This And That

I put the borders on This And That today, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. 

Using green in the borders brought out the green in the patchwork. It feels good to be able to cross this off the list.

I'm working on those Fancy 4Patch blocks, I'm up to 16 finished and 10 kitted. I make all the HSTs first, then I cut the 1.5" squares for each block and bag them up. 

I'll decide later if I want the 2.5" squares to be the same fabric or something different.

One night I saw the Periwinkle project box tucked away on a high shelf and pulled it down to see what needed to be done to it. I've chosen and cut the sashes, and I'll machine sew them, so I trimmed all 35 blocks to be an accurate 9.5" square. They weren't bad for hand pieced blocks, only a few had skimpy seam allowances. Now it should be easy to lay them out and get them sewn into a top.

I based this on a Grant Wood painting that was in one of my quilt books, and now I can't remember what book.  I found images of the painting, Spring In Town, online, but in all of them the pink and green quilt on the left has been cropped out. 

This was the best I could find, and the quilt is all smeared.  I'll keep looking for the image in the book; it will be an excuse to go through all my old favourites.

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Progress Report

One UFO has made it to finished top stage.

This took a few hours while I fiddled with how to finish the edges, trying to be fancy, but ultimately I was limited by the amount of fabric I had. I love how it turned out, and I love how vibrant it is with  the black linking the autumn colours, but I think I'm over using black for a while.     And I'm never going to start another black project without ensuring I have more than enough fabric.

Onward to another on the WIP list. I finished 2 more blocks on this scrappy project. It's called Scrappy Dappy Do on the YouTube video, but I refuse to use that name. I'll call it Strippy Diamonds I think.

I'm sewing this on my dear little Pfaff, which is just the sweetest machine. I think she has a touch of dementia though; when I turn her on she takes a lot of fiddling to make her sew normally. She responds with a gathering stitch no matter how many buttons I push, until I'm ready to give up, and then she relents and gives me a normal stitch length. I thought, at least she's a later model, I can have her serviced, but then I find that she's actually 24 years old. So almost vintage. A motherboard fix might be expensive or not even possible. 

I got busy and sewed up all but 5 of the little cross blocks that were my leader enders. I have 76 now, I will do some experimenting and see what they might become. I'm thinking a border in a medallion quilt. And yes, there are some blocks in that photo that are a new start.

My 2.5" repro strips were bugging me, so I cut out a pile of these blocks to get rid of them. I don't like 1800s blocks with that size strip, so I cut these blocks from any that were long enough. They're fun to piece, so I'll make up what I've cut out and then see what I can do with them.

My other leader ender is the Spinning Rectangle.  I now have 55, but I will need hundreds of these 4" blocks, so a long way to go yet.

I'm actually cutting pieces for them as I go through the 2.5" strip drawer, and making kits. I'm really terrible at the whole random thing, so having them all bagged up is a time saver. No trying to find the perfect bit to use, and wasting time that I could spend sewing.

There was another trip to the craft shop sale. More $11 fabric, and the floral was $6 a metre. The sale is only for another 3 weeks, so we're excusing our purchases on the grounds that in 3 weeks he'll have shut up shop for good.

I have seen bloggers post about pretty granny square blankets they've found in the op-shop and I must admit I've been a bit jealous. Yesterday I found one of my own, in a bin marked Dog Blankets.

Sometimes these crocheted rugs are covered in pet hair, old lady hair, dirt, holes and stains, and yes they should be used for pets. But this is perfectly clean and undamaged, so I rescued it.

I will use it to keep warm while I crochet my own version this winter.

Mothers Day, and my favourite flowers are in full bloom. One of my favourite flowers, I have so many. I appreciate chrysanthemums so much more because they are a once a year treat. Such a generous display of beautiful flowers!

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Working On Several Projects

I had already chosen the fabric for the alternate squares for these blocks, and I'd even cut the squares, so it was an easy job to lay them out on the design wall.

The hard part is deciding how big to make the quilt. 7 x 7 blocks would be 56" square. Not big enough. I know I want the blocks to be in the corners; either I make a square  quilt, or one that is 16" longer than it is wide. It will have 4" borders too. I can't make up my mind; it's either going to be 64" x 80", or 80" square. I'd better measure my bed and see if I can even use an 80" quilt. It's definitely staying with me, I love it.

My inspiration photo was this:

from this book.

I loved the green and the plain quilting, and the farmhouse feel. I didn't love the blocks, and I thought my Cat's Claw blocks would be perfect. (I know they're called Devil's Claw, but I don't like that name, and I modified it slightly so it's not a regular 9patch in the middle, so it's called Cat's Claw instead.)

I'm sewing rows of 7 together, just a few at a time so I don't get jaded about it. While I sewed I made some more Spinning Rectangle blocks, and assembled some more Fancy 4-Patches as well.

