A Finish

I finished the little quilt made from the Missouri Star Falling Charms quilt pattern. It was a nice easy pattern to follow using 5 inch squares of "made fabric" instead of charms. I made my squares about 5 inches and trimmed them to size. I did make anther bunch from a larger piece of made fabric and cut ome squares fro it. I liked doing it that way. I think I prefer making each block to a predetermined size and shape and trimming it. I can see that with some patterns making fabric to cut more pieces from will be an advantage. Though I have done this for years there is a lot more exploring to do. This could be a series, I could even clean out my scrap boxes, bags and bundles and all  the hidden accumulations. That is probably a pipe dream.
The quilt is 43 x 60 which makes it a generous baby quilt size I guess.

 I quilted in the ditch along the staggered  rows and then went back and quilted along the lines in the blocks so they don't poof out. I ditch  quilted with off white thread in the seams where the white strips on the blocks came together with the next blocks white strips. I knew it needed more and I thought about some free motion quilting, maybe feathers or vines moving down the stair step pattern but in the end I marked straight lines with my trusty old (dull) pizza cutter and used it as a guide for the Bernina #4 stitch.

  This shot above shows the quilting a little better. I  was not too crazy about the seams between the white patches but in "person" the are not really so much of a distraction.

In these top two shots You can see the binding that is the same white (Kona Bone) as the background patches in the body of the quilt.
The top two photos are border shots and you can see where I have used a little left over end of a strata from the piano key piecing . I just turned it sideways to fit. After all, you can't waste precious fabric.
The bottom two were made using left over pieced units as starters. I've  used several Half Square Triangle starters and 4 Patch starters.
I am looking forward to Saturday when the Diva group will get together to play with "making fabric". It is always eye opening and inspiring to see what someone else has decided to do.
I think we have the best kind of challenge rules, loose, few and not designed to shut down individual inspiration. If this works out to be a challenge probably the only rules with be in the way of size and a finish date.

Yesterday, after dinner, Jack convinced me we should get out for a while and we went to the Arboretum. He should have convinced me to dress warmer too. We were  going to walk around among the lilac plantings and take some pictures. We only walked a short way before I was freezing so we went back to the car and I got a few picts from the car window. The top photo here is a small weeping (something ) tree. I couldn't read the sign without walking up to it. The bottom photo is  own of hundreds of lilacs, each more beautiful than the last and the fragrance is wonderful.
Maybe by Thursday it will have warmed up and hopefully the lilac display will still be spectacular.

Made fabric starters

I left the small scrap pieces out where I can work on them when the mood strikes. I dumped them all on a tray that is 16 x 20 which makes it easy to look through the scraps and easy to clean up and put back in the box.
I decided that I should only sew 2 or 3 scraps together if these are going to be starters; otherwise they stay small if I continue to add very small pieces.

So..............Here we are, sometimes, something catches my attention and I get caught up in one piece. Instead of continuing to chain piece adding the second or maybe the third scrap I started adding more to one piece and I got a piece that was about 5 x 7 1/2, a bit big for a starter.

I added another piece that didn't go all the way across the seam and I made a cut at that place, then I had 2 pieces and I added on to them.






Now I have one piece that is large enough to cut a 6 inch square or I can keep adding to it  to make something that I can cut into shapes. The other piece is more of a starter size and it will be trimmed before I add anything else to it. Maybe I will just add it as is to the starter box.




I was feeling pretty good about cleaning up all the small pieces I had and making them into something more useful as starters for something larger. I found another small container that I been feeding with small pieces. I dumped them on the tray and decided to take a picture of them.


Oh my, this is starting to look like a lot more pieces.

I put a quarter on one scrap as a reference to show the size of the scraps and I moved the tray to a better place to photograph it.







Wait!
What is in that bag under the tray?
Guess what!










More small scraps. When I cleaned up these were pieces that I didn't deem large enough to sort into color families.

I might be making "made fabric'

 for the rest of my life.

