Round #6 - Mary at See Mary Quilt {Round Trip Quilts}

Well hi.  I didn't mean to take the month of August off.  It just sort of happened on accident.  Work has been incredibly busy the last few months and thought I've had time for sewing I haven't had time for blogging.  I have a lot of exciting things to show you to get caught up. I'll start with a LONG over due post about the latest round of our round robin bee.

It's been awhile since I posted about our Round Trip Quilts adventure.  We're nearing the end of the bee and some dates were delayed because of the craziness that surrounds end-of-school and early summer activities.

Today I'm excited to show you what I added to Mary's rainbow quilt.  She blogs over at See Mary Quilt and is a fellow granite stater!

Remember this terror?

I was so frustrated while I worked on this top.  Honestly, anything that could have gone wrong, went wrong when it came to this quilt.  In the end I'm so glad I pushed through it though.  I love how it looks and can't wait to see what Leanne adds and how Mary decides to finish it!

I get Leann's star quilt next for our very last round of the Bee and am over the moon excited to see what mine finally looks like after that!

Some thoughts and a Rainbow Nightmare

I have been so busy I feel like I have no time to blog anymore.  Work has been crazy this spring and my personal life has also filled up fast with other commitments.  Plus I'm not working on anything that I find overly exciting right now.  It seems like it's just been a lot of deadlines and sewing for other people.  I guess I'm just having a hard time feeling passionate about my quilts at the moment.  It makes me sad to say that out loud.  One of the things I have struggled with as I try to grow my blog and expand my quilting (with the hopeful someday goal of making it my business) is whether or not I should try and grow this "business".  If it becomes a business will I lose my passion for making?  Will my time go from precious sewing time to burdensome work?  I don't know yet.  And not being able to answer that question is seriously stressing me out.

I'm hopeful that I'll get some spark and spunk back but I don't know when, so bear with me while I find my mojo again.  Do you ever question why you are quilting or taking on a certain project?



Anyhow, enough of that.  One of my commitments this year is the Round Trip Quilts round robin bee.  We are nearing the end of our nearly year long journey but I still have two more packages to send off.

Right now I'm working on Mary's quilt.  She blogs over at See Mary Quilt and is absolutely amazing.  Seriously, go check her out.  Right now.  I'll wait.  Her quilt is amazing.  Because of a change in the schedule, I've had it in my hands for almost 2 and a half months now.  Enough time for something to rub-off on me perhaps?  I started with this amazing Roy G. Biv fabric pull and a healthy selection of white and black based low volume fabrics.

I mocked up her quilt top in Excel and played with a print out to see what I wanted my border to be, eventually deciding on a rainbow gradient triangle border.  This step was so helpful for me to figure out where all the colors would go.  As you can see I had to move things a few times.

Then tragedy struck...I pieced the first side with the triangles point the WRONG DIRECTION!  Shortly after that I realized that I'd cut all of my triangles a quarter inch TOO SMALL!  Could anything else go wrong?  Suddenly my border was completely the wrong size.  To make matters worse they finished at 3 3/4" which meant I needed some serious make-it-work action to happen.  I had a furious instagram session with Mary and eventually decided to sleep on it, putting the quilt aside out of pure frustration.

 The next morning I decided to add one more block to each border bringing each side to a size slightly larger than Mary's current quilt top.  I added a black border in between my triangles and Heather's herringbone, playing off some black that was added in at the very beginning..  Once again, I did the math totally wrong and had to trim the border down once I had attached it.

This is the best picture I have of Mary's quilt top so far.  My border is now attached and ready to send.  We eventually ended up delaying this month's mailing another month because everyone was running behind.  So now I have it for another 4 weeks.  I'm currently debating adding another low volume border since Mary is missing out on one addition due to our schedule change that I mentioned above.  The real question is: do I really want to start working on this rainbow nightmare again?!

Regardless, Mary's quilt top is stunning.  I'm not one for Roy G. Biv quilts but this one could win me over.  It is by far the most "traditional" version of a round robin quilt in our group.  Despite everything that went wrong I've enjoyed working on the top and am proud of my current contribution.  At least Mary will get a good laugh about how many times I messed this one up!

I got to meet Mary at MQX this spring in Manchester.  She's a fellow New Hampshire resident!  I have to say, she's just as amazing in real life as she is on her blog!

Check out my Round Trip Quilts page for more of the work that's happening as a part of this group!

Round #5 - Chelsea at Patch the Giraffe {Round Trip Quilts}

Chelsea blogs at Patch the Giraffe and can also be found on Facebook, Intagram, and Pinterest.  

Chelsea's top came to me looking like this.  Amazing right?  Also small.  The whole thing was only about 36 inches in size.  But that's perfect.  Chelsea is aiming for this to finish at about lap quilt size.

Image borrowed from Liz at Green Cheese Quilting

I was worried that I wouldn't have enough solids in the colors Chelsea had requested so I started by digging through my stash and was pleasantly surprised to find a wide variety of colors to pull from.

