Finley Nichole Paddock was born February 26, 2013 at 1:55pm, weighing 9 lbs., 6 oz. and measuring 19.5″ long. She came out yelling and bright red, with a full head of dark brown hair.

She looks startlingly like her brother, which surprised everyone:  Ronan’s features are very much a mix of different family members, so that when people ask me who he looks like, I always say he just looks like Ronan. Now Finley also looks like Ronan, to the point that when they brought her to me, I thought, “Didn’t I already have this baby?” Her face is a little rounder, her forehead a little less prominent, and I think her eyes will be brown. But I also think they will look strongly alike as brother and sister, which can only be a good thing.

She’s a snuggly little girl who loves to be held, and knowing that she’s my last baby, I’m trying to cherish every moment of cuddling her. It’s a good thing I’ve always been told that you can’t spoil a newborn, because otherwise I’m spoiling the daylights out of this child.

I’m still getting used to the word “daughter.” Before we had children, if I ever pictured myself as a mother, I saw myself with little girls. After all, I have three younger sisters; my brother wasn’t born until I was 14. Having spent the last two years and three months as the mother of a boy, however, has changed that perspective. I think I’m doing a good job so far with Ronan; I hope I can give them both what they need from me.

We’re also trying to make this transition as easy as possible for Ronan. He never really grasped the concept of a baby coming despite all our efforts to discuss the topic with him over the last several months, so he has been a little spun by this major life change. My mom stayed with me in the hospital so Dan could be at home with Ronan to normalize things as much as possible those first few days. Nevertheless, he’s been somewhat clingy and oppositional since we got home from the hospital, but I make sure I do storytime and bedtime with him every night, just the two of us, and he’s gradually coming around. He likes Finley a lot, so at least he’s not holding a grudge against her.

So while I’m still in the early, bleary-eyed, weepy phase of new-baby-having, I wanted to introduce my new little treasure here. I’m still getting to know her, and still getting to know myself with her in my life. But she represents a very welcome new chapter, a new adventure, a blessing, and a promise.

Welcome to the world, baby girl.

Every year since 2000, at his request, I have made Dan a different flavor of cheesecake for his birthday. Although I had baked cheesecakes before, this annual project has given me a great deal of experience. Some years’ cheesecakes have been better than others, but I haven’t had any complete disasters; even the amazing imploding Brownie Bottom cheesecake still tasted good, as Rhonda can attest.

So when Alyssa asked for my cheesecake recipe, she gave me the motivation I needed to collate information I had scrawled across multiple pieces of ingredient-splashed paper, combining crossouts on recipe printouts with handwritten notes and some little tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years and putting it all into one document. This doesn’t represent every cheesecake variation I’ve made; some, like the aforementioned Brownie Bottom deviate from the pattern; some, like the Pistachio and the Key Lime cheesecakes require different base recipes altogether; and the White Russian cheesecake (where’s the money, Lebowski?) was so complicated that I need to lie down just thinking about it. But you can pretty much make your own Cheesecake Factory display case at home with just this one recipe and its variations, and look pretty impressive doing it. Enjoy!

Master Recipe for Cheesecake

4-  8 oz. packages of cream cheese
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup sour cream

Crust:
1 1/2 cups graham cracker (or other cookie) crumbs
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup sugar

Adjust one oven rack to middle position, with another below it. Preheat to 325 degrees, with a pan of water on the lower rack.

1.  Bring all ingredients to room temperature. This makes for fewer lumps in the batter.
2.  Crust:  mix crumbs and sugar in a large bowl; add melted butter and mix to combine. Dump mixture into a 8″ springform pan and press with fingers across the bottom and 1/3-1/2 of the way up the sides. Take care not to let crust get too thick where it turns the corner to go up the sides. The crust does not need to be prebaked.
3. With an electric mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth. Gradually add sugar and beat at medium speed until fully combined, scraping down sides with a rubber spatula throughout. Add eggs, one at a time, continuing to scrape sides regularly, then vanilla, then sour cream.
4.  Pour batter into springform pan over crumb crust and place on the middle rack of the oven. The oven should be very humid when opened and there should still be plenty of water in the pan on the lower rack. Bake until cake perimeter is set but center still jiggles, usually about 45-50 min. Turn off oven and leave oven door slightly open by a few inches, leaving the cheesecake in the oven for another 30 min.
5.  Remove pan from oven and set on a wire rack to cool fully to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, 2-3 hours. Run a sharp knife around the edge of the pan to release cheesecake, then undo spring and remove side piece of the pan. Slice with a wet knife, rinsing between slices, and serve.

Variations:
Chocolate cheesecake:  Use chocolate cookies for crust. Melt 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips over low heat. When combining sugar with cream cheese, also add 1/3 cup baking cocoa. Add melted chocolate chips after adding sour cream.

