The Return of Me and My WIPs / Beauties Pageant 250

Hello. Is anyone out there?

It’s weird for me to take time off from blogging, to be creating behind the scenes without sharing with those of you who’ve been walking alongside me these past 10 years. I’m very happy to be back and in the swing of things.

The truth of the matter is that I just submitted the manuscript for my first quilting book. It has proved to be both one of the most exciting and most anticlimactic events of my quilting life. On one hand, I wrote a book! It’s going to be beautifully photographed and designed, and I can’t wait to share it with you! That. Is. Exciting! On the other hand, it won’t be released for another year. Many amazing publishing professionals will leave their mark on my work before it’s ready for public consumption (the book-production cycle is more complicated than you'd think). Still, twelve months is a long time to wait.

One of the challenges of writing a book is that you have to commit to making a certain number of projects upfront. There’s little room for much else, and I am eager to chase a few quilty squirrels.

In the few days since I turned everything in, I have been planning all the things in all aspects of my life.  On the quilting front, I am preparing some projects that bust through scraps and stash. These include:

• Chamomile: I am going to sew this pattern by Allison Jensen (Woodberry Way) in fabrics from Fig Tree and from Bonnie and Camille. The instructions call for strip piecing, the thought of which makes me very happy.
  
• Quilty Stars: The background of this design from Emily Dennis (Quilty Love) is going to make a huge dent in my low volumes. Now to decide on a color for my stars ...
  
• Tall Tales Block: Kate Basti is once again organizing a summer sewalong for her super-popular Tall Tales Block. I know I’ve signed up in the past and sewn zero blocks, but this year is my year, friends. I’m pulling fabric, ordering some newsprint for foundation paper piecing, and getting started. If you want to join in, you can sign up for free at the Summer Book Club site.

And then there’s the sweet miniquilt at the top of the post, made with a pattern by Kid Giddy. I was hoping to have her quilted and in the mail already, but did I mention I had a manuscript due this week? Ha! I’m hoping this lovely mermaid will still be appreciated when it arrives a few days after Mother’s Day. 

I cannot wait to hear what you’ve been up to! Please, upload what you have finished—anything from blocks to full quilts to other fabric-y projects—since I went radio silent back in late March!

Follow Me On ...

 

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Blog Break

In case you missed my earlier announcement ...

I have some large quilty deadlines looming on the horizon. The smart (grown-up? sane?) thing to do is step back from this space for a bit. So I’m going to take off the rest of March and all of April. I expect to be back in early May, right in time to celebrate 10 years of blogging, with new posts and finishes for you. Until then, happy sewing!

How Not to Piece a Quilt Back / Beauties Pagent 249

A show of hands, please: Who among you loves a good pieced back?

Me, too! Sometimes you will find me using a wideback (remember these ladybugs?), but it’s a rare occurrence, because for me, a pieced back is an opportunity to use up some fabric—fat quarters or yardage—that might otherwise linger in my stash.

My tried-and-true approach to piecing a backing is this: I take a cut of fabric that is the length required by the project, I cut it lengthwise, and then I fill in that space with enough fabric to create the width required. Here’s an example, on the back of my Rain or Shine quilt (you can see additional pictures illustrating this technique here) ...

There are times, however, when I’ve mixed things up a bit with good results.

Take the back side of my Norway quilt as an example. I didn’t like this block enough to place it on the front, but set here on the back, it becomes something special ...

An unused panel became the focal point of my Square Deal quilt back, with equally great results ...

I wish I could say my pieced backs are always a success. This is not the case. In fact, I seem to create problems for myself when I try to do anything fancier or more fiddly. 

Take, for example, the back of my Lotus Blossom quilt. The quilt front featured fabrics that suited the recipients’ taste but not my own. I knew if I didn’t use them on the back, I wouldn’t use them at all. A few math mistakes created problems for me, and I ended up with a backing that is not my style ...

I found myself in a comparable situation recently, shown in the picture at the top of the post. (I have yet to reveal the top of this particular project.) My goal, as usual, was to use up as much fabric as I could. In this case, however, some of that fabric was 2.5-inch squares. The process was more fiddly than I had hoped, and the result is OK but not awesome. To me, the way the pieced swath cuts off at the edges of the quilt looks like a mistake. There is something to be said for big chunks of fabric on a back, I think.

The moral of my pieced-back story is this: The simpler the plan for a pieced backing, the better. I spend less time thinking and sewing a pieced back—and like the results more!—when I keep the approach straightforward.

Blog Break

Friends, I have some large quilty deadlines looming on the horizon. The smart (grown-up? sane?) thing to do is step back from this space for a bit. So I’m going to take off the rest of March and all of April. I expect to be back in early May, right in time to celebrate 10 years of blogging, with new posts and finishes for you. Until then, happy sewing!

Follow Me On ...

 

* * *

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter