Snow Day

We don't go out in the snow anymore if we don't have to. It is 9 degrees out now and the snow is still coming down but it is nice and toasty inside.

This is looking down the street from our second floor apartment and now the streets are snow covered and there is no side walk showing anywhere.
It has been a good day to stay in and sew.



 I do  not have my Bernina back yet so I can't quilt. I decided it would be a good day to work on the blocks that the kids at quilt Camp made this summer. They "made fabric" sewing strips on 6 inch squares of phone book paper. The squares were trimmed to 5 inches and 2 1/2 inch strip were added to 2 sides.


Some of the blocks were done well   with no problems but there were a lot of issues. There were very narrow or very tiny pieces at the edges and in the corners that would have been lost completely in the seam, there were nonexistent seams in some places that revealed themselves after the paper was removed, there were some places that had several  layers of fabric at the edges because the fabric wasn't trimmed away before it was covered with a new strip. All of the blocks had to be trimmed down a little because there were some a lot that didn't measure up and never would.
I did some repairs taking off the 2 1/2 inch strips and fixing them and I whacked off some corners and edges and sewed on new strips. I tried to find scraps that were the same as what I whacked off so the quilt would reflect the choices of the Quilt Campers. This quilt will be auctioned at the Youth Group Dinner Theater event this spring at our church. It is a fundraiser that helps with the cost of the mission trips the youth group is involved in.
There are not enough blocks to make the size quilt we want and time is running out. We will have to do some creative thinking, or more likely, creative sewing.

.

A flimsy and a scarf

I finally finished adding the borders to my Triple Four Patch quilt.  I would have finished sooner but I had several busy days with non quilting things. Monday the weather was good to drive so we dropped off my Bernina to be fixed and it turned out to be a long day of driving due to taking the long way home. I didn't feel like doing any sewing after dinner.

You can see my Janome Gem lightweight traveling machine in the lower corner of the photo. It is a nice little machine for piecing and has a much nicer straight stitch  than my Bernina but I am eager to ransom get my Bernina back with all the features I bought it for. Maybe MY straight stitch will be better too.

I can't get back any farther in my room and right now I can't move the machine any farther away from the design wall due things that don't belong in my room taking up space.












I added 2 sides and mitered the corner and the miter looked good but the corner wasn't square. I went on to other 2 side borders and did the miters differently and they came out perfect. I went back and redid the first corner and now they are all square.






I finished my scarf and I like it but there are some things that could be better. It is much shorter in length and makes it awkward  to wrap and requires some fussing to get it looking right. I am not an experienced knitter and know almost nothing about yarn and how to read the labels so when I was shopping for needles and yarn I finally just went with the color I liked and hoped for the best in the weight. All in all  I think I came pretty close but I forgot that I had a second skein of the same yarn just in case I needed it (actually I couldn't find it so I thought I didn't buy it after all) and when I came to the end of the yarn I was 10 notches short of what  the pattern called for. The pattern said to knit to 42 notches or the end of the skein it, it called for a larger skein but I didn't think about whether or not all skeins were the same size. I learned a lot from this scarf. Making all the dish cloths helped me become better at the actual  knitting but this taught me about choosing and buying yarn.

I also learned that I have a lot more to learn.

A Flimsy ......almost

I finally sewed all the blocks together for the Triple Four Patch and I thought I was finished and ready to layer it up and add Prairie points after it was quilted but I decided to add a border instead, so it isn't a flimsy yet.
There is a mistake in the fifth row down on the right where the far right block is sewed to the block on the left. I have  one of  the little black and white 4 patches turned the wrong way. I saw it when I had 4 blocks together and I decided to leave it. It is one of two little surprises to find  in the quilt.

This is the other surprise. When I was snipping threads I snipped a little gouge near the upper left corner. In all of my squares of different sizes (and there are many, many... really many) there was not one single square or even a scrap of this fabric. This quilt really needed this fabric block so I fixed it with a little triangle of a similar colored fabric. In the overall picture I do not think it will detract.




