Where Things Stand

This is a photo of Ruska, a Camp Sefton collaborative quilt from earlier this year, laid out over my drafting/cutting table; but the photo was taken from the back side.  

I had to clean up my paper art table so the top and later the back could drape overtop and stay flat for rolling onto the pool noodles.

Ruska is now fully pin basted and I've chosen the thread color.  This is going to be a very hectic week with a lot of coming and going but I hope to fit some quilting time in the gaps.

Meanwhile, Nimiety is now a quilt top - 52" wide x 72" long.

And after a bit of a tussle, the scrappy pieced back has been pressed.  

This is the center section that shows all the different fabrics.   

Here is the top for Yutori, no. 13 in the series of 13 Macnas quilts, laid over the drafting table ready to be rolled onto the pool noodle.

This is a BEFORE photo of the backing for Yutori . . .  

And this was taken after the finished back was pressed.    

At this point, both Nimiety's top and back AND Yutori's top and back are rolled onto pool noodles, ready for pin basting . . . I just couldn't stick Nimiety in the waiting to be quilted closet when the top and back were freshly pressed, so I'm going to quilt it before I start on the four bonus quilts from the Macnas series.

Quilting these 3 will be a breeze compared to all this prep work.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Dwelling on negative thoughts is like fertilizing weeds."

Norman Vincent Peale

Random Progress Teasers

Since taking this WIP photo, Nimiety has become a full fledged flimsy.  

Once the finished top has been pressed, I'll get a photo of it on the design wall.

I've also constructed a seriously scrappy pieced backing for Nimiety. 

It, too, needs to be pressed before I take flat-ish photos of it.

It has felt SO good to actually USE some of the leftover backing pieces and fabrics from the resource boxes; and in doing so,  I've found my next liberated scrappy mission once the remaining Macnas series/bonus quilts are finished -- LOTS more scrappiness and hopefully a lot less overthinking.

While digging in the stash, I pulled these fabrics to make a set of reversible placemats for September when our seasonal theme is sunflowers and apples.   

I also pulled yardage to make a new set of five reversible utility mats for our December living room (fireplace mats, end table toppers, and a runner for the cedar chest).  

The current set is six years old and I'm very tired of the print I chose back then.  Clearly I have the fabric to make another set, so that's what I shall do.

* * *

Elsewhere in the studio, I've made the bindings for Nimiety, Ruska, and  Yutori.  

Ruska will get pin basted this weekend -  right after I finish the rest of yet another edit/sort of the stash.  

Quiltdivajulie

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"It is a happy talent to know how to play."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Paint Party - the Quilt

Paint Party, No. 12 in the Macnas series, is finished.

Quilted using Glide thread in Yellow Whisper and my liberated all-over nested spiral fans.  

I had planned to bind Paint Party using a black and white stripe but after switching backings, I used the same fabric for binding.

(Color Splash Multi purchased from eQuilter)

The palette for Paint Party was inspired by this photo of Young Man helping a local restaurant owner paint her patio fence in early 2025.

Again, I am so glad I made the decision a few weeks back to eventually gift eight quilts from this series, otherwise I would have let myself fall head over heels with Paint Party.

* * *

Next up in the quilting queue will be RUSKA as it needs to be gifted in early August.

Once Ruska is finished, it will be Yutori's turn.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment.  It fashions its own

 perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

Bruce Garrabrandt

Relocation-Reassignment Complete

It all started while Lynne was clearing out her studio before the new flooring arrived.

She asked if I wanted the extra blocks from Field of Dreams and I said yes, knowing I had a plan for them.

Last night I pulled some fabrics from the stash and retrieved six of the liberated bird blocks Lynne sent after she finished her Green Bird Quilt.

I'll use the blocks from Field of Dreams to piece six slabs for placemat tops.

I'll use the array of greens from my stash to create strip pieced slabs that will include the birds for the reverse side of the placemats.  

In the box with the green blocks were these extra HSTs from her quilt named Amethyst.

I'll piece them into an insert for this backing for a scrappy quilt that is still in the gathering stage.

I've been stashing leftover blocks and bindings in this project box for another quilt top in the same style as Esperance.  

The leftover tumbler blocks from Lynne's Easter Basket quilt will be worked into this top when the time comes.

And so will the stack of leftover rail fence segments from Rainbow Crush.

My stashed yardage above has been set aside for yet another future scrappy lower volume quilt top.  

Lynne started piecing slabs using her pastels but then lost interest in the project.  I'll use the slabs as part of the backing for my quilt when the time comes.

* * *

One quilter's excess is another quilter's bounty.  Thanks, Lynne.

Quiltdivajulie

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"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."

Mark Twain

Squirrel Alert

I read THIS POST from Alycia a day or so after it was posted.  

The next thing I knew, my studio squirrels had gone from being quiet to being on high alert / code red / defcon 10 / etc.

As soon as I read Alycia's post, I knew exactly what to do with this waiting-in-the-closet mash-mash array of 2.5" strips left after sorting out the ones used for YUTORI.

In less than 24 hours, I had edited that crazy assortment and cut roughly 2/3rds of it into rectangles.  

The scrappy yellow rectangles were ALL cut from resource box fabric pieces. 

