Long Time Gone -- the Top is Finished!!

All the boxes are checked!

The bits and pieces have been cut up for the final borders!

The background text prints have been folded up and put back on the shelf!

The "project" basket is empty and ready for the next one!!

The piles of strips have become borders.

The borders have been stitched in place.

I found enough of this print for a backing!!

And there it is!! 

Ready to layer and quilt.

I've decided to quilt it with the Baptist fan design and perhaps bind it with black.

These little church dashes are my favorite blocks in the quilt -- so much fun to hide little secrets in the center squares.

Love the plus panel with the star hidden in it -- think I'd like to expand that idea into a larger piece.

The book is on it's way to a new home -- yep, sold it!

And I've started cutting a new project!?!

Be sure to come back on Tuesday, August 1 to see the full reveal of the piece below as part of the Emily Breclaw's Adventures in Hexagons Book Blog Tour going on now! 

(DETAILS HERE)

I'll have giveaways, too so get you "commenting hat" on and make sure you are NOT a "no-reply" commenter -- you can't win that way!!

Yesterday's stop was at Marti Michell's blog (HERE) and she has a great giveaway so you might want to pop over there for a read and to make a comment!

Enjoy the weekend!

Mary

Scrappy Long Time Gone Piecing Progress

I'm  looking back at my Instagram posts to see when I began to piece this quilt -- looks like I posted my first finished block on March 19.  Here I am, almost 4 months down the calendar and still on schedule!?!  I sorted out all the blocks by "sections" to be sure I had everything finished.  I didn't even need the "amnesty" week the organizers allowed for catching up with the block piecing!!

Once I was sure I had everything, I began organizing the checkerboard fill-ins sections and assembling the six sections of the top.  Sorting through the leftovers from sixteen weeks of piecing provided most of the strips needed for the checkerboards and helped clear off the cutting table.

My strip sets were various lengths which helped keep everything scrappy.

Once the strips sets were pressed, I paired them up for quick cutting by laying them right sides together with the seams meshed together.

It's important to maintain consistency when piecing light/dark 4-patches.  You think it won't matter which direction the pairs are facing, but it does!!  Take my word for that -- been there, done that and it doesn't work -- well, it does if you de-stitch.

To quickly pair up sets, I start by sorting them into stacks by color as above. 

Then I pair up all the sets from one stack with something from another stack until that stack is gone, so I've paired up all the turquoise in the picture below -- time to move on to the green stack.  

Sometimes I "manage" the combinations by only pairing up a warm color with a cool color.  

I find it doesn't pay to get too fussy because there is a gremlin hiding in the studio closet who comes out and rearranges what I've arranged?!? 

Case in point -- there were not blues or purples together when I laid out this group of blocks!!

I must say, the crisp contrast of the checkerboard sections have me thinking about a larger scale checkerboard quilt -- the 1 1/2" strips make for a cute piece but I don't think I'd stay with it for a larger quilt at that scale!

My checkerboards are all finished and I am past the halfway point with the final assembly.  I've run into a couple instances of the checkerboard being too long.

No need to panic!!

Experience has taught me to simply go back and take a slightly deeper seam here and there in a band until the lengths match. 

No need to destitch -- and as you can see my Bernina 1/4" foot makes it easy to see what I need to do.  I'm guiding the original seam along the inside edge of the presser foot. 

From the right side, you hardly notice and no one else will notice it at all!!

This is section 5, waiting for me to return to the studio and stitch it together.  I love how the black is making everything sparkly and breaking up sections to calm the quilt down a bit.

One more session in the studio and it will be ready for the borders.  I found a backing fabric in my "big hunks" stash -- love when that happens!!  And I think I've come up with the quilt's ultimate destiny -- that should provide the incentive to move all the way through the quilting!!

Most of the colored prints in this quilt have been gleaned from my scrap basket and my strip boxes.  There are even some precious little favorite "last" bits tucked here and there.

The center blue square in the upper left corner churn dash is a scrap from the first dress I made when I was 11 years old!!

So time to start a new project, right?

And it's on the cutting table -- hopefully I'll be far enough along with it later this week to share!

Keep on stitching -- there's lots to do!!

Mary

Linking up with SCRAPTASTIC TUESDAY today!!

Long Skinny Triangles

Long skinny triangles -- isosceles -- not my favorite shape to stitch up until Marti Michell introduced the Peaky & Spike Triangle Set.  

