Quilting Floral Triangles (Formerly Know as Sweet Surrender)

First of all, I've never like the name Sweet Surrender. I think a quilt name should reflect the quilt somehow and Sweet Surrender just doesn't do it for me. I've renamed my quilt Floral Triangles, not a fantastic name but it truly reflects this quilt.

Next item, the disclaimer I need to post so I don't get bombarded with questions about the pattern.

Because someone always asks, I no longer have the Sweet Surrender pattern. I do NOT know where you can buy the pattern.  Sue Cody is the designer and owns the copyright on the pattern. She is no longer releasing it for publication. As far as I know, it is not available anywhere. Sorry, but that's the way it is so please don't ask me where to buy the pattern. Do your own search.

 Now, onto what this post is really about, quilting Floral Triangles!

I finished the bottom floral border. I really love the way this border looks, the colored Sulky threads look lovely. The stem and the inside of the leaves are quilted with a variegated green thread and the outside of the leaves is a more bright spring green.

The yellow flower centers were a problem. I've tried several different yellows and have finally settled on a brownish-gold thread. So, the bottom border has 4 different center colors until I finally found the right one. No one will ever notice though. I know, the colors don't show in this picture, I'll try to do better next week.

Did you notice the cloth on the back of the quilt? That's a cover I keep over the quilt when I'm not quilting. The room has windows to the south and west. Also we have the screened windows open during the summer, this way no dust lands on the quilt.

The pictures are a little dark, I took them in the early morning before the sun was very high. There's too much glare when the overhead light is on or the room is flooded with sunshine.

I need to get back into the fall/winter routine of quilting every evening but that hasn't happened yet so the quilting is going slow for now. 

I had said in the earlier post about this quilt that I used a Hobbs Tuscany Collection wool batt for this quilt. Connecting Threads has all their batts on sale now for 30% off, including the Tuscany Collection, just in case you're interested.

Linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Oh Scrap, Bambi's Show & Tell Monday, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away, Moving It Forward, WIPs On Wednesday

Summer Sun, Spring Splash

The Summer Sun, Spring Splash baby quilt has been quilted.

I ran across this pattern on another blog which linked back to the original pattern which was designed by Shelby Morris. I changed the name of my quilt to Summer Sun since I was making my quilt in the summer.

My quilt measures 40" square. I quilted her using Isacord polyester thread. This is the same thread I used to quilt the sky on the tractor quilt I made a grandson several years ago.

The quilting was completed with my sewing machine. I wanted the center star to be the focus of the quilt so I chose X quilting for the center. The lines are 1/2" apart. After that was completed, I stitched in the ditch around the center square.

Next was the checkerboard border. I had decided I was going to be brave and adventurous and do orange peel quilting on these blocks.

This was my first attempt at this design, I've always stuck with easy and simple before. Some of the orange peel blocks look pretty good, but some of them don't. If I were a perfectionist, which I'm not, I would unstitch those not so perfect curves and resew them. Fortunately I'm not a perfectionist, I'm more of a finished is better than perfect sort of person.

The above picture shows the true color of the yellow. When I take pictures of this fabric outside, it looks lighter colored and washed out.

I did see improvement in my stitching as I went along. I don't know how soon I'll quilt more orange peels but at least I was brave and tried them.

For the outside border I went with simple straight lines. I always like the simple design they make when the lines cross in the corners. I did take a picture of the corners from the front but it turned out blurry. You can kind of see the corners in the photo below.

I used the leftover fabrics on the back, the blue I've had for, oh, maybe, 15 years! The 9 patches on the back are from the leftover strips from the checkerboard border.

This was a fun, fairly fast little quilt to make. I recommend using this pattern for a small baby quilt or a wall hanging which was what the pattern shows. 

However I can see piecing several of stars for the center of a larger quilt.

Linking to Needle & Thread Thursday, Let's Make Baby Quilts, Peacock Party, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF!, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished Or Not Friday, Oh Scrap

Happy Little Things

I actually started a BOM in August called Happy Little Things with Jacquelynne Steves. I had planned to use leftover fabrics from Metro Rings, but then I saw the red & white block Leeanne made and changed my mind. My block though is going to be in blue, yellow and white.

