Yesterday I made forty 6″ string blocks, and I am in love with the colors. No, I can’t tell a difference in my string baskets. What is up with that? but I like to sew string blocks, and I always feel I’ve created something from nothing. I’m sashing them with Kona White, and using this nice gray and white Kaufman leaf print for the borders. This will make a throw size, 50″ x 74″.
Are you playing with fabric today?
I’m linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.
Well, yes, that is new fabric. 22 1/5 yards from eQuilter. I suppose it doesn’t reduce the yardage that most of it was on sale, does it? But it’s great stuff, and some of it is earmarked for a Christmas gift project. I did use 7 1/2 yards to finish the Blue and Orange donation quilt.
This week: +22.5 yards, -7.5 yards
YTD: +73 yards, -138 yards
Net stash used in 2013: 65 yards
How are you doing with your stash reduction? Sometimes you have to buy some to use some…
I’m linking up with Sunday Stash Report on Patchwork Times.
I finished up the blue and orange donation quilt yesterday. I had a lot of fun quilting it with straight lines and feathers in orange thread (Superior Highlights, 40 wt.). The textured blue fabric was weird and stretchy to piece together, but not too bad to quilt with the walking foot. It has great cozy texture now that it’s washed up.
I have to admit that I like the back almost as much as I like the front. These are orphan blocks from a double nine patch that I had made, and some from this quilt, when I discovered that too many nine patches would make it too busy.
So much of the stash fabric I have and need to use is floral, and makes pretty feminine quilts. I try to switch off by making every other donation quilt out of something a little more appealing to anyone, including men. And, apparently, cats. Lots of help. This is headed to Moore, OK.
You could have knocked me over with one of my own feathers yesterday when I answered the phone and it was Judy Laquidera from Patchwork Times! I was sewing the binding to this quilt when she called. She called several of us who had donated quilts for West, TX, to see if we minded if she sent them on to Moore. They have all they need in West, and Judy knew of a truck with people she trusts going to Moore. I told her I was fine with that, so I guess my pink and gray quilt will go there, too.
Doesn’t it seem like there’s been a lot of need this year? I sorted some strings last night to start a new donation quilt for whatever comes next. Don’t even want to think about that.
What have you finished this week?
I’m linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.
This week I finished up this baby quilt. The top went together very quickly, of course. I spent much more time arranging the blocks (originally I thought all the blocks would have the color spikes, but that gave me secondary patterns.) than when I finally sewed them. Then all the straight line quilting was tedious and time-consuming, but very worth it. It gives it a great crinkly texture and saves it from being so plain.
The object was to use this very bright print. It looks like a hand dye, and like it’s crinkled, but it’s just a print. A print that went with nothing. I put it with two gray and white dotted fabrics. I don’t have the selvage, but I think they were “Mix and Match Dots”, or something like that.
I used the rest of the bright on the back. Using the Fairy Frost and nearly the last of my Mirrored Dot is probably what started me into the new HST zigzag quilt.
Hope you had a satisfying finish this week.
I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, where I love Amanda Jean’s new finish.
I spent yesterday making HSTs from aqua and gray fabrics for this baby quilt. The solid is Kona Azure, until I ran out, so there are also patches of a tire track print in with it. The grays include Fairy Frost and Mirror Dot. They do lend a little glitz and sheen. Oddly, what appears to be the very shiny parts of the zigzags is a gray and white “bubble” or dot print, a plain cotton that’s not shiny at all.
Observant viewers will spot two turned patches, and numerous places where I need to redistribute the blocks so that the colors don’t clump. I went though and fixed a lot, and left it to percolate overnight before I sew it together. The design wall is so helpful for this, and so is a camera. I just use my phone, and sometimes don’t even snap the picture. Just looking at it on the little screen helps me see things. Then I see more when I upload a photo to Twitter for the Twilters to check out. If early quilters had had camera phones there wouldn’t be nearly so many “intentional” mistakes.
(Okay, Spellcheck, I didn’t expect you to know “Twilters”, we just made that up last month. But “quilters”? You thought I meant “quitters”??? C’mon! Get with the program!)
I’m linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.
I’m working today on this baby quilt using a very intense print that appears as a textured hand-dye. The other fabrics are a gray with white dots and a white with gray dots. I’m definitely still turning the blocks to decide where the “spikes” of color should go. This will get diagonal straight line quilting. Then I’m binding it with the bright print.
Are you playing with fabric today?
I’m linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.
This week I have two finishes, both sewn with thoughts of hope and peace for this troubled world in which we live. I’m very pleased with the way my Project Hope Online Quilt Show contribution turned out. We all know how hard it can be to translate a vision into fabric reality, but mine came very close. I puttered around and put it off, but now that it’s finally finished, I like it. See all the Project Hope quilts on Flickr.