15 minutes ? or more

I find it difficult to work for only 15 minutes but if I only had 15 minute intervals here and there I can see that I could still accomplish a lot. Yesterday, when I was working, I set the alarm on my cell phone for 15 minutes and then I set it for a 1/2 hour and then I set it for an hour. I am really not speedy and someone else would have accomplish more in the time I allotted, I'm like the tortoise instead of the hare;I keep going slow and steady.
I had the sewing room in order again and re-sorted the scraps by color and put them away. I had one box of small pieces that were to small to be of much use except as starters or centers for larger "made" fabric pieces. they were too small to put away with the larger strips and pieces (most people would throw them away). I started stitching pieces together to make "starters". It will be good to have shoe box of these on hand.
This is what I made yesterday. The largest pieces here are about the size of my hand and one or two of them are almost right to cut a 4 or 5 inch square. All the longer pieces have been put away for now so this is as big as these will get for the time being.



These five were  all made using something that had already been pieced. The two on top have pieces left over from the piano key border I just added to my Falling Charms quilt. That narrow red strip and the multicolor strip were trimmed off  the end of a strata.
The black and white  center was a left over 4 patch, the blue and yellow was a section of a Birds in the Air block that I sewed together wrong and the little red and black and white block was made with 1 1/4 inch HST's  that I put together from the pieces I cut away from connector corners ( I am never going to make a lot of those).

Starting next month the Basement Divas are going to work on making fabric, as in Victoria's  (Bumblebeans) "15 Minutes of Play" book.  We are all going to bring strips and chunks to put in a fabric pool for everyone to work on. I am bringing these along as starters for myself and for anyone else who would like to use them.  In the meantime I am going to see if I can use up this shoebox of little scraps.

Tree update and a flimsy

This is my view today while sitting at my desk looking out the window. It is a rainy, gloomy day but look at that bright green grass and the water droplets hanging off the tree branch. In real life they sparkle, a little bit of  bling; that cheers me up.



 Here are some more tree pics.
Top right was yesterday, top left is today.Maybe the difference is not noticeable in the photo but I can see the difference in how the filling out of the leaves is filtering my view of the other buildings. The bottom left is a close up from another angle. The leaves are not so bright green now; they have more of a bronze color than they did a few days ago. I can see the little maple seeds starting to grow but it is hard to gt a good shot of them. The bottom right is the oak tree that is closer to our bedroom window and I can see the leaf buds. I am happy to see this tree thriving as several years ago the whole top of the tree broke off during a storm. It seemed like the tree could not survive but it compensated by growing its lower branches veeeeerrrry wide and in the last few years it has been growing a new top. In the summer there is not much to show that anything happened to it.

So.... here is my flimsy! I finished the piano key borders and sewed them on this morning. These are the real thing not virtual borders. There is a 2 inch inner border strip that really doesn't show but it made easier the task of sewing on the piano keys. I'm not sure how I will quilt it but I will use Kona bone for the binding.

Now it is time to clean up the sewing room. For the last two days every time I put something down it got lost in the mess. I had to resort to putting the quilt on my bed to pin the borders because both my cutting tables are pure ordinary disaster.

I always feel

more energetic and ambitious

about cleaning

when the sun is shining

but this

is not going to wait for the sun.

 

 

Made fabric quilt

I have not had much luck in getting my sewing room in order because I have all my bags of scraps out and I kept dragging some scraps out to play. I even got them them all put back in their respective bags and I still couldn't leave them alone. I decided that the  only way I was going to get them put away would be to make a quilt. I have had a quilt in mind since last week so I went ahead and got it together. I showed the blocks up on my wall  in my post yesterday. I sewed the 2 1/2 inch strips of Kona Bone on 2 sides late yesterday. Today it is a partly done flimsy; I still have to make the borders.

This is a pattern from the Missouri Star Quilt Company called Falling Charms. Click on the link for the Your Tube video. The quilt in the video is so pretty made with a nice soft floral charm pack and that is what really caught my interest. After I started to play with making fabric I decided to make 5 inch squares and use them in a small quilt, maybe a baby quilt.

 In the quilt picture shown here the body of the quilt is a photo of the actual quilt that I sewed together today. I imported the photo to EQ7 to audition a virtual piano key border in EQ. This is a new feature in EQ7 and I dicovered it about a year or so ago; it makes pieced border decisions easier. It was either piano keys or prairie points. I have a lot of bright strips cut but not very many bright 3 inch squares so the piano keys it will be.

