September Stitching Goals: FrankenBerries, Setting Quandaries + Seven Sisters

Stuffed berry production is happening!  Preparing all 96 of the remaining stuffed berries needed for my FrankenWhiggish Rose quilt is my September stitching goal (and if I get any of them stitched onto the blocks as well, that will be "gravy"!).  

Tip: Pencil Eraser Holds Perfect Circle Template for Tracing

I'm using my Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Circles templates to make my berries (this post contains affiliate links) along with leftover Quilters Dream Poly Select quilt batting and Wonder Under fusible web (using up an old package I had on hand).  I discovered that I can prevent the Perfect Circle template from slipping if I hold it in place with a pencil eraser in my left hand while tracing around the template with a mechanical pencil held in my right hand; that photo above is to remind Future Rebecca of these neat trick the next time I am tracing around small template shapes.

I traced all 96 berry circles onto the paper side of my Wonder Under paper backed fusible web, fused the marked Wonder Under to my batting scraps, then rough cut around groups of 12 (12 berries per block) just to help me keep track of how many were needed and how many were finished.  I experimented with three different pairs of scissors before deciding that I like my ApliQuick 4" microserrated scissors best for cutting out these tight circles (that I probably shouldn't have crammed so close together when I was tracing them).

And So It Begins: Cutting Out Fused Batting Circles for Berry Stuffing

Appliqué prep work does seem to go faster for me when I do it assembly line style, so I'm going to cut out all of my berries before I proceed to the next step of fussy-cutting my larger fabric circles.

Meanwhile, I've been walking past these nine blocks on my design wall every day, marveling about how those broderie perse rosebuds didn't take me nearly as long as I thought they would, and realizing that I am going to have all of my blocks completely finished and ready to set if I just keep working on it a little bit every day.  That makes me want to revisit, reevaluate, and overcomplicate my plans for setting the blocks and finishing this quilt!

I could add one inch diamond sashing, a wide neutral border for a quilted formal feather design, and an outer one inch diamond border, as visualized in this EQ8 software rendering below:

66 x 66 FrankenWhiggish Setting with Diamond Sashing

August Goal Completed, FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds Are Done!

Oh my gosh, y'all -- pigs have sprouted wings and Rebecca has finally accomplished her One Monthly Goal by the end of the month.  I know what you're thinking: flying pigs are much easier to believe.  All nine of my FrankenWhiggish Rose blocks now have their eight tiny broderie perse rosebuds stitched down in their centers:

Rosebuds Completed on All Nine FrankenWhiggish Rose Blocks

The block on the lower left is the only one that is 100% complete with its stuffed berries, so making 96 more of those and stitching them to the other eight blocks is the next task for this project.  Side note: I wish I'd used a greater variety of fabrics for my pieced block backgrounds, because it was annoyingly difficult to come up with a layout for the blocks that didn't put two of the same fabrics next to one another.  And I'm loving how my new-and-improved design wall is working out in the hallway:

FrankenWhiggish Blocks On the Design Wall

By the way, there's an added benefit of the white Bump drapery interlining that I used to recover my design wall, in addition to it complementing my gray walls better than the natural cotton batting.  This is one of those projects where the colors in my photos never look much like the fabrics do in real life, but it was so easy to correct that with a single click using the White Balance tool in photo editing software, just by clicking the white design wall surrounding my blocks.  

The New Design Wall, Take 2 + Slogging Along With FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds

Good Morning and Happy Weekend!  We've been bustling and busy since my last post.  Bernie and I drove eleven hours back up to Charlotte, North Carolina to move our youngest son Anders into a new apartment at UNC, spent some time with my mom in South Carolina, and then drove another eleven hours to get back to our new home in Naples, Florida.  We drove him up this time because we needed to get his car up there and we had a lot of stuff we were bringing for the apartment, but we'll be flying him home for breaks.  Meanwhile, the new bump drapery interlining fabric for my design wall was delivered from Amazon (this post contains affiliate links) and Bernie and I are both SO much happier with how it looks now!

