Small Finish

I finished this little 6 x 9 inches piece today. I had fished it out of a box of odd stuff a couple of weeks ago and stuck it on my design wall so I would be reminded to do something with it.
Today, I just put some borders on it, layered it with 2 layers of fusible fleece and a backing, put folded triangles in the top corners and stitched on the inside of the borders and 1/2 inch from the edge. I trimmed the edge with a pinking blade. I put a piece of cardboard across the top edge caught in the triangle corners  and hung it above my desk. It was easy and quick and a light and easy reminder that I don't want to be a drip. Does anyone use that term (drip) anymore to describe someone who is a pain in the neck?

Birds of Ohio Challenge etc.

Our group from church met today and we had the revel of our challenge quilts from our Birds of Ohio challenge. Elaine printed up some photos from the Internet of birds that are native to Ohio and we blindly picked a photo from a bag to be our inspiration. We could interpret that any way we wanted. there was a size limit of 120 inches around the perimeter.

Five of us brought something to show today. Guess who forgot their quilt at home. I did however have a photo of it to show here.
Top row on the left is Kim and she picked two birds but decided to make only one quilt. Her birds were the Purple Finch and Black Throated Warbler; she use their colors for her inspiration. In the center is Kathy with her quilt inspired by the Blackburnian Warbler. Elaine, our challenge originator, is on the left with her Black Throated Green Warbler quilt.

 In the bottom row on the left is Dorine with her paper pieced Hummingbird. She enlarged the pattern on her computer and printed it. The original was a much smaller bird. In the center is Debbie's quilt. Her bird was a Red Breasted Nuthatch. As there is no red in the quilt, I am assuming that her inspiration for the birdhouses was perhaps their nesting habit. It is a fun quilt with pretty fabric and we were free to interpret our bird any way we wanted. The last quilt is mine that I forgot at home.  My bird was a Blue Winged Warbler. Kathy's and Debbie's quilts are still  at the flimsy point, Elaine's quilt is hand quilted and the others are machine quilted.

We had some other show and tell as well. Kathy has a beautiful quilt for a graduation gift that she has almost finished. I wish I had taken a close up of the fabrics because they don't show up well when  I enlarge the photo. the darker of the block fabric is zebras and the other has gnus and  either tigers or leopards or maybe both. The quilt on the right is a hand quilted baby quilt for Elaine's soon to be born grandson. The fabric is just too cute and she has made some other items from the fabric as well, including a darling bib with the monkey fabric in the center.

These are some blocks that Gail is working on for a Quilt of Valor. I am not sure of the size but they I think they are larger than 12 inches.

 

 

Sorting, sewing, knitting

After we moved things around early this week I started working on my box of 2 inch log cabin strips. It was such a jumbled mess that anytime I though about making blocks I  decided to do something else instead. I dumped the whole box into a collapsible laundry hamper last week and I had been adding to it  as I was cleaning up.  I finally got busy making order???? out of chaos. I separated the lights mediums and darks and loosely separated the strips by length. It is better than what it was. then I had a bunch of 11/2 inch strips that had found there way into the mess and I sorted them out. I had a lot of red and blue strips and I thought I just need to make something with them right then and there.

Jack had taken my old printer a few months ago when it refused to print in black (it prints black for him, go figure) and it was on top of that chest that is now in my sewing room. Now it has to sit on his desk (formerly my cutting table) and he doesn't have a lot of room for all his stuff on his desk. so he set his lamp on the printer, along with that male essential, the remote. He didn't want to scratch to top of the printer so he was using this, which is one of many brand new knitted dishcloths.

As I was sorting out those red and blue strips inspiration struck. and I made him a mat. I didn't want to do a lot of fussing around with decisions about what strip to put next to another so I did it jelly roll race style. I just sewed odd lengths together end to end until I had 168 inches and folded the long strip  in half and sewed and folded and sewed etc. I layered it and sewed it pillowcase style and turned it.
Now I don't have to decide what to do with those strips and I have satisfied my need to sew something.
I am still not able to do much sewing. All this moving stuff around has left me with a bunch of stuff shoved into my sewing space until it can be put away (somewhere?) or picked up and taken away.
In the meantime I will work on finding places for the stuff that no longer has a designated home and I guess I will knit some more dish cloths. I think I like making them because I enjoy the colors and  the way the pattern falls together with the variegated yarn.

