I'm going to make another list for this weekend; it worked quite well last week, until I lost the list.  I did get to cross a lot of things off, but haven't a clue what else was on there. I'm a bit hopeless at organisational things.

Nevertheless, I intend to try again. 

The two blue quilts will get their borders, the fabric is all pressed and ready to cut. 

The sashing for the cheddar and blue blocks was bought on Thursday at Elaine's in Jamestown.  I was organised enough to take the blocks with me, and try them on the fabric to see if the colours worked.   I've attempted to do that before, and left the bag of blocks at home, so I was quite pleased with myself this time.

I tried to use this ancient blue fabric from my stash, but I thought the rigid geometric pattern might cause me some anguish when it was cut into sashes, as the pattern is a bit off-grain; it may end up as the border.

I will be setting those blocks together as soon as I decide how wide to make the sashing.  And how to place the blocks.  

I can't decide if I like them with all the blue four-patches set vertically, or every other block rotated. I think the rotated blocks have a sort of plaid effect.   I'm pondering the photos in between other tasks, and hopefully my On-Board Computer will sort all that out in the background.
Maybe it could also remember where I put last week's list......

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For some reason, the Bargello quilt seemed to be a lot more work than the Scrappy Trips.

It took a lot of organising to make those long panels with 47 strips in each; I tried really hard to get the seam allowances to nest together (and failed). I tried to use 47 different fabrics in each panel, and not have them near the same fabric in adjoining panels (and failed).  I tried really hard not to make a mistake and sew anything wrong (and failed).  The last panel was sewn on upside down, so the squares went up for two panels, instead of up and down.  I tried to like that effect, (and failed), then got a cup of coffee and the seam ripper and took it apart.  So now that seam is sewn correctly, and the centre is in one piece, on the design wall. I think I've got the border fabrics chosen, I'm just waiting to see if I cut them wrong, or sew them badly.  I seem to have messed up a lot on this quilt.

I was brave and used a few batiks in the mix, and it's something I will do again.  The wild patterns and colours really bring the other fabrics to life.

I made an executive decision and packed away all the remaining strips so that I could finish a few of the projects that have stalled. 

These cheddar and blue blocks are next in line to go on the design wall; I was going to make 42, but 30 will be enough.

Then I'll tackle the red nine-patches and make my version of Bonnie's Sisters 9-patch.

Before I do any of that I'm going to cut some leader-ender pieces that I like; I'm not going to make more nine-patches if I can help it!

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I'm finding the Go Cutter so useful that I invested in a couple more dies.  I ordered the 1" finished strip die, because I love that size for nine-patches and  would use it a lot.

Then I chose the 2" quarter square triangle, because those are just tooo too fiddly to cut; I used a heap of them last year, and didn't enjoy cutting them at all, so now I can have as many as I want.  I made a 6" Ohio Star to test it, and was pleased with the results.

Then this 9" Lemoyne Star spoke to me, it's a favourite pattern and I love the idea of being able to sew them without any tricky cutting.  The sample I sewed was so easy to put together, it was a breeze; the centre could have been unpicked and one side moved a fraction, but I don't have time for perfection right now.  This is good enough.

These shapes are going to be so useful to me, and save my poor hands a lot of work.

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The blue and green strips have taken over the sewing room; if I want to get it back I'm going to have to sew them all together quick smart. 

I can't believe I have this many fabrics that I'm willing to use up entirely. Why was I saving them?  I should have done this years ago.

It seems to be taking a long time to get the panels made, but that is because I'm using 2" strips instead of 2.5". The panels are 47 strips long, and it's all a bit cumbersome.  I reeeally don't want to make a mistake with this, and have to unpick anything, so I'm going slowly and carefully.

One panel is finished, and there are three more laid out.  If I could sit down and work at it then I'm sure I could make some serious progress; however, this week is one of those constantly busy ones, with many appointments in different towns, and family commitments.  I'm grabbing every spare moment I can, and I'll get there in the end.

