Flat FO #2: PPPPineapple quilt

You have seen it in many stages along the way. I’ve sworn over it, been impressed by the quilting, and used it for a binding demo on this here blog.

It’s finally finished.

Meet the Positively Painful Patriotic Pineapple.

Shortly after moving out here, mom and I decided to both take a Pineapple quilt class at Quilted Memories in Dunkirk, N.Y. (Mary, the owner, is almost certainly going out of business. This is extremely sad news).

Quilting motif that’s on all of the Pineapple blocks. When you’re computer-guided, it’s perfect every time!

I completely enjoyed my classmates, but discovered quickly that having to make a gross of sub-cuts (literally 144) on every stinking round of these blocks simply wasn’t for me.


The borders were also computer-guided and are perfect. Chevrons in the red, diamonds in the white and stars in the blue

But I was really glad to be finished piecing this top when that finally happened.


More detail of the quilting, as it’s more easily seen on the back. Still not great photos of the stars, but they’re there.

I had Mary from Quilted Memories do the quilting on her Gammill longarm machine. I think she did a simply fabulous job.



I went online and purchased a quilt backing-width fabric. I’d had enough grief piecing the front, I wasn’t about to piece the back!


More detail shots of the back

I recently took this quilt in to The Quilt Company to show it off a little bit, after I finally finished whipstitching the binding down. The fabulous Debi (store manager) thinks I should enter it in the Butler show this October.


Something blue bled like a sonofabitch when I washed this thing. I think it was the backing, but I can’t prove it.

What do you think?



I’m just thrilled it’s finished.

Bind This!

Yes, I did some sewing last weekend. There was Secret Sewing that I photographed but can’t show you. That’s already in the hands of the USPS winging its way west to my LURKER friend Lisa. (hi, Lisa! Hi, Ole!, Hi, Deb! Hi, Sandy! ... I think that covers about a third of the Cali contingent)

Ahem. Back to business.

After getting all of the bits and pieces cut and sewn back together for Nonie’s quilt, I figured I should also get cracking on getting the Positively Painful Patriotic Pineapple finished. Since I sent it out to Quilted Memories in Dunkirk, N.Y., for longarm quilting, that means binding and label. So I started on the binding!


And as long as I was sewing, I figured I’d snap some photos so that Floribunda would be happy and quit bugging me about the knitting-heavy content.

About halfway along the process of sewing the binding allllll the way around this queen sized monster, I realized that as long as I was doing that, I could take a few more photos and try to explain my favorite method of closing binding. I will try to keep this as concise as possible, but please feel free to fire away if you have questions.

Personally, I always lay out my binding before I start. I begin with a point about 12-18” away from the center of the “bottom” of the quilt, then I lay out the binding to make sure that I don’t have any seams in the neighborhood of any of the corners.

I’m assuming that if you’re still reading, you know how to make binding strips and how to miter a corner. And that you know to leave about a half-strip of binding “free” when you start sewing on the binding. I’m focusing only on how to “close the loop” so to speak.

As I get back around to the side of the quilt where I started, I stop sewing the binding down when I’m about 18-24” away from where I started sewing the binding down.


I take the “starting” tail of the binding and fold it down at a 90 degree angle so that tail is now perpindicular to the edge of the quilt. You’re looking at the “bottom” tail of red binding in that photo above.


Now lay the piece coming from the “top” directly over that foldy piece. If you click to biggify that picture above, you can see the line I finger-pressed with my nail. At this point, you’ll have three levels of binding going on in that little triangle.

Don’t stretch the binding, but don’t make it extra-loose either. Both sides should lay completely flat on the quilt, exactly where you want to sew them down.


You then stick a pin through only the top two layers of binding.


This is why it’s important to leave that 18-24” gap, because after that pin is in place, the next step is to straighten out both binding strips and sew along that finger-pressed line. That un-sewn length gives you enough room to maneuver the binding through your sewing machine.


Here, you can see the line of stitching that connected the two pieces of binding. And my scrap I used to sew off the corner. :-) Yes, I noticed that I had a few skipped stitches there. I re-sewed it before I moved on to the next step. Don’t want that sucker to fall apart.

