It's raining today, proper autumn rain, and therefore I can't shift any more boxes of stuff.  I had a clear conscience about spending the afternoon in the sewing room, where I managed to finish the Stack&Whack quilt. It's a lousy photo, but there was no natural light and the fluoro light was pretty pitiful.

  I love it, it's so pretty and intruiging with all the different patterns swirling through it.  It was a fun quilt to make, I'm very glad I bought that material in both sizes.

I found the book that the new madder quilt came from, and the original pattern was called Road to California.

I've cut a whole heap of strips for the blocks, but I haven't tried to match any of them up for individual blocks yet.  There are so many parts to this block, I'll be able to sew the 4 and 9 patches for ages before I have to make any more decisions.  I'm looking forward to these, but there are other things to do first.

I unfolded one piece of treasured fabric to find a fade line on it. 

It's about 12 years old, so it's been in the stash for a long while, but it's still disappointing to find that materials deteriorate like that.  I've used it in countless quilts over the years, so I suppose they will all end up fading too. It didn't stop me using it in this quilt though, I just cut around the fade mark.  One of the things I love about old quilts is the unpredictable way the colours have changed, so I'll trust that my quilts will end up being charmingly faded, not dreary and washed out.

The dogs don't have much logic to the way they think.  In their minds, the cure for boredom is going for a walk.  They've been lying around all day, eyeing the wet weather outside and sighing dramatically.  Then one of them will bounce up to me 'I'm bored with all this rain.  Can we go for a walk???' When we get to the door they stop and turn to me 'It's RAINING!!  I'm not going out in that...'  Five minutes later, 'Can we go for a walk??'  It's going to be a long night.

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I never used to be so fixated on the weather report, but now that I have a job that invoves 2-5 hours outside every day, the weather is very important.  Mereth and I don't mind the cold, or even the rain, but it's not fun on hot days to be wearing a helmet and protective vest, and trying to keep the sun out of the eyes. So this forecast makes me feel very relieved.

That's the end of summer in sight there, and the temperatures range from a high of 93° to a low of 79° ; no 108° degree days amongst the lot.  Everyone here is getting very tired of heat and having to water the gardens, and it seems that the last weeks of it are harder to bear.   But 93° is not unpleasant, so if that's the worst we get in the next 10 days I'll be happy.  Delerious even!  My gardening chores will be much lighter if I don't have to water every day.

The sewing room is looking emptier now; I keep discovering other things that I've tucked away, ready for the day when my sewing room is completely packed.  Two more kits came to light, one hand applique (as if that's going to happen!) and the other one involving 1.5" HSTs.  I don't think I'll be doing either of those when I'm tired out from work and moving, so they can go up the hall this afternoon.  I need to get drastic, and realistic, right about now, or I"m going to be sorry later on.  Declutter, downsize, purge, streamline, simplify; call it what you will, it needs to happen soon.

I'm having fun cutting strips for the madder quilt, and I'm justifying it by pointing out to myself that four boxes of fabric will be ready to leave by tonight.  Whatever I haven't done by then will have to wait.

Would it be wrong to make another test block?

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Every day that goes past brings moving day closer, and I'm trying to move all the small stuff ahead of time, so that the movers only deal with the large furniture.  Gradually the sewing room is getting emptier, as I ferry unneeded things back to the hall.  It's hard to let go of it though, I like to have everything here in case I need to cut more pieces, or try a new colour combination.  The only fabrics left in the sewing room now are my cream and white FQs, all my madders and greys, some weird large print reproductions and 4 drawers of scraps.  And my project boxes, all 9 of them.

I figure that if I run out of things to sew I can use the scrap drawers and the creams to make blocks at random.  There are the project boxes that I can work though.  I have two prepared kits that I can work on, but that doesn't seem enough somehow.  So today I started kitting up some blocks to go with the leftovers from my Double Anvil quilt, from all the way back in December 2007.

