Design Wall Monday - August 10, 2020

 Nann just sent me a message - Did you forget Design Wall Monday?  OMGosh, I did!  Please forgive me, I have company and they have 1 yr old and 3 yr. old girls....and I have been busy playing with them.  Eating pretend ice cream cones and pretend french fries from their little play kitchen I set up for them.

Banks is taking a nap and Darcie is eating her lunch (real food).  Play kitchen is in background.

I shall be back next week with more quilting pictures.  In the meantime, you are to carry on without me.  lol

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Progress, Always a Good Thing!

Binding has been added to a king sized quilt that I made to warm the upstairs bedroom at the cabin.  I selected a polka-dot fabric, and it compliments the quilt fabrics nicely.  Sometimes a quilt has to wait until I decide for sure what I want to do, and this one waited a year.

I reviewed several you tube videos on attaching binding, and this time everything went smoothly.  I think it also helped that I've added binding to several doll quilts, and am getting better at the process.

Practice does improve my work.  I am happy with all four corners this time. Usually I like one or two, and the other ones, not so much.  I love progress!

Corners:

Here's the quilt on the bed:

I didn't measure the quilt to give you the details, re finished size, and block size.  I will measure it and add the info later.  I'm away from the cabin (in Ludington) to connect to wifi, so I can post today.  

   Here's another picture:

Here's part of the turkey family that has adopted our yard as their own.  The two little ones were out of the picture.  The wildlife here has our old yellow labrador who is 13 years old, remembering her roots.  She went on point yesterday, to show us that she's still got her hunting instincts.  She was so cute with one of her front paws bent and her tail straight out, with her eyes intent on something she saw in the woods. 

Pure Michigan.

Sophia Grace and Rosie looked over the maple leaf quilt, sat on it, and pronounced it entirely too big for their taste, and they want me to work on something much smaller.  They are a tough audience.  You can see the clam shell machine quilting (By Two Sisters of Bear Lake, Michigan) in the picture.

 I'm hooking up with Design Wall Mondays at Patchwork Times to join the other quilters there.  Patchwork Times Design Wall Mondays

Love Entwined Start and Michigan Tiger Lily Start

I decided to start in a small way on Love Entwined, the 1870 Coverlet (see link to read about it) Esther Aliu's blog 

The center is a Mariner's Compass with small circles surrounding it.  I think there are about 32 little circles, but I'm not sure.  Anyway, I am starting to make the small circles because I haven't printed out the pattern for the Mariner's Compass yet.  I'm still reading about how to make it, and I know how to make circles, so that's where I am starting.  

Here's my fabric, and the start of many small circles:

I should have put a dime in the picture to show you the size.  The next time I will.  These little circles are very small, smaller than a dime.  How do I make them?  I trace around the pattern on the back of the fabric and before cutting it out, sew a running stitch with strong thread about 1/8 to 1/4 inch outside of the drawn circle. I cut the circle out, close to the stitching line.  By cutting out after sewing the gathering stitches, I have a bigger piece of fabric in my hand while sewing.  I pull the thread to gather the fabric around the pattern, and tie the ends into a knot.  It then gets soaked in water, and laid out to dry overnight.  I don't use starch or any other product.  I find that wetting it and drying it out will keep the circle shape good enough until I sew it down. When I am ready to sew it to background fabric, I snip a few of the gathering stitches, and pull out the pattern, and then reshape it into a circle and applique it down.  The circle pattern is from a set I have from Karen Kay Buckley, called "Perfect Circles".    

Michigan is so beautiful this summer.  Here's one example.

One of the native wildflowers of Michigan is Lilium lancifolium, commonly named Tiger Lily.  Since the Detroit Tigers are our favorite baseball team, I've been on a search to find some Tiger Lily plants to put in our yard.  Here's a picture of a Tiger Lily in bloom that I took this morning, at the building where the local quilt guild meets:

This plant has what different sources call "bulbils" or "bulbets" along the stem that can be collected and planted to produce new plants.  It will take at least two years to grow a flowering lily from the bulbils, so I am collecting some and planting them.  I used to have these flowers in my yard when my children were small, and I want to have some again.  Since they are native to Michigan, hopefully the deer will leave some for me to enjoy at the cabin.

Here is another picture of the bulbils along the stem:

Pure Michigan!