The Latest

So this is one of those times where I log in to post acknowledging my woeful lack of posting. This, as you would imagine, correlates to my lack of progress in the creative arena. I am sewing down the binding on a quilt, so I will be excited to share that soon, but as I've said, anything requiring hand work is a slow process for me these days. I really want to have it done by next weekend, so hopefully a couple of movies or baseball games will suffice to get it taken care of.

The rhythm of life in Chicago has just not led me much in the direction of sewing. I put in a little work here and there, but I tend to find myself swept up in other things a lot, and I think that's just life right now. I feel content knowing that I have sewing space and it's there when I need it. I also feel content taking advantage of the blessing of living near friends right now and living in The Big City where there are always a million and one things going on. Since I know I am highly unlikely to be in this situation forever, I think it's incumbent on my to enjoy it while I am. If you would like to follow my life outside of my creative activities you can always check out Rejoice Always, although posting has been a bit slow over there, as well.

I did finally bust out my new jewelry making supplies last weekend, and I found this to be highly satisfying. Although I have essentially no idea what I'm doing, both technically and when it comes to design, it's super fun to play around with and satisfying to be able to complete a project in a very short time. And since I have no idea what I'm doing, the minimal time commitment makes it easy to just cut apart a project and remake it if I end up deciding it's not quite right.

Pictures of my creations to follow. I always intended this to be a blog for ALL my creative endeavors, but quilting has obviously always predominated. I really don't think there's any chance of this becoming a jewelry blog, so I beg the indulgence of the hard core quilters in the audience.

My birthday was this past weekend, and I got a new camera! Quilt bloggers know how exciting this is. I am really interested in photography and have been doing my best at taking it seriously with my old point and shoot, but wanted something that was a bit of a step up. Part of my motivation was to be able to take better pics for the blogs, so maybe this will also motivate me to make things to take pictures of!

In the meantime I took pictures of the top of my mother's pie safe, where she keeps many things:

Long Time

Here it is at last, my sewing machine set up in a little corner of my Chicago apartment. In reality I never moved. I was having such a hard time finding something that I liked and that worked for me, and in the meantime got so settled in here with my friends that I eventually stopped trying to move and made my current situation "official." Space is the trade off of this arrangement, as in, I don't have a lot.

I was at my parents a few weeks ago gathering up some sewing stuff and came face to face, once again, (and sorry to be a broken record), with the over-the-top amount of fabric that I own. I mean I do not have room here for even half of it. Probably not even a quarter. So to start out with I grabbed my several tubs of salvage fabric to bring to Chicago, along with the scrap bin and whatever random yardage was sitting out not in a container. That includes most of the fabric I have been trying to convince myself to get rid of. Pretty much all of my "nice" fabric is still at my parents. I'm hoping that this will allow me to work through some of this fabric - use it or move on from it. I grabbed a few finished tops that need quilting, too, and a few in-progress projects.

All very much a step in the right direction. I still don't know how much time I will realistically spend sewing in the coming weeks, but hopefully it will at least be more than zero. My job continues to go well, but it is busy and sometimes mentally draining so that I don't do much when I get home besides veg. I need to make the transition to vegging with fabric.

I actually got the sewing machine to the apartment, but forgot a lot of notions including my presser feet. So when I was ready to start sewing last weekend I only had the walking foot. This might be good since it inspired me to get back into sewing by finishing something rather than starting something new, hence the quilting project in the above picture.

About that...I am having the worst time with tucks on the back. I mean, let's face it...I always have that problem. I don't know why. I want to know why, but I don't. I had high hopes for this one as I thought the combination of flannel backing and cotton batting would mean minimal movement...you know, because they would stick to each other. I pin basted using my fist to space, but had to completely unpick the first three lines of quilting b/c the tucks were so bad. Maybe I'm wrong about flannel - maybe the softness of it makes it really tuck prone. I have spent hours basting and re-basting this, eventually pinning like every one to two inches to try to keep it in place (and still getting little tucks, although little enough to leave in). Where have I gone wrong??

Oh well...it will be done soon. THEN I will start something new.

