Playtime quilts

I have been working on my challenge quilt for our basement play group and I got fired up about it and finished it. However I can't post a picture of it yet because I have to wait until we reveal them all.

Our group doesn't have a regular meeting date and we are loosly organized but we have good times when we get together. We learn from each other and exchange ideas and we inspire one another. I think I mentioned before we have wonderful lunches.

The book that started us off was this one. This is a fun book just to look at but the exercises are great to get you started to make your own improvisational quilt. All of the quilts are named for childrens games and the names of the quilts don't always refer to the finsihed quilts so much as to the idea behind the composition. Not everyone did every exercise; there are some that I want to go back and do because I missed them.

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This is Hopscotch, my first quilt from the book; it is about 40 x 40. It has elements also, the checkerboard and piano keys.

This is Tic Tac Toe Whose Move? about 42 x 42

This one is Musical Chairs about 32 x 42. Maybe you can guess one of the elements from another game. Because of some of the fabric it took on an African look so I drew the mask and added the beaded trim and the Icthus.

Busy

I have been busy finishing up some things that have been around a while. I have to move things around and rearrange my room to set up for machine quilting. I like to have more than one thing to quilt so that I am not moving and putting things back too many times. My room is 10 x11  and I have too much STUFF. Last month I changed things around one day but instead of getting rid of something I brought something else in the room for my printers. I had it all arranged in EQ and I could see it wasn't working well but I did it anyway. I like it better but maybe just because it is a change. Everything works OK as long as I can live with my little blanket chest in front of my bookcase blocking the lower shelf.

This is my corner set up for machine quilting or it will be as soon as I move my iron and board and the rulers on my machine.

I just finished quilting this baby quilt for our "new baby" shelf at church. I think this is a pattern we will use for more quilts because it is fast and easy for new quiters. We would like to  involve them in making something for our "Caring Quilts", something that will be a learning process.  

Below is a closeup showing the Baby Signs print. I don't think the free motion quilting shows. I quilted in the ditch around the pieced blocks. I still have to but the yellow binding on, hopefully tonight.

I finished up my Diva challenge and have it layered up but I can't show it just yet. We are going to have our "reveal" in April.

I had some problems with my borders and I think one reason was because my new iron that I was so enamored with did not heat up enough and none of my seams were flat. When my infatuation with my iron cooled down a bit I could see someting wasn't right. I took it back and got another of the same and now I am a happy presser.                                                                                                     

Paper piecing again

My friend Kathy taught me to paper piece last year and it was no small thing. I am not sure why I had so much trouble with paper piecing but I made mistakes that made it hard to figure out what I was thinking. I had taken more than one class and I came to the conclusion that when I turned somethng over to stitch on the back something happened to my mind. But what Kathy taught me clicked and I made 2 sets of migrating geese. So ...........Thursday I was all set to make a paper pieced sun. I finished it yesterday afternoon. The paper piecing went well, slow but no problems; setting it into a circle. not so hot. The hardest part was adding the circle in the center. I decided to applique it with straight stitching on the edge and my stitching went awry. I am going to use it anyway and figure out how to rescue it but I don't think I will make any more 6 inch suns unless I fuse them.

Parts department

I am part of a group of quilting friends who get together and play. We sometimes choose a book and work our way through the exercises and learn new techniques. Sometimes 1 or 2 people will teach us something that they have learned or discovered or created. We are very loosely organized (like not) and we don't really have a name. We are sometimes the Saturday Study Group and sometimes Sewing in the Basement; it depends on who is sending the email.  We play, we encourage one another, we learn from each other and we have wonderful lunches.
We are presently working on a challenge using a Sewing Diva panel and parts from 2 books, "Beyond the Block" by Linda K Johnson and Jane K. Well a.k.a. Crafty Ol' Broads and "Collabrorative Quilting" by Freddie Moran and Gwen Marston. Both of these books are fun, fun,fun but doing this with a group is friends is even more fun.