There's no end to these strips.....

 But I still love the colours together.

Along the way I've ended up with 18 unintentional nine-patches, made as leader-enders in between all the strips. 

I don't need more nine-patches, I don't even want them, but I haven't got anything else handy.  I need to find some simple block that I will welcome a stack of. I'm fighting the little Tumblers that Bonnie is making, but I found a jellyroll today that I'd forgotten I had, and maybe I could chop it all into Tumblers.  I'll think about that, while I send all those blue and green strips through the machine.

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There are so many things I want to do on this breezy Sunday morning, I'm going to have to do something alien to me: make a List.  It's been a busy work week, so there are lots of things to catch up on; yesterday I worked till midday, then just did whatever I wanted to and that felt good.  I spun some wool, and messed around in the kitchen and tried to catch up with the blogs I read.  We took the dogs for a long walk on a country track, and admired the beautiful scenery.  It was a nice, relaxing day.

I didn't really feel like sewing, that happens sometimes, so I dug out several bags of fleece I bought a while ago. 

 This one is nice, even if it's got a lot of dirt in it.

This one is rubbish; so tangled, and there is a break in the fibre; it just disintegrates when I pull on it.  Maybe I need to learn how to felt?

My pet peeve is people shoving fleece into tiny plastic bags until it's a tangled useless mess; so while I got cross at the Ebay seller who described one third rate fleece as 'a spinner's dream' I also derived some satisfaction from sorting out the few useable bits.  I can see an afghan in my future, made from all these small amounts of mismatched stuff.

I washed a little bit of each, so that I could spin it today and decide what sort of yarn they wanted to be.

It was too early to go to bed, and I still didn't want to sew!  I stood at the ironing board and ironed all the fabric I want to include in the next blue quilt, then cut pieces to load onto the 2" die.  I didn't have the energy to send them through the Go Cutter, but that will be a fun thing to do this morning.  I really like doing all the dull stuff last thing at night and setting up the fun stuff for the next day.

That's quite a pile of fabric, and it will be a LOT of strips later today.

Then the fun will start, arranging them into stripsets for the Scrappy Bargello.  But first I need to get a cup of coffee and make that list.

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One late night saw the blocks all joined together, so now it's just the borders to deal with. 

The quilt is wanting these two, but that light blue is in the Precious pile; I've had plans for that ever since I bought it. 

 That's all well and good, but look at the date on the selvedge! 

Admittedly I would have bought this a few years after it was released in America, but that's still close to 15 years in the stash.  Should I just use it and buy another pretty blue for my Someday quilt?  I'm going to have to think about that for a while, and maybe do some browsing online to see what's available.

 And this one is an oldie too; I have some ancient things in my stash, but I still like them, so why would I get rid of them?  I just need to actually use them.

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My goal this morning is to finish the last three blocks, and maybe start sewing the rows together. 

 There are lots of leftover pieced strips. I didn't cut the strips to any specific length when I was sewing them into the pieced strata.  Sometimes I could get 9 or 10 slices out of the sets of strips and it seemed easier to sew them longer than needed,rather than deal with a lot of little bits cut off each strip.

Might be a border option?

The sewing room is still a mess, and I need to put all the scraps away and organise the strips that I'll be working with when I start the Scrappy Bargello quilt. 

It will be a lot more sewing with the same fabric, but I'm hoping that the ease of strip piecing will keep me dedicated.  And if I do get horribly bored, I want to be able to pack all of it away neatly in a trice, and not be mystified when I come back to it in 6 months time.  That sort of thing happens all the time around here.

I've been blogging on the Ipad recently, because it's much easier now than it used to be, and it's so quick to just snap a picture and scribble some words.  The photos are very ordinary though, so I hope I don't abandon the good camera just for the sake of speed; it's nice to have photo records of my projects that aren't all blurred and hurried.  I need a couple extra hours in the day, don't we all?

