Celtic Solstice - A Finish

Celtic Solstice was the 2013 Quiltville mystery; I finished piecing the top in 2014, almost exactly 5 years ago. I started machine quilting it in November of 2017 and just finished it last week.

I hung it out on the clothesline on the 4th of July. It really sparkles with those vibrant oranges, blues, greens and yellows. I totally need to spur myself onward with getting quilts quilted. More of that in another post.

Closeups of the wave quilting on the borders. The outer border fabric and the binding come from that epic estate sale I went to over 5 years ago.

I have a set of rubber stamps with designs from the Book of Kells... I decorated some plain fabric with them once and decided to use the fabric here. Celtic kitties...

and Celtic knot patterns.  The quilt measures about 78"x81" - better for a Full than a Queen size. I used navy thread for quilting and, aside from the wave pattern and some outline quilting in the borders, an overall squiggle/loop/star pattern that is my go-to, standard pattern for most quilts.

Also, since it's a new month, the UFO challenge random number is #1, and for me that breaks down to my long-neglected "classics" tote bag, and spinning the light green with silver glimmer fiber that I bought at Sock Summit. Both of those are theoretically possible, but I haven't worked on either so far.

The Joy of Finishing

So, I have progress in both knitting and quilting to report this week. Of all the things I have blogged about, the knitting and quilting have always been constants, and since I am still struggling with blogging regularly, it is easiest for me to push myself to blog when I have progress or even a finish to report. So, I started a new, impulsive summer knitting project this week. It is Gemini, from Knitty summer 2012 issue, and I am trying it with some reclaimed cotton yarn from an unraveled thrift store sweater. But my conscience nagged me as I knit, because Mint Chocolate was lacking only the buttonhole band and some buttons, and it had been started 5 1/2 years ago.

Also, full disclosure on my abundance of UFOs -- on the right is On Your Toes, a Green Mountain Spinnery pattern I started about 8 years ago (?) with some handspun Shetland wool. And on the right is Rosalind, also long in hibernation. Rosalind doesn't need too much more, On Your Toes needs quite a bit.

Well, I stayed up late and banged out that buttonhole band. It was just a little math, and looking up how to do one-row buttonholes. The next morning I sewed on all the buttons, which were salvaged from my favorite red Nordic sweater I bought at Goodwill, after it wore out at the sleeves many years ago.

 I even practiced my selfie-taking skills a bit. They are better than they used to be. Mint Chocolate, finished at last.

So after I blocked it, I also washed three other of my colorwork cardigans in the Kookaburra woolwash. And then I ordered some more Kookaburra because it's been too long and basically all my woolens need washing. Amazon delivered it the NEXT DAY, which is kind of insane but impressive.

So last week I blogged about returning to the Megaquilter to work on Celtic Solstice, which had been basically waiting 1/3 done since the end of 2017. This was the 2013 mystery quilt. I got to the bottom border and had to refresh my memory about how the quilting goes. It was a good thing I had taken a picture over a year ago of the border quilting, which is a wave pattern.

That was this morning when I finished the bottom border.

 And the right side. Then I took it off the frame and remounted it so one side was ready to have the border quilted. When I took my training lesson on the Megaquilter, the lady said to do this with borders. You can just let the weight of the quilt hang over the front rail to keep a basic tension on the area to be quilted.

 How it looked from the side before quilting...

and from the front of the machine. I tucked the extra quilt under and up again over the batting rail to keep it out of the way while still holding tension. If necessary I put a heavy notebook in the middle, in the "pocket" formed by the folded quilt. Believe it or not, this helps!

So I have finished quilting Celtic Solstice. I am still having some trouble with the machine, but I think it is because the hard rubber rails on the carriage have abraded in certain spots, and maybe also because it needs me to use different thread. I can tell it's the rails by visual examination, and because the bumpiness I feel in quilting happens when I am quilting north-westerly or north-easterly. I think I can fix the rails on the carriage, cutting down the short rails that I have never used from the original set-up. I will need to disassemble the set-up and take the machine off separately from the stitch-regulator to do that, and I can maybe sew on the binding while I have it off to test whether the machine itself needs a tuneup. This is a lot of tech talk to say, I need to hold myself accountable to actually do that! It's a bit scary for me. But I am on a bit of a high from having actually finished a project, and maybe I can channel that. I have so many more tops to machine quilt!

