works in progress

Everything I have been working on this week is not originally my project. However, they all need to be completed for the Airing in April so I had to get them done, sooner rather than later. Most of my own projects are at the basting stage and I need to make a trip to my LQS to use the big table there for that process so now was as good a time as any to work on other people’s projects!

Here’s what I've been working on (or plan to work on) this week:

1. four patch quilt – to be bound and labelled
2. triangle brights and flowers – to be bound and labelled
3. pink brights and gingham – backing required
4. K’s project – quilt, bind and label (binding supplied)
5. QAYG string blocks – 14 more blocks needed

At our community quilting group, when projects go to the long-arm quilter, there must be a top and a backing. When projects come back from the quilters (who volunteer their time to help us), the project is usually given back to the original maker to bind. Sometimes the original creator is not there – either they are a member who is absent that day or the quilt top was donated.

Projects #1 and #2 came back from the quilter but the original makers were not there so I ended up with the quilts to bind and label.

For some reason, the member who donated project #3 did not provide a backing so I was asked to make one.

Project #4 was donated to our group by my quilting teacher – the quilt sandwich is made so the trickiest part is done for me!

I have already made a quilt from the donated QAYG string blocks (project #5) but I still have 28 x 9” blocks left. That’s not enough to make a quilt in the size required in our group so I will have to make some more blocks which shouldn't be too much of a hardship given the number of scraps around here!

So, how has my week gone so far?

MONDAY

I didn't do any cutting or sewing: the heat/humidity has stopped me sleeping well and I was too tired to use my rotary cutter and sewing machine safely! Instead, I auditioned fabrics for bindings for projects #1 and #2, both 280” around.

 

Then I read a novel in a day! It was The Dancing Master by Julie Klassen – historical, romantic (Christian) fiction. Ms Klassen has been described as a ‘modern day Jane Austen’ – I’m not so sure but it was a light, enjoyable read.

TUESDAY

I auditioned fabric for the backing of project #3 then put the fabric in the washing machine (on the  ‘easy iron’ setting) because it was stiff and very creased. It’s the same pink fabric in the photo above.

I cut the binding strips, joined them and made binding for both quilts. I then made labels for both quilts from leftover triangle scraps (note to self: write the label after attaching it to the quilt – or write smaller!).

I had to watch a video on binding, because I haven’t bound a quilt for over a year and couldn't remember how to start! Thank goodness for YouTube and all the generous video makers! Eventually, I attached the binding and label to project #1 and began the task of hand-stitching the binding down – I got a little more than halfway (the quilt is 280” around) before it was time for bed!

What looks like a brown and white check is actually tiny white stars on a brown background; which I didn’t notice until I’d already cut the binding strips. It doesn't look like a good choice with that blue backing; but the quilt was mostly browns – here’s a hint (see the checked fabric in the block?:

WEDNESDAY

I started writing this post before I got on with attaching the binding and label to project #2, then I watched another video on mitred corners because mine just weren’t working! They are fine on the front but the back is terrible! I attached the label to the quilt then started sewing on the binding. I got to the second corner and realised there was a hole in the fabric, eight on the fold line of the binding. I had to undo twenty inches so I could remove the hole – it was close to a join in the binding strip – and rejoin the strip. I was about to start sewing again when I realised I was attaching the binding to the back of the quilt! *sigh* 

If it were my quilt, I might have been tempted to keep going but it isn’t and I couldn’t take the risk of bad corners on the front of someone else’s quilt so I spent more than thirty minutes un-sewing the rest of the binding! :-(

Things improved somewhat; I got the binding on eventually. It’s not perfect but it really is the lest I can do. After pressing the binding (I can’t remember ever doing that before but I think I must have – my teacher is very big on pressing) I moved onto project #3.

Piecing a backing involves a bit of maths and, for me at least, the rough drawing of diagrams. Eventually I had it sorted and went to find some strips to join my pieces together – I can’t help myself; it has become my signature to have a panel or some sashing on the back of my quilts. This isn’t mine but I did it anyway. I cut the pieces for the sashing and for the backing. There was some more reverse sewing after I sewed the right side of one piece to the wrong side of another piece but, all in all, with the help of lots of pins, I got the backing finished.

What looks like an off-what fabric is actually a very pale pink. It has some lovely details on the fabric which, of course, can only be viewed close up.