96 x 96 Design Wall Wrapped with New Bump Drapery Interlining 

When I posted about the first version of this design wall last week a lot of you thought it was fine as long as it was functional, and if it was in a dedicated studio or craft space in my home where no one had to look at it besides myself, I might have agreed with you.  But I lobbied hard to get my husband on board with putting the design wall in a very prominent, public part of our home where everyone would walk past it and have to look at it all day long, every single day, and I promised that I was going to make it look GOOD there.  

There's a Design Wall in My Hallway Full of Deco Blocks! But it Looks, Umm, ROUGH...

First, the good news: there's a 96" x 96" design wall in my hallway across from the entrance to my sewing room, and my Deco Quilt blocks are up on the wall.  Hooray!  This is the project-in-progress that was on the design wall in my old studio in North Carolina right before I had to pack everything up and move to Florida this past December.  It's good to see those blocks out again, especially since now I can see the progress I made working on additional blocks here and there throughout the move.  Woot woot!

My Scandi Deco Bed Quilt Blocks Are Up on My Brand-New Design Wall

Now for the bad news: this new design wall did not turn out anywhere near as nice as the old one, and it's going to require immediate revision.  For one thing, we shouldn't have put it up so high -- my fault entirely, as I thought it might be nice to be able to plug a vacuum cleaner into the bottom outlet socket.  We should move it down to completely cover the outlet so it's centered nicely from top to bottom the way it's centered from side to side.

Bernie Said "Quick, Cover It Up With Your Quilt Blocks!"

Actually, what Bernie said was "I KNEW it was going to look like crap.  Cover it up with your quilt blocks so I don't have to look at it."  

FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds, Michele's Log Cabin Stars Quilt, Laundry Room Makeover, Swedish Pancakes + A 21st Birthday Celebration

Good Morning, Quilty Peeps!  As you can see by my way-too-long blog post title, I have lots of ground to cover today.  First things first, I am happy to report that I've finished prepping ALL of the remaining broderie perse rosebuds for my FrankenWhiggish Rose blocks, they are all glue-basted in position on the blocks, and the hand stitching to secure them is in progress.  That's right; I have a portable hand stitching project again FINALLY!

All FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds Are Prepped and Ready for Stitching!

In case anyone is interested in what's in my portable hand stitching "toolbox" for this project:

• YLI 100 wt silk thread in color 256, matched to the rosebud fabric
• Bohin size 12 Appliqué Needles (these are the only ones I've tried that don't bend or break on me)
• Colonial Needle Company Leather Thimble Pad stickers (I use one on my right pointer finger to help grab the needle and pull it through the fabric, or to protect my fingertip when I need to exert a little pressure on the back end of the needle to force it through a spot where the glue dried stiff)
• Thread Heaven (no longer available) or Thread Magic thread conditioner to help prevent snarling and knotting -- I don't need it when I'm using silk thread, but I have it in my hand stitching kit because it's a big help when I'm hand stitching quilt bindings with cotton thread
• My new 2.75 magnification sewing glasses from Warby Parker, so I can thread the eye of my needle and see how many threads of fabric I'm grabbing with each stitch
• That nail file in my kit is actually for my fingernails, because often I'll discover some little scratchy spot at the edge of a fingernail while stitching when the thread gets hung up on it
• Not pictured, I also have a tube of Neutrogena Hand Cream in my hand sewing kit and another one in the drawer next to my sewing machine.  I like this kind because it's not greasy, has no fragrance or dye, and a tiny drop goes a long way to just barely moisten my fingertips so I can get a better grip on what I'm stitching without gooking it up with lotion
• Either my Apliquick 4" Microserrated Scissors (pictured) or my Gingher Spring Action Thread Nippers (preferred if I'm just clipping thread and not trimming needle turn appliqué shapes while stitching).  If I'm planning to take my hand stitching kit on an airplane, I'll swap out for a cheap thread clipper (in case Airport Security confiscates it and throws it away) with a pack of dental floss that I could use as a backup thread trimmer in a pinch

(Those are affiliate links, by the way).   You probably won't see much of FrankenWhiggish for a couple weeks while I'm stitching the rosebuds to the blocks because, if you've seen one of my blocks get rosebuds, you've seen them all!  My Seven Sisters pattern and templates finally arrived from Australia and I'm planning to start on that project in September.

