Mrs. Lebo's Legacy V

Still at work on the applique for these checkered Dresden plate blocks.  Here's what I have so far (in fast photos because I have too much to do before bedtime and too little time to do it). I also don't have a handy place to take good photos, so I'll do that later, but these show the variety of wedges created from one 42 strip jelly roll of American Jane's Bread 'n' Butter and four additional strips of fabric.

The seventh of nine blocks is about half done and under the needle of my treadled Necchi.

I'm using a 2 mm stitch length with a 1 mm zigzag. This experience really has me wishing for a hand crank machine that does zigzag, but I'm not at all sure such a machine exists. I think by the time Singer had built in zigzag the machines could no longer be converted to hand crank. One lesson learned: assemble the wedges, glue baste the center circle (I used Elmer's water soluble school glue--dot, dot, not a lot), pin to background square (heavily spray starched square); applique center first, and fine tune pinning of wedges and then applique them.  That works much, much better than appliqueing center to the Dresden plate before placing it on the background.

I promise to shoot better photos in better lighting later. I'm feeling a little shaky because right now our winds are 39 mph at 49 degrees with intermittent precipitation and all this noisy weather  makes me more than a bit discombobulated! The wind speed is predicted to drop after midnight.  I certainly hope it does! I'd fall asleep to music, but if I do, it's likely I won't wake up when my radio alarm goes off at five in the morning.

Happy quiltmaking,....

Mrs. Lebo's Legacy IV - Progress

We had major weather overnight, making this a perfect day to work on my Dresden plate quilt.

 I did decide to use the yellow print for the center of the plates.  This gave me the chance to revert to my old ways of applique.  I cut the circles from card stock, and got out an ancient piece of beeswax, and my treasured thimble that was a gift from an elderly lady in Cleveland, Tennessee when my grandmother's thimble, complete with a monogram D, disappeared.

 This sterling thimble with nice, deep serviceable dimples is lovely, and a great consolation for the loss of my paternal grandmother's sterling and gold thimble.

 I gathered the circles around the cardstock and then pressed them well.  Handwork is slow stuff, but the circles needed to be circles.

 The interfacing method didn't work well at all, despite careful stitching and turning and pressing.

 The applique is being done with a tiny zigzag on my vintage Necchi treadle.  I sought out the Necchi years ago because I wanted to treadle a machine that could zigzag.

 I quickly realized I needed an open toed foot for better visibility, so I pulled out these two.  Necchi BUs are high shank machines.  I'm not at all sure of the intended purpose of these feet.  The one on the right is working just fine, so I didn't try the one on the left.

 The one on the left is covered with this textured plastic/silicone(?) piece.  I'd love to know its intended use. (Edited to add: Gypsy Quilter says it's for sewing on buttons--so the foot will hold them in position and not damage them.  See her comment below.)

 Here's the first block completed.  I did begin and end the zigzag with long thread tails that I pulled to the back and knotted for security.

Although it feels like the applique takes forever, it is nearly invisible and is taking a lot less time than hand applique.  Hopefully, Dolly Shreve Scheer, who did incredible hand applique, and whose partially finished applique inspired me over 40 years ago, would approve.

Since this will be machined quilted, I'm not trimming away the background as I did with the first Dresden plates I created long ago.

I awoke several times last night with the roof being pelted with ice.  When I braved five degrees this morning to do minimal shoveling and wheel the garbage out to the street, the snow was quite powdery above the layers of snow pellets. When I was a kid, all the adults said that if the temperature reached 10-degrees, it was too cold to snow.  Clearly not the case today east of the Sandia mountains in New Mexico. I'm not sure it reached twenty today. Despite ample sunshine, nothing melted. We cancelled our appointments, stayed in and, aside from cooking, I worked on my quilt.  The College girl watched Poirot, napped, and texted friends.  (She learned this week that her acceptance to graduate school is sitting on the desk of the Dean of Students, who will be back on campus on Wednesday.  I'm delighted with how hard she has worked and of the success she is building for her future.)

As these storms move east across the U.S., I hope everyone stays warm and happily busy.

Happy quiltmaking, knitting, etc.,

Mrs. Lebo's Legacy III

At last, I have nine sets of wedges together.

