Going With The Flow

Remember this free-pieced project? And how I was trying to finish it or something? I decided I had "enough" units, I trimmed them to size, and then I started trying to come up with some kind of layout for them. Still working on that.

In the meantime I looked at the remaining scraps that I had set aside for that project and noticed that I had a lot of long strips of various widths left. A few seams later:


(This is actually before I sewed the blocks together, but it looks the same.)

I guess the best way to describe this block is improv log cabin. I tried to follow somewhat of a log cabin pattern, but obviously there's no real plan for the colors and the strips are all different widths. It's a little busy, but I really didn't want to sash the blocks. I think it works, though!

Scrap Pinwheels

I have mostly lost all focus on whatever it was I was trying to accomplish and am now just messing around and experimenting. Exhibit A:





Perhaps there is a method to my madness. More to come...?

Still More Hearts!

This is one of my favorite heart quilts. It is made by my mother, and since she had it sitting out I decided to snap a few pictures and share it with you all.



Obviously the few appliqued red hearts jump out at you the most, but the majority of the hearts are in the quilting. Every solid square has a heart quilted in it.





Hi Mom!

Spring Cleaning

So I have been cleaning. I should say I have been trying to clean. I have been sorting through my huge overflowing piles of fabric and supplies, trying to turn a critical eye towards it all and decide what I MUST have and what I can get rid of. I've spent some time this year reflecting on the topic of stash and whether or not I need to reduce mine. While logically I can easily talk myself into keeping it all because it is all a part of the creative process, I finally realized that I WANT to reduce the amount of stuff I have. At the end of the day it feels out of control to me and feels like a burden. I think I will be happier if I reduce. In the same vein, my wardrobe is also on the chopping block. My book collection will very likely be next.

The problem is that I keep coming across certain supplies and thinking - I will just whip this up into a quick project in order to move it out of my stash. And the problem with THAT is that "whip this up into a quick project" is not really something I do.

Case in point: a set of five heart-themed blocks made by a friend of my mother's in the 80s. Mom was going to get rid of them, and since I am incapable of resisting a heart theme, I had to take them. So then I came across them while cleaning the other day and thought...that's right, "I'll just whip this up into a quick project." After all, in this case much of the work was already done for me.



Problem is, I wanted to try to modernize the blocks with the setting, but I was having a hard time thinking of a good way to do that, and that was impeding with the whole "quick" part of the process. In the end I decided to go with something simple - if it looks like it could be from the 80s, well so much the better, I say. Parts of it look a bit brown in this picture, but the colors are really mauve-y pinks. I was planning to put more borders on to make it more of a medallion style, but when I finished the first border it was a nice size for a baby quilt and honestly just looked finished to me. And it's well suited for a baby quilt, so I thought why not just go with it.

Here's a close up of this block that doesn't show up very well in the overall shot (even here it doesn't show that clearly - it so hard to photograph those subtle colors!):

Quilt Spectrum

Here are a few pictures from the local guild quilt show that was last weekend. While I love the "big" quilt shows, I also enjoy guild shows that are focused on letting members show off, regardless of if they are doing flawless "show quality" work or not. Let's face it, most of us aren't, including me!

Lauren's Choice by Susan Carney. The maker had her five-year-old pick out the fabrics for this and I think she did a really great job.



Lincoln Museum Quilt by Connie Guhlstorf



Churn Dash by Barbara Miller and friends - the churn dash blocks were a 60th birthday present from many friends.



The Art of This Quilt by Kimberly Travers



No Polar Bears Allowed by Georgia Cluver Dawson. The upper section was part of the guild's progressive quilts program. The beluga whales are an original design.

My Oldest Work In Progress

Remember the grunge phase that swept the nation in the early nineties? Smells like teen spirit? Long hair? Ripped jeans? That was the context (umm...sort of! not really!) for this quilt. As a junior high school student at the time I went through a few years where I wore flannel shirts and hiking boots almost exclusively. It was around that time that my mom got me going on this quilt, probably as a way to keep me entertained in the summer, probably when I was eleven or twelve. It helped that I was also a little horse crazy (this was not related to the grunge movement as far as I know). I did the buttonhole stitch applique and embellishment (ears, eyes, and tail) on all the blocks at that time and set them all together without the borders, but that's as far as I got. Then it got moved from box to box to closet for about fourteen years.



Years later when I began to get seriously interested in quilting I hunted around for this project intending to finish it. All it needed was the borders for the top to be completed, but somehow when you've been not working on a project for over ten years it is easy to continue to not work on it. However, I had it specifically in mind when I went through my beginning of the year assessment and goal setting this year, and I bought the border fabric the first week in January. Now at last the borders are on and I can put it in the queue to be quilted. I haven't decided if I want to do it by hand or machine.



It's a different look from most of what I'm doing these days, but I guess you can probably expect that from fourteen year old works in progress...

They Call It Madness

Does this look like a basketball to you?

I have been working on a lot of different things (obviously), and jumping from project to project a lot. I started cutting drunkard's path pieces during my big scrap cutting marathon a while back. Last weekend I needed something to do with my hands while watching the first action packed weekend of the NCAA tournament, so I spent the time clipping and pinning drunkard's path units - because the clipping and pinning part takes for-ev-er. Sewing them once they are prepped is a pretty fast process, but the prepping...not so much.

I have only been planning on doing a small project - a baby quilt, I imagined - but since the largest units I can make with the templates I have are 4" unfinished, even a small project takes a lot of units. I decided to do 64, and got most of them done last weekend.