 I had enough pieces for 12 blocks, and the best thing seemed to be to cut some more to make a decent size quilt.  My resolve not to start something new hardly lasted 24 hours, sigh.  But I love the block, and a lot of the pieces were cut anyway, so I'm actually sort of finishing a UFO (even if it wasn't really started at all).

The large print repros were the perfect choice, I'm really happy to have found a place for the ones from the Battle Hymn line.  I love them, but the effect is lost when they're cut into small pieces.

I had to pull out the madder fabric to cut squares, and fell in love all over again with the beautiful fabrics I've collected over the last few years.  The greys from the Metropolitan Fair range will work well with them too.

I've never made a madder quilt, and it's high time I did, I have boxes of them.  On an impluse I decided to cut out another quilt I've had earmarked for these fabrics, and just had to make a test block.  It's from a quilt history book, but I can't remember which one, and they are all up at the hall now.

The block turned out just the way I wanted it to, so now I can go on a cutting spree to kit up at least 20 of them.  I love slicing up piles of fabric, I really enjoy unfolding the fabric and ironing it and cutting the strips and then folding it up again.  It's all very meditative.  And somewhat messy, as piles of fabric appear on every surface.
The madders made me remember a project I started in about 2005, so I dug that out and had a look. 

 55 six inch Sawtooth Stars, the pieces for another 12, and dozens of strips cut for more. 

 I rather think I wanted this to be a medallion quilt, but apart from that I can't recall a single thing about what I was planning to do.  Guess that allows me to do anything I want now.

 I love these madder prints, so rich and luscious.  I'm going to have fun inventing a plan for them.

I'm giving myself till Sunday night to get as much kitted up as possible, and then it's all going back to the hall.  Can't sit here and fiddle with fabric when I should be shifting and lugging and toting.  It would help if I wasn't so distractible.......

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There's not going to be much time for blogging in the next few weeks.  I'm looking after Pippi for Mereth while she's away; I'm also doing her job at the Post Office.  And as if that isn't enough I'm also watering her garden and my brothers garden, which is a big job in summer.  The last four days have been spent working or running from one property to another, turning hoses on and off and watering pots.  It didn't help that Monday was one of the hottest days we've had this summer, it was an absolute scorcher.  Not a day to remember and cherish, that's for sure.

Pips has been neurotic, looking for her mum, but is slowly getting better.  She sat outside Mereth's back door and whined for an hour the first time we went there, poor baby.  There's a lot of hiding under beds as well, but she's coming good, and in a few days time she won't even remember that she's been abandoned.  Until Mereth comes back, and then there will be hysterics.



Sorting and delivering mail is very hard on the hands, and my right hand in particular is feeling the strain, so I banned myself from doing anything yesterday; no sewing, no ironing, no packing or lifting boxes, not even any computer time.  Gak, it was so boring I couldn't stand it.  Watering the garden was OK to do, as I could hold the hose in my left hand.  Except that I sort of forgot and repotted three plants and then remembered that I wasn't going to do any lifting; apparently heavy bags of potting mix don't matter. 

I did some reading while I was banned from sewing; I recently downloaded Lord Of The Rings onto my Kindle, and I'm using that as my reading on the treadmill.  Love it so much, my copies of the books from 1975 have tiny print and brittle pages, and I don't want to handle them any more than I have to.  The Kindle is so great on the treadmill, I doubt I'll buy paper books any more, I'm a complete convert, except for quilt books.

This is a bad photo of the Churn Dash quilt I finished last week sometime.

 I bought 5 different fabrics to try on this for the borders, and nothing pleased it except this old Judie Rothermel print.  I planned to put a different border on the fourth side, and I like how it looks, plus I will always know which way to put the quilt on the bed.  So that's another top finished.

I'm still clearing out my sewing room, and I'm not allowed to start anything new yet.  I found another top that just needs borders, so that will go on the to-do list after I've got the borders on the Stack&Whack, which should be any day soon.The fabrics are chosen and waiting to be cut, I just need a couple of extra hours in the day so I can get it done. 

