And They're Off . . .

From left to right - Rident (53" x 67"), Ohana (48" x 60"), and Spots and Dots (35" x 42").

Before these were packed for their journey to  Florida, I just HAD to get photos of them together.

Left to right:  Big Brother's quilt, Baby's toddler quilt, and Baby's newborn quilt.

(the baby was born safely on the 30th - he's in NICU for now to help keep his O2 and temperature up)

You can read more about any one of these three quilts by using the labels below today's quote.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Children want the same things we want.  To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted."

Dr. Seuss

Spots and Dots - the Quilt

Back in mid-2021 I put together a fabric pull with all of the polka dots in my stash.  And it sat.

In February 2022 I finally die cut a LOT of HSTs along with a bunch of 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles.

I ended up making four (!) quilt tops from those pieces and parts - 

Spots and Dots (this quilt), 

Gone Dotty (the quilt top's border has been changed since this post), 

Dot to Dot (gift quilt for a different nephew's family), 

Penelope Rose (gift quilt for that same family as above),

and the leftovers pieces and parts were used in both Ohana and the scrappy back of Rident.

Since Max's side table has been repurposed for my journaling work station, a new table is on order to go beside Max.  In the meantime I decided I could still quilt Spots and Dots (the baby's due date is getting closer).

I don't think this design has a "proper" name but I am calling it liberated waves (or fins, depending on your point of view).  

Quilted using Glide thread in Aquamarine (top and bobbin).

Here is the info on the backing's edge.  I used this eQuilter remnant which ended up being exactly the right size.

The binding was made with another well-aged stripe from the stash.

We had blue skies this weekend for first time in many days and, since there are bits of green beginning to appear (despite the fact that we'll have more freezing temps next weekend), I just HAD to take the quilt outdoors for photos.

35" wide x 42" long 

* * *

Spots and Dots will be the baby's newborn quilt.  

Ohana (WIP link above) will be his larger play quilt.

Big Brother's quilt will be Rident (WIP link above).

Time to get the next one of these pin basted . . . 

Quiltdivajulie

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"The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure."

Dale Carnegie

Friday Updates

The new flexible-use design wall has been covered and attached to the wall at long last.  Next week I'll paint the screw heads and washers so they don't show quite so much against the white flannel.

The earlier 18" test block is on the left and a new 12" version is on the right. 

I think I want to go forward with this project, but if I do I won't be using KF fabrics for the baskets and flowers.  I haven't decided if there will be a controlled palette or whether it will be entirely scrappy yet.  

And then, it might not happen at all.  Time will tell.

All of the four-rectangle strip sets (pieced using leftovers from Dot to Dot and Ferhoodle) have been trimmed into 1.5" and 2.5" cross cuts.  

The 2.5" units will be used for Ohana (see previous posts using the label below).

For now I am planning to incorporate the 1.5" strips into a future scrappy Dr. Seuss crib/toddler quilt.  

Unless another idea for the polka dot strips that has been rolling around in my head becomes reality . . . 

Finally, with the scrappy back fabrics for La Colcha off the design wall and put away, I was able to lay out the nearly 200 HSTs left after making Gone Dotty.

They are now becoming a baby quilt named Spots and Dots (shown here with the horizontal rows sewn, ready to finish webbing the top together).

Here is the 36" x 45" flimsy with its intended backing and binding.

And here's a close up of the binding.  There are rows of little dots in between the binding fabric's rainbow stripes; and the giraffe and others on the backing have colorful spots, all in keeping with the ongoing polka dot theme.

 

Quiltdivajulie

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“There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.”

Norman Vincent Peale

Ferhoodle and Dot to Dot - Two Flimsies

Dot to Dot has achieved flimsy (quilt top) stage.  

It measures 48" x 64" and is destined to become an oversize crib or toddler quilt.

My sister recently shared that she is happily waiting for her sixth grand to be born this fall. 

After several texts, she and I have chosen the quilt (Winsome) for the parents, so I am thinking about gifting Dot to Dot to my sister for her house.

Ferhoodle has also achieved flimsy status.  It was made with many of the excess rectangles cut for Dot to Dot.

This top measures 36" wide x 50" long and is destined to become a crib quilt.  

Since Winsome measures 51" x 62" I may send Ferhoodle along with Winsome so they have a choice of sizes for different situations.  I need to look and see if I have a quilt to send along for the baby's new big brother.

* * *

This leaves Spots and Dots to use the excess HSTs from Gone Dotty and Ohana to use the rest of the excess rectangles from Dot to Dot and Ferhoodle.  When I cut the WOF strips from that long ago polka dot fabric pull, I had NO idea that they would yield five quilts!

