Count Me In

Ok, I am jumping in for the friday night sew-in. What will I work on?? My choices are:

• Charm square table runner
• Paper piecing more for Briar Patch

These will probably more than use up the evening!

Working on my PhD's

Myra at Tactile Pleasures is hosting a PhD Challenge! What is a PhD?? It is a Project Half Done that needs to be completed. I have LOTS of those!! In an effort to play along and get something accomplished for myself at the same time, I have decided to join in with all the others who are joining this challenge. I am going to set a certain time either daily or weekly that I will spend on PhD's.


Now, I'm not sure if this pink and yellow disaster I was working on is a PhD yet or if it is still my current project but, I have decided that the blocks are all to be unsewn and then remade paying closer attention to the contrast within each block. What a lot of work but... I am stubborn and determined. It would be easier to scrap it all and start again but... thats where my frugal nature kicks in. Worked all afternoon yesterday and managed to get 15 of the 72 blocks unsewn. It better be worth it....

Pink & Yellow Disappointment OR The Importance of Contrast

Finally, I decided that enough is enough. I NEED a design wall. Off I went to our local fabric store and there I found some 274cm wide flannel in a natural color. Knowing I wanted to mount the flannel directly to the wall above my sewing machine, I needed only 1.6 M to do the job. I straightened both ends of the cuts and hemmed all sides. With help from a friend, we pulled all the stuff away from the wall and stapled the flannel to the wall under my magazine shelf. FINALLY, I have a design wall!!!! It cost me all of  $15.00.

First things up on the wall are the blocks for my pink and yellow quilt. Well, a bit more than half of them. I knew my wall would not have enough room to accommodate a full size quilt all at once. BUT, seeing those blocks up there... I am feeling quite disappointed with this quilt. The inspiration for doing this design and color choice came from Hanne's Quilt Corner and a quilt she made . I loved her quilt the moment I saw it!

When I made my first 4 blocks, I had used just two fabrics for each block. I decided I wanted it to be more scrappy (like Hanne's) so I took those apart then went right ahead and made ALL the blocks mixing up all the fabrics. When I look at it on the wall now, it looks like a scrambled mess to me. The chains through the blocks are not showing up because of the lack of contrast in the blocks. MAJOR disappointment. I am thinking now I should have gone with the original blocks using 2 fabrics per block and making sure there was a good contrast between the colors in each block. I am unsure now if I even want to finish this quilt. Picking out 72 blocks would be a HUGE task but, it would be one way to salvage this mess.

Stash Report for Week 2

Used this week: 0 M (Not counting the fabric to make my design wall)
Used Year to Date: 8.25 M
Added this week: 0 M (Again, not counting the fabric for my design wall)
Added Year to Date: .9 M
Net used for 2010: 7.35 M

Stash Report - Week 1

Thought that this might be a good way for me to audit the fabric ins and outs here at my house. Here is my first ever Stash Report:

Used this week: 8.25 M

Used Year to Date: 8.25 M

Added this week: .9 M

Added Year to Date: .9 M

Net used for 2010: 7.35 M

One of the quilts that are using up this fabric is a pink and yellow Double Four Patch quilt for my guest bed. I saw this color combination a while back and have wanted to do a quilt ever since! It just happens to be perfect for the guest bed as it has a yellow bed skirt. Since this bed is rather tall, I had to add an extra bit across the bottom to lengthen it. I had just a little of the fabric left to use in the quilt so hopefully it will all co-ordinate. Sure can't look any worse than that old comforter that is on there right now!


The rest of the fabric is for the mystery quilt-along called Hazels Diary.  I've had this butterfly print sitting around for a few years already. Originally, it was supposed to be used in a challenge quilt for our local guild. Think it may be a bit late to enter?

Catching Up

So, for the Final Countdown at Prairie Moon Quilts, Dec 30th, Shelly assigned Task Four "Clean up the area around your sewing machine". I had already pretty much done that on day one because I didn't have a quilt ready for binding. I put the extra Ott Lite away and all the extra thread that had collected, gave everything a good wipe down and I was done. Woo Hoo... a free day to work on my new project!

Went to the quilt store and picked up 3 strips of pink that I was short for the blocks. I've decided too that I want this quilt to look scrappier so I am going to take apart the first four blocks I made. The blocks made from here on will have all different yellows and pinks in them. Hopefully, that will spread out the one yellow print that I wanted to use as it matches the bed skirt in the guest room. Wouldn't you know it, but now, I don't really like that print with the other fabrics. It seems to demand too much attention.

Day five of the Final Countdown was New Years Eve. Shelly's Task Five was "Pampering and Dreaming". As a reward I bought myself a new quilting magazine to read and dream over. Thanks Shelly for coming up with this idea. Everyone who participated has won because we all have clean and organized sewing spaces to start the new year!!

Too many books!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Hoping this year is a whole lot better than the last!

For the Final Countdown at Prairie Moon Quilts, the task for day three was  "Straighten up your stacks of magazines and/or your quilting book shelf". How did she know that this was something that I REALLY needed to do? It took me about 4 hours to do this and, I discovered, I have a LOT of books and magazines.

Here is the bookshelf. These are reference books and pattern books. I wish I could say I have made something out of each but, sadly, I have not.

Here is the shelf that is high on the wall above my sewing machine. This is used to store magazines. Most of the magazines up there have little tags sticking out the top of them marking projects I thought I wanted to make. I probably need to revisit a lot of those magazines and get rid of some of them, if I can. I seem to have this thing for acquiring them and it is difficult for me to let them go. I realize that this behavior could ultimately become a problem so it is something I need to work on. It won't be done in a day, however.