No Sewing

There has been no sewing here for at least a week. Jack decided he needed to change his computer desk so he would look down at his monitor instead of up. Looking up has caused him sinus problems and he had been working with one thing or another to work something out. He took one of my 2 ft. x 4 ft. cutting tables with the adjustable legs and lowered it and we spent 2 days moving things around. We weren't sure the table  would work out so he took mine to try and we will replace it.

Now I have a new addition to my sewing room. It was in the corner of our bedroom next to his desk where it would no long fit. I don't really mind having it but it requires some adjustment to everything else in my sewing space. That is the keyboard tray from his desk there against the wall. Our grandson is going to take the desk (soon I hope) and then I can get things arranged better.

We almost never move furniture but we have spent days moving things in the living room too. We also had to shop for a new smaller end table and lamp because we moved Jacks recliner a little bit at a different angle to make a little more room in the dining area. Now we won't have to move the recliner if we put the leaf in the table for company. There used to be a smaller easier to move chair in that place but Jack reclaimed his recliner and it had to be moved, why else but so it was closer to the TV. Of course one thing leads to another and I now want a small bookcase and a new coffee table. I am tired of shopping so it won't be this week.

I am ready to get back to some sewing.

Finished project

I spent way too much time on this. I thought it  would be quick and easy as I had used the apron pattern before. Well... when I used it the first time I followed the pattern; this time I had to adapt the pattern to fit that top.
I used up a bunch of little bitty scraps for the equilateral triangles.  I had to cut t some of the long strips for the bottom. I was happy to use up some  odd Kona Bone strips and some Kona white pieces for the lining. How odd is that, lining for an apron. It's what the pattern calls for and this apron will probably never fall apart.

Now I am really going to put the scraps away

 for a while as I am all scrapped out.

And that's the truth!

Adiction

I can't quit making fabric from scraps. I think my favorite way is to make squares about 5 to 6 inches but I sometimes trim one out at 4 inches because it tells me it is finished. I can always add something more if I decide it needs more when I actually use it in a project. I keep trying to put all this stuff away so I can go through all my note books and piles of paper in my letter trays and that I have stuffed everywhere in my book case. Every time I almost "get there", I spot a couple little scraps that happen to be laying together in one of the several scrap receptacles sitting on my cutting table. I think that I should sew them together before they get separated. As I said before one thing leads to another.

 So..in the upper left, this is my design wall with stuff all over it. There are some strips that I dug out of boxes of log cabin strips, some starters, some finished blocks, a strip set of green fabrics that I picked up last Saturday from the fabric pool table. Below is a closeup  of the finished 6 1/2 inch square in which I used 3 of those green fabrics and to the right is a closeup of the green strip set. I hesitated to pick up that 7 inch wide strip set because I didn't want to be greedy but someone talked me into it and I'm glad I took it.

 I decided that I would use some triangle paper foundations to make a specific size of equilateral triangles because I want to explore all the possibilities and not get stuck on just making squares.  I cut the papers with my small Clearview triangle ruler that I used recently for my Reticent Stars quilt. The top two shots were auditions as I was deciding if I wanted to separate the triangles with strips of Kona Bone. The bottom shot is the 8 triangles sewn together. I have a plan and I have spent my day working on it.

If you check back tomorrow

maybe you will see my finished project.

Maybe not!

Hutch mat #2

I finished the second hutch mat and this will be it. I decided that the coffee table will remain bare and I will dust it more often.

The reds show up here as brighter than they are; these fabrics are all darker and antique looking. The top mat is the second one I made. I decided to finish out the ends with strips instead of triangle corners.
I didn't want them to be the exactly alike; the center 2 inch square and the red binding are the same in both of them and many of the strips are used in both. Most of them are from the same box of strips left over from a quilt in made either 1990 or 1996. I wrote on the back with a Pigma pen but I can't read the last digit. That quilt was a pineapple log cabin and you can see it at the bottom of this post here.


