Project Quilting 11.4 – Birds in the Air

Project Quilting kind of snuck up on me this week.  For some reason, I was thinking that I had another week.  But no, there it was, posted on Facebook on Sunday afternoon.  Actually, it was probably wishful thinking.  You see, I knew that this was going to be a really crazy busy week and I didn’t need one more thing to do!

We are having our kitchen remodeled, and the work starts this week.  I have mixed feelings about the whole project.  On one hand, I’m really excited that I am going to have a brand new kitchen where everything works, but I am definitely not looking forward to the chaos that is involved with not having a working kitchen for close to a month.  And even though we have known that the workmen (work people?) are coming on Thursday, there is only so much that you can do ahead of time when it comes to your kitchen.  I have been gradually emptying out the cupboards that contain rarely used items like the ice bucket and the big serving pieces. They have gone into boxes and bins which I then carted off to places where I hope that they won’t be underfoot.  The walls of the dining room and my son’s bedroom are lined with said boxes.  (My son doesn’t live here anymore, but still comes to visit.  I guess that I should start calling it the spare bedroom, but in my mind, it’s always going to be his room.)

We are getting new appliances along with the new cabinets and lighting.  They are going to take out the existing stove and dishwasher, but the new appliances won’t be installed for a couple of weeks. So I won't be able to do any cooking until the new ones are installed. The plumbing isn’t scheduled to be finished until the middle of March, so I'll be limited in the amount of dish washing that I can do.  Using disposable plates, cups and flatware seems so wasteful, but we won't have much choice. 

The old refrigerator will get moved around the corner into the dining room for the time being and we’ll put the microwave on the dining room table so we have a way to heat up meals.  I’ve been doing some cooking ahead so that we can have warm meals without having to order takeout or go out to eat all the time.  

I’m also going to have to make myself a chart to remind me where I put everything! It will say something like: Coffee pods for the Keurig - Third box from the left along the front wall of the dining room, on top of the box of mugs. And I will leave the chart out in plain sight so that I don’t have to answer the inevitable “Honey, where is the…” questions. ^.^

The last thing that I need to do is to pack up the rest of the kitchen.  The dishes and cookware that we use all the time couldn’t get packed away until the day before the work starts. Tomorrow is going to the busiest day yet, so I wanted to get my project done by today, in case I run out of time this week. 

So now that I have given you a glimpse into my week, I hope you will understand why my PQ 11.4 project is rather small and simple.  I really like the block and can think of so many ways to use it in a large quilt.  But I had to curb my enthusiasm and make something that could be finished quickly.

My overflowing bin of waste triangles

I saw those half square triangles in the Birds in the Air block and immediately thought of my bin of waste triangles.  Whenever I make a unit that requires you to cut off a triangle, I throw those triangles into a small bin.  Sometimes I will sew the extra seam before I cut them off, so that I have ready made little HST. A good example of this is when you make flying geese by starting with a rectangle and two squares. If you sew an extra diagonal seam ½ inch away from the first, you can cut between them and have a cute little half square triangle. I first saw the technique in a book called Nickel Quilts by Pat Speth and Charlene Thode. I was fascinated, and I have been saving the waste triangles ever since.  Someday, I will make a whole quilt out of them, but in the meantime, they come in handy for quick little projects.

There are several variations of the  Bird in the Air block, but the one that I chose requires 3 HST.   I found some red/white and some blue/white HST fairly close to the top of my bin, so that decided my color scheme. The waste triangle HST finish at 1¼ inches, so they are a bit tricky to use.  Instead of trying to do the math, I just used a 5-inch square cut in half diagonally for the large triangle, then trimmed it down to match the HST side of the block.  I made four BITA blocks and set them 2 x 2.  

A new potholder for a new kitchen

The resulting block ended up to be a little over 8 inches square.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this week’s project, but when I had the block done, I looked at it and it yelled “Potholder”!    I thought that it was appropriate for me to have a new potholder to go with my new kitchen!   

Because I wanted to finish it quickly, I tried a new technique for binding by machine.  You sew the binding to the back first, wrap it around to the front and stitch it down from the front.  I ended up with a few tucks, but not bad for a first attempt.  I'll use it again for things that will get a lot of use, since I think it results in a sturdier finish than binding by hand.   