After I triple- and quadruple-checked that the join was completed correctly,


I snipped both ends of the binding about ¼” off of the seam line. I now have a completely closed loop of binding, but I have that 18-24” section where the loop is not attached to the quilt.



So the next step is to sew down that last gap


Tah-dah! Totally ready to be whipstitched down to the back of the quilt. I’ll get around to that. Speaking of which, this seam line will disappear when it is whipstitched down and will look exactly like the bias joins on the rest of the binding.

Oh, and I have two labels to make and have binding to hand stitch down on both of them. Bah, humbug! But at least I like this better than doing finishing work on my knitting. Weird, huh?

I honestly don’t remember how I closed binding before I learned this technique. This is pretty no-muss, no-fuss and I’m very sold on it. Hope I made sense and you liked this tutorial!

July 4, Three Days Late

Wow. I didn't realize that I hadn’t posted since last Tuesday. Sorry about that. It’s quite easy to lose track of time at the Lake.

We had an enjoyable Independence Day. We went over to the Community Center early and enjoyed some donuts while shopping the merchandise put forward by the Women’s Club.

Hubster took one look at this display and had one comment for the bear on the right

“Dude-- Don’t pass out if your buddies have sharpies”

There were hot dogs for sale too, but I was not up for a hot dog at 10 am.

We hung around long enough for the bike parade, where I saw one of my all-time favorite entries

Washington crossing the Delaware! They did a fantastic job on that entry.

You may remember that last year, someone brought a pony to the festivities. This year?


Two ponies! And you can see the yellow lab just behind the black pony for scale. These suckers are tiny!

Once we got home, I made the World’s Easiest Peppermint Brownies. I took photos for a mini-cooking tutorial, but we’ll save that for another day.

The neighbors were playing a game that Trillian42 will recognize …


After sunset,


I did a little sewing


Binding for the Painfully Patriotic Pineapple quilt, and some M&Ms “secret” sewing that is now ready to be mailed to Lisa. Yay!

I have some other stuff already photographed, so I’ll try to post more often this week. Hope you had an enjoyable weekend as well!

You call this Spring?

First, Yvonne tagged me for a meme, so I’ll get that out of the way:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages (All Creatures Great and Small/All Things Bright and Beautiful 2 volumes in 1 by James Herriot. I actually had a wide variety to pick from, but this was at the top of the pile.)

2. Open the book to page 12 and find the 5th sentence: That man over there, bent double and slashing away at the air with one hand – he was castrating a colt in the standing position.

3. Post the next 3 sentences: And the one with his arm out at full stretch, his fingers working busily at nothing – almost certainly foaling a mare; probably correcting a carpal flexion. And doing it effortlessly too. Veterinary surgery was a childishly simple matter in a warm bar with a few drinks inside you

[Note: Thank God that last sentence was included. These are the first two of a four-book series that I can’t recommend highly enough for anyone who ever likes animals. The BBC series based on the books is fantastic too.]

4. Then tag 4 people. No thanks. I’ll pass on this part, but feel free to do it if you want.

Onward!

So on Thursday (remember, the equinox was Thursday! You’d never know!), I headed up to the Lake with mom and aunt Suz. We took care of the primary reason for the trip first


And we picked up our quilts at Quilted Memories (that's a 716 area code if you're in the area. No website, sadly). Also bought some fabric (duh). No pics of either of those. I’ll post quilt pics once I can get the binding on. I hate binding. Almost as much as I hate making labels. I need to find some good transfer paper so I can make labels with my computer. Any suggestions?

So after we picked up our quilts and some fabric, we headed over to the cottage.

The following is usually a big field on the main road into our community


Gee, I wonder why we had a major mosquito problem up here when I was a kid? When things aren’t frozen, there’s a pump that helps this water get out of this field and into the Lake, which “solves” the mosquito problem.


Yeah. It’s most certainly still winter on the shores of Lake Erie.


You’ve seen this vantage point before, many times, but I’d never seen it like this!

The Lake is still frozen. Yes, frozen. I wanted to go out and tromp around a little bit, but if I wanted to do that, I should have gone up a month or two ago when I could be a little more confident that the ice is thick. So I stayed up on the neighbors seawall and took my pictures from there.