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The blue stash is depleted, which was my intention.

What is left fits into two drawers, instead of three.  See those bits of cardboard around the edge of the drawers? They're there to block the light from the fabric, to stop fading.  Didn't work with some of the FQs.

 I may have to cut even more strips to make the three quilts on my list, and then there are borders and bindings to consider.  It's quite exciting to be making such a drastic change to the stash.

I can't do the same with every colour though, the Blues were a special case.  I bought a lot of them on spec, and they didn't fit into my usual quilting style.  My browns and reds and pinks are nearly all repro styles, so they are a lot more precious and reserved for 'good' quilts.  How on earth can non-quilters understand the logic behind that!!

The Scrappy Trips is going to be 36 blocks, 3 more to piece; I may extend the length with a clever edge treatment but I'm undecided at this point. Once it's in one piece I'll have a think about it while I start on the next lot of strip piecing.  It still feels like fun, so I'll keep going; as  soon as it becomes a chore I'll swap projects, because I certainly have a few of them to choose from.

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Collage August 2015

8 months of the year gone, and I have 8 tops finished.  That seems a paltry figure, compared to my 22 finishes last year, but one a month is OK.  This year has been very family oriented, with lots of work thrown in, and I just haven't had the sewing time that I used to have.
I started out this year wanting to have collages of everything I finished each month, but you can't have a collage of one photo!  So here are the quilts I've finished so far this year, with another four months to go.

 Jarred Takes A Wife, Coverlet, Madder Stars and Framed Kansas Dugout

Cracker, Split Nine-patch, Crosses and Trip Around The World

There are four UFOs, and four new projects in that lot; pretty evenly balanced I'd say.

I've used up a lot of blues this year, and that's without the latest cutting marathon.  I've earned a shopping spree in the blue aisle, :)

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I seem to have become obsessed with cutting strips, but that's a good thing.

Most of the fabrics I'm cutting are really old, and they have been sitting in the fabric drawers long enough.  Every time I go to pick blues for a project I pass over these, because they aren't repro patterns or colours.  'They're for my modern blue and green quilt' I tell myself, and jam the drawer shut.  
Their time has come.  I'm not giving them another 5 years to marinate.  My fabric isn't exposed to much light at all, but many of the older FQs had fade lines when they were unfolded.  After another few years they would be un-useable.  Dyes have changed over the years, modern ones are much more stable, but blues really do seem to be worse than other colours.  
I've stripped up dozens of FQs and pieces cut from yardage, and I don't feel the need to stop yet.  I'm planning three quilts based on 2" squares, one Queen Size and two smaller.  If I need to gift a quilt to a family member it's going to be a modern one, because no-one likes my repro ones.  After I'm done working on these quilts I should have a nice stockpile ready.

I'm doing Bonnie's  Scrappy Trips first, and the sewing is so meditative; I just sit and feed strips through the machine like a production line.  There's not a lot of thinking needed.  I have 17 blocks done, aiming for 30, or 42, depending on how I feel.  

I would like to do a Scrappy Bargello next, and then another more planned zig-zag pattern.  There's every chance I'll get sick of working with these colours and the same shape, but I'm not too worried.  I'll just pack it all up as kits, and the next time I want an easy project they'll be waiting.  I'll be able to get the blues drawer shut easily after this, though my next shopping trip will probably include some new blues.  It's still my favourite colour.

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I seem to be able to make any border difficult, it's a gift.  I wanted that madder fabric to form a complete diamond around the centre, but that meant either piecing another complete row around the whole thing, (not going to happen) or extending the madder square into the border.

I added the gold strips to the outside of each quarter, then pieced the single strips of squares that would join the quarters, with the madder square joining the gold strips.

 Four quarters finished, just that centre strip of squares to add.

Once that was done it was a simple matter to add the two outer borders, and my top was done!

Yay!!

