Again, it’s been awhile… With the Easter holiday and Spring Break, my time at the computer has been limited. This is the latest finish:

Chasin’ the Blues Away – 2013, 47″ x 54″

The working title for this one was the Russian Doll Quilt. I had gotten bits of the Russian doll print in a bag of other scraps, probably from Etsy. Not having any other particular plan in mind, they went into a box to be cut into stock squares. (I routinely cut scraps into whatever sizes of squares they’ll accommodate. I always have these squares on hand to use when needed.) Last Spring, I was rummaging through the 4.5″ stock squares box trying to put together a baby girl quilt for a custom order shower gift. I separated out the pinks and reds for the girl quilt, and started weeding through the blues, thinking I’d set some aside for a boy quilt or two as long as I had the box open anyway.

Among the blue squares, I found two focus fabrics that would work for boy quilts, denimy blues, one with yellow and the other with red and black. (These became the two Denim Baby Animals quilts.) I also found 5 squares of the doll fabric, but decided that the colors would not mix well with the two previously-chosen focus fabrics. So, I set the doll print aside. I quickly sorted through the remaining prints and discovered that most of the prints that did not fit with the two denimy quilts were ones that went remarkably well with the doll print – the purples, purply blues and browns, olive greens and teals, beiges, etc, In fact, I quite liked the effect of all those colors and prints together, although it was a color combination I probably wouldn’t have considered absent that doll print.

I was a bit concerned that 5 squares would be a bit few to consider a focus fabric, but, they seemed to hold their own in the mix as I rifled through them. So, I decided “why not? I counted squares and, with the addition of a few others here and there, I had enough for a 10 x 12 rectangle – with a border, it would be a decent-sized throw or crib quilt.

Over the next few months, the squares were sewn together, a border with 4 matching squares for the corners was added. I found a piece of flannel for the back – a lovely lavender tonal print with birds and butterflies. (The same print, different colorway as the back of The Anarchist.) This piece wasn’t quite wide enough, so I used strips of two differnt purple non-flannel cotton prints down either side – one is lavender with a touch of pink (the same fabric as the 4 corner border squares), the other is purple on white. Standing back, both prints blended well with the flannel, so I went ahead and basted it.

Chasin’ the Blues Away – Detail of Back, Variegated Thread

Once basted, it moved pretty quickly up the queue for quilting. (I do not have much room to house basted quilts, so, unless I hit a real snag with the quilting plan, this is not a place where WIPs linger for long.) I debated briefly over thread and finally settled on a King Tut variegated thread of blue, purple and teal (the other choice was a Gutterman variegated in purples). A binding fabric I had used on another quilt (The Tropics) called to me, so I used it on this one, too. Made the binding, sewed it on by machine, moved it to the hand-sewing pile for finishing and there it sat.

This was one of my portable hand-sewing projects for approximately 4 months. That’s not usual – by this time, I’m usually more than ready to get stuff finished. But, there were custom orders that took priority and other little hand-sewing projects that got snuck in. Plus, I started finishing more bindings by machine. (Finishing all the bindings by hand was creating a logjam and, for some things, a machine-finished binding really is more suitable.) I finally finished it this weekend on our trip to Albany for the holiday.

Oh, and the title change? As I was finishing the last of the binding, my sister, my mother, my niece and I were watching Easter Parade. It had been awhile since I had seen it and I had forgotten about one of Ann Miller’s dance numbers in it, an Irving Berlin tune called Chasin’ the Blues Away. That song has been running through my head to the point that I’ve been breaking out humming and jiving (Ann Miller style, of course) at odd times while fixing dinner and sewing for the last four days. When it came time to sign this quilt and write it up, the title change seemed to be a natural fit… 🙂

As for the rest of the past week or two, sewing-wise? This is what 3 dozen mug rugs look like:

Now, on to the dozen plus bibs and baby blankets I need to finish for the upcoming St. Lawrence County Historical Association Antique and Artisan Fair on April 27th. After that, I need to work on pillows.