All set up

I've been down here for 2 weeks already, that time has flown by so fast.  Isla and I are having a good time, but she's starting to miss her mum.  Shonny gets to spend about 40 minutes a day with us, then she's off to work and we don't see her again that day.  It's hard on a little girl, but she's tickled pink to have me around.  When we go out she tells everyone 'My Nan!!' and points at me. I don't do any housework when she's around, so I'm a lot more fun than Mum apparently.

I've set up my own little space so that I can sew in any spare minute, and I even have a coffee set-up, so I don't have to disturb anyone else when I get up early.

The desk was left out on the footpath as hard rubbish, and Shonny and I  carried it home minutes before the truck arrived.  

It has lovely big drawers to hide all my sewing stuff from Miss Busyfingers, and I appreciate it all the more for being free.  I'm hoping to get some machine time in today or tomorrow while Isla is at daycare.  I miss being productive, but I have to cram in as much housework as I can before Isla gets home. 

I have a handwork project started, and it's a pattern that I've wanted to do for years. 

 I decided to use a colour scheme of pink and grey, also something I've wanted to do for years.  I'll be glad to get a single block finished at this rate, but it's a long term project.

Well I'm off to hang the first load of washing out, and tidy up the lounge room, but then it will be sewing time.

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State of the Stash

Last year I didn't finish a single top or quilt, so there was nothing in the fabric used column.  I did do a bit of buying as compensation, or consolation, (both apply).  Luckily I didn't keep track of it last year, because I think I'd be horrified it I did total it all up.  I have a lot of fabric to find homes for in the overcrowded stash drawers.

Time to sort through all this....

Doesn't look any better from this angle either.

I'm keeping track of the Stash this year, because I like to know what I've used, and I think I"m going to be adding quite a few finishes to the tally if I can just stay focused.  But I need to track the purchases as well, so I've made up a Google spreadsheet, and I've entered the totals of the three shopping trips I've made this year.  The running total is 31.3m so far, about 4m a week :) which seems a lot.  I've bought even more than that, but I shared some pieces with Mereth so they don't count.  She has several colours that she just seems drawn to, so when I see rich, rusty, mahogany colours, or that antique pale green, I pick them up for her.  No complaints from her!

Nearly all the fabric I buy is reduced in price, so I don't feel guilty.  My batik stash is growing nicely, I think I need to move them into their own stash drawers instead of the baskets they now occupy.  And I snap up cheap yardage for backings, I scored one from Spotlight that was $2 a metre.  I love having a backing stash on hand.  Alas, it's been absorbed into the sewing room, and I can't even find it right now. 

A couple of years ago I went through my yardage stash and cut FQs from the longer pieces.  Most of them have been on the shelf for 10 years, and in that time I could have incorporated them into quilts but I was 'Saving' them.  It's been good to have them in the FQ stash, so I can get an idea of how the colours behave when mixed with others, and if it's a nice fabric to work with or just thin and nasty.  I'm going to go through the yardage again, and take out more.  A 3 metre piece can easily lose a half metre and still be useable.  I figure this will give me a whole 'new' set of fabrics for piecing and keep me entertained for no extra cost.

I recently found a FQ of a nice green from at least 10 years ago, and it had faded beyond redemption, and it wasn't stored in the light anyway.  All the fold lines had turned a dirty yellow, I don't even know if I want to put it on the back of a quilt if it's so unstable.  It's a very old piece, so hopefully the more modern fabric won't lose colour like that.  And I would show you a photo of the FQ except, the sewing room ate it and I haven't seen it since.

I have GOT to clean up, but I'm off to Seonaid's  today for an extended stay, so all I can do is turn out the light and I'll be back when I can.  Sob.....

I made an extra couple of blocks in between my computer work (taxes, blech) and now I have 6 blocks on the wall and about 5 more complete nine-patches.

I'm loving this, and if I have time I'll organize a tub of parts to take with me, but I also have to take the machine and the iron and the pressing board, because Seonaid doesn't own an iron. I know I"ll be so grateful to have those things to help keep me sane, but I have a ton of work to do before I leave and I don't know if I have time to sort through stuff.  Life doesn't slow down, when there's grandchildren involved :) .

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Nine-patch scrap

I don't want to take the Hunter's Star off the design wall just yet, I'm enjoying seeing it there.  I can't work on my other projects until the design wall is empty, so..... nine-patches it is.  

