A rough week.

Last week I didn't feel the best, not sure why. I could blame the weather I suppose. It's been hot and cold and rainy and stormy and generally unsettled. I had a couple of quilting jobs to do for a friend, and I'd come home so wiped out all I could do was have a nap and try to recover. When I have a late afternoon nap I'm usually up later than I intend, so I sleep in, and I'm tired all day, and then I have another nap and perpetuate the bad routine.

When I'm up late I often do some last minute sewing, trying to make the last bit of the day productive. For some reason I fixated on these black and cream chain blocks from February 24.

They'd been kitted up waiting since May 24, and I had no interest in finishing them, but they jumped to the head of the queue for some reason. Mereth hates it when I get stuck on my duty sewing, she says it's so boring to come visit and there's no change to my design wall. But I persevered and now I have 26 blocks ready to sell. 

I think they'd be great to frame machine embroidered blocks, or hand embroidery in black or red. Or applique. Must not get involved on any of that, my saner self tells my Inner Squirrel.

I could pat myself on the back for taking another thing off the WIP list, except that I started another one immediately. I was sorting through some orphan blocks and found these 2 from 2012. 

I made a quilt I  called This And That from my scraps, and these 2 were spares. 

I remembered that they were so much fun to make, they solved my 2.5" scrap overflow and the quilt they made was one of my favourites. I had just weeded all the small strips out of the 2.5" drawer, so I cut piles of them into squares and triangles for this. So I had 37 WIPs, down to 36, and now back up to 37. I'm starting to think it's just not humanly possible to eliminate all the UFOs.

Working my way through the archive of tops that I've completed and sold:

Ladder Star, another of Bonnie's patterns. This was made entirely from my plaid stash, and unfortunately it only dented it, not eliminated it as I'd hoped. I overcut of course, so now I have a kit with enough squares and triangles for a Sawtooth Star top. Must try harder not to overcut.....

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Where was I?

I've been in Adelaide with the family. I could have blogged from there, but I forgot the cord for my laptop, and the tablet was not co-operating with Blogger, so I just gave up.

Before I left I got these blocks put together into a top, and I still haven't decided if it needs a border. Maybe a narrow one? 

Don't know what I want to do next; I found some scraps that looked nice together and make a 9" block. It's pretty, but I don't think I have more of those fabrics. I'll put it in the box with my other blocks that size, and I might be able to find some co-ordinating fabrics to make more.

Quilt tops from the archives:

This one used up a lot of 2" squares, left over from a Trip Around The World. It's based on a Quiltedtwins pattern but I chose not to do the triple sashing. It was a great scrap buster, I'd like to do another one when my scraps have built up again.

This one was to whittle down my grey fabrics.

I seem to have collected far too many, so a simple triangle pattern helped thin them out. I threw in a few aqua and apricot triangles to lighten it up. It was fun to make, but I still have a lot of grey fabric.

This top was just 2.5 and 1.5" strips.

It went together really easily, just some fun piecing for a quick top.

My daughter Seonaid and family went up to visit my son Rhys and family in Brisbane, right in the middle of some horrendous storm activity. It was bad timing, so many lightning storms that it wasn't safe to be outside for a lot of the time. There was a lot of reading and playing inside instead.

Isla was very good with her small cousins, she read them so many books, and carried Charli everywhere. And Freddy whenever possible.

They ventured out on Halloween for a spot of trick or treating, which is not huge in Australia. I love how Finn and Theo hold hands when they walk.

This photo is of the same pair last year. I can't believe they have both grown so much. It seems to happen so quickly.

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I made a few Sawtooth Stars yesterday,and it was fun, so it looks like the Annette Gero Star quilt is underway.

I have some very odd stripes and repro fabrics that don't lend themselves to cutting into bitty pieces, so they will find a use here. I'm not going to be strict about using fabric only once, but I am going to scour the cupboards tracking down all those weird pieces. It would be a shame not to use them with all the others.

