Setting for Swap Blocks

I've been trying to develop a setting for the blocks I received through the craftster block swap I participated in at the beginning of the year. I've had a basic idea, but was not sure which of the many possible variations I wanted to do. Any of the versions would require more blocks so I started this past weekend by working on more blocks:







By the time I finished these blocks I had landed on a setting idea that I thought I was happiest with, so that's what I worked on the rest of this weekend. None of this is sewn together yet except those strip set borders:



To guide your viewing, let me just say that it is "upside down" in this picture, but I did not rotate it because then the angle looks funky. Also, I can already see that in the center section I will switch the top middle and the right middle blocks (according to where they are in this picture) to balance the colors more. Also, sorry it's dark - it was late evening by the time I got around to this. Keeping those things in mind...

Actually I'm finding I like it more today than I did yesterday, but I'm still going back and forth between liking it and fearing it might be too busy/funky/weird/? I mean it certainly is busy, and the borders and lack of sashing do nothing to calm it down. It does have a certain charm to it, though.

Now wait, I am anticipating that someone somewhere will want to know what it would look like with the strips sets flipped around so the white is on the outside, so I laid that out, too. Try to cleanse your palate before you look at it, though...

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Ok, here it is (and the good news is, this picture is right side up and all the blocks have been moved around):



Hmm...personally I definitely like the first one better. I will continue to mull it over. I have one more block and lots of scraps that will go on the back.

Steps Completed

Here is the finished London Steps top. While I realize it is not something that is everybody's taste, I am pretty happy with it. I enjoyed experimenting with more non-quilting fabrics and mixing lots of different kinds of fabrics, and it has the look I was going for. To finish this I think I am going to combine two quilt ideas into a two-sided quilt, so I will be soon be working on another "top" for the back of this.



I am now working as a teacher's assistant in a pre-K classroom at a public school. This is still not my long term final destination job, but as jobs go it's a definite step up from substitute teaching, and I'm enjoying it so far. It has put a limit on my sewing time, I think mainly because it's been taking me longer to think about and transition between projects. I've had other jobs where I actually thought about sewing projects at work and came home ready to work on them, but so far I find I don't have time to let my mind wander while corralling three and four-year-olds all day. I actually kind of like the fact that the job absorbs me while I'm doing it. It has made me realize, though, how much thinking I actually do about quilts before and while I work on them, and that thinking time is an essential part of the process.

As a bit of an aside, flipping through my Hancock's of Paducah catalog I notice they are selling Gee's Bend quilt kits with a pattern to make a Gee's Bend style quilt, and a fabric line called Gee's Bend solids. I admit my initial reaction to that is not a positive one, given that patterns, quilts, and fabric lines seem so far from the things I love about Gee's Bend. Am I being narrow minded? Maybe it's just a way to make the aesthetic more accessible to people who have trouble working in a liberated way? Maybe it's positive because it's ostensibly making money for Gee's Bend (says they "partnered with the Gee's Bend Quilter's Collective). What do you think?

London Step

I am no longer trying to reduce my fabric accumulation by getting rid of fabric.* I will only reduce my stash by using what I have and not buying anything new. Here's why: I can't get rid of fabric. As soon as I get a pile of fabric together that I have convinced myself I can part with, I am inspired to make something with it. Yes, there is something about seeing all that unloved, rejected fabric together in the same place that inspires me. Contrary to popular believe, this is NOT because I'm trying to get rid of fabric that is beautiful, or that I love or even like, or that on its own inspires me. Each individual piece of fabric in the pile is ugly, weird, or minimally it's boring, and almost all of it is of questionable quality. Every individual piece I can look at and say, "Oh yeah, I can get rid of this!" That's how it got into the pile, after all. I guess it's the pile that gets me. Once I see it all together I say to myself, "you know what I could do with all this..." and the wheels start turning. And it's all over.

So maybe I should just try getting rid of my nice fabric??