That ridge there? It’s the one closest to the bottom of the picture? With the small animal tracks in the snow leading up to it? That’s the boulder that’s in almost all of my sunset pictures.


That’s looking east from our little vantage point. You can kind of see the “ice volcanos” that formed when the lake was starting to freeze. Oh, and those ridges? Probably 20-30 yards into the lake from the shoreline.

We then did a little driving around the community and stopped between our community (the Point) and the neighboring community (the Bay). RT jumped out of the car and got his picture taken with the frozen Bay and Dunkirk in the background. (Again, that would all be water in the background if everything wasn't still frozen)


After dinner at the country club, we went over to The White Inn, (sorry SJ! They have typos!) where we stayed the night


No, we can’t stay at the cottage in the middle of winter. It’s not winterized. That means no insulation, no heat (well, baseboard heat, but that’s not particularly effective vs. 30-degree temps!) and no plumbing. We drain all of the plumbing so it doesn’t freeze.

On Friday morning, RT wanted a photo-op with the White Inn in downtown Fredonia, then we hit the road southward. We stopped at the Grove City outlets (who knew that Good Friday was a major shopping day? That place was crowded!) then home.

Now, I have a second sock to cast off, then bed. Yap at you later!

Grownups Live Here

Today (Monday) was a routine day with lots of little hiccups. I wanted to work out this morning, but I stayed up too late last night (baking Snickerdoodles. At least they turned out pretty well), so I wussed out. Dammit.

My day was planned around delivery dudes for my new bedroom furniture. Their delivery window was from 10:30-12:30. They showed up at 1. And stayed until 3. *sigh*

Then they dropped a piece of the metal frame that was being moved into a different room to vacate the space for the new bed. We have hardwood floors in the master bedroom. When the metal bedframe piece hit the wood, it took out a dime-sized chunk on one end and and a chunk about half that size when the other end hit.

Fortunately, Delivery Dudes were immediately apologetic and immediately called their boss. I’ll be hearing from their wood repair guy, who will fix the big blue painters tape X’s on my floor free of charge. Gotta say that they handled that mishap as professionally as I could possibly have asked. What a change from my LA experiences!

The interior designer we are working with showed up for the “installation.” We changed where the new dresser is going in the room, so it’s probably a good thing that we started with just the bed and dresser. We had discussed getting an armoire, but it may not fit with how the room is coming together. We’ll figure it out soon. That is, if we ever sell the house in LA!

Delivery Dudes put the bed together first. I think it looks pretty damn good, and is a big step forward from the frame-only look I’ve been going with for 11 years (translation: as long as I have owned my own bed). See? Grown-ups really do live here! It’s not just all hand-me-down furniture any more!


Taking this picture reminded me that I really want to get back to my Starr Designs block-a-month. I want that to be a good winter quilt, hopefully with a wool batting so it will be warm for winter. Oh, and it has to have a flannel back. I love this quilt, but it SLIDES. Big-time. Most nights, one of us wakes up quilt-free because it has slid entirely off our side of the bed. I’m hoping that once it gets cool enough for a blanket in addition to the sheet, that will help with traction.

Here’s a shot of the entire dresser


A close-up (below) of the drawers and top

Oh ... it looks goofy because it was waxed just before it left the gallery showroom, and everything I took the time to try had some sort of haze or glare on it. I didn't have time to really mess with it. I got on the road to the Lake three hours later than I had hoped. Oh well.

And one of the inlay on the corner of a drawer. There is inlay on each side, the top, and on the front of each drawer.

If I ever start feeling REALLY ambitious, I could probably make a quilt off of that inlay design. Don’t hold your breath.

Oh, and here’s proof that I put the last border on the Pineapple Quilt:

It’s going to Quilted Memories tomorrow so I can “quilt by check.” On this particular project, that prospect makes me very happy.

Quilty Thursday: Fireworks Edition

The assembly line ended today. The fireworks are in honor of a special occasion -- finishing the damn Postively Painful Pineapple top!