The orangey-pink was from the same Winterhur range, and I bought enough of the large print  to border several quilts.  It's scale is so excessive, I just love it.

My hands have recovered enough to wield the iron, so there will be sewing and pressing this afternoon.

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In the distant mists of time I began a Stack & Whack quilt. 

Well, it was March 2010, but that's three years ago, and an awful lot has happened between then and now.  I made about 30 blocks in a white heat ofexcitement, and then it all got shelved when other things became more important.  In the interests of Finishing Things I pulled out the box of pieces and laid them out on the design wall to consider the possibilities.

INSTANT obsession.  Can't think of anything else until I get this in one piece. 

I wonder how I can have put it away for three years.  It's so much fun!  I've chosen to set the hexagons right next to each other, like a One Block Wonder quilt, and I love how they look, like a kaleidoscope.  I'm enjoying every minute of this.

 I don't own the One Block Wonder book, so I don't know the correct way to do this; I'm just making it up as I go along.  I'd already sewn together a heap of hexagons, so I had to build on them.  I laid out a net of hesagons, leaving spaces to add the unsewn pieces of alternate hexagons.  Then I sewed triangles to the hexagons to make large triangles, and now I'm sewing them into rows.

I will need to be careful to get all the points to intersect properly, but I don't mind.  I want this quilt to hang on the wall, and I"ll look at it constantly, so I want to be very painstaking and do the best job I can.

I had 1 set of pieces left over, which was amazing, seeing as I cut it out with no plan, and only decided what size I wanted it to be once I had the pieces on the design wall.  It's meant to be.

I did put the borders on the scrap Churn Dash, but I have nowhere to take a picture of it, as the design wall is taken up with little pieces that I can't shift.  So there will be a picture of that soon.

Things are happening here again: I've been renting a house since Christmas 2011, as I needed a/c over the summer, and accommodation for family through the year.  Now that this summer is nearly over I can go back to the hall, and concentrate on starting to renovate that.  In order to make room for me to live there, the shed is finally being insulated and lined, and it is going to be the workroom for the Statler.  

It took so long to work out what I wanted to use the shed for, but I'm happy with the decision now.  I was going to live out there, but decided having a dedicated workroom was a better use of the space.  Customers won't need to enter the hall now, so I won't have to deal with people dropping quilts off in my living room anymore. 

There's still so much to be done, but I'm hopeful that it will be done in a month, and the machine shifted before I have to move all my stuff back from the house.  Oh well, it will all get done, it just might not be pretty to watch.

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I didn't mean to have a quiltathon this weekend, it just turned into one.  I was organising and sorting and cleaning up, and then, suddenly, there was a new quilt on the design wall.  I remember thinking that
I would  '..just use up these triangles' and before I knew it there was chaos and uncontrollable sewing.

In my clearing away I uncovered a pile of 6.5" squares, and they were what made me choose to make the little churndash blocks.  I've been moving those squares from container to box to shelf for more than 5 years, and it was time to deal with them.

I finished all the blocks yesterday, 50 of them, and it didn't take me long.  The HST were there already, and so were the squares.  It took about 5 minutes per block to assemble them, but I also cut a few new pieces to put some more colour into the quilt.  I know that's madness, when I was trying to use up the scraps I already had, but I didn't want it to look dingy.  There are 4 blocks leftover, the colours didn't really fit in, so they can go into the orphan pile.
It took nearly all day today to cut the extra setting squares and assemble the blocks into one piece, but I'm really happy with how it looks, just the border to go now.  And look at all the empty containers!

I admit I didn't use up every piece, I just gave what remained to Mereth; she was happy with her little treasures and I was glad to see the empty boxes.  Maybe I should have given them to her at the start of the weekend, it would have meant a lot less work for me.

As leader-enders I used the 16-patches and the pinwheels that I sewed last week.  I made 10 blocks  like the one below, and they can wait for a home in a scrappy sampler quilt.  I'm sick of the sight of them right now, so a deep cupboard shelf is where they are going.

