Shopping on the 4th

I had a minor episode of vertigo last evening and ended up going to bed very early and slept soundly until about 9AM. Today I am feeling quite well and fit. Fit enough to go to J Ellen's quilt shop and take advantage of her sale of red, white or blue fabric for $6 a yard.
I bought the red and white print on the left for the back of the  quilt I made in January at the 2nd annual Basement Diva Jelly Roll Race. The Jelly roll was Blitzen and I didn't get any fabric from that line while it was still to be found so today I was on a quest for a red backing fabric. I found several to choose from and this is the one that came home with me. I am ready to layer and quilt.


When I was in the shop last week I caught sight of the  Moda Honeycomb
packs, something new to me. I thought about it for the next few days and today one of them found it's was into my bag. I also discovered Moda Dessert Rolls but I didn't buy any  today. My stash is on a diet.

I spread out a few, but not all of them to look at. In the pack there is also a piece of template plastic the exact size of the hexagons and it has holes in all the corners for making a quarter inch dot for machine sewing; how nice is that.




I used to bypass the precuts, thinking they were a waste of money. Not anymore, I do not want to add anything to my stash. My goal is to have almost no stash except scraps and to buy what I need when I need it. Precut is perfect for that. Leftovers are small and can be counted as scraps. It is too soon to say how well this is going to work for me. I do think I will allow fat quarters for impulse buying if it will be appropriate for whatever color palette I am working on at the time.

We'll see.

The race

When our son was here for dinner on Wednesday I mentioned that I was participating a race on Saturday. He gave me a rather skeptical look and said O Kaaaay. Jack spoiled it by telling him it was "a quilt thing".

Yesterday was the 2nd Annual Basement Divas Jellyroll Race. I was up early and as I was looking for something in my old posts I noticed that there were 2 comments on January 10. I get so few comments that I knew that there had been only 1 before. My friend Jan asked if I didn't want to fold my Jellyroll in half before I fan folded it and be ready to sew. YES, I do. The thought had skimmed through my mind when I was folding it but I dismissed forgot it. I had plenty of time this morning so I turned the fan folded Jellyroll on its side and put the two free ends right sides together and fan folded it again as I went along putting the strip RST. I still came in dead last.

Here is my flimsy. I was a little  surprised to see how the colors clumped together. With this method you never know for sure what you will get. I think I like it but maybe now as much as last year's race quilt.

Here I am admiring my trophy. there is a long story associated with this topiary. I think it started out as a table decoration at a quilting even about 10 years ago. I am not sure how the original possessor came to have it but it has been passed on again and again to unsuspecting "winners". Everyone alters it in some way before passing it on. I was afraid wondering if I was going to receive it at some time. Well..... now I am the proud possessor of it for a while.  

 

This quilt is our first  collaborative quilt. When we first got together after a long hiatus we were inspired by the books "Collaborative Quilting" and Collaborate Again", by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston.  

We brought blocks to a meeting and some members worked on making filler blocks and it was worked on now and then and put together over several meetings. We gave it to one member to quilt, Diane, who has a lot going on in her life and I was surprised to see it finished so quickly. Yesterday it showed up and it was won by one lucky member in a drawing by number. She said she has just the spot for it in her office.

Some of us are putting our minds to work and thinking about our

Second Collaborative Quilt.

Another Finish

This is my second finish for 2012 and actually the first one that I started in 2012. It is my Jellyroll Race quilt. The photo below is the back of the quilt. the colors show up a bit more true in that one.
I worried that the ripples would not quilt out because of the bias edges  in the setting triangles but it is nice and flat on the back as well as the front.

I quilted it in rows of curvy lines about 2 inches apart. That shows up better on the back. I followed the seam lines on the front and the quilting doesn't show up as well in the horizontal lines. No matter, it is not the quilting that  is the star here but the fabric. This was a Moda Central Park Jellyroll and I really love it. The the binding is the orange print that I used in the blocks on the back.

This is a closeup of the block  on the back. The way the yellow with  orange and purple print blends into the yellow and white print might not appeal to everyone but it appeals to me; there is still some colorwash quilter in me.
I gave away all of my 2 inch 1 1/4 inch colorwash squares. I know I would not use them again but I might make 9 patch  colorwash quilts  again and for that I will use strip piecing.

More on The Race

I am beginning to regret the way I started going through all my stuff. I am in such a mess right now that I am having a hard time finding anything, including a place to sit. I am now in the process of trying to make some order out of the chaos so I can continue. I have come to the conclusion that what I have does not qualify as a stash. I  have so few pieces of fabric anymore that are large enough to use for something more than scrappy blocks that if I want one cohesive fabric to pull it all together I will have to buy something. Of course, this was my ultimate goal.

Those empty shelves would lead you to believe and am making progress and I guess I am actually getting somewhere.

However......

This is what the rest of my room looks like. I  will not show you the other 3 side of the room as I do not want to end up on TV.

