Featherstone Quiltworks

(My blog was down most of Monday, April 6th, due to host server problems.  My apologies for any inconvenience.)

Judy Laquidara hosted a “Quilt Along” a while back and offered her Bears in the Farmhouse pattern to participants.  (In her Quilt Along, you were given a step via e-mail, and had a deadline by which to finish that step and e-mail Judy a photo to show that you truly did complete the step; then you would receive the next step, etc.)  300 people signed on, and over 150 quilters continued to at least close to the end. 

I created a problem in mine by making my half-square triangles too big (should have been 3 1/2″ unfinished; mine were 3 1/2″ finished.)  As a result, they didn’t fit in the border in the order Judy designed.  I am very pleased with the quilt; I’m just explaining why mine is different.  And it’s also a good reminder that there are no real mistakes — just pathways to creating a (slightly) different quilt!

I used a lot of fabrics that were offered during the Minnesota Shop Hop in 2007/2008, and I purchased them during that time frame.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with them, but they were only available until sold out.  No additional trips to the LQS were made  in the creation of this quilt!  Totally out of stash.  Woo-hoo!

Here is Judy’s original Bears in the Farmhouse quilt pattern, which is now offered for sale.  Click here for Judy’s post where she’s inviting people who have completed their top to add a link.  It’s so much fun to see what other people do with the same pattern, so check back as I’m sure there will continue to be new links added.

Thanks, Judy!  I’m keeping this quilt.

Sue

Finally, a completed top.  It’s Judy L’s Bears in the Farmhouse (mine is renamed Bears in the North Woods):

Mine looks different than the others because of my error, described previously, in making the HSTs the wrong size; I switched the five borders around and made one (the green one) wider.  Now that it’s done, I love it!  Thank you, Judy, for not only sharing this pattern, but for your work in distributing the pattern to us in segments and setting up a photo site for sharing our Bears pictures. 

Sue

One of my favorite people ever to work with was Sue K.  You never had to wonder what was on her mind — she would let you know!  We were using copiers side by side, and Sue was doing some sort of complicated copying of boxes of documents, unstapling, double sided, trying to keep everything in order.  Sue said, “Do you ever feel like you’re way too smart for this job, and then you go and *flub* it up anyway?”  Okay, if you know Sue, you know she didn’t say “flub”, but this is a family post.  That is exactly how I feel today.

I’m working on my Bears in the North Woods quilt, a Quilt Along offered by Judy Laquidara at Patchwork Times.  And let me say up front, JUDY”S DIRECTIONS ARE PERFECT.  This was totally my screw-up.  Judy sent out the last of the instructions for this quilt, and we are going to finish the quilt with three more borders.  The next border is comprised of 86 half-square-triangle blocks, which will march in a row around the entire quilt, 23 on each long side, 20 on each short side = 86 blocks.  So far, so good. 

Last night I made the 86 HST blocks, then laid them out next to the quilt.

This may not look like a problem, unless you count the blocks.  This is a 20-block strip on what should be the 23-block side.  What???  I’m usually accurate to a 1/4″ or so, and this is waaaay off.  Checked the math, checked Judy’s directions, and still didn’t stumble onto my error.  The pattern clearly says to trim the blocks to 3 1/2″ (these would finish at 3″); my blocks are FINISHED at 3 1/2″.  I used Thangles (r), and having 3 1/2″ on the brain, I grabbed the 3 1/2″ pack, not thinking through that it says 3 1/2″ finished right on the package.  Grrrr.  (For you non-sewers who might care, you lose 1/2″ on each block on the seam allowances.)

So here’s the deal.  I could take one of the previous borders off and redo it larger to compensate for my HST blocks so at least I would come out even with a whole block so I don’t have half a triangle or something strange.  I could  do that.  If I had any more of either of those fabrics. 

Then I started experimenting with adding another border as an even-up-the-dimensions border to anything that’s divisible by 3 1/2″ plus 1/2″.  Math!  I have light green yardage (used in the bear paw claws) and the light taupe (the inner sashings) left.  I’m not thrilled with either of them, but here are their “audition tapes”:

I’m leaning towards the green one.  What do you think?  I’m going to walk away from this one until tomorrow and then look at it with fresh eyes.  I really don’t like this border so wide, but it’s either that or a very slender border (1 1/4″) so my blocks will come out okay.  Right now I’m thinking the wide border will improve with some quilting in it.

On a brighter note, when I was looking for another fabric that might save the day, I came across this Minnesota hanky that was sold during the 2007 Minnesota Shop Hop.  Cute, isn’t it?  It will go on the back close to the label.

Sue

or, as I’ve renamed mine, Bears in the North Woods.  The twelve blocks are done for the top:

And for the few non-quilters that read my blog (hi, Jim, Patrick, Rob, Tony, Dave…), I thought I would tell you why this quilt is named anything to do with bears.   The square piece of fabric with the picture is the bear’s foot, and the triangles are the claws, so each block has four paws radiating out from the center of the block (and remember, there WILL be a test later):

This is going to be my Minnesota Quilt.  These motifs were fussy cut from fabric sold during the 2007 Minnesota Shop Hop.  If it wasn’t for Judy organizing this Quilt Along, these fabrics would probably be celebrating their 10th anniversary in my closet in 2017.  (If you concentrate and close your eyes real tight, you can almost hear the fabric shouting, “we’re free, we’re free!!!”)  Of course, after I took it out of the closet, I chopped it all up, stitched it full of thousands of holes and pressed the heck out of it with the iron set on “cotton”.  But I know the fabric will agree it’s been worth all the pain when it feels the love that we give to quilts!

Next we’re doing the sashings, and I’m going to make mine a medium green.  I think this very pale quilt needs more color!  Then after the green, a first narrow border of the natural color, another thin border of a nice Bourdeaux wine fabric (is it happy hour yet?), followed by half-square triangles, another wine border, then about a 4″ border of a lighter green.  I’m not sure I want to do the HST border, as I don’t have all the fabrics I started with to do the HSTs from.  Fortunately, we have two weeks before the next step is due, so I will have plenty of time to work things out in my mind.

This is another quilt that will be 100% from stash.  What a good feeling!  Of course, you always have so many left-over scraps that sometimes you feel like you don’t really deplete your stash at all!  It’s like those giant, humongous salads that are served in some restaurants.  You eat and eat and eat, and it seems like the salad just gets bigger. I think the theory is the same.  As you eat the salad, it kind of gets moved around and fluffed up; and scraps of fabric are fluffier than folded yardage.  Keep that in mind when you look at your scraps:  there’s a lot of AIR in there!

Sue

Here are my fabrics for Judy Laquidara's new (and first!) Quilt-Along project, Bears in the Farmhouse.  Click here for a look at Judy's finished quilt. And now that you've had a look at Judy's gorgeous quilt, I have to tell you mine isn't going to look anything like that!  I so wanted a stripe to use in the bear paws (sooo cute!), but didn't have one.  Ran across these fabrics that have been properly aging to perfection in my closet.

My quilt will have these Minnesota-themed motifs for the bear paw blocks (from Quilt Minnesota 1 1/2 years ago).  They are almost exactly the right size.  I will have to do some fussy cutting to make sure the outline doesn’t show in the finished block.

For my coordinating fabrics, I am using some plums and greens from my stash.  The muslin is a good match to my Minnesota block backgrounds, so that will be the background to the “paws”.  I also added a gold that wasn’t in my original mix of fabrics.