Summer Porch ~ P2 ~ November

Good evening! It's time for me to show off my P2  project for November.

One good thing about sewalongs is that they keep you focused. Lori [Humble Quilts] is really good at keeping me / us on track and challenged and interested. The other day I just happened to notice her post on FB telling us that we'd show off our P2 blocks this Monday. Omigosh, I had not looked at P2 since I showed it to you in October! And I'd ''heard on the grapevine'' {FB] that the wheels of the central bicycle did not go together easily.

"But, Lori...." I whined. I've been busy with etsy items, Christmas projects, and Thanksgiving prep. But I'm a sucker for a deadline so this weekend I put everything aside and just worked on P2.
My Big Wheel block went together with no problem. I used Pellon fusible to keep it round, knowing it would not be hand quilted.

Only issue, it is 15" diameter, not 12''. The good news is that I love it like that. I had no intention of making the bicycle as shown. To me the big circle is the summer sun shining down, sending its warmth to our Porch.

I got the Wheel together Friday night and on Saturday there we were, me and Mo, eking out the last of the summer sun  and enjoying our deck time.

The light has a pink cast now, even mid-afternoon.

 Mo is always up for a sewing session.

Truly it is not the cold that will finally spoil this simple bond and pleasure Mo and I share; no, it's the early sunsets, the shadows are too long by 4 o'clock for me to sew. Winter months are spent on machine sewing.

But our assignment didn't stop there. We were also supposed to sew the central section of the quilt together. Oh dear, a stumbling block indeed. I must have ripped out every seam at least five times. Nothing fit together easily, or I forgot to trim, or --oh who knows.
Here it is!

I'm pretty sure the Kite and Basket, far left will be redone and reversed, the kite tail is too busy. Or I may put a simpler block where the Kite is.

I had mis-cut the Flag stripes and was out of the original red dot. Oh what the heck, at almost midnight I grabbed the nearest red scrap and added it on. In light of day, I think it's cute. Fine.

Mo did a lot of kibitzing.

Here is P2 with this month and last month's sections all laid out.

...
And...look what I found! Earlier in the week, as I hunted through my antique linens collections for pieces to use in Christmas gifts., I came across this stash of beautiful turkey red prints.

Four versions of this Provencal style, popular beginning in about 1840, I think.

I think I'd been collecting these [most are newish repros] to repair my fave red and green antique quilt. Even a gorgeous overprinted turkey red, look at that dense red color. That bit is a rescue from a tattered old quilt top.

And a small piece of my all time favorite dill pickle green calico.

Also found this small stack of lovely antique , authentic linen homespuns, too.

Lucky me, I ''shopped'' at home for Black Friday.
...

What have I learned so far with this project?
I learned to mark all the blocks'  dimensions on a chart, especially with Jan Patek patterns. She often does not supply all the blocks' dimensions or even none. [Her version of the Ohio Sampler quilt has NO block measurements anywhere, imagine my dismay. Hard to resize when I don't know where I am starting from! Emails ignored...40.oo bucks?].

And I learned to sew together as I go. I noticed on Westering Women this past week that some followers sew the sashings/ settings each month. That would never occur to me. And how amazing and wonderful to come to the end of a sewalomg and have not have a huge job of sewing together/ finishing await.

Speaking of...I have decided that the beginning months of 2017 will be dedicated to finishing projects that I could not complete this year due to health issues and time crunch. There's a lot undone: Dotties, Summertime, Cheddar-Indigo doll quilt; Antique Baskets, Wild Geese. This is no hardship, because my favorite part of a project, aside from buying the fabric, is setting that final stitch, and sighing quietly,"All done."

I've promised myself I will be selective in taking on new projects, too. So if there is a new Dotty, [Blue Moons] it will begin in, say, June. Brackman's 2017 sewalong looks so interesting, it will be based on Civil War/ Union diaries, a subject of great interest to me. If it's only one block per month it will be doable. And Lori is already tempting us with her blog's next year project.

So 2017 is all sorted out [maybe], no New Year's Resolutions here next month. My quilter is having a special now, quilt 6 quilts and the next one is quilted FREE! I hope I get that reward/ freebie.

BTW, what is your favorite part of making a quilt? The planning, the sewing, the finish, the gifting/keeping?

 love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

Linky for all the Porch projects on Humble Quilt blog http://humblequilts.blogspot.com/

Summer Porch (P2) Sewalong Update.

Hi! Oh it was hard to tear myself away from Lori [Humble Quilts]'s new doll quilt project...