I was immediately drawn to those paper pieced stars.  They finish at 8".  I really like how they balance out the smaller borders and piecing.  So I set to work choosing and sizing the templates I would need.  My original goal was to make four or five stars and set them along one side, similar to how Chelsea had set her original center.

I made three blocks before I ran out of time.  As it was I was over a week late mailing this off to Leanne.  At that point, my "make it work" came to the rescue.  I re-purposed some of the orphan pieces in the bag and made some quilt low volume flying geese to fill in some of the blank spaces and got to work piecing together my addition.

Though this isn't what I originally pictured when I started working on Chelsea's quilt, I'm happy with how it came out in the end.  The larger stars help to balance the weight of the quilt and I like how that one extra butterfly block is escaping out of the neat and tidy row that Liz added before me.  Chelsea I hope you like it!

Round #3 Recap {Round Trip Quilts}

I'm behind on my recaps of our Round Trip Quilts round robin.  We are finishing and mailing round 4 now...  Here is a round up of the additions made during round 3 of our round robin quilt bee.

Liz at Green Cheese Quilting

Liz was working on Christina's autumn themed quilt and added some requested falling maple leaves to the top.

Image from Green Cheese Quilting

Jennifer at Never Just Jennifer

I had Kim's quilt for round 3 and added some wonky flying geese.

Leanne at Devoted Quilter

Leanne added some cute applique flowers to Heather's quilt.  

Image from Devoted Quilter

Mary at See Mary Quilt

Mary was working Liz's quilt this month.  She added some color coordinated bear paw blocks to the top.  

Chelsea Huckins at Patch the Giraffe

Chelsea had my New Hampshire Beauty quilt and added the NH state motto to the quilt top.

Image from Patch the Giraffe

Christina at WIPs and Tuts

Christina was working on Leanne's star quilt top.  She added some of Leanne's favorite friendship stars to the top.

Image from WIPs and Tuts

Kim at Ties That Bind Quilting

Kim had Mary's rainbow quilt top for round three.  She gave the quilt some breathing room, adding thin stipes of color in between low volume squares.

Images from Ties that Bind Quilting

Heather at QA Creations

Heather was working on Chelsea's quilt top.  She added some meandering flying geese to the top.

Image from QA Creations

Thanks for visiting.  You can find a complete summary of all of our posts on my Round Trip Quilts page in the toolbar at the top of the page!

Round Trip Quilts is on Flickr and you can follow our progress on Instagram using #roundtripquilts!  

The full list of members is below:

Heather at QA Creations

Leanne at Devoted Quilter

Kim at Ties That Bind Quilting

Liz at Green Cheese Quilting

Mary at See Mary Quilt

Christina at WIPs and Tuts

Jennifer at Never Just Jennifer

Chelsea Huckins at Patch the Giraffe

Round #2 Recap {Round Trip Quilts}

I'm behind on my recaps of our Round Trip Quilts round robin.  We are finishing and mailing round 4 now...  Here is a round up of the additions made during round 2, back in November.

Liz at Green Cheese Quilting

Liz had Kim's bright and colorful quilt and did a great job beginning to add all the pieces together.

photo from Green Cheese Quilting

Jennifer at Never Just Jennifer

I was working on Heather's "Wishes for my Daughter" quilt.  I added some bright and cheery cathedral window blocks with some additional words that Heather sent along.

Leanne at Devoted Quilter

Leanne added some beautiful paper pieced feathers to Liz's feathered star center.

Image from Devoted Quilter

Mary at See Mary Quilt

Mary was working on my New Hampshire Beauty quilt.  She made some fabulous flying geese.

image from See Mary Quilt

Chelsea Huckins at Patch the Giraffe

Chelsea also made flying geese for the second round and added them to Leanne's Star themed quilt.

Image from Patch the Giraffe

Christina at WIPs and Tuts

Christina got Mary's Roy G. Biv themed quilt and added some truly tiny log cabins.

Image from Wips and Tuts

Kim at Ties That Bind Quilting

Kim was working on Chelsea's pastel and low volume quilt top.  She added some more soft and dreamy stars.

Image from Ties That Bind Quilting

Heather at QA Creations

Heather had Christina's woodlands/autumn themed quilt top and added the most adorable paper pieced squirrels! 

Image from QA Creations

Round two was equally as challenging and fun.  Thanks for visiting.  You can find a complete summary of all of our posts on my Round Trip Quilts page in the toolbar at the top of the page!

Round Trip Quilts is on Flickr and you can follow our progress on Instagram using #roundtripquilts!  

The full list of members is below:

Heather at QA Creations

Leanne at Devoted Quilter

Kim at Ties That Bind Quilting

Liz at Green Cheese Quilting

Mary at See Mary Quilt

Christina at WIPs and Tuts

Jennifer at Never Just Jennifer

Chelsea Huckins at Patch the Giraffe

Round #4 - Christina @ WIPSandTUTS {Round Trip Quilts}

For Round #4, I had the opportunity to work on Christina's (from WIPs and Tuts) Round Trip Quilts Top.  You can see all of my related posts here and all of our updates here.  Christina can be found all over the web.... on Flickr, Instagram, and Etsy.