The top measures 56 x 64 as it is now. and I think I will cut my borders 6 inches. That is the measurement of 3 stripes. I bought this striped fabric for something a long time ago and the colors were too deep in value for the quilt and I have tried to use it several times but it never worked;  this time I think I found it's place. I will  probably miter the corners. I still have a dread of mitered corners but they always turn out fine with out any problems. I think it is probably time to get over my aversion to miters.
My sewing room is still a mess with almost no room to work but I put this top together anyway and just walked carefully from my machine to the ironing board.
I did get my stack of Christmas quilts put away today but I think I am going to have to clean up a little more to have room to cut my borders. Now that I can envision a finished quilt I have my batteries charged up for a finish.

I hope my enthusiasm lasts.





Triple 4 patches etc.

I thought I would have a Triple Four Patch flimsy by now but I've had some interruptions. We had family over for dinner Sunday and yesterday Mrs. Scrooge (me)  got up and started taking the ornaments off of Christmas tree; that took ALL day. I bought some plastic ornament boxes to replace the old cardboard boxes that were getting dried out and  brittle. It took some thinking rearranging and  reworking to get everything packed away. I was determined to have it all together and not here and there and some things forgotten only to be put somewhere else where they would not be remembered until after Christmas. Jack would have been happy to have it up a few  more days but I think all in all he is happy to have his chair back where it belongs, closer to the TV. It is good to have the light coming in the room again now that the tree is not blocking the window.

I still have to put the Christmas quilts away. I folded them on the bias as suggested by Ann Fahl in a post some months ago. I washed up all the Christmas tablecloths, place mats, towels and other cloth stuff and will put them with this stack and wrap them with a sheet and put them on the top shelf in the linen closet. It is  a good place for anything that won't be taken down for another year as it  too high for me to reach with out a ladder and I have been discouraged from using a ladder.

 I  did get his far with the T4P blocks. they are sewed into foursies and sixies (the bottom 3 rows are sixes). this is the third T4P quilt I have done and each one was a different setting. I  made some of the blocks for this and I  thought the rest were from the friendship group  but some of them had labels on them from an Internet block swap from almost 15 years ago. I think they were leftovers that didn't appeal  color wise with the other blocks. This time I just put them up on the wall with Random Abandon and made only a few switches.

I should get this much sewed together today as I am staying in again today. The sun is out and it looks pretty good but the forecast for today is single digits and I see no reason to venture out.

Happy New Year etc.

I may be a day late with my wishes for a happy new year but the year is  going to be around for a while so I am wishing good things for everyone throughout the year.



When I looked back over the quilting finishes for the year 2013 I was surprised that I had not finished very much and I was frustrated that it was hard to find photos of my finishes. I am not making resolutions but I have set some goals.

1. I am organizing my photos in a better way and keeping track of the finishes.

2. I am going to make quilts with the blocks I have waiting. That means  I am going to spend less time organizing and sorting and more time sewing.

3.I am going to make a real effort to  finish the hand quilting on my big UFO.

I think 3 goals is enough for now.

 

I am starting with this.

I have about 45 blocks, some that I made and many from the Friendship group. There are also cut squares and little white and dark 4 patches for several more blocks. I got them out yesterday and I will finish enough blocks to fill in a rectangle layout. Right now they are on a design board and a table top. I am going to have to take the Anvil blocks down from the design wall so I can lay this out and  really see how I want to put this together.

 

I expect to be snowbound for at least another day and we forgot to stop at the bank for quarters for the washers before the big snow hit us hence no laundry will be done here for a few days. I know I won't be taking my Bernina to the sewing machine doctor for awhile but I will have no excuse for not doing some piecing and getting a top or 2 put together. 

 

This is the big UFO that has been hanging around for years. I am going to put it in my Q Snap frame and keep it handy to work on the hand quilting. It would be nice to finish it this year.  

 

Looking Back at 2013

I have been looking back over my photos to make a collage of all my 203 finishes and it seems as though I did not have a very productive year. the T shirt quilt was the only sizable thing I finished this year; it was one of 4 things I listed as my goals for 2013 and it is the only one the I accomplished,

I might have a few more finishes but I can't find the photos in my computer and I can't figure out how to get them out of Picassa web albums to add them to the collage.




I did find these runners that I made for the hutches to use in the summer when I had all the red, white and blue quilts out.




