Quilt Inventory Summer 2014

This is a nice stack of quilts made by me, staying at my vacation house. There are a few others hanging on the walls, but these are the bed/lap quilts that are portable.

The one covering the bed is Easy Street, and then at the bottom of the stack is Celtic Solstice, both mystery quilts designed by Bonnie Hunter.

Number two and three from the bottom of the stack are the twin quilts belonging to my sons.

The second from the top is the newest addition to the house: Summer Slice Scrap Buster Quilt.

At the very top is one of the first quilts I brought to the house, Summer Dream.

I hope to finish the binding of a table runner before I have to head for home, but that runner will travel home with me.


Happy Quilting!

Celtic Solstice completed

The weather did not let me take CS on an outdoor photoshoot all week, winter set a stop to that with lots of wet snow coming down. To get the daylight work with me, I took the quilt with me to the office to snap some photos. The building has large windows and even a skylight which lets a lot of light in.

Draped over the railing this picture gives a good impression of my queen size quilt. The colors look gorgeous here, just as they are in real life.

Here the CS is draped over the couch and coffee table. It looks good against the red carpet, grey couch and white wall.

Spread out on the grey carpet on the floor...

...and on the table top.

This is a closeup picture of the quilt taken last weekend, where the low sunrays showed off the quilting real good! Thanks to the fabulous quilter, Merete .

The back of the quilt was pieced with mainly two flower fabrics with some of the green border fabric in between, plus a stripe of extra checkerboard and of course elephants!

Linked up to Fabric Frenzy Friday #8 ,  Link A Finish Friday #110  and TGIFF.

Happy Quilting Day!

I have celebrated the day by sewing down the last meter of the binding on my Celtic Solstice. All together there was almost 9 meters, and  I spent about 3 evenings/days of hand stitching it to the back.

I got the beauty back from the quilter, Merete Ellingsen, a week ago, but I was busy with a hand-sewing class the whole weekend, and  didn't have the energy to start the binding before a few days ago. Merete, as always, did a fantastic job with the quilting.

I had to take indoor pictures, because we had a blizzard today, March 15! We have not had any snow fall since January 10, and that is very uncommon. We have had a lot warmer temperatures this spring than normal, and everybody was sort of getting ready for spring. But, last night, Winter decided to return.

The sun appeared for five minutes in the afternoon, and the low sunbeams show off the gorgeous quilting.

Concerning the binding, I had to spend some time choosing the right one. I didn't want to buy new fabric for it, and the one I had in mind did not work out. The quilt has lots of colors, in a scrappy, busy design. I chose a quite wide green border to get the quilt in queen size. I auditioned many different fabrics for binding, and none of the were right, until I found this black one with daisies.

I have used several black-on-white fabrics in the quilt, but I never thought I would use a mainly black binding for the Celtic Soltice quilt! But the white lines of the daisies soften up the fabric, and it really works out, don't you think?!

I will take more pictures when the weather improves; the quilt deserves to be portrayed in the correct colors.

Beside finishing up CS, I also basted my 2013 Aurifil Quilt, and started quilting it. My ALYoF goal for March is to quilt and bind this one . More work is ready for the next few days!

Happy Quilting Day!

Celtic Solstice Top 100% Completed

Just a few minutes ago I sewed the last border on my Celtic Solstice quilt top, and it is now officially completed!

As compared to Bonnie's original version measuring 75" square, I added a checkerboard of blue and neutral four patches on top and bottom to lengthen the quilt, after a tip from a fellow blogger.. In addition I made the outer green border wider, and as per now my quilt top measures 89.5"x83.5". This will make it fit my queen size bed.

Here is a closer look of the checkerboard. I am very happy about the colors I decided for this extension. They help balance the busy top against the sort of monochrome (actually two-colored) border.

As always, indoor pictures are never the best. But, with cold winter weather outside, including a freezing wind, this is all I can offer today.

Now I have to start piecing the back of the quilt. I have the fabric ready, and I will add some leftover blocks from the front, also. I think it will be an interesting and colorful backside!

EDIT:

Here is a little peak of the pieced back. I found room for some leftover checkerboard, and I also had to display more of my elephants! There is a lot of this yellow/white elephant fabric on the front, but due to the size of these blocks the elephants didn't get a prominent display. That is all taken care of now!

I have to hurry finishing the back so I can send the quilt off to Merete for quilting. She did such a perfect job with my Easy Street one year ago.

Linked up to Bonnie's Celtic Solstice Mystery link up finale .
 

Celtic Solstice - assembled

Here is my Celtic Solstice top completed, just missing the border outside the pieced border. This is how far I managed to get before I have to pack up my top and head for home across the Atlantic.

I have decided to lengthen the quilt by adding a row of four-patches on top and bottom, and add a wider green border all around the quilt. This will make it fit a queen-size bed (almost). I will have to decide on the colors of the four-patches on the plane back home.

 

If you remember a post of mine earlier in the process of this quilt, you may recognize the posh cat lady in the picture above. She has got a central position in the quilt.

 

  

When Bonnie made the final reveal on New Year's Day, I was surprised that the orange and blue blocks were to be the outer pieced border. Most of the orange fabric are my last Halloween remnants! It works out OK, though!

 



 

Corn fabric, witches, and black cats are lining up around the quilt in a never ending queue. They are well behaved, though.

To sum up; all the fabric used in this quilt, except for the inner neutral border and the soon to become green outside border, are from my own stash. It should have reduced the fabric on my shelves, but, fabric sales here were to tempting, and I am bringing home more than I used in this quilt. Good deals are good deals, and you don't walk away from them if you are a quiltoholic! Let's see if I manage to put them all in my suitcase...