So in summary, I have finished two long-standing UFOs in June so far. They are just NOT the ones chosen randomly from my list.

Scrappy Trip Around the World

Well, it has once again rolled around to a new month, and I have been lackluster in my blogging again. But I have been sewing a fair bit. Last time I blogged, I had resurrected some 6-year-old trial blocks for the "Scrappy Trip Around the World." And I kept making them, using my 2.5" strips, until I had a total of the 48 I need for a 72"x96" top.

 Ten

 Twenty

 Thirty

 Forty

48! It went very fast, all things considered. That's what I love about quilting. It's a high-energy, quick gratification thing. Unlike knitting, which I probably need to do to recover my zen after all the blocks I made. Also, I need to clean up my scraps again, but that's a never-ending thing.

 I experimented with a few different layouts; above is more or less an attempt at true randomness, and below is trying to keep adjacent blocks with diagonal paths in the same color/value groups.

 I ended up liking the more random approach of the first time but of course the final layout is different, and I didn't bother to take a picture of it. I did stack the blocks and pin the row numbers on the top in each stack so I can sew them together. That is going to go more slowly, because the long seams of putting a big quilt together are not what I like best, so I tend to put it off or only work in concentrated spurts.

Speaking of putting things off, I put the Celtic Solstice on the frame at the end of 2017, and I am finally getting back to it just today. I'm a little unhappy with how the tension is not quite right... maybe it's subpar thread that is the problem, maybe the machine needs a tuneup. But even with occasional broken threads or tension issues on the bottom, I finished about half of the overall center of the quilt just this morning. I will need to repin the quilt to do the side border quilting. I'm definitely trying to remind myself that "finished is better than perfect."

I don't think I shared this on the blog yet, just on Instagram. This is a test block of "Sand Castles" from Bonnie K. Hunter's newest book String Frenzy. It has a lot of 4-patches I pieced as leaders and enders between the scrappy trip blocks, and some string blocks, and is just going to be really fun.

Also, reporting on the UFO challenge... I haven't really finished any of my quilting or fiber UFO's except for January, when I spun up my autumnal colors batt. I was supposed to do Celtic Solstice, the 1996 Piecemaker's Quilt, and at least 2 other machine quilting finishes so far this year, and for fiber arts, Rosalind, Manu, and more spinning which haven't been touched. The number for June is 10, which translates to the Rainbow Star quilt top, and the On Your Toes sweater which has languished for many years. I may have a good shot at finishing the Celtic Solstice quilting, though. These challenges are more like REALLY broad guidelines, anyway. I have a pair of lacy Sara Elin socks I really want to finish knitting, and I am also continuing cleaning and organizing my sewing area while I work on scrappy quilts and maybe more baby quilts. Happy with the progress on the quilt front this past month, whether I finish any UFO's or not.

Two Finished Quilts! And other quilty updates

I haven't been blogging much in the past few months, but I have been quilting. There has been an attempt to revive the quilting group that meets at my church, but we're not sure if that will take quite yet. Still, I demonstrated a basic, Snowball 9-Patch quilt pattern that is very user-friendly. Daniel needed a quilt for his full-size mattress that he has now, so I dug into my scraps and came up with this; pieced in a week or two, quilted in a few days:

The longer I stay in this quilting hobby, the scrappier my quilts get. The weather cooperated for quilt photography outside today, but it was starting to sprinkle by the time I was done. This will need to be boxed up and mailed to Daniel soon.

 This is Allietare! The mystery quilt from two years ago, and probably my favorite of all the ones I've done so far. It felt wonderful to get this one quilted. I used the same squiggle-loop-star overall pattern that I've settled on as the easiest for me to use on the Megaquilter.

 I really like that scalloped border and binding!

 This is a queen-sized quilt, so will probably eventually end up on our bed.

Celtic Solstice, a mystery quilt from even farther back, maybe 2013, is on the Megaquilter now. I'm having a few issues with bumpiness on the carriage rails; I think the plastic tracks are abrading and need to be replaced. I'm doing a wavy border and outline quilting on the wild geese, and then squiggle-loop-star in the central area. After this, I still have at least 4 tops to quilt, 2 of them Quiltville mysteries! I'm going to do my best to crank them out.

 Here is my design wall with my Frugal Patch color study. I can't remember whether I blogged about this much, but it's a project I have had in mind for 10 years. I spent a lot of time several months ago cutting jillions of rectangles for the "paths" of colorwash, and the squares for the diamond "pavement" squares. My basic idea is to fade in rainbow order along the paths, light and dark, with the diamonds being a complementary color to the paths, although there will be a few surprises. And the background of the diamonds will be neutrals from white through beige through gray/brown/navy/black.

 I did a lot of fussy rearranging of the dark blues in the sample block, and decided I needed to just piece them into pairs and arrange from there. Hopefully that will make it easier.

Here are several of my warm-color diamond patches. I'm really curious to see how this will turn out. Sometime soon I need to decide what size and how many blocks to make for the quilt.

Updates

I would need several days of blogging to catch up on all that I've missed, so I'll just share some of the highlights from our mid-January snowstorm and the sewing I have been working on. I'm sure there will be more left for a randomday post tomorrow.

 About 13 inches of heavy snow in 12 hours tested the bendy-ness of our birch trees.

 We took a walk across the street. In all this year there have been 8 snow days for Tertia and 9 for Quarta. They will have extra days in the summer.

Trying to shake off the birches a bit.

After an hour or so outside it was nice to come inside and sew. I monopolized the family room floor for a day or so. The snow turned to freezing rain and Portland shut down; I just kept sewing.

 Outside the gutters overflowed with freezing rain and the icicles just got longer and longer. The back porch was covered with an inch of very slippery ice... we didn't go out that way.

 I finished the En Provence quilt top and the sun came out just in time for this photo shoot on the old sycamore tree. The front fence would have been too snowy.

This is embarrassing... I have a rather extreme backlog of the 2013-2016 mystery quilts now waiting to be quilted. Plus a few extra...

 Front to back, En Provence, String Star, Allietare. On the frame (for more than three years!), Farmer's Wife. Not pictured, Celtic Solstice and Grand Illusion. This was the picture I took to goad myself on to start machine quilting Farmer's Wife again. It worked! (Pictures of that maybe another time).

I enoyed the mystery quilt this year: it managed to give me the kick start I needed to at least attempt to get back into my neglected quilt corner. My everyday Viking machine is in working order this year, although it just suffered breakage of the "accessory box" and now only functions in free-arm mode. I hopped back into the APQ quilt-along of a low-tone Burgoyne Surrounded, also from about 3 years ago. I've been cutting many strips for my Scrap User's boxes and binge-watching Call the Midwife, and I may very well have yet another finished top if I keep up at this rate. I hope I do, and I hope I manage to get some much-needed house cleaning and organization done as well. And knitting, and spinning. It's really quite amazing what is possible when I'm no longer teaching every day. In a small way, of course... I'm not claiming the house is neat or anything! And there is no denying I need to have some serious purges of excess stuff.

In previous year's I've tried to do various things to keep me accountable to work on UFOs and WIPs. I haven't been blogging enough to make that realistic this year, but I will try to do periodic updates on progress. It's what I originally enjoyed about blogging years ago, and it gives me an incentive to keep on. So here's to keeping on!

Finished Celtic Solstice Top!

I have not been sewing much lately, and it's been wearing on me.  I haven't been knitting much either, but I've been working my way through it, better than the lack of sewing.  So today I had some previously taped Tour de France going in the background and I finally wrestled the rest of the borders onto Celtic Solstice, which has been languishing in my extremely untidy sewing room since February or so.  That was when I attached the yellow inner border and the flying geese pieced border.

The biggest challenge was deciding what to use for the outer borders.  I rejected a second yellow border as being a little too assertive -- it needed some calming influence after all that sparkle and busy-ness.  I had some 4-5" wide strips of fabric from the epic estate sale of last year, but no yardage of either the light blue or the blue-green print.  I had to get a little creative to make it work, and the end result is a quilt top that is approximately 80.5" x 82.5" and used up - a lot of fabric.  I'm not really counting at the moment.