I found a photo of this table topper I made from a Honeycomb hexie pack by Moda.






I made  a lot of blocks for the Friendship group and I made some to send to Victoria (Bumblebeans) for the quilts she makes for cancer patients. I made and sent some house blocks to Beth (Love, Laugh, Quilt) for her annual Neighborhood Block Party

I finished this apron from "made fabric". I cut triangles for the top of the apron and adapted a pattern I had.

I also did some knitting. I made about 25 to30 dishcloths and finally graduated to a scarf which I am working on now.




 I made some "to  Boston with Love" flags and sent them along with some I collected from my friends.




I made a bunch of small things that I don't remember and can't find.

I cant forget that we had a week of Quilt Camp for the teens at church.





I spent a lot of time sorting and reorganizing and none of that shows and some of it is a mess again. I spent more time on the computer than I really need to. 

In light of my non productivity
am I going to make some resolutions
 set some goals for next year.

I am going to think that over and maybe save it for tomorrows post. 

Bouquets and Blocks

About 2 times a year I get flowers, Sweetest Day and my birthday. Last week ,Dec. 20)I got 2 bouquets for my birthday. This is the last of them.









The one on the left was from my son and DIL and it is on the dining room table; the one on the right was from Jack and is in the bedroom. They both had red roses and the one from Jack also had 2 white roses. When the roses started to hang their heads I took them out and hung them up to dry and rearranged the rest of the flowers. The baby's breath will dry nicely too and maybe the red berries in the one on the left will dry nicely too. In a few days I will put the dried flowers on my dresser for awhile. The real surprise was the lilies. The first one opened after 3 or 4 days and the other one opened after I rearranged the bouquets. They are huge, nearly 10 inches across and very fragrant.

This is a shot of the roses drying. I couldn't get a good picture and had to lighten it up; the red and green are both a little brighter and  will stay that way for quite a long time.


Today I made my Friendship bocks. I started with 3 inch strips and right now they measure 5 1/2 inches square. There are 5 of each colorway; 10 total. I had trouble with my 1/4 inch again and did what Beth, the owner of Cottonpickers  LQS, told me. I removed the guide on the side of the presser foot and voila my 1/4 inch is right on.










The weather today in Willoughby, Ohio according to Accuweather.com (on my desktop) is 51 degrees. It would be a good day to take my Bernina to the sewing machine doctor but it is also a rare winter day here in NE Ohio and a good day for Jack to be out on his motorcycle. He is considering having total hip surgery and that will be the end of his riding days.

The Bernina can wait!!

Some Knitting and one anvil block

I am not much of a knitter. I started knitting again about a year ago after many, many years ( my first attempts were not stellar). I made a stack of dish cloths, like 25 +, I considered them practice. My daughter recently told me that my dishcloth knitting looked pretty good and that I should try knitting something else. I  bought and downloaded this "Hitchhiker" scarf pattern on Ravelry and I went out to buy yard and needles. This is really the same stitch as the dishcloths but a different gauge.  I know nothing about yarn types and I had no idea what fingering yarn is. Another shopper gave me some advice and I bought the yarn for the color. I am about 1/3 of the way finished now. There is an increase of 4 stitches in width for every notch
and there are 42 notches. I think there are 2 mistakes but because of the variegated yarn it is really hard to tell.

I made one Anvil block yesterday. I thought it would be quick as I had all the background squares cut and the "made fabric" squares ready. I am almost never quick. Here it is with the other 12 yellow/orange background blocks in back on my design wall.

I think I had a problem because I was using a different machine and the quarter inch foot has an attached guide on the side;  my light was not positioned to light up that edge. My seams were not straight and not 1/4 inch so there was a lot of unsewing going on. I finally realized what the problem was and moved my lamp.

Here is a close up of the finished block. At our Basement Diva meeting in October Fran gave me some made fabric blocks and that is what I used for this block.
I have more yellow and orange background squares cut so maybe the next blocks will be quicker.
I really have to get my Bernina in soon for service; yesterday I kept moving my right leg to lift the presser foot. Once you get used to the knee lift it is hard to get along without it.

