The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts

Tag: Plus Dash

Plus Dash: A Friday Finish

Hi, It is kind of chilly here in Iowa today, but the Sun is shining. Yeah! I just finished binding Plus Dash this morning.

Double Yeah!! I have a Friday Finish to share.

She sure is pretty even against the brown corn stubble.

I forgot I placed the four blue churn dash in a diagonal across the quilt. I really need to get a full length view of the entire quilt in the daylight, so you can see all 20 of the blocks. I think I made the largest version of this quilt from all the pattern testers. Even larger than what the designer, Jan made for her test of the pattern. It is a real fun quilt and lends itself to all kind of fabric combinations.

The back turned out really cool and the color banding really shows off the quilting nicely.

Here is a shot of the candy cane striped binding. I found it in my stash and it captured most of the colors in the quilt. Yes, I know I applied the binding to the wrong side. I choose to do it that way sometimes. It lays nice and flat and gives a true pop of fun color to finish off the quilt. (If it was going to be a show quilt, it would have been applied to the back and handstitched down. )

Here are the lovely Gutermann threads that I quilted my Plus Dash with. I was taught to use good quality thread. I am thankful to have collected a large selection of colors. I now need to purchase white and gray as they have taken a big hit. I live an hour from any store that sells this thread so I need to restock up.

I am very happy with how this quilt turned out. I hope that my friend who will receive it likes it as much.

I will be linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts, Can I get a Whoop Whoop Friday, TGIFF and a couple other weekend linky parties.

Happy Sewing,

Shelley

January 30, 2015
Plus Dash: Quilt Progress

Hi, I thought I would share where I am at with the progress of my quilting of Plus Dash.

This top has taken a lot longer for me to quilt than others. Quilting around all the blocks and the pluses in the sashing is a real work out. Lots of stops and starts and alot of turns. My walking foot has taken a good licking this past week. It has gotten quite noisy and squeaky. I think I read recently online that it might be possible to open up the walking foot and clean it and possibly oil it in some fashion. I will have to look into that more before I take a screwdriver to a sewing machine foot that cost over a $100.

The quilt top is quilted but I have one corner that I am not happy with. I am not sure what happened to it, but the rows of stitching really gathered up. I am going to take them out and redo them. After that I will be able to bind it.

You can see more of the quilting detail on the backing.

Yesterday, Buddy who is our adopted Maine Coon tom cat came indoors with wet muddy feet. I had finished up a long period of quilting and finished all the gray pluses. We were going away for the afternoon and I ran to the gas station to gas up the car. I folded up the quilt, but silly me, I left it out on my sewing table. My daughter came home from school and let Buddy in the house, and he proceeded to run in and walk all over my quilt. She did her best getting some of the stains out with a Tide stain remover pen. I always wash my quilts when I am finished with them, but this time it will need a little extra care and soaking to get the muddy foot prints out.

I am hoping to have the quilt finished and bound by Friday so I can share it with all the Friday Finish linky parties. I am sharing this progress report with WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

Happy Sewing,

Shelley

January 28, 2015
QIP: Plus Dash

Hi, It’s Twentysome days into the New Year, and I am finally getting back to quilting this week. I have basted my Plus Dash quilt top and have the first length wise row completed.

This is a closeup of one of my favorite blocks. I really like this turquoise print. I wish I had more than the fat eighth I started this quilt with. I may have to scour the shelves at JoAnn’s to see if there is any yardage.

It took me quite a bit of time to get the top properly basted with no wrinkles on the bottom. Our two tom cats either wanted to claim the top of the quilt sandwich as their blanket or use the blanketed dining room table as a hideaway fort so they could jump out at each other from hiding and attempt to pull the quilt off the table in the mean time.

For the quilting, I am using my walking foot and quilting a 1/4 inch inside the shape of the churn dash and center plus signs. I have pulled matching colors for the pink, purple, orange, yellow, green and blue churn dashes. Gray of course for the pluses. I am stitching in the gray on each of the plus sashings so there will be a nice boxed framework in the design on the back. I am using gray in the bobbin. I think I waited so long to start quilting this top as I did not know how I wanted to do it. I know I need to learn how to FMQ. I know that I am going to need a different table set up to attempt it properly so I eliminate the heavy drag of the quilt, and it’s effect on the thread tension. I am using a 3.0 stitch to quilt vs. the 2.5 I usually use for normal sewing. This is a Hobbs Heirloom Cotton batt.

I really like how the quilting shows up.

We finally got our King size bed this past weekend. Boy, was that a comical time attempting to get the mattress up the stairs to our second story bedroom. We had the two piece box springs, so there was no problem with that. The mattress would not clear the door trim and got wedged midway up the stairs. So tightly wedged, it would not go up or down. We ended up folding the mattress into a C shape. With lots of pulling and pushing, it finally made it’s way upstairs. Now that it is upstairs, it will not likely go downstairs in one piece, when it wears out. I was told there will likely be a chain saw coming into play. Later, I found some papers that fell off the mattress, that supposedly it is hinged someway or another, to help going upstairs. Just do not bend it further than a 45 degree angle. That would have been nice to know??

It is nice to have a spot to lay out a quilt top in entirety. The mattress is so big that I had to climb back into the closet to get a photo. I can not wait to see this Plus Dash top done. My friend has been having an extra hard time and I am sure could really use a pick me up. This quilt is still a surprise gift to her.

