My Jacob's Ladder Project, Part 9

Finally, the last 4 blocks are done and I've been rearranging the blocks.  It's in kind of an order, mainly trying to keep the lighter blocks together and the darker blocks together, but not quite.  Still had to please my eye and make both quilts have the same color blocks in the same spot on each quilt.
Here's what I have at the moment.  Of course I'm going to let it sit for awhile while I piece the sashing and cornerstones though I am pleased with this placement.

I might even have these 2 quilts done in time for my guild's next quilt show next February.  They'll fit right in with the show's theme, Quilt Color Splash

Now for a look at the old family quilt that started this project:

and here is the first unfinished quilt from this project.  I'll be taking this one all apart and rearranging the blocks as I'm still not pleased with the layout of it:

All the fabrics used in this setting are used in the two color block quilts above.

My Jacob's Ladder Project, # 8

The Corner Stones are completed!

 

and work has begun on the missing blocks.  Mind you, I will be rearranging the orders of the blocks in each quilt once the final 4 blocks are completed.

Here's what I have so far:

 
Ready to sew together.

and the solid blocks are ready to sew.  Here's one:

Now it's off to sew for the day ... and get the final fabric cut for the 3rd and 4th blocks.

 

The last blocks above.

My Jacob's Ladder Project # 7B

An update on the dilemmas with my decisions:
The new sashing came in.  After cutting and laying out the new sashing with the old sashing, decided to do one quilt with the old, and the other with the new.  The new sashing is a darker red.

From Bar Harbor collection by Paula Minick
& Laura Simpson for Moda

Birds of a Feather collection by Kaye England licensed  to Wilmingtonprints.com

When I laid them out with a mix, it just didn't look right so put them in the separate quilts:

 

The one on the left has the older sashing and is lighter than the one on the right.  The designs of the 2 sashing fabrics are quite similar and from different manufacturers.

The 4 missing large blocks are being put together and I've decided to make the cornerstone blocks with the red fabric and muslin instead of red and sashing fabric.  Just seems to be the way to go.  Plan to get those cornerstones done today.

Continued in Part #8

My Jacob's Ladder Project, # 7

Decided to lay out the 2 quilts so that matching colors were in the same positions on both quilts.

As you can see, I still need 2 more blocks in each.  Not to worry though.  The fabrics have been found in my stash, just not the inclination to build them yet.  So...

Have been working with the sashing off and on these past few weeks.  I cut out sashing thinking I only needed the strips 3 1/2 inches wide.  Got half of what I needed cut out and found that I wasn't going to have enough for both quilts.  Dilemma now as the fabric was available in 2011 but not now.  Searched several sources on the internet including the manufacturer and it's "gone", not even showing up on e bay.  Also checked local quilt shops, none had it.  I'm sure there is some still out there as I bought the fabric last summer at my local store but in their clearance bolts.  At least I think I bought what they had left.  At the time didn't know how much I'd need (not too well planned, right?).

Then I decided I better look at the old quilt picture again and double check how I was going to make the cornerstones.  Oops, they are a 4-patch, not the single piece my brain thought it was.  Darn, I have to make the sashing wider so the 4-patch is at least the same size as 4 patches in the blocks.  The old quilt had the 4 patches at a larger size than the 4 patches in the blocks but I didn't quite like that look and my fabric was running out.

Decided that another look on the internet was in order, looking for a similar pattern in the same colors.  Took a while and finally ended up on Fabric.com and browsed all of their red and white fabrics.  Eureka!  Found one that is close to the same pattern.  So it's on order, expecting it to arrive any day now.

Meanwhile, back to the 4-patch and the sashing.  In order to make the 4-patch work, my sashing now has to be 4 1/2 inches wide uncut.  That meant, all those pieces I had cut out earlier had to be widened.  Of course, now I had to add another 1 1/2 inches to each strip.  There was enough fabric to get that done for the 30 sashes I had already cut.  Got that done last week.

Next dilemma:  I wanted both quilts to look the same other than the positions of the colors in a block.  So with two different sashing fabrics, the layout of those have to match in both quilts.  So, the original sashing will be laid in horizontal rows and the new sashing will be laid out in vertical rows.

Still debating on whether to have the light background  in the 4-patches match the sashing fabric or match the muslin background used in the blocks.  The original quilt had used the sashing fabric in the 4-patch corner stones.  None of the blocks in the old quilt had muslin as a background fabric but had used other fabrics, scraps or old dresses most likely.  I probably won't make that decision until the new sashing arrives and I play around with the look.  Though I am leaning toward using muslin in the cornerstones but then it will really look different than the original old quilt.