Last night, I trimmed the 11th round on the Painful Pineapple blocks. I got up this morning and sewed the squares onto the corners, trimmed and laid the damn thing out.


I contemplated doing something a little different than I had planned … negating the blue and red secondary design squares on the corners. But I didn’t.


I sewed the damn thing together, pressed it out, laid it out on my mom’s bed for a photo-op (the “official” sewing room and ironing board are upstairs. I’ve been sewing at the dining room table). Then I folded the damn thing up, took a shower, threw some stuff in my car and headed to Akron. When I get back to the Lake on Saturday, I’ll put the three borders on (white, then red, then blue) and get a backing figured out so I can drop the damn thing off at Quilted Memories. I am not going to quilt this monster, I’m going to get it quilted on a longarm and will be happy with it.

We did go to our final Pineapple class on Thursday. Thanks to last week’s SNAFU with my fabric and I in different states, I was not at the point documented above when I went to class, which was my goal.


But mom was. Grrr … She got half the borders on during class and finished the other half yesterday. I forgot to take a “totally” finished photo. Oh, and she had her sample block plus the 30 she did assembly line (same as me), so she made a second “extra” Pineapple block and made a pair of pillow shams to go with the quilt. Overachiever. Grrr…


We also had a TRUE overachiever in our class. I suck because it’s now two days later and I’m not 100% sure I remember her name, but I think it’s Nancy (please don't hate me if I got it wrong. It's late and I should have written down your name on Tuesday!). Anyhow, she had this top done AT OUR SECOND CLASS.


On Tuesday, she was working on a second set of miniature blocks. Yes, I said miniature. I think I’m gonna hurl. (actually, they’re very nice blocks. I just couldn’t have hacked making a second set of blocks). If I remember right, she used 1” strips, which means each “layer” of the block finishes at about a half-inch. Yeek.

So that’s it for the Pineapple. I’m not sure what my web access is going to be while I’m in Akron, so bear with me if I’m a little slow on the posting or commenting front over the next few days. I’ll do the best I can!

Quilty Thursday: Censored Edition

Why censored? Well …


I got myself set up in the basement to do some sewing today while I watched this (FANTASTIC movie, btw). A large chunk of running around the house was necessary before I wrangled the following items into the basement:
* Surge Protector (in order to plug in sewing machine)
* Key to Koala cabinet (since the cabinet was locked for transport and the key wound up in the master bedroom … why? I don’t know)
* Items living on top of the compacted cabinet were moved to their proper homes elsewhere in the house

Then I moved the cabinet out of its spot on the wall and went to pull out my Pineapple stuff.
* Pile of blocks on rotating cutting board. CHECK!
* Pineapple ruler and 6x12 Omnigrip ruler. CHECK!
* Bag from Quilted Memories with all of my strips pre-cut and extra fabric. UMMM ...
* Rotary Cutter. RUH-ROH

I have searched high and low and can’t find those last two items anywhere in this house. I looked EVERYWHERE in the house and in my car at least twice. And I swore. A lot. That would be the censored part.

This is why I always had my big blue crate full of stuff. Then I just put it all in there and was ready to roll. *sigh*

Fortunately, I found one of my eleventybillion other rotary cutters, so I can at least get all 30 blocks trimmed down so I’m ready to sew like a crazy woman when I get back up to the Lake on Monday. Between now and then, I pray that the stupid bag is up there waiting for me, and work on this:


This is my Picnic Plaid quilt. It has been in various and assorted stages of “in progress” for over a year. It’s the second time I’ve made this quilt, as the first one went to Oxford, Miss., to my friend Bill.

I quilted the borders probably a year ago at Bearly Stitchin on a series of Friday nights. I did the blue and yellow stripes at the Lake just before I started the Pineapple class. The two green stripes on the left and the three green stripes are all that are left to quilt on this thing. Then I need to decide what I want to do about a label and work from there. Truthfully? I really want to skip the label and get this thing washed and in use on a couch near you. Well, near me. You know what I mean.

Back to sub-cutting. I want to watch this, since it’s the last Netflix movie that I have “at home,” but I can’t find that either. Insert more swearing here. I’m hoping that damn thing is at the Lake too. I suck.