 Here is the block I made for August . . .

And September's block.

For variety, I turned this flower a different direction.

I've embroidered 2 more blocks of alternate designs which are available on the website.

They're slightly blurry, sorry!

I'm always using white backgrounds for embroidery. I decided to be brave and bold and use a white with a gray print.


You can choose how you want to make your block, applique or embroidery. Instead of a quilt, Brenda made the blocks into pincushions which are really cute!

I had originally planned to make 6 blocks for my quilt but I've since changed my mind. There will be more blocks and I'm not going to finish my blocks the way Jacquelynne has designed. 

In case you're wondering how Sweet Surrender is coming along, I haven't quilted a single stitch all week! I did check to see if the quilting fairy stopped by during the night to put in a few stitches, sadly, no. Hopefully this week won't be as busy as last week.

Linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Oh Scrap, Bambi's Show & Tell Monday, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away, Moving It Forward, WIPs On Wednesday

Summer Dreams, Bright Hopes

The Summer Dreams or Bright Hopes quilts are quilted. I quilted them on my sewing machine with very simple quilting.

The quilting consists of stitch in the ditch along the seam lines between the blocks horizontally and vertically. Then I stitched diagonally both directions. Plain white thread was used on the front and backside.

I love this little bird fabric so for one of the quilts, I added several blocks of fabric instead of a pieced block.

You don't really notice the fabric blocks though. Look at the side by side pictures, the squares really blend in.

I did make a mistake when cutting some of the rectangles for the blocks. My rectangles weren't quite wide enough, easy to fix though. I just trimmed another 1/2" off, sewed fabric strip along that edge then then trimmed to size. Go ahead, enlarge the photos, see if you can find the fix. I think there were 4 blocks I needed to do this to.

They both measure 48" by 62", a little big for a crib quilt but perfect for a youth bed. I always liked crib quilts for my babies bigger than most people. When I was up in the middle of the night, especially in the winter, I liked the quilt to cover me too!

In the summer of 2018, I was organizing my fabrics and I came across cotton/poly fabrics I used when I sewed little granddaughter dresses. I thought these fabrics would make good backings for quilts. These fabrics are what I used on the backs of Summer Dreams, they have the soft, low volume look.

I had planned to use the bottom red/yellow/pink/blue stripe for the binding of the quilts but I didn't think it looked right so I went with the lavender/aqua fabric. 

What I like about the stripe I did use is the lines are printed diagonally on the fabric which gives the illusion that I used bias binding.  

I love the look of these quilts, they're so joyful and springy looking!

There may be more low volume quilts in my future. 

One of the blogs I enjoy reading is Quilted Twins. She is one of the most prolific quilters whose blog I read. She recently had this post highlighting some of the low volume quilts she's made. (While you're on her blog, check out her free quilt patterns)

The Bright Hopes pattern was so simple and easy to make. The original pattern was published on the Red Pepper Quilts blog. She has a tutorial for piecing the blocks. Yes, there is a partial seam but that's not hard. She also has listed the sizes to cut for different sized blocks. I see making more of these blocks, not necessarily in low volume fabrics, in the future.

Linking to Free Motion Mavericks, Needle & Thread Thursday, Let's Make Baby Quilts, Peacock Party, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF!, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished Or Not Friday, Oh Scrap

Sweet Surrender in the Frame!

One of my August goals was to get Sweet Surrender marked and into the hand quilting frame. I did meet that goal and the quilting has started.

Because someone always asks, I no longer have the Sweet Surrender pattern. I do NOT know where you can buy the pattern.  Sue Cody is the designer and owns the copyright on the pattern. She is no longer releasing it for publication. As far as I know, it is not available anywhere. Sorry, but that's the way it is so please don't ask me where to buy the pattern. Do your own search.

This is a large quilt, 92" by 104". I made my quilt larger than the original pattern. 

The pattern called for an applique border but I just couldn't do one more bit of applique for this quilt. Instead I chose to add a white border with a vine/leaf/flower stencil design. 