GypsyQuilter sent this link to a TATW pattern made using the tube method; it would be a great way to put the design together in the least amount of time.  I quite enjoyed my bumbling approach, one fabric at a time, but it wasn't the fastest way to work.  And I have a serious mountain of leftovers.  Maybe I'll throw together a Scrappy Bargello from Bonnie's site, or a Scrappy Trips; both are a fun way to use up a pile of strips quickly.

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It's a glorious Spring day outside, even though we officially have one and a half weeks of winter left.  It does this every year and, while I'm sad to see the end of my favourite season, the soft yellow sunshine and the birds and flowers make me happy too.  Spring is lovely, even if we only get 2 or 3 weeks of it.

I've been having a lot of trouble with my hands lately, I've had to ration the amount of time I spend doing anything.  They hurt all the time, but I simply can't sit around and do nothing, so I spin for a little while, sew for half an hour, so the dishes, work on the computer in small increments.  I'm trying to knit slowly, type slowly, not lift anything too heavy; in short, I'm trying to be mindful of how I use my hands, what seems to damage them the most, how I can modify movements to prevent more pain.  I'd like to say I'm enjoying being mindful, but I'm not; I want to race off and achieve things, like I always have done.  Which probably is why I have the problem in the first place.

In the last couple of weeks I worked on a Trip Around The World quilt, from 2"strips.

The die cut strips were wonderful to work with, and I think I'll invest in a couple more sizes.  It was so simple to cut all the strips I needed, and then some.  I'll be working with this lot for quite a while.  I can see that an electric cutter would be even better for my hands, so that will go on the Great Christmas Wish List 2016.  Not going to happen this year....

 However, I wasn't happy with the centre of the quilt, from that single line of pinky-orange. I built the quarter on the right first, to get the colours I wanted, and it was fine except for the bottom left bit.

 I lived with it for a few days, but in the end I unpulled the bits that were worrying me and replaced them with a sequence I liked.  It's not a big difference in the photo, but the original light fabrics on either side of the pink squares were just toooo light.  So my Inner Goldilocks kept sampling different things until it was juuust right.

So now, many strips later, I have three quarters in place, and I'm getting together the pieces for the last quarter.  The border is probably going to give me fits when I come to it, but I'll worry about that when I get there.

So many strips left over!!  This is a good thing I think......

Hmm, I do like all those saturated colours on the background of blue;

maybe I should hunt out my blue background UFO and get it finished, before I start another project?

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 My sewing room is covered in fabric, and I just don't know how to get it organised. 

 I have so many small pieces left over from cutting quilts, many of them less than half a FQ. 

What do I do with them, how do I decide whether to store them or cut them into strips or triangles or squares?  I'm completely undecided about how to tackle these leftovers.

I did used to cut them up into several sized strips and put them into the scrap drawers, but then I found I was sick of seeing them in each scrap drawer.  And now I don't particularly like making random scrap quilts, so I don't want to go back to that.  I'm thinking that I need to choose a couple of quilt patterns that use one size strip, and then cut everything up into that size.

I have two strip dies for the Accuquilt, and I love them. 

All these 2" strips were cut in about 2 minutes; there are five strips of each fabric.  All I had to do was layer the scraps and then send the die through the machine.  It cuts 4 strips, and I can do 5 layers at a time comfortably, so that's 20 with each pass.  It certainly is a quick way to deal with all the leftovers.

I am planning several quilts based on 2" strips, and this is one of my favourite blocks ever. 

 I've already made several quilts in this pattern, but I love piecing it, and the cutting is a breeze. I like the fact that it takes two main fabrics, putting the colour combinations together is pure fun.

I have 3 blocks finished, 8 blocks kitted completely and loads more pieces cut, so this project is well underway.  I still have to decide how to use the scrap pieces that I don't want to cut into strips, and there are plenty of them.  Maybe I will choose a triangle die and cut them into a bazillion triangles for an Ocean Waves or a Pine Tree quilt.  Decisions, decisions.

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