Because I have so many other projects to quilt in the near future, and because I think J. would like this quilt in this year’s Airing, I am not going to attempt to quilt it myself. I will pass the backing and the flimsy on to our coordinator, who will in turn, pass it on to one of the long-arm quilters. If I feel so inclined, I may even make the binding to go with the quilt. I’m thinking I’ll make it out of the same fabric as the back – I have some binding left from project #2 and lots of that fabric left. I’ll think on it – it may be too much having the same binding as backing fabric.

THE REST OF THE WEEK

So, here it is, Wednesday evening, which still leaves me two full days to work on the other two projects and to get the binding done on projects #1 and #2. I’m linking this post with WiP Wednesday over at Lee’s blog, Freshly Pieced.

What about you? Are you crafting this week or is something else occupying your time?

lest you think I no longer sew

My last few posts have been heavy with knitting, which is my primary stitching craft. However, most of my followers are quilters so I thought it was about time I talked about my quilting-related projects!

I have not yet touched my “Something Old” project for this month but I have big plans for tomorrow!

I have been stitching. I have finished piecing and cutting all the pink pieces I need for my Scrappy Drunkard’s Path row; and am about halfway through the purple piecing. I don’t have any photos to show you of the pieced segments themselves but this photo shows most of the scraps left over from making the pink segments.

Some of the pieces I have already trimmed and started sewing in an improvised way into the beginnings of some blocks.

Here are the purple pieces that I have so far – they’ll be turned into improv blocks next.
This is supposed to be my “leader and ender” project but I get carried away and keep stitching, pressing and trimming to the exclusion of other activities!

I was going through my stash of “"donated fabrics” to prepare for making a bargello table runner. My drawer of green fabrics is almost impossible to open or close. I couldn't find enough “width of fabric” pieces in there to make my bargello but I decided it was time to deal with the shopping bag full of smallish pieces. On Saturday and again this afternoon I pressed what seemed like hundreds of pieces. If the piece was larger than my new scrap basket, I folded it and added it to the drawer with the larger pieces. This is what my ironing board looked like after I finished pressing all the smaller pieces.

This is the basket containing the odd shaped pieces, the ‘bricks’, the squares and the triangles.
The pile of “strips” (anything much longer than wide) will be sorted by widths. There's no way that pile will fit in my new basket.
   
The shallow basket is supposed to fit in the drawer on top of the larger pieces of pressed and folded fabric. There’s no way that I can close the drawer like that. I need to use some green fabric – soon!
The other thing that I got started today was my “Something New” project: a blue bargello table runner. I have designed it myself so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. It is being made from donated fabrics plus a couple from my own stash and will end up on the fund-raising table at the Airing of the Quilts next year. I hope someone likes it enough to buy it. Here are the nine fabrics my teacher and I chose for the project. The one on the left is a pale blue damask, a lovely fabric that doesn’t photograph well.

So that’s what I've been been working on in July; most of it being done in the last few days after sorting all that yarn.

How’s your month going? Are you meeting your goals or are those of you living in the northern hemisphere enjoying summer too much while I freeze here? ;-)

making progress

I think it must be true that to tidy up properly, first one has to make a greater mess! It’s certainly true in our house; WM is tidying up his study/library and one can hardly move in there! This is what my family room looked like a week ago after we started on my sewing room.

  

Thank you to all who responded to my dilemma about the tub of fabric. Many people said that they would open it and sort the contents; three said they would go one step further and photograph the contents then put them back. That was a really good suggestion; however, there were literally hundreds of pieces of fabric in that tub (ranging from scraps to yardage), squashed down and locked in so tightly they couldn’t have moved if the tub were tipped upside down!

Here’s the tub with just the top of the contents taken out:

n the end, I decided to open the tub and sort the loose pieces of fabric into rough colour groupings: white and off white, black, grey, purple, blue, blue-green, green, yellow and lemon, orange, pink, red, brown and “low volume” beiges! I also ended up with a pile of fabrics that were mostly florals but some abstract prints that couldn’t be grouped by colour. This is what part of my sewing room floor looked like last Wednesday morning.

As some of you would know, I sort all scraps bigger than 1” square into colour groups so the pieces of fabric and the associated bag of coloured scraps have ended up in drawers.