Sorry to have been a neglectful blog friend. I don't dare promise that will change, but hopefully it will little by little. I want to share this post from a while back from Debra. The horse top was one that I made as a way to challenge myself to use those horse panels in a creative way. The panels were 99 cents in the remnant bin at Hobby Lobby. It is a perfect example of a project that I make because my mind is captivated by the challenge, but I don't actually like it that much. I mean I don't dislike it, but it isn't really "me". So I finally realized I wasn't ever going to finish it and sent it to Debra for her amazing charity projects. I am SO grateful to see that she finished it for a good cause.

The Start of Something

As the year comes to an end my mind predictably turns to resolutions. I just pulled up my "resolution" post from a year ago. I had six resolutions: four I did decently well at, the other two were complete non-starters. I stuck to my resolutions about buying fabric, starting and finishing projects, and did okay at trying new things. I did NOT even make an attempt at learning to free motion quilt, and I spent very little time on non-quilting crafts. I did finish my Texas scrapbook, but besides that I'm not sure if I can think of any other non-quilt crafting that I did. That might change this year since I got some jewelry making supplies for Christmas.

I guess I won't make resolutions this year. I'm still working through my transition and waiting for all the pieces of my life to "land", so it's hard to say what's going to be realistic or possible for me in the "creativity" and "creating" department.

I think if I was going to make a resolution for this area of my life right now it would be to validate my creative activities.

Anyway, while I was at my parents over this holiday I did NOT do any hand quilting (less time was spent watching TV than usually might be). I did however decide to pull out the scrap box and do some good-old-fashioned sewing together of scraps. This is a little "start of something" - probably will get some borders and be a crazy-ish baby quilt. It was fun.

Crumb Cake

You may remember the pieces of this quilt from this post a while back. They have been dormant for quite some time whilst I went through a lot of different design options in my head. My original plan was to keep the units small and uneven and sash them with thin black sashing for sort of a mosaic look. I was having too much trouble visualizing that, however, and when I tried to lay it out I did not like how it was shaping up. So the pieces continued to sit while I processed it in some dark corner of my brain and worked on other things. Finally I just decided that the best solution really was to just sew them all together into one big scrap mash up, and this piece is the result. My original fear is that this would dilute the impact somewhat, especially since the quilt uses only three colors so there is not tons of contrast. However, in reality I think it works, and I'm glad to finally have a finished top, as this has been in progress for...forever.

This quilt is sister to this one, and I have one more I'm thinking of doing from the same set of scraps to complete the "quilt family." I guess some people might call it a series.


my favorite bit

I would LOVE to hand quilt this, but I am torn because there are so many small piece and therefore TONS of seams. Some pieces are all seam. And maybe it's because my fingers are sore from my current hand quilting project that wrestling with a million seams doesn't sound fun to me right now. We'll see. I am loving hand quilting (the look of it) more and more these days; it just seems like it adds so much to the finished textile. I have always enjoyed the process, too, of course, but since I know there's no way I can hand quilt everything, I have to be selective about what I choose to work on. I just wish I would hurry up and get better at machine quilting so that maybe I would feel the same way about it, rather than just seeing it as a fast but not very nice way to finish projects.

(Bleh...it seems hardly a post goes by that I'm not apologizing for the quality of the photos, and maybe I should just get over it! However, I hear good photos are not in season right now, and I could not wait any longer to share this! I probably just need to improve my photoshop skills.)

In other news, I know only a few posts ago I was blogging about my new job as a teacher's assistant in a preK. And that has been a fun gig, for sure, and I have enjoyed it. However, I got yet another new job! I will be working as a paralegal in a non-profit agency that assists immigrants and refugees. It is more in the vein of what my long term interests are and is a better opportunity in a lot of ways. So I am excited, even if I am also sad to say good-bye to the preK kids. I am gearing up to relocate to the big city (Chicago) in under a week!! I will be staying with friends when I first go up so it's sort of a "soft" move - I won't be officially moving all my stuff until I figure out a more permanent living arrangement. As a result of the move I would not be surprised if the blog goes quiet for a while. I'm not strictly saying it will, because I hope to still make an effort to post. However, we'll see how it goes!

In the meantime, back to cleaning and packing. This includes more internal wrestling about the amazing volume of fabric I have in my possession and what, if anything, I should do about it. A question that never goes away??

Resolutions and the State of the Stash

So here're my quilting/crafting related resolutions, plus an assessment of where I stand on current projects and a reflection on my stash. In some ways this long post is really more for me than for my readers, so if you don't feel like reading all this, scroll down for a couple of pictures.