When I opened this box of scraps I really opened a can or worms. I could probably make another RW&B quilt with what I have.  I had everything sorted by size and color and each wrapped with a piece of muslin with the length of the strips. Much of that is not longer nice and tidy as I combed through everything looking for strips that I wanted to use. I don't think I want to make another quilt with these RW&B 1 1/2 inch strips but I don't want to throw them away and I don't think I can get away with giving them to my friends as prizes again. As it stands now I am contemplating what to do with all of the other scraps I have  recently discovered hiding in various places.

OH WELL

 

I  am going to start  by putting away all my rulers etc. and clean up a little. then I will do a bit of hand quilting that I have committed to on my big UFO.

Summer is Coming

I know that summer officially arrives later in June but, I believe like most people, I think of Memorial Day as the beginning of summer and Labor Day as the end. All the summer holidays are patriotic and so I display all my red, white and blue quilts from Memorial day until Labor Day.

Last year in the spring I made some hutch mats in spring fabrics and made some for fall but I used red, white and blue regular sized place mats on the hutches in the summer. They were OK but after I used the ones I made specifically for the hutch I found they were much more useful as they cover the entire surface where I set things at meal times.


Hutch mat 14 x 28

Yesterday I looked through my red, white and blue scraps and it was a meager bunch. I bought a fat quarter bundle to augment my scraps and I set to work. In the end I didn't use anything from my FQ bundle. I looked through my 1 1/2 inch and 2 inch log cabin strips and found some I could use and I opened up a shoe box of long ago left overs from a RW&B Pineapple quilt. I had all the little strips sorted by size and color and wrapped in muslin strips waiting for the day when I would make another Pineapple quilt. Not only am I using these strips but what is left will go into the general pool and I will have an extra empty box. I plan to make one more hutch mat like this and I am thinking about if I want to make one to cover the top of the coffee table with it's always dusty glass top. If I do it will need 3 pineapple blocs along the length and then the chevron strips. I am thinking it might be overkill with the runner/mats and after I make one more hutch mat that might be enough RW&B sewing for me.

Quilt Festival Reticent Stars

This is my entry in the Bloggers Quilt Festival in the wall hanging category. I have posted about it as I was working on it and when it was finished. In this post, I put it all together for the Bloggers Quilt Festival.
I named this "Reticent Stars"; although I wanted the stars to show up, I did not want them to be the main attraction. For that reason I quilted them with black thread and not metallic thread as I had intended. My original choice for a binding was solid black but when I was ready for the binding I changed my mind and went with the black and white stripe cut on the bias.

Reticent Stars 33 x 49

Here are some close up views of the quilting. The straight line quilting is about 1/2 inch apart and follows the overall shape of each diamond.
I belong to a group of fun and creative ladies who have been meeting for a few years to explore new techniques and avenues of creativity. We have always been rather loosely organized meeting as friends and not as an organized "group".

About 2 years ago we got together after a rather lengthy hiatus and  set a definite date each month to meet. We settled on a name "The Basement Diva's" and set some goals and challenges.

 

Here are the rules for our challenge.

The challenge shall be black and white and, if wanted, one other color. Color being defined as a color family. Quilters are to do something they have not done before using a book, pattern or tool that the quilter already has. No, that doesn't mean finish the thing, Yes, a book that has been used before can be used but not the same pattern in said book. No, it does not mean you can make "that pink quilt you made before, in black and white".
There is no size limitation or finish date established yet.
Quilter's should be ready to start, or have started at our next meeting in October.

We try to have as few rules as possible for our challenges so there were not many. Later we added an April meeting deadline to finish. You can see the Basement Diva's Challenge quilts here and here

 

I had the book "Quilts from a Different Angle" by Sarah Nephew and the smaller Clear view Triangle ruler to go with it. The publish date in the book is 1986 so I had it a long time (26 years can that be?).

 

I designed my quilt in EQ7 and I had many versions before I settled on one. the quilt I made evolved as I went along and I would go back and audition my revisions in EQ before proceeding. All final decisions were made on the design wall.

This was my start and I used most but not all of the fabrics that I cut, I  have a stack of leftovers and discards eliminations.

