still quilting!

Happy Labor Day, to those of you who celebrate it (and those of you who don't)! I was at work fora while this morning, but when I finished things up there, I came home and back in front of the sewing machine. Here's how the quilt is looking this evening.It's overcast and has been raining a bit today, so the light isn't great, but I wanted to see the quilt outside.
I'm really liking it, which is good, because I'm not nearly done yet!
Here are some close-ups of the quilting. I now have 2.5 of the 5 rows of blocks quilted, but so far I've been concentrating on the ends. The middle is a lot harder to get through the machine; I've come up with a system of rolling the edges tightly and fastening with binder clips to help squeeze things through the throat of the machine.
It's not exactly easy in places, and it's certainly not fast, but I like the results! I hope you do, too!

Cheers,
~Phosphorelated

today's menu: ratatouille and a quilt sandwich!

This morning, Brad was up before the sun smoking some brisket.Me, I am not that ambitious (though I certainly do enjoy eating the brisket someone else has spent 14 hours cooking!). I took some herbs from the garden,
some beautiful veggies from the farmer's market,and made ratatouille (yum)!That took most of my morning. We had a lovely lunch off the grill (thanks, Brad!), and then I got to work on the quilt. I pieced the back, then remembered I'd meant to add a contrasting stripe on either side of the blocks. Oops.
But I thought it looked OK, and when I measured, it was just big enough. So I flipped it over
and built a quilt sandwich!
I added lots of pins,
and lots of bobbins of cheerful yellow thread (it's Essential thread from Connecting Threads, in Butter)
and was ready to quilt! I spent a lot of hours (at least 4 or 5) doing organic line quilting. (You can find nice instructions and an example of this technique here, thanks to Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio, another quilt blog I greatly enjoy.)
I'm quilting every 1/4 - 3/4", widthwise. After quilting all afternoon (and OK, the whole evening, too...maybe more like 6+ hours in total) I have gotten some quilting in each of the blocks to help stabilize the sandwich, and have finished the quilting on the first row of blocks. One down, four to go! It's going to take a while, but I really like the resulting texture, so it's worth it.

Onwards!
~Phosphorelated

a quilt back in progress

Tonight I've been working on a back for the sunshine bento box quilt. I've got 2 yards of this busy yellow and blue fabric; I bought a lot of it because I thought it would make a cool quilt back and wasn't quite sure how else to showcase this fabric. The pattern is just a little large and busy for most of the piecing I have been doing. Because the quilt top measures ~62"x77", this backing fabric is just long enough but not quite as wide as I need it to be. That suits me just fine, since I prefer pieced backs anyway, and I have a bunch of scraps left over from the blocks. So this evening I sat down and pieced five scrappy blocks to add to the back.Here they are in a classic blogland shot complete with toes. (The blocks are ~16" square, so I had to stand on chair to get them all in the shot.)
Here are the blocks laid out on the busy backing fabric.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to need some sort of border between the two, but I haven't quite worked out the details yet. I'm thinking maybe some of the darker blue fabrics. I think the contrast is really helpful in the blocks where those are included.
I'll sleep on it. It's not quite there yet, but it's moving in the right direction. And I solve a lot of problems in my sleep. Perhaps I'll have an answer in the morning. There's no rush; I won't get around to assembling the quilt sandwich until the weekend. Time to mull it over and get it right. I think I know how I'm going to quilt this one, though; pictures to follow.

I also finally gave in and bought some fabric for the back of the purple zig-zag quilt. I kept trying to find a combination of things in my stash that would work, and I just wasn't feeling any of them. I had an idea and (somehow) no purple fabric in the right color, and not nearly enough of any one fabric in purple, or green, or any other color I thought might work with the top. I thought about doing some really wide stripes, but as the quilt is wider than the 44" width of the fabric, it just wasn't working. $14 later, I think I have what I want. Or I will soon -- it's in the mail. Still not sure how I'll quilt this one yet; I've got some ideas but haven't quite decided. Should I use white thread, or lavender, or purple, or something wild and crazy for contrast? Should the quilting echo the zig-zags, or be more organic? Or I could do straight horizontal lines to emphasize the sideways stripe of the quilt, or use diagonal straight lines to emphasize the on point setting of the individual blocks.

So many problems to solve; so few nights to sleep on it! I should go get to work on these pressing questions. Good night, all!
~Phosphorelated

today's progress

Here are my 20 blocks laid out on the kitchen floor:I haven't gotten the quilt top assembled yet, but here are the blocks sewn together in pairs in the last bit of afternoon sunlight.
Cheers,
~Phosphorelated

work-in-progress: sunshine bento box quilt

These blocks don't look like Bento Boxes yet, but they will. So far they're log cabin blocks, but when they're done (a center then two layers of alternating blue or yellow strips) I'll cut them into quarters and re-assemble them into Bento Box blocks. These are just a few of the blue-centered blocks-in-progress. The blocks with yellow centers are currently full of pins and not in a good place to photograph. I got home from D.C. Monday night, but haven't been sleeping too well since I got back, so I've got most of the initial piecing done. I'll take pictures of the semi-completed blocks before and during the cutting and re-assembly process.

Cheers,
~Phosphorelated

another new quilt: sunshine bento box

As is so often the case with me, there are so many things I want to try that when I find a chance to try several new things at once (like the no-triangle zig-zag pattern and making a quillow; this still isn't done but is still the plan), that's exciting. Two things I've been wanting to try lately? A blue-and-yellow quilt (sorry Mum, I know that's not your favorite), and the bento box quilt pattern. I'm going to D.C. this weekend to hang out with fantastic friends I haven't seen since we graduated from college in 2006, but I couldn't resist choosing and cutting some fabric before I go.

Here's a stack of cheery yellow and blue fabrics:There are several great modified bento box tutorials out there; I particularly like "quartered squares - a modified bento box tutorial" from Film in the Fridge (another of my favorite quilt bloggers) and "bento box tutorial" from Quiltin' Jenny. They both end up with different block sizes than I wanted, though, so I'm using measurements from "Bento Box Quilt, Part 1" from Sonnet of the Moon.

I chose 6 fabrics each in yellow and blue, and cut a 6" square of each, plus 3" strips (6" and 11" long in color B, 11" and 16" strips in the same color as the center square). I've got everything cut and ready to sew when I get back from D.C.! Safe travels to everyone going places this weekend. And may your weekends be as fun as I know mine will be!
~Phosphorelated