What’s in the tub now? A lot of the fabric in the tub had been sorted into groups packed in individual zip lock bags so I left those and put them back in the tub. I also put any large pieces of fabric (a metre or more) in the tub. When I’m looking for backings that will be the first place I look.

so back to my sewing room…

Here are before and after photos of the wardrobe (closet):

There’s space on the top shelf for storage of completed quilts and knitting projects until the time comes to donate them. The red bag on top of the drawers and the plastic bag on the top shelf hold metres of fleece bought on sale for making warm ponchos for disabled patients and/or bed blankets for the local animal shelter. The tub with the bright yellow lid holds scraps of batting. Two of the three boxes on the right are completely empty – I’m trying to decide whether to fill them with miscellaneous "objects” that I don’t often need or to fit another set of drawers in there! Those drawers are very useful; the ones in the wardrobe hold stash that belongs to the community quilting group, the ones in the corner near my ironing board hold my private stash (yes, it’s small)!

The bag on the floor is one of the two bags of scraps detailed in my last post. The quilt on top of the drawers is my Country Houses quilt which is supposed to be the next UFO in line – when I remember to buy more batting! The cylinder beside it is actually two sheets of Teflon to protect my iron and ironing board when using adhesives for appliqué! The white cord in the left foreground leads to my cordless iron!

Other parts of the room are still untouched but it’s so much fun to be in here now that I don’t want to tidy, I want to sew!

I need to spend some time sorting out the storage of my knitting yarns but I’d rather be quilting!

I wonder if tidying my yarn stash will wake up the desire to knit!

What would you do?

We have had a very mild winter and spring has begun early. Although we are officially still in the coldest month of the year (there was snow on the nearby mountains a couple of days ago), yesterday was warm, clear and bright -- not a cloud in the sky in the morning and only small puffs of white in the afternoon. A perfect day to be outside.

So where did WM and I choose to spend the day?

In my sewing room, where else?

Now, please don’t be shocked. You are going to see something that is quite awful. I’ll admit that I am a hoarder, a procrastinator and a bit lazy. But I’m working on improving in all those areas!

My sewing room was a bit of a mess. I really didn’t feel creative in there at all! Any horizontal surface, like my cutting table, my sewing table and the spare machine table that DD occasionally used, had become cluttered. The cutting table had mostly knitting projects from last weekend or those in progress but there’s also a finished quilt under all that. My sewing table has a pile of pre-washed but not ironed fabric on it plus a few other odds and ends. The old machine table had become the storage place for works in progress and more prewashed but unironed fabric, this time flannelette.

 

To begin the clean up, I moved everything that wasn’t furniture but was on the floor from the sewing room to the family room:

Yes, all those boxes, bags and tubs (and a pile of batting scraps moved from a container because I needed it for something else) were on the floor of my sewing room, making it hard to get at anything else. Don't worry, it's all ordered so I know where it's going! That lounge with the two tubs in front of it is covered in quilting related things and everything there will be going back into the sewing room. The lounge with the two green shopping bags on it has knitting related stuff and everything there will be moved to the wardrobe in the spare bedroom.

The wardrobe in the sewing room had been a repository of all sorts of things. The room had been DD’s bedroom so there were still some clothes of hers plus at least one box of her things. The rest was either quilting related (fabric) or stuff I had packed in boxes for our renovation in 2007 and had not unpacked yet!

 

Encouraged by WM, I threw out some unneeded, long accumulated items. This is very hard for a hoarder who saves everything because I might be needed in the future. I emptied four of the five archive boxes (the other was DD’s) and the large white carton carton and WM re-packed what was left into one carton (to be rehoused at a later date)!

WM visited the local Reject Shop (a discount store) while I, supposedly, moved things back into my sewing room. Unlike others who enjoy this part of the process, I don't -- I find it very hard to work out where I want everything. Especially when we started on the task before I had thought it all through!

WM returned with four storage units -- five plastic drawers in each. Here are three of them:

 

At first we arranged three of them in the wardrobe like this, but then we moved the old ones into the wardrobe and put the new ones on display because they are all charcoal (the only colour they had), and the original two units, now hiding inside the wardrobe, are blue.

I like the uncluttered look that we have achieved so far but the family room now looks like a disaster zone!

There's still a way to go. Lots of ironing and folding of all that pre-washed fabrics to be done too.

However, the thing that is really holding me up concerns a lot of fabric that is not actually mine.

