Almost There

  I still have things to move out of my sewing room but at least they are sorted and ready to go. Whatever I am keeping is sorted and ready to use. I do not have things all back in order but I did set up my sewing machine and I did some mending. I really hate mending, especially when it involves taking out seams. However, it was the first thing I did when I got my machine set up and it is good to have it out of the way.

Although thing are not back in order, I have cleared a space that is orderly enough to work. I made 2 blocks for an Underground Railroad quilt that our church group is making. They were pretty fast and easy to make. When I work with triangles I usually press the seams open but I followed the instructions and pressed to the dark and I have lumpy intersections and grumbled a lot.

These colors are pretty  true, maybe a little darker in the photo.  Not the colors I usually choose to use but they are true to the era the quilt represents.

I have 2 other blocks to make from the same fabric pool but a different block. After I finish them I hope I can complete the job of putting my room in order. I am looking forward to using some of the things that I had forgotten. I have a few things I was all fired up about but life got in the way and they were put out of sight and out of mind.

Life is still getting in the way but I need to find the time for the joy of creativity and accomplishment.

That's what keeps the cranky pants in the closet. 

Stalled

 It seems as though I have been working at purging and organizing for months and making no progress with organizing. July came and went and nothing to post about.  In an effort to make my sewing space more cheerful (an area I don't want to avoid) I hung some of my older pieces on the design wall.

This is Summertime in the Land of OZ. It is from a class with Lorraine Torrence . It looks a little dull here but is really light and bright.

This is spider web from a pattern on Bonnie Hunters blog. this were made years apart but my color choices were  pretty much the same.

This is a wall hanging I made for our bathroom before our last move and it now resides in my sewing room closet along with the three banners below, which hung beside and between the mirrors above the countertop with 2 sinks.

I had finally resorted to drastic measures and took my sewing machine out of the sewing table and folded up the table and put it away. I kept coming across things that distracted me. Instead of sorting to give away I found myself putting together little packs of things that looked good together to make something. I even sewed some blocks together and quilted a couple of things for which I have no use and don't know anyone else who would want them. That is when I put the machine away and rearranged furniture to make a  sorting area that is not conducive to any sort of work involved with sewing. I think I have finally tackled every box, drawer, basket, bin or stack of trays. I gave some things away and have some boxes ready to go, SOMEWHERE.  I am not ready yet to get my room back to sewing/quilting mode. When I moved a chest from my bedroom to newly freed up space in my sewing room closet I found a drawer of old paperwork that needed to be shredded and disposed of and then 2 drawers of the same in Jack's dresser. He has always kept things very organized but paperwork going pack to 1980 is just over the top too much. Four very large bags of shredded paper later, there are three drawers freed up but I am still stalled.

So...... here I am with boxes and bags finally ready to move out but not yet gone. I'm feeling ready to sew again but my room needs to be put back in order and my machine put back in the table. I am going to get help to move everything again.  After moving everything around to make a better working area I was exhausted and aching.   I hope I will be back to "normal?" soon.  We'll see!

                                                                                                                  

Still here

I am still here and about all I have been able to get around to on the computer is to check my email, my bank debit and credit cards, and the blogs that I follow. The daily life stuff seems to have a longer list and it all takes me longer to accomplish. 

 When I have time I am in my sewing room making more chaos out of chaos. That is not to say I haven't accomplished anything. I gave my grandson's wife some things and I hope that now that I have more things sorted out she will choose some scraps for improv piecing. I have an over abundance of those. 

Restoring order to my sewing room faces 2 big obstacles, interruptions and me getting sidetracked by something I find in the stuff I am sort. The interruptions cause me to lose focus and to lose track of where I left off.

This is my design wall as it was this morning. In the past several weeks I stuck things up on the wall that caught my interest as I went through my boxes. Some of my odd blocks are up there and some are in my parts department box. The parts department category is borrowed from "Collaborative Quilts" book by Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran. There are also some pieces of fabric that I picked up from someone else's scraps and one pink improv block which proved to be a distraction as I combed through the smallish pink scraps (that I was sorting) and began to audition pieces for another pink block.  I kind of solved the distraction problem by keeping the door to my room open and pushed tight against the wall so it covered those blocks.

