Triangles!

I can't believe it but I have finished piecing all of the triangle blocks for my quilt!  All 196 of them!  And the 18 side half-blocks.....AND last night I cut out all of the background pieces!  I'm ready to put it all together!  Woohoo!  And I just looked back, and realized that I started all of this just 2 weeks ago!  Holy cow!  I sure do love being retired!  Cuz it is ALL about the quilts now!  Yay!

Here are the stacks of blocks ready to be put on the design wall for placement!

Here are about half of the blocks laid out on the floor a few night ago.  I realized I needed more light-on-light blocks, since that is what really speaks to me in the antique original.  So I spent the last few days just making those, until I had all the blocks I needed.  The finished quilt will measure about 72 x 86.

And today I'm supposed to have a golf lesson (my short game sucks!), but it's also supposed to get to 92 degrees today......so I think I'm cancelling the lesson......and I'm going to start piecing these together!

Hope you all have a great day!

regan

Visit with a friend and triangle progress!

Last Friday, I headed down to the Boston area to visit with my dear friend, Rita.  And we had a wonderful visit! I was mistaken, in that she is 86, not 91!  (She's my dad's age, not my mom's!  Brain cramp!)

I met Rita when I first moved to the Boston area, back in 1996.  I had been quilting a little previous to that, but thought if I joined a guild, I would get into it more.  So I found the local guild, Crosstown Quilters, and showed up at a meeting.  I was early, of course, and the few gals there said to sit anywhere, so I plunked myself down at the middle table, so I could hear and see everything!  Turns out......I picked the best table, because Rita came and sat next to me.  She told me years later that she thought I had spunk, plunking myself in the middle of everything!  Ha!  We became fast friends, and she invited me to the local senior center, where they met every Thursday for quilting and every Monday for rug braiding!  I had always wanted to learn to braid, so of course, I started going with her!  What a great group of ladies at both meetings, with the quilters from the guild's center table making up most of the group at the senior center!  Nice......I already knew them!

I learned so much at these groups, where all the ladies were well into their 60's, and some in their 90's!  Amazing talent, and they were all willing to share ideas and techniques with this 'spunky' 34 year old!  I was very lucky to be there!  What's more, is that the senior center was an old victorian house in town, and I just loved being in those surroundings!  Sadly to say, the upkeep of the old home was too much for the town to manage, so the meetings were moved to the town municipal building, and the old victorian 'Hersey House' has gone to disrepair.

But back to my visit with Rita.  She does all sorts of crafts......quilting, rug braiding, counted cross stitch, crewel work......and it's all lovely!  Here are some of the things she's kept, because she gives most of it to her daughters and grands.

I just love her rugs.  The one in her dining room is over 30 years old!

Gorgeous crewel work!

This little hexie wall hanging was fabric salvaged from an antique quilt top that the neighbor found in a dumpster!  It was terribly torn up.....rags, really......but Rita salvaged what she could and made this beauty!  The hexies are 1/2" sides!

Here's Rita with her latest piece of crewel work.......it's really lovely!  She's such a sweetie!

And here's Rita with our good friend, Dottie, who conspired with me to set up this get-together.  We had to keep my visit a secret, because Rita will fret herself into a tizzie worrying about me visiting!  So it's much better to surprise her!  And she sure was!  We had a lovely day of just talking about quilts, and stitching, and did a little show and tell with our past projects!  Dottie brought lunch, and we had a perfect day of it!  Fun!

Now, of course, since I got back from Boston, all I can think about is my Triangle quilt!  And if you happened to read the comments from my last post, you'd see that Linda C from Quilts in the Barn blog actually owns that inspiration quilt!  Holy cow!  What are the chances of that!?!  She bought it on Ebay, and I'm so glad that wonderful quilt went to a good home!  Upon further inspection of my pic, I realize that the 'matching' fabric I have for the offset triangles is just slightly different.  It's the same print, but the original has a bit of red on those little black marks!  But that's ok......I'm loving it 100%!

Here's my progress in the last couple of days!  I just can't leave it alone!  lol

I'm going to have to refigure the setting for this quilt.  Because we have a footboard on our bed, I always make quilts to fit the bed so it doesn't get tucked at the end; the binding just rests next to the footboard.  So when I do a quilt, I have to make the long sides the top and bottom!  It usually doesn't matter much, because blocks are blocks......but I just realized that I am preferring the triangles not to 'sit' at the bottom.  Here's a pic of the original again, and I really like looking at it from this angle.  What do you think?