I will be linking up my QIP with various midweek linky parties.

Thanks for stopping by this week to check out my latest quilt projects.

Happy Sewing,
Shelley

January 22, 2015
Plus Dash Pattern Test Flimsy and Backing Pieced

Hi, I would like to share the completed flimsy of my pattern testing of the Plus Dash quilt pattern by Jan at The Colorful Fabriholic.

I finished up adding the last two borders to complete the outside gray pluses. I had a bit of hard time at first “visualizing” how all the different sashing strips were going to have to go together, but once I started laying them out around my blocks then it didn’t take much to see how they pieced together the outer pluses. I have not worked with a multiple sashed quilt design in a while and this one is really cool on how it all came together in the end.

We had our first measurable snow over the weekend just in time for the bitter cold winds and windchills to set in. I managed a couple outdoor shots of my quilt top. I was hard pressed to find a larger enough area of fresh untouched snow to lay the quilt out flat. What photos I took were as good as it was going to get by myself with the wind picking up. When I get the top all quilted, I will find somewhere to lay it out completely so I can get a full size photo. I was worried at first about the bright colors and prints and how they all would work together, but the gray and white pull everything all in nicely.

And here is the top turned lengthwise. The wind wanted to suck the quilt through the gate.

For the backing, I chose to use a few of my left over squares and strips to make a pieced stripe for the center of the backing. I sashed the strip with the same pewter gray, and added white, and a little gray solid(as I needed to save the last of my pewter to use in the backing for Looking Glass quilt) and pulled a light turquoise solid from my stash to add a pop of color to the backing.

Here is a close up of my pieced strip.

I will be setting this quilt top aside for a couple days so that I can quilt and finish my pattern testing of Looking Glass to meet my deadline for the upcoming blog hop for it’s pattern debut next week.

Thanks for stopping by and looking at my quilt top. I will be linking up with various midweek linky parties.

Happy Sewing,

Shelley

November 18, 2014
Plus Dash Test Top Almost Complete

Hi, I thought I would share how my pattern testing for Plus Dash by Jan at The Colorful Fabriholic. I have made great progress in two days. I have my top completed except for the outer two borders.

This is what I had two days ago. This laid out on my 5 foot slate top desk. I use this desk as my design wall/table. I do need to finish my design wall. I have white felt to complete it. I just need to determine a place that it will be secure to attach my wip together on it.

After making quilts for upwards of 20 years, I still fight alot of doubt on my color choices. I picked out these five colorations of prints in fat eighth sets almost 2 years ago. I did not know what to do with them in the end, so they stayed put in my fabric chest of drawers. When I saw that Jan was picking all sorts of prints for her version of this quilt, I decided to give these a go. It’s very bright and colorful to say the least. I do love the pewter gray pluses. I plan on giving this as a special gift to a good friend. I hope it brings some happiness and comfort to her during the hard times she is dealing with currently.

I had a great find in my fabric stash. I found 30 precut 2 1/2 inch white strips of fabric so it made cutting out this quilt a whole lot easier. I also had some odd sized about the size of a fat quarter of white fabric that was left over from cutting borders for another quilt that I was able to cut many of the pieces I needed for this quilt. It was like winning the quilter’s lottery.

Here is one side of the quilt and after adding the last two borders, it will complete the last row of gray pluses.

And this would be one of my favorite prints from the whole set of fabrics.

I hope to get the last borders completed maybe yet tonight or most likely tomorrow. We are supposed to get some measurable snow this weekend, so it is a good time to sew and quilt. I have to make backs for my Broken Frames quilt, also for my Patriotic Square in a Square quilt and my Looking Glass quilt. I am hoping to have them quilted by Thanksgiving. Do not hold me to that, but is definitely a plan that I am shooting for. I will quilt Looking Glass first as it needs to be completed for a blog hop on the 21st, and the other two I hoped to give as early Christmas gifts to family I hope to see for Thanksgiving.

I will be linking this wip with various linky parties this weekend. Thank you for stopping by.

Happy Sewing,

Shelley

November 14, 2014
Plus Dash Pattern Testing WIP

Hi, I thought I would post a quick WIP report on what I am working on this week. I am pattern testing for The Colorful Fabriholic and making up a twin size version of her new pattern Plus Dash.

I am making 20 blocks. I have 4 different prints in 5 color ranges. I found these fabrics as fat eighth sets at JoAnn Fabrics around 2 years ago. I think they have something similar still but in different color offerings. It was a hard decision for me to choose which prints to use. I did not know exactly how the larger prints of the group would work at first, but I do like how the blocks turned out. I chose to use a solid pewter gray as my crosses versus the black and white print that Jan is using to make her quilt’s pluses.

Here are my teal blue print blocks.

Here are my green print blocks.

Here are my purple print blocks.

Here are my pink print blocks.

And here are my yellow/orange print blocks.

There are a lot of “happy” color prints in this quilt. I really like the pewter plus. It’s been quite awhile since I made churn dash blocks and they are quite fun. The blocks are a nice 14 inches when completed. I am definitely going to need a design wall to lay out all the sashing strips to get them in order.

Thanks for stopping by this week and checking out my quilt projects. I will link these WIP with various linky parties.

November 12, 2014