I found this 12 block piece that was a leftover from my wall quilt for my boring, everything all white,  bathroom. I have no plans to use this or do anything with it, I gave the first BR quilt away when we moved and it no longer fit, I  had blocks left from the quilt and I made a four piece set of small wall hangings to fit that bathroom. After we moved again I put them on a hanger and they hang in a closet with a bunch of seasonal wall hangings.

You can see my first bathroom wall quilt and my 4 piece set of bathroom quilt pieces here

So even though I have no plans for this I became fixated on a block that had a center that looked all wrong, It was too pale and washed out. I made the mistake of sticking  it on the wall  where it was not out of sight or forgotten. Then I spent 3 days fussing with it on and off.  

This is what it looks like now. Retrofitting the center of a improv block isn't the easies thing to do.  First, I messed around with pulling fabrics from already sorted and packed scraps. Then I removed the offending center and stitched a rectangle and fussed around with the orientation. When I got it the way I thought I wanted it, I cut it to fit and stitched it in. That meant opening up parts of seams to allow me to stitch the new seams. Then I had to fix the seams I opened. I hope I got them all.

 

This is the new center. I don't  have a photo of the old one because I lost it and I surely hope it is not going to pop up and ask to put into something else. I hope it is in the dog bed scraps. Though I have no plans for this 12 block piece I am satisfied to have fixed it,  please don't anyone ask me why.  I am putting it out of sight and I will be getting back to sorting and clearing out. 

I have made some progress and though the end is not in sight I can look at some empty boxes and some boxes that have organized strips and small pieces organized by color. There is a box or partial impro blocks and a box with sets of things that go together in some way. 

I can see a way to move forward.  As I go long I am becoming more and more inclined to pass most of this stuff on to someone else.

Finished

Alphabet quilt is finished 

The quilting went well as I quilted  in the ditch along the sashing but after that,  not so much. Every block had to be free motion quilted differently. I had to change thread colors several times and determine where to start and stop stitching in order to minimize the number of thread tails to bury. My fingers have been especially troublesome during this quilting process so there were some days I just skipped working on the quilt. Who would ever think that picking up thread to thread a needle would be painful?  When your thumb and index finger don't meet properly, your pinch is inadequate and that makes you press them together harder and that causes pain in the joint. Free motion quilting is also a  joint stressor. As I went along, I was not pleased with the quilting but after the center of the quilt was finished and the border quilted and the binding finished, I like it.... a lot.

My daughter stopped for a visit last Friday and took the quilt with her to give to the new parents.  It was after she left that I realized that I had no photo of the finished quilt.  I texted her to take photos  of the front and back but I have only one of the front.  That's OK the back doesn't look different than the flimsy except for the binding.

Still working on the second alphabet Quilt.

 The back for the second alphabet quilt has been finished after many pauses to take care of all the little things that make up my days. And I am almost finished quilting the blocks on the front.

It has been a slow process free motion quilting. Each block is different and I have to determine where to start and stop as I loosely quilt around the words ad the animals and then bury the tread tails.  

I had purchased this fabric for the back  at the time I bought the panel. I knew I would be piecing the back and I thought this would be a good choice. When I started working on the pinwheel blocks I was dissatisfied about the colors. I wished it had some yellow. I decided to color the white numbers with my Derwent Inktense yellow pencil and see how it worked out.

I colored the numbers in  a 12 inch section and then wet the colored numbers with a paint bush and let the fabric dry. I washed it with detergent (Tide) and let it dry and ironed it and color was good and stable.

The other colors are really the same but my photo makes everything else look darker. I seem to have a problem photographing yellow.  Maybe I just have a problem with photography.

