A Finish and an Experiment

I  finished a little 24 inch table topper (I guess that is what it will be) this weekend. I saw the tutorial  for these blocks at Film in the Fridge about 2 years ago. I cut a lot of strips from Kona Bone and from my bright fabrics and I made 4 blocks. I really like the blocks and I loved the quilt Ashley made but I did not like the process. I am not fast anyway but with these blocks I was really slow. There were the extra steps sewing the Kona strips to the colored strips and all the decisions about what width to use next. I was not so red hot sewing straight seams either as my blocks were kind of bowed out on the sides. However I liked the blocks too much to not finish something. I went to the quilt show at Lake Farmpark on Friday and I was going to get a lime green fabric for the binding but I got side tracked and didn't get any so I used Kona Bone, which was my alternate choice. I use that often on bright quilts; I like the nice clean look of the off white with the bright colors.

While at the Farmpark and checking out all the vendors I came across some yarn that caught my interest. The woman in the booth had a black knotted scarf made from the yarn and I bought some black for me and some beige for my daughter.  You can see here the steps I took to the finished scarf.

  At home, I went to the Bernat website and looked at the instructions for the knotted scarf and then I looked up thread scarfs make with Sulky Solvy and decided to go in a that direction. The skein of yarn had about 5 different types of yarn that were tied together. They were not as easy to take apart as I thought they would be and I ended up with a tangled mess that I finally got separated. I cut about 50+ inches of Sulky Solvy and taped it down and proceeded to lay out stands of  yarns, one strand at a time. When  they were all used up I covered them with another layer of Solvy and pinned them and started stitching in crosswise rows; that was beyond boring. When I finished with all the stitching I washed out the Solvy and rolled it in a towel and hung it on a hanger to dry. I am not in love with it but I don't hate it and I learned something, so I am calling this an experiment. I wish I had left out the white treads they were sparkly and pretty in the knotted scarf but not so much in this one. Next time I will tape the ends of the yarn so they stay straighter and I think I might not stitch my rows so close together.

Will I wear it?

 Maybe!

Maybe I will wear it Tuesday

If it doesn't snow.

Another Flimsy

I came across these blocks a few days ago and stuck them up on the wall above my sewing machine. I had finished 3 of them and started a 4th but decided they were just too time consuming with too many decisions to make. For every round I had to choose the fabric and decide on the width. It was too much thinking at that time and I put them away. When I got them out again and put them up I knew I would finish that last block and make something with the 4 blocks.

After I got home from church today,I decided I would make some fabric and make 2 Anvil blocks to send to Victoria, Bumblebeans, for her stash of blocks for making quilts to give to people afflicted with cancer. I had some pieces stated and I was working from a shoe box of strips, many of them the colors of the blocks on my wall. Only one block there to finish; oh that shouldn't take more than 15 minutes. Wrong!! I worked for hours finishing the one block and then when I sized the blocks one of them was not right. It was a tiny bit too small so I decided to use some spay starch and see if it would make it come up to size. It did, but it was wonky and then I scorched the Kona bone fabric. I cut the center square out of the block and started over.

So here it is; the top right is the block I finished and the bottom right is the one I remade. I liked the quilt when I saw it at FilmintheFridge and if you are interested the tutorial is here. It is really just too much fussing around for me. In addition to all the decisions about fabric and strip width, I got too picky about my strips being perfect ( which they were not even close to).
Tomorrow I will get back to making fabric for Anvil blocks; I was having fun before I got side tracked.

Not much going on

Not too much going on here. I have done a little sewing on and off this week but today is the first day I have felt "back to normal". I would sew a little and rest a little and maybe take a nap. I have been really sleepy this week.