* * *

P.S. You can use the labels at the end of this post to see earlier posts for each of these projects.

Quiltdivajulie

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“. . . you can find magic wherever you look.  Sit back and relax, all you need is a book!”

Dr. Seuss

Works in Progress

I'm still playing with the leftover polka dot rectangles (2.5 x 4.5). 

Here you can see my "test" for the second baby/toddler quilt with a layout inspired by a vintage utility quilt.  The bottom group shows four rectangles sewn together.  The middle group shows trimmed 2.5" segments and the upper group shows trimmed 1.5" segments.

Time will tell if I stick to the inspiration quilt's layout that uses only 2.5" segments (resulting in a baby/toddler size) or whether I incorporate both the 2.5" and 1.5" which would yield a slightly larger quilt. 

The rest of the leftover rectangles (in the shoebox) are paired and pinned ready to be stitched together and then paired a second time to create the 4-rectangle sets.  

Originally I planned to use these as leader-enders but now I'm thinking I will just go ahead and get them sewn together and laid out (once a design wall is clear).

Either way, I have named this quilt Ohana (meaning family).

Once Ohana becomes a quilt top, I'll pull out the project box holding the extra polka dot HSTs from the making of Gone Dotty.  These are ready to be laid out and sewn into a quilt top that I'm calling Spots and Dots.

I really want to get all of the polka dot projects to flimsy stage now instead of putting them into the closet for "someday." 

These HSTs for Flaneur have been my leader-ender effort for the past few weeks.  They're all sewn now and I've pressed the first few . . .

But as you can see, there are a lot more that still need to be pressed open since there are nearly 400 HSTs in the layout.

As I was clearing off the top of my sewing table I took the time to stitch up three strip sets for Raconteur, a low volume scrappy trips quilt.  One set is shown here on the cutting table and the remaining strips are grouped and stacked in the shoebox.

I went ahead and made two test blocks to convince myself that the low volume prints would work.  (I've seen lots of photos of LV scrappy trips but I wanted to see blocks using my fabrics before proceeding.)

Raconteur will become one of our January quiet quilts but I'm hopeful it will be finished long before then.

* * *

Little Man will be here this weekend for a sleepover. 

Last Sunday during our weekly family dinner he happily told me that he'd like to make another quilt while he was here.  I had to explain that making a quilt is too big for a weekend so we are going to make a placemat "from scraps" that he can take home and use at his house.

Something tells me he will also want to make two more - one for Mommy and one for Daddy.  Good thing I have lots of scraps.

* * *

Has anyone else encountered the apparently random "sign in with Google" issue when attempting to leave a comment on someone else's blog post?  I have tried several times to "log in" (despite already being logged into Blogger/Google) without success.  So to those who are not receiving comments from me - it isn't that I haven't tried!

Quiltdivajulie

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“We are mosaics – pieces of light, love, history, and stars all glued together with magic and music and words.”

Anita Krizzan

Introducing Gone Dotty

June, 2021 - I pulled as many different polka dot fabrics as possible from my stash (yardage and resource boxes).  This is what I came up with.

The original plan doesn't even matter any more because there have been so many changes in direction between then and now.

But over the past few weeks, using this array of polka dot fabrics, I've been cutting 2.5 x 4.5" rectangles for a baby quilt named Dot to Dot and pairs of 4.5" x 9" rectangles for die cutting 3" (fin.) HSTs to make a lap quilt named Gone Dotty.  

Here are the first few sets of HSTs for Gone Dotty.

There will be 64 different polka dot fabrics paired with a limited number of black and white polka dots and others that read like a polka dot -- eight different color groups each with eight different polka dots. 

Cathy L. shared this vintage beauty last year and I knew instantly that at some point I would make my own version.  Gone Dotty is that project.

Cathy is making sets of 5 HSTs from her scraps and tossing those sets into a box.  I just know that her super-scrappy version (scroll to the end of the linked post to see photos) is going to be amazing.

This is what my design wall currently looks like but this will not be the eventual layout.

Process note:  In order to get five HSTS using a die that cuts four from each 4.5" x 9" rectangle, I used two rectangles giving me eight HSTs from each of the 64 fabrics.  I'm making all of them but only five of each fabric will be in this quilt.  

The other 192 leftover HSTs  (3 each x 64 fabrics) will be used to make a second baby quilt tentatively named Spots and Dots.

But for now, Gone Dotty is my focus.  Stay tuned . . . 

Quiltdivajulie

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“There is a magic about you that is all your own.”

D.M. Dellinger