I have heaps and heaps of 1.5" pieces in boxes and baskets all around the sewing room, so I collected what I could easily find and put them in the project box for Tumelo Trail.  These four-patches will be built into nine-patches leader-ender style, I have boxes of 1.5" squares as well.

I like the completely scrappy nine-patches, but I'm going to use these ones in two fabrics just to get them out of the orphan pile.  They are left over from my Double Nine-patch quilt, and it's time they found a home.

Lots of white prints in the strip drawer, so I don't need to cut any just yet.

And I'll be using up lots of little ends of strips to get the variety I need.  I don't have a colour scheme, I just want to get things used up, so anything goes.  It doesn't take long for the finished blocks to build up, but I need 200 more, so there's a fair bit of sewing ahead of me.  I like knowing I have everything set for a few hours of sewing happiness.

I picked up another sewing machine in Adelaide; I've wanted a Pfaff for 15 years, but never found one at a price I was happy with, or that was close enough to pick up.  This one came from a lovely quilter who upgraded, and I was so delighted to have her old machine.  I'm going to name her Pauline, after Pauline Rogers of Quilter's World in Toowoomba.  I taught quilting workshops there for many years, and Pauline always loaned me a Pfaff to demonstrate on.  I fell in love with them, but in those days I couldn't justify the expense of a new machine when my old one worked perfectly.

I'm going to get Pauline Pfaff set up with her new 1/4" foot, and stitch my nine-patches on her, fine-tuning the seam allowances and getting used to her Pfaffy ways.  In future, when I say I'm just faffing around, I might just mean sewing.

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Shirts, shirts, shirts

Bonnie Hunter's workshop slideshows often include quilts in the Tumelo Trail pattern, and the more I see of them, the more I want to make my own. It's in the Scraps & Shirttails II book, and it's on special! 

 I love the shirt prints in this block, and just lately I've come across a fair few cheap shirts on my op-shop visits.  I guess it was inevitable that I would start this quilt before long.

On my trips to Adelaide I try to pop into a few op-shops, but I was gob-smacked at the prices they are charging. $14.50 for a second hand shirt??  That's insane. Pity the poor guys trying to find a new outfit at that shop.  I did find a few at another place for between $2 and $3, but they were marked down from much higher prices.  I won't be adding to my stash in Adelaide.

The local op-shop is a whole lot more reasonable, so I bought up big when they threw a heap of stuff out for .50c.  That's more like it.  I don't have enough yet for the whole quilt, but it's a start.

I'm hoping to clear out the 1.5" strip drawer making the nine-patches, and use up lots of teeny little strips that are very messy.  They will make great leader-enders while I get busy on those remaining borders that need to be sewn on.

One block made, 41 to go...

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Finished!

Well that took most of the day, but the borders are on and this top is finished at last.  

It's heavy, and those last borders were a struggle, trying to support all that weight and guide it through the machine smoothly.  I had to sew a bit and then take a break till my arms and neck relaxed, then I'd go back and do a bit more.  It was very sensible of me, normally I'd grit my teeth and soldier on, and damage myself in the process.

It looks very impressive, completely filling my design wall.  I'd like to leave it there for a while, but I need the space for the next project, which will be the last row and the borders on the Pretty Tumblers.  I don't think I can take any more blue, at least not for a few days, so I will do the borders on the blue squares quilt at a later date.

Last time I went down to Shonny's I was surprised to see this quilt on her bed.

She pinched this as soon as I finished it, and took it back to Emerald with her.  It's been packed away in storage since she came down here. I'd forgotten about it, but there it is on her bed.  She bought a set of blue sheets, and had to have a quilt to match so went digging to find this.

It took a colossal amount of blue scraps to make this, and I had a lot of fun piecing it. I do seem to fixate on blue though, don't I?  Nice to see it being used again, and extra nice that my girl appreciates my quilts.

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Hunter's Star progress

Sometimes a little time away from the sewing room can be a good thing.  Before I went away I made a decision about the borders on the Hunter's Star, and I cut out all the pieces I would need.  By the time I'd finished all the cutting I was pretty sick of blue and white, and sick of trying to find the perfect fabrics, and sure it had been a colossal mistake to make the quilt in just two colours.

Now, after I've had some time and space between me and the design wall, I'm really happy with how my two colour quilt is working out. 