Chocolate mint cheesecake:  Same as chocolate, but substitute 11/2 teaspoon peppermint extract for the 2 tsp vanilla.

Marble cheesecake:  Same as chocolate, except only melt 3/4 cups chocolate chips and do not add cocoa or chocolate until remaining batter is combined. Divide plain batter into two bowls, and add 1/4 cup cocoa and melted chocolate chips to one. Pour plain batter into springform pan, then add chocolate batter and swirl with a knife before baking.

Pumpkin cheesecake:  Use gingersnaps for crust. Reduce to 3 packages of cream cheese and add 1 29-ounce can of 100% pure pumpkin along with 2 tsps. ground ginger, 1 tsp. ground cinnamon and 1/4 tsp. each ground nutmeg and allspice to recipe, substituting brown sugar for granulated and adding 1 additional egg.

Peanut butter cheesecake:  Use vanilla wafers mixed with chopped peanuts for crust. Reduce to 3 packages of cream cheese and add 3/4 cup peanut butter and 2 cups melted peanut butter baking chips.

Peanut butter cup cheesecake: Use chocolate cookies for crust. Make peanut butter cheesecake, then when cool, top with 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips melted and combined with 1/4 cup heavy cream. Garnish with mini peanut butter cups.

Almond Joy:  Use chocolate cookies for crust, with or without chopped toasted almond pieces. Substitute 11/4 teaspoons almond extract for the 2 tsp vanilla, and add 1/2 cup cream of coconut and 2/3 cup finely shredded coconut to the batter. When cool, top with 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips melted and combined with 1/4 cup heavy cream. Garnish with chopped toasted almonds and shredded coconut.

Liqueur-flavored cheesecakes:  This recipe is wonderful for flavoring with 1/4 cup of any of the following (leave out the vanilla extract):  Bailey’s Irish Cream; Amaretto; Kahlua; Godiva chocolate liqueur; Grand Marnier (orange); Chambord (raspberry.) Any of these works with either the plain master recipe or with the chocolate version… (yum!)

A clean start to the new year!

So, half a UFO is complete! As I posted before, I still have the other 72 matching Broken Dishes blocks in the UFO box. But I finished piecing the complete set, made a quilt top with the first 72, and I produced a pink quilt to give to a baby girl for Christmas.

Evelyn on Evelyn’s Quilt, 48″ x 48″

The particular strain of Murphy’s law that has afflicted this project was still in effect, though:  when I basted it, I pretrimmed the batting and discovered that no matter what the packaging says in regard to dimensions,

Oops

I still need to measure twice and cut once. Thank goodness for the Pellon fusible batting tape I bought at the Lancaster show last year!

Good stuff to have around.

Since I always like to get some contrast between the piecing and the quilting design, I knew I wanted to quilt curves. I had originally planned to keep the quilting formal, perhaps with a lacy Spinal Twist design from Megan Best in the white “pathways” and then something less elaborate but still following the Barn Raising-style concentric diamonds created by the fuchsia and purple triangles. If I had been trying to make an heirloom quilt, that probably would have been the way to go. However, despite the formal setting and all the white in this top, I wanted to make a quilt that would be put down on the floor for the baby to play on and spit up on, for the cat to lay on and for her parents to feel comfortable stuffing in the beach bag and then tossing in the washing machine. Therefore, I decided to take the quilting in a decidedly non-traditional direction.

I’m trying to become more comfortable with all-over quilting designs that disregard not only piecing lines but also the “pathways” created by contiguous areas of the same color or value of fabric. While I’m certainly not a fan of the overuse of lowest-common-demoninator, just hold the three layers together pantograph quilting, there is definitely a time and place for an all-over design. Hopefully this quilt falls into that category.

Quilting Detail, Evelyn’s Quilt

I’ve been reading Leah Day’s blog a lot lately, and her recent design “Flower Power” really captured my imagination. I thought it would add some youthful feminine whimsy to this quilt without getting too crazy. I further attempted to keep things upbeat and casual by choosing a Superior Threads Rainbows variegated thread in neon pink, orange, yellow, and lime green. And although I planned out a general strategy for the placement of the giant daisies, I did them completely freehand and without marking. I purposely kept them “consistently inconsistent” so I could vary the size and degree of symmetry as the top dictated, without making any one stand out. And I think overall, I was successful.

Not that I didn’t have problems. I originally planned to get all the quilting done at my recent guild retreat, but I made the mistake of only bringing along some pink Wonderfil thread for the bobbin that absolutely did not play well with the Rainbows on top; after quilting three daisies and having the thread break for the sixth or seventh time, I packed it in and made Shop Hop blocks from 2008 (more on that later.) Not that my quilting was completely free of frustrations when I tried again at home:  although Bottom Line was much more successful in the bobbin, I still had trouble with occasional breakage when I’d go through heavy seam allowance convergence areas.