This is the first project inspired by "the pile". It is based on a photo of a quilt in the book "Bold Improvisation." If you get a chance to look at that book, I highly recommend it. I got it for my mother for Christmas and have been enjoying it ever since! There are many quilts in there that give me ideas. One in a zig-zag/rail fence pattern called "London Step" kind of jumped off the page at me, and I am doing an interpretation of it.



Obviously it is a pretty free-style piece. I did no planning in terms of the fabric combinations and colors (do I even need to tell you that?). I didn't attempt to directly replicate the blocks/color combos in the inspiration quilt, but tried to get the same random "using up odds and ends" feel. I have used at least four fabrics so far that are not quilting cottons - some flannel from an old sheet, a stretch twill, a corduroy, and some pillow case fabric. This is the first time I have mixed so many fabrics, so we'll see how it goes. I think this is slightly more than half the number of blocks I will end up doing...

Well, the good news is that while I'm busy being inspired by my junk fabric, for the most part I have been realllllly good about not buying new fabric. Ever since I spent my Christmas gift certificate, I have only made a few small fabric purchases - a few yards of black and grey broadcloth, two or three 50% off remnants, and maybe two other pieces of yardage and one fat quarter. I mean we're talking about a time period of more than SIX MONTHS, so I definitely think I'm doing pretty well. And I've decided that if I continue to be good about not buying fabric for about another, you know, year or so, then I will buy myself some frivolous things as a treat. In the meantime I'm going to try to focus on USING WHAT I HAVE!! That means I need to get sewing....................



*Watch this space for posts in which I resolve to reduce my fabric accumulation by getting rid of fabric.

Historical Design

While it's pretty blurry in this picture, under the framed mirror next to the window is Mary Todd Lincoln's sewing table at the Lincoln Home in Springfield Illinois where the Lincolns lived for about 17 years before they moved to the White House. On the tour they told us it was where she did all the family's sewing. I was the only visitor snapping pictures of the carpeting, but the designs were so great that I just had to share. Wish I'd gotten more of the wallpaper.

Gifted

I have not had much to share the past few weeks partly because I was rushing to finish two quilts that were both gifted this weekend. I traveled out of town to a wedding and one quilt went to the bride & groom while the other went to some friends who hosted me along the way. I was in such a mad rush the day I left on the trip that I only had time to take a few quick pictures. They did not come out very well, but they're all I've got!

This first quilt is made with a set of charm squares from So You Sew Fun II line from RJR. I bought them half price from the Fat Quarter Shoppe. I'm sure many of us have done this because charm square packs are not very expensive in the first place, and then when they go on sale they seem like a very affordable price for a little piece of inspiration. Although I'm sure there are a million things you can do with them, I'm not sure if they really fit into my personal way of working. (Maybe I need to be more creative.) However, I think this quilt works no matter how simple the design may be, and it has a modern feel to it that I thought would be good for the college friends who hosted me the first night of my journey. They are good friends and the quilt was less of a hostess gift and more of a "good friends" gift.





The second gift was this improv log cabin quilt I posted about recently. This quilt went from beginning to end in a very short span of time! At least by my standards. It is hand quilted with black #8 pearl cotton in a baptist fan pattern. The quilting went so quickly! Those baptists knew what they were doing. Of course I did not mark the fans at all so they are pretty wonky in some places, but I think it works with the overall feel of the quilt. This went to the bride & groom, and I hope they will like it.


(This quilt actually quite possibly lays flatter than any quilt I've ever made, but the wind was blowing it in this picure).

Me at Sisters!

This is too fun not to share - turns out I made a small tiny contribution to the Sisters quilt show! Dionne, one of the people I swapped quilt blocks with for this swap finished her blocks into a quilt and the quilt hung in the show! You can check it out here - it looks so great!

My block is on the far left side, third down from the top. Looks like this:



Thanks Dionne!

256 Square Inches

252 one inch squares (1.5" unfinished) + about a week of on-and-off sewing = this piece:



All that work for a piece that is smaller than a fat quarter! That's my pin cushion on it for scale. I have so much additional respect for people who make full size quilts out of squares this small, like this one for example!