I was getting concerned that I would not have 180 wedges; If I had not cut a one 4-strip set from other fabrics, I would have been short.  As it was, I needed three more wedges.  I managed to get them from scraps.  I did go looking in my stash, but I've rarely used these colors since maybe the 1970s, and the 100% cotton fabrics we could find back then were rarely this high quality.  (Thank you ,millions of quilters and all the manufacturers and shops who share our passion and our dollars!)

Then when I had them all together, I found this lurking about! Oh, well!

This is going to be one very happy quilt!

I used to have a design wall, but no longer have one up--and no good place to put one.  I don't think I mind.

I need to decide what size to make the centers and whether to make them yellow, red, or blue.  Right now I'm leaning toward yellow if I have enough fabric.  They will remind me of English Chintz China, something I love but will never be able to afford.  I also need to decide on the size of the background squares.  Jenny Doan suggested 22 inches for the Missouri Star Quilt, but I haven't decided yet.

We don't know how much snow we'll get out of our current storm, but this is a perfect quilt to be making while it happens!

Happy quiltmaking,......

This Is Taking a While

I'm at the step where each point is getting ironed.

I've ironed about half the points. The fact that I want lots of variety in the Dresden plates means I want all of the wedges to be ready, so the pressing all at once seems the best way. I'm watching some You-tube videos while I press. Quilt-it!, the long arm quilting show, has posted several full length videos, and a lot of them contain valuable information for domestic machine quilters as well as long arm quilters. I really like Quilt It! - Episode 701 - Curing Continous Confusion with Deborah Poole (It's so much easier to stream them via you-tube without having to use the HDMI cable.) Still this is such a boring task  it's also easy to doze off!

Happy quiltmaking,....

x

Mrs. Lebo's Legacy - Today's Progress

A bit more done on the checkered Dresden plates:

Two boxes of blades sewn. (Very happy that I managed to do all this sewing, on a treadle, at that, without my knee hurting. I'm thinking the P.T.s had it taped wrong because it's so much better now!)

The next step will be to flip the points and press them.

When I was a child the days leading up to New Year's Day were filled with cleaning, laundry, and any other work my parents could think of.  That was because mom's mother was very superstitious and said that whatever people had to do on New Year's Day, they'd have to do every day of the year.  I'm not superstitious, but in addition to attending church and Sunday school and, later, baking the lasagna, I'm hoping to do some knitting, quiltmaking, and reading.  That sounds like a great start to 2017.

Happy New Year!--

On the Bed - Summer Romance I

I realized I never got around to photographing the completed Summer Romance I quilt.  I finished quilting it last summer, but didn't get the binding on until two or three weeks ago.  Here it is on the bed:

 This quilt was begun Memorial Day weekend of 2015 and made it to my Nolting long arm a year later.  I used white yardage (probably Kona cotton), and Eleanor Burns jelly roll (Benartex) and some yardage from the same line.  This is a great way to make a quilt since it has only five blocks.  These are Blackford's Beauty, a block that caught my eye in the early 1980s.  A lot of people have called this block a lot of other things, including Snowflake.  Someone told me Bonnie Hunter has a quilt made from this block in one of her books or on her Quiltville website.

 I love these fabrics and their lovely shades of violet and wanted to create some great places for quilting.  You can see the stripe I used for binding at the left edge of the above photo--as well as what can happen after quilting for too many hours in a day.  But that's all behind me now.  It looks great on the bed.

 The additional four patches in the layout were easy to do and add interest and movement.

 Most of the quilting was done freehand with minimal marking.  The local quilt shop was out of blue marking pens, so one of the employees convinced me to use a Frixion pen and assured there would be no problems with it reappearing.  Not quite true.  The quilt has been laundered and dried because I love the "crinkly" quilt look--but I noticed one morning that there were some tiny black dots and dash lines apparent; my thermostat is set on 60 degrees F. at night, and some of them had reappeared.  I didn't notice any when I took photos just now, but the thermostat is set at 68 during the day.

 I loved, loved, loved having the large areas for quilting some favorite designs.  If I had a do-over, I would have used a lighter shade in the outer border.

 It's not a competition quilt, so its imperfections are fine with me.

 It was fun to quilt different designs in similar areas, although I'd be surprised if anyone ever notices them.