Also, this design really showcased a continuing weakness in my machine quilting because the extremely large petals are essentially long straight lines that require at least one, sometimes more, stops to reposition my hands as I stitch them. (Fortunately I have managed to break myself of the habit of trying to stitch beyond the area of my hands’ control, which has most definitely improved my quilting.) But while I do continue to take Karen Kay Buckley‘s advice from her long-ago class, to only stop a straight line at an intersection to hide any wobbles when restarting (I tried to use seams whenever possible,) my stitch length is still noticeably inconsistent when restarting; I tend to have a few shorter stitches till I get going again. Also, I need to be more cognizant of approaching seam intersections to help prevent short stitches or wobbly lines resulting from the foot getting hung up or deflected by the increased bulk. I think stitching over complex piecing is one of the areas in which domestic machine quilting really has a handicap compared to longarm. It’s not that it can’t be done, obviously, just that I still need a lot of practice to do it well.

But that’s the beauty of a quilt like this:  it was far more important to finish this quilt than to try to make it perfect. I’m great at doing but lousy at practicing; the prospect of making a bunch of muslin quilt sandwiches to practice my quilting before embarking on a big project would just drive me away from the sewing machine. Instead, I practice by quilting actual quilts that will serve actual purposes, rather than just being thrown away or stuffed in a drawer. (And no, I am NOT making my practice sandwiches into placemats. If anyone wants to torture me, they can force me to attach binding to a whole bunch of small pieces I don’t like very much.) This isn’t a practice quilt, but a real quilt with a real destiny that allowed me to try something different without too much pressure to make something perfect. And I think the result is pretty, functional, and FINISHED!!!

Back detail, Evelyn’s Quilt

The back was bought at a discount on the most recent shop hop, and I don’t think I could have found a more perfect match for the fuchsia and purple at any price (not that I brought the blocks with me, so my freaky superpower for color memory persists.) The binding was a stash fabric, and although I briefly flirted with a wild impulse to bind this quilt in lime green, cooler heads prevailed. Maybe that’s what I’ll do for the remaining set of blocks.

For a happy dance, I’ll go with “Almost There” from Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog.” Cassandra gave the DVD to Ronan this Christmas, and I love it! Funny how the one genre where classic movie musicals never went out of style was in animation aimed at children. I also got an education when I researched this number, in that the animators were specifically inspired by the work of Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas, whose gorgeous work I wasn’t familiar with till now. Enjoy!

Cassandra’s Purse, November 2012

I wouldn’t previously have called a project I hadn’t even touched shears to fabric for a UFO, but I’ve been reading Leah Day’s blog lately and she defines any project that you’ve kitted up as a WIP/UFO. While this nearly infinitely expands my UFO list (and I am not comfortable with that) I will take it as a fair description for this particular project.

Remember when I made my sister Sian’s Star Wars purse?

Sian’s Star Wars Purse, July 2010

Even in that blog post from two years ago, I had mentioned that my sister Cassandra had also requested a purse from that pattern (Huntington Hobo by Pink Sand Beach Designs.) However, her birthday is November 15, and two years ago I was preparing for a much bigger project in November than making a purse:  namely, the birth of Ronan. The main reason I hadn’t even started it in advance of her birthday, though, was the fact that Cassandra is… particular. It’s not that she doesn’t like handmade things, it’s just that she needs to be a bit more of a collaborator or at least a consultant on the project if she is going to be happy with the final product. (Of course, that means I’m less likely to make stuff for her than for some of my less particular relatives and friends, but so be it.) So rather than trying to use some of my precious pre-baby quilting time to make her something I wasn’t convinced she’d be thrilled with, I got her something else for her birthday and brought along a selection of fabrics for the purse that she could choose among. She liked the primary fabric I had chosen very much, as she had specified turquoise and purple and I had found a gorgeous sari-inspired print in those exact colors, but she made some different selections for the accents (corner patches, handle, pockets) and I dutifully noted them all down. Then the pattern and stack of fabric were unceremoniously shoved into the closet for two years.

All fabrics placed per instructions

This became my Hurricane Sandy project. We were fortunate enough not to lose power at home, but I was unexpectedly off work for two days, so I started the purse. Fortunately, I had made very clear notes to myself in 2010 as to what went where fabric-wise, and the directions in the pattern were as thorough as I remembered:  even with a two-year gap since I’d made the last one, this one did seem to go together more smoothly as if I really had learned something the first time. I was very pleased with the result, and more importantly, so was Cassandra:

A satisfied recipient!