I wrote this post when it first came out (HERE) so I know how well it works, but I still wasn't eager to make this unit of the Long Time Gone SAL quilt top!  So I procrastinated it all weekend and then realized late Monday that I was leaving early Tuesday morning on a quick teaching trip to the Indianapolis, Indiana area -- grrr.

The tool set features those brilliant engineered trimming corners so I knew the stitching would go well, but I hadn't cut any of the pieces and I realized during supper that a deer chomped on my young sassafras tree so I needed to spray the entire yard which is ready to burst forth in daylilies flowers (aka, deer candy) before I left town or I'd really be fuming!!

Having secured the garden's bounty for another couple weeks, I decided to try knocking out the piecing before bed since all was packed for an early departure in the morning.

As with any of these odd shapes, the trimming is critical since it simplifies setting up the pieces for stitching!!  No guessing, just align the trimmed corners!!

I ignored the pressing guidelines and pressed one side away from the center triangle and the other towards it.  My purpose was to make nesting the two finished triangle units possible. 

A quick layout and a bit of rearranging for the sake of variety.

And I was ready to stitch the pairs together - love how precise those side intersections are!

Here is the back so you can see the pressing. 

Rather than stitch the diamonds into rows, I set together pairs . . . .  

then clusters of four diamond units . . . . .  

and here is the finished result!!

All together in a little over an hour (yeaa!!) plus I ironed my clothes for the trip!!

(I hope I took a lopsided picture and that the piece isn't actually crooked.)

Once again, I encourage you to wander over to Instagram and check out #longtimegonesal to see what other quilters are doing!!

I also put together the first section of the quilt top over the weekend so it can travel with me and be part of the trunk show Tuesday evening.  I'm using a rather old black print with silver stars -- dates to the early 1990's?  If I remember correctly, the print was inspired by a piece of fabric found in a movie wardrobe studio.  Mary Ellen Hopkins approached her friend Irwin Bear at P&B Fabrics with it and he printed it in several color ways.  Mary Ellen would have loved this scrappy quilt and I like the way the black gives one's eyes a place to rest. 

My pineapple blocks are a little catty-wampus -- not sure why but I'll need to be more careful on the rest of them -- still 13 to go but that's next week!!

Make sure it's a stitchy week!

Mary

And the beat goes on . . . . .

The past couple weeks of the Long Time Gone SAL have been all about triangles -- HST's and flying geese.  Little HST's and little flying geese!?!

My typical strategy is to use my big blocks of time for cutting and then grab time to stitch as I can.

Chain piecing to the rescue!!

I am using Marti Michell's templates for the cutting (you can check out her blog posts HERE -- they are full of lots of extra tips and tricks) so I'm not trimming my HST's once they are made.

Sometimes they look a bit wobbly but with 25 years of "fudging" experience under my belt the end results usually work.   A quick layout to get the pattern organized and then time to leave the room.

When I came back it was easy to pickup out the HST's that needed changed like the oranges and yellows together and the clumps of polka dots.  Of course, you know that you can shift pieces around forever and still see pieces to move.

At some point, you just have to stop adjusting and start stitching.

I join everything into pairs. 

Then the pairs into "4-patches" and then pairs of "4-patches". 

It's easier to fudge units together in sections like this than in rows because I can "nest the seams" on all four sides of each section.

And a finished block!!  Looks a bit wobbly around the edges but the points are crisp and I can fudge a bit more during the final assembly.

Time to take on the flying geese!

Have you explored all the posts on Instagram from the quilters that are doing this SAL?

Check out #longtimegonesal -- there are over 5000 posts -- lots of color inspiration!!

I love seeing how others organize their colors.

My primary focus with this group of blocks was to spread the yellows around since they are the lightest value in the blocks so they jump right out! 

I now have all the flying geese units finished! 

I'm thinking I'll use black for the sashing and have started to audition possibilities on the design wall.

What do you think? 

I'm still building the (itty, bitty) pineapple blocks -- 1" cut strips but so manageable with Marti's template set!!  They are the "leaders and enders" for all my studio work these days and I'm past the halfway point!! 

This week also saw the delivery of four large lap robes to a local mission team heading down into Kentucky to work with the Appalachia Service Project in July.  A second batch will head out in August with another group.  My quilting gang works hard on this project!!

How long do you it will take all of us to cover the world in quilts??

Enjoy your weekend!!

Mary