A Baby Blanket and More of What I Got In Chicago

I finished the baby blanket. Yippee! Sewing it together wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Though I still think it could have been worked as one piece. The recipe called for fringe, but I don't care for fringe. I don't like how it frays and it just seems like something to drag on the floor and get all linty. Plus I think a baby would have a hard time resisting the temptation to pull the fringe out and eat it.

Instead, I added a double stitch around the edge and capped it off with a crab stitch. Far more elegant, don't you think? I hope the baby will be content cuddling with it.

You know how every time you go home, your mom gives you stuff to take with you? While I was in Chicago last week, my mom gave me a mystery bag of fabric. Apparently, she started collecting it thinking she would make a quilt. But she didn't know anything about quilting when she started collecting the fabric, and never learned to quilt. So she decided to give it to me. From the looks of it, most of the fabric has been hanging around since the early 1970's.

There's this pretty pink silk dress. Very 80's.

I'm pretty sure these are cotton. But they are very heavy. Like upholstery fabric. The funny thing is these patterns are back in style.

These are either satin or polyester. I'm leaning towards satin. I've heard that polyesters from the 70's were not very good quality. But these fabrics are in excellent condition.

I don't know what these are. I think the blue might be some kind of cotton or linen with a shiny finish. I think that washed out fabric is polyester. It looks like a piece of commercially produced baby quilt. There's batting and a backing and it is machine quilted.

I like these fabrics. I would never have bought them for myself - even if you could still find them. Now I have the opportunity to try something different. I think these fabrics will be especially good for book covers and bags. I'm thinking of experimenting with paints and embroidery on these too. Especially those solid cottons. So even though I didn't do any quilt related stuff on my trip to Chicago, I still managed to add to my stash. You gotta love moms.

How Could You Not See Something That Blue?

Yesterday I was going to go hang out at my favorite local quilt store, Intown Quilters. Instead, I got an answer to the question, "What would happen if I was riding with my husband to his job and another car ran a red light and t-boned my Saturn?" I didn't really have a burning curiosity about this. But I got an answer anyway. And so it goes.
Actually, I think the accident was worse than the photo looks. Yes, that is the muffler under the tire. I love that Saturn. It did its job and took the brunt of the impact. And when we stopped spinning, the OnStar people called, just like in the commercial. While I was standing there looking at the tires which were at a 45 degree angle to the car, the policer officer asked if we could drive it away. He should have asked the other driver how they could not see that big rolling blueberry in the middle of the intersection.

Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Stiff and sore, but otherwise ok. Well enough to take a quick look around Intown today. And by "quick", I mean slow and shuffling. I nabbed a big floral print from the 50% off table. It was calling to me singing, "embellish me." I actually killed the bolt which always gives me a thrill. "I'll take what's left", is one of my favorite things to say in the fabric store. And I got an Amy Butler purse pattern. They have some great new stuff in there and they were having a red tag sale. I'm sure I would have spent more if I wasn't feeling like I'd been hit by a speeding car. Proof that people who run red lights are bad for the economy. Let's just hope I'm back on my wheels in time for the shop hop in two weeks.

Just Say No

I cleaned my sewing studio. I use air quotes when I say "cleaned". Maybe tidy would be a better word? Let's just say it is somewhere below Martha Stewart and somewhere above Oscar the Grouch. Things are pretty much put away. Scraps have been stored or thrown out. There is space to work. That's all I'm looking for. I don't really have any interest in doing any more cleaning than that. I'd rather be sewing.

Here is my work area. It is pretty much a desk where I do my drafting, cutting, and machine work. I keep my beads and embellishments on the desk too. I keep scraps under the desk in bins sorted by color. There is also a big rubbermaid tub of yarn under the desk. The cats love it under there. It scares me a little.

Here's my stash. It is sorted by color. I also have a cube for fat quarters, novelty prints, batting, PFD fabric, and plaids. I even have a cube for extra special, too awesome to cut fabric. The rest of the cubes are holding fabric for projects. Once I pull fabric from my stash, I keep it separated from the rest of the stash until the project has the binding on. That way, I have fabric if I decide to make extra blocks, sashes or whatever. There is a tapestry that hangs over the whole thing to protect it from sunlight.

