in the face of disaster and defeat." A good reason to hear it these days. 

Enjoy the day, Ann

Snowballs Make a Perfect Border

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

~Ambrose Bierce

Quilting

The snowball borders are finally sewn on the Wheel quilt. Wheee!

Snowball border on the Wheel quilt

Oh, joy! Not that the quilt is done but at least the top is finished. It's too large to get a full photo right now. Hopefully that can happen once it's quilted. Next will be an excavation of my stash to see what white fabrics lurking there could become a back. I can't remember any right now but am certainly not purchasing more before checking the piles already here.

The quilting plan will also take some time. While the backgrounds are not solid white, they are very low-volume so the stitching will show. What will look good? Does the sashing need any or can it just be SID? Fortunately my trusty vinyl is at hand so sketches should be easy.

Clearing Out my Stash

I pulled fabric for six more totes. Although I'm trying to make some for young men, they all look like a tote for little kids or little old ladies. Perhaps solids will work better for older boys. Next month I'll look for those. Each tote uses two fabrics: one yard that becomes the inside and sides plus half a yard for the front. The print in the top left is in two other totes {middle and left on the bottom row.} It's a beautiful {to me} Rose and Hubble print that's so old my hair wasn't grey when I bought it in Lewisville TX. There wasn't enough for a big shirt and it's been sitting in my stash long enough.

Six tote bags

I also finished a dozen pillowcases which should keep my whole family provided. The king size ones take a yard plus a third for the cuff while the standard take two-thirds of a yard plus a third for the cuff. Most of my one-yard lengths got a serious look to decide whether they would work for either a pillowcase or tote. This batch took twelve and two-thirds yards. Now they are ready to gift throughout the year.

Twelve pillowcases

Masks and Gowns

No new masks. Like Robin, I think I'm done until something needs to be replaced but six new isolation gowns this week. In addition, five gowns were sent to me for minor repairs. It's great to have a large group of sewers but would be better if they would read the directions. So that was not so fun but hopefully these were "first round" mistakes. Sewing 4 Good has a small group of paid sewers at a southern California shop but many volunteer sewers. As businesses reopen, I believe we volunteers will fade out; however, all our hospitals and care centers have spent their budget. Some are even laying off staff in the middle of this pandemic. So we will be sewing through the end of the year and probably beyond. Not as fun as quilting but way more important.

Reading

I alternate books online with physical copies but almost always am on the waiting list. A whole bunch came due this past week so I chose The Cuckoo's Calling, the first of a series of crime novels by  Robert Galbraith. That is a nom de plume for J.K. Rowling. {I must be the last reader to find out she has a new series.} Her protagonist, private investigator Comoran Strike, is a disabled Afghan vet looking into the death of supermodel, Lula Landry. I enjoyed it and placed a hold on the second one.

Movies, TV, Etc

We just finished the fourth of nine episodes of Home from Apple TV. If DH wasn't so adept I wouldn't have found this series and it's wonderful. Each looks at one builder or architect in one location, what they built, why they built it, how they were inspired. The homes are stunningly different, from a Swedish log cabin inside a greenhouse to the tiniest apartment in Hong Kong. That place had moveable walls. Not like Japanese sliding screen, these move like shelves in my chemistry lab and reconfigure the space for cooking, working, entertaining, or sleeping. If you see it, let me know which episode most intrigued you.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Nine Patch Snowball

Last year I began cutting a few project remnants into 2.25 inch squares. But by the time there were enough I was in a machine quilting funk. My sketchbook was boring; I couldn't quilt designs I'd previously mastered. I wallowed in this misery for a week. Boring, tiring and non-productive.

Google searches led to Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project. Making small samples didn't appeal. Finally I realized I could make a nine-patch snowball quilt which would:

1. Use up scraps
2. Have small areas similar to Leah's samples 
3. Give me a warmup piece to practice on before moving to larger quilts AND
4. Finish a quilt for the ready-to-go stack.

Nine-Patch Snowball Scrap Quilt

How to make this quilt:

1. Cut 353 squares 2.25". Use the Value Finder to sort the squares by value, keeping only lights and mediums (Gray Scale 9-4.) Darks go back into storage. 
2. Randomly sew 225 squares into 25 nine-patch blocks. Don't make x's or o's. 
3. Press seams to the center (because the snowball seams press out.)
4. Cut muslin into 24 squares of 5.75 inches each.
5. Take 96 colored squares, turn them over and draw a diagonal line on the back.
6. Pin to each corner of a muslin square and sew along the drawn line. 
7. Flip and press towards the corner; make sure the colored square (now a triangle) reaches the original muslin corner. Then carefully cut the excess muslin & colored part underneath leaving a quarter inch seam allowance.
8. Lay out blocks alternating nine-patch and snowball. Match seams and sew. (The seams won't butt each other because they have different angles. Pin the intersections well.)
9. The border is simply a row to finish the "stars." Cut 28 muslin rectangles 5.75 by 2.5 inches and 4 muslin squares 2.5 inches. 
10. Take 32 colored squares and repeat step 4.
11. Pin and sew two colored squares to each of 16 muslin rectangles as shown on the quilt. Since the muslin is slightly wider, the squares won't reach all  the way to both sides.
12. Press & trim the excess from the rectangles as done in step 6.
13. Lay out border alternating rectangles with colored triangles & plain rectangles. Put muslin squares in the corner. Sew.
14. By cutting the border muslin slightly wider, the star points finish 1/4"before the edge of the quilt. Now you don't have to bind exactly to those points. Let it float a bit! Easier.

Step 5

Pressed snowball block

Step 6 (second part)

Additional information: I made this completely from scraps but if you need to buy something, here's the yardage I calculated.

1. 1 yard muslin for the top
2. 1.125 yards for the back (it's 41' by 41")
3. 0.33 yard (12 inches) for binding (quarter inch double fold)
4. 1.375 yards assorted scraps for the squares and triangles

Wouldn't six inch blocks be easier? Perhaps. However, this quilt finishes just under 41 inches, so the back can be made from one width of fabric. With six inch blocks it would be 46.5 inches.

After sandwiching and pinning the quilt I used the walking foot to ditch stitch the block edges and quilt diagonal lines across the surface through the colored squares. Only the muslin areas were unquilted. Every morning I chose a different design from Leah's website and sketched it by hand a few times before quilting one of the muslin areas. Warmed up, I'd move to Ocean Waves. This baby quilt was completed in about a month and only took that long because I just quilted one design a day.

Over that month my quilting improved and I finally created my own designs on some of the blocks.

Tree Bark design from FMQ Project 

Swirling Petals design from FMQ Project

My Baby Owl design (in the border this time)

Three varying sketches as I worked through ear tufts, eyes and beak.

From the "Can't Do" whine to the "Happy Dance" hooray. Thank you, Leah, for sharing your expertise so generously. It's finally linked to the FMQ Friday here. 

Fret not; enjoy the day.

Ann