Sewing the diagonal rows together was a learning experience and sometimes a challenge as it was hard to tell at times if I had everything where it should be. As the rows were sewn they shrunk and when up on the design wall next to the unsewn rows I sometimes lost sight of where the pieces were in the overall pattern.

 

 Here is the back view of the top. I really did press all those seams open. When I work with triangles I have better results when I press the seams open; it  really is worth the extra effort.

 

 

 

 When I finally got it all together I made the changes in EQ to reflect the actual quilt and colored the EQ version with lighter values to save my ink and it be able to see quilting lines that I would draw on the printed quilt to experiment and as a guide when I started to sew.


I don't know why I never used my triangle rule until this challenge. I remember I was very enthusiastic to make something when I bought the book and ruler. I am probably going to do something again soon with the ruler and pair  up the triangles with hexagons and diamonds as I bought those rulers recently to go with the triangle ruler. I better not wait 26 years to start; I may not be sewing when I am 104.

A Finish

I finished the little quilt made from the Missouri Star Falling Charms quilt pattern. It was a nice easy pattern to follow using 5 inch squares of "made fabric" instead of charms. I made my squares about 5 inches and trimmed them to size. I did make anther bunch from a larger piece of made fabric and cut ome squares fro it. I liked doing it that way. I think I prefer making each block to a predetermined size and shape and trimming it. I can see that with some patterns making fabric to cut more pieces from will be an advantage. Though I have done this for years there is a lot more exploring to do. This could be a series, I could even clean out my scrap boxes, bags and bundles and all  the hidden accumulations. That is probably a pipe dream.
The quilt is 43 x 60 which makes it a generous baby quilt size I guess.

 I quilted in the ditch along the staggered  rows and then went back and quilted along the lines in the blocks so they don't poof out. I ditch  quilted with off white thread in the seams where the white strips on the blocks came together with the next blocks white strips. I knew it needed more and I thought about some free motion quilting, maybe feathers or vines moving down the stair step pattern but in the end I marked straight lines with my trusty old (dull) pizza cutter and used it as a guide for the Bernina #4 stitch.

  This shot above shows the quilting a little better. I  was not too crazy about the seams between the white patches but in "person" the are not really so much of a distraction.

In these top two shots You can see the binding that is the same white (Kona Bone) as the background patches in the body of the quilt.
The top two photos are border shots and you can see where I have used a little left over end of a strata from the piano key piecing . I just turned it sideways to fit. After all, you can't waste precious fabric.
The bottom two were made using left over pieced units as starters. I've  used several Half Square Triangle starters and 4 Patch starters.
I am looking forward to Saturday when the Diva group will get together to play with "making fabric". It is always eye opening and inspiring to see what someone else has decided to do.
I think we have the best kind of challenge rules, loose, few and not designed to shut down individual inspiration. If this works out to be a challenge probably the only rules with be in the way of size and a finish date.

Yesterday, after dinner, Jack convinced me we should get out for a while and we went to the Arboretum. He should have convinced me to dress warmer too. We were  going to walk around among the lilac plantings and take some pictures. We only walked a short way before I was freezing so we went back to the car and I got a few picts from the car window. The top photo here is a small weeping (something ) tree. I couldn't read the sign without walking up to it. The bottom photo is  own of hundreds of lilacs, each more beautiful than the last and the fragrance is wonderful.
Maybe by Thursday it will have warmed up and hopefully the lilac display will still be spectacular.

A few more to Boston With Love

I acquired a few more flags for To Boston with Love.  I probably won't get anymore tomorrow but I will wait till Tuesday morning to mail them as that is what I originally said I would do.

Four of these are from my group at church. There were only a few of us there this month but those of us who came made a flag. The two little hearts on the lower left are from one of the Basement Divas and she dropped it off today. I think these are all so cute that we should  definitely plan to use this kind of banner in another way.

To Boston with Love

So far I have seven little flags to send to Boston with Love. I will be sending them on Tuesday May 14 so I am hoping to have collected a  few more by then. I am meeting with our group at church on Saturday and hope to get a few there. Maybe some of the people in some of the other groups I belong to will drop them off or let me know and I can arrange to get them. I know the Priority mail envelopes or flat rate boxes will hold more than 7.