This week I've also started making the backgrounds for the bad luck quilts. I've put two together and I'm hand piecing the third. It is a baby block design and I love hand piecing those y-seams. I was at JoAnns today to buy yarn to crochet a baby afgan that I will be making as a gift. I was walking around with 5 skeins of yarn thinking it would be nice to have a cute bag to tuck the yarn into. Of course they didn't have any so I thought, "Why don't I make one". Five words that are like crack to a crafter. So now I am also making a quilted bag. At least it keeps me off the streets.

Quilting 'Aint Always Pretty

Whew. I completed the foundation piecing for the weeping quilt. And I came “this” close to running out of medium yellow fabric. Now all I have to do is the curved piecing. I do all my curved piecing by hand. I feel like I have more control of the fabric that way. I also think it might be faster. I would image that you would have to take the curves slowly on the machine. I’ll be putting this in line behind Kevin’s quilt. I’m pretty close to finishing the quilting on that one too.

So here is the shrapnel left from the foundation piecing. I love this technique. Not just because you get awesome pointy bits and curves. But because there’s no accurate cutting involved. I tear the strips of fabric, sew them to the block, trim the block, fling the fabric and keep going. Now I know some of you are thinking, “look at all that waste.” Many see this as a drawback of foundation piecing. However, I see a pile of delicious scraps. Mmmm, scraps. Imagine the possibilities for a moment. I could do some string piecing, some crazy quilting, or fuse it and make wicked new fabric. Right now I’m pondering whether or not I will try to incorporate these yummy fibers into the weeping quilt, or add them to my scrap bin. Perhaps mixing them with some green scraps or something.


Of course there is one negative consequence of my reckless foundation piecing. Now someone has to clean the floor. And I’m pretty sure it’s going to have to be me.

Oh, and since I've upgraded to Leopard, Blogger rocks. You Mac users know what I mean.

A Trip to My Happy Place

So I’m elbow deep in foundation piecing. I’m making the spiky bits for the weeping quilt. After a couple of false starts, it is going swimmingly. Then, I ran out of yellow fabric. I know what you’re going to say. And really, don’t you think I know that? The thing is, I’m sort of making it up as I go along. I originally thought the spiky bits would be scrappy. I don’t know why, since I don't really do scrappy. I try, but I’m always compelled to make scrappy orderly. When I actually started sewing the blocks, I decided to make all of the outer spikes light yellow, while the inner spikes will be different shades of orange or pink. And this is what led to me running out of yellow fabric. And since yellow is one of my least favorite colors, I don't have a whole lot of it in my stash.

I like to look at running out of fabric as an opportunity to go to my happy place, Intown Quilters. So, after we took our pumpkin to the pumpkin patch, I headed to my favorite quilt shop. Actually, I went to the store where I bought the fabric first. They were practically cleaned out of tone on tones which was weird because they are never out of anything. Then I went to Intown. I found yellow that is not quite an exact match but close enough. And since I can’t go into Intown and just get what’s on my list, I got a couple of other goodies too.

First, this funky Alexander Henry fabric. I really like this theme. Doesn't it just scream "city girl"? I used the fabulous fashionista fabric that came out a couple of years ago in a wall quilt for my closet. I was pretty excited to see a new variation on the theme. I want to panel a wall in this stuff, but my husband is straight so that is not going to happen. This is going in the stash. I also got a bag of 10 ½ inch batik squares. Lest you think I’m adding to my stash willy nilly, I already know what I’m going to do with this fabric. In fact, I went into the store knowing what I was going to do with this fabric AND a name for the quilt. Impressed? I planned the whole thing in my head on the way to the store. I just had to find the right fabric. Stay tuned. I think it’s going to be a cool quilt. Oh, and I got a panel to make an advent calendar for the baby. I got so excited about the batiks I almost forgot.

I love Intown Quilters. If they put a Starbucks in there, I would never leave.