Of course a big part of the reason why it took me so long is that I planned the layout and every square had a specific place I wanted it to be. That meant I couldn't do too much chain piecing because I felt I would quickly get confused about what went where. I could imagine that working in a less planned way would go faster, but no matter what it would be time consuming!

The sad thing is I would like to conclude from that that I shouldn't bother saving scraps this small anymore, but I probably will. I actually kind of liked it, and I could see myself doing this again. Oh the horror.



This quilt is somewhat reminiscent of this one, except that those were five inch squares. I will probably end up doing one in every possible size. Why not.



If anyone thinks that this looks super fun, I have a bag of one inch squares I can send you. I don't know how many squares are in it, but enough to make a good start I think. I'll send it to the first person to express interest, if anyone does!

Another Quilted Garden

I am back in Illinois after a very pleasant trip to Texas. Shortly after returning I finished this quilt that I've been hand quilting since February or so. It was almost completely done before my trip. I only had about half the binding left to sew down, so I got that done fairly quickly after getting back.

This quilt is really a collaboration between me and my Aunt. She did the hard part - she needle turn appliqued all of the gorgeous flower blocks and gave them to me as a gift. I assembled the top and did the quilting.



I think the quilt is 60 x 90ish. It is photographed on a queen size bed here. I think it would probably fit a twin bed pretty nicely.







As much as I love this quilt (and I do), after hand quilting two predominantly yellow quilts in a row I am feeling very ready to work with another color for a while!

I have been slow getting back into my old routines since returning from my trip - namely sewing, blogging, and reading blogs. In the last two weeks I found and started a summer job and signed up to do some volunteering, and those things have taken up most of my time. I think I will continue to ease back into things.

Rose Garden

I am safely arrived in Texas, so it's safe to say that you may not hear lots from me in coming days/weeks. Before leaving Illinois I did manage to finish patching the blown out seams on the project I mentioned in my previous post.



This top was sewn many years ago, but has languished in the closet forever due to my lack of quilting skills. Because it is foundation pieced on muslin, I thought it would be too thick for hand quilting. At the time I made it I didn't yet machine quilt, and when I started machine quilting I didn't think I was good enough to work on this, since I'm particularly fond of it. Now my machine quilting skills are slightly better, but more importantly I decided I would rather have it finally finished so it can be enjoyed.

I'm fairly happy with the quilting, but the good news is that you can barely see most of it, anyway. There is a grid of wavy lines in the center section, and a vine in the border (no leaves).



Most of my photos did not turn out great, but the thing I love about this quilt is hard to capture in photos anyway - the texture created by using the stitch-and-flip method to create the field of green surrounding the flowers. I got the idea to make flowers this way when I was sewing my crazy quilt, which used the stitch-and-flip method. Revisiting this project made me want to think creatively about other ways to use the same method to create different effects.



If I come across anything interesting and fiber related down here I will post, otherwise I'll be back in a bit. I will try to find time to read blogs, too, but if you don't hear from me for a while, know that I promise to catch up later.

Strips

Here are two simple baby quilt tops I did last week. When doing my scrap organizing project a while back I set aside any strips that were selvage to selvage. I had fun putting them together in different combinations, and these are the results. I thought about adding borders or other additional elements, but I think I've decided that I like them as is, simple though they may be.



In other news, school is just about out for the summer meaning no more work for a substitute. I've decided to head back to the shelter in Texas for part of the summer to visit and help out. I leave next Wednesday. I'm not sure how long I will be gone for, but things my be a little quiet around here in the meantime. Of course you never know! I do hope to have one or maybe two more things to post soon. I have one project that is quilted and even bound, but unfortunately I found not one, not two, but three blown out seams when I was doing the quilting! Some patching is going to have to happen before it is considered "finished". I'm trying to force myself to get that done so I can share it, because it's a project I'm really excited about. Maybe I will be able to get to that today. Stay tuned!

Hope you're all gearing up for a great summer!