"Yellow Star on Blue" Wall Hanging

Last time I talked about this project was April when I completed the top and basted the layers together. Then I left it hanging on the display board.

I really can't remember over what time period I worked on the quilting, but by January 7 of this year, I had the center portion quilted:

.

I marked all of the lines with disappearing ink and free motion quilted it.

I repeated the back and forth lines on the outside of the star in the center as well, except I made the lines wavy to match what was going on with the fabrics. (This piecing was an improv technique learned at the class where I originally made the center star.)

I can't say I think it looks great. Now I know.

In the yellow part, I did curves from point to point that are similar to what was done in the yellow areas of the wall hanging I have been trying to match.

The only thing left to quilt was the outside border, which would be done in a "square in a square" pattern. I thought if I put the binding on first, I could make sure the points lined up exactly on the edge. But I didn't want to tackle the binding because it included piping and that was just a step to far at that point. So it was left hanging again.

Two things pushed me to pick it back up:

1. It was listed on my UFO (UnFinished Object) list in the Ravelry quilting group. I hadn't participated in the UFO Club in the summer and fall, but signed up again in January for the winter quarter, and even signed up for the "send" group. That means, if I finish a project, people would send me a FQ!! (FQ=fat quarter, a quarter yard of fabric. Well, never mind, it's fabric!) One member went so far as to tell me she had one that she had been saving for me--she knows I like elephants so I have reason to believe I'm going to like that one! ;)

2. Joy at the Joyful Quilter issued a "Table Scraps Challenge", with extra kudos for including the Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour of the month. Although I was making this project as a wall hanging, it could easily double as a table topper. And the colour for February was yellow!

Last week, I pulled this star off of the board and took a look at what it needed. Fortunately I had cut all the remaining pieces because without them, I would not have remembered my plan at all. I chose to use blue piping instead of yellow, in part because I just didn't have any more of the bright glaring yellow that I had used on the other one.

I pulled out my Piping Hot Binding book and tool and applied four strips of piping around the edge in pretty short order.

Then I realized the difficulty with quilting the outside border. The piping is designed to lift up--it's only sewn on one side. So do I line the points up with what was visible? Do I line them up with the actual seam (which was under the piping)? Further complicating it was that if I pulled the piping far enough back to not cover any of the points, the edge of the quilt wasn't going to be caught up in the binding seam. /big sigh

I just did the best I could, balancing the need to capture the raw edge and not covering up too much of the little squares.

After that was done, I trimmed the quilt and applied the first two sides of the binding. Then, thankfully, I tried to fold the binding over the edge to see how it would look...it was too small! It also happened that the binding lined up so that a seam would land exactly at a corner--not good! Obviously, I was going to have to remove it and try again.

On another day, I gave my seam ripper a workout and removed the binding. I trimmed the quilt with the smaller setting on the tool and started again, making sure to shift where I placed the binding! No seams landed at the corners and all was good.

I gave myself one more problem before I finished...when I cut the binding to attach the end to the beginning, I measured perfectly and then cut the angle the wrong way. So instead of the two edges aligning,

they made a big empty triangle. 

Did I throw up my hands and walk away? No, I did not. I sewed in a short piece of binding to fill in the gap, thus giving myself more opportunities to practice the skill.

Then it was done. Oh wait. No. I had to sew the binding to the back, which I did by hand. That was done during daylight hours considering it was dark blue thread on busy fabric.

As with the first wall hanging, I sewed two triangles on the top corners for hanging:

You slide the ends of a dowel under the triangles and it holds the quilt up. On smaller pieces, it's a nice way to avoid having to do a hanging sleeve along the entire top edge.

And here are the two pieces together:

I have to admit I didn't really like how the blue and yellow in the outside border lined up on the two of them. (I have no memory if that was a conscious choice or if that's just the way it turned out.)

But when I displayed them side by side, I liked it a lot more:

There were several design things that went wrong on this latest piece. Some I corrected and some I left. Now that's it's finished, I think it would have been a stronger piece and a better match to the first if the light blue area around the star was filled in with dark blue squares instead. But when I made the original block,

I didn't know this was what I was going to be doing with it! :)

It was an interesting challenge to try and make a match to the first piece a few years later. I still had some of the same fabrics, but had to find substitutes for others. Some things I had to piece together to have enough (like the backing) and other things were solved by a combination--did you notice the narrow yellow border is different on the second one? I had to find a second fabric to have enough to go all the way around. I ended up piecing the fabrics together so that the original is in the  middle of each side and the new fabric is in the corners. (You can see it in the detail pictures of the piping above.)

Linking up with the Joyful Quilter February Table Scraps Runner/Topper Challenge, and

Quilting is more fun than Housework Oh Scrap!

