Wednesday 3 August 2011

sometimes I need something new

Firstly, thanks to everyone who has read my 500th post and cast their vote; if you haven't voted yet, would you please pop over there and do so - it's all for a good cause (or three). Voting will remain open until 8am (Sydney time) Saturday 6th August. Thanks heaps.

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I have been working on my Country Houses Quilt for nearly three months. I have only two more seams to machine sew (which I will do today) then there's a fair bit of hand-sewing before the next bit of machine work. I will take photos of the process and show you in a future post.

Yesterday I couldn't shake off that tired, weary feeling. I didn't want to do any of my usual pursuits - no knitting, no sewing, no reading, no watching television.

Instead, I hand-washed and line-dried my ten half metres of fabric and then ironed them all.


I spent time sorting stuff in my studio -stuff that had just been dumped to be dealt with "later". I threw away paper work, both recent and ancient.

I changed the way I store my fabric - that is, it's all still in the same semi-transparent plastic drawers but I moved it around so that the scraps are more easily accessible!

I sorted my fabric scraps into strips, triangles, crumbs and larger pieces. Here is my box of strips - who'd have thought there'd be so much from just three quilts?



I rediscovered the scraps that Kate sent me a couple of months ago when she was sorting through her scraps.



After dinner, while WM was out for a couple of hours, I took to my cutting board and then to my sewing machine. And I made this from some of the scraps from the first three quilts:

10.5 inch QAYG square
It took longer than I had anticipated (doesn't everything?) but I have to say it is my favourite thing of any quilting I've ever done. It just looks so neat! It reminds me of foam-core board but so much prettier!

And, of course, my sewing muse returned so I continued sewing until 12:30am! It doesn't look like much but this is what happened to some of Kate's scraps:

These will be used as strips in the string blocks.

I'm off to cut some more strings and sew more triangles into strips!

7 comments:

  1. Yay scrapbusting! I have so many scraps now that I have a huge clear box full of patterned scraps, and a big shoebox of solids. Looking forward to seeing what you do with rest of the scraps! I love the string block.

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  2. i can see why you're so happy with the stripes. Looks great!

    You sound like your mood is a bit like the one I've been in for days. I needed to have a tidy up and sort out of projects too and I feel a lot better for it.

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  3. WOW, I love that block! Well done :) No wonder you got your sewing muse back.

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  4. Good work! The best way to spark a new burst of energy is just to get to the machine and start in-playing in the scraps is a good idea, too! The new bits will be beautiful in the next quilt!

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  5. Very fun scrappy satisfaction. I could go for some of that myself right now. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. OOh, I like what you've done with those! Glad to see them being put to good use...

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  7. I love your photos they certainly do the talking lots of colour.

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