30 Reds on 30 Whites

30 Reds on 30 Whites
by Ilene Atkins

 This one is about 16" x 16", and is part of my red and white heart series of quilts. I had quite a few hearts left from other projects, and when the President's Challenge came up at our guild last year, I put those red hearts into this small quilt. It was the 30th anniversary of our Waterloo County Quilters' Guild, so we had to challenge ourselves to use 30 fabrics in our small quilt.

I was also experimenting with a quilting style that is more heavily stitched, and this is the result.

30 Reds on 30 Whites, detail
by Ilene Atkins

These hearts are glue-stick applique.  This is where you glue the  edges of the applique down onto the back of the pieces, and then they are quick to hand stitch, in this case, to the background. These pieces can also be machine stitched to the background.

My inspiration for this technique is from Kathy K. Wylie, when she was at our guild for a presentation. I wrote about her visit here, when she showed us her fabulous appliqued quilts.

HST's, and Assorted Other Bits

I have a number of irons in the fire, so to speak:

This star top was made some years ago, and has been waiting patiently to be finished up. I don't usually do borders like this, but I think this one needs it. So I spent some time this weekend making these 180 HST's and 4 corner stars. What a pain it is to make half square triangles! And those corner stars . . . an even bigger pain. All this is a bit fiddly for me, but the heart wants what it wants!  I still have to cut another inner and outer border, and make a backing, so there is still some work to do before I get to sandwiching and quilting this.

This red and white nine-patch is one I've been slowly chipping away at whenever I have a few minutes to just sit and sew. I like to keep something around for when I want to run my sewing machine, but don't want anything big to think about. I started with a few leftover strips from the Log Cabin, here, and it doesn't take much effort or time to keep enough 1 1/2" strips cut to make into these 9 patches.

And I made up a bunch of these sachets, with a bit of catmint inside. For the trouble maker! Because he only sleeps 5 minutes a day, and wanders around looking for trouble the other 23 hours 55 minutes! He had all of these messed up pretty quickly. He actually rips apart the fabric to get to the catmint inside. I'll have to put them away, and take them out one at a time for him.


I suppose there is no better time than during this cold and stormy January weekend to get a bunch of quilting done.

Piecing vs. Free Motion Quilting

Piecing won out today, and I made another quilt top to add to my stack! I'm giving only a sneak peak at this one, that I think I'll call 5% Red. I say that, because so far, for every quilt I've made, I wish I'd done something differently. And on this one, I wish I had put in a lot  more red. With the blocks all joined together, it looks pretty pale, and more red in the mix would have given it a more striking contrast. It's together, though, so I'll chalk this up to experience and leave it at that. Since I think it will look good  quilted in circles of varying sizes, I might move it to the front of the sandwich line.

And speaking of quilting. I am realizing up until now, piecing has come naturally to me, from my previous sewing experience. The free motion quilting part is all new to me. I've had some epic failures with this, so I am hesitant to get to quilting my pieced tops. I must remind myself that I've also had some epic successes, so this is my struggle at the moment. My determination to get my quilt tops turned into finished quilts is what is keeping me going. So on that note, I started quilting one of my sandwiches this afternoon. Nothing big to show yet, just laying down some grid lines along all the block edges.

The saga continues. Having this blog medium to work this out helps tremendously, and for that I am grateful.