I will be quilting the design with #12 Sulky colored threads, hopefully it will show nicely. I did toss the idea around of embroidering the design in the border. 

An embroidered border would have been lovely, but I just couldn't stand the thought of wadding the quilt up in my lap while embroidering. If only I had though of it before I added the outside borders, no way I was going to take them off now.

On the center of the quilt, I marked 1/2" away from the diagonal seam lines on both sides. I followed this line into the white background of the applique.

On the darker fabrics I used a white Sewline chalk marker. On the light fabrics I marked with a Paper Mate Sharpwriter #2 mechanical pencil. I'm using a variegated white/silver thread for quilting the diagonal lines.

I'll be stitching in the ditch around all the applique using white YLI hand quilting thread. I will also stitch in the ditch the seamline between the rows.

In my opinion, wool batting is the way to go for hand quilting. I've always used a Hobbs Heirloom Premium wool batt, I buy them when they're on sale from Connecting Threads. During the last sale, I purchased a Hobbs Tuscany Collection wool batt. 

The problem with the heirloom premium batts is when they are folded then shoved in the plastic bag, it make bulges and pulls part of the batt out of shape. It can be a challenge to quilt those bulges. 

The Tuscany batt was folded nicely into a square and when I unfolded it, there wasn't one bulge pulled out of shape! I'm loving this batting already!

The backing is whole cloth fabric I purchased at Calico Point. That's where I buy my whole cloth backings. 

This quilt will be in the frame all autumn and most of the coming winter. I take my time when hand quilting, speed is not an option. Eventually this quilt will be gifted to one of the grandchildren when they're an adult.

* * * * *

I wrote the above post earlier in August when I got Sweet Surrender into the quilting frame.

The scrappy square border under the quilted white border is quilted diagonally. I'm not quilting the seam line between the blocks, I like the way it puffs. I also stitched in the ditch on both sides of the narrow white border and the bottom of the wider white border.

I really like how the colored thread looks in the flower border. The colored thread doesn't show up well in the picture but it does in real life.

Linking to Peacock Party, Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Oh Scrap, Bambi's Show & Tell Monday, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away, Moving It Forward, WIPs On Wednesday

Bright Hopes, Summer Dreams

Despite my determination not to get sidetracked from the projects I'm already working on, I did. On Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting, I saw a project she was piecing called Bright Hopes. She shared the link to the original designer, Red Pepper Quilts. It really intrigued me. No matter how I told myself no, I couldn't resist.

I pulled light background fabrics, a few colors too and started to sew. This is fun! I'm going to call my quilt Summer Dreams since it's summertime and I dream about making quilts while driving tractor.

This will be a long term project unless I get tired of slow piecing and decide to get 'er done.

Just a reminder, I won't be posting for the month of August, see you in September!

Linking to Let's Bee Social,  Needle & Thread Thursday, Peacock Party, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF!, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished Or Not Friday

Lucy's Back!

Do you remember Lucy? I had decided on the border fabric last winter. I've finally attached it. I decided the easiest way to go was to just baste the flimsy to the fabric then hand applique, obviously I removed the EPP papers first.

After I finished appliqueing, I carefully cut the center out of the backing.

I had planned to hand quilt Lucy but now I've changed my mind. The seam allowance on the backside is wider than 1/4" which makes quilting 1/4" from the edge difficult. I've decided to quilt 1/4" from the edge with my sewing machine. I'll still hand quilt the outside border.

Here's a close up of the back.

Since Lucy isn't going to be hand quilted, this means Sweet Surrender is next on the quilting frame. This is a link to my last post about Sweet Surrender.

Some people mark their quilts as they quilt. I don't, I'll get the marking done in August and into the quilting frame.

Here's a link to a BOM  called Happy Little Things which starts in August.  The information is found on Jacquelynne Steves website. Looks like fun!

I'm going to take the month of August off from posting. See you back here Sunday, September 1st! Hopefully Lucy will be finished by then and Sweet Surrender will be in the hand quilting frame.

Linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, HQAL, Oh Scrap, Bambi's Show & Tell Monday, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away, Moving It Forward, WIPs On Wednesday