The second UFO to warrant mention in this post was supposed to be a quick quilt, and it has not worked out that way. In 2006 or 2007, Diane and I spent a fun weekend in my backyard dyeing fabric. The project left me with a fat quarter bag full of gorgeous, one-of-a-kind fabrics that I was frankly terrified to cut. In an attempt to get over myself, I shortly thereafter started making 4″ finished size Broken Dishes blocks using the fuchsia-to-purple 6-step gradation we had dyed both a regular white muslin and a stipply white-on-white print. I decided to use triangle papers to further ease construction, and I had made 24 blocks of each step of the first three steps of the gradation before putting the project aside for what I’m sure was a good reason at the time. I didn’t pull it out to work on again until this summer’s mini home retreat, when I wasn’t quite ready to start the challenge quilt but wanted some simple piecing to do.

That’s when I found out that I was inexplicably missing two half-square triangle squares from Step 3, and that I hadn’t cut the fabric for Step 5. Oh well, that’s what happens when you put a project aside for multiple years. It occurred to me that this was in its essence the makings of a pink quilt, and since Alyssa was having a second daughter in October, I would have a good motivation to finish this otherwise stalled UFO. After finishing the challenge quilt, I picked this project back up, thinking it would be relatively simple to put together. But I ran into weird difficulties. First of all, despite all my careful work with the triangle papers, the blocks were still inconsistent in size; the 4.5″ squares of white Kona cotton I used as alternating squares showed me that most effectively. Second, although the gradation is very plainly obvious in the finished top and when comparing large pieces of the fabric, I had to be extremely vigilant in keeping the blocks organized because individual blocks from adjacent steps became virtually identical to one another if, for example, they fell off the design wall onto the studio floor (like that would ever happen.) And third, I had gotten 5/6 of the way through assembling the top when I discovered that I had made the solid, but not the stipply white-on-white, blocks from Step 6, so I had to stop my momentum and go back to piecing before I could continue. Since I didn’t feel like figuring out where I’d put the leftover triangle papers, I just used my Easy Angle ruler. And wouldn’t you know it? Those six blocks were more square and truer to size than any other blocks in the whole quilt. Lesson learned, that in my hands, for some reason, the Easy Angle technique, cut biases and all, is more accurate than using triangle papers.

The top that will soon be Evelyn’s Quilt

But after all that, I do have a very pretty quilt top to show for it, and a sense of accomplishment that I killed two quilting birds with one stone by turning a UFO into a baby quilt. I’d get a real sense of accomplishment if I got to peel the label off the UFO box, but unfortunately, I only used half the blocks for this top:  I still have 72, 4″ Broken Dishes blocks in search of another quilt. Then again, I myself am having a baby girl in March, so I don’t think they’ll be searching for long. And at least now they really are all finished and nicely sorted into labeled baggies, from whence hopefully none of them will decide to re-sort themselves or vanish while in the box. We’ll see…

Ronan strikes a pose on the Shop Hop

Once again, my mom, Ronan and I did the Eastern PA Shop Hop the first 2 weekends in November. There were only 11 shops this year, as Jeannette from Endless Mountains Quiltworks in Tunkhannock decided not to participate in favor of a new hop in southern New York state. I was sad not to go there, since it has been one of my favorite shops since I first discovered it on the shop hop many years ago, and especially because we missed The Airing of the Quilts this year since it fell the same day as my youngest sister’s wedding. However, the shorter list of shops made it more accessible to do at a leisurely pace, especially with a toddler in tow, and at least this year’s list got shorter because of a shop owner’s choice, rather than because another shop went out of business.

As with last year, I went into the shop hop with a commitment to not add to my stash unnecessarily. The only item on my actual shopping list was a backing for Alyssa’s new baby daughter Evelyn’s quilt, and even that was planned for the discount bolts. I think I did pretty well: I only bought one full price piece of fabric, and I only bought half a yard of that.

I did buy the shop hop blocks, as I really liked the color palette and it’s all batik. The line only has a few lights in it, and some of the shop quilts really demonstrate how important it is to have a range of values in your quilt. While some took advantage of those couple light prints and used them for sashing or setting triangles, others turned out muddy because they’re predominantly mediums and darks.

Also, while I wouldn’t buy the blocks if I didn’t like the fabrics, it does give me an easy out for a shop where I don’t feel called to buy anything else at any given shop. Yes, I know there is no price of admission for getting my passport stamped, and yes, I know not finding anything I want to buy is not usually my problem, but it does feel strange to drive all the way to a shop and then not buy something.

As much fun as I had making my Liddle Lamzy Divey quilt using only the Jo Morton line for the entire quilt, I have four years’ worth of shop hop block kits to make into quilts, and I plan to fill in what I can’t do with the generous kit leftovers with stash fabric. Much as I don’t need new projects in my life right now, I think I’m going to take my block kits to retreat with me and see how many I can knock out. I haven’t been doing much piecing lately since finishing the (grumble grumble) paper piecing for the challenge quilt, and I think it will be fun.