Anyway, here's what things look like so far without the new sashing.

The blocks may be rearranged again when the final 4 blocks are added..


Continued in Part #7B

My Jacob's Ladder Project # 6

Update:  Mid Dec sometime:
Having set the first J.L. quilt top aside for adding borders at this time, I've turned to working on the 2 color blocks.  These blocks will form two smaller quilts with corner stones and sashing as the original old quilt was put together.  18 blocks were already put together from over a year ago but 18 is not enough to make the lights and darks look decent in a quilt so ... made more sets of blocks to put another 18 blocks together.  Got those cut out and started but realized that if I wanted a 4 block x 5 block setting for two quilts, that I'd need  more blocks.  After all, I want these to be at least usable as lap quilts.  Into my stash to find some more fabric that would work for this.  I would even need 10 more blocks to make them 5x5 blocks setting. Oh, such a thought, finding 10 more colors to add to the quilts.   arghh! will the block making ever end? Oh, not sure how quilt #4, the final scrappy quilt will be but at least there will be enough left over pieces to do it!

On second thought, decided that I will take two sides of the one color blocks off the first quilt.  They are just too light to deal with. That will be a TV time project.   Will make a small baby quilt from those  extra 11.  and maybe I'll just do  4 x 4s  for the 2 color blocks.  As you can tell, I'm tired of making more of these blocks though I did find enough in my stash to make more blocks.

Here's some of my progress photos:

This is from the first batch of colors.  I've since rearranged some of the colors and sewn the blocks.  That  is when I decided that this set of blocks would be better off being made into two quilts. btw, these were finished over a year ago.  I am taking my time on these quilts.

Update January 11,
Have made the blocks that have already been cut.  I think I will just leave these as 4x5 block quilts which means just 4 more blocks to make.  With sashing & borders that should leave me with quilts that are at least 60x72 which are a nice size for twin bed toppers or to wrap ones' self up.

Continued in Part #7

My Jacob's Ladder Project, # 5

It's been awhile and I've actually moved along with the Jacob's Ladder Project.  The one color blocks have all been finished and rows are being sewn together.  Should have that done today.  It kind of drives me nuts that it's taken over 2 years to get to this point as just 15 years ago, it would have only taken me a week or two to put the top together.

There were 41 blocks made but only 36 were needed to finish.  It seems that a couple of colors were repeated but I only used 1 of those twice in the finished top.

The following is a picture of the blocks in my final arrangement.  It was a struggle even getting the blocks in this order.  One can really have quite a few combinations.  This setting was picked because I liked the way it looked.  The next two J.L. quilts will be put together according to the way the old quilt was put together, with sashing and cornerstones.

The next step will be to add a border.  At the rate I do that, it might take another two years.  Let's hope NOT!

Continued in Part #6

My Jacob's Ladder Project # 4

It's been a few weeks since I've posted on this project.  Not much accomplished other than all the fat quarters have been marked.  I ended up deciding to use my walking foot to finish the rest of the marked fat quarters as I found that that foot was the key to keep the lines straight for cutting.  However, I don't get to the project often, (like once a week if I'm lucky), so only 5 fat quarters have been cut so far.  Still have a bunch to sew and cut.

Last week attended my bee and kind of timed myself with sewing one fat quarter.  It takes about 20 minutes to do one.  Not long at all so why haven't I finished them by now?

I've been putting the Sewn and cut pieces in small zip lock bags.  1 bag for the one color blocks, 1 bag for the 2-color blocks, and the rest get put in the container for the scrappy j.l.  So, now it  looks like it's time to stop writing and get to work.

Continued in #5

My Jacob's Ladder Project # 3

After cutting the 2nd set of colors, decided that I'm going back to the old way of just cutting out the block strips first, then start the sewing.  or maybe I'll just try one more time and use the walking foot.  The difficulty with the larger fat quarter size fabric was trying to cut the blocks apart after sewing them.  The lines drawn seemed to shift about and I kept having to move the ruler to try and make a straight cut.  One whole line of the 2.5 inch blocks sewn turned out about a 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch off.  Too much and I'll have to make the seams smaller when I sew the next blocks to those.

continued in # 4

My Jacob's Ladder Project # 2

Yesterday spent time with my bee and took along the Jacob's Ladder project.  When my guild had it's quilt show, I had purchased a number fat quarters of different calicos from vendors there, enough to work on the 3 quilt tops that were already started. Then my brainstorm of marking the fabric in the last post.

