Meadow Flower Lap Quilt Flimsy

The Meadow Flower flimsy is finished! This more than completes my One Monthly Goal, which was to get started on an EPP (English Paper Piecing) project. This also completes a project from my 2021 WOOFA list. 

This was my first ever EPP project so I wanted to do something relatively simple so I could get the hang of it. I really enjoyed working on this project so I am definitely going to do more EPP projects. It's wonderful to have something to work on when I'm out of the house.

Even though I wanted this as a project primarily for when I was off doing things outside of the home, I have to admit I did work on it fairly often while I was at home. It was a fun project and once I only had 4 blocks left to finish, it was too difficult to resist the lure of finishing before the end of the month.

The flower block is from BlockBase+ (#4143) and is called Meadow Flower.  According to BB+, it was originally published by the Old Chelsea Station Needlecraft Service in the 1930s. I exported the SVG file from BB+ and cut it out on my new Cricut Maker, so it was super easy to make this project.

That wild floral print is a really old fabric I bought in around 2000 to make square dance clothes. The rest of the coordinating prints are just a random assortment of fabrics from the stash.

I'm linking up with

Brag About Your Beauties at From Bolt to Beauty

Finished or Not Friday at Alicia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday

One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts

Peacock Party at Wendy's Quilts & More

Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

WOOFA at Gone Stitchin'

Tuesday To Do #18

Has it really been a week since I last made a To-Do list? My, how summer is flying by. I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to sew but I really need to finish a stained glass project I started more than a decade ago so I can sell off the supplies and clear some room in the basement. I ordered a Handiquilter Infinity long arm and I can't have it delivered until I come up with a 14'x7' space in our basement family room. You'd think it would be difficult to keep me from that project, but surprisingly not.

Anyway, back to last week's list.

1.    Assemble the long border pieces for the Finger Lakes log cabin. ✔︎

2.    Finish the Finger Lakes log cabin flimsy. ✔︎

The flimsy is finished. I posted about it here.

3.    Assemble the backing for the Finger Lakes log cabin quilt.

I don't feel like doing this right now. It will be quite a long time before I manage to quilt this into a finished quilt so it can wait for now. I also need to make some pillowcases. I'll set the fabric aside and return to the project later this fall.

4.    Continue sewing the Meadow Flower blocks when we're out of the house. ✔︎

The quilt is nearly finished. I am sewing on the last black border pieces on four of the blocks. The rest are finished. I may actually manage to finish the flimsy this coming week.

5.    Start figuring out how to cut out the Unbeweavable Lap Quilt (from my WOOFA 2021 list). ✔︎

Figured out and Complete. I posted about it here. 

I actually spent a couple hours last night starting to put blocks together. These angles hurt my brain; I keep making mistakes on the assembly so it will be a bit of a slog until I get into the routine (and memorize the orientation of the pieces). And I'm also trying to figure out which direction to iron all the seams so they are oriented in the opposite direction as the adjacent block. It will take a bit of trial and error to figure everything out.

Also, last night I realized I cut out twice as many pieces as I need. Oops. If I cut out another set of black pieces, I could actually make another quilt with the weaves going in the opposite direction. We'll see how this one goes first before I decide to make another. LOL

My list for the coming week:

1. Continue to work on the Meadow Flowers Lap Quilt.
2. If I finish the Meadow Flower blocks, trim them down to size and piece the flimsy on the machine.
3. Choose fabrics for the next EPP project. (I've already cut out the papers.)
4. Cut out the fabric pieces for the next EPP project.
5. Continue work on the Unbeweavable Lap Quilt.

Linking up with

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Monday Making at Live, Love, Laugh blog

Tuesday ToDo at Chris Knits

Drop on by if you want to see what everyone else has been up to.

Cricut Magic

OMG, I am seriously in love with my new Cricut Maker 3. I already have most of my Unbeweavable quilt cut out. And I did it while I was working on other projects!

I would put on a fabric to cut and then wander off and do something else! Then I would come back a little while later and put on the next fabric. This continued for the afternoon until it was all finished. I don't think I'll be doing much cutting out by hand anymore. LOL 

Since I expect I'll be doing most of my cutting out on the Cricut now, I decided I'd better stock up on the fabric cutting mats. Cricut has them on sale right now for about $8/ea (in a 3 pack) so I figured I better stock up. And they are also offering Free Economy Shipping on orders $99+ with code SHIPAUG or AUGSHIP through 8/31. 

Now that I know how awesome this tool is, I'll definitely keep an eye out for sales on the mats and replacement rotary blades. I am officially glad I didn't go for the AccuQuilt. This cricut is so much more flexible; I can resize blocks to any size (smaller than the mats) and I cut any block I can find/make an SVG file for.

Unbeweavable Lap Quilt Plan

Finger Lakes Log Cabin Flimsy

I don't have a good way to hang this quilt flimsy to take a good photo of it, unfortunately, so I'll settle for just laying it out on the bed so you can see the finished border. This is an amazing quilt design and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Most of the print fabrics are an old set of fabrics I bought from JoAnn's in about 1999/2000 that I've been hauling around for way too long so I'm glad I finally made something from them.