Resolutions

1. Buying fabric - I really do want to minimize the amount of fabric that I buy, but since I doubt that I will be able to stop completely, I want to focus on only buying things that fill in holes in my stash: browns, greys, oranges, bigger pieces, polka dots, solids. And some other stuff that I probably haven't thought of yet. More on stash below.
   
2. Finishing - this will just be the continuation of what has already been going on lately for me. I will continue to make finishing older projects a priority.
   
3. Prioritizing projects - when I start new things they need to be the projects I am most committed to, not necessarily the funnest sounding new thing I just thought of. I have at least one typed page of project ideas, and that is only the titles with maybe a couple word description. We're not talking paragraphs or anything. I will probably continue to have new ideas. As the speed of my ideas seems to outpace the speed of my production, I need to prioritize what I work on. (That said, some scrap projects will have to be a priority, as I am drowning in scraps.) I kind of have a sense of which long languishing ideas need to be a priority, but as they're probably only meaningful to me at this point, you all will just have to stay tuned.
   
4. Trying new things - I really want to push myself to try new techniques. Things like curved piecing, working with diamonds, set-in seams, applique with more than one shape, etc. I think it will be good for me to challenge myself. I have been planning a drunkard's path quilt to push myself into curved piecing territory, so that is going to be a priority, see above.
   
5. Learn to free motion quilt - I have saved batting scraps for practice, and I have at least one quilt top that I'm pretty indifferent to that I've been saving to be my first practice top. It's just a matter of actually getting going, not that anything in particular is stopping me...
   
6. Work on not-quilting crafts - I have a small list of other projects that I want to do. It's so much harder to get started on things I don't do regularly, and so easy to work on quilting because it's familiar. But I wanna work on some other stuff, too :) 
   

(Ahem. As for personal resolutions, finding a job and moving are at the top, bottom, and middle of the list. If I do a good job on those it will undoubtedly interrupt creative progress for a while, but that's the price you've got to pay...!)

We interrupt this word-heavy post with a picture. Block 7 of 11 for the swap:



On Stash

I realize that having a well supplied fabric stash is really part of my process, since I usually work from my stash rather than buying fabric for a new project, and I often take lots of inspiration from my materials. I think this is also why it's sooo hard for me to get rid of fabric since everything seems to have potential to me. The only thing I really have a problem with is the size of my stash. Sure, normally I'd say...the bigger the better! The real problem I have is just that I am not really settled yet, and I don't really expect to be any time soon. So having a huge amount of fabric stash means having to move it and find a new place for it with alarming frequency - in the last five years I've moved four times, and will move again as soon as I get a permanent job. Just for context, here is a picture of my fabric as I found it crammed in some storage space when I returned from Texas:



Yes, if you're looking closely there's a shoe hanging off that basket. I don't know why; this is just exactly how I found it. Oh yeah, and there was one more sweater box I found in another closet later on. And my mom gave me two boxes of fabric she is getting rid of. Of course I don't HAVE to keep it, but I haven't gone through it yet. Plus all the stuff I brought home with me from Texas. So you get the idea. I wish I could reduce the size of this just to make it more portable. Maybe I will just sort it not with the idea of getting rid of stuff (because that is too hard for me!*), exactly, but rather separating the strictly necessary from the less necessary. Then at least when I move I can focus on my energy on moving the most important stuff and decide what to do with the rest later. Like get rid of it. Or reincorporate it. (The latter is way more likely.)

*As an experiment, and because the bin wouldn't close, I went through my blues to cull whatever I could live without and would be willing to get rid of. I pulled three pieces, a fat quarter and two smaller pieces. Didn't help much. Now I'll have to try it again to cull the "less necessary".

Block 8 of 11:



On Projects

I have been fretting about having so many projects going at the same time, but when I actually sat down and took a closer look it's not really so bad. I have eight works in progress. 2 of those just need borders, but I need to find the perfect fabric and buy it, so that is currently holding me back. Hopefully when I get fabric those will be quick finishes. 4 of the wips are long term projects - things that are not on any real time frame, that I have been working on forever and will continue to work on for a long time. I don't feel and rush to power through and finish those; that's just not the kind of projects that they are. On the other hand...it's okay if they take a long time, but I do have to work on them occasionally! I won't start another project of that kind until at least one of these hits the finished top stage. 1 of the works in progress is my swap quilt, which I obviously can't do much with at this point in time since I'm still waiting for people to send me the blocks. The last of those projects is a log cabin quilt that is basically the one thing on this list I need to focus on working on and finishing. So not really that bad, right?

