Simply Woven Quilt is finished

The push has been on!  I really wanted to get the bindings on three quilts before 2015 arrives, and I've done it.  This quilt is the final finish of 2014.  Most of my quilts are originals, made without a pattern, this one was an exception, the Moda Bake Shop tutorial was wonderful to follow.

Front, back and the quilting, and YES, we had snow overnight, right here in Murrieta.  It's after 1 PM, the snow is melting, but it's still here.  Great fun for SoCal people.  We got a light dusting about ten years ago, and when I was a little girl about 65 years ago, we had snow in Long Beach.

Name of Quilt:  Simply Woven
Start Date:  July 6, 2014
Finish Date:  December 31, 2014
Measurements: 59" x 59"

May your bobbins always be full,

A Quilt Back for Simply Woven Quilt.

I had very few scraps left over from the jelly roll of Tranquility I used for the Simply Woven quilt top.  I love to use scraps, so I pulled some solids that I thought went with Tranquility and patched together those with the jelly roll scraps.

The black print is leftover wide back fabric from The Lighter Shade of Pale quilt I made for my daughter Carrie. All that still wasn't enough, so I edged the top and bottom with some black form Moda.  (I really don't like this black because it's printed, not woven, but I thought it worked well with this project.)

May your bobbins always be full,

Simply Woven Quilt Top is assembled.

My least favorite thing about quilting is "pressing the seams open", but some quilts require it.  This quilt has too many little seams and joins to have a chance of being flat, if the seams are not pressed open.  I really like the way this quilt top turned out.

A close up.

And a shot from the back shows all that tedious pressing; but I know it will make it a lot easier on the Janelle, my long-arm quilter.

Making the quilt back will have to wait until later in the week.  Tomorrow morning I have to clean the house, teach Tai Chi in the afternoon and in the evening our card-playing group is coming over.

Wednesday is the monthly Parkinson's Support Group, and I'll lead Tai Chi.  Plus I've got some errands to do.  Life gets in the way of quilting all too frequently.

May your bobbins always be full,

One more block and some progress.

This is the Woven block I made out of scraps.  It's my favorite of the 25 blocks I've made.  If I made another quilt using this block, I think I'll make all the blocks scrappy.  The scrappiness is subtle, and I like that, too.

Today, I managed to stitch all the rows together.  For my layout I tried to keep it scrappy by twisting the blocks left-right and up and down.  There's an afternoon breeze happening, so  I anchored the bottoms with more clothespins.

Frisco is doing really well, today.  He's mostly resting and he's a little grumpy.

I'm going to wait to stitch the rows together.

Ben's always close by.  He's a really good little guy.  His nickname is Ben Rivers, because he doesn't do the "normal" marking thing when we go for a walk.  He lets it all out at once, like a river.

May your bobbins always be full,

Slow but Sure Progress

I've been making steady, if slow progress on piecing the Simply Woven blocks.  I ended up with 24 blocks.  I've been playing with them on the dining room table; I'm trying to end up with a balanced layout.  I'm really not satisfied with either a 4 x 5 or 4 x 6 layouts.  I think I'll make one more block out of scraps; so I'll have a 5 x 5 layout and the quilt to will be about 60" square.

In other news, 6 weeks ago we adopted two dogs.  They needed homes and we needed dogs.  This week we took them to the groomers, and on the way home, Frisco, above, managed to lower the rear window and jump out.  He landed under the car and was run over!  Frisco got up on his own, walked to the sidewalk and waited for Bob.  Bob took him straight to the vets office, and he had surgery this morning.  He's home now and doing great.  He was hurt much less than we imagined, which is a relief.

Here is a photo of both dogs.  Frisco is 7 years old and a large Cocker, we're calling him an American Cocker Spaniel mix.  Ben is only one years old, and 10 pounds.  He's a terrier mix; his coloring is like a Cairn Terrier, but he's much smaller than any Cairn we've ever had.  The dogs get along great, which is great for us.

If you haven't entered the giveaway, you still have more time.  Go here to enter.

May your bobbins always be full,

Progress Report on the Simply Woven Quilt Top

I'm making good progress on my latest project, the Simply Woven Quilt Top.  So far, I've added four of the stripes by cutting, joining and pressing my seams open.  There are two more stripes to be added in, then I'll be able to join all the blocks together, after a bit of "trueing-up"; a necessity with this many pieces in a block.

I wanted to point out that if you comment on my blogs and you don't hear back from me, you are most likely a No-Reply Blogger.  It's frustrating to a small blogger like myself, not to be able to interact with you, if you've been gracious enough to leave a comment.  If you do a google search of  "no-reply" blogger, you'll find lots of people willing to tell you how to fix this.  I do want to mention that not everyone uses the Blogger platform for their blogs; the other free platforms that I'm aware of are Wordpress and Typepad.   One good solution is to have an account with all the the blogging platforms, the account is free; that way it's easy to leave comments on all three types of blogs.  Here's hoping you become a Reply Blogger, if you aren't.

Now, I'm going to slash and add stripes to all 25 Simply Woven Blocks.

May your bobbins always be full,

Workin' on the Chain (Piecing) Gang

I'm making progress on the Simply Woven quilt.  I've sewn things together, cut them in two, then joined them together, again.  I'm liking the way these blocks are looking, so far.  Now, I'm off to make more cuts and joins.  Sounds like carpentry instead of quilting, when I write it that way.

Today's my birthday, I'm 70.  I've been celebrating for one week, by not cooking.  Today is going to be an ordinary Tuesday, with some sewing and in the afternoon I teach my Tai Chi class.  Since I teach on a voluntary basis, I never cook on Tuesdays or Thursdays, that's my reward.  Tonight we'll play cards with our regular group, so it really is an ordinary day.

May your bobbins always be full,

New Project, Simply Woven

A former bookseller friend, who lives in AZ suggested a quilt design for the two memory quilts I'll be working on later this summer.  Nancy is a very experienced quilter, here's a photo of her, stolen from FB, that her daughter posted.  The quilt was entered in the Arizona Quilt Show in Phoenix.  Isn't it fabulous?

The quilt design she suggested is Simply Woven Quilt by Jessica Kelly for Moda Bake Shop.  The "recipe" makes a twin size quilt and uses two Jelly Rolls.  I'm using stash, and chose Tranquility by Michele D'Amore for Benartex.  I only have one Jelly Roll, so I cut the "recipe" in half.  I'm using black for the background fabric.

I got busy with the cutting, and carefully labeled each strip size.  

Jessica doesn't mention strip-piecing in the directions but I'm thinking that's the way to go.  So, I'm off to start stitching.

If you're interested in the half numbers, here they are:

Fabric

(1) Jelly Roll or (40) 2.5" strips, WOF

1 1/4 yard of background solid.

Cutting.

from 12 Strips cut: (2) 8" strips (24 total) and (2) 12.5" strips (24 total)

from 12 strips cut:  (4) 9.5" strips (48 total)

from 16 strips cut:  (3) 11" strips (48 total), you'll have a leftover 9" strip that you can use for the quilt back design or put in your scrap bin.

May your bobbins always be full,