The Grand Prismacolor Experiment

The grand experiment with the colored pencils went great. After drying for 24 hours, I ironed the whole thing and put it through the wash. I washed it on a gentle cycle, in warm water, with baby detergent, which is how I pre-wash all my commercial fabric. I also got the sunrise fabric for the Weeping quilt washed too so I can get started on the foundation piecing. Then I put it in the dryer with all of the other fabric. And the whole thing came through with flying colors (pun intended). There is no noticeable fading. And the areas that were treated with the fabric medium still seem soft enough to needle through. The whole piece of fabric has maintained it's drape and softness. Now I'm going to trim it down, layer it and quilt-embellish the whole thing. Probably by hand. First I need to decide how I'm going to finish the edges. I'm not feeling binding. But I can't picture it bound pillow case style either. I've never bound something by satin stitching the edge, so I might try that. Ahh, another project for the WIP pile.

Venus Must Be in My Creative House

Well the planets must be aligning or something because yesterday I cleaned my studio AND worked on the artichoke quilt. And when I say, "cleaned my studio" I mean both lower and upper surfaces. Who knew there was a floor. And good golly a desk top. So here's the sketch for the artichoke. I know it has way more petals (or whatever those things are called) than the average artichoke. But for me the sketch is about learning the shapes and scale, figuring out where things sit on the page, and experimenting with color and texture. So they go a little wild sometimes. It's colored pencil and Sharpie. I also make notes about construction, fabric and quilting. This is because otherwise I would forget what I was going to do and the thing would end up as a string bean or something.

Here are my supply items. The lighter green is a piece I hand dyed and the darker piece is commercial fabric. In the end, I went with the darker fabric because the texture was more artichoke like. I will paint it with Jacquard textile paint and some lumiere for the purple highlights.

After the sketch, I made a cartoon. This is what it will actually look like. You might not notice because I have a crappy camera, but the actual artichoke is smaller than I originally thought it would be. That's one of the things I learned from the sketch. I needed to bring the size and scale down to make it work. This is why you should just go for it in your sketches and art journals. I think you have a better sense of what will work if you just go a little crazy on paper first. After all it's just pen and wax and paper.

I used this the cartoon to make the pieces out of fusible web. I followed the advice in Robbi Joy Eklow's book, "Free Expressions". That's where the numbers and arrows come from. I was debating about whether I should paint the fabric and then cut out the pieces or cut out the pieces and then paint. I decided I would have more control of the painting if I assembled the artichoke first. So, I got the thing cut out and put together. Now I need to paint it. It is actually looking like an artichoke, so I'm pretty happy about that. I know. I can't believe I got so much done either.

Just Do It

I've been spending my time lately endlessly pondering my blog. What should I call it? What service should I use? Blah, blah, blah. I do the same thing with quilt designs. Then I reach a point where I just kick myself in the butt and do it. The blah, blah, blah is just a form of procrastination. If you never start something - never cut the fabric - you never screw stuff up and embarrass yourself. And you still look like you're doing something because you're considering all the angles. Whatever. I recently took a class from quiltuniversity.com where we were forced to cut into our favorite fabric that we had been squirreling away for that perfect project. It was a terrifying exercise. But liberating at the same time. Here is the fabic I chose for the exercise:


It is in that spirit that I started this blog. Plus I made a New Year's resolution to add new skills to my quilting know-how (more on that later). The purpose of this blog is to journal my progress as a quilter. There's a lot that goes through my head during the quilting process. I take notes and keep a journal of all of the quilts I make. But it's private. I don't actually like to show my quilts to people. Here is something else I need to get over by just doing it.

So here's a little bit about myself. I've been quilting for about six years but collecting fabric since college. I am mostly self-taught, though I've taken lots of art classes. I am mostly a hand quilter. I think hand piecing and quilting is easier and more relaxing than doing work on the machine. That said, I am improving my machine skills. I actually have two Baby Lock sewing machines. A big momma that stays in the studio and a little one that I can use in other areas of the house. I have an 11 month old son and husband so I like to hang out with them when I sew. I have multiple projects going at once. I'm a fast typist and an atrocious speller. I find cutting pieces out tedious. If I were a master artisan, I would have my apprentice do all of the cutting. I hate binding. I love everything else about quilting.

By the way, here is the little quilt I made of that fabric I had been afraid to cut.