Time Flies...

June 16, 2018

Time flies whether I am having fun or not. A lot of sayings I grew up with have been fluttering through my thought process lately and one of them is about time flying when fun is on the agenda. Thinking more deeply I see that time flies, PERIOD.

Thursday last I was on the phone for almost 2 hours signing up for Medicare. MEDICARE! Where did the years go? I am so amazed that 65 is the next big birthday for me. I am certainly grateful for the cost of Medicare coverage and the cost of supplemental health insurance to cover the rest of the medical. The lady signing me up was trying to find the most economical deal for me and was happy for all my input and clarification each time we exchanged sentences. It was an interesting experience, to say the least! The amazing thing is even getting an expensive coverage plan (her choice of words) it is a real bargain to me, as I am staggering under the cost of buying my health care on my own since Tom’s retirement plan dumped all us old-timers they didn’t feel like covering anymore due to rising costs. I had a sweet deal for 6 years before the other shoe fell. Boy did it land with a thump!

There was a set amount they put in a fund for us losers of health care and my share of that fund ran out 14 months after I got it. The last 7 months of this year before Medicare kicks in have all been on me, and it takes almost every penny of my Social Security to cover the health care payment. There is something hugely wrong with our medical system.

Layout of Hawks Nest block with pieces for next block on table above it

I have been slowly working on my current quilt projects. I seemed to have lost my mojo and finding it again has been just putting one foot in front of the other and getting through each day. I would think I was depressed, how hard it is to find the desire to sew pieces of fabric together, but I have figured out it is a massive sinus problem! Besides being hot and tired all the time and being fuzzy in the thinking department, there is that quilt each day that needs to be quilted. My schedule is full. I get the job done and go home. Then I fall asleep in my chair and wake up in time to go to bed. Where is the MOJO!

Hawks Nest

Old habits kick in and five minutes of sewing each day still gets things done. Very slowly, but a block at a time is still getting sewing done.

Hawks Nest 2 finished blocks

I’m organized and settled in the house. I miss being able to get up really early and go into the studio to quilt, but the flip side of that coin is I get to walk away from the shop and come home. There is no WiFi at the studio, so there is no computer perusing during the day. I do the quilting, I come home. I sew a block. And I look for my mojo. I know I will find it, I have found almost everything else that got displaced in two moves.

Hawks Nest 12 finished blocks

I hope to get more quilts going and I need to remember I have finished many projects that got started and put in little shoe box tubs. I have a stack of empty ones in the closet.

This year my goal is to make as many twin size quilts for charitable purposes as I possibly can. I took 5 to my friend, Karen, last week. She knows where to take them for people who need them.

Lay out on design wall

I learned how to “web a top” by watching a web cam video Bonnie Hunter had on her site. I have read about it on her blog, but I could not figure out how to do it. Seeing it on the video made it all clear and now I am looking forward to getting a set of quilt blocks done so I can try this simple assembly system she described. 

Webbed top to bottom all the way across

Sewing webbed and pressed rows into a finished block

I practiced today on a quilt block that was 13 x 13 blocks in size. I was amazed at the speed I put the whole thing together, from layout on the design wall to pressed and back on the wall as a finished unit. I will look at it for a while and make 5 more in the future and make a crib quilt.

Finished block back on the design wall

Hawk's Nest is my latest ongoing project while I look for the mojo. I know it will hit me full force in the process of looking, so I just keep sewing. A little at a time is better than no sewing at all.

Hawks Nest trial layout

Happy June! 4 days until summer!

2017 Another Year Gone...

I am on my Christmas break. Emily is reading in the living room and Tom is fixing lunch. It is Christmas Eve day. I am in the sewing room making samples and writing up instructions for my quilts on the hoof.

I am making a Lady of the Lake quilt and it will be scrappy. The only consistent thing is the large half square triangle in the middle. 

Lady of the Lake sample block

The half square triangles that go around the block are scrappy anything. The light side of the triangle is all tans from very light to no darker than a paper bag. The colors are anything I find in my box of 2 ½” squares. I am trying to use as much of the cut stuff as possible. I have lots of 2 ½’ squares.

The fun part of this is the bonus half square triangle that comes from making the block parts. If you mark a second line 3/8” from the original diagonal line and sew it as well, when you cut the space between the sewn lines, you get two half square triangles.

   

One for the current project and one for the bonus block box.

I have made several quilts from the bonus block box and since there are so many possibilities, it is worth making them for future use. Unfortunately it is twice as much pressing of half square triangles, but there is the plus side of not having to make 2” half square triangles for the small blocks with which I am so enamored.

4 X Square with dark squares

4 X Square with light squares

To find ideas for using them, I look everywhere for block ideas and build my quilt on EQ7. 

This time my bonus half squares are going to be made into a block called 4 X Star which I found in the block tool from Ladies Art Company. I think this would be an excellent project to take to a quilt retreat. I have a tub of 2” strips for the 9 patch blocks in the center. The color possibilities can be endless and I don’t have to cut anything but the sub cutting of units to sew. I get to use of stuff.

I have lots of scraps of fabrics to cut into usable parts hanging around. I get gifted with fabric from various people who are not going to use what is left from some project or other.

Honestly, I probably don’t need to buy anymore for quite some time.

I took a buying hiatus several years ago and used such a lot of fabric in a 2 ½ year time frame. The price of fabric had sky rocketed in my non buying phase, and now it just freaks me out how much it costs to make a quilt. I’ll stick with scrappy and use up what I have.

All the pictures shown of finished blocks are just my samples so I remember how to assemble things and can see how to press things when I actually make the block. I like to be organized.

The ideas for making bonus blocks I learned from Bonnie Hunter and her scrap organization techniques.

Seven Shirts

I have a friend in Pinterest.  

One day my friend, Pattie, asked me how many pins I have on my Pinterest account.  I didn’t know. How do you find that out? She said it is right under my name when I open Pinterest.  Well I’ll be.  I have around 450 pins. She had over 4000! Me thinks she has too many days with headaches.

I bought a Go fabric cutter.  I get an urge to find a pattern to use shapes I have bought and I start looking at quilt patterns.  I am a quilt builder more than a pattern follower.  I find inspiration in things and go from there. Most of my Pinterest folders are different types of quilts for the different shapes I have for my Go cutter.

I have a plethora of men’s shirts that I blame solely on Bonnie Hunter.  She came to talk at our guild one year and show us her quilts.  I left with an urgent need to buy men’s shirts at the thrift store.  I have two huge Rubbermaid tubs of 100% cotton shirts. 

I was perusing Pinterest one night and I found a pattern for a quilt that uses 7 shirts to make a quilt. A link led me to Thrifty Quilter blog and she gives wonderful instructions on how to use 7 shirts to make a quilt.  I’m hooked! I just happen to have 100 % cotton shirts! I started digging around in one of the tubs and pulled a few shirts and then decided that I needed one more color so I got in the other tub.  Well guess what? The other tub is filled with fabric pieces of shirts that have been cut apart.  My friend Pattie did me a huge kindness and cut many of my shirts apart for me. I started feeling guilty having all those perfectly good shirts that I was just cutting up and there are people who could probably use them to keep warm and I stopped after cutting apart a dozen or so.

Out came 7 shirts in usable parts and I cut them according to the directions in the Thrifty Quilter blog. I did not read all the way through and sub cut the light strips into 2 ½” squares.  I wasn’t supposed to do that.  So I didn’t make my quilt exactly like hers.  I had a lot of pieces to use up.  Fortunately I stopped before I cut everything into squares and started doing the sewing according to the directions.  Because I had cut so many strips into squares I could not make the piano key borders, so I am making 9 patch blocks instead for the outside border.  It’s fun in a way, finding enough squares of each color to do what I have planned to finish up my thrifty 7 shirt quilt. 

my layout, different a little from Thrifty Quilter

I have told myself all along this was the experimental shirt quilt.  I think I will go pull 7 more shirt parts and start anew.

I bordered my quilt with 9 patches instead of piano key strips

Sometimes I make it up as I go…

I have a plethora of bonus half square triangles from several projects I have made in the past 2 years.  Bonus half squares are made when you sew a second seam to a square you are adding to a rectangle to make a triangle be on the corner of the rectangle.  Clear as mud I know.  But when the thought of making tiny half squares for a project seems overwhelming, it is a wonder to get them as a bonus when you take the time to sew the extra seam! I learned this trick from a class I took from Bonnie Hunter years ago.  She has lots of tips and tricks on her web site that make so much sense. Waste not want not is probably her mantra.

Stars over Challotte

I made a quilt last year from one of Bonnie’s books called Stars over Challotte.  It used up a huge number of bonus half squares and then of course I made a few more quilts that netted me many more bonus half squares. My little box of them is overflowing and I wanted to come up with something for using them up.  

9 patch stars

I decided to make a little 6” star with a 9 patch in the center.  The 9 patch is surrounded by half square triangles that make star points. I had lots of blue and brown and green and brown half squares so I made my little stars have brown points.

When I drafted my original pattern I needed somewhere in the vicinity of 72 stars.  I decided the stars would be pretty busy so I went back to the drawing board and made my pattern have a second block that would create the look of chains between the stars.

Yuck, back choice.

I liked the little tan and blue 9 patches that created the center of the star and decided to make the chain blocks from four red and tan 9 patch blocks.  I made four of them and sewed them together but there was now too much red to go with the blue and green so I went back to the drawing board.

make lots of sets and sub cut all at once. saves time!

My EQ7 program really got a work out this morning as I refigured the layout of the quilt. I settled on making the chain blocks from red and cream 4 patches. I will set 5 of them into a 9 patch using cream squares to separate them, and the chain will still be red but not so overpowering.

Even with all the stars I barely made a dent in the half square bonus box.  I am not even making a noticeable dent in my red and cream bags of strips as I create the four patch blocks.  

red and cream bags of 1 1/2" strips

I still need to round up the cream background to make squares to set the red and cream four patches together, but I have a handle on what I want to do now.  

How I remember things (grin)

The little cutie red and cream squares are being worked up in sets of 10.  I need 250 units to make up 50 blocks my pattern requires.  I have 40 units done.

Tidying Up

I have been busy these past few months on various projects.  The chaos needs tamed and the clutter needs to be attacked and organized again. Yes, again.

I have this zipper bag full of bonus half square triangles that I have gotten from various projects I worked on in the past 18 months.  

It is amazing how many bonus half squares you can get just from one quilt!  I did two with lots of rectangles that had squares sewn at an angle on each end of the rectangle and I think I had over a thousand bonus HST’s from each.

I am currently working on another project making more bonus HST’s and I decided to trim and sew them as I do each block so I don’t end up with the plastic bag full of “stuff to do.” It just won’t go away by itself. The current project is Bonnie Hunter’s Boxy Stars. A free pattern on her website.

I didn’t have the energy to do pressing it was going to take to empty this bag and today I decided I just needed to get it done. 

Now I have a very full box of bonus half square triangles and I need to find another project to use them in.

I used a lot of them in the Stars over Challotte quilt I found in a Bonnie Hunter book.

  

I liked the zig zag of the setting triangles.  The dark fabric really lets the stars shine.

I also figured out how to make a bear paw block using the half squares as well and that is a pleasing manly quilt. I found the perfect fabric in my stash for the large square and had fun matching the four I needed for each paw.

I’m sure the mess will never go away but I feel better knowing I no longer have that bag of unpressed triangles looking at me.

I’m going to go outside and enjoy this perfect summer evening.

Sewing and Thinking

I was thinking this morning as I was sewing on the itty bitty spool blocks how much my sewing style has changed over the years; in large part to Bonnie Hunter and her organizational suggestions as well as my penchant for not throwing little pieces of fabric away.

In my mind I was comparing sewing to driving.

When I was young I drove my car fast.  I loved the feel of moving through traffic and getting where I was going.  When I started sewing back in the last century I was always hurrying to get the blocks done so I could put the quilt together and move onto the next one.  I hand quilted in those days and I did enjoy the slow process of that.  I made many tops in my first few years and like other hobbies, I was inundated with my productivity.  Purchasing the longarm was a means to an end.  It was a new job to move onto when the weaving job was no longer an option and it kept me from being buried alive under pieced tops.

I liked making quilts with big blocks.  They could be simple or intricate, but big was always my end result.  The bigger the block the less it took to make a quilt.  It didn’t take any less fabric, just less blocks.  It’s a mental thing for me.  It is like the mental thing of getting half done with the pantograph quilting.  After the half way point it seems I zoom along to finish the quilt.  Up to the half way point it is like wading through mud. I feel like I’m never going to get done.

I find I have slowed down while driving. I don’t speed.  I look around at the scenery and enjoy seeing the things out the window.  I even feel sorry for the people who are rushing past me trying to get to work and I’m in their way.

The tops I make now are more intricate.  The pieces I use are small and it takes many to sew together to make a block.  I even like using narrower strips and find using 2” strips and 1 ½”” strips more to my liking.  I would never have thought when I made those big blocks years ago that I would find the same kind of joy piecing blocks from small pieces of fabric and not feeling like I was going too slow getting the process finished.

Now it seems I get to the edges and don’t want to put the borders on.  Quilt tops languish for months while I decide what to do for a border.  I do get them done.  I feel guilty when several are waiting for borders and I will take a weekend to do that tedious job.  I find my fun this day building blocks.  Lots and lots of blocks!

The pattern I’m working on as a main project is called Spoolin’ Around and is one of Bonnie’s patterns from her book More Adventures with Leaders and Enders.  I had printed out the instructions when she had offered it as a challenge on her blog.

The last project sits in a stack of sewn rows and sewn sashes waiting for me to pin them together tonight when I sit and watch tv after my day is done.

The spools are just cute.  I love these, but realize the futility of thinking I am actually using up fabric.  There is no obvious dent in the tub of strips. 

Resolutions are a work in progress!

Resolutions

I made a New Year’s Resolution on January 1^st, 2015, to finish tops I have that need to be quilted.  I always seem to have something of my own in the tub to be quilted and I have a cupboard of rescued tops that sit there day after day looking pretty but never getting closer to being usable.  Since I know I won’t stop making tops (but I CAN stop purchasing ones that someone else didn’t finish) and I want to see some good come of what I do for fun, I thought I’d challenge myself.

My goal was to do at least one of mine a week, rescue or tub, whatever moved me or whatever was easiest to get on the frame, and just get them DONE.

On March 31^st I had 16 done! That was better than a weekly average of one! I may not get 52 tops quilted this year, I am quilting a lot of custom quilts this year and they make me too tired to think some weeks, but I have made progress I am happy with at this point in the year.  I have had a week of vacation in that time frame and I did at least 3 during that time off. 

The little quilts are crib quilts that get donated to local charities. My sister made 225 crib tops for me to quilt and donate.  I am almost done with them. The larger quilts are going to grace the quilt room for inspiration.  I sent 36 larger quilts to charitable organizations this year so I could get a fresh look in my studio. I know someone is enjoying the ones I sent on.  I enjoyed looking at them for a while.

crib 1

crib 2

crib 3

crib 4

offset log cabin inspired by customer quilt

crib 5

rescue 9 patch

close up of quilting of quilt above

strippy jelly roll quilt done from a picture

 The Rest of Bill's shirt. Quilt #2 that I made with this pattern. The first one was red and yellow and i called it Bill's Shirt because the white in the 9 patches was from Bill's shirt!

Stars over Shallot (Bonnie Hunter Design)

Bear Paw made from bonus half square blocks, my design

Whirly gig, my design

crib 6