Hydrangea Triple Irish Chain

HydrangeaTripleIrishChain

It’s been a while!

Somehow, around February, I got a fresh breath. I’d been kind of unenthusiastic about quilting, but suddenly I spotted some fresh fabric, hydrangeas, which I love, from Keepsake Quilting. I ordered six yards and I knew I would repeat the lilac triple Irish chain I did while I was in Kuwait. It has become one of my favorite quilts, roomy, just the right size and weight to sleep under in the hot steamy Pensacola summer.

I’d forgotten how easy it is. Two blocks, one with the feature fabric, one with complimentary squares forming the chain, you just take the colors from the focus fabric. I’m still clipping off stray threads, but for the most part, it is finished, quilted, bound. Woo HOOOOO!

All of a sudden, I don’t seem to be able to link, oh arrgh, but if you want to see the Lilac Triple Irish, called Dancing Lilacs, you can find it in June 2007.

Dancing Lilacs

It doesn’t happen all that often – I have such good self discipline, I work away at my works in progress. . . but I saw the border fabric and fell totally in love. You know the feeling, your heart is beating faster and your breath is shallow and comes in short gasps. . . I ordered the fabric the very night I first saw it, and the coordinating fabric, which you see in the center blocks.

I love Irish chain, I love the motion and I love the way it frames a beautiful fabric, and I love purple and green together, so for me, this all worked.

I had never done a triple Irish chain before, but I found an easy description of how to do it – and did it!

And I mitred the corners of that beautiful striped lilac border fabric:

And then, having just taken a “Master Class” with a lovely woman who tried to teach us so much more than my poor little brain could absorb – but I remembered a couple important things. She said you could do feathers in free motion, it just took a little practice. And she said you had to TRY things, even if you thought you couldn’t do them.

The woman is a total inspiration to me. She is modest, it is just her nature, and sweet, and very funny, too. Her quilts win big prizes every year at the annual quilt show. And she shares, she gives it away, and she encourages people to aspire to do more and to do it better. So . . . with those perfect lilac blocks, I decided to do feather circles.

They aren’t perfect. I used a sandwich plate and a Hera marker (has a sharp edge to mark fabric with a crease, but doesn’t leave any lasting lines) to get perfect circles, and proceeded to make imperfect but passable feather wreaths.

On the front, of course, you can barely even tell they are there. I did them for me, because I needed to know I could do it, not to be perfect. And to me, they are good enough. Here is one from the back, where you CAN see them:

And, because I love the fabric so much and wanted to use ALL of it, or as much as I could, in this quilt, I also made a BIG label for the quilt, with a lilac border frame:

I blocked out my name. Some of you will know me by the quilts, but I am not eager to put my name out on the ‘net. 😉 This is just another attempt at documenting my quilts in a way that doesn’t disappear with every move. Sigh!

Stars over Ireland

This quilt began in a Mystery Night at Ramstein AFB, taught in 2002 (?) by Kimberly Einmo before her first book was published. Oh! We had so much fun, but making zillions of half square triangles was a chore.

The top went together quickly, but I had a photograph of a tombstone from when we visited Ireland, and I wanted to use it as a quilting motif in the white centers. I also found a Celtic border I liked, but it was very small, and I had to enlarge it over and over to get it to the proper size for my border.

The hand quilting took forever, partially because the white fabric was sort of rubbery, and hand quilting through it was tough. Aaarrgh! I didn’t finish hand quilting until I was back in the Kaiserslautern area for an emergency surgery, and had nothing to do by wait for my return flight to Doha and quilt!