Project summary

Started: Center block made June 21, 2018; wall hanging started February 23, 2020

Finished: February 19, 2021

Size: 18"x18"

Pattern: my own

Material: 100% scraps, almost all cotton quilting fabrics

Cotton batting.

Walking foot and free motion quilting on my Viking Sapphire.

All blog posts about this wall hanging: link

Prayer Flags Wall Hanging

Here is the story of a wall hanging with a slow start and a fast finish.

Last May, I finished the top of this quilt:

and had lots of left over blocks. At some point I thought I had enough to do a second quilt, but it wasn't quite that many. I don't remember deciding to make that many extra, but in any case, it made easier to pull colours that I wanted for the rainbow ombre effect.

But then I had all these extra blocks:

Some were pieced in pairs (left) and some in fours (right). I rejected the idea to make the same pattern, so I knew I would have to take these apart at some point.

In October, I sat down and did it. Separated all the units from each other

and then trimmed them all to a uniform size. They were supposed to be 5" squares, but I knew a lot of them were small. Not wanting to work to make things fit, I trimmed them all to 4.75".

Then they sat in the box for a while.

I mentioned in my post about the family crafting retreat in February (remember when you could travel and meet in groups??) that I brought the blocks and laid out two different designs:

I gave up on the idea of making a full-sized quilt because there weren't enough blocks to make a top and I wasn't interested in figuring out what to add to make it big enough. So I thought I could use these for a couple smaller pieces. They are a good size for baby blankets, actually, but I don't know of many who want a black quilt for their baby. So wall hangings it was!

At the retreat, I sewed together the top of the first design (no pictures). I had had an idea of where I might be able to use this wall hanging so I was motivated to get it done. Less than a week after getting home, I had made a back from more of these black scraps by piecing 7x14" rectangles into squares and piecing them together. (Same thing I did for the big quilt.)

Once the back was ready, I could layer it with some scrap batting and baste it.

But all my safety pins were in the quilt I basted at the retreat. Like all of them.

So I pinned it with straight pins!

It was a small quilt and I was going to be stitching it right away in a simple design so it worked out. I quilted wavy vertical lines in black thread. First I did lines between the pins. Then I could take the pins out and do the lines where the pins were.

Then I kept adding lines evenly across the quilt until I thought it was enough. Then I loaded some rainbow thread (same thread I used for the elephant quilt I finished recently) and made some rainbow lines.

I was worried about how it was going to look, so I only sewed about six lines across the quilt. I decided it could use more, so I sewed another six lines spread out over the quilt. I did that a few more times, and every time I added another set of lines I worried it would be too much! But in the end, I think I stopped before it was.

I don't even really remember this, but apparently at the time it was a big enough deal to take a picture. This is what we call winning at bobbin chicken:

See that half inch tail of thread? That's all that was left after the seam was done. Perfect!

I bound the quilt in more of the black fabric and added a hanging sleeve on the back.

Looks like I need to add some pockets on the bottom and put in a dowel to keep the edge straight!

Here's a close up of the quilting while it is hanging:

I do really like the pops of colour.

And here it is hanging in the room I was thinking of:

I had been revamping our prayer room at church. It was four walls of painted cinder blocks and nothing else. The shelves only held books and a lot of tarnished and wax-covered brass candle holders. So I cleaned all the candle holders, made some storage on the left (behind the bit of curtain you can see), and lined the one wall with fabric (behind the shelves) to warm up the room.

Then I filled the shelves with more inspirational pieces, including a cross specially made for this room by a friend at church, and a couple of (fake) plants which make a big difference too. (They must look good because I've had more than one person ask me how they're going to survive in a room with no light!)

And I knew it needed some quilts on the walls to soften the space.

I worried this quilt was too "black" and dark for a prayer room, but my sister and cousin at the retreat reassured me that it would work.

After it was up, a friend said that all the coloured bits arranged like they were reminded her of the Tibetan prayer flags that are hung on a line and blow in the wind. And that's where the wall hanging got its name.

Project Summary: Prayer Flags Wall Hanging
Started: February 14, 2020
Finished: February 22, 2020 (or so)
Size: 34"x38"
Made from parts leftover from another quilt.
Cotton batting.
Quilted with wavy vertical lines done with a walking foot on my domestic machine.
Binding is hand stitched.
Last week I submitted this quilt to the Holland Tulip Festival quilt show, rushing to mail my application at the last minute. Only to be informed that the show had been cancelled. Of course. She is keeping the applications for next year, so no rushing in 2021--I am a year early!

Canada150 Quilt

I told you that my sister and I were working on a project when she visited in early July. I didn't show any pictures though. (I think I was distracted by talking about teaching her kids how to sew.)


Here's a picture of Kim's so you can kind of see where we're going with this:

 And how far she got by the end of the day:

We purchased kits that included the fabric (specially designed for this project) and the pattern. We had to do all of that fancy cutting ourselves!