I was planning all along to do a traditional drunkard's path layout, but...come to find out that for that layout you're supposed to alternate the dark and light on the quarter circle and the arc. That is, half the units have a dark quarter circle and the other half have a light quarter circle. I did them all dark, with white arcs. Umm...duh? Sadly that never occurred to me - it wouldn't have been any problem to do 32 of each, but now that I have 64 of one kind of unit I do not think I'm going to make 64 more unless I can't find a nice layout for the ones I've got.

Soooo, I spent some time today trying out different layouts and snapping pics so that I could compare them and see if there's one I like. I actually have a book about drunkard's path quilts in hand, and I found a few traditional layouts that use only one kind of unit. These units need to be trimmed and steamed into submission, and I also didn't pay too much attention to color placement in these pics. You get the general idea, though.

This one is called "Baby Bunting"



"Anna Dancing"



"Around the World"



I like the first two the best. I did a couple others, too, but did not like them as much. Of course, I certainly haven't exhausted my layout options. Once you start playing around with this things the possibilities are pretty limitless. I will continue to contemplate this for a while. Still enjoying the tourney this weekend, but as of this evening my bracket is officially BUSTED.

A Successful Experiment

My Color Block Quilt made from t-shirt scraps is quilted and bound. I love the way it turned out. I wish there was some way I could photograph the texture, or that you could reach through your screen and touch it. It is backed with a thick flannel sheet and the end product is super soft and cuddly. I think this would be a great gift quilt - perfect for going off to college or a first apartment. This particular version would be great for a guy, too.

See, cuddly:



When making more traditional t-shirt quilts, I back the designs I want to use with featherweight fusible interfacing to stabilize them during construction. For this experiment I heavily starched the fabric instead of using interfacing. I was hoping that this would make the fabric manageable to piece with but, since when it was all finished it would wash out, the fabric would retain all its t-shirt character (I guess rinse away interfacing would be an option, too).

I also used fusible batting (scraps) - in this case it was a particularly apt application of the product, because it further immobilized the knit fabric to keep it from pulling around during quilting. Once washed and dried it does have a great texture, the jersey fabric stayed soft, and the top is flat. The flannel on the back actually moved around more than the knit during quilting, since I paid less attention to it (unfortunately). (As so often happens when machine quilting, the back is my least favorite part of this quilt.)



It is 48"x60". A nice throw size. So long story short, I am pleased with the results of this experiment, and am already brainstorming the pattern for the remaining t-shirt scraps I have...still a lot. While you're waiting for that, you can hop over to see Michael's experiment with t-shirt fabric, and the other cool things he is doing with scraps.

The Fabric Makes the Quilt

While I do have a few things I'm still trying to be focused on finishing, it looks like I am kind of shifting into "starting" mode again. As per my '09 resolutions, I am trying to prioritize what I start and think about which projects are really most important to me. One thing I am very determined to start is a memory quilt based on my trip to Namibia (a mere seven years ago). While I was there I bought these strips of folk art embroidery done by members of a women's cooperative.



The strips are about 40" long and 6" tall. I have a pile of fabrics for this quilt that I selected, I don't know, about five or six years ago. I was reading Roberta Horton's "The Fabric Makes the Quilt" at the time. I've been waiting for the fabric to make the quilt ever since. Maybe I was supposed to leave it out by the machine with a rotary cutter nearby?

But seriously folks. I like that book and found it inspirational like most of Roberta's books that I've read. Nevertheless I have yet to be able to tap into the quilt that the fabrics and these embroideries want to be. My original idea was to make a row quilt where I would leave these strips uncut and mix them in with rows of piecing. I still might do that. I'm worried that there might be too much white space. I could also cut the strips up, probably into a variety of sizes to keep designs intact.



I know you might be thinking...after seven years if she hasn't made this quilt, how much does she really care about it? I do, though. I really want it to happen, so I'm determined to make some kind of start on it. The reason I never have yet is, I think, due to that certain lack of vision. Quilters block. What have you. But I have lots of fabric, so I think I will just start cutting and sewing and see what I come up with. Hopefully in doing so I'll be able to strike upon some kind of plan.

On an unrelated note, look what I got from Dionne! A little taste of the tropics...I love it.

When Scraps Take Over

You may have been worried when you read about me cutting all my scraps up that I wouldn't have anything left for free pieced projects (like this one). No need to worry, I had a whole set of other scraps set aside for this project. I started this a while ago and have been thinking of it as a long term project - there wasn't exactly a goal or end in sight, just piecing scraps together at random until they become something. When I started it I thought it would be a good project to have on hand to just work on now and then, when I had time, when I needed a mental break, etc. It takes no planning since it's all random, so it should be easy to pick up at anytime. It's also a good creative boost because it is so free and spur of the moment.



The reality has been that I haven't worked on it very much. The only part I've consistently worked on is adding blue, green, and purple scraps to the pile. Now I've gotten it all out and put it by the machine (actually it's basically eaten the machine and the surrounding area) and I'm feeling like I may just want to work on it till it's done. I'm beginning to think there may be more than one quilt here. I had originally imagined creating a lot of units of different sizes and shapes and setting them together with thin black sashing so they look somewhat like a mosaic. I may or may not do that, but I'm starting to have other ideas, too.




These pictures cover only a few of the units and blocks that I currently have. I don't know how many scraps I started with, but I definitely still have plenty.