As many of you would know, I belong to an organisation that makes quilts for children in hospital and for palliative care patients. We make these mostly from donated fabric. Because we have minimal storage space in the Council-owned room where we meet, different members are storing the donated fabric at their homes. I am one of those. At the moment, some of the fabric at my place is stored in a large plastic tub which is crammed so full of pieces of fabric that I have no idea what's in the tub and so am not using it to his full potential. That tub, the larger of the two in the photograph below, has been in my home for fifteen months now, and no-one, not even the lady who packed it, has any idea what's in it!

The big question is this: should I leave it all in the tub so that, in the unlikely event of our founder requiring it at a meeting, it will be packed and ready to go? Or should I unpack it and have much greater access to the fabric? If I do the latter, I lose space but gain precious time because I won't have to rummage around the overstuffed tub on the off-chance something inside might be just what I need. I may even become inspired when I see all those new fabrics to play with! ;-)

I'm inclined to unpack it -- but what would you do?

What is that?

Yesterday I asked you if anyone had any idea what this is?

This reflection of my laundry tub tap, my friends, is perfectly clean drinking water (in an old orange bucket) after I hand-rinsed a few pieces of dark coloured fabric!

I used to pre-wash all my fabric on the advice of a friend who has been quilting for many years.

Then I started taking classes and my new teacher said it was better to sew with the sizing in the fabric. Plus I think I just got lazy!

But when my sewing machine looked like this after attaching the binding,

I decided I should pre-wash; at least all my homespun (made somewhere in Asia) fabrics.

So, on Thursday, I emptied several buckets of water that looked like that, and washed dozens of metres of fabric. I have yet to iron all of them but my DD (who has returned home to prepare their house for the move and the rental market) did iron some of them – eight half-metre pieces (thanks DD).

My washing line looked like this pretty much all day (the temperature here was 30°C (86°F) with a constant breeze so it was a good day for me to get a whole lot washed and dried.

This was the first load (of light colours) and, although it may not look like it, there are fourteen pieces of fabric hanging there in the sunshine!

And this, my friends, is what the two-and-a-half seater lounge in our family room looks like at the moment.

Anyone want to do some ironing in return for food and a comfortable bed? LOL

starting the New Year in the right way

How?
By adding to the stash, of course!

Last week, I visited the Big Box Store (not the real name of the store; it’s a crafts and home-wares chain store) to buy some fabric to bind Dotty Bright. While there, I found myself in the yarn department and picked up a couple of bargains that weren’t advertised in the catalogue (they were specials in this store only).

Let me explain: The store had some yarn they wanted to clear so they marked it down to clearance prices. It wasn’t moving quickly enough, so a sign on the table advertised 50% off the clearance prices!

So here are my purchases:

Firstly, sock yarn (as if I needed any more!): I don’t have these two colourways and at $2.50 for 100g I couldn’t resist! This particular yarn, at full price, is $11.99 for 100g.

And no, I’m no trying to brag; I want overseas readers to understand how much we pay for craft materials here. Remember, this is a chain store with discount prices, sock yarn at my local LYS starts at $24.99 a ball!

Secondly, what I consider my bargain of the month – not only was it heavily discounted, but the sale yarn included my favourite colour!

It’s a 90/10 blend of cotton/silk. It was marked down to $3.00 a ball and to clear it out, they were taking another 50% off. Twenty balls (all in the same dye lot) for $30.00 – what a bargain!

On Saturday I returned to the store. This time I had DD with me. It’s a rare treat for her to get out without the boys so she made the most of it. I could say it was all her fault but it wasn’t really; I had already made up my mind what to buy before I got there.

Before I go any further, overseas readers probably need to know that fabric in this chain store normally starts at $12.99 a metre, and in Australian quilt stores, fabric starts at $24.99 a metre. (Just take a moment to absorb that…     Okay, you can resume normal breathing now!)

So you can understand that when I say “bargain”, I mean BARGAIN (sorry for shouting)!

I bought three metres of each of these fabrics for $4.00 a metre (yes you read that correctly!) That amounts to a discount of 67%-75%!

These fabrics were purchased with the intention of using them as backings. I’ve used the top one already! (yes, that means there's quilting in progress but that's another post)

And I bought at least two metres of each of these solids. The normal price of homespun in this store is $6.99 a metre – at $4.89 a metre it seemed like a good time to stock up. (What’s that? How much is homespun in LQS? Oh, $14.99 a metre! Do I need to remind you to breathe again?)