I can't show my Diva section but these are some of my parts from the "Parts Department" as they are called in the book "Collaborative Quilting". These won't all be in my challenge piece but this is what I have been working on .
The top row is 4 1/2 inch 16 patch blocks. They were my favorite yeterday when I was working on them.
The second row is 4 x 4 1/2 inch log cabins.
The third row is Gwennies Pinwheels.
The fourth row is Liberated Stars.
The fifth row is 2 inch 4 patches on point
The 6th row is 2 1/2 inch HST's  and a "Chunky Churndash" from Bonnie Hunters website and  a Birds in the Air block.


These are a few more parts.

So far I have been using up mostly short strips and small pieces. I don't know why I have so many bright scraps; maybe because I save everything. Yesterday my cutting table was covered with a big tangle of strips but I used a bunch and sorted the rest in manageable bunches.

 

This is an "I Spy" quilt that I am quilting. I stopped when I folded under a corner and quilted it down. I never got back to it after  I took  out the stitching. I think I made these blocks after I got the Collaborative Quilting book but I am not sure. The blocks are the same as the liberated log cabins but they might have been crazy pieced. I made about 100 blocks using I Spy patches that were too small or odd sizes for other I spy patterns.

This is a quilt that I finished using those same blocks. I know I got the idea for the dividing strips from the Beyond the Block book.There was one more quilt pretty much the same as this one with lighning bolt dividing strips. All three quilts are for our new baby shelf at church.

QAWM #3

This is the last of my QAWM quilt tops, it is 42 x 42. The photo below has the real border. I used EQ to determine the number of patches I wanted to use and the size to cut them.  I got my black fabric yesterday and finished it today while the snow kept coming down.

When I get this one quilted I will hang it above my bed.

I decided a longtime ago that black was just too difficult to sew for my old eyes. Probably immediately after deciding that I decided that I had to use black in something or other and I got hooked on black and use it allthe time. It has not gotten any easier to see but it has made me more careful when I use it because it is so hard to see to unsew.

This little 11 x 11 colorwash is what tipped me over the edge in deciding to say good bye to my trays of 2  inch squares and 1.25 inch squares. I found this and another small piece early last month during a cleaning spree. They were all layed out on flannel and covered with tissue paper and ready to sew. They were probably class samples from several years back. I sewed them together at the time I found them and I fused some printed flowers on this one,  satin stitched around the flowers, quilted it and finished it. The back ground might as well be one piece, the prints blend together so well.  I spent some time to lay it all out and agonize over the orientation of each square and then sew it together.  I know I am  never going to make anything again with all those 2 inch squares let alone the 1.25 squares. I have moved on!

Lessons learned

I learned something new in EQ yesterday. I learned how to take a photograph and import it into EQ and set it in a quilt as a block. This way I can audition the border.

The body of the quilt here is the photo and the border is EQ. I see the photo is rather dull and out of square but I can see what I wanted to see. Now as soon as I go out and get some more black fabric I can finish this up. I can't find the 2 or 3 yards of black that  I thought was in my stash. There is no way I would miss it if it was here so I must have used it up.

That brings me to the other things I learned this month.

1 - I work better when I am not working in a mess. I knew this but it was filed in the back of my mind. It has come to the forefront.

2 - It is time to clear out and clean up. I spend way to much time organizing and reorganizing stuff I am never going to use again.

3 - My sewing room is the only way it can be UNLESS I GET RID OF SOME STUFF.

4 - If I have made a quilt with fabrics I like, I still like the quilt 15 -20 years later. If fabric sits on my shelf unused, after a few years I don't like it so much anymore.

5- I don't always have to know everything I need to know in order to get started. (sometimes I do). I still don't know everything I need to know about blogging but I am learning as I go along.

6 - When I can't seem to get interested in starting anything or even finishing anything I need someone to give me a jump start. I am not good at motivating myself.

