Carly Ann: Circles

So I didn't make it back here this weekend, but that shouldn't be a huge shock! LOL After working over 60 hours last week, and Zach starting a new job, we got hit by the inevitable sinus infection going around. Most of the weekend was spent alternating DayQuil and NyQuil and generally lounging in our PJs. Not what we intended, but was worth it to feel much better this week! But that's not what you are here for... On to the good stuff!

At the January meeting of the Central Florida Modern Quilt Guild our group revealed the results of the Riley Blake Fabric Challenge. If you have not heard about it, you can read up on the MQG website HERE. The basics were that each member was given 6 fat eights of fabric from Riley Blake and we had to incorporate them into any quilted project. We were permitted to add additional Riley Blake prints, or any other solid fabric.

Let me just start by saying that this ended up being a HUGE challenge for me. What I thought would be a fun week-long project turned into a month of designing struggles, and then a rushed 2 day job. Not ideal, but very educational for me. One thing I did recognize in my quilting style is that if I don't have the right combination of fabric in front of me I tend to hit a bit of a design 'wall' (pun intended). Regardless, I did end up finishing on time, so that's a success in my book! Now, onto the show!

The Riley Blake prints we were each given to start with.

I wish you could all see this first quilt in person. Not only is the design absolutely striking, but the quilting on it is AMAZING! Each round of circles is quilted in a different pattern, and the all over 'snails trail' in the background is the perfect addition! This is my free motion quilting inspiration for the year. I plan to refer back to it often to remind myself of what is really possible if I would just practice! (okay, well I may be expecting a little much of myself, but it's good to have goals, right?)

Linda H. from the blog Flourishing Palms.

This is my quilt, titled Accidents Happen. It's not my favorite, but there is a bit of a story behind it that I want to share. I started the project doing some wavy pieced blocks in the hopes of using the array of colors to my advantage. I sketched it all out and everything! After finishing a few blocks, and adding the word 'relax' to run along the bottom I stood back to take a look and hated it. No bueno. It didn't give the rainbow effect I was going for and instead just looked like a serious hot mess! What's a quilter to do but start over of course. At this point I was running very low on the fabrics that were supplied, time to finish, and patience with myself. I decided to throw caution to the wind and just start cutting what was left of the Riley Blake fabric into one inch strips. Sometimes that's all it takes to get the juices flowing. I realized that planning is not my strong suit and really improv is the way to go for me! I finished the blocks and then decided that the RELAX at the bottom needed to stay. Relax is my word of the year for 2014. I tend to get overly anxious and stressed (yes, about everything) and I'm hoping keeping the quilt on the back of my couch will be a good reminder to just relax and let things be! One can hope, right? I free motion quilted this with what I like to call paint splatter shapes. My thought was it looked like a water balloon was thrown at a window and shattered. In other words, Accidents Happen! All in all it was fun to quilt, and gave me a really great sense of accomplishment when I finished it on time. Here's to many more (and less frantic) finishes in 2014!

Somehow this one got turned around, but I WILL find a picture of the elephants on

the other side. Beautiful use of the colors and fantastic straight line quilting.

This one I believe was titled The Falls. Again, the picture does not do this justice.

The falls of water were accented by beautiful blue 'water' stitching and bubble

quilting where the bowl was overflowing at the bottom. So creative!!

I've already decided to steal this quilt to hang on my sewing room wall.

I'm not sure how, or when, or where, but I NEED THIS! Ha!

This one I absolutely love! I really love the Gracie Girl (obsessed with this line) she

added and the improv quilting that she did herself! Those circles are perfection!

This is a different spin on the ever popular chevron quilt that I am dying to try. It's hard to see in the picture but she quilted all the white space and left the chevrons un-quilted giving it a really amazing 3D look.

Yes another project I need to make, a new tote! This just screams

Florida to me and I love that you can just make out the whirligig blocks in there.