Of course that means

I will not be able

to put those bags of scraps a way yet.

I better get busy.

Black and white challenge etc.

The Basement Diva's met yesterday for our monthly meeting and the big reveal of our Black and White Plus one color challenge. You can read about it here and see the quilts.

 

This is my quilt and I have posted about it previously while it was in progress. I am not going to say anything more about it now.

 

  Amy (from Amy's Creative Side)has her spring Bloggers Quilt Festival  coming up and I plan to enter this quilt and have a post about it at that time. it has to be a new post and not one that has been up before so I don't want to over do it to the point of boredom about this quilt.

I have been playing (for more than 15 minutes)with made fabric. I keep trying to put my bags of scraps away but something grabs my attention and I start playing with my scraps. I have about 22 blocks now and I put some strips and bits and pieces that I want to use up on the will above my machine. Each time I get back to this I do something a little different than the time before and different colors catch my fancy. It's good to do a little every day or so as it adds variety.

I have been trimming as I sit at the machine. I could say that it is in order to be more efficient but the truth is that my cutting tables are covered with bags of scraps that I sorted and got ready to put away and there is no room to cut.

A word of caution for you if you are cutting while sitting at your machine with a little cutting mat.

 

     If you are doing this............................................................don't do this.

 Fortunately the odd clunky noise alerted me that something was not right and I only took 3 stitches.

 

Made fabric

I received this sewing machine carrier 2 years ago for my birthday and then for Mother's Day my daughter gave me another. The one she got me is smaller and is a better fit for my Janome Gem, which is the one I take with me most of the time. They reside under one of my cutting tables and  because this one has no machine living inside I use it to store my scrapsin Ziploc bags, sorted mostly by color; there is also a Ziploc bag of stripes. Usually, when I am going to make something with the scraps, I take them out of the bags and put them in shoe boxes by color or stripes and  arrange the shoe boxes on my cutting tables. When I am finished the scraps go back in the bags and I stack the shoe boxes and it works pretty well. It is much easier to look through one shoe box that a whole scramble of different colors and it is easier to store in bags than make room for a bunch of shoe boxes on my shelves.

Yesterday our group at church met (we had a lot of show and tell but sadly I forgot my camera). I had some things to take with me and they were kind of heavy to carry so I decided to put them all in my larger sewing machine carrier. That meant that all the Ziploc bags were out piled on my cutting table.

Well as long all the scraps were out I thought that I might as well make a few pieces of free pieced fabric. This is what I have to show for my efforts. I know there are some more but they have hidden themselves among the scramble of scraps on one of my tables.There are some small pieces among the scraps because as I looked for the next piece to use they got covered up. I am not sure if I will make these larger and cut shapes for them or if I will squares these off at 5 or 6 inches (or more (or less). I have no real plan and ideas flew in and out of my head as I worked along.These are to put in my "Parts Department" box. I am borrowing that term from Gwen Marston and Freddie Moran.

I think I will randomly select some scraps from each of my Ziplocs and put them all together and work from that and put the rest of them away again and leave them there until I use up the selected bunch.

Does that sound like a plan? 

I think so but we'll see.

 

I like this house

I had other things I should have been doing today but I didn't. Instead, I worked on this house. It is finished except for a few threads that need to be buried; I always seem to miss a few even when I bury them as I go along.

I turned it pillow case style because I did not want any kind of binding. I added a pocket at the top (from the peak of the roof to where the roof joins the house) to insert something stiff if need be but I don't think I will need to put any thing there. I am just going to hand stitch some sort of hanging loop or ring at the peak of the roof.
I layered the top with just batting and I quilted in the ditch around every patch. after I added the backing (and the pocket)  and turned it I quilted again in the ditch enough to hold it together and keep it nice and flat. I like my inhabitants they inspired me to trim off the upper left side and make this a house. The house is 24 inches tall and the main part of the house is 17 inches wide just below the roof overhang. The house isn't perfectly square but I am not the least bit concerned about it.