It worked! though I wasn't so sure after marking the first one (probably because I was using the wrong marking tool).  I switched to a pencil for the 2nd one.  Thought I probably wouldn't continue that way but after sewing up the pieces for the first one, decided it was worth the time to mark the fabric and sew before cutting apart.  It was so easy to do though it took me two hours to get that first one marked, sewn, and cut.   The second one took half that time but I did have to take out some stitches because I was over enthused by the process and didn't watch closely where to stop and turn.

I did run into one problem when sewing on the diagonal.  The fabric appeared puffed up after the sewing was done.  At least I had over-sized the half square triangle units by 1/8 inch. I'll have to try the walking foot for the next one I mark up or change directions of the diagonals when I mark.  BTW, the colored fabric was layered with the background fabric in case you're wondering what's going on.  In this case I just used plain muslin.

Here's what it looked like after it was sewn and before I did the cutting.
Did decide that I didn't need to mark the cutting lines for the individual 2 1/2" squares as I can easily do that part when I'm cutting those 2 1/2" squares from the strips... after the strips have been sewn.

Looks like I might have to make another just so you can see the markings better and make the sewing more visible.

It was really nice though to be able to have most of the sewing done while uncut.  Next step will be to iron then sew the 4-patches together then build the block.  Oh, and the 1/2 square units will have to be slightly trimmed to correct size of 4 1/2" inches sq.

I haven't described the Jacob's ladder project that I'm doing.  The picture of the original old quilt is on the first part.

The first quilt will use one color blocks, probably without sashing but I might change my mind on that..  Then there will be two quilts with 2-color blocks similar to the old quilt, and the 4th quilt will be scrappy, mixing up all the colors that I've cut from these fat quarters.  The 2nd and 3rd will have sashing like the old quilt as will the scrappy one.

 I had to split up the 2-color blocks as I noticed that the light/dark ones didn't look good with the dark/light blocks so that is why there are two quilts being made with these.

These are some of the blocks I had finished up last year though in that picture, I was just playing around with the colors.

continued in # 3

My Jacob's Ladder Quilt Project.

Tuesday and I'm finally ready to tackle some more projects.  One ongoing project has been putting together a number of Jacob's Ladder blocks to simulate an old family quilt.  I have 3 variations going on at the moment and decided that more blocks were needed for each variation.  Picked up more fabric for the blocks this past weekend at my guild's quilt show.  Had a little time to sit at the computer and figure out how many colored pieces that can be cut from 1 fat quarter (18" x 22").  Had to do it that way as my brain just doesn't seem to want to figure it out. Results show that I can make 3 single colored blocks from 1 fat quarter used with same amount of muslin or another light or dark color as the background.

I used 3 colors to show what is needed for each block.

The separate colors represent the colored pieces for 3 blocks with a little left over. Ideally, one would end up with 2 extra 2 1/2 " squares and a 2" strip for use elsewhere. plus a 1/2" strip as waste unless you're into using that small a scrap (maybe as a small package tie-wrap?).
This diagram is marked for making three 12 1/2" unfinished blocks which uses  4 half square triangle units per block  and  10 2 1/2" squares for the 4-patches per block.  You'd need the same amount for the background.

 The half square triangle units are marked as 5" blocks to start with to be layered with a 5" block of muslin then diagonal marked and 1/4" seam sewn on both sides of the diagonal line. Then cut apart on the diagonal line which leaves you with twoapproximately 4 1/2" half square triangle blocks (you'll need to trim the sides to fit to that 4 1/2" measurement).

hmmm!  I could layer the fat quarter with the muslin and get some of my sewing done before cutting it out.  All I'd have to do was mark the fabric a head of time!  I think I'll try that out and see how it works.

Meanwhile,  here's what 1 single color block looks like:

And here's a view of the old, well worn family quilt:
     
I've picked up some fabric to use as a sashing & corner stones for 2 of the 3 quilts I'm doing.  Haven't picked up fabric for the backing yet.  Not sure if  yellow will be used for the back.  Maybe on one or two of the quilts?

 Now to get on with my other projects for the day - posting the winning quilts from my guild's show on our website.

Continued in # 2

Getting to some hand quilting...

     Just about ready to make this blog known. It's probably not going to be daily, more likely hit or miss for a while until I get used to doing a journal of sorts. Today has been spent tidying up the blog and learning about using it. Several posts have already been made since I opened up this blog. I've done some editing to them and might add some more photos to Gypsum's brush post. Hard to believe that he's been asking for a daily brushing since last September. Even I look forward to it and miss it when I'm gone for the day.