I'm pressing the stars like this. I hate turning up the point of the geese unit, it tend to blunt even perfect points, so I'm hoping this will help everything look crisp. I'm getting fussier as I age.

Just for fun I've started mucking around with a new projects. Flourishing Palms blog had instructions for a strip quilt using 1.5" strips, encircling a centre strip. She has complete instructions here Filmstrip quilt

I don't have strips of modern fabric that narrow, but when I cut up those FQs I will definitely cut strips for this.  It will make a nice baby quilt one  day.

So 2 new projects are underway, but I did terminate 3 projects. I sold these blocks on Facebook recently; I had no interest in seeing them to completion.

Box Kite, another Bonny Hunter block. Fun to make, but 68 was enough

Scrap Bear Paw. I loved making these, and they obligingly used up a heap of charm squares, but I didn't need to put them together. It's quite tiring for me to wrangle a whole quilt these days, and other people are thrilled to get blocks like this for a quick finish.

and some blue/green/aqua blocks. I have more of these cut out, but a lady made a special request, so these are off to make her happy, and I will fill the project box up with more of them.

So I've been busy, even if there's not a lot to show for it.

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My stash Needs Sorting

 I'm still wandering around the sewing room, opening boxes and being bemused with what I've squirreled away. I'm finding fabric I have no memory of, and remnants of old projects, and little collections that I might have meant to start new projects with. But it's all a bit of a mystery.

This fabric is not something I ever would have bought in a quilt shop, and there's so much of each that it's unlikely I found it in an op-shop 😕. I would remember that.

The fabric is probably from a huge haul we got from a garage sale earlier in the year. A crafty lady had passed on and her family were trying to get rid of her stash, which wasn't just fabric. She had enormous tubs full of feathers, or sequins, or modelling clay, or buttons or paper or paint.  It was mind-blowing. We took about 10% of the fabric, but it was all prepacked in bags, with a lot of rubbish packed in with the good stuff, and it was priced way too high. We haggled over the bits we did want, and didn't pay too much, but the bulk of it all was still there when we went back in the evening of the second day. (Just to check there was nothing there we missed.) I'm actually glad we didn't get any more, because it's been difficult for our spaces to absorb the amount we did buy.

Going through my boxes and drawers has made me realise that the things that are giving me grief are the bits and pieces that I didn't want, didn't buy, and have no idea what to do with. We accumulate a lot from the quilts we finish for other people; they don't want the backing scraps, and we can't bring ourselves to throw it away.  It's mostly narrow strips and strings of really nice fabric, Tilda and William Morris to name a couple. Hence my foray into String piecing earlier this year, in an attempt to use some of it up. I was moderately successful, but the baskets of strings are still overflowing.

I did finish a string pieced top made from Kaffe offcuts from the patchwork shop in Jamestown. 

I really enjoyed working with those prints, but I didn't need to keep the top.

So I did what I usually do and sold it. And no, I don't make a lot of money from that, but this top was constructed from a small part of a $15 scrap bag, and fabric from the deep stash. I'm not in it for the money, I want to use my stash. The hours and hours of enjoyable sewing is an extra bonus.

We've been watching The Quilted Forest on You-tube, and her attempts to clear out her 2.5" bucket of strips. It's fascinating to watch, she's up to 24 videos in that series, and sometimes she makes 2 quilts per video. Very inspiring. Maybe if I could commit to a string pieced project every month I'd see progress.  Even 5 blocks a month would dent that pile of strings.

What I really need to do is start donating fabric back to the charity shops.  If it's not my cup of tea, get rid of it instead of trying to incorporate it into a scrap quilt.

Polyester. That's an instant No. 

Technically not ugly, but not my style at all. Back to the charity shop to make someone else happy.

I don't like Debbie Mum fabric, or 90s fabric with geese and straw hats and teddies. I don't like black backgrounds and dreary greyed-out colours. It can all go straight back. I think I will start a donation box right away. I'd better show Mereth, otherwise she might find it in the shop and bring it back again. We've done that before. What are we like?