 I can picture this hanging in a little girls room. I am thinking about little boys rooms and maybe big boys room. I think I will make more houses. I can picture sports stuff, cars, trucks, trains, robots, drums etc. I am not sure the 4 great grandsons would really appreciate bed quilts at this point  but I am almost sure they would like a house to hang in their room.

Playing

I have been playing at making fabric. I confess that I have exceeded my 15 minutes although I really don't spend big chunks of time doing this. I keep going back to it throughout the day. If I can figure out how to keep all the scraps controlled as I work I can leave this out almost all the time. If I can use this as my frustration buster, instead of heading for the refrigerator, it will be a big plus or maybe I should say a big minus (pounds that is).These are my two work tables right now and I really don't work well with everything jumbled up together. I do have a plan to get this under control but I had to play a little first to understand how I want to approach this.

On the left is what I had this morning when I started. and on the right is where it is after playing awhile.













  I read through Victoria's book and all her exercises and pointers and I have learned a few things that were only learned by doing.

1. If I am going to cut up the fabric that I make, I will need to use slightly larger pieces so I will not have a lot of bulk in the seams especially at the corners.

2. Those small scraps can best be put to use in blocks that will only be trimmed to size.

3. I don't want to use fussy cut motifs unless I am making smaller pieces that will be trimmed individually. I don't want to be fussy cutting made fabric with a motif that I don't want to cut through.

4. I might want to foundation piece some specific shapes like triangles and hexagons in order to avoid having seams or narrow pieces right on the edge.

5. Many things I already know about sewing and quilting and about my own preferences and way of working apply to making fabric.

It is my usual habit to have what I am working on up on the wall; as I walked past it struck me that it was kind of shaped like a house. Why not add a couple of strips for a roof and trim off that part on the upper left. I  can layer it and turn it pillow case style. I had started with some scraps that I would not want to cut through and they kind of look like people on the second floor. I can use this whole piece as my first project and have a start on another piece of made fabric with that section I cut away.

 I think know this is going to be fun.

Lots of Snow

Today we had a lot of snow. That is not news to most of the people who follow my blog as they have experienced the snow first hand. I sat around and worried all day because many of our family members were traveling somewhere or other in the snow. I assume they all got where they were going safely as I have not heard other wise. I used to call them to make sure they were all safe and snug at home but I quit doing that after I called my daughter once when we were having a blizzard. I wanted to rest assured that they all made it home safely. One of the kids answered the phone and said that the parents were out shopping.   My daughter told me later she was not about to be stuck at home with 4 kids with no food in the house. I saw her point. However I decided that if  there is something I need to know I will find out abut it soon enough.

To occupy my mind, I took the top row off of the Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt and took the row apart and sewed it back together lengthwise so I could add it to the side of the quilt. It was too long and narrow and I didn't want to make more blocks to make it wider because these are the blocks the kids made last summer at Quilt Camp and we want it to be made from the blocks that they made.

 After that I didn't have much too much to do. I read my " 15 minutes of Play" again and I decided that I would make some fabric. I had a small container on my cutting table with some scraps and I started playing. Of course I had to dig out a few more fabrics and then I got into my big stash of scraps that is more or less organized by color. I have so much stuff piled all around that I figure I might as well spend at least another day on this (15 minutes at a time).  
In the past I have made blocks using this method and I trimmed them to either 3 1/2 for star centers or 7 1/2 for alternate blocks. I trimmed  some to whatever size I needed for a block size and sashed them.. When I first started making scrappy blocks this way, about 20 years ago, I foundation pieced them to either paper or muslin but I hated to tear off the paper and sometimes I didn't get the last addition  pressed smoothly on the muslin and it kind of bubbled so I just started sewing the strips without the foundations. I waste a little more fabric that way but these are scraps, after all. I am going to make bigger blocks this time and start putting them together and add a few longer strips to make large pieces of fabric. I am not sure how big I will make this or what I am going to do with it but I am pretty sure I am going to cut it up again to use it. On the right side of this photo are two blocks that I put together and added longer strips on the right and top. It is about 15  inches long. I am not going to make my blocks square or even all the same size. When one looks like it is finished I will sew it to something else in whatever way I need to in order to make things fit. I think that sounds like a plan......

 For now!