Ribbons and Wreaths

 

I'd had this wreath fabric in my stash for a few years. I don't remember where or when I bought it, but I think it's very pretty. 

One would almost think it's a Christmas fabric, with green and red being the dominant colours, and those flowers in the corners could pass for poinsettias. But the other flowers and the butterflies are certainly not Christmas. And I double-checked the selvage to see what the fabric line was called. It said something about "Australian" and nothing to indicate that it was Christmas. 
So, I was determined to use it in another of the 5 quilts. The difficulty with this kind of fabric is that it works best to use it either as one whole piece, surrounded with a border, or as individual panels. Unfortunately, there is often distortion with printing the fabric and the panels are not necessarily straight with the grain, or perfectly square. And if there isn't a definite border to the panel. one has to decide where to cut. In this case, I chose to cut right through the centre of the flower sashing. And then one might discover that the panels are not a reasonable measurement that works well with an alternate quilt block. These panels are not even square, and measure about 10" x 11¾", for a finished size of 9½" x 11¼", so rather weird dimensions. Which left me with the challenge of coming up with a block that would work with those dimensions. 
Inspired by a design in one of my 3-yard quilt books, I created a really simple block, and chose to avoid red and green as the colours to avoid the Christmas-y look. Instead I used the purple that is in the wreaths, together with green, and a beige Stonehenge fabric in the same colour family as the background of the wreath fabric, for the background fabric in the blocks. And I'm very pleased with how the quilt turned out. 

This is the quilt for which I had to juggle the backing fabrics. After determining the backings for the other 4 quilts, I was left with hot pink, which just wouldn't have worked with this one. So, I decided that the celery-coloured one that I had originally planned for Ashford Square would go to this one, the blue that I had planned for Butterfly Sanctuary would move to Ashford Square, and the hot pink would be used on Butterfly Sanctuary. The other two, which I haven't shared yet, remained with the planned backings. 
I chose Forest Floor for the quilting. It's not a really distinct design, so I really don't like it that well. But it's also not going to compete for attention with the quilt top. Another pantograph that I haven't used before. 
I named this quilt Ribbons and Wreaths because the effect of the cascading blocks reminds me of curling ribbon.

Butterfly Sanctuary

 

For another one of the 5 quilts, I wanted to express hope. And butterflies to me have always expressed hope. While rummaging in my stash of 1 yard/1 metre cuts, I found these 2 butterfly fabrics. 

But I didn't necessarily want to use them together. And then I remembered that I had purchased some butterfly fabric last year. Most of last year's purchases are still piled in a rough tote, waiting to be organized and shelved. Or maybe just used in a quilt. 😁

I'll be honest: I was rather loath to part with this one. It's so beautiful. But not every beautiful fabric can end up in a quilt for me. Just like I can't keep every beautiful quilt that I make. 
Neither of the first butterfly fabrics would coordinate well with this one. Although the lighter one actually has a pink background (I know it looks more mauve in the picture), the pink was too light. 

But this one is a much more vibrant pink and would echo the bright pinks in the white fabric. 

And this one would pick up some of the blues. 
So, I had my 3 fabrics, and then had to choose a pattern. I considered a double focus pattern because both the white and the blue are large prints. I especially wanted a large block for the white print. I ended up choosing Traditions from the book Make It Christmas, as it has a 10" square of the focus fabric and I felt that the 4" squares in the alternate blocks were big enough to feature some of the butterflies in the blue fabric. 

For the quilting, I chose Butterfly Charm. While I am trying to use pantographs in my collection that I haven't used before, nothing but Butterfly Charm would work for this one. And I have used it before as I have made 2 butterfly-themed quilts previously: Butterflies and Blooms and Take Flight, plus I used it once in quilting a friend's quilt. 
And yes, this is the quilt that received the hot pink backing. I had originally planned on using the blue backing that I used in Ashford Square, but as I mentioned, the hot pink just wasn't going to work in the final quilt of the 5 quilts. But it worked fine for this one. I just hope the recipient appreciates pink!

Ashford Square

I finished my 5 quilts, maybe not in a week, but probably about 9 or 10 days altogether, even if they weren't consecutive days. And of the 5 of them, this one is my favourite. I find it very peaceful. The pattern is found in Fabric Cafe's book, Quilts in a Jiffy, and for once I actually named the quilt with the same name as the pattern. 
Like most 3-yard quilt patterns, it went together quite quickly and makes a nice snuggle-size quilt. Especially with a minky backing. 

Originally, I was going to use a celery-coloured backing, but when I decided to make 5 quilts, I had to juggle the backing fabrics to make sure I had a better-coordinated backing for each quilt. I only had 5 minky backings to work with. But the blue is fine. It was the hot pink/coral one that wasn't going to work with the 5th quilt. In the future, I may just buy neutral minky, so it can coordinate with any quilt top. 
Ordinarily, I would have chosen a flower-themed pantograph to quilt this quilt, but I'm actually trying to use each pantograph I own at least once to justify it taking up storage space in my house. And really dense designs don't work very well with minky. I've used my more open flower-themed designs at least once before, so my options were limited. This one is Nifty Feathers, an 8" Urban Elementz design that appears to have been retired, as I couldn't find it on the website. It's a pretty generic design that would work well with most quilts, and works up quite quickly. And as I have said before, the average recipient of a quilt doesn't even notice, let alone care, what quilt design I use on the quilt. 
Now to get this, and the other four, to their intended recipients. 

 

5 Quilts in a Week?

 

Flower Boxes on the longarm; Ribbons and Wreaths (left) and Butterfly Sanctuary (right) on the design wall in the background

My daughter, grandson and I will be going to Ontario for a family reunion this summer. We each are allowed 3 pieces of luggage: one personal item, one carry-on and one checked bag. Because it's summer and we won't be needing heavy clothing, and we're only staying for a week, I'm hoping there will be room enough in our bags for some quilts. I would like to finally finish three bed-sized quilts that I want to take with me to give to their intended recipients. So, I would like to focus on getting them done before our departure date. 
But in the meantime, I wanted to get some snuggle quilts done first. Five of them, only one of which was already started before last week. And I determined to see if I could get all 5 of them done in one week, so that I could focus on spending the rest of my time working on those 3 bed-sized quilts. And I nearly accomplished it. I have 3 already quilted and ready for binding (Good Vibrations, Flower Boxes and Ribbons and Wreaths). Butterfly Sanctuary is ready for the longarm, and Ashford Square will also be ready for the longarm as soon as the borders are added. 
I was making great progress and then on Friday, I hit a snag. I had no fabric that would work for the binding on the Flower Boxes quilt, which necessitated a trip to the quilt shop. But I had already been to my local quilt shop and didn't find what I wanted. So, I was going to go out of town to the next nearest quilt shop, about 20 minutes drive away. And then my daughter got called into work, so I would be responsible for overseeing my grandson's virtual schooling. And since she was working over the weekend (she's working in healthcare), I decided on some "field trips" with my grandson. On Sabbath afternoon, we went to Elk Island National Park. 

It was gorgeous there, and we exhausted ourselves with over 4 km of hiking. That doesn't sound like much, but most of it was not smooth, paved trails like in the above picture. And that was a lot for this old grandmother who hasn't exercised regularly in too long. 
On Sunday, we took in the Edmonton Reptile Expo and the Alberta Aviation Museum. On Monday, my daughter was asked to work for the rest of the week, for a total of 8 days straight. So, even though my grandson is old enough to not require a whole lot of direct supervision from me, I still had to feed him and my daughter (they usually stay with me when she's working) and I haven't done any quilting this week. And today is Thursday. Maybe today...