On the day that I mentally committed to joining this project, the background fabric presented itself to me. I opened the door to my fabric closet, and out tumbled a little, beribboned pack of fat quarters that I could not remember seeing before. I mean, a sign is a sign, right?
Me: When were we in Grantsville, MD?
DH: Two years ago on the way to the Buffet concert. There was a bridge… We ate lunch there.
Me: And there was a quilt shop there?
DH: Yes! In an old school building.
So then, yes, I did finally remember Four Seasons Stitchery and the little bundle of batiks I bought there.
I sprayed bleach to create the ray of sunlight. Then I fused fabrics down to create the flowers, and use various threads to “paint” them. There is also a chalk pencil involved for some of the white shading. I quilted the sunbeam with iridescent Sulky mylar thread, the “Hope” with Sulky white rayon and the iridescent, and the background with Superior poly monofilament. The stamens are French knots.
Enjoy the binding on this piece, because I will probably never do it again. Fiddly!!
My flowers are charred and gray on the outside, but are opening in the ray of light to reveal their beautiful, hopeful interior. Nature is always renewing itself, in spite of setbacks. The binding is my reference to Jacquie’s work (Tall Grass Prairie Studio) here and here. Her work is graphic and cathartic, but not very hopeful to me (these particular pieces). So, my binding is blood red, but it does open to admit the sunlight.
Also finished is my flag for To Boston With Love. See others at their page on Flickr.
I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday on Crazy Mom Quilts.
I got on board with this late, but I decided to send a flag to Boston for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild’s initiative, To Boston With Love. I don’t belong to a guild, and their project was aimed mainly at guilds sending in bunches of these flags, but individuals can participate. I didn’t really understand the concept when it first came around, but now I think it will be a spectacular sight, and I’d like to contribute. I really wish I had gotten in gear earlier, because I would have coordinated a group effort from our “Twilter” group of quilters on Twitter, and sent those in as a group. Anyway.
Yes, that’s a reject piece from my fabric bleaching. I don’t have it arranged correctly yet, but I think it will make a fine background for my rainbow heart. And, yes, that’s a strip of orange “Fairy Frost” in there. You can’t get more cheerful than that. This will only take me a few minutes when I sit down and get serious about it. Lots of color for a little time.
I’m linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.
Lots of fabric pulled out, piled up, and all over the design wall, but only one small finish this week. That’s okay. My numbers are good. I’m especially pleased to be finding uses for some long-time Stash Dogs. Those “what was I thinking?” pieces, or fabrics that are pretty/striking/interesting by themselves, but don’t go with anything else. Or that looked different online. Making some progress on those. I find that if I leave them out, or at least at the top of their baskets, then they are more likely to occur to me when I need something.
Dog!
This week: +0 yards, -3.5 yards
YTD: +50.5 yards, -123.5 yards
Net Stash Used in 2013: -73 yards
How about you? Are you using it up to make way for new, pretty fabric?
Cat!
I’m linking up with Sunday Stash Report at Patchwork Times.
This little quilt with the floral fabric and flower and leaf quilting took very little time to make. This was great and sad, because I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of making this, especially the lucious colors, and I wanted to keep gazing at it forever.
Don’t you love these spontaneous little quilts where you just pull fabric madly from your stash, cut with abandon (partly because it’s such a small project), and have it mostly pieced before you have time to second-guess yourself? These are my favorites. It also felt good to work on something small after the queen quilt.
When I made Elephant, I was throwing some stash fabrics together to put a bright, boy’s quilt in my shop, but I decided to keep it. While I worked on other projects, I kept my eyes open for more feminine stash fabrics that might do for the girl’s quilt. My first grouping was too pink and floral, though I still want to use those fabrics together soon (for one thing, they’re still grouped in a basket under my cutting table…). When I found this aqua print, I knew I had a companion quilt that would coordinate with Elephant without being matchy matchy or sickly sweet.
The cabins are Kona Salmon, Coffee, and Azure, with a green Grunge. The solids aren’t dead matches to the print, but they work. The sashing is an off-white grunge. Every block has a quilted flower in the center (Sulky white rayon), and the sashing is quilted with leafy vines. I know, leaves again, but I love to quilt them almost as much as feathers.
My twin great niece and nephew aren’t due till August, but these little quilts just happened and they feel right.
Of course, my studio is a mess because all the pulled fabric is still out (but I did cut up and put away all the scraps!), plus I have a pile of orphan blocks I want to use on the back of the new scrap quilt I’ve started, plus someone contacted me about making a baseball baby quilt, so that fabric is out… It looks…creative!
I’m linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts. Go there to see lots of finishes!
Evening in the Garden Quilts 