Anyway, we had a very good time. The weather cooperated for the most part, and so did Ronan, helped significantly by his affinity for both the smiling, friendly ladies that tend to populate quilt shops and for the cookies that so many of them had on offer. (I’m a little concerned that from here on out, he will expect all quilt shops to give him cookies whenever we go in.) We went to Pocono Sew & Vac and American Ribbon in East Stroudsburg, The Country Quilterie in Effort, and The Quilted Crow in Lehighton on Saturday, November 3; 118 Fabrics & More in Sweet Valley, J&B Fabrics in Nescopeck, and The Happy Sewing Room in Hamburg on Sunday, November 5; Wooden Bridge Drygoods in Kutztown on Saturday, November 10; and At Piece Quiltery in Easton, Allentown Sewing Machine Outlet, and Ladyfingers Sewing Studio in Oley on Sunday, November 11.

My haul…

Obviously, I did buy fabric; I just bought heavily discounted fabric. Pocono Sew & Vac, 118 Fabrics, and J&B Fabrics all had excellent sales going on certain sale fabrics, so I finished some bolts of fabrics that I thought would make good borders or backs for projects or color schemes in the pipeline. I didn’t realize until I composed this picture that I had bought so many Christmas-themed items, as I haven’t really done any Christmas quilting for myself, and it’s been several years since I’ve made any gifts. But the panel was cute, on sale, and had possibilities; the poinsettia fabric was $3/yd (!!!) and the shop model 118 Fabrics had up of the snail’s trail variation pieced santa pattern was just too cute to leave behind. I’m very excited to try out the Inspira needles I bought from Allentown Sewing Machine Outlet for free-motion quilting on the recommendation of their sewing machine guy, but the crown jewel of my hoard from this hop is the gold-plated Roxanne thimble, the correct size for my thumb, that I bought from The Happy Sewing Room for only $42! I’ve wanted to get one for my thumb for a while, since there are certain times in hand sewing where I really need to push the needle with my thumb (plus, someday I want to try Alex Anderson‘s technique for hand quilting with my thumb.) However, Dierdre McElroy hasn’t been coming to the shows I’ve been attending in recent years, and I haven’t wanted to buy one mail order at full price and have to both pay shipping and guess on the size. This one was just sitting in the little glass case as if it were waiting for me.

So, after all that driving and shopping, it’s time, as Leah Day says, to “Shut up and quilt!” I have an excellent opportunity to do exactly that at the guild retreat next weekend. More on that soon!

It’s always summer when you’ve got shades!

Obviously, it’s been a really long time since I posted. I had intended on taking the summer off from blogging, but I didn’t mean to let it drag so far into fall. However, Hurricane Sandy closed my office on Monday, and since the power at home stayed on, I got some good momentum going on this post before normal life resumed.

Part of what has kept me quiet was the fact that until very recently I literally couldn’t talk about the main project that has occupied me since July: the guild challenge. This year’s theme was orphan blocks. We randomly drew bags that contained anything from a single orphan block to a collection of blocks or precut pieces, and then had to make something new out of the bag’s contents. My bag had just one single block in it, and it had issues:

The original orphan block

In the plus column, it’s a 54-40-or-Fight block, which I’ve always liked the looks of but had never made; the basic color palette had promise, since purple and green are two of my favorite colors; and the fact that it was primarily made of solids meant that finding coordinating prints would be relatively simple. HOWEVER, I completely understand why this block ended up an orphan. It’s hand pieced, and the seam allowances were positively enormous, in the 1/2″ to 5/8″ range. There were rust stains, probably from being stored with needles or pins in it, and this block did not have a single 90-degree angle to its name. If I had made a block like this, I would have stopped at one, too. I salute the brave quilter who not only held onto this block for some years, but offered it up for public consumption. And I have to say, it inspired me to make something I’m very proud of, that I never would have conceived of otherwise.

My first thought was to just rip out the seams and use the individual pieces for applique. Heck, with those seam allowances, I certainly would have ended up with plenty of fabric! But ultimately, I decided I really wanted to maintain the sharp points of the original block and riff off of those for my final design.

The finished product, “Aurora Borealis,” 36″ x 36″

A brief aside regarding my conflicted relationship with foundation paper piecing. I absolutely love “sharp pointies” designs such as New York Beauty and Mariner’s Compass, and paper piecing definitely seems to be the way to go to achieve satisfactory results with these blocks. However, I really don’t enjoy the process that much. I’ve tried several different books’ and teachers’ methods for paper piecing, I’ve tried several different types of paper foundations, and I still just find it to be tedious. I don’t like sewing on paper because the presser foot slips around, I despise having to trim after each seam, and I HATE having to tear the paper off afterwards. But in order to achieve the results I want with those super-sharp points, it’s what I have to do, and I’ve made peace with that. It will just never be my favorite technique.