...and refocus on her full sized quilt sewalong that we've been working on for maybe six months now. This month's P2 assignment was pretty big! One large block and some filler blocks, AND we were supposed to sew together the entire lower third of the quilt. Wow. I did it!

But before I show you my project I want to share this darling kitty made by my blog friend Lise.

Lise is somewhat modest and says she is not a trained needlewoman, but I think her work is exceptional! The Kitty is from P1, A Little Porch Time, by Lynda Hall; we made it here online in 2013. Lise made only her kitty, with wool applique and embroidery. The Tree and Autumn Leaves are her own design. I love the whimsy, and the texture of all those french knots.

Back to P2~
Here is my lower third section.

This time I was extra careful, measured, measured,and trimmed before sewing and the parts went together better than my usual hair-pulling disaster.[Just goes to show, that old ''measure twice, cut once'' works well if handled with patience.]

I took the section of the quilt outside for good pictures, good colors. Howling wind, note the 35 mph gusts. And the weather station is on the mainland, so picture right here on the oceanfront.

...but it looks so pretty. I am pleased.

This month's large applique block [left, above the watermelon] was a big birdhouse with an even bigger bird. That didn't appeal to me, so I drew up my own idea, drawing on memories of summery porch days with my best friend Anne. We'd be so excited when the Bookmobile would bring us books! We'd sit on the front porch of her big yellow Victorian house and pore over each week's stack of new books. Anne was older---we were maybe 7 and 9 or so?--- but I was the best reader, so we read more or less the same things.

Besides reading books on her porch [my house had no porch], I remember her mom making us lemonade or KoolAid, and funny bland lemon wafer cookies. We played a lot of jacks, too. And later cards, board games. My mom didn't approve of games like that so it was an exciting thing for me. Last night as I sewed my quilt together I had fun remembering those long ago hot summer afternoons---the porch was shady and cool, with a dark green painted cement floor--- and I looked up our street on Google Streetview. Haha, her house was pretty, but NOT a big Victorian after all.

Small bunglow in real life. It did have the extension of the porch and a bathroom in the upstairs dormer with the round window, but otherwise it was / is exactly the same as the small house I grew up in. My dad added a lot to this house, so it got bigger than it looks, maybe. And it now has a small porch! Both are still pretty, to me anyway.

So my substitute block for P2 is a stack of books, with one of my kitties sitting on the top. Her name was Polka Dot [aka Pokey],

I loved her dearly. She was tamer than my other two male tomcats, though I loved them too of course. The design of the books block was inspired by the border of a Gwennie Medallion Quilt [project also by Lori, she's a busy lady!], the border was designed by a French quilter named Katell Renon. Katell kindly gave me permission to use her idea/ design for my quilt. [Merci, Katell!].

I waffled around about how to make the book titles: hand embroider, machine embroider? Computer printed titles? Books I loved back then, or, lasting lurking memories like Moby Dick or Bleak House, eeew? In the end I used words printed on the selvages of fabrics in my stash. This appealed to my found object/ serendipitious finds mind set the most. I even found a Lizzie's Journal.

Pokey I simply drew from watching my feral cats here, the Twins.

I gave Pokey a star to wish on, instead of having her facing the Bird on the Basket.

Then there were the spacers, to the right of the Books. I added a small Basket to the line-up, the pattern called for just a blank square.

Fun and summery, isn't it? But instead of summer, outside we had the high winds, blowing flocks of tiny birds overhead. Some rain, and finally cooler.

cold front coming in

Mo is snuggly, the beach is turning golden. Dinner will be pork chops with cinnamon apples, Thai coconut rice, steamed Fall asparagus. The apples sauteeing in their pan smell delicious.

Hope your weekend was wonderful too.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

Post script~ Anne and I stayed best friend always, through grade school and high school, different colleges, and family moves. Her dad introduced us to antique shows, took us always even as very tiny girls where we'd ooh and aaah over the French and German be'be' dolls and Civil War era ''ear bobs'', like Scarlett O'Hara wore. I admired Anne because she could sing and played the piano, was even taller than I was, and her mom sewed.  I designed and made Anne's wedding dress, and a gingham rainbow [Trip Sround the World?] quilt for her baby daughter. She and her husband renovated an old schoolhouse for their home; they raced dog sled husky dogs. Separated by time and different lifestyles, we wrote often. We never forgot each other.
She was the best friend ever.
Sadly Anne passed away in her early thirties, a young wife and mother, felled by brain cancer. She fought well, though; she had a happy , optimistic soul.
I loved her. The Kitty and Books block is for Anne.

Be sure to see everyone's quilts on Lori's Blog: Humble Quilts