I now have 55 16-patches, it won't take much to finish that quilt; it's scary how many I'm churning out here!  Mind you, I don't sleep much, and there's definitely no housework taking place!  And the sewing room is now a complete shambles, so I will have to start all over again.  I don't think this cleaning up thing is working for me.....

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January 26th is Australia Day, and because it was a Saturday the holiday is being observed on Monday, so we have a long weekend.  It's bliss on Sunday morning to know I have a whole extra day to spend at home.  I actually slept in till 7.40, which is 2 hours past my normal rising time, but I certainly appreciated the extra rest.  I hope to tackle the remainder of the day with twice my normal enthusiasm.

I did catalogue the contents of the wire backet, and this is what was in there;

 cross blocks

album blocks

a whole pile of sample blocks from quilts I started last year

extras

 These Random 9-patches are the beginnings of more of the album blocks I think; who knows, I no longer remember what I was planning.  There was a lot more flotsam and jetsam in there, mainly pieces for more of the above.  I need to whip up some more of the blocks I like, and the extras etc can be filed with all the other orphan blocks, ready for that time when I want to make another Frankenstein quilt out of all these parts.  I've made three or four of those already, no enthusiasm for another one quite yet.

Before the end of the month I want to make a collage of all the finished quilt tops in recent memory, because I just make'em and stack 'em and forget'em.  Time to see what is there and what the quilting lineup should be.  It's been a long time since I quilted one of my own quilts, and that has to be one of my priorities this year.

If only I could stop the endless procession of new tops, I might actually make some progress, but the new ones are the fun part aren't they.  (I may have a new quilt on the design wall, I don't know how it happened.....)

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 I was all set to do a long rambly post this morning, and thenreceived an invite for a day out with the brother and family, so I need to go and get ready for that.  The real world can't wait, a blog post can.

I did manage to finish the Plaid quillt top, and I lovethe way it turned out, even if it was a lot more work than just adding a few strips of material. 

It also cleared out a lot of those pieced strips, but not all of them, so there is another quilt brewing from the leftovers.  At this rate I won't get to my new fabrics until 2023.

Last year a farmer friend gave me 4 strawberry plants, who knows what variety, donated from a very old garden.  I don't really like strawberries, so four was plenty, until they began producing the most amazing fruit.  I eat these every morning on my rounds of the garden, and they are truly divine.  Luckily they produce as many runners as fruit, so I'm propogating every single one so I can have a huge strawberry patch next year.  I love my gifted plants, and I'll be passing these on to my friends as well.

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I'm a bit sick of being bossed around by my patchwork.  I should be like Judy and plan everything out before I start cutting fabric. But that's not the way I work, so I will have to accept that I'm the sort of quilter who wings it at every stage.  I just wish the tops would be a bit more vocal about what they want, before I've made a zillion units that are just wrong for the quilt.

I made this top last year in January, determined to use up every scrap.  As if that were ever going to happen.  It seemed unfinished, I knew it needed a border, and needed to be longer and a little wider, but I was sick of it and left it sitting on the clothes rack for a whole year.
Then all the HSTs seemed to be the answer, and I made the mistake of thinking pinwheels was what the quilt said.   Apparently not, they were violently rejected as soon as I put them on the design wall.  But I made about 50!  And I was also mistaken in thinking I was just going to slap it all together no matter how it looked.  Muttering curses I went back to tthe sewing machine and my eye fell on some little blocks I'd put together and set aside; just 4 HSTs all in the same orientation.  Hmmm, I already had quite a few....

Well, they were just what the quilt was looking for, so then it was only a matter of making enough for the top and bottom borders, and attaching them.

  And we were all well pleased, except that I now have a stack of pinwheels, and there are still triangles to spare.  Sigh....

The next top to be dealt with it this Plaid one; (there are 6 spare blocks, but the quilt is big enough already, so looks like I'll be making another quilt in this pattern)

 I thought I could bully that into submission and make it accept the pinwheels, but it's not having them either.  It didn't mind some light-coloured pinwheels, but it wasn't fussed about them.  Didn't like the 1' squares either.