I’ve had a book in my collection for many years, “Quilt Mavens: Perfect Paper Piecing” by Deb Karasik and Janet Mednick, whose pictures I have (metaphorically) drooled over for as long as I’ve had it. Up until now, though, I’ve never had occasion to make any of the patterns from it. But strangely enough, their pattern “Spike Redux,” which is essentially a giant Lemoyne Star by way of the Chrysler Building, seemed to echo the sharp points of the 54-40 or Fight block while introducing new design elements. I just changed the color and value distribution to suit myself, and swapped out the corner New York Beauty-style blocks for the orphan block.

I had bought the beautiful, hand-dyed-look, gradated purple and green fabric, “Glacier Lake” by Caryl Bryer Fallert, at least eight years ago. (I found it on the enclosed porch of the old location of Endless Mountains Quiltworks, so it’s been a while.) It was love at first sight, but it’s been one of those “too good to cut” fabrics for me all these years. With this color palette pre-established, I had finally found its showcase in the big setting triangles and curving center pieces. I only had a yard and a half, so I had to cut carefully, and I only have a few scraps left after just barely having enough to make the binding, but it was the perfect fabric for the job. In fact, most of the fabrics for this project came from my stash; the only ones I had to shop for were the pale lavender and pale chartreuse, because I needed lights for value contrast, and these are not shades that naturally occur in my collection. Fortunately, my mini-retreat with Rhonda and Kathy occurred just when I was about to embark on this project, so a shopping trip to Sauder’s did the trick.

Detail, “Aurora Borealis”

The only part of the quilt that I hadn’t completely pre-planned before starting to cut fabric was the corner blocks. Initially I had considered leaving the block intact and just making three more like it (obviously machine pieced and with new fabrics), but I was concerned that wasn’t changing it enough for the spirit of the challenge. Also, having three identical blocks and one “vintage” block would probably tend to draw focus to the odd one out, like that old song from Sesame Street:

So I tried cutting the blocks in half diagonally, although I flipped the orientation after playing around on the design wall. I experienced a great deal of stress when finally rotary cutting that block, because it was the only one I had — normally the worst thing that could happen is that I’d have to recut or repiece, but the stakes were high on this! Plus, those hand-pieced seams really wanted to spring apart until I sewed across them. I had fun making my own new 54-40 or Fight block for the other two corners. I finally used the Tri-Recs ruler I’d bought years ago, and was very happy with the result.

Quilting detail, “Aurora Borealis”

For quilting designs, I mostly fell back on my old standbys:  freehand feathers in the Glacier Lake pieces and  parallel lines in the paper pieced areas. The stroke of genius was Dan’s, as he came up with the idea to quilt the corner setting triangles as if the piecing continued for complete blocks. Doing the dense pebbling filler pattern not only created contrast in the solid areas, but also gave me some additional peace of mind regarding the hand-pieced blocks, that they wouldn’t be going anywhere.

And all my work and soul-searching was very well rewarded at our guild meeting, when my quilt got the highest number of votes at the big challenge reveal! I got a lovely prize bag and the grateful satisfaction of knowing my work is appreciated by a group of quilters I love and respect so much. Priceless.

For the happy dance, I had to go with Gilles Marini’s Bollywood dance from DWTS All-Stars. It just makes me smile:

Ronan Loves Fabric, too!

It’s the 2007 shop hop sampler quilt, finally finished!

“Liddle Lamzy Divey,” 2012, 86″ x 102″, only 1/4 visible because it’s hanging on my back porch.

I decided the name for this quilt had to reference the lambs in the focus print from the Jo Morton collection used for the shop hop blocks. After all, that was what made me buy the block kits — especially the little pugnacious lamb in the back:

Making this quilt created a multitude of fun challenges for me, and the overall design of the top just evolved organically as I solved each one. First, rather than making each block separately from its kit, I counted up how many of each shape and unit from each fabric needed to be made in order to make all 19 (18 shops + the kit included with the passport purchase) blocks. I then opened all the kits and only used what I needed. Since each kit included width-of-fabric strips, they were extremely generous, and I was left with a large quantity of excess fabric once all the blocks were made.

A desire to use up this excess fabric was the genesis of the idea for the flying geese borders, because I had stacks of 3 1/2″ strips crying out to have something made from them. I used the Fons & Porter Flying Geese Ruler for the first time, and was very pleased with the result. I also fell in love with the plaid, which was a part of Jo Morton’s collection but not used in any of the blocks. The owner of (the since closed) Quilting in the Valley in Hegins had used it in the center of her shop hop quilt, and I knew I had to have it. Setting triangles seemed like the way to go, and since most of the blocks had light backgrounds, I put the narrow dark borders around them so they wouldn’t bleed into the plaid. (Fabric selection for those was based entirely on what was still left from all those strips.)