The finished tops list (could also be called the to be quilted list) breaks down in a similar way. There are 10 items on the list. 3 are in line to be hand quilted, and since I can only really hand quilt one thing at a time, there's not much I can do with those for now. 2 I am saving for free motion quilting practice - see above for my resolution to learn free motion. 2 are boy baby quilts (probably) so I am probably going to wait to finish them until I have someone to finish them for (probably). 2 I am not sure how I'm going to quilt them. They are both good candidates for free motion quilting, but in that case they will have to wait until I am "good enough". Otherwise I could quilt them with the walking foot, but it would probably have to be time-consuming, fussy, stitch in the ditching. So waiting to decide on those two. And lastly there is one that I am ready to baste and machine quilt anytime now and will probably work on soon.

Sooo... There you have a long explanation of where I stand creatively entering 2009. Actually there might be more, but I'll save it for another post. 2008 was such a truly wonderful year for me. My time at the shelter taught me so much and I was so blessed by the relationships and experiences I had. Even if my current state of limbo makes me feel like it's not ending on the highest note, it was a great year. I have high hopes for the adventures to be had in '09, so with that in mind...

Happy New Year! Hope you all have some fun tonight...I'm planning on it ;-)

Let's Call It Good

A (very) belated thank you to everyone who offered to send me fabric for my Grandmother's Flower Garden. I think I've finally decided not to do anymore flowers. I have finished 27 flowers and finished putting muslin around one side of each so that I can play around with layouts (this one is definitely NOT final). I have also decided that I will be leaving the shelter at the end of my year - in fact I'll be leaving in two and a half weeks! No mas! So, I decided I wanted to just leave the project with the flowers I was able to complete during my time here. It just seems nice and even to do it that way - then the project will always remind me of my time here (even though I'm sure I'll be working on it for years to come).

Things will no doubt continue to be quiet here at Quilty the Libster...until I get back to corn country, that is. Because so far the ONLY plan I have for life post-shelter is at least a couple weeks of uninterrupted creating. And I'm REALLY looking forward to it. Beyond that - well, I can't really see too far beyond that for now. I have lots of things I'm thinking about, but no idea what I'll finally end up doing. But that's okay with me. I'm beginning to have faith that it will all work out in the end - even if I have to keep nomading for a while.

She's Alive!!

Greetings from South Texas!

I've been here nearly six weeks and have completely neglected to post. Of course this is in part because I have absolutely no "quilty" content to share, but I thought I could at least let you all know that I'm alive!

Things are going well down here. It's been a HUGE adjustment, and the adjustment period is still ongoing, to be honest. Living and working at an emergency shelter for migrants provides no end of challenges - constant noise, living off of donated food, and constantly being on call, among other thigns. We work with our guests to help them figure out a plan to move on from our shelter - some do so successfully, others have to be asked to leave for one reason or another, others just don't show up at bed check one day. We listen to their stories and do our best to share their journeys with them and help them carry their burdens.

I'm learning a lot about myself and the world around me and constantly have more and more to think about! But that's exactly why I'm here - to truly examine my life and see where it's going to go from here. No one said it would be easy, and it's not, but there is a lot of joy in the work I'm doing, the people I'm serving, and just in the knowledge that I'm growing as a person.

Anyway, I'm sorry I neglected to mention this sooner, but if you care to you can follow the non-quilty aspects of my life here over on my personal blog, Rejoice Always. My readership there has traditionally been a handful of friends and family, and that's who I write for, but I'm happy to invite my fellow quilt bloggers along for the ride.

I have over 2,000 unread feeds on my bloglines!! My internet access is really limited and I only get to the computer every few days, usually. Even when I do get a chance to look at my favorite blogs, I am usually speeding through them and don't slow down long enough to comment :( But please know that I am reading as much as I can.

As for sewing - to be honest I miss my stash terribly! But even if I had it - so far I haven't found a space here that I could really use for sewing without having to completely pack it all away after every session. I haven't given up hope of finding, that, but I remind myself that I may have to change my ideas about what is "workable" sewing space. I keep reminding myself that I want to get back to my quilting "roots" and that our fore-mothers didn't have studios or stashes for the most part. But it's a challenge, I'm not going to lie! Sometimes I think I'm crazy for doing this, but at least I know that after this year I will never take these things for granted again! In the meantime, I'm working on a Grandmother's Flower Garden that I'll try to snap a picture of when I get a chance. Thank goodness for hand work!