When I mentioned that my intention was to get rid of things Lori, our Jellyroll Race hostess, asked me if I would  put together some prize packages. I cut a lot of  5 inch squares for Notso Packs (not so charming squares) and also not so charming 10 inch squares (Mudpies). I cleaned out a box of leftover and packaged up in zip locks Ninepatch Colorwash blocks. I also put together a bunch of not so great ugly brown pieces. I made up an "Insanity Quilt Kit"  with the little triangles I cut off when I inserted solid bone colored spacers between my Jellyroll Strips. I sewed them together and trimmed the blocks  to 1 1/2 inches. "guess who  is insane). There was more but I have already forgotten what I put in the bag to give as prizes. I guess I will never miss it.

Lori also put together a few  things of hers for prizes and this is what I got as a "Thank You" for all my work, along with that chopped up piece of fabric hanging off the table in the above photo. (I am quite sure that I had added that to one of my prize bags to give away.) I have weeded out the two brown fabrics and put the green with my landscape and housing elements and the rest will be cut into log cabin strips. Who knows where they will end up.



First Place



The Final Finisher



Here are  the first and last place finishers. Lynn was  the recipient of the brown fabrics and I am not sure what fabric prize Fran received but they

both  seem to be more interested in the topiary they receive than the fabric  prizes. 

As I said before a good time was had by all.

Florida Jellyroll Participants

I have one more photo of the basement group Jellyroll race.

  Kate, Candy and Debi
  Candy use to live in NE Ohio and was part of oour Friendship block group and part of our basement group when we first started.
We miss her and were  happy to have her join us via Skype.
I am sure they had a good time racing together in Florida.

Jelly Roll Race



The night before the race



  The Jellyroll Race with the basement group was held Saturday. Lori, who hosted the event had planned well for everything. Mike her husband carried machines and bags, made coffee, watched Brady their 3 year old and stood ready to take care of anything that might go wrong. (nothing  did) It was Brady who gave up his playroom to provide us with a wonderful,large, well lighted space to sew.  Everyone finished a flimsy, everyone got a prize or two, lunch as usual was spectacular. What more can I say it was a great day with good friends  and I think  it exceeded everyone expectations.



Here we are sewing away as fast as we can, that is me in the green sweater right in the front. In the back on the counter if you click to enlarge the picture you can see the laptop with the Florida contingent who joined us via Skye. There were three of them. I don't have photos yet of their quilts

Here is Lynn with the first quilt top finished:her time was 47 minutes.

Diane cut her strips from an impressively large stash of bright fabrics. 

 Fran,  was last at 1 hour 44 minutes but only a few minutes behind me. She had some machine issues at one point and ran out of bobbin thread another time.
She cut her strips from a large stash of red fabrics.

 Gwen, who  had an all batik Jellyroll.

Jan on the left who cut her strips 3 inches. Jan was also our referee and had a whistle to keep us in line.

                                                  

 Kathy is hiding behind her all batik Jelly roll. Kathy is my hero, she taught me to paper piece, which was no small challenge

Maryann, on the left,had a Kate Spain Christmas Jellyroll. 

Suzie , on the right, used all batiks and I think  she cut them from her stash.  Just a note here about Suzie and Maryann; they are sisters. This fact somehow escaped me until I was looking at them one night at our friendship block group  and I noticed how much the resembled one another. This was probably during the second year Suzie was sewing with us. I don't know why they kept this a secret from me. Everyone  else knew they were sisters. Do you see the resemblance? 

This is me with my quilt made from a Kate Spain Central Park Jellyroll.

 This is Lori who hosted the event. She did a super job of planning for the event. There was also some planning a while back when they begn to finish their  basement that made Brady's playroom work out to be such a wonderful space for us to play in once a month.  I didn't want to leave Mike out even though my photo is rather poor. He not only went along with the plans that made this space quilt group friendly, he cheerfully puts up with us and never seems to mind the invasion.

Starting over again

The New Year always seems like a good place to start anew to do/fix all the  things that need to be done. I don't make resolutions but I do look forward to fresh starts.
In spite of thinking I was  back to normal after my one day stay in the hospital I realize this morning that I have not be feeling as good as I could. This morning I am feeling so much better that I can really tell the difference. It always takes me a couple of days of mostly sleeping to get back not feeling like "my get up and go got up and went". It's back this morning and that is a good way to start the new year.

 In between all my naps I tackled my Jelly Roll. I worked on it a little at a time and it is now ready for our race next Saturday. First I opened it up and separated the strips in stacks in the way I would sew it together. I showed that in my last post. I decided  I would add spacers of Kona Cotton Bone in between the strips and I knew if I added them all first I would have the order of things messed up so I did it as I went along and I trimmed off the corners at the joining, finger pressed and continued.

After I finished one stack I would go to the ironing board and press and then rolled it up around a cardboard paper towel roll. That kept it manageable as I went along. I let it rest for a while while I took a nap and then I stretched it out on my bed so I could find the two ends and I pinned them together. I did remember to cut off 18 inches. I accordion folded the whole thing in a stack and put  a selvage band around it and I am ready for the race.

Before Christmas as I was searching for something  I pulled out some things from my boxes of fabric and made some rolls of things to cut up and use or get rid of. No pics of that today but I will tell you that when you first start out it is hard to purge but when you run out of space to sort you get more ruthless. This is going to take some time because it is boring and tiring and I am not going to push myself.  I will say that I have gotten pretty ruthless already and that's not easy for me.  (pun intended).
I wish everyone a happy, healthy,and blessed New Year,
Ruth