I chose to use the big triangles from the die as the border, knowing they would tie in to the actual piecing really well.  It was pretty easy to cut some strips and send them through the cutter till I had enough. I did choose to use one light print throughout the whole border, and the blues were scrappy.

I have a heap of leftover shapes from that, and I'm going to incorporate them into another design that is yet to be decided upon.  I like this pattern enough to make another one, but it will be scrappier and have a lot more colour to it.

So now all I have to do is get busy sewing.....

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Playing catch-up

The last post was written more than a week ago, and I forgot to actually hit 'Publish'. Then I went to Adelaide and was very busy there, and only discovered the poor old post languishing unread when I got back.  So I just published it anyway, even though it was all out of date. 

I'm too hot to think anyway.  The temperature this week has ranged between 102 -114º, and I'm ready for a cool change on Sunday.  Just one more stinker of a day to get through.

I had a lovely time in Adelaide, helping Shonny prepare for a family get-together to find out what the next baby will be.  Hayden was away working when she had the scan, so she didn't peek at the screen, and asked the technician to write down the babies sex, and put it in a sealed envelope.  The envelope went to a lady who makes up party balloons, and only she knew what colour balloons and confetti to put in a giant black balloon.  On the day of the reveal, poor Hayden was so nervous, he almost didn't want to break the balloon in case it was pink.  I had my 'It's a girl, how lovely' face ready, but I didn't need it.  BLUE balloons.  I'm going to have a grandson.

There were three toddlers present when the balloon popped, and all the adults yelled in triumph, and the babies cried and cried at the huge noise.  But they got lots of celebratory cuddles, and we were all so overjoyed.  Hayden has had a boy name picked for 8 years, and finally he will get to bestow it on his son; Thomas Charles.  Love it.

Shonny's only half way through this pregnancy, and I'm wishing and praying good thoughts for her, because we don't want the drama of Isla's birth to be repeated.  Here's hoping the arrival of little Thomas is drama free.

So now I can try and get some sewing done, and finish cleaning up the sewing room, and put the house to rights before I set off to Adelaide again.  I'm determined to make some progress on the borders, and to get my handwork project up and running.  I just need this weather to cool off and I"ll be sewing madly.

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Goodbye scraps

Lordy me, the weather has just been insane!  It was 45º yesterday, the worst day of this summer.  Then today it's 25º with a breeze that makes it seem even cooler. 20º difference from one day to the next is a bit extreme, but I'm just grateful that it's cooled down.

I've used my time today sorting out the sewing room.  I am done with the scraps, they are making me miserable and I can't find anything I want in the mess, so I'm donating them to Mereth, or (gasp) throwing them away.  It may seem a bit drastic, but I was overwhelmed with all the baskets and boxes and piles that needed to be dealt with.

This is the first installment of what I gave Mereth;

there is more than this, because I dug down to the bottom of some very old containers and pitched heaps more stuff out.  I'm being ruthless, and it's easier this time round, because this stuff has sat there for 6 or 7 years and I haven't touched it.  I'm certainly not going to miss it now.

I found pieces of blocks left over from projects, and I sewed them into blocks and put them in the orphan box.  Soon I will go through that too, and make a scrappy album, or backing, or donate the whole lot to someone who wants them.

It's been boring and irritating; all those decisions make my brain ache, but I can at last see the difference so I'm going to keep at it.  I want to be able to take a photo of my sewing room and see surfaces, not towering piles of fabric and project boxes.

On the sewing front, I'm up to the dull stuff.  It was so much fun to keep swapping from one thing to another, but now I have to buckle down and finish them.  There is still blue fabric everywhere, and I can't put it away until I put the borders on the blue squares and the Hunter's Star.  I have one more row to attach to the Hunter's Star, and then I can design the border.  I will do a piano key for the squares, so that's fairly easy and will be a good leader-ender.

And the Pretty Tumblers needs one more row and then it can have borders.  That will be three tops finished if I can just stick at it.  Alas, I'll be off to Adelaide on Wednesday, so there won't be much achieved until I get home.  And on the 18th of next month I"ll be helping Seonaid out for a month, while she works a festival and a concert.  I'd better make sure my hand work is ready by then.

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Charm Square stash

Three Christmases ago I cut up nearly all my charm squares and made nine-patches from them.

I'm making these blocks with them; 2½" HSTs turn them on point, it's a real stashbuster.

