A Tale of 2 Squids

 I finished this pair of squid.  Each finished at 20" x 26"

 Based on this photo by Pat Di Giazomo. 

 I started with this one.  It was started during lock down so I was limited to fabrics on hand.  I found a fat quarter of this fabric and set about fussy cutting the darker grid areas for the top, and lighter sections for the bottom.

This squid was made using my favorite applique method of back basting needle turn.  It was hand quilted.  That makes the whole piece very soft and drapey after washing, and bigger pieces have some poof to them that makes them look very dimensional.  It took about 11 hours to complete.

Quilt shops opened, the week I started this project, which was fortunate as I didn't have a good, dark background fabric.   While at the shop I found this spotted brown fabric. I was sending updates to Pat all along, and she really preferred the brown, so I made a second one.  I made some minor adjustments to make the body a little skinnier, and the pupil of the eye larger.  I used my least favorite applique technique of fusible web.  To further save time, I top stitched it during the quilting process. The squid is much stiffer in the body due to the fusible.  However, it is going to be used as a wall hanging, so that works out OK.  I have concerns about the durability of raw edge applique for quilts that get a lot of use.  It reduced the time to about 5 hours and had the additional cost of Wonder Under and much more thread.

Pat's brown squid will be bound and finished for a wall hanging.  The green one turned into a pillow case.

Furlough Day 29 Just Busy.

 Week 3 of my furlough was spent working on some long ignored applique borders.  It's been slow going, but since this pictures have most of the connecting stems placed and have some leaves on one panel.  I also started the machine quilting of the raw edge applique panels on the Covid Quilt.

It was a great weather week, so ended up on a couple of lunch rides.  

Week 4: Headed to Eastern Idaho to deliver belated Mother's Day gift and to buy a new-to-me car.  Did my 3rd try at recreating an heirloom crocheted lace on the way over, but found that the small scale irritated my wrist, which has already been bothering me with all the quilting and motorcycle riding I've been doing.  Have decided to abandon this project.  When I messaged my friend to let her know, she informed me that her mom had decided to let her have the original.  Win!

Came back via Montana. 

 Retail stores are open in Idaho now and I did my best to support 4 small town quilt shops last week.  I have 3 commission quilts lined up, all of which are out of my usual fabric color choices.

 Making progress on the Covid Quilt.  Here's my corona virus border.

I would have made more progress, but a friend has been bugging me to make him a mask from a Crown Royal bag.  Used the Dhurata Davies pattern which I quite like, but am going to have to adjust for a bigger than "Large" size to accommodate hubby's beard.

The schedule is open this week, so am hoping to finish the covid quilt.  I'm over 1/2 done with the quilting, and have finished the fussy parts, so some background fill and a couple borders should go pretty quickly. I also plan to design a lap sized Vizsla quilt which a friend has commissioned for a fund raiser.

Furlough Day 17 Quilt Prep and Bright Shiny Objects

 Yesterday after getting the flimsy done, I just couldn't bear to go on to my least favorite step of sandwiching the quilt.  So I sorted a BIG pile of scraps and double checked with my NICU nurse friend to be sure they could still use mini quilts.

 By end of morning today, the yellow leftovers, combined with some random reds that have some yellows, looked like this.  It's kind of ugly, but remember that only the center third shows when it's wrapped around a bassinet mattress. I'll quilt it so it looks prettier with texture.

 This one is much more visually pleasing.  The Tula Pink Unicorns were for a dress for my granddaughter a year ago.  I am not entirely sure where the lighter pink scraps came from.  I remember the yardage but not the project that resulted in bits leftover.   The flimsys are 30" wide x 36 long to allow plenty of extra for wrapping without being fussy and annoying for the nurses.