And......a big 'Thank You!' goes out to Rachael at Blue Mountain Daisy for reminding me to take a pic of my peonies!  This one is nearly gone, and I didn't even think about it!  Thanks, sweetie!

Ok......I'm heading back to the sewing room.......triangles are calling me!

Have a great week!

regan

Life is Good!

Especially 'retired' life!  Woohoo!

Today marked two weeks since I stopped working, and I can't believe how busy I've been!  First off, a friend made a comment on how nice it must be 'to be a lady of leisure, and not have to worry about getting up!'  Well, two weeks ago I committed with my friend Pat to walk every morning at 8:00 am around the softball field, so now for the first time in years.......I'm having to set an alarm for 7:00 am!  Every day!  Cripes!  Lady of leisure.....with an alarm clock!  But it feels really good to start the day with a 3 mile walk, and I'm finding a LOT more energy later in the day!

So much so, that I've been reorganizing my sewing room for the past few days, sorting scraps by color, putting fat quarters away, and getting everything in it's place.  And of course, once it all got tidied up, I instantly wanted to start pulling fabrics for a new quilt!  And no, I haven't finished my jubilee quilt back yet, but it's on the design wall, so it can't get too far out of sight!

The quilt I've started has been in my "must make" folder for over a year now.  I think I found it on the Quilt Index, but I'm not really sure.  It's an antique, and scrappy......and I've just been in love with it from the minute I saw it!

Isn't she gorgeous!  I just love this quilt, and so I instantly started pulling my civil war repros to make it!  About 6 months ago, I actually found a really great piece of chrome yellow for the background block, and when I got it home, I found it was EXACTLY the same print as in this quilt!  Amazing luck!

But before I could start cutting all my fabric up, I really needed to plan this out!  That's kindof my problem with quilting most quilts......I just wing it!  About half the time I'll graph it out on paper, but a lot of the time, it's just a sketch.  That's why when I make something on-point, it usually is a weird dimension, either huge or too small when finished.......cuz of the winging-it!  lol

Well, I wanted this quilt to be GREAT......so out came the graph paper!  But it's an equilateral triangle, and that's just a LOT of ruler work on a square grid paper.  So I googled it!  And came up with this great site.....

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

It is loaded with any kind of graph paper you can think of, with FREE downloads that you can print out!  Score!  And you can make the dimensions of your graphs any size you want!  So I played with it, and printed a few, and drew my quilt out, figured how many triangle/blocks I'd need, and went to town printing out pages for paper piecing it........so all my points will be there!

Months ago, I thought I would hand piece this, but now that I'm doing the 8-pointed star for my hand piecing project, I kindof wanted to get to this sooner.  So paper piecing it is!

This is the paper I'm working from, and you can see the stack of paper pieces in the background.....all 203 of them!  Three of these pieced and one single fabric will make up a block!  And yeah, there are extra lines on this grid, but if I hadn't done that, I would have only got about 2 of these per page, and that would have taken forever, and wasted a lot of paper.  Printed the way I did, I was able to get 12 from every legal size sheet of paper!  Yay!

I LOVE THIS BLOCK!  And and I love the background fabric.......it just looks darker here than it really is. (Note to self.......I really need to do something about those fluorescent lights in my sewing room!  They ruin every picture!  Ugh!)

So I'm working away on this.......I just couldn't stop once I got started!  Who could, right?  lol

I'll trim them all up later, but for now......I just love adding to this on the wall!  These blocks are 6" finished size.

Of course, it hasn't been ALL about sewing these past 2 weeks.......I've actually been reading a book!.....and taking naps, too!  Woohoo!

Life is good!  Yes it is!

And tomorrow I'm heading down to Boston area to visit my friend, Rita.  She's 91, still lives on her own, and does some kind of craft every day!  She's the best rug braider I've ever seen, and she taught me how when I lived in Boston, some 14 years ago!  She also hand quilts, knits fisherman cable sweater for American Girl dolls for her great-granddaughters, does counted cross-stitch, and crewel work, and.......

she says that everything she does is WRONG, because she's left-handed, so it's all backwards!  Ha!  She's amazing, and everything she does is a work of art!  I can't wait to spend the day with her!

Have a great weekend!

regan