It was a lot of fun, and I remember thinking, Oh good, that's got them out of the stash!  Like it was a virtue or something.

Then two Christmases ago I mourned the loss of my charm pack stash, so I ordered about 10 from The Fat Quarter shop when they were on special.  My stash was restored.

Last Christmas I did the same again.

The trouble is, I hadn't used any from the year before, so now I have quite the pile.

I'm not sorry about this at all.  I've used so much fabric over the past few years that I need to buy certain things to fill in the gaps.  I have very few shirtings with white backgrounds, and almost none with blue prints on them.  I've nibbled away at my yardage, so I don't have any decent amounts left of good background prints.  So much of what I order online turns out to have a yellow cast, or a mottled background (HATE the mottle!), and I end up disappointed.  The charm packs allow me to see the fabric in real life, and decide what I should and shouldn't buy.

I prefer white backgrounds, or a very light stone colour, not yellowish.  It changes the whole look of the block, makes it too warm and cosy for me.  Of course everyone else in the patchwork world must love it, because that's mostly what's available.  When I find a shirting I like, I buy yardage now, it's so hard to get.

My stack of charm packs is waiting for me to go through them with an eye to ordering some new pieces.  And when I've done that, I can start thinking of another project to use a few of them up.

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Pretty Tumblers

One of our customers asked for a Queen Size quilt in summery colours of blue, pink and green.  It has to measure around 95 x 80, which is large but not daunting.  I immediately thought of one of my UFOs, a tumbler quilt of my pretty fabrics.  Unfortunately I'd included a lot of brown in the bit I'd already made, so it was back to the cutting table to amass a lot of clear pretty shapes.

I seemed to cut for days, and then spent ages at the design wall, arranging pieces exactly so.  It's so much fun to work with these fabrics, I'm really enjoying it, and it puts me in a good mood.

It's so annoying though, when I agonize over each piece and get it all juuuuust right, and then I go and sew things out of order.  I added a row to the top of another one instead below it.  Really?  But I didn't unpick it because it looked fine, and I just had to spend a bit of extra time blending the new arrangement.

This is 12 of 18 rows, so I'm nearing the end. 

I've added the darker shapes for the next 4 rows, and I quite like the effect of an alternating plain block, in dark or light,  That's just the colour of my design wall showing through, but a pretty tone on tone in white or cream would really pad out the pretty fabric.  Something to think of for the next quilt....

I'm going through my border stripes to see if anything suits it, I think it would look pretty special with a large floral border.

I don't know if this is what the customer had in mind, but I'm perfectly happy to keep it if it doesn't sell.  There are some delicious fabrics in here.

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EPP

I've been watching the English Paper Piecing craze for the last few years.  I made my first project using this method more than 30 years ago, and there have been many, many others since then.  I do like it, but my hands hurt after a while, and I have to give up.  

However, I think I need to have a hand work project for all those times when I'm not near my machine, and so I'm going to have another go with a slightly different method.

I've always tacked through the papers when I cover them, and preferred to do it this way because it was so secure.  I was a bit sceptical of just tacking the material around the paper template because I thought it would shift too much without the stitches anchoring the paper and fabric together.

But what if the paper shapes were cut from freezer paper and ironed to the fabric?  They wouldn't shift then, so tacking would work.  And if I wanted to applique the hexagons to a background then the edges would stay turned down once I took the paper out, because the tacking stitches stay in.  And the seam allowances wouldn't kick up when I ironed the finished units.  This started to sound good.

I have a hexagon cutter, it's by Creative Memories I think, with two sizes of hexagons.  It says the larger one is a 1½" hexagon, but that's from point to point.  It's actually ¾" along the side, which is a bit small, but still comfortable.

I'm using the larger one, and cutting shapes out of my ancient roll of freezer paper.  That roll is nearly 20 years old, I bought it on my first trip to America in 1998, just shows how much I use it..

My first rosette is finished, and I enjoyed the process and it didn't take too long.  The freezer paper is softer and more flexible than other paper templates, and my hands don't hurt.  I even have a little box that's just the right size to make a sewing kit for this project.  I chose the madder stripe for no other reason than that it was close at hand, but I think I'll go through my wonderful madders for the next blocks too.  Madder, black, grey, cheddar;  I think that would be a lovely colour scheme for these little fussy cut hexies.

Another WIP to add to the list.....