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Play Time

I only meant to assess the situation with the Plaid blocks, but I got busy putting the cut pieces together, then realised I only needed 8 more to complete the top, so that's what I did. I went to the trouble of trimming each block, only to discover that they all measured 7.5" exactly. What a nice little block to put together.

They aren't all together yet, I assembled them into groups of 4, and I'll get it in one piece today. Then I can think about whether it needs a border or not. It might benefit from a 2.5" strip all round it to secure all those edge seams.

I had a little play with the Tucker Trimmer ruler, making Cat's Cradle blocks (or Mary's Triangles, or Shaded 4Patch) in various sizes. In 2020 I finished a top called Beloved from a favourite book, The Big Book of Civil War Quilts. 

I didn't have a ruler to help with the hundreds of Cat's Cradle blocks involved, and I cut all the pieces the exact size, which led to some struggles with piecing.

The ruler worked well, and I found it fascinating that this is one of those blocks that can be trimmed down to any size. An Hourglass block, or a HST can also be made bigger and then trimmed down.  If I were making a miniature with these units I would definitely make them larger and then cut them down to the size I needed. I've since discovered a Creative Grids ruler that might work even better, and I'm debating if I need yet another ruler to clutter up my table. But I'm a gadget girl after all, and with our current fabric prices here that's the equivalent of 1.5m of fabric..

I have other things I want to do right away, but I'll be on the lookout for a quilt design that I can use these units in, now that it's easy to do them.

What else am I doing? Still opening project boxes and organising the contents. So many of them are just leftovers from tops I've already completed, and think I might want to make again, or a collection of fabric destined for a top that's hardly begun. I might have to persuade myself to be a bit more ruthless.

I attended an exhibition of Anette Gero's  quilts many years ago, and took photos of my favourites. Annette is an Australian historian, and began collecting antique quilts long before it was fashionable here in Australia. 

I loved the quirky 1800s prints in these Sawtooth Stars, and about 10 years ago I set aside all my suitable fabrics in a project box.  I made one star, and  to me the project was underway. 

But it never moved past that initial block. By the end of today I'm going to have made a decision on whether this goes ahead, or if it goes back into stash.

Some of these pieces have disappeared from the stash, and I thought I'd used them all up. Not so; I'd cut 8" strips and squirreled them away in this box. I'm glad to see them again, and I hope a little of them survives this project and enters the stash again.

Strange, strange prints, but they will work in a quilt like this. If I decide to do it.

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Dabbling

 Sometimes after I've made a big effort to finish something I don't know what to tackle next. I've spent some time cutting up shirts and contemplating the UFO list. I ironed a whole bunch of scraps and FQs that I intend to cut up for the strip drawers. I went through the photos I've saved on my phone and computer and I drew up possible new projects in my graph paper book.

In keeping with my resolution to get in touch with all my UFOs I pulled out my Plaid project and cut more pieces for those blocks. 

I can use 3.5" strips for both sections of these blocks, and then just add in 1.5" squares from my overflowing basket of them. I'll sew this lot up tomorrow and then decide where it's going.

Tonight I tackled my 1.25" strips that resulted from the last time I cut up scraps. 

I sorted them all into lengths and, consulting my list of sizes for my Log Cabin blocks, cut them all into pieces for more blocks.

 Oddly enough, though I was cutting sizes randomly, I ended up with enough pieces for 11 blocks exactly. That seems very strange to me, when I wasn't trying to do that. But then I added them to the piles I already have and it became apparent that I need a lot more light pieces. I guess I'll get busy tomorrow cutting up more light fabrics into 1.25" strips.

I don't feel very motivated at night, so I just sewed up the Scrappy Mountain Majesty blocks. 

I unearthed a whole heap of fabric scraps that I can cut more squares out of, so I'll tackle that tomorrow.  Maybe after a couple of days dabbling in this and that I'll have come to a decision about my next project.

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