I bought the Inktense pencils a few years ago when I was playing with adding some color to my small  Zentangle inspired pieces. 

When you wet the colored areas the color turns to ink and it is supposed to be permanent. So far that has bee true for everything for which I have used the pencils.

I should have a finished quilt soon as there are only 5 more blocks to quilt and the borders will be easy and fast.  The arthritis in my hands has become more troublesome and any hand work, like burying the threads, has become somewhat difficult and painful. Working on a couple of blocks at a time works out pretty well and I have been using compression gloves which help a little. 

This is for a child that my grandson and his wife are in the process of adopting a child from the Ukraine. He is about the same age as their 3 year old and he has arthrogryposis the same genetic disorder as their child.  They are expecting to travel to the Ukraine soon to bring him home. If you are a praying person, keep them in your prayers for a safe and uneventful journey there and back.

Another Alphabet Quilt

 I started another alphabet quilt from a panel. This is what I have so far.

This one was printed lengthwise on the fabric so in my mind it was not useable without cutting it apart. I cut all the squares and of course they were not exactly square. I cut them all square by cutting a bit less than 1/4 inch  into the printed "sashing" between the squares .    It worked out well but it gave me  5 3/4 inch  squares to work with, kind of an odd size.  I cut my sashing strips 1 1/2 inches from red fabric which was almost exactly the same shade as the printed sashing.

In addition to the lettered squares there are 2 squares with several of the animals in the square and no letters. That made 28 squares and setting the squares 5 to a row and 6 rows, I needed 2 more squares.

I thought of pinwheels but 2 or even 3 colors in a pinwheels seemed be lacking. I found some 16 patch leftover blocks that had all the colors in the quilt and I took the rows apart from 2 of them and added the rows to 2 other blocks and made 25 patch blocks that fit the corners exactly.  So.... there they are and I am not certain they are the best choice. In person they are much brighter and the colors are a good fit.

I am ready to add a bright blue speckled fabric for the borders and the backing will be the same.  If I have to piece the backing, I might make pinwheels. We'll See. 

Cat Quilts

 I have been cleaning and sorting and purging and making a ever enlarging mess.  I do have a plan in mind but until I can move some of my sorted things along, I am not making a lot of progress. 

Sometimes you just have to sew, even in the middle of the chaos.  I have a lot of cat fabric and as I have mentioned before A LOT of scraps. My new neighbor has 2 young cats who have no quilts.  I can fix that. The cat who received the quilt I made last month was pleased with his quilt so I am encouraged to make more. Cat quilts are fun to make and I have a number of cats in mind to be the recipients. I have plenty of raw material for making quilts and they will hopefully use up a respectable amount of fabric and batting. I will also be able to keep on sorting and purging and when I need a break I can make cat quilts. 

This is front and back of a previously made quilt. It is about 24 inches square. I had used odd shaped scraps of assorted cat fabric and a lot of short strips. I quilted in the ditch around the strips.

Below, is the quilt I just made. It is also about 24 inches square and it was a panel so it just needed a border. I quilted around the squares and around the individual cats. I am using only what I have so although I would have liked to use a print on the back to hide my quilting stop and start knots, I used a plain allover print. That's what is nice about cats they won't care.

I am working on another child's alphabet quilt from a different panel than the last one. More about that another time. I do need to get it finished quickly so I have organized the current mess in my sewing room in a way that will give me space to work and space to sort.

My plan is to work my way through each bag or box at a time and put away or dispose of everything in each one before I drag out another box or bag. No more opening another one because there are things in different places that go together.

Bonus Quilt

 Some of us call them free quilts but, as my husband pointed out to me, they are not really free. However a bonus is just as good as free. There are leftovers from the Alphabet quilt and I do not want to add any more scraps to my overwhelming collection of scraps.  This is the bonus quilt made with the Alphabet leftovers and a block from my leftover blocks box and a piece of flannel for backing that was leftover from making flannel board for a kids activity at church. 

It is 26 inches square.