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January WIPs

I didn't finish anything in 2017, I can't remember the last time I didn't finish a thing all year.  My UFO count currently stands at 27.  Of those, 7 are actual Works in Progress; they are being worked on as Leader-Enders or main projects as the mood strikes me.

The Economy blocks, Blue Squares and Hunter's Star are awaiting borders; I'm working on blocks called

North Wind

Country Cousin

6" Ohio Star

Checkered Lattice.

Of course I could be making major progress if I just concentrated on one thing, but I don't want to feel obliged to finish anything.  I'm just sewing and enjoying it, and if I don't find pleasure in it then I move onto something else.  I can be quite beastly to myself, pushing myself to keep on and finish things when I'm tired and unhappy.  Part of me is a bully, lecturing and hassling and critical.  I really don't need that right now, so I'm just puddling around amongst my projects.

I don't normally work this way; I'm usually much more focused.  Mereth has dozens of collections of blocks, she can pull out a set of blocks and build them into a quilt at a moments notice but I make a set of blocks, I work on the borders, and then I have a finished top.  I have to admit this is fun, and the lack of pressure is the best bit.  

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2018

It was another busy Christmas;

I spent 10 days with Shonny and family in Adelaide,

getting home here on New Year's Day. 

Yesterday I spent with the family in Pirie, so it's been non-stop socializing.

I never seem to make resolutions on New Years Eve, either I'm asleep early, or staying up with family, so there's no time for quiet contemplation.  The first week of the new year is when I do my thinking and planning and reflecting on the past year. I don't know what word for 2018 I want, but I keep coming back to Resolve.  It can mean a solving a problem, or making a decision or determination, and all those meanings are appropriate; there are things in life that I have to find a solution for, and I have to decide what to do about them and then be determined to actually do something.  There's nothing life-changing going on, just niggling issues with my living arrangements and my quilting set up.

The other word I'm thinking of is Begin.  So many things never get started, I never take that first step and so there's no progress.  I need to make an effort and actually do the things I dream about.  Surely if I take those first steps then the momentum will keep me going.  I'm tired of staying in the same spot because I can't get started.

Today I'm going to contemplate the sewing room, and list all my projects, and try to tidy up the layers and stacks of fabric everywhere.  I'll list the problem areas, and what I can do to make working in there more fun and more effective.  I might just have to look at what I hope to achieve this year too.  We are getting lots of requests for specific quilts, and have two commission quilts to make, so I need to look at ways I can sew those while fitting my own projects in.  I hope 2018 is going to be a year full of activity in the sewing room, lots of achievements and fulfillment.

2018 is going to be filled with my grandchildren too;

Shonny is expecting another baby in June and we are all so excited about that.  We don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet, but we're hoping for a boy.  These three girls need a little brother I think.

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Old Favourites

Recently I found some older books online, at ridiculously cheap prices, so I bought them both.  I had a young family when they were new on the shelves, and though I desperately wanted those books, there was no money in the budget to buy them.

  Marsha McCloskey has always been a favourite, and so has Judy Martin. Jinny Beyer was the queen of quilting in those days. In some ways patchwork was very limited then, but there were some very talented quilters out there.  And they're still around, still making wonderful quilts.

I felt quite nostalgic, looking at the pink and blue quilts, and the old fabric ranges.  There was a lot of fussy cutting striped fabric going on at that time, it really adds something to a block design.

This colour scheme really appeals to me, and I love the setting for the sampler blocks.  So many ideas! 

I'm feeling very inspired by all the ideas in these two books, ready to pull out fabric and start cutting. I have 2, nearly 3 tops finished up to the border stage, and both these books are full of ideas for pieced borders.  

I'm going to finish the last 12 Hunter's Star blocks first, and then work on borders for them, and then the borders for the blue squares quilt.  Once I've done that I can pack away the blue fabric completely.

The leader-ender blocks are going well, but I've cheated a bit and sewn quite a few of them in between the main projects.  I can't help myself it seems.  And I've totally given up on the scraps, and now I'm cutting into yardage as well. The scraps are going to be gifted to Mereth, because they really don't bring me any pleasure. And they take up a huge amount of room, so I can't be doing with that anymore.

I haven't made a sampler quilt since who knows when, but I'm tempted to choose a few of these and start cutting.  I should stipulate that I can only cut them out of scraps, but I know that idea wouldn't last.  I just love cutting into my stash fabric.

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