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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Plague Edition

 Ach, I have a doozy of a cold, flat out misery making.  The last 2 days have been horrible, I slept for long stretches and tried to give myself time to recover. I feel marginally better today, all dosed up with cold medication and stuff for my headache. This is the first time since 2020 that I have a cold that wasn't passed on from my family. I'm always so careful when I go out, but I attended a lot of appointments last week, without a mask, and some germ moved in.  I will get a batch of chicken soup in the IntantPot and that will help I'm sure.

What were some of these appointments? For a start there was a sale at a sewing shop featuring $5 a metre fabric.  Most of the cheap fabrics were panels, and even at that price not a lot of people were interested. Mereth and I certainly weren't, so most of what we bought was $9 a metre.

You can't ever have too many blues or greens.

These are cheerful colours, very welcome, but I wish I'd bought more of that map fabric. Sometimes being sensible is regrettable. 

 I kept within my budget, buying mostly half metres of useful blenders, but there were 2 Martha Negley fabrics that I grabbed. 

Such beautiful colours and patterns.

 I really want to make a Mathemagical quilt, using my Kaffes and other splashy bright fabrics. but I don't have very many now. I need 12 FQs, and I would be scratching to come up with that many, so these gorgeous fabrics will fill the gaps.  I absolutely do not want to walk into a quilt shop and buy more Kaffe FQs, after working to get them out of my stash.

There was also a trip back to the closing sale of a craft shop, because he's now offering a 40% discount.  He's a bit pricey, so such a big discount still leaves some things not cheap enough, We went for widebacks, scissors, some magnifying aids and some spinning supplies.  

Next month, the discount goes to 50% off, so I will have a look at more spinning stuff and some cross stitch supplies. 

What else have I been doing? I got the borders on the blue Square within A Square top, and it looks very nice.

 Snowballing all those corners took so much time, but I do like the look of it. I got the idea from a picture on Jo's Country Junction, one of Ray's charity quilts. It's the 4th photo. There are so many ideas out there, and it was a great idea to make a quilt a bit special.

I think that's only my 3rd finish this year, I've been sewing, but not completing much. I made dozens of blocks from my 2.5" strips, but I don't feel compelled to sew them into tops. I need to have a big shake up when I feel better, and decide what to work on next.

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A Use For Those Samples

 I did get busy and cut those samples up into 8.5" squares and made Scrappy Mountain Majesty blocks.

These really aren't my cup of tea, but they will make a nice quilt.

It will be mainly green and brown, with a bit of rusty orange here and there. I'm not using anything floral or girly, hoping it will appeal to someone wanting a quilt for a guy. My son was very anti-floral when it came to his quilt😄

When it comes time to trim the pieced triangles into 2" strips I use two rulers to make sure that I'm able to get 4 equal strips. Often I make the initial cuts just a tad too wide, and when I get to the last one it's not 2" at all.  So I only make the cut when I can see I'm trimming off 2", and there is enough left for more 2" strips.  I can't tell you how long it took me to figure that out. Sigh.

When I'm in the workroom I've been working on these long neglected Triple Treat blocks.  I started them last winter, and they've been languishing ever since, for a silly reason.  When I made those little 4patches I didn't square them up, or take any care to make them accurate, so the blocks don't fit together as nicely as I would like. Just deal with it, I told myself. It's too late to go back and fix them all, and I'm having to mash them together any way I can.  That is not how I like to work, so I'm finishing them with a very bad grace.  Some of the 4patches are 20 years old, before I had decent glasses, or a decent quarter inch seam allowance. Yes I'm using them up, but they're making me miserable. I need to be done with them and move on.

Luckily I have lovely little flowers to sweeten my mood, and I won't make any more slapdash units just to use them up. It's not worth it.

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