Lastly, thanks to all who have expressed their good wishes and encouragement during my transition!! I'm afraid I haven't been able to respond to them all as I should, but they are very much appreciated. I hope to post again soon, at least sooner than six weeks from now. Many thanks to all who are even reading this - this online community means a lot to me!

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

So I'm moving - today! The story of the move is really too long for me to give alllll the details now, yet I have been promising and promising details and have so far failed to deliver!! And since I should be packing and cleaning but instead want to enjoy one last quiet morning, I guess I'll write a quick post.

The news is very exciting for me - I've decided to do something that has been a dream of mine for a long time and be a full-time volunteer for a year! Crazy, yes, but not quite as crazy as it sounds. I will be working for an awesome organization in Southern Texas that runs shelters for immigrants and refugees. While I won't have a salary, they will provide close to everything I'll need - room, board, health insurance, and lots of little things like toiletries, stamps, bus tokens, etc. etc. etc. For my part, I will perfect my Spanish, meet tons of interesting people, and have some time to think and reflect about where I'm going from here.

Part of committing to this means committing to a simpler lifestyle. Among other things, this means that my stash is not going with me....! I'm taking a few hand projects for starters, although I have a feeling it may be a couple weeks before I think about sewing again. I've got lots of notions packed in my suit case and will have my machine and some other stuff shipped to me when I'm ready. The shelter I'll be at has a clothing bank, so I'm hoping to continue my experimentation with recycled fabrics and utility quilts. Letting go of my stash has been one of the hardest things about this, but it's only for a year, and I think it will be very good for me in the end...

Here's a couple pictures to share before I go. First, the t-shirt quilt! Yes, I know it looks identical - because I did not add a border. I hope no one will think I'm contrary for that, because after all the majority of comments I received said yes to the border! But weighing out all the factors I decided to go no border, and I'm happy with the result, not the least because I actually got it done!! Super quick finish for me. It's not very closely quilted, which made it go even faster, but it's awfully sturdy, so I think it will last. That's the brother in question holding the quilt, so you can see how it came out size-wise. Maybe he's shorter than I thought??



This is for all intents and purposes a gratuitous cat picture!! I came home one night and found my kitty getting up close and personal with my hand quilting project - guess he wanted to help. This is the trip around the world quilt. I got the border 3/4 of the way quilted but no more! I don't want to take it to Texas just to finish the last tiny bit and then have to store it there, so I'm storing it here and I'll finish it at Christmas. Or something.

Transitions

Hello everyone. Whew still not much sewing going on in my world because my life is minor (very minor) turmoil and I can't seem to get myself to focus on anything much. I've pretty much decided to leave my job. I plan to give notice on Monday, although depending on how they react it will be open-ended notice and I'll probably be there for more than two more weeks. The catch of course is that I don't know where I go from here. I just know I need to be done with this, and I'm taking the prerogative of being 25 and more carefree than I will ever be again to just step out in faith and see what happens.

Anyway, for the most part my sewing time has been spent hand quilting the ginormous Trip Around the World or machine quilting this:



Yes, you read that right, machine quilting - my first attempt. I am using polar fleece as a combined backing/batting meaning that I don't have to worry about batting separating and could probably get away with really minimal quilting, but I want to do some for the sake of strengthening the top. And since my new-to-me (it's 17 years old) machine has a walking foot I decided to give it a go. Since I'm not too familiar with the whole walking foot thing, I'm just making it up as I go along. The stitch length is really erratic, but I think I might just be pulling the quilt to much.

The good news is, I don't care at all how the quilting LOOKS on this, and in fact poor quilting will fit in better with the rest of the quilt than good quilting would. The top was sewn almost entirely from untrimmed scraps pulled fairly randomly from the scrap box. The only bit I cut is the black. When some of the seams were close to pulling out because of fraying fabric I reinforced them by whip stitching in embroidery floss - very visible. When the top didn't lay flat - because it did not come CLOSE to laying flat, I took darts and used more embroidery floss. I basically broke every quilt rule in the book, but it's been super fun and makes me love it even more!