How it was put together: (If you want to skip this mini tutorial, click here to go to my battle with adhesive or click here to go to final pics.)

The pattern gives you all the shapes to cut out for each fabric. Here, for example, we have the goose body/wing and the long "under wing" pieces:

You trace the shapes onto double sided adhesive. One side is backed with paper and that's the one you draw on. You cut them out roughly, that is outside of the lines. Then you iron them onto the back of the fabric. Finally you cut out the shapes on the line. You end up with a piece of fabric with adhesive on the back ready to stick to your background.

But when you're making more complicated applique, it is helpful to put the unit together before you try to put them onto your background. You use the pattern placement guide to put the parts together, pictured on the bottom right here:

Each goose was different and had its own guide. My pieces fit on more or less, as cutting fabric with scissors is not the most precise process. You can also make changes to suit your own asthetic.

Since you're working with adhesive, you need to take some precautions. I covered the pattern placement guide with parchment paper.

It's there so that the adhesive won't stick to anything. Or rather, it will stick to the parchment paper, but you can peel that off and still use the adhesive. It's also important that you can see through it.

Then I place the bottom two parts where they're supposed to go and cover them with a piece of white cotton.

This is to prevent the adhesive from getting onto my iron and to keep the parts in place.

Once I've hit them with the iron, I have the beginning of a goose:

Repeat for the next layer:

And the final layer in this case is the flash of white behind the beak:

What this gives you is a goose that works as one piece that you can arrange on your background until you find the place where it belongs:

Obviously, this goose needs some help as it is
taking a nose dive!

Once it's placed, you can hit the whole thing with an iron again and it will stick to the background.

Although they were made from more pieces, the geese were simple compared to the maple leaf:

The final goal is a maple leaf nested inside of another maple leaf with the background showing in between. To save room on the pattern and use less fabric, the pattern is nested as well.

I roughly cut out the outside of the shape and stuck it to my fabric. Fortunately for me it was a batik with no "wrong" side because I put it on the fabric thinking that was the front. My heart sank when I realized until I remembered that I could use the reverse side just as well. Phew!

My job now was to cut out the two maple leaves! The inside one is complicated enough (I love you Canadian maple leaf but you are the bane to every child made to draw the flag!) but the outside one has to be cut outside and inside. Ai yai yai!

To make a mistake slightly less likely, I scribbled in the part that I wasn't going to keep. That was the safe zone to make extra cuts to get around all those corners.


My biggest frustration with this quilt was working with the adhesive. Me and any type of glue just don't seem to get along! The adhesive stuck fine at first, but as I handled the piece for quilting and as the quilt changed shape due to the quilting (quilting around the maple leaf literally makes the maple leaf puff up), the adhesive just couldn't keep up.

All the sharp edges and skinny shapes of the maple leaf border were prime for lift up. A lot of the edges were sewn down, but I didn't want to sew on the border--I wanted the puffing up! I also didn't quilt over any of the geese or numbers I ended up adding.

The maple leaf was attended to with a glue stick. Since I doubt I'll ever wash it, I think it will hold fine and it is common for it to be used for quilting projects.

I used the adhesive recommended by the pattern but when I looked at the packaging more closely, it did claim to work for basting. So the company has an out by saying that they expect people to sew the pieces after they stick them down. The pattern did not address this and simply said "quilt as desired". I just have to wait and see how much of a problem this becomes.

Here is the final piece:

I added the numbers since this is the year of "Canada150", i.e. 150th anniversary of Confederation. I printed them on paper from a word processing program and then tackled them in the same way as the rest of the appliques.

To accommodate the numbers on the quilt, I rearranged the geese compared to the pattern.

I can't believe how effectively they convey a goose with only four layers of fabric. For such a small part of it, the white piece adds so much!

The kit did not include backing fabric. I found this in my stash and thought it was ideal:

I really like the maple leaf print and the colour, but have found it very hard to fit it into quilts when I have tried. Sounds like a perfect backing to me! Kim had brought a red stripe fabric for her backing but she used a piece of this as well and traded me for the red stripe. (Win win)

Kim also managed to find a red for the binding among my many red fabrics. I, however, was able to use the same fabric as the red stripes on the front:

The triangle of backing fabric was added to the top two
corners. These pockets will hold a rod to make hanging easy.

Kim left me all of her leftovers and I had enough to piece together a binding. (There are more seams than you would normally have but with this busy fabric, who can tell?)

Here is a shot of the back that shows the quilting:

I echo quilted around the centre leaf, going around the geese as I came to them. On the red stripes, I followed the lines of some of the maple leaves in the fabric. I added some vein lines and outlined the centre leaf. I wasn't planning to at first but the leaf was puffing up way too far and I had to hold it down a little. (And by that time I knew stitching around the edges would be needed to hold it down.)