Christina asked for an Autumn and Woodland themed quilt.  When her quilt left Liz's she had a lovely scrappy star, some yummy apples, two hungry squirrels, and some falling leaves.  Well being a "woodlands" girl myself, I knew the minute I saw it what I wanted to add to her top:  the forest!

Image from Green Cheese Quilting.

I grew up in the woods.  My favorite place to play was literally in the trees... my brother and I would climb trees all day in the summer and hide under the lowest branches of the pine trees in the winter.  I love the peace and quiet that exists in deep in the woods; when all you can hear is the sound of the wind running through the trees and the animals chatting with each other.  There is no place better than that.

To make my trees I started out by cutting 5" strips by various heights out of the green and various sized squares out of the blues.  Then I made the two into REALLY wonky flying geese, not worrying about losing the points.  I actually preferred when they did lose their points.

After everything was pressed and trimmed to neat 5" wide I sorted them out into eight roughly equal piles.  I ended up making another, neater wonky goose for the top of each tree, as that was the only place I didn't like the lost points.

Trees in progress

Once my trees were assembled I used what I guess I would call a slash-and-insert technique to make the tree trunks, again varying the heights of the trunks.  Then the whole thing was brought up to size using strips of blue sky for the background.

Finished trees

I really love the height and weight that this gives the quilt and I hope that Christina does too!  What was really fun about this round is that while I was working on Christina's quilt, she was working on mine, and though I haven't seen the finished product of my top, I'm pretty sure we both made trees.

Christina's top after my finished addition

The trees do add a lot of green and blue to the quilt top, but I'm confident that Leanne, Mary, and Chelsea will be able to bring in some more of the oranges and yellows that Christina loves.  I didn't actually measure the top when I was done with it but I know it's about 50" across and long enough that my dear, quilt holding friend had to work hard to keep it off of the ground.  When it's done this is going to be a great cuddle quilt.

Leanne this will be in the mail first thing tomorrow!!

I'm linking up with this weeks WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

Round Trip Quilts Update

I just have to share this with you all.  I finally saw a picture of my quilt today and I am SSSOOOOO IN LOVE!!!!

Chelsea at Patch the Giraffe did an amazing job!  Click over to read her post!  I'm also updating the links on my Round Trip Quilts page if you want to see what everyone else is doing too!

And Chelsea, thank you so much!!

Image courtesy of Chelsea at Patch the Giraffe

Round #3 - Kim @ Ties That Bind Quilting {Round Trip Quilts}

Have you met Kim from Ties that Bind Quilting?  She is one of the participants in our Round Trip Quilts adventure.  Read more about that here and here.  Most of the time you can find Kim on Instagram and Flickr.

Straight out of the package.

Instead of going with a theme for her quilt Kim decided that her colorway would be her theme to tie all of our additions together.  Both Heather and Liz did an amazing job adding to Kim's quilt top so I knew that my addition had to be equally fabulous.

Final fabric pull.

I simply spent a long time looking at Kim's quilt.  It was so busy! But in the best way possible.  Each idea I came up with felt like it would detract from what Kim, Heather, and Liz had already done and just make it busier.  Everything I auditioned made me feel like the quilt was holding it's breath!  And I really felt like it needed to exhale.  I finally decided to do some wonky triangle-type things.  When I laid them out I had two options...

Layout Option 1

Layout Option 2

I liked option 1 best.  I liked the weight that the center diamonds gave the block.  However, I put the question to Kim to find out which she preferred.  I'm glad I did.  She liked option 2 better.  I still wasn't sold.  So I let it sit for a few more days and came back to it.  I'm glad I did.  When I was playing with the pieced trying to decide which way I wanted the option 2 "butterfly centers" to face I stumbled upon a third option I hadn't though of before.  Wonky, crazy, flying geese!  I started with the blocks/colors mis-matched but then realized that I could match them up to make the geese more prominent in the design... and I LOVE IT! 

Like Kim's notebook says: TRUST YOUR CRAZY IDEAS

Close up of the border

I really like how what I did still creates movement in the top and I think the geese still reflect some of the weight that I liked about my first option.  I hope that Kim agrees.

I'm still playing with possibly trying to attach what Heather added to the top with the addition of some more of my crazy geese, but I'm not totally sold on it yet.  I still have 7 days to decided before our mailing deadline.  This one is heading to Canada to stay with Leanne for a few weeks next.

Quilt top after my addition.  Looks crooked but it's because the ground is sloped.  

The other nice surprise is that when I was making the base squares for my design I sewed a quick 1/4 inch seam on the other side of the piece I was cutting off and saved them.  They make the cutest little half-square triangles.  The biggest one is only 1 1/2 inches across.  I'd like to keep them and make a fun little mini quilt to hang at work with the first one I made out of extra blocks from Heather's quilt (which I just realized I didn't blog about, time to fix that!)  I like the idea of having a little gallery of minis inspired by and created out of the pieces that I'm added to these quilts.  It would be a fun way to remember each project.

Happy Quilting!

I'm linking up with Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story for the first time.