The instructions—found in Judy Martin's Log Cabin Quilt Book: Patterns & Possibilities for Lob Cabin & Log Quilts—are excellent and I had no problem making it. Okay, other than using some of the wrong length strips when I was assembling the border blocks, but that was mostly because I wasn't paying close enough attention to what I was doing and I picked up the wrong pile of pieces.

This is the second quilt I've made out of this book (the first was the Snake River Log Cabin Quilt) and it was worth every penny I paid for it. 

There is still one more design I may make at some point (the Timberline Log Cabin), but now it's time to focus on finishing up my WOOFA 2021 list. And I have a number of non-quilting projects I need to work on for the rest of the summer.

I'm linking up with

Brag About Your Beauties at From Bolt to Beauty

Finished or Not Friday at Alicia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday

Peacock Party at Wendy's Quilts & More

Put Your Foot Down Friday at For the Love of Geese

TGI Finished Friday

More EPP Projects

As I approach the end of my current English Paper Piecing project, I thought I should start trying to figure out the next one. I poked around in Electric Quilt for projects I designed in the past to see if any could find any that were suitable. I found a couple that I think I will try.

This is a Kaleidoscope Quilt block I found in BlockBase+ (it's block 4004). I printed out templates on cardstock and I'll drag them to a BBQ this coming weekend and start cutting them up. I'm not sure of the final colors as I'll probably have my husband help me pick what he likes. (Purple is my favorite, not his.)

I also thought this little quilt would be fun and pretty easy. The colors may change on this one too. I don't have all my fabrics in EQ right now, so once I get upstairs and start pawing through my stash I might find something I like better.

Both of these blocks are from BlockBase+, though I actually edited the flower one to remove some lines to make it easier to EPP.

Block #2135,
Japanese Poppy by Nancy Cabot

I removed some lines to
have fewer pieces.

To prep for this one, I already cut out the cardstock shapes with my Cricut Maker 3. Gosh, I love that machine already. It only took me an hour or two to cut out all the pieces for all of the blocks. And once I figure out what fabrics I want to use, I'll also cut them out with the Cricut.

Linking up with Midweek Makers and Design Wall Mondays. Check out the link parties to see what everyone else is up to.

Tuesday To Do #17

Last week I filled my To Do list with tasks I didn't think I would actually get to, but I did. I guess my motivation to sew is pretty high right now since I'm close to finishing a complicated project.

1.    Assemble the central portion of the Finger Lakes log cabin quilt. ✔︎

2.    Start piecing the border blocks. ✔︎

I am nearing the end of the Finger Lakes Log Cabin quilt. I finished piecing the central portion early last week.

Then I built the strips and blocks for the border during the later part of the week. What a miserable project that was; I couldn't believe how many mistakes I made. Clearly, there was some failure in my process when I was prepping the strips. I did more ripping than I've done in a very long time, but the blocks are done and I do love them, but I am going to take a couple days off this project. I'll try to get it done by Friday for TGI Finished Friday. LOL

3.    Rework the hanging hooks on the design wall. ✔︎

I have plaster walls in my house so I'm unwilling to drive screws into them to mount this so I actually installed picture hangers along the top edge of the foam and suspended it from the picture rail with picture rail hooks. It works well enough. It's not a very large design wall, but it's much better than nothing. 

4.    Continue to sew the Meadow Flower blocks when we're out of the house. ✔︎

5.    Cut out the Irish Chain blocks for the Meadow flower lap quilt.  ✔︎

And I've obviously made some progress on my meadow flower lap quilt. I'm happy with how this is turning out too and I'm definitely going to do more EPP projects in the future. It's a great little handwork project for when I'm away from home.

For next week, I would like to:

1. Assemble the long border pieces for the Finger Lakes log cabin.
2. Finish the Finger Lakes log cabin flimsy.
3. Assemble the backing for the Finger Lakes log cabin quilt.
4. Continue sewing the Meadow Flower blocks when we're out of the house.
5. Start figuring out how to cut out the Unbeweavable Lap Quilt (from my WOOFA 2021 list). I had to change the color scheme because I didn't have enough of the fabric I originally planned.
   
   
   

   

   This is the current fabric palette, but I may make
   some changes if I find fabrics that work better.

Thanks to Chris for hosting the Tuesday ToDo linkup. Also, thanks to Judy for hosting Design Wall Mondays linkup. Drop on by if you want to see what everyone else has been up to.

July Friday Night Sew In

It's been a while since I joined the Friday Night Sew-In because since we've been vaccinated we're usually off dancing, but a minor injury kept me home last night, and of course, I prefer to spend my time sewing with Wendy and everyone.

I actually spent the entire day, from shortly after breakfast until bedtime, working on the border strips for my Finger Lakes log cabin quilt. This one.

As I neared the end, I kept running out of pieces. Apparently, I was counting challenged while I was cutting out the project and so I had to keep cutting up more strips which made for pretty slow progress. But I am finally ready for the final push to finish this quilt.