I am going to put this one on hold for a while and maybe only make a table topper or wall hanging. I can't seem to get organized to work in any kind of efficient way to do this one. Because every strip might be a different width I have been making the strips I add as I go along and that is slow and messy, for me anyway. I usually find the best way for me to work efficiently after I have make a few  blocks but I think all the stops and starts has kept me from doing that. This is as far as I got all week and that partial block was squared up crooked after the 2 1/2 inch strips and it bothers me enough that I am putting it aside for now. I have some other things  I need to get done first.

One thing I didn't need this week was for both of my printers to quit working.
I had an old black and white laser printer that was a real workhorse but lately I had paper jams every other sheet that printed if I was printing something that had more than one page. Wednesday morning it just quilt working. Wednesday morning my all in one color printer jammed and the ink cartridges just clunkety clunk in place and won't move. Jack spent 2 1/2 days researching printers and we got a new wireless all in one color printer. Jack spent 3 hours getting the wireless connection but all is well now and I am happy to get rid of some of the wires and to free up some shelf space over my desk where I had the second printer.

I need to clean up my space again before I do anything because I shoved everything from my desk on my cutting table. There was a lot of stuff on my desk from trying to troubleshoot my printers and researching low sodium cooking and some of my quilting stuff I am working on. I am not neat and orderly.

Not sewing today.

Yesterday I fixed the other corner block on the last round in the other block. For the rest of the blocks I will pay attention to using all different fabrics in the two corners. I don't think I will fix these any further unless they really look bad after I get the other blocks done and lay out the quilt. The color in yesterday's photos is more true as I took it when the light was coming in the window.

I didn't do any sewing at all today. I doodled a bit in the morning and experimented with scanning it and importing the scan as an image in EQ so I use it for a tracing image, so I could color it, so I could print it on fabric and then complete the drawing. Does that confuse you? Hmmm could this be contributing to my vertigo problems? (that is a joke) (the vertigo is no joke)
I had a doctors appointment today with a vertigo specialist and had a hearing test. I have to go back Wednesday for another test that couldn't be done today because I had to take my "dizzy pill". I was told I have Meniers Disease and I guess it is good to know what it is. I have done a lot of reading about it and I can see that my eating habits of late have contributed to to the frequency of the episodes. Starting NOW I plan to follow a low sodium diet and cut out the caffeine. It is a good thing it is time to grocery shop in a day or so.

Another start



First block



I started a new quilt; I saw the Converging Corners quilt here at Film in the Fridge. It looks like too much fun to pass up so I am giving it a try. It is one of those quilts that you kind of have to figure out the sizes to cut for each block as you go along. I paid so much attention to the sizes to  cut that I was almost done with the second block before I realized that I made both corners the same and I want to make them different. I unsewed the last set of logs on one corner for the second block and added one different fabric I might do the same for the first block too.



second block





 I am making 12 inch blocks and I am using Kona Bone for the background. Most of the center blocks are from 2 Moda charm packs, Central Park and Fresh Squeezed. I have a few other squares cut from my stash that are a  good fit color wise. I was gong to stick with the  Citrus colors but decided to go with more variety as in my bathroom quilt but a bit heavier on the orange yellow and green.  I cut some strips and squares yesterday and I will have to take out  all  of my bright scraps from their zip lock bags and put them in the shoe boxes so I can maintain some sort of order. they are easier to stash away in the zip locks but  I found that the  shoe boxes work well when I am working with the strips. It is easier to control the disorder and it helps maintain my sanity.

This ought to satisfy my need to work with color for a while after all the black and white doodling.

On a more  personal note, today was our 60th anniversary. Sixty years is a long time but it doesn't really seem  that long. It makes me wonder how we got here so fast. I guess it's true that time flies when you are having fun. Yeah, we still have fun.



We went out to breakfast this morning because Jack said he wasn't going to cook on our anniversary. This evening our kids took us out to dinner. We had a very nice time; it is nice to spend time with just the adult children once in a while. I love seeing the great grand kids and am always up for a visit, anytime, but afterward you realize that no matter how many adults were there you never really had any adult conversation.