Long before I knew what the quilt top would look like, I bought the acid green tone-on-tone print because I knew I would likely need additional yardage of one of the “neutrals” and it was my favorite from that category. Due to just how huge the top ended up, I wound up having to piece the long vertical borders, but it still worked. Once again, a cutting error ended up making the quilt more interesting:  I had initially planned for the outer borders to be solid 6″ strips with the extra flying geese pieced in to break it up. However, I got distracted and ended up cutting all my remaining yardage into 3 1/2″ strips. After storming around for a while, I got practical and decided to piece in the narrow strip of the focus fabric to make it look like an intentional design choice. As usual, the process of fixing my mistake led me to a more complex and compelling design.

I didn’t do anything earth-shattering with the quilting, just variations on what I’ve been doing with most of my quilting lately:  Pam Clarke and DeLoa Jones-inspired continuous curve variations and no-mark motifs following the piecing lines in the sampler blocks and flying geese; Patsy Thompson and Kimmy Brunner-style freehand feathers in the plaid setting triangles; and that Megan Best ”Onions and Garlic” filler in the green vertical borders. I also quilted a little “half-hearted” design in the accent stripe in the outer borders and in the borders of the sampler blocks; it’s a variation on Sally Terry‘s “signature” sashing design that I thought complemented the feathers nicely.

Overall, despite the sheer acreage this quilt represented, I tried to concentrate on making the quilting patterns echo and call back to one another so they looked like part of the same “family.” I also attempted once again to achieve Sue Patten’s “three densities,” with the densest area being the green vertical borders and the poofiest areas being the setting triangles. I did all the quilting with just two colors of Superior Threads’ So Fine!, orange and green, with tan Bottom Line in the bobbin. Other than a few isolated incidents of thread breakage after going through some very solid spots of converging seams, everything behaved beautifully. After this quilt, I think I can finally detect some visible improvement in my stitch length consistency, but that remains to be seen.

I used the 19th block on the back as my label, and added a hanging sleeve made of the only fabric not from the shop hop collection in the quilt. (I didn’t have a big enough scrap left over to make a sleeve without doing a ridiculous amount of piecing, which didn’t seem worthwhile.) And it’s finished, a full week before I have to drop it off for the guild show. I washed it and am keeping it in a plastic storage tub until next week, so it doesn’t get cat hair on it, because this is what repeatedly happened while I was sewing on the binding:

They’re very lucky they’re cute.

For a happy dance, here’s the song that’s been running through my head ever since I hit upon the name for this quilt:

Or the binding, which in my life normally elicits some shouting.

I don’t know why I dislike sewing binding on so much. I don’t know if I’m still at heart a bratty child who’s too impatient, seeing the finish line but resenting still having one more task to perform. I don’t know if it’s the handwork aspect, that having executed all the piecing and quilting on the machine, it seems retrograde to sit with a needle in my hand. I don’t know if it’s my perfectionist tendencies that make me tense up over wanting every stitch to be invisible and ideally placed, yet wanting to finish sometime this century. All I know is that binding the quilt is my least favorite part of the process. I’d rather pick out stitches than sew on binding.

But the end is in sight, and I am definitely on target to finish in plenty of time for the show. (I also have to make and add the hanging sleeve, and sew on the label, and launder the quilt to get rid of the water-soluble basting thread… ok, maybe I should be sewing rather than blogging right now.)

I do have to say that as far as bindings go, I’m rather fond of this one. It’s the lovely plaid from the setting triangles again, because I can’t resist a plaid or striped binding, especially set on the bias. However, since the setting triangles go straight to the edge of the quilt, I wanted something to make the binding stand out. I didn’t think I had time to do one of Susan Cleveland‘s Piping Hot Bindings before the quilt show, so I cheated by using brown 1/2″ rick rack. I did use Susan’s technique, though, of attaching the rick rack first using a contrasting bobbin thread, then attaching the binding to the front of the quilt by sewing with the back of the quilt facing up, so I could follow that bright orange bobbin thread and sew just to the left of it. Hand sewing the binding down was incredibly tedious on such a large quilt, especially facing a deadline and during an unusually warm late spring, but the result appears so far to be worth it. And on the hot days, I just wore shorts and posed like Angelina Jolie at the Oscars.

Here’s a little preview for the “finished!” post that I’ll hopefully be publishing soon. Just as I did during this year’s shop hop, in 2007 I took a picture of the quilt at each shop:

While the different settings and designs were extremely inspiring, and I have certainly gleaned some ideas from them for future sampler quilts, ultimately I went my own way. The big reveal should be coming soon…`

“Time for book club!”

Our guild program for April was a presentation by professional longarm quilter Barbara Persing and her sister, quilt shop owner Mary Hoover. Together, they are the designers behind the quilt pattern company Fourth and Sixth Designs (so named because they are the fourth and sixth in birth order in their family.) I enjoyed their trunk show of quilts and the affectionate banter between the sisters. However, the most valuable piece of information I took home was that Barbara had a book coming out just a few weeks hence, about choosing quilting designs and threads for your quilts. Since this is probably the single biggest current issue in my quilting, I anxiously anticipated its release.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when Dan got it for me for our anniversary last week! At first I thought he’d been super-stealthy Observant Guy and had noticed the advertising card I’d picked up at the meeting and had placed on my studio whiteboard, but it turns out I’d added it to my Amazon Wish List so I wouldn’t forget about it, and he’d just found it there. Still, the result was the same.