The black dotted strips will become binding and the wide back( that had previously been slotted for Paint Party) is just too perfect for this squirrel project, which has been named NIMIETY (noun meaning excess; overabundance).

The squirrels wanted to keep going, so I've made blocks for the first of three columns.  

The scrappy 4" x 6" blocks on the right are sorted into groups of purples, greens, blues, and oranges.  

The blocks with a scrappy yellow rectangle are sorted using those same parameters.

There's no easy-to-explain logic for my 16" x 24" blocks.  

I just know they're making me happy, so I'm glad the squirrels decided Nimiety was worth getting excited about.

Quiltdivajulie

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"The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"

Picasso

June Recap

I spent the first part of the month finishing Xanadu's quilt top.  You can see that post HERE.

A bit later in the month, I quilted and finished Xanadu, ready for gifting.  You can see that post HERE.

I used the leftover blocks and made this utility mat for the cabinet beside Max.  That post is HERE.

Morning Fog, Macnas series no. 11, was pin basted, quilted, and finished - that reveal post is HERE.

And on the very last day of June I pin-basted Paint Party, Macnas series no. 12, and chose a soft yellow quilting thread.  

Fingers crossed I can finish Paint Party and Yutori (no. 13 in the series) and maybe even Holus-Bolus (the first of four bonus quilts from the series) during July.  

* * *

This is our crape myrtle as seen from the rear/side of the house (this side faces east and gets sun until late afternoon).  

I liked the comment on how it looks a summer version of the lilac bushes I grew up with in Michigan - except these don't have the lilac's glorious fragrance.

This is the backyard photo taken on July 1.   It some ways it doesn't look dramatically different than the June 1 photo, aside from the plants having grown more dense and the grass beginning its seasonal color shift from spring green to summer stress.

(the temperature was 96 with heat index of 100 when I took this photo) 

Oh, yes - summer is definitely here.  

Quiltdivajulie

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"Just make a mark and see where it takes you."

Peter Reynolds in The Dot

Xanadu - the Quilt

I finished Xanadu in mid-June but couldn't share these photos until the quilt had been gifted.

These just-finished photos were taken on one of the in-between-rain-showers days, hence the gloomy sky in the background.

I bought the backing in 2024 because I loved it and it was on sale

(Xanadu by Ann Lauer of Grizzly Gulch for Benartex, Style # 16152)

The HST fabrics all came from the stash, including the background fabric which had taken up residence in the stash back in 2023. 

(‘On Dragonfly Wings’ – “Splatter” – White/Pearl by Ann Lauer of Grizzly Gulch Gallery for Benartex) 

It wasn't until I noted the selvage info for my tracking sheet that I realized the two fabrics were by the same designer - what a happy coincidence.

A day or so later, the sun peeked out so I took this additional photo with the quilt on one of our back porch rocking chairs. 

Quilted with my liberated all-over nested spirals using Glide thread in Amethyst. 

* * *

The already-much-loved quilt was gifted this past weekend to elder son and DIL in honor of their 20th anniversary.  

Yet another example of how time flies!

Quiltdivajulie

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"If I create from the heart nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing."

Marc Chagall

Summer Has Arrived

One of the most visual ways to know that summer has arrived in our area is blooming crape myrtles.  They've been close to flowering for the last couple of weeks but in the last two days the blossoms have burst forth.  

Our's happens to be this deep rosy pink color but others around town are blue-violet, pale pink, a vivid red violet, and white.

A couple of weeks back, DH re-did the bed in front of our front porch.  The aging, overgrown hostas had been attacked below ground by the voracious moles that bedevil homeowners here.  

These new hostas are planted inside flexible stainless steel mesh bags to protect them from any future mole invasions.

(to help you visualize - each bag fits perfectly inside a 5-gallon paint bucket)

Several of the displaced hostas were relocated into the large above ground pots in our back yard and our next door neighbor gave the rest of them new homes.

The hanging basket purchased for this hook back in the early spring did not thrive; so when I found this trailing mandevilla much like the one that did so well last year, I bought it.  So far it seems very happy.

The outdoor plants are holding their own but with the temperatures now settled in the mid to upper 90s with humidity in that same range, I am staying indoors as much as possible.  

I've finished my DIY wreck this journal project, the one I named Bricolage  (in art or literature, construction or creation from a diverse range of available things).

This page follows the title page.

And those arrows point to this facing page.

I'm happy to report that I actually followed these directions (more or less).

When I first read this prompt, I immediately thought of the rhyming book we read over and over again with Young Man.  

I just couldn't resist the idea so I went with it.

I've previously shared the two page spreads for pink, red, blue, orange, black/white, and yellow.  This is the spread for green.

I really enjoyed creating the journal spreads that were filled with so many random bits and pieces.

Highlighters and a permanent black ink pen were the tools for this spread.

I clearly do a better job of quilting my liberated nested spirals than I do drawing them on paper; but even with the sticking pen issues, I like the way this turned out.

* * *

My next studio goal is to piece the backing for Paint Party (Macnas series no. 12/13) and get the quilt sandwich pin basted.  

I'd love to have the quilt finished before month end but I'm not going to get too upset if the finish runs over a day or two into July. 

(and yes, this backing yardage is a different  fabric than the one I had set aside earlier)

Quiltdivajulie

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"There are no wrong turns.  Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk."

Guy Gavriel Kay