CFMQG is an orange and green group for sure! :)

Okay, scroll down and really look at this one and then come back up here. Done? Okay then, you now know how totally fan-freaking-tastic this quilt is! See those hexagons, they are actually 6 slices a piece all sewn up together. See the tumbling blocks on the top... those are sliced hexies as well! And the quilting... I could probably write an essay on this, but I think you get the idea that Beth is a seriously amazing quilter.

This quilt is another one I wish you could see up close. She started with the D9 blocks and then planned ahead for being on the road for the holidays and hand quilted in all those squares (in the car). I think the form of hand quilting with thick colorful thread is often referred to as Big Stitch. If you haven't read much about it there is a good overview over on AMH's blog HERE.

This one hands down wins the Instagram award! I had previously posted a number of these quilts in my Instagram feed and this currently has the most likes (I'm over here: http://instagram.com/carly__ann on the web in case you don't have an Instagram compatible smart phone). These birds were super cute, and although it doesn't show up perfectly in the photo there are also birds quilted into the background. This is another one I wish I had a picture of the back as there are three little birdies that 'didn't quite make it' back there that crack me up!

All in all I think our little group had an excellent showing for this challenge. We all have very different styles and it was amazing to see how each of us used the same fabric so differently!

So I've officially posted once a week for three week's now. Think I can keep it up? LOL

In my last post I summed up my group of girlfriends pretty well, so this post will not be nearly as long, but I think each girl, and each quilt, deserves their own entry. Next up this month was Donna.

I think when I look at the whole group of us, Donna is the rock. It's not always easy, but she has finds a way to balance A LOT on her plate and still be a constant support to those around her. She is the one I turn to when I'm lost, and whether she realizes it or not somehow I end up 'found' in no time at all. A good cup of coffee on her porch, Sunday dinner at Pei Wei, or a Wednesday yoga session in her garage and it just seems to calm me down. She has the gathering house and I can't even come close to counting the number of birthdays, holidays, etc. we have celebrated there. Not only is she a wonderful friend, but an unbelievable mom to my favorite 7 year old Roxy. All of this together is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm so glad we are 'neighbors' now, and can't imagine it being any different. This kind of sums it up though.....

So onto the quilt. A while back I asked the girls to send me some ideas for colors, shapes, designs, etc. that they would like. In all fairness it was a pretty broad questions, but Donna's answer by far took the cake. Her reply, and I quote:

"...I like flying pigs in any color, hearts, polka dots, Xs and Os, and weenie dogs..."

I'm not even kidding. Megan gave the best response: "You're weird." I pondered this one for quite a while. How the heck do you take all this and put it into a quilt? I mean hearts with Xs and Os are easy, but would be very Valentines. Oh, and where in the world do I find weenie dog fabric? Yeah, this was a tough one.

I searched online for different polka dot quilts. I figured I would start with the easiest of the patterns she mentioned and work from there. In doing that I came across this circle quilt from Bijou Lovely. It's not exactly what I was thinking, but it was enough to get the creative juices flowing.

Next stop, fabric! Being the procrastiquilter that I am I did not have enough time to order online, so I did the dreaded Joann's trip. Don't get me wrong, I luck out there a lot, but it's just not ideal. I decided once I was there to start with the hardest fabrics and then coordinate with those. This meant I was searching for flying pigs and weenie dogs. Lord help me!

I struck out on the flying pigs. There were pigs, there were angels, but the two combined, no go. Even when I looked later online, there was a serious lacking of flying pigs. Can someone work some Spoonflower magic for me?

Weenie dogs on the other hand, appear to be all the rage! Who knew? I first found this one...

Seriously... Weenie dogs in sweaters? Adorable!

It was almost perfect, but red is not really the color I think of when I think of Donna. It was a little over saturated, so I decided to keep looking. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted this....

Dachshunds in rain boots! Um, yes please!

I'm not so much an OMG sqee kinda girl, but this is some seriously cute fabric. I also lucked out that there was about 4 yards left. I bought it all because you never know when you will need a good dog fabric, right? The easy part came after locating this one. I decided to look for the other elements in coordinating colors. The polka dots and hearts were easy, and I found a great graphic floral and a fun chevron that fit perfectly.