Navy, Natural, Black, Sand, Petunia, Grass Green, Chestnut, White, Fig, Iron, Regatta Blue

 This fabric was bought for sashing and binding.

DD found these two fabrics in the remnant bin and somehow they found their way into my purchases. The one on the left is homespun, more reddish than shown here. The one on the right is flannelette.


And finally I bought this fabric to make a quilted tablecloth for our new glass topped (outdoor) table. There is enough there to make a couple of placemats for when there is only WM and I.


And, it doesn't stop there: I won these eight fat quarters from a give-away late last year on Wish Upon a Star blog.

Thanks Mrs A! I don’t know what I’ll do with them but I’m sure I’ll think of something!

So, I guess I’d better get sewing!

life doesn’t always go according to plan

Here we are, twelve days into January and things have not exactly been going to plan.

I decided to run my Linky party on the first Thursday of the month which was 3 January. I thought I'd have plenty of time to organise it because mum, who arrived on 27 December, was going home on 2 January, and my sister and nephew weren't arriving until 4 January. That gave me all day on 3 January to write the post and set up the Linky!

But....

Older Grandson wouldn't milk the cow but was happy to brush her

We visited Calmsley Hill City Farm on Sunday 30 December. Mum was helping WM carry the picnic lunch up from the car and therefore had her arms full and couldn’t see the ground immediately beneath her feet. She fell heavily on some uneven paving and twisted her ankle. We spent most of the afternoon in the emergency room after an ambulance took her from the farm.

Mum's okay now but she ended up staying here until 5 January when the doctor said she would be fit to travel. As you know, I managed to get my post written so everything worked out okay.

Then ....

While my guests were here, I decided it was time to finish the Sideways Striped Baby Jumper that I had started in November 2011. All it needed was a collar knitted on and the seams sewn up -- one evening's work (or so I thought)!

But ...

Knitting the collar wasn't as easy as I thought and after four attempts over two days to get the collar right, I gave up! In the end I frogged it because the head hole seemed too small to go over a baby's head easily. No worries, frogging is a "finish" for that project and the yarn will some day become a cardigan knitted sideways to retain that vertical striping that attracted me to the pattern in the first place.

this used to be a baby sweater

And then...

One of my top priorities for this month was to finish the Hearts and Squares quilt. I had finished all the blocks and just needed to trim the 6.5" four-patch blocks down to the same size as the 6" heart blocks. I hadn't been in my sewing room since well before Christmas but in my head the quilt top looked great!

It took a long time to settle on a layout for the four-patch blocks. I knew the finished layout had to be 9x7, because there is a particular size I have to make for our community quilting group (roughly 56" x 64"). I had a large number of blue blocks, and almost the same number of brown blocks, and a few others in green, red, pink and yellow. I finally came up with a layout that I was happy with and started to add the heart blocks.

But....

The layout was okay but the squares seemed too “hard” for the hearts which cry out for a “softer setting”. It occurred to me that the squares made an attractive layout for a "man quilt" (we have to work harder to make those because of all the floral scraps we are given). But that's okay, I have plenty of fabric (that belongs to Caring Hearts Community Quilters) and I'm not adverse to making two quilts.

The question was which quilt to make first because it's unlikely I'll get two finished this month (given the goals I've set for myself and the time remaining). I settled on the four-patch blocks; after all, the layout is already on my design wall.

Then the question became: what blocks to make to enhance the four patch blocks? I don't have enough of any one fabric to use plain 6.5" squares nor do I have the quilting skills to make a 6" block look interesting!

I settled on square on square blocks, the central square being the same size as one quarter of the four patch (that is three inches finished) with a light neutral border around it to make it up to the correct size.You might not have noticed, but I've made further changes to the layout of the four patch blocks.

I must make up my mind which way those four patch go!

So despite the fact that yesterday was forecast to be 41°C (106°F), I took myself to the garage to find some suitable fabric and then to my sewing room to re-introduce myself to my rotary cutter and sewing machine! I think it actually got to 37°C (98.6°F) but the air-conditioned kept things at a comfortable 24°C (75°F). I got slightly more than half the blocks made, pressed and trimmed.

I think it’s shaping up to be a good unisex quilt, don't you?

How are your plans for January shaping up?