Hello, hello on this chilly but brilliantly blue April day! It's too windy for the deck, Mo and I had to come inside. Mo has a new giant chew toy from the Easter Bunny, so he doesn't mind. Earlier we investigated pink and white April "snow".
First up today, we have Fall Festival blocks. I have decided I will not try to match the fast pace Lori is setting on her sewalong. I had pictured FF a slow and pleasant hand applique thing for sewing on the deck--even the beach!?--during the spring and summer. To start off I redid the three Pineapple blocks I showed you a few weeks ago. They were terribly crooked. I redrew the pattern and straightened things up. Not sure what went wrong with the first set, maybe my printer is wonky? --because the designs were originally printed right onto the freezer paper templates.
Anyway I'm much happier now, even though I also had to piece the backing of Aqua Pineapple. It got brighter leaves too.
Then I did the March Basket blocks. Fun and simple.
The April 15th assignment was to do the House block. I love House blocks but I'm a little bored by Jan Patek's use of exactly the same house---and doggy!--on every quilt. Sneak peek of the alternate block I have drafted. I am hopeful! It's quite large, 24" square, and there will lots of lovely hand applique. (If I hate it or it doesn't ''work'' in the design of the whole quilt, I'll come back and do House and Dog.)
The other April sewalong blocks are the Jack o' Lantern and Vines...planning them for early summer, can you imagine? The winter went so fast, didn't it. I have a LOT of autumn quilts, I'm in no rush for Fall Festival to be done for this year. I'm just gonna slow stitch and enjoy. I know Lori would agree, whatever works!
Then I did quite a bit of tweaking to When the Wild Geese Fly. Maybe this is really complete now? Just needs de-threading and a good press. Instead of [ugh] embroidered names and dates I did wool applique. I like it, a little graphic touch.
I blanked out part of the initials, also wool applique---we never know what initials on a quilt might mean, do we?
The bottom right border bothered me. Despite careful measuring it looked wavy/ ruffly. When I tried to rip out the seam and resew I found out the blue shirting was very thin and delicate. I was only able to rescue a small section; I put a nice framing deep blue on that edge instead.
And while I was redoing that area I decided to redo the not-orange pumpkin. The pumpkin on the right was a dull brown-ish tweed. I liked it but it went lost visually when the top was complete. I chose a soft duck egg turquoise instead, like the dusty blue Cinderella pumpkins we admired last Fall.
The turquoise picks up the turquoise that appears in some of the blue shirting plaids. And it draws the eye to the bottom of the quilt.
I loved working with the thrifted blue and tomato soup red/ orange shirts but I did learn that some shirts look great but are very loved and worn and fragile. Even a good starching can't really make them usable again. I'm already planning my next two shirt quilts so this is good to know. (And a thrifting outing Monday! Yay!).
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PS I must show off this year's Devilled Easter Eggs! Always a hit in my house. This year I changed the recipe a bit, using finely minced scallions, a mashed avocado, tarragon, a new horseradish-dill sauce I found on the Passover food sale shelf, and a bit of mayo. Blend everything with the yolks of a dozen eggs. Fill the shells. Sprinkle with scallion circles and more tarragon. Delicious! The avocado adds a hint of sweetness, almost.
Hope your spring is nice! It's hard to know what to wear, isn't it? Shorts at noon, parka by evening.....
Have a good week.
love
lizzy
gone to the beach...
You can see other versions of Fall Festival on Lori's blog: Humble Quilts
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