July + Summer handwork projects

We had a fun Fourth of July holiday weekend. We had lots of family in town from out of state on both sides of the family. It made for lots of food, fireworks and family time. Good times for sure, but it also took some time to recover from all that partying. Not that I’m complaining.

This tied patchwork quilt is the first quilt that my mom made, sometime around 1976. It’s a little faded in a few spots but for the most part it’s held up fabulously! (That could be in part because there’s a fair bit of blends and polyester in that quilt. 😉 Quilting cottons were pretty scarce in the 1970’s.) All of my growing up years we called this the 4th of July Quilt. I love that it’s still pulled out to use for that holiday.

I haven’t had much machine time over the past few weeks, but I’ve been prepping and carrying around more of my Orange Peel blocks – I love having a handwork project for summer. I started this one 5 summers ago (I can’t believe it). It’s the never-ending project, but I’m not sick of it, so I figure I’ll just keep going and growing the quilt until I am sick of it.

A few people have asked me about my applique method. I choose to prep my ‘orange peels’ using a cardboard template and starch – that way I can take them with me on my travels and mindlessly applique them in place without having to do any needleturn. I’ll work on a quick tutorial to show how I do it.

I just added some fun red and blues to my stash – I’m loving the prints from Riley Blake’s Parade on Main for this project – especially those red flowers on the blue background.

I have a few other hand-work projects I should pull out and work on this summer. Such as my Liberty stars that I started two years ago. (One of these days I’ll finish a handwork project instead of just starting new ones…) I recently got these gorgeous Liberty prints the Liberty Addicts Club from Amitie Textiles. They make me a little swoony.

This bundle is also an Amitie club- their Stash Builder Club. Amitie is owned by Jen Kingwell and after seeing her amazing scrappy quilts in person last January, I wanted to make my own quilts a little more scrappy-eclectic and so I figured the best way to do it would be to get a bundle of fabric curated by Jen herself! I need to get back to the Steam Punk quilt I started at that retreat and I think I’ll add these prints to that mix to make it a funky and fun quilt.

This summer, my goal has been to pull out and wrap-up some of these long time finishes, but here we are almost half-way through the summer and I sure haven’t got very far on any of them…

Here’s one last handwork picture to inspire you. This is an up close shot of a Cathedral Window quilt being made by my cute 80+ year-old neighbor. The squares are about 2 ½″ x 2 ½″ and she’s making a queen-size quilt – all of the Cathedral window applique work done by HAND. It blows my mind a little. I thought it was too gorgeous not to share. I’ll have to get a full shot sometime as it gets closer to completion.

So I may not be knocking big projects off my to-do list, but summer is treating me well and I’m trying to just roll with it. I hope summer (for all your northern hemisphere folks) is treating you well too.