I checked on Instagram and they're up to week 8, 4 blocks a week, so I'm aiming for 32 and then it can go away till next month. I have quite a few kitted up, so I think I can finish them in a week or so.

One night I worked exclusively on these little cross blocks. I finished 6, and put together the cross part for another 20. I started these as a way to use up 2" strips of 1800s fabrics, and they cleared a lot out of the scrap drawers. I need to decide how I want to use these, because I don't know that I have many more pieces in the scrap drawer that will be suitable.

We're finally getting some cold temperatures, mainly at night, the days are still pleasant. My tomato plants were pretty well dead, so I stripped off anything remaining on them. It's not a big harvest! I'll make some spaghetti sauce and get a few meals from it, but that's it for the year. Next up is planting spring onions and silverbeet, and that's enough for a winter garden. Plus some pansies. And a gerbera or two.....

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Advance - My Word For May

 April seemed to just vanish; I know I did some sewing and organising, but not as much as I would have hoped. My trip away took up one third of the month, so I wasn't very productive. I've chosen a word for May, one that I need to consider every time I sit down to sew, or wonder what to do next. Advance; what can I do to advance my projects closer to a finish. I don't expect to have a huge amount of tops done by the end of the month but I do want to see that I have worked on my stalled projects and brought them closer to a finish.

I have several tops that are at the border stage, and I've moved on to something else rather than finish them. My sewing set up is a bit cramped and that puts me off wrestling with a whole top, but I do have an ideal space at the shop. I need to spend more time there and get the tops finished.They include This And That, Fox And Geese and the black and autumn grannies made from leftovers.

I went through so many fabrics trying to find 'The One.' Eventually Mereth made me try a wideback we've been hoarding, and it does look nice. 

This print annoyed me because the pattern slopes down across the width of the fabric, and it's very noticeable. I cut 4 strips lengthwise, because I have many metres of it, so hopefully it will go together nicely.

This has been in time out because I couldn't match the black fabric. It's a very blue black. When I was going through a scrap bag I found a half metre of black with a midnight blue swirl, and decided it would do, because this top really needed to be finished.

I've also started a lot of block collections to use as leader-enders. It always works best when I just have one leader-ender, but I get side-tracked so easily. I'm sewing the Spinning Rectangles, 

but also the little cross blocks. When I run out of pieces I swap to the other one instead of cutting more pieces. I'm surprised I don't have a third one in the works.

I want to work on my blue and green scrappy project this month. I only want 12 blocks, and they are very easy to sew. 

I need to make some more Fancy 4-Patches, because I've not been keeping up with those. I have no deadline for them, but if I never touch them then I never make any progress.

This collection of blocks also deserves some attention.  I have 37 made, and I imagine that's enough for whatever I want to do. I would also like to make more Triple Treat blocks, and more Four Patch Fun blocks. I have so many kits prepared for them, I need to pull out a few of them every week and get them further along.

I'm not aiming to get everything finished, but I do want to be able to say that I didn't waste my time this month. It's so easy to get distracted these days. I'm going to have to limit my computer time, so that I don't get ideas and start so many new projects. And stop buying so much fabric that tempts me even more.

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Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

I went to Adelaide to visit family for 10 days, and now I'm back. What a hectic time it was, and Isla turned 10 years old. It's so hard to comprehend that 10 whole years have gone past since she arrived and made me Nan. She's an inch shorter than me, and growing like a weed, such long legs! That is because of her grandfather's genes, not anyone on my side of the family. We're all like hobbits, and DH was a man of Gondor. It's a Lord Of The Rings thing.

 I succumbed to another $1 FQ sale at Spotlight. Isla scored another lot for her stash, and we used some of the new FQs to make pajamas for her teddy.  I showed her how to sew the top by hand, and we did the pants on the machine. She's much more comfortable with the machine than with a needle, but we'll work on that.

Finn was his usual energetic self, but we had some good times reading. His siblings have been lording it over him because he couldn't read and they could; we spent a lot of time together going through his school readers and something clicked. He knows all the sounds and the theory and the sight words, but he just wasn't putting it together and then suddenly he made sense of it all. When I left he was reading cereal boxes and the toothpaste tube and the instructions in the games he plays. I said to Seonaid, it's sad when they are able to read the headlines on magazines and papers in the supermarket, and become aware of the news. They get to know a whole lot of stuff you wish they didn't.

My brain was fried by the time I drove home, too much energy and movement from the kids, too much traffic, too many people in my space every time I left the house. I'm so glad to be returning to my quiet life for a spell. I sincerely hope I haven't jinxed myself with that statement.

I left these blocks on the design wall when I left, so yesterday I sewed them all into a small top, probably just lap size. 

There are leftover bright squares, but I'm working on a plan for those. What I also have are 214 bonus HSTs from the snowballed squares. They finish at 1.75", so I will have to come up with a plan for them.

Instead of using 2.5" squares to snowball the white squares I used  3" squares.  