At one time, I asked The Friendship group for 12 inch Anvil blocks with improv centers and bright color HST's. I think I made a top and sent it to Victoria Findlay Wolfe. On her blog, she had asked  for Anvil blocks with blue backgrounds to make quilts for cancer patients.

 I found three leftover Anvil blocks in my block box.  Days earlier, I had found an extra large zip lock bag with a bunch of leftover pieces of various Laurel Burch fabrics, I wanted to use the block and the LB cat fabric and the HST"s and the striped fabric were perfect together. So I replaced the center improv pieced square with the LB cat fabric. 

I've had fun with this, I didn't obsess over every little thing and my workmanship is pretty good but not perfect, after all, THIS IS FOR A CAT AND I HOPE HE LIKES IT.

As I started putting things away, I found three more boxes of scraps that are unsorted. This is what happens when when I need to clean up my sewing space in a hurry. I stuff things in boxes and then never get back to it.  Who would believe that when I finished my first bed quilt in 1985 I thought that was the only quilt I would ever make?  And who would ever think that I would have accumulated so much stuff?

Finished!

I finished the Alphabet quilt on Tuesday. I woke up early and that gave me a big chunk of time to sew the binding. 

 I altered my technique for fusing the binding on the back before I stitch it down from the front. Today I left the paper on the 1/4 inch strips of fusible web and ironed them on the edge of the binding. After it cooled I removed all the paper and folded the binding to cover the stitches and fused the binding. I was easier than folding and pressing and then tucking the almost invisible fusible under the folded binding. 

I decided that using my walking foot was really a bad idea for the kind of quilting I was doing on the panel. iItwas not only tedious but my hands hurt from turning and twisting and stuffing the quilt under the arm of the machine. I set up my machine for free motion and hoped for the best. It turned out OK. My stitches were not always consistent but they were within the acceptable range and I improved as I went along. As I started each letter and animal I planned what i intended to do and it worked out OK most of the time. There were a few times that I got lost and ended up where I had to end my stitching and start again in another place. 

These two sections turned out to different to stitch than I expected. I thought the branches and leaves would give me a problem working out the direction to meander around them. It was intuitive easy after all.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   I though the fish would be easy but I got lost and had to take out some of the stitching.  It is not perfect but I am happy with it nonetheless.                                                                                         I guess free motion quilting is still an option for now.

Overall the density of the stitching over the entire quilt is consistent. The quilt is nice and flat and would hang well though I hope it will be used and not hung on a wall.

I have learned that I can adjust to my changing  abilities and to all the things that have altered the amount of sewing/playing time I have,

I did have another big frustration. When I was free motion quilting the foot control quit working again. This time I didn't pitch a fit over it. I just turned off the machine and folded up the quilt and went and did some housekeeping chores. I considered that maybe I should just buy a new machine. I was also thinking about what I was doing before it happened. Just as the first time, I had taken a break after I had wound some bobbins. I looked at the bobbin winding switch and it looked like it was switched for winding the bobbin. I turned the machine on, flipped the switch and guess what. It worked. This is not the first time this  happened but it has been a long time since it did. That is probably why I didn't think of it. The problems with my original l foot pedal were because my cat had chewed the cord. I guess I was still in the mindset that there was something wrong with the wiring on the new foot pedal. I am trying to let myself off the hook for being such a dunce. At any rate I am so relieved that I don't have to buy another foot pedal or worse yet another machine. 

Sigh..............

 Sometimes it seems as though nothing is going to be quick and easy.

After I finished basting the center panel of the Alphabet quilt, I stitched 2 more letter sections. I went much easier than removing pins but all the turning I had to do using the walking foot turned out to be a huge struggle, much more than I expected it to be.  I came to the conclusion that it could not be any worse to do it free motion and it might be better, and it was. 

The numbat and octopus were done with the walking foot and the reindeer and the sheep were done free motion. I had a little less control that I wanted but it was no harder on my hands than with the walking foot. From that point the quilting process moved along much faster.