 That's when I opened a container and found all the rest of the strips that didn't get used up in the Strip Spiral.  I need an intervention for my over-cutting problem....

The Plaid quilt is delighted with the strips, so that's what I'll be sewing this afternoon.

After that, I need to catalogue this basket of blocks; all through the year, whenever I ran out of leader-enders, I'd pick a pattern and just make random blocks from scraps, anything, just so that I could feed the pieces through the machine.  Which is admirable I suppose, except now I have the beginnings of about 5 quilts in this basket, none of them planned, and some of them downright ugly.  I hope I've learned my lesson, and will use only designated leader-enders this year. 

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it feels like this picture is worth a thousand hours! 

I've been very good about not overdoing the sewing sessions, I've tackled this in little increments and never once got overwhelmed by it, or felt ill at the thought of going on with it.

 But it took ages, and I'll be very very glad to be sewing something else in the future.  Of course there are still the borders to tackle, but they will be the leader-ender from now on, and I'll be sewing something with a bit of Colour in it.  No more grey for a while!
I don't quite know whether to start something completely new, or go on with my plan to cut down the number of UFOs in the sewing room.  I want to splurge and fill up the design wall with something exciting, but then I also want to get those half-finished projects closer to completion too.  Guess I don't have to decide straight away, and I could make one or two 'Trial' blocks of patterns that intruige me, and see if any of them want to take centre stage.  Not another Major Project though, I need something frivolous I think.

I've sewn up most of the 2.5" triangles into pairs, and they are building into pinwheels for a scrap border.  Now that the design wall is free I'll be able to put them up there and decide on the next plan of attack. I still love these colours, but I've made an awful lot of quilts that look the same, so it's time to branch out on the next lot.   BLUE!  I need to use up my blues.

A trip to the local Patchwork shop resulted in a bit of stash acquisition; I was on a mission to get more creams, but nothing much appealed to me, all too yellow.  I finally succumbed to these ivory-whites from the Etchings line; 

I'm making it my mission to lighten up the stash, steer away from all the sombre reproductions that I love.  I will still buy them when I see something that appeals, but my shelves are stacked with them already.  With these fresher colours I hope I'll make some prettier quilts with a lighter feel.

It's been the most horrid day here, so hot that the air itself burns you; We're supposed to get a cool change tonight, which will be very welcome. The poor dogs don't like it at all.  Lucky there is air-conditioning to take the edge of the heat.  There won't be any walkies tonight though  :(

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 I've been alternating between sewing and tidying, trying to do an equal amount of both.If I sew for half an hour, I have to tidy for half and hour.  I can see results, so it's worthwhile, but the tidying is bringing to light some bad habits of my mine.  Such as my overcutting problem, which has been well doucmented in the past. 

Instead of looking for things I know I've already cut, I'm just as likely to grab  new fabric and cut more pieces.  This works fine for me at the time, as I figure I've saved the time I would have spent trying to ferret out the old pieces from wherever I've hidden them.  But when I do the Big Clean, all is revealed.

Oh I thought, that's nice, I have a few 1" four-patches stockpiled.

There was another bigger box of them.

And some 1" HSTs too apparently.

And some more.

And then I unearthed the 2" cache;

and some more.

 I can't sew along with Judy's Quiltathon this weekend, as I have other chores that have to be done, but I've decided to sew all these bits into borders for two scrap quilts that have had me stumped for over a year. I'll have little scraps of time between my other work, and this sort of sewing is easy to pick up or leave at a moment's notice.   The boxes will be empty, the quilts will be finished, and I will have a whole lot more space in the sewing room. 

I guess it's pointless to say I'll never let the little bits mount up this way again, because I know I will do it.  But in future I should have a single place to put them, not scattered about the sewing room in 9 separate containers.  None of them labelled.  Mereth despairs of me sometimes......

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