That gave me a larger bonus triangle to work with, and subtly changed the block without affecting the overall look. It also meant  that I didn't have a big lump of seam allowances to deal with, so it was a good idea.

I'm looking forward to getting back to these scrap blocks. I've gone from thinking these blue and green strips were garbage to loving the look of these blocks.

They are so easy and fun to sew, and they look a lot more complex than they are. Proving yet again, that no scrap is too small to use.

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Closer to a FInish

I got a bee in my bonnet about finishing This And That, and sewed steadily on the blocks, sure that I would have units left over. Imagine my horror then, to find I actually need another 5 units. It felt like making those 10 extra HSTs would take forever and I would never get it done. 

Once I put the histrionics to one side it actually took less than half an hour, and I could then sew them into the required blocks and get them on the design wall.

It took a whole evening to sew the blocks into a top. There was much nesting of seams and pinning, but I really enjoyed it.

Because the unit and then the block seams were twirled, every seam nested perfectly, and it was a pleasure to pin and sew. Even if one piece was a little long or short, I could contain that within a 2" area, so the whole thing is flat as a tack. It was very satisfying. As far as choosing borders for it, that wasn't so pleasant; it was a struggle to find something acceptable, but I won that little battle after a few hours.

What have I been doing since then? Sewing on this bright project. I had a mild memory problem calling it Arkansas Traveller, which of course is an applique sampler quilt from the 1800s.  It's actually an Arkansas Crossroads, which I suddenly remembered while I was cooking dinner one night. It's very strange how minds work sometimes.

This will only be a single bed quilt, because I just want to use the leftovers from those bright strips; I don't want to cut a whole heap for this and then have to plan another quilt to use up the excess. What is on the design wall is half of what I need; I think another few nights will see this done and the box of squares emptied out.

I've been playing with another scrap design from Americana Quilting.  I have a box of blue and green scraps from a Bargello quilt and a Many Trips Around The World that I made probably a decade ago.

I knew I had more, and then Mereth unearthed another box of them from the scrap containers.

 Yep, that's a lot. They've been cluttering up the place since 2015, and I was close to putting them all in the bin, but I saw this video first. 

I made sample blocks, and I think it will be a wonderful way to get rid of these entirely. The blocks are a lot of fun to make, and I'm keen to get sewing on them.  I love how the internet can supply all these inspirations that are a solution at last to long term scrap problems. But it would have been a lot quicker to bin the lot of them......

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A Bit of This and That

I'm stalled on this Fox and Geese top.  First up, I sewed a row in the middle backwards, so my carefully arrangement of fabrics and colours went out the window. I did contemplate un-pulling 2 long seams, but I was too miffed to do it. I was so cranky that I hung it on a rack and didn't look at it for two weeks. I guess I shouldn't concentrate on speed above accuracy, but it was late at night and I was determined to get it in one piece.  Well I did, but I wasn't happy.

I've decided that it doesn't really matter, and that I should just put borders on it and call it done. But now the top is being bolshie, and refuses to tell me exactly what it wants.  A big sprigged  cream floral such as the left strip, or a warmer, denser floral like the right strip. I've tried everything I can think of in my stash, and it won't give me a yes or no. It can go back on the rack and think about it's attitude.

When I started to feel better in the early days of this cold I decided I just needed something easy and mindless to sew, and the kitted This and That blocks fit the bill.  

I sewed like a machine, 48 quadrants in one night, and the final count the next afternoon was 72, That's enough for 18 blocks, which is most of what I need. I'm aiming for 56 blocks, and later today I will do a count of what I have and finish the remaining kitted pieces. This is yet another example of a leader-ender fail; I always get to a certain point with them and then it becomes the primary project. But at least it will mean a free project box, which is very welcome.

Incidentally, I found this unit in Blockbase.

No 1326, Cotton Reels. Not seeing it myself, but that's what it says.

My prolonged cutting extravaganza of 2.5 and 4.5" strips produced a flurry of blocks, 50 Square Within a Square blocks, 48 Happy blocks and the blue top in the last post.  This is all that's left of that huge pile of strips.

Not very much. I ended up with a lot of 2.5" squares from the ends of strips, and I'm toying with the idea of an Arkansas Traveller in those brighter colours.

Of course I modified it a bit, and working out the changes kept me interested, and it will definitely become a project. I feel like I need to cut a heap more strips though, so that might happen in the next few days.

It's trying to become Autumn here, but our days are still very warm. I decided it was time to harvest some jalopenos and capsicums.

There are loads more jalopenos on the bushes, but I think the capsicums are over. Considering the bushes are 3 years old I think they've done well. I plan to pull them out and plant anew next year.  My tomatoes struggle on, with about 35 small fruits, but their days are numbered.  Then I can think of planting a few winter things like spinach and snap peas.  It's only a few pots, but it keeps me interested.

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