I took a break to do something and when I returned to my machine the foot control would not work. I checked everything, it was plugged in, I could move the needle up and down manually by turning the wheel ,the machine turned on and off the way it always does, there was nothing that appeared to obstruct the full compression of the pedal. This pedal is not a genuine Bernina but it was half as much less than the cost of the Bernina and all the reviews on amazon were good. It worked perfectly from the day I started using it until that day. I was completely frustrated and needed to consider what to do next. I moved furniture and set up my other machine for quilting.  I have never used this machine for quilting and though it was far from ideal, I thought it would work. It did not. I could not get a decent stitch.

I asked my friends for help and one of them was going to let me try her foot pedal to see if the problem was my machine or my foot pedal.  I go my Bernina up on the tale again and just on the off chance that the foot pedal would work I tried it and it worked.

So..... back to work. I had about an hour to sew and I got ready and found this on the back of the quilt.

Somehow a sheet of wrapping paper found its way onto the table next to my machine. There it is, stitched right on to the back of the quilt. I started to cut it away but looked at the stitches and saw that they needed to be removed. I have no idea where that wrapping paper came from. I don't remember seeing it in the last 15 years. The 4 foot table next to my machine is right inside my sewing room door and often I will set things there that I need to put away somewhere else. I had been digging in my hall closet for something and that is probably where the wrapping paper was hiding before it flew across the hall onto my table.

Well, the wrapping paper stitching is gone and I have another hour or so to quilt. I may not finish this quilt this month but I might.

We'll See.

Sometimes the long way is the shortest route!

My bright idea with the 1/2 inch applique pins wasn't such a good idea after all. The first motif, the numbat, was really easy but the octopus was not! I had to reposition the quilt many times while quilting the octopus and the little pins kept slipping out. There was not as much twisting and turning and stuffing the quilt under the arm of the machine with the numbat. I did some more quilting on the pinwheel border while I thought about what to do.  Removing the safety pins as I quilted was really hard at times for my old fingers so I decided the easiest/fastest option was to baste the panel. It is taking a long time but I know it is going to work out better/faster in the long run.

The numbat and the octopus are quilted. Below them, you can see my basting and the 3 1/2 inch needle I am using. I have some long needles from making cloth dolls and they are fairly easy for me to hold. However, it has taken me over a week to almost finish basting the panel.  There have been too many interruptions and not enough "getting back" to the task at hand. 

I am not so sure I will finish by the end of the month; who knows how many more times I will need to do something I hadn't planned on or how any hours I will have to sit waiting "on hold" during a necessary phone call.  I am going to set my timer for 15 minutes when I can't have a big chuck of time and I will get it finished.  We'll see how that works.

Tedium Awaits

 I knew quilting the Alphabet panel would be tedious but I think I underestimated just how much that would be.  I have stabilized the borders and quilted the pinwheels in the top and bottom borders. I decided to quilt around one or two of the animal sections to see how it was going to work.

This photo is the somewhat unorganized pin basting. I had pinned all over the panel to flatten out any bubbles and wrinkles. I knew I would do a little more pinning when I started to quilt.

This is the one section I quilted. I knew right away that the safety pins were gong to be a problem. Using the walking foot requires  lot of turning and repositioning of the quilt and the safety pins kept getting hung up on the foot. I had already ruled out free motion quilting. A little might be OK but not this much and not   so close around the various small elements. I need to have more control than my fingers can manage.

This is my solution. As I start on each new letter, with all the little bits around the animal, I will replace the safety pins with 1/2 inch applique pins. I was able to work around the pins without taking them out and there wasn't any problem with getting stabbed by the little pins.

This is not going to be fast and stitching a few stitches and turning and repositioning the quilt is gong o be tiresome. I think I can manage two letters/animals a day. I will work on the rest of the pinwheels as I go along. Small pinwheels have gotten pretty tiresome too. 

I like this quilt enough to stick with it. Maybe I can get it finished in a month. 

         We'll see!