No Sewing

I haven't been doing any sewing for a couple of days. I have been busy catching up with things that need to be done. sometimes that is a good thing because while I am doing other things my subconscious mind is busy mulling over the things that I am not sure about in my quilting.

Just so I have something to show, I  am posting a picture of an old fall wall hanging that is hanging from September until the Christmas quilts come out. I made this a long time ago when I was making color wash quilts. Probably 20 some years ago. I keep saying I do not like brown but I guess that is not really true because this is one of my favorite quilts and I do have a fair amount of brown around the place.

I picked out all but one of the fabrics for this quilt on a road trip with our quilt guild. It was October and I am sure I was influenced by all of the glorious fall Ohio foliage.

You would not guess from this shot, taken this morning, of our tree that it is fall in NE Ohio.
The leaves are getting more sparse but still a lot of green on this tree from our window.







What has been keeping me from sewing has to do with my cell phone. I was searching everywhere for it and I made a few phone calls and send an email to my friends to determine if anyone had found it or if it somehow found it's way into someone's things.  I have been complaining about that phone ever since I got it last January 27 when I misplaced my last cell phone (which I found the minute my husband got off the phone setting up my new phone and transferring my minutes). So yesterday we went out and got a new phone and I  have been busy learning how to do everything and entering all my contacts. I have not found my old phone but I expect it will turn up any time now. In case you are wondering, I did try calling my cell phone but I had turned it off in church on Sunday and I am pretty sure I never turned it back on. The bright side is that since the last time we when through this Tracfon has improved the way one communicates with them and it took a few minutes on the computer and a one minute phone call to accomplish the change to the new phone instead of 2 hours and much frustration.
This is a good reminder of how patient Jack is. He doesn't complain when we have to search for my keys or phone. Because I don't always hear well on the phone he has to make all the phone calls to get my phone stuff straightened out. I guess he is just used to resigned to it as I have been this way all my life.

Christmas Sampler

There is a Christmas Quilt show going on at Sew Cal Gal. I haven't been able to grab the linky button but you can click on the link and  get there from here.

 I  finally finished this sampler quilt that I started about 3 years ago when our group at church was doing a Block of the Month. I made mine in reds and greens using a  bunch of fabrics from  Block of the Month packs from a local quilt shop. I decided right away that I would not make the quilt from the shop but I bought all the packs since I had signed up. There were enough red and green fabrics in the packs that by adding a few from my stash I was able  to make a scrappy quilt. There are a lot of reproduction fabrics from the BOM packs which is nice for a traditional quilt. I decided that I would make 3 blocks every month and make 3 quilts. That didn't happen. However those blocks didn't go to waste I used 5 of them on the back of the quilt. After the 2nd month I knew I wouldn't make 3 quilts after all so I only had 6 left over blocks. The blocks are 9 inches before the red frames. 



57 x 70



Back

 I am not sure where I will  use this one this year. I change things around from year to year. Because it is new this year I will  probably put it where the whole quilt shows.

This quilt below is the one that for the past maybe 15 years always goes on my dining room table. It is a nine patch color wash and I left the center kind of blank because I intended it for the table with a centerpiece sitting in the middle.



40 x 40

I got out some of my Christmas quilts yesterday. Looking over my Picassa web album I am remembering many more quilts that I made for Christmas and have given away. I still have a bunch that I kept, probably too many.

I haven't taken the bundle of Christmas quilts down from my closet shelf yet but by the end of this week I will be taking out all my Christmas quilts and  Christmas dishes and they will be out until January 1. I will be showing more of my Christmas quilts in the days to come.





Black and white colorwash

I have been working on the black and white nine patch color wash background for my circles. It has been slow going. I thought I had it all worked out in my mind and also a chart for cutting but there are always changes long the way when I get the blocks up on the design wall.

This is what is up on my design wall right now. I am moving into the gray area and I may have to shop for some transition fabric or I may work out another solution after I make the next 2 or three sets of blocks. I am not sure about the last set; they have kind of a milky look in the photo but blend a little better in real fabric. I can judge better after I get the next set of blocks made. 

 This is my little pile of rejects; once I got them up on the wall I could see that they didn't work. Some of the blocks are the same combination of fabrics as some I used but they have the darker and lighter fabric in the opposite position  in the blocks. I  had thought I would use each combination of fabrics in two diagonal rows across. I changed my mind because I wasn't moving toward the gray (or blended) area soon enough. These are 3 inch blocks and this will  not be a huge quilt.

I  can see that I will have enough blocks to make a  smaller background square and maybe set one of my small circles on it. I can use it to practice what I think I want to do for the larger piece. I am still not sure how I want to go about it.

I think I need to  take a break  and clean up my work area. I spent 30 minutes yesterday looking for 2 blocks that I knew I had made. I knew I had cut my strips to make 8 blocks and I had only six. I was read to cut some more strips for 2 more blocks and found them sitting under the heel of my iron. The was only one of the times I had to stop everything and look  for something. It is no  wonder that this is going so slowly; between searching and  agonizing over every fabric combination I am spending wasting a lot of time.

Some nine patch colorwash, again

I spent a few days with  the cloth drawing of the 3 circles rolling around in my mind. I knew I wanted to do something different with it than just put a frame around it and quilt it. It is kind of a cockeyed photo because I didn't want to climb up on a ladder to take it down (and more  trouble yet, to put it back up straight); so I held my camera up over my head. It really is nice and square.

I made this  quilt  a few years ago. It is a nine patch color wash that was an experiment in luminosity that didn't show the luminosity the way I wanted but I liked it and added the applique and it hangs on the wall in my sewing  room. I made 9 patch blocks using the darkest and lightest 2 fabrics, then the next darkest and next lightest etc and  layed them out in a  diagonal pattern across the quilt. When I got to the bottom left corner the fabrics had very little  contrast and blended together.

I am going to make a similar background for the 3 circles. I dug around in my black and white fabrics and in my box of assorted mess leftover black and white strips and squares. This is what I sorted out to use. I will press them first, of course. I may shop for some white with black to make a smoother transition in the middle of the lights. I'll see how it looks when I get to the 3rd and 4th fabric combinations. Nine patch colorwash is much more forgiving than  using just squares.

Darks

Lights

I spent a lot of time yesterday working it out in Electric Quilt and making a chart to figure out how many strips of each fabric I need. I do this all the time; when I was teaching colorwash  and nine patch colorwash I had a chart for  everything. I am not sure whether anyone else ever thought they were useful but it saves me from starting something and not having enough to finish. Of course that still happens when I change my mind halfway through. That happens a lot because when I see it in real fabric I see other options. A chart also helps to show the finished size; colorwash quilts shrink dramaticly when you start  stitching the pieces together.