Merry Christmas

 

 

The Real Studio Tour -Week 3 - The Sewing Room

This is week 3 of the Real Studio Tour where we show our studios. Just as they are without cleaning and sprucing them up. 
Is my sewing room a STUDIO? Well................ sure, why not!
I have to be honest; I did a little bit of cleaning up the other day when I finished up some pillowcase gifts for my 3 youngest great grandsons. I needed  space to work.

 This is a layout of my 10 x 11.5 room that I worked out in Electric Quilt. Next to it is a shot from my doorway looking toward the window. Using EQ has certainly saved me a lot of work moving furniture only to find it doesn't fit.


Moving around the room to the right this first shot is what is behind my door. I keep some flannel covered design boards there with cutting mats clipped to them. It works well for keeping them safe. The next view  shows  the open door with my bookcase next to it and my Lifetime adjustable height folding table  next to it. The table  blocks the lower shelves on the bookcase but the table is light and easy to move. On top or the table there is a roll of bubble wrap from a package I just received. Under the table is a box of gifts I have to wrap and a rolling chair with a quilt on it that I have been hand quilting for years  (which I am ignoring at present).  Right next to the bookcase is my closet with metal shelves on one side and wall hangings and small quilts hanging on the half of the closet rod that I had to leave in the closet. Plastic see through boxes hold my fabric stash which doesn't amount to much any more. I do not have many large pieces of yardage, mostly smaller pieces and lots of scraps. My goal a few years ago was to whittle my stash down to nothing and only buy what I needed for each project. I have  modified that goal but I was still able to whittle  down the  amount of fabric to about half or what it was.
Moving around the corner to the next wall is a tall narrow chest that we bought at an estate sale when we were looking for a chest that would fit in our bedroom next to the window and still  leave space for the closet door to open.  I ended up with this chest recently when Jack took one of my folding tables for his desk (in the bedroom).
 I have a bulletin board above the tall chest and some of my little quilted pieces.Next is the little  blanket chest in front of the window. It is full of odds and ends  and is always piled up with stuff; today it holds pillows that I made from some excess pieces of fluffy poly batting that we were going to throw out from our  quilt closet at church. There is also a box of Christmas boxes and bags, none of them the sizes that I need now. The last shot is the other side of the window with my other bulletin board. It has a license plate that belonged to a friend and was given to me on a birthday. The little  Twister quilt was made by a friend from a zip lock bag of squares that I got rid of put together as a prize for last years annual Diva Jellyroll Race.

Once again moving around the corner, this is my computer desk and the wall above it. When we moved into this apartment from the one down the hall I stuck those quilted  pieces up on the wall with thumbtacks as a temporary solution. I intended to have Jack put Homasote or insulation boards on that whole wall so I could pin things to it and change them. That never happened and those two things are tacked up are there just as they were. Next to my computer desk is another countertop that I use for cutting, ironing, sorting etc. I have shelves above them that I original planned for placing my scissors, cutters, etc. while I was using them so they would stay easy to find. It is usually stacked up with other stuff. You can see where I hang my rulers. I just put  finishing nails right in the wall and it works well. I worked out the placement for the rulers in EQ

These lower two shots show my desk from below. You can see the little chests that my counter tops rest on and the plastic drawer units below. When Jack took my other table we replaced it with the second counter top and now I can fit things underneath that couldn't go under the table because of the corner folding braces. In back of my overflowing waste basket is one of my sewing machine totes. It is packed with zip lock bags of scraps sorted by color.. Under the shelf above the counter top, Jack put on of those under cabinet florescent stick lights and it is lights up that area well.

Below is my last wall with my design wall  that is covered with queen size Warm and Natural batting. It is stapled to a wooden lath strip that is secured with 3 nails at the top and thumbtacks at the sides and bottom to hold it taut. This wall was supposed to have insulation board on the wall covered with batting but that didn't happen either.

Whatever I am working on goes up on the wall;  between times I keep up an assortment of things that I am thinking about or just want to look at. On the wall right now are my Anvil blocks from the Friendship group and the red work Santa I just finished. In the center picture you see my Janome Gem lightweight traveling machine sitting in place of my Bernina. The Bernina which just seized up 2 days ago. I packed it up and it is ready to go to the Bernina doctor but not probably not till after Christmas. It is not too close by and the weather will  have to be good as well before we take it.