It's not my last finish of the year, just the last one to have its photo taken in 2016!  I can confirm that it's lovely to have on my bed during these cold winter nights. I'll show some more as 2017 gets underway.

Happy New Year's Eve and Happy 2017.  I'm going to stay off the roads (and away from the inebriated drivers) and work on the checkered Dresden  plate, read, relax, eat some leftovers, and maybe do some knitting.

Happy quiltmaking, knitting, and so on,...

Mrs. Lebo's Legacy - the Quilt

I',m learning a few things....Isn't it nice that we can continue learning decade after decade when we become quiltmakers?

First of all, one jelly roll of 42 fabrics is not likely to be enough for nine Dresden plates with 20 blades.

 I did cut each strip in half to yield a lot more variety as I piece.  That means I can cut eight wedges from each strip set.  Had I not decided to do that, each full width strip set would have yielded 17 wedges instead of 16.  However, if I had used the full width strip sets, that still would have given me only 170 blades--and 180 are needed for a quilt with nine plates.  I found some gifted fabric that works with the Bread 'n' Butter colors, but I think I'm still going to have only enough for eight plates, so I'm trying to come up with something creative for the ninth block.

 I'm using the Missouri Star Quilt Company's layer cake wedge ruler.  I think it may have been an add-on to an order I placed with them for something else; I know it's been around here for over a year, but I'd only used it once and that was for some smaller project.

 It was slipping a bit as I cut, so I opened one of the drawers of my treadle and pulled out a small rectangle of rubberized shelf webbing that I use when I quilt on the treadle.  I cut a couple of tiny rectangles and glued them to the back of the ruler with Elmer's water soluble School Glue. That is helping.

 It's important to remember to keep the narrow end of the ruler at the edge of the strip set as we flip and cut.

 Also, I can see that my scant 1/4 inch seam allowance, which I accomplish with a stack of post-it notes, was a bit too scant.  However, since I pieced all the strips and wedges with that allowance, it won't be a problem.  (Each four-strip set should have been exactly 8.5 inches wide.) I've also found that it's easy to let the ruler slip a little instead of keeping that 8.5 inch line parallel to the edge of the fabric.--Little lessons.

 I'm also separating the wedges into two groups as I cut, because that should help me get more of the variety I want.

The next step is to create the point at the top of each blade.
I also need to decide what fabric or fabrics to use for the circles at the center of the blocks.

Happy quiltmaking,....

Year End Quilt Beginning!

I recognize many quiltmakers begin a new quilt, or two, or more, during the week between Christmas and New Years.  Over the years [decades] that has frequently been my plan, although just as frequently, it hasn't happened. For many years the issue was the need to travel miles and miles from shop to shop trying, often in vain, to find the right fabric for the quilt I was envisioning.  The facts that there is now a lovely little quilt shop just seven miles from my home and that online quilt shops are abundant, eliminate the travel requirement.  Furthermore, this year I had fabrics I've been longing to put to use.

 These lovely Bread 'n' Butter from American Jane (Sandy Klop) for Moda have been playing with my imagination and waiting patiently since sometime last spring or summer.

 I sewed them into strip sets of four because I decided I really could create checkered Dresden Plate blocks as shown on Lurline's 2009 blog post and last fall on Jenny Doan's Missouri Star tutorial.

These are not colors I usually use--but they have been playing around in my brain for several years--at least since I made Mrs. Lebo's Kitchen I and II around 2009. I also blogged about it here. When I saw this Bread'n'Butter collection, I knew the time for returning to these colors was approaching.

So while the College Girl was ailing with some virus she probably caught during her frenzy of pre-Christmas socializing and shoping, and, therefore, was sleeping, I began cutting wedges.

 Here are a couple views of the first block.

 It's very happy, and I love it.  I'm calling this quilt Mrs. Lebo's Legacy since it's a return to the colors I remember from her kitchen as well as the kitchens of many other residents of Woodford and McLean Counties in Illinois in the decade following WWII.  Mrs. Esther Lebo was my first grade teacher, and her real legacy was that throughout the decades of her teaching career she taught hundreds of children to read , and many of us have shared our love of reading and books with thousands of additional children.

I'll post more progress, and bits of what I learn as I go along.

Wishing everyone plenty of joy in quilting, knitting, etc. as we say goodbye to 2016...