This is the FIRST finished sewing project I have turned out in 2014!  It has been a real wilderness for quite a while!  And yes, I know it's not technically finished until it's quilted.  But I will take it, especially as it looks so pretty blowing in the summer breeze over the limb of the sycamore tree.  Many thanks to Bonnie K. Hunter of Quiltville for the mystery quilt pattern and the fun of piecing.  The colors just sparkle together.  Cause for celebration!

Randomday, longest day

Randomday - here's a photo of those fine young people on the trip to Washington D.C. 

At the Pentagon.

And now for a really random picture - the slug that came in the crack under the front door a few weeks ago.  I really wish they wouldn't do that.  I had to get a stick to remove him.

Weather was lovely today -- the girls and I attended a wedding; the boys took Steve to play golf as a late Father's Day present and a last hurrah before Peter ships off for boot camp next week.  Peter has discovered after more than a year how his voice mail works on his phone; he had to go shopping for the regulation socks and underwear and duffel bag he will need.  I'm a little worried about him since we don't have a definite schedule for him yet, but he's going to have to learn to manage his life and better sooner than later, I guess.

Daniel found a good deal on an Ipad mini on Ebay and it arrived today.

I spent a significant part of the morning ironing the backlog of Steve's shirts and pants.  Daniel downloaded a mod for my Civ4 game, called "Caveman2Cosmos".  It is so big it takes 5 minutes to load and taxes my computer to its limits and sometimes beyond, but it is quite fun to take my stone-throwers and trackers out to hunt orangutans and sun bears.  I am playing the Celts and they started up in the Amazon rainforest.

Steve and Daniel picked raspberries yesterday and I made jam, with Quarta's help.  It turned out a bit too runny.  The plum tree is looking good for this year -- not quite as loaded as last year, but still quite respectable.

I found an interesting bit of Proto-Indo-European when I was doing my Bede translation today.  He keeps mentioning "frater germanus" and I finally found a link that explains it, kind of.  The interesting thing is that "hermano" is Spanish for brother,  but the German word for brother is completely different - "bruder".  I've been reading a bit about what it might be like to be a polyglot this week: a fascinating article.  The idea is appealing but I don't think I could maintain my sanity and learn that many languages!  My current list: English, French, Latin, Koine Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German.   The German is still pretty beginner level.  I'm counting down the days until Duolingo offers Dutch, and I would like to learn at least one non Indo-European language at some point.

I just realized it is the Summer Solstice and I still do not have Celtic Solstice finished.

Design Wall Monday

So here's what my design wall looks like at the moment:

It's mostly Celtic Solstice.  I have more than 80% of the blocks pieced and will maybe get started assembling the rows later on this week.

And I have another block to show in the APQ low-volume quiltalong.  I think this is #5.  Not a lot of sewing went on over the last week, but enough to claim a bit of progress.  However, no finished projects of any kind since the beginning of January, so I still have nothing to make up a stash report about.  It will come, I hope!

Celtic Solstice on the Design Wall

Enough to see the lovely patterns formed by the 2 different blocks, this is Celtic Solstice.  I have all the 54-40 or Fight blocks pieced and am not quite halfway finished piecing the second blocks.  Then of course I will need to sew them all together and add borders to make it finish at 75" square.  It's a good design; I like it a lot.  There are several overachievers linking up at Bonnie Hunter's site who have already finished the top, I bet.  I will be content if I can finish the top before her final link-up.

My quilt is inspired a bit more by my Scottish heritage than the Irish, so I chose darker greens and plenty of plaids. But if you look at my ancestors it doesn't take too many generations for the Scots and the Irish to intermingle a bit.  And they all ended up being Americans together.  I thought of the colors of the Irish flag and the colors of the Scottish flag mixing in this quilt, (and orange for the Dutch too!) with the sun sparkling on the water, and I thought of this song by Battlefield Band, which seems appropriate:



Many thanks to Bonnie for another beautiful mystery quilt and a fun way to spend Christmas break! I'm also linking up to Judy L.'s Design Wall Monday, but not to the stash reports yet because I have no completed projects for the year.  Yet.