Project Quilting 11.3 - Put a Heart on It

I've always been attracted to quilt patterns that have hearts on them.  The first real quilt that I attempted to make was made with hearts.  (As an aside, I don’t count the patchwork comforter that I made for college as a real quilt.  I think that I have written about that experience in a prior blog post, so I won’t get into it here.)

That first 'real' quilt was a pattern that I saw on the HGTV website, so long ago now that I can’t recall exactly when it was.  It might have been a show called “Simply Quilts”, but I’m not even sure about that. The show wasn’t on TV in my area, but the website had information from each episode, and sometimes had patterns.  The episode that really captured my fancy featured a scrappy heart themed quilt.  The directions started with ‘grab scraps of all your reds and pinks’.  Well, I had never made a quilt before, so I didn’t have scraps.  Over the next several months, I gradually picked up cotton remnants from the local Minnesota Fabrics store, since that was the only place that I knew of where I could buy fabric. I finished all the blocks (with hardly any matching points or edges, LOL!), sewed them together, and put a backing on it.  Then I wrapped the backing around to the front to finish the edges.  Did you notice that I missed a step?  I didn’t quilt it before I bound it!  I was such a newbie that I didn’t realize that you were supposed to quilt it first, then bind it!  I started to hand quilt it, but got busy and never finished it.  It is actually hanging on a quilt rack in my room.  Maybe someday I will finish it. ^.^

The first quilt that I had the audacity to actually give to someone was a heart quilt that I designed and made for my sister’s wedding.  I really liked it, and hoped that other people would, too.  So I decided to write it up as a pattern. I had the crazy idea that I wanted to be a pattern designer when I retired, ha ha!  That was the first quilt pattern that I had published in a magazine.  It was published in the inaugural issue of The Quilt Pattern Magazine, January 2011.  Just in time to make a Valentine’s Day quilt!  Here is a link to the site with the pattern listings.   The Quilt Pattern Magazine - Valentine's patterns

That’s mine in the bottom right hand corner!

Anyway, my love affair with hearts continues!  For this challenge, I decided that I needed a Valentine’s pillow cover to help dress up my living room.  I went to my scrap bin and got some red scraps, sewed them together crazy quilt style.  I fused the patchwork to a piece of Wonder Under, then cut out a heart. I pressed it onto a white background and added a border of red 2 ½ inch squares.  I wasn't sure what I was going to use for the back of the pillow cover, so I went spelunking in my fat quarter drawer.  I found one that has red roses all over it and knew that was the one! Roses are very Valentine-y, right? 

About the same time that the challenge topic was posted, a local quilt store announced a charity promotion.  They have partnered with Meals on Wheels and have promised to provide quilted mug rugs for each recipient this month.  Since I was done with the challenge, but still in the mood to make hearts, I decided to make a few mug rugs to donate.  The pattern I decided to use was hearts, of course!

Recently, I saw a blog post by Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew that features a quilt called Simple Hearts.  You can read it here: Cluck Cluck Sew Simple Heart Pattern

The hearts in her quilt are similar to the ones that I made in that first quilt, and as a bonus, she gives a chart to make various sizes of hearts.  I often cut my scraps into 2½ inch strips, so I used some of them to make the hearts that finish at 4 inches. These hearts are like potato chips!  You simply can’t make just one! 

To make a simple 4 x 6 mug rug like these, you only need 3 matching 2½ x 4½ inch rectangles, 2 – 2½ inch background squares and 4 – 1-inch background squares.  Follow Allison’s directions to make the 4-inch heart using 2 of the rectangles and the background pieces, then sew the remaining rectangle to one side.  Use a 4 ½ x 6 ½ inch piece of batting and the same size backing.  You could quilt it then bind it, but I chose to sew mine together envelope style since I was short on time.  I had to get them to the quilt store by this past Wednesday, or I would have made a lot more. 

But I wasn’t still done with making hearts!  I had some fabric strips leftover from making a Valentine’s table runner, and I was able to make 12 more 4” hearts.  I set them 3 X 4 and am currently trying to decide if they will be another pillow cover or a placemat!    And I still may make that cute Simple Heart quilt, since my niece is expecting, and it makes a really great baby quilt!