 The 4 I did previously were quilted, but a request was just simple flannel backing and no batting, since thick quilts don't wrap well.  I didn't have any then, but found that Joanne's had Flannel for $4/yard today.  Plus 20% off total order coupon.  Ordered on line for curb side pick up.  My past 2 pick up experiences had some difficulties, but today was sublime.  I should have set a timer, but my guess is less than 10 min from when I parked until I pulled away.

 I did complete the hateful sandwiching process.  Including this background and the process of fairly successfully and fairly easily matching the repeat for the backing.  I used the walking foot to quilt the outlines of each section of the Covid Quilt. De-linted the machine and on to FMQ tomorrow.

AND I found out there's a Quarantine Quilt category at Houston Quilt show this year.  So I'm gunning to finish asap.  Deadline is June.  And the recipient of this quilt lives in Houston.  So I can send it to her when finished and she can walk it in if accepted.

 Meanwhile, I am still obsessed with Sourdough English Muffins.  This is batch 9 and I think I have it figured out.  Bottom left is side 1 and others side 2. 

My goal is to make unbelievably fluffy English Muffins with 100% sourdough (no additional leaveners) with a super sour flavor.  This is my supermodel with big, lovely holes for the butter to drip into.  Made with a Bahrain sourdough, which has amazing flavor, but slow rise. 

Furlough Day 16 Covid Flimsy

It was a very productive day.  I finished the insulin/ CGM block that was nearly done yesterday.  I did all the borders around the individual components of the Covid quilt and got it to the final flimsy stage.   Added a couple more TP rolls, a skinny one and a totally empty. 

The goal was to have the center represent the really dark, hard and frightening experiences Chris had battling Corona Virus.  But including the one positive, that she was in the first wave of recovering and being able to donate plasma for an experimental treatment.  The header/ footer represents what most of the rest of us were experiencing at the same time.

The applique uses multiple techniques including both my favorite: needle turn applique, and my least favorite: fusible web.  The fusible will have some sections of thread painting as part of the machine quilting.  The masks will remain 3-D.  I came up with an idea for an extra surprise here...but you won't know what it is until Chris receives the quilt.

I will be FMQ on my humble Singer.  I will be adding more symbols in the quilting including the evil nasal swabs, and some covid spheres. 

The process of making an art quilt always make it look like a fabric store barfed there.  Fabrics are auditioned, tossed aside.  More found.   I spent a couple hours putting this back away, and reorganizing the small yardage fabrics for future applique.  It was reorganizing a fabric library but changing the Dewey Decimal system. "Seashell" fabrics are now tones of tan.  My "Southwest" fabrics shifted to shades of brown & rust. 

I also sorted the scraps into a dozen potential mini-quilts.  Subject for another post. 

Furlough Day 14 Covid Quilt Progress

 I've put about 8 hours into this quilt today. 20 hours running total. Here's the lay out as it is currently planned.  It's been a mixed bag of good and bad.  (Sorry about the sideways thing...Blogger is not so user friendly)

The masks turned out great.  I used my mask pattern, but just thin muslin on the back side.  Wanted them to be 3-D.   Picked out colors that I would personally describe as BLERGHY.   Weird, muddy, jaundicy  colors that I am not entirely sure how they ended up in the stash.

The Toilet Paper is the post that started the whole quilt.  I was planning to create my own, but felt an obligation to buy the pattern "We're On a Roll" from Java House Quilts.  They were about 30% smaller than what I'd imagined.  I did some reverse versions.  And I think I'll add a couple more, transitioning from the full to empty rolls (left to right).

Early in the planning I had included the leftover Chartreuse and Puce fabric leftovers, but after an hour of sewing HST, I wasn't sure that they are going to work.  They are on hold.

Finished up the day by working on the Plasma Donation panel.   Feel that I should have done needle turn for  item placement.  Not convinced about the outcome, but confident I can fix what I don't like during the quilting stages.

Only 1 theme panel left:  Inuslin and CGM.

Meanwhile, my sewing studio looks like a fabric store barfed all over it.
And we used to joke about having enough fabric to survive an apocalypse.