I'm also linking up with Finished (or Not) Friday. Have a good weekend everyone.

Tuesday ToDo #16

 Thanks to Chris for hosting the weekly ToDo linkup. You can visit her blog for this week's link party. 

Our weather has been pleasant this last week and I spent quite a lot of time sewing. Certainly, more than I expected when I set my goals last week:

1.    Scan the quilt design(s) I like from my library book. ✔︎

2.    Start fussy cutting and gluing the fabrics on the papers. For non-fussy cut pieces, see if I can cut them on the Cricut. ✔︎ I posted about it here.

3.    Work on Design Wall in the sewing room. ✔︎

Not only did I finish cutting out the papers for the EPP quilt, but I've also finished gluing them all and sewing three of the blocks. By the time I had spent two days hand sewing, though, my fingertip was ready for a break. So I went up to my sewing room and worked on my Finger Lakes log cabin quilt for three days and finished sewing all of the central blocks!

For this next week, I would like to work on:

1. Assemble the central portion of the Finger Lakes log cabin quilt.
2. Start piecing the border blocks.
3. Rework the hanging hooks on the design wall.
4. Continue to sew the Meadow Flower blocks when we're out of the house.
5. Cut out the Irish Chain blocks for the Meadow flower lap quilt.

Love My New Cricut!

I got a new Cricut Maker 3 machine on Monday and spent the afternoon cutting papers for the Hatter quilt. At least enough to get started. I'm expecting to be able to reuse some of the pieces.

Yesterday morning I was hoping to get started on the Hatter quilt, but I am still waiting for fabrics to arrive. I ordered a black and white stripe as well as a light purple. They seem to be taking a long time as I ordered them over a week ago.

While I was trying to decide what to do, I was looking at my WOOFA list and realized I have yet another quilt that would work great as an EPP, and I have everything I need for it already.

Meadow Flower Lap Quilt

Luckily I was able to find this block in BlockBase+ so it was really easy to import it into the Cricut Design Space and make minor modifications.

It only took me a couple of hours to cut out all the papers and then I tried cutting out fabric for the first time.  It was like magic!

OMG, this took maybe 3 minutes to cut out.

I cut the center gold squares out of a scrap from the bin.

Cutting out all the papers and all the fabrics took maybe 6 hours and I suspect I'll get faster as I get more experienced with the design software. And the glue I ordered came today, so now it's time to get gluing.

Linking up with Midweek Makers.

Tuesday ToDo #15

 Last week I had a couple of meager goals:

1.    Finish the first set of blocks for the Finger Lakes Log Cabin quilt. ✔︎

This past Saturday we had a cool morning and I was in the mood to sew, so I actually managed to finish this task! It took me all day, but I even managed to add the two extra pieces that the pattern called for. All 24 blocks had an extra right edge piece and then 18 of those had an extra piece added on the top edge.

2.    Start cutting out the Hatter quilt. I probably won't take the time to cut out all the pieces... ✔︎

I spent several hours on Sunday starting to cut out the papers for this project. I don't particularly like cutting out quilts, but I discovered it's far worse to spend hours cutting up cardstock. I got bored with that and soon found myself looking around for a laser cutter. Then I ran across the Cricut Maker 3 as a viable option. I spent the rest of the day watching videos on how they cut fabric and using the design software. After spending several hours talking about buying a many thousand dollar laser cutter, I had no difficulty getting my husband to agree to this purchase. LOL 

I was happy to discover BlockBase+ can export SVG files so it was really easy to transfer my block into the cutter design software and play with it.

I ended up cutting out the pieces from a ream of cardstock we've had kicking around our house for decades. It is 9½" wide and too wide for most printers, but it worked fine for this project. I think the Cricut prefers 80# cardstock and this was only 65, but it worked OK. I lost quite a few pieces when the paper tore but it was certainly an acceptable success rate for my first day. I could very well have been doing something wrong with the layout or settings. I know I still have a lot to learn.

This isn't remotely enough papers for all the pieces at once, but I am hoping I'll be able to remove them as I go along and reuse them. This took quite a while to cut all these, but not nearly as long as hand-cutting would have taken and they're much more uniform.

For this next week my goals are:

1.    Scan the quilt design(s) I like from my library book.

2.    Start fussy cutting and gluing the fabrics on the papers. For non-fussy cut pieces, see if I can cut them on the Cricut.

3.    Work on Design Wall in sewing room.

Thanks to Chris for hosting the weekly ToDo linkup. You can visit her blog for this week's link party.

July One Monthly Goal

I think I will risk making another One Monthly Goal, but I will make it less ambitious than the last one. I won't expect to finish a whole complicated quilt in one month. Instead, I think I will set the goal to get started on a new EPP quilt, the Meadow Flower Lap Quilt (from my WOOFA 2021 list).

We've been vaccinated and have been getting out at least 3 times a week going square dancing so it would be nice to have a project I can work on in the car and during breaks. I've ordered templates and some diamond papers and I'm eager to get this project started and see how I like hand sewing projects.