In comes procrastiquilter again, and work took over my life for a few days. I got the fabric cut and the backing measured, but the final piecing and quilting had to wait until Saturday. You guessed it, the day before her birthday. Do you see a pattern developing here?

I created some basic circle templates with card stock. If you can't tell, I used a drinking glass, coffee mug, dessert plate and dinner plate as templates. I found that these four make a great variety.

After tracing the templates onto fusible I cut, cut, and cut some more. For each set I layered about five pieces of fusible together, pinned and cut. For me, this is a huge time saver. Being so rotary cutter dependent makes me dread having to cut things by hand.

Once I had what I thought would be a good number of circles I cut fabric. This might sound a little backwards to some people who like to iron on fusible before cutting the circles, but I was really unsure of the layout, so I decided to cut the fabric first, then iron.

I don't even want to tell you how many times I moved these around. Up and down and back and forth. Switching colors, sizes, rotating designs, etc. Finally I said enough is enough and started ironing. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I will share it anyway. After ironing the fusible to each circle I score them with an X with a needle. This makes it so much easier for me to rip off each little piece of the pie, rather than trying to pick off the paper. This is especially helpful where there are no sharp edges or corners!

So fabric ironed to fusible, and fusible circles ironed to the backing, it was already time to baste the quilt! At this point I got a little over confident on my time schedule and took a nap. Big mistake! Oh well, lesson (not) learned. So, all well rested I got back to work basting. I'm an over pinner. I'm not careful about smoothing and checking while I'm quilting, so I have found it works better for me in the long run. You have to find what works best for you.

Still feeling pretty confident on time I took another break to hang out with the boyfriend. I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, but he is in nursing school. That means that when are both home, and he's not studying, I try and take advantage! So yeah, another big mistake on timing, but well worth it. Now, onto quilting. I stuck with what I know and did a mixed up meander. No real good process pictures of it, but this gives you an idea. My stitching is not as even as I would like, but I am getting better. I think.

So I took my time on this part and before I knew it, it was 2:30am. Oops. At least I had a nap, right?! I whipped up some binding (without measuring of course) and took a quick coffee break. At this point I was seriously regretting the whole nap/dinner/boyfriend time I took. LOL

3am still binding. This picture also gives you a good idea on my whole spool binding deal. I move my thread over to the horizontal, and put an empty bobbin on the vertical spool holder thing (does this have a name?) with my binding spool on top. This keeps it out of the way (empty bobbin gives it height to be over top of the thread spool), untangled, and the best part, I don't pin and it doesn't matter. I just pull the binding off bit by bit and it feeds through the machine. Easy peasy.

UPDATE to answer a question: Yes, that is the machine I do all my quilting on. It is a Huskystar C10 that I think I bought back in 2005 or 2006? I tried to find one on sale somewhere to find out the real details on it, but apparently they don't really exist. Not surprised. So yeah, it's got 5.5 inches under the harp there that I shove all my quilts through. Good times. It has tension issues, and it likes to break needles, but that's ok. It's what I have, and I have learned to work around, and most of the time laugh at, her little quirks. Would I like a new machine? Of course! Can we afford one? Not at all. Oh well, it's something to work towards! Goals are good!

Side note on the UPDATE: I named my machine Mardell after my grandmother. She lived across the country, so I never got to sew with her, but she is still my inspiration. Oh, and naming your machine after your dead grandmother is great until she acts up and then it sounds like I'm yelling at my grandmother's to settle down among other colorful expressions.

Okay, sorry about that. Back to the quilt. I finished up around 4am, just in time to throw it in the wash, have a quick 4 hour snooze, toss it in the dryer, and then off to Donna's for birthday breakfast. Again, don't know how I finished, but I did. I amaze even myself. So Donna literally jumped up and down while saying "I wanna see, I wanna see, I wanna see." I had been teasing her all day with little snaps on instagram. Little jewels like this one that kept her in suspense. Even made it black and white so she couldn't see the colors. Sneaky sneaky!