I am not adding to my magazine collection like I used to. A few years back, I would buy every quilting magazine that came on the news stand. I decided that I would only buy a magazine if there was a quilt pattern in it that I really, really loved and thought I might actually make. So many of the patterns that are in magazines are just a rehash of older patterns with new fabrics. So during 2009, I bought only 7 magazines. Quite the difference from previous years.

 

Preparing for the New Year

Thought that it may be a good idea to join in with Shelly at Prairie Moon Quilts in her "Final Countdown" to the end of the year. She will be setting out a task for us each day until the last day of the year. Of course, there is a prize for doing all five tasks which is a bonus!

I have already completed the first two tasks. Day one was to finish sewing a binding on a quilt. I didn't have anything in the works to the point of doing a binding so, instead I decided to make sure that any tops I have done have the bindings cut and stored with the top so that I don't use the fabric for something else. Since I usually do cut the binding right away, this didn't take very long and I spent some time tidying up the sewing room.

I also started to pull out some fabric for a new quilt I want to make for on my guest bed. I saw a quilt I loved on Hanne's Quilt Corner and decided it was just what I wanted to do. I pulled out all the pink and yellow fabrics I could find to audition for the new quilt. I think its going to be a good quilt to work on because of the happy colors.

Day two task was to put away any stray fabric. Since I had already done a tidy-up yesterday, I didn't have a lot to put away other than what I rejected for the new quilt. I spent a few hours ironing fabrics and cutting for the quilt. Then, I sewed up four blocks just to see how they looked!

I went back and looked at the pattern on Mary's blog and saw that she did her red and cream Double Four Patch all scrappy. Now I am wondering if I should just mix up all my fabrics for a scrappier look or if I should just continue going on the way I have started? What do you think?

Two blocks for Joseph's Coat

An update on my slow progress on my Joseph's Coat blocks. I have only completed two blocks so far. The first I did using the instructions as written by Kellie at Don't Look Now using glue stick to prepare the appliqué shapes. I think that perhaps my glue stick was old as it did not stick well. I found a newer one but I have found that the glue is still a bit sticky even after more than a week.

Since I was not able to find a local supplier of the Floriani Stitch and Wash Fusible nor a reasonably priced mail order source to Canada, I have had to resort to using freezer paper which I have in abundance. I decided to experiment with spray starch for prepping the shapes and found I liked it a bit better. I am able to get nice sharp points without any trouble.

Using freezer paper means that it must be removed at some point. I am stitching down one side of the 'petals' in the center of the block then removing the paper just prior to stitching the second side down. I took them out of the outer edge petals on the first block after stitching down the one side but soon discovered that they should be left in until after the blocks are joined as the outer edges have not stayed turned under. I was trying to make the block look nice to photograph and when I hit it with the iron, all those edges kinda got messed up. As a result of this lesson, the block on the left may not make the final cut unless I am able to do needle-turn on those edges. That will be determined when we get the block joining instructions.

Happy stitching!!

Here I go.. making adjustments to Joseph's Coat

I spent most of Sunday doing the prep work for Joseph's Coat but not without a few problems.

My first problem was my compass. It would only open to a maximum size of just over 4.5 inches and the instructions call for a compass set to 5.5 inches. I decided to just go with the 4.5 inches which should make my blocks for this quilt finish about 9 inches which I think (hope) will be ok.

When I began drawing the circles, I discovered that it made a difference in how I held my cheapo compass. The difference in the circles could be as much as 1/8 inch off. I used some tape to secure the shaft of my pencil to the arm of the compass to keep it from wiggling and managed to draw my basic pattern.

I created the template and drew some petal shapes onto freezer paper as I have plenty of it on hand. I did do a trick to make lots of petals at once. I layered more sheets of freezer paper underneath the top one with the drawn petals. Then, I put a staple into each petal to secure all the layers.

I also used my Clover mini iron to heat bond the layers together BETWEEN the petals. You have to be sure not to get the petals bonded or they won't come apart. (Lesson learned) I then rough cut rows of petal shapes and continued to staple the next rows until all were cut. I took these to my comfy chair and spent an hour watching quilt shows on video while I cut all the petals out.
Once all the petals were cut precisely, I removed the staples and separated them. (This is when I discovered that some of my stacks were accidentally welded together when I did the iron tacking trick.. so I lost a few.)I've decided to just use scraps for this project so I got out all my strips and ironed the freezer paper petal shapes onto the wrong sides. I cut out enough to make one block and proceeded to glue the edges. This is when I discovered that glue sticks can get old and become useless. The edges would not stick down. I went digging and found another glue stick and it worked better although those pointy ends are VERY fiddly and difficult to get precise. I found that it was a bit easier if I also used the Clover mini iron to heat set the glue especially on the points.  (I may experiment using spray starch to prep my petals to see if it works better for me.) I had 12 petals prepared and the whole day was gone. Next, I need to decide just how big I am going to make this so I can find some background fabric to use. Right now, I am thinking perhaps crib or lap size....

Don't Look Now...

Photo is from Don't Look Now.

Kellie has a wonderful, happy color filled blog called Don't Look Now. She is currently hosting a quilt-along doing a design she calls Joseph's Quilt. Everything about this quilt (and Kellies site and other patterns for that matter) says HAPPY to me... 

I was debating on whether or not I would commit myself to another long-term hand project right now but this is Oh-So-Tempting! When I was checking out some of the links to others' sites, I found many that didn't seem to connect so... in a moment of abandon, I posted a comment letting Kellie know. Seems now, I am the quilt-along police...  LOL  No worries but, I figure I had better jump in and start one of my own now! I posted my link to her Mr. Linky and... wouldn't you know it... it is going to an old post, not to this one...  I feel so silly...

I best be off to find some fabrics. I am thinking that I may just do this like the original Joseph's Coat and make it of many colors - scraps! Guess I better get a wiggle on....