So........ that takes us around the room and back to the door. You can see by the assortment of old lamps every where that I do not have really good lighting. There is no overhead light and there are only 3 outlets; I use some heavy duty power strips. One of the down sides to this apartment is that we do not have any really good way to remedy my lighting problems.

Even though it is small

and it is not perfect 

and I have to move things around

 for different quilting tasks; 

  I feel fortunate to have a designated space for sewing. 

 

A Finish -Kind of

Last evening I finished this red work piece that I started over 20 years ago.
I guess it really isn't a finish because only the embroidery is done.

I saw this done in red work at a local quilt shop. It was adapted from a Curtis Boehringer applique pattern. The embroidered part of the old fashioned Santa is about 13 x 30. I believe it was framed and not quilted but it has been so long I am not sure I remember how it was finished. The lady who did it did really beautiful red work. I was so impressed that I thought I would make it for our annual quilt guild auction. I didn't get very far before I knew that I was not going to put this in any auction.  This looked like it would be a quick project. Maybe it would have been fast for someone else but it was not fast for me.
At the time I started it tea dyed fabric was in. I didn't tea dye this myself but bought it at the quilt shop probably because that is how the original was done. I am not quite so enchanted with it now as I was then. It does look a little more  stained in the photo than it really is. The dark places are a lot lighter in reality. When I was working on it I read somewhere that if you traced the pattern with a red Pigma pen the lines would be easier to see and they wouldn't show; I found that to be true.
I would get this out every once in a while and do a little work on it and then put it away again. When I got it out last month to take along as a hand work project I saw how close I was to finally finishing. I have been working on it for the past 3 weeks and finally finished.

Now What? I don't know what to do with it. I don't think I want to quilt it.  I am pretty sure the one I saw was professionally framed. I think it might have had batting behind it to pad it. I know if I just put it away now that it will stay in this state until someone goes through my stuff after I'm gone.

The Real Studio Tour - Storage

The Real Studio Tour week 2 is about our favorite storage systems. Mine is see through plastic; I use shoe boxes, the next size which is about 16L x 11Wx 6 or 7H, and the larger size 17 x 28 x  I like that size because it will fit under my bed or on the metal shelf unit. I have one large box to hold to hold the whole assortment of  my black and white fabrics and one for my odd leftover blocks.(I should probably make a quilt or two or something useful with those blocks). I like the older Sterilite boxes because they do not have so much taper and they are the ones that my metal shelves were adjusted to fit.

I have more of these with the white tops than I do the older Sterilite boxes which I really like better because they do not have that wide lip on the top to snap on the lid. These take up a little more space and are a little taller so they are a tight fit on my metal shelves, which were adjusted to fit three of the older boxes side by side. I hate to stack things on top of each other as I am less likely to put them back on the shelves.
 I like to organize smaller things in zip lock bags inside the boxes. Here  I have rolled  "Layer cake" size squares around a cardboard tube to keep them organized in this box of cut squares. You can see the wide lip on  this box compared to the small lip on the box on the right.


I recently acquired two 9 inch wide 4 drawer units from a friend who didn't need them and I use them to store all my tools. I liked them so well I added another wider one with wheels for all my thread and things that I use when I am sewing on the  machine.



I found some stackable boxes for thread that so far work out very well and fit nicely in the drawers. The center row is higher which makes a grove in the bottom and the lid is higher above it so that they stack without sliding around. I have pushed it to the left  a few inches for the photo to show how they fit together. I would buy more of these to replace some of my other thread containers but I am putting all purchases on hold. I plan on changing some things in a few months and it is my hope that I will be able to have all of the same kinds of boxes and shelves for the things that are stored together. I have a lot of stuff that would not be missed if it was gone. I believe that everything should have a place (even if I don't always have everything in it's place) and I find I no longer have a place for everything.

Check out the other storage ideas here. I already have a good idea about storage boxes from Lynn Taylor at the Patchery Menagerie and an idea from Vickie Walsh for a top to my drawer unit for my thread.