 

Bonnie's site  shows links to a great deal of the more or less finished Celtic Solstice quilts, take a look at the gorgeous art work!



 

Celtic Solstice - blocks completed

 

Last night, while my family was watching a movie, I finished the blocks for the center of my quilt. Here they are all laid out on the floor of the study/sewing room. 

 

Today the assembly job will start. It is a bright and sunny day here in the southwestern US, but the temperature is freezing. It was approx. -14 degrees C (or 10 deg F) this morning when I woke up. Luckily there is no wind, otherwise it would be bitterly/brutally cold as they say on the weather forecast on TV. We have no snow, though.

A perfect time to be inside sewing blocks together. A more detailed picture is shown below.

Check out other linkies here .

 

Celtic Solstice Part 5

All the 100 units for Part 5 are now completed, and I have several days to work on other projects. I had great fun working with this clue, and I don't think I have one unit the same as any other.

Here are a few selected units. I am especially pleased wth the blue lady cat from London in the upper left corner, my yellow shirt fabric with white elephants, the different orange Halloween fabric, and last but not least, my corn fabric. I have such a variety of different fabrics in these blocks, and I think they are lovely!

 

All my 100 units nicely stacked up to show the variety of fabrics. I am looking forward to the next step, and hoping that I will be able to finish most of the steps before I have to take the fabric with me and head for home after the vacation is over.

I have wondered how the layout will be in the end, we definitely need more neutrals before it's done. I have played a little around with the blocks from the 5 different steps, and I know that the end result will not be like this, but aren't these good looking assemblies?

The progress of the other participants can be seen on Bonnie's site.

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EDIT: A little quilt math, numbers are for the small quilt of 75"x75":

Pieces in the quilt blocks this far: 2264
Number of 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" blocks left to make: 112

Let's see how Bonnie is going to solve this!

 

Celtic Solstice Part 4 and Merry Christmas!

Late last night I finished Step 4 in the Celtic Solstice Mystery, and now I'm caught up with this project and have a few days to relax and enjoy Christmas before the next step is published on Friday.



All the 120 four-patches came together fast and easy with Bonnie's instructions, and they were all spinning the same way.

I really enjoy that I am able to use only fabric from my stash, and finally use the rest of my orange Halloween fabric! As for the previous step, there were 8 different fabrics in each pinwheel.

 

Here are a fourth of the four-patches laid out on display. Bad indoor lighting does not give full credit to the colors, but as you can see I have chosen a warm palette.

In this picture you can clearly see my Halloween fabrics, there is even corn and witches in my quilt!

On Bonnie's  site you can see the progress of the other participants.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

 

Celtic Solstice Part 3, and Ice Storms

Saturday night I finished Part 3 with the 25 pinwheels and the 100 single units. The pinwheels are shown under.

It was kind of late when I finished, and I didn't take a picture of the single units. This step was a fun one to do, because I love making pinwheels!

What about Ice Storms? Yes, my family and I are having Christmas vacation in the Southwestern US, and here ice storms occur from time to time during the winter. Friday afternoon we had a place to go, and when we were returning home and had 100 miles to drive, it started raining, with freezing temperatures. This is a weather phenomenon I have never experienced before.

We were driving home, with DH as the safe driver. The conditions were kind of treacherous with the frozen rain glazing the car, and not to mention the windshield wipers! The fortunate thing, though, was that the rain didn't freeze on the ground. The reason for that was probably that we had had very high temperatures for the season the day before, and the ground wasn't cold enough to freeze, yet. Anyway, DH drove slowly, as most of the other cars did.

We managed to get home safely without any accidents, and in the garage afterwards we could see the amount of ice that had accumulated on the car. DS1 took a lot of pictures, both of the car and the surrounding trees the day after. I will show some of them in a later post.

Here is the tree outside our door, completely glazed! It is still like this, today, since the temperature has not increased. Last night DH and I took a walk in the neighborhood and heard a lot of cracking noises and saw limbs breaking and falling off the trees. We kept our distance and didn't walk under any of them, just to be safe.

Let's hope there will not be any wind before the temperatures start rising and the ice melts off, because we don't want more damage to be done to the trees than what has already happened. Anyway, the icicles and glaze have created fantastic Christmas decorations to the surrounding area!

Link to Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link Up #4 is HERE .

 

Celtic Solstice Part 2

 

All my 100  Chevron units for the mystery are finally done. Looking good.

 

Have started cutting half square triangles for part 3 and hope to get a good way into sewing pinwheels later today.

 

The progress of the other participants can be found HERE .

 

Celtic Solstice gone traveling

Here are Step #1, and #2 (almost completed), all packed up in ziploc bags and ready to go on Christmas vacation with me. Of course, additional fabrics will also come along. I long to continue working on finishing the second clue and start the pinwheels on clue #3; my other sewing machine is waiting for me when we arrive.

All the fabric I am using for Celtic Solstice is from my stash, and it is amazing to see how big my stash has grown since I started quilting 2 years ago! There are probably enough fabric for 10+ quilts there...

 

Celtic Solstice Part #1

Yesterday I finally managed to start this mystery. I am working on step 1, making blocks with the Tri Recs Ruler. As you may see, a lot of the orange is remnants from Halloween...

Since I made Easy Street in king size last year, I have decided to stick with the 'small' version this year, approx 75" x 75".

This is going to be fun!

See the progress of the other participants here.