I can’t think why he didn’t notice it there. (Sadly, this is not a staged photo.)

And it’s just as good as I’d hoped! Barbara starts by giving an overview of her “Four Questions” that should be asked before planning the quilting for any quilt. This isn’t a new strategy; Kim Brunner and Debby Brown each suggested a form of this approach during their lectures at Quilting with Machines, as do several of my favorite machine quilting books (more on them later.) Barbara Persing has managed to set herself apart by streamlining the discussion into an easily accessible system that any quilter can apply to any quilt. As a big fan of systems, I was hooked.

Basically, what she and all these other knowledgeable quilters are saying is that the secret behind choosing appropriate and complementary quilting designs for any given quilt is to identify what kind of quilt it is and how it will be used. There’s no point in doing gorgeous heirloom “bump-back” feathers on a busy print Turning Twenty quilt you’ve made for your nephew to take to college. (As Mark Lipinski famously said when he spoke to the Letort guild a few years back, “It’s just going to get covered in beer and DNA.”) Likewise, if you’ve taken the time to needle-turn applique a Baltimore album quilt, you probably don’t want to stitch a pantograph over it all.

Back detail, “The Sampler” by Barbara Persing. I took this (with the help of the white glove angel) at Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza 2009, when it won for Best Machine Workmanship.

The latter 2/3 of the book is really a peek inside Barbara’s thought process as she quilts nearly 30 different quilts in four different categories:  Child/Youth, Traditional, Contemporary, and Art Quilts. (She acknowledges the arbitrary and incomplete nature of these categories, but you have to start somewhere.) Each quilt has at least one page devoted to it with a 1/4-page photograph of the entire quilt, and inset closeups to show quilting detail. At the bottom of each page, she takes us through the way she answered her own questions for that particular quilt, from the larger generalities of degree and style of quilting, to the specific design chosen and thread used. I particularly enjoyed the attention she pays to thread choice, which has been a bugbear of my quilting lately and doesn’t usually get much press.

“Listen To Your Quilt” is in many ways the player that was up till now missing from my dream team lineup of machine quilting books. With only 70 pages to work with, the author doesn’t dwell at length on the subject of selecting quilting designs to complement particular design elements in the quilt top; she simply mentions that shapes from a fabric print can be mimicked or echoed , or that she used wave-like quilting on a blue quilt. I would recommend that anyone who is looking for a more comprehensive discussion of the process of designing the individual elements of the quilting should see “A Fine Line” by Melody Crust and Heather Waldron Tewell, which is twice as long and really explores this topic in depth, but doesn’t offer such a structured, practical blueprint. In “Machine Quilting Solutions,” author Christine Maraccini provides less variety of sample quilt pictures but more specific “how-to” diagrams of three different levels or intensities of quilting designs for each of the tops depicted. I would finish out the essential book shelf with “Quilting Makes The Quilt” by Lee Cleland, in which the author accomplished the Herculean task of quilting FIVE different versions each of TWELVE quilt top designs (yes, that’s a total of 60 quilts!) so that we could see just how much the quilting design choice can influence the final result. With these four books in my arsenal, I feel properly educated to choose the quilting for any quilt I might make.

The machine quilting portion of my library.

Some prospective readers who quilt on domestic machines may be concerned that this book is intended for longarm quilters. I can reassure you that this book is all about planning, not technique; the only mention of longarms is in her biography. If anything, the fact that she is quilting customer quilts, of which she has no input in the design, makes her approach even more relatable for me. I am not yet to the point in my quilting where I am designing my tops with the quilting in mind, as Ricky Tims and various other renowned quilters recommend. I am reacting to my own quilt tops much like a professional quilter who is seeing a customer’s quilt for the first time. While this is a mindset I’m trying to change, it made this book more applicable for me for the time being.

What “Listen To Your Quilt” does not do is teach how to machine quilt, and this was absolutely fine with me:  that information is abundantly available from other sources. While there are some simple freehand, free-motion designs depicted on the last few pages, there are plenty of other collections of quilting designs available. What is usually missing from the books that tell you how to machine quilt, or provide you with designs of what to machine quilt, is an explanation of why you should (or shouldn’t) machine quilt a given design on a given top. “Listen To Your Quilt” is an excellent fulfillment of an underserved area of quilting education, and would make a useful addition to most quilters’ libraries.

After my mom looked at the quilt, I folded it and placed it on top of the built-in cabinet in our living room. I planned to take it back downstairs within the hour.

And within an hour of their leaving, I found this:

This is how I interpret the look on his face: