Resolutions part II

It is August 30^th and I have not finished as many of my tops in the tub and the cupboard as I had hoped, but I am making a dent in my stash.  

The Rest of Bill's White Shirt

I have pieced a few tops and quilted a lot of customer quilts. 

Detail of Line Dancing I use on the little crib quilts

My vacations every quarter have not included much of my own quilting.  I did 3 in March but I did none in June.  I have a week off coming up in September but I think I might be up to my armpits in alligators and the bathroom redo upstairs should be in progress if the mid -September start happens as promised. Mid to late July got backed to September because of the weather slowing the crew down on the job before mine.

I have almost finished sewing the bindings down on my pile of quilts and I thought I’d get the girls to help me hang them on the port-a-stand so I could get pictures of them to post. I have one left to sew the binding down and I will have to motivate myself to start quilting something of my own again for continued hand work in the evenings.

Red and Blue Big Block Log Cabin Queen size

The first quilt I pieced this summer was the red and blue queen sized log cabin.  This big block pattern has captured my attention and I have made 5 so far.  #4 is the R&B one and I also got crazy and cut tumblers out of reds, white/creams, and blue from fabric that finds its way into my house and made the backing from the tumblers. 

Tumbler backing for Red and Blue BBLC #4

I was delighted with the outcome so I forged ahead and cut out a green and brown pile of tumblers and sewed big block log cabins from my green and brown bags of 2” strips.  I found when I did the R&B one that the little log cabins I did for the border didn’t work out as well as I had hoped because the short sides of the quilt used an uneven count of blocks and the little log cabins wouldn’t pattern out properly for me. I put a plain block on each short end to solve my dilemma.

Green and Brown Big Block Log Cabin Queen size

  

On the green and brown big block log cabin, I made the small block border into Court House Step blocks and I was much happier with my results.  The tumbler backing on it is stunning and the border fabric I found in my stash was a perfect blend of the correct brown covered with little squares of color that were in the quilt blocks.  It was serendipitous to say the least.

Tumbler backing for BBLC #5

The twin quilts are from my box of bricks and my box of 5 inch squares.  These will find their way to new homes in the next run to the quilt shop to drop them off. It seems there is always a disaster or a person who could use some TLC and a quilt hopefully conveys the thought that someone “out there” is thinking of someone for a moment in time.

Brick sidewalk tile design Twin

I still have at least 2 dozen crib quilts in my tub of tops my sister made for me several years ago (she did about 250 tops for me from 5” squares) that await quilting and then I think I will be done being charitable for a while.  

5 inch squares Twin

I will need to think up a new quilting resolution for 2016 that involves getting the fabric out of here before I can’t see the door anymore.

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

My Latest project (Mad City Mama goes Rural)

I am so inspired by Bonnie Hunter and her taming of the scraps.  I have accumulated end trimmings from quilt edges and pieces parts from other projects for years.  They need to be brought under control.  Well right off the bat I know that is not going to happen, so just utilizing some of the scraps into a project is a project in itself.

I try to explain my method of approaching a project in the blog posts most times and I will explain my inspiration for this latest quilt.

Bonnie has a wonderful series of books I use for inspiration.  I have focused on a pattern called Mad City Mama in her book Adventures with Leaders & Enders.  It is a wild riot of color strip blocks and 25 patch units.  I am making the 25 patch units from 1 1/2” strips of fabric.  I felt the easiest way to achieve a good mix of colors with unnoticeable repeats was to make all my strip sets for the 100 blocks I need for my quilt before I cut them into units to sew together into the blocks.  I have a tub of 1 ½” strips of fabric that just keeps getting fuller. 

My sister tried to tame this tub years ago and found they never go away.  She made a lot of quilts before she threw her hands in the air and said enough!  She even resorted to taking bags of one color and sewing the entire bag of strips into long strings and giving the sewn strips to our friend, Linda, to weave purses with.  Still there are bags of strips.  Linda would report back and tell us how many dollars of stock she had created.  Good for her.  It got rid of the really awful stuff like PINK.

finished sets of 9" strips sets

pressed and waiting for subcutting

Back to the project at hand.  Today I completed the 100 strip sets and will cut them into 1 ½” units consisting of 5 blocks.  

I don't cut one set at a time!

trimmed

trimmed

trimmed and into tub for sorting into sets of five

These will get sorted into sets of five units to sew into little 5” blocks which have 25 1” squares. 

sets of 5 waiting to be sewn

lovely little 5" blocks of 25 patches!

I will change the way my quilt looks by not using strips to make the squares that set the 25 patch units together because the riot of color Bonnie used is just too much for me. I will tame it with Kaffe Fassett’s red shot cotton fabric I bought recently at a local quilt shop.  The star points will be made from a brilliant blue fabric.  

The planning part is always the most fun.

Pictures will try to tell the story.

Sewing for Scraps

Why Scrappy?

There seems to be a never ending supply of scraps in this studio. Whether from the trimmings of my quilts as I prepare a finished top for binding or just from trimming fabrics as I cut out projects and even from mystery bags that are left behind by my lovely customers, scraps never seem to go away.

What to do; what to do! I had such a hard time at the beginning matching my fabrics for a regular quilt project. That hard time multiplied when it was scraps I could not throw away because they were still pretty big and there were so many colors I could not decide how to make it work.

I decided one day that there was no reason why the colors could not work together; I just had to find something to make them all play nice. What followed was an 18 month foray into “sewing for scraps”. I experimented with all the colors I had in my cupboard.  

Starting with a rather light medium color of green, I made a sampler style of block using half square triangles made by sewing a square of scraps sewn on telephone book pages and cut into 6 ½” square and sewing that on the diagonal with a whole piece of green.  I cut these apart to make half square triangles that were strips on one side and green fabric on the other.  I experimented with different style settings to create six blocks.  The resulting quilt pleased me enough to have me move on to another color.

The next set of half squares that were strips on one side and whole fabric on the other became a very striking purple quilt that actually read as black.  I gifted that quilt to a friend who helped serve the food at a party I hosted for my longarm quilt group.

I learned from the first two quilts that I liked pairing the scrappy halves with dark rich jewel tone colors.  It seems to make the scraps pop better than middle range tones.  I’m not sure I created a monster, but I did start ripping through the scrap buckets.  Actually, my sister was ripping through the scrap buckets because she was the one sewing the scrap colors to the telephone book pages after her famous “any idiot can sew fabric to paper” statement.

 

One thing we found out, even after sorting scraps into color categories to make her brain happier working with them, one quilt or a dozen, the scraps never seemed to go away, the tubs (yes it went from one tub to tubs) just got fuller.  In self- defense Joanne started sewing strings of scraps (all the blacks, all the reds, etc) and she took them all to our friend Linda to weave bags with.  Linda reported back after the first group of scrap strings got woven into product that she had created over $600 in inventory.  The scraps still did not go away.  They are handled now in one tub again, still sorted into color category.

I make scrappy strip quilts still but have moved on from the half square triangle brain teasers.  Someone said once in a class I took that you paid the same price per yard for that scrap fabric so don’t waste it.  It appeals to my “use it up” upbringing as well.

ANY color?

ANY color?

When I was newer to this quilting addiction, I would have a hard time pulling fabrics together to make a quilt be cohesive.  I usually did not follow a pattern that had specific colors already chosen, and I did not usually purchase a line of fabric where all goes together with no thought involved.  If I did have a pattern in mind from a quilt magazine I would invariably not like the colors the designer used and would still have to either buy fabric to make my version or I would have to pull fabrics from what I already owned.

Back in the day there was a wonderful fabric store a county south of me and I LOVED going there.  It was called the Craft Store and there was quite a choice.  The bolts were not arranged by designer but by color, and it was so easy to go buy a palate of colors to satisfy my scrappy needs and the fabric was priced very reasonably.  There was also a cubby or two with sale fabric for $1 a yard and that was my first stop. I would buy the whole bolt if I liked it because it was $15 for a quilt back or two and lots of leftover to seed the stash pile. 

Unfortunately, the man who owned the store wanted to retire and what I did was amass a huge assortment of everything imaginable at bargain prices.  I did not go when he called on the last day to say everything was 90% off and it was like he was giving it away.  I had NO ROOM anywhere in this studio for 1” more of fabric.  As a matter of fact, that became my mantra when on an outing with friends who ended us up in a fabric store and I restrained from buying fabric for several years.

Now that I have this huge assortment of every color imaginable it is so much easier to pull a quilt together.  After quilting the trimmings were not thrown away, but put in a tub.  My sister was aghast one day when she saw the mess of colors in the tub and felt obligated to help me use up at least the leftover bits.

I would spend my evenings on the computer playing games on Pogo and between games I would pull the papers off the backs of the paper pieced blocks I made from my scraps.  Joanne decided any idiot could sew fabric to paper and she commenced to “reducing” my tub of scraps. (Ha!)  Not only had another person been hooked on fabric; she found it never really goes away no matter how many pages of a phone book you have sewn into strippy blocks.  

  

Yes, phone books.  I sew scraps of fabric to old useless phone book pages.  For some reason I have an unbelievable number of old phone books.  My choice to recycle instead of putting stuff in the trash found a use for phone books. (Don’t be thinking you found a place to drop them off, my brother brings his here each year, too and I have an endless supply!)

This way of using up fabrics gives a sewer a sense of freedom.  It does not matter what colors you choose to sew together, there are no wrong choices.  Because pulling a palate of colors together had always been so hard for me, this new found freedom was invigorating.  All I need when using telephone book blocks is one color or one value of color to tie them all together.  This is accomplished with the border or the sashing.