Then I had a choice to make. I could enter the quilt in this year's fair or I could bring it with me to family camp where my sister and I could share our finished projects. I decided to bring it to camp:

I would have had a harder choice if the fair was in Canada--entering it next year would have seemed so out of date, but the Americans here won't care. They haven't been inundated with all of the Canada150 celebrations (and merchandise) this year!

I worried about bringing it camping for all the obvious reasons, plus keeping it "safe" in a packed car. On top of that, I figured any excessive heat (like a car on a sunny day) would make all of the adhesive fail. But I took a chance and brought it with me. I stored it in the camper in a safe place...and that's where it stayed when we drove off!

I realized late that night that I had forgotten it and sent my sister a message. Best case scenario, her co-worker could bring it with her the next day and I could pick it up on my way out of town. But no, the trailer is stored somewhere else and the coworker wouldn't have access til later. So my sister retrieved it later and will store it until we meet again.

Speaking of forgetting, my sister finished hers as well and then forgot it at the cottage where they were staying right before coming to camp! But she sent me this picture so you could see:

Project Stats
Started: 03 Jul '17
Finished: 11 Jul '17
Pattern/Materials: Homecoming Kit by Shania Sunga Designs, Cotton fabrics, binding, and backing; wool batting.
Size: 17'x33"
Equipment: Quilted on my Husqvarna Viking Sapphire 830

Landscape Quilt: Mt Robson (The Case of Mistaken Identity)

Picture from the front of the pattern. "Mount Robson" by
Vicki Andrews of Rocky Mountain Designs.

I recently started a new project--another quilting project, if you can believe it. And when I say "new", I mean newly started. Because I bought the pattern in 2012 when Troy and I took our trip to the Rockies in Alberta.

The quilt shop we visited in Canmore had a number of patterns depicting famous peaks of the Rockies. I liked this pattern best and picked it in part because I thought it was the peak we could see from our hotel in Banff.

Only in doing research for this post have I realized that this peak is in British Columbia and we did not see it on our trip! This is Mount Robson and I was thinking of Mount Rundle. I'm guessing I got confused by the number of patterns they had. I've decided to press on. (I did contact the shop to see if they have a Mt Rundle pattern. If so, I will consider this my practice piece. If not, then this will be my memory quilt and I will think of my mistake every time I look at it but no one else will know the difference.) You can see a picture of both at this nice post about the famous faces of the Rocky Mountains.

All of the patterns were available as kits, which is what I was planning to buy. Not something I normally do, but I liked the idea of getting everything all at once. Except the one pattern I liked best (and thought was Mt Rundle) had run out of kits and they only had the pattern available. Oh well, more room in the suitcase!

The pattern traveled home and then sat in my craft closet for a while. I think it was last year when I decided to pull it out, study what I needed and buy the fabric. I got it all at once from a local quilt shop.

I got a lot of batiks because of the nice colours and patterns. Batik fabrics also are generally a tighter weave which means you get less fraying. Which is a good thing for raw edge applique. I didn't not get a lot of "landscape" prints where you use a water print for water, and tree print for trees, etc. I prefer the more abstract look.

Sometime last weekend I was struck by the urge to get started on this and wondered why I had been hesitating. I don't do applique very often and I haven't had the best of luck with fuseable adhesives. (They wouldn't stick for me. Now I'm thinking I used too hot of an iron.) But really, how hard could it be?

So I took out the pattern and traced all the individual pieces. They number them for you so you can keep track (and it also indicates the order that you put them onto the background fabric).

This is just a part of the pattern for demonstration. I didn't think
the designer would appreciate it if I published the whole thing!

Once they are traced to the fuseable, then you cut around them. And me being me, I organized them. Since we have lots and lots of manilla folders from Troy's old files, I got one for each fabric.

I labeled the piece numbers on the outside so I could double check I had them all, and on some of them I even stuck a piece of the fabric to the outside so I could remember which was which. (I'm working with four shades of grey alone, so you have to know which is which.)

Once organized, I took a folder at a time and stuck the fuseable to the fabric.

The back side of the fabric. (Not that batiks have a back side, but it doesn't stop me from checking closely in case there's a difference.) I only pressed one piece to the right side of the fabric by mistake and had to retrace that one. Not a bad percentage.

I am now working on cutting out all the shapes. It's slow going with all those peaked and straggly trees. I'm using a pair of embroidery scissors so they're small and pointy (and Troy keeps them sharp for me) but the handles are very uncomfortable so I can't work on it for very long.

It's been the perfect activity for me after my long days at work, once I recover enough that I no longer need to lay on the couch. Go back to kindergarten--cut out shapes with small scissors.

But I think today I'm going to the shop to see if they have some more comfortable ones....