Instead of sharing FrankenWhiggish, I thought I might share some of the backlog of long arm quilting clients' quilts that I haven't posted about before, like Michele's version of Emily Dennis's Log Cabin Stars quilt.  Here's a teaser to whet your appetite; we'll return to this quilt later in today's blog post:

Michele's Log Cabin Stars Quilt, Pattern Available here

FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds + Random Happenings of Everyday Life

No, my Seven Sisters pattern and templates have not yet arrived from Australia, but I've been making progress on my languishing 10-year-old FrankenWhiggish Rose project while impatiently waiting for that package to arrive.  

Glue-Basting Prepped Rosebuds Prior to Stitching

In looking back through my earlier posts I realized that I never showed the step in between prepping the rosebuds and actually stitching them to the block, hence the photo above.  These rosebuds are too little to be pin-basted to my blocks and the Patchback stabilizer product I'm using makes them a little bit stiff, so I'm glue-basting them in place with tiny drops of Roxanne's Glue Baste-It (this post contains affiliate links).  I've had this particular bottle of glue for a LONG time; it lasts forever because you use so little of it on each appliqué shape.  Not sure whether you can see this clearly in the photo, but I'm putting my tiny drops of glue in the center of my turned seam allowance rather than right on the edge.  The glue spreads when I press the rosebud in place on the block and I don't really want it right on the edge where I have to push my needle through as I'm stitching.  Here's an update on where I am with this project as of today:

11 Rosebuds Glue-Basted to Blocks, Ready for Stitching

24 Rosebuds Need to be Prepped & Glue-Basted to Blocks

97 Stuffed Berries Need to be Made & Glue-Basted to Blocks

Speaking of the stitching part, I got a bit of a rude awakening when I resumed this project after a 6-month hiatus and discovered that my Magical Sewing Glasses (prescription reading glasses that I had my eye doctor order based on the distance I hold my work from my eyes when hand stitching) are no longer capable of banishing the blur!  So apparently my close vision has deteriorated significantly.  AAAARRRGH!  I went to my local Warby Parker store, hoping that I could select and come home with a cute new pair of stronger glasses for hand stitching.  I picked out these frames and ordered them in the 2.75 strength magnification, but instead of taking them home the same day I have to wait for them to be shipped to me in 7-10 days.  Probably should have just gone to the drug store instead.

Warby Parker Brady Frames, Desperately Needed for Blurry Hand Stitching!

I started stitching down my rosebuds with my old glasses even though I can't really see what I'm doing.  Hopefully my muscle memory is picking up the slack from my aging eyeballs!

Actual Rosebud Progress for FrankenWhiggish Rose

Good morning, stitchy friends!  I am delighted to report actual PROGRESS on my FrankenWhiggish Rose appliqué project today!  Finishing the rosebuds is my One Monthly Goal for August.

Me Stitching an Actual Rosebud Onto an Actual Quilt Block

(In case anyone's about to ask, yes, that is a serger 3-thread overlock stitch on the edge of my quilt block in the photo above.  I oversized the block backgrounds (so I can trim them all to exactly the same size once the hand appliqué stitching is completed) and overcast the raw edges of my blocks before beginning, knowing that this project would be a long time in the making and that raw block edges would be prone to fraying as the blocks were scrunched up and manipulated in my hands during my stitching process.  The overlock stitching will be trimmed away prior to joining the blocks into a quilt top).

Four Little Rosebuds Where there Used to Be None

Each block gets eight rosebuds around that center circle but I only glue baste four at a time for stitching, to lessen the chance of my thread getting caught on an adjacent unstitched rosebud and ripping it off the block.