      I do want to make this a journal of quilting and the cats so will start off right now with my current projects. I'm in the last stages of a wall hanging made from charm squares I "won" on the RJR Fabrics Facebook page. It must be ready for my guild's quilt show in 3 weeks. Glad it's small as I've been slow at working on the hand quilting. Then I'll need to get the binding done and label made and a hanger tube for the quilt show. My plan today was to work on the quilting. fat chance that's going to happen since I'm here typing!

The quilt top is full of cat hair as Rainey used it for a sleeping spot for a few days before I decided I really needed to stop her from doing that. Will probably have to use the old tape method for cleaning off the cat hairs. It does not interfere with the quilting though as I can remove hair as I come across it.

   I also have a couple of other quilts in progress, both workshop quilts. One will also be in the show but it's needs are little, just a label and a hanging tube. Oh and there are some others that have needed finishing for two years. One needs a backing, then quilting, and the other needs quilting. I think both of those will be on the agenda for after the quilt show. Both will get done this year. After all, one is a wedding gift for a wedding that took place 2 years ago and they have already had their first child. The other was promised to my grandson. Have to hang my head for not getting that done two years ago as the cats have not made it easy to baste and quilt for the past year. Darn, then I think of the ufo's from YEARS past. There's a backlog there too.

The Cats on Quilts

If you view cats on facebook, you'll come across pages that talk about Caturday.  Many pages ask their viewers to post pictures of their cats on Saturday -- on quilts, or quilts about cats. So, here's your introduction to my 5 current Cats on Quilts (even though this is not Saturday!).

Rainey and Diamond on my first quilt

Goldie, all ready for Valentine's Day.

Butch  during a July 4th photo shoot.

Diamond, not really wanting me to sew!

Rainey  came to us  September 8 of 2012, a stray found by our neighboring friends. She's now about 2 years old since we don't know her birthday.  We had been without any cats for about 10 years so were happy to have a cat again.

 Rainey is a Character Cat.  She's a diva type, noisy when she wants to be and grumpy when she wants to be but still quite sweet. She's also very observant of her surroundings and where she wants to be and learns quickly.  She does not like to be touched by the other cats except when she is totally ready for it.  It's taken her quite awhile to even let them sniff noses with her even though she watched them grow up. Rarely does she allow Diamond to groom her. At the moment, Diamond is the only one that she allows that priviledge.

Goldie came along 6 weeks later, on October 24, 2012, quite pregnant and wanting a new home.  She found us on her own and at the right time as she dropped those kittens 2 hours later, after we got her situated in her own private room with all the food she needed and fresh water.  Her age is unknown but she appears to be older than Rainey.  Though she appears to be all black, she does have some white spots on her.  We named her for her golden eyes.

Butch, Diamond, and Gypsum are Goldie's babies, born a little over a year ago on October 24, 2012.  There were 6 in the litter and 3 of those are now in other homes.  They were all relatively healthy, beautiful little kittens.

Butch, the black and white is a lover and also a Momma's boy.  He nursed on Goldie until he was about 5 months old and she finally decided enough was enough.  Butch has a nub of a tail, and the stubby body type of the manx breed though we don't know who the father(s) were.

Diamond is my sweetheart.  She's taller than her Mom, Goldie, and built like Butch but her tail is a few inches longer with a bend in it that causes her tail to look like a little flag when she's holding it up.
She's a tomboy though and doesn't mind getting into scuffles with her two brothers.  She can out leap either of them with twists and turns like a ballerina.  She resembles the Manx breed in her body build and the Snowshoe Breed in her coloring.

Gypsum this past autumn.

Gypsum is a beautiful seal point.  He looks like a Siamese but definitely not a pure bred.  He is most graceful and a wonderful "gentleman".  Never demanding but he does know how to get his way if he really wants something.  He's the largest of the 5 cats now.  Has a full tail that he controls quite well.  He loves to be brushed and comes in to the computer/sewing room several times a day to be brushed, gently asking, first with a little meow, then a gentle grab of my arm with his 2 front paws.  If that doesn't work (I'm busy typing), he'll sometimes pull my arm down and give me some gentle nibbles on the hand.  Who can resist?!

Both Gypsum and Diamond have pale cream eyes with hints of blue/lavender.  Their pupils reflect red while Butch, Goldie, and Rainey with their yellow/orange eyes reflect green.  Sometimes I'll reduce the red-eye in photos so they don't look so scary.

You may view more stories and photos of my cats and their escapades on Facebook at Rainey's Cat Daze page.