It looks like the first 4 things on my list have to do with letting go of some stuff. The first thing to go will be the trays of 2 inch colorwash squares and 1 1/4 inch squares. I know I never again going to arrange 2 inch squares on my design wall and sew them together. I like all  of the quilts I made but I know I won't do it again. Maybe the next to go will be the squares and rectangles, lots of old duller tones in those boxes that don't appeal to me anymore. A big part of my enjoyment as I sew is seeing the interplay of color and pattern and some of what I have just isn't that enjoyable anymore.

That's what friends are for

Paper piecing is something that always left me wanting to tear out my hair;.I always did something so dumb that I often couldn't even figure out how I could have done such a thing. If I ever had to paper piece, I complained and grumbled endlessly. When someone in our Friendship (block swap) group gave us a log cabin foundation that she had copied on the copy machine I was worried I would end up bald. It was a little bit off in the sizing because of the copy machine so that I couldn't print another foundation from EQ without first figuring out the size of the blocks and strips. When I finally got that right and printed it I made a really stupid mistake on the last log, not once but more than once. I ended up picking out all those tiny stitches because I knew if I did it over from the beginnig I would be likely to make the same mistake again.

 Well anyway, fast forward a couple years. I get togeher with several ladies who are talented and creative. We get together in the basement of one of the group and learn something new and fun. Someone brought instructions that she got off the internet for drawing a migrating geese block in Electric Quilt. It was just stuck in with some other papers and I found it when I got home. I played with it in EQ and drew out a paper piecing pattern and thought that this was something that I wanted to do enough to make me paper piece. I spent a whole day making one mistake after another and threw the whole thing away. When I said I would swear off paperpiecing, Kathy came to my resue. She said she would teach me to paper piece the next time we got together and SHE DID.

This strip was going to go in a larger piece using blocks from the books "Beyond the Block" and "Collaborative Quilting"; that is our latest basement project. I looked at it yesterday and decided that I wanted it to stand alone. I sewed the borders on this morning and I will quilt in the ditch around the geese.

Old colorwash UFO

Last month when the weather was terrible for several days I slipped into the cleaning mode and cleaned out closets and drawers and boxes etc. I found some things that were almost done and finished them. I found some sturdy fabric that was not quilting fabric  and I made reusable shopping bags (now if I would only remember to get them back to the car where I might remember to take them into the store). I also came across 2 pieces of flannel with colorwash 2 inch squares all laid out and partly sewed. They were covered with tissue paper and rolled up so the squares stayed in place. Of course, I stopped cleaning and sat down and finished sewing them together. I have found a different 1/4 inch since I started sewing these together some years ago and  by the time I got around to sewing the rows together I could see that something wasn't going together well but I continued anyway. I stopped when I got the first one sewn in one piece and resumed cleaning. Yesterday I came across it again and I got out my large  square ruler squared it up, put borders on it and layered it up. The nice thing about colorwash patches is that they moosh together and it is not so noticable if some of the patches get trimmed so they are not square anymore. Well anyway, that is what I tell myself.

This is the result of my effort, it is 18 x 21 inches. I put 2 small 9 patches in the border to transition from the dark fabric to the light I think I will leave them in even though they don't look as red hot as I thought they would.

Getting organized

I have finished cutting up all the pieces that were left from the QAWM blocks and sorted out the  pieces that were useful enough to fold and put away. I have quite a few 12 inch square pieces that will make good backs for small quilted projects. The rest is cut into strips and squares and a few rectangles.

As soon as I get everything cleaned up and put away and the floor vacuumed I am going to see what I an do to make my room more efficient. I keep going over this again and again. I use EQ for my room layout and furniture and it saves me from actually having to move furniture. Every time I do this I come to the conclusion that I have the best arrangement for everything I have in the room but I am not happy with it..... so back to the drawing board or rather back to EQ.

This is what I have to show for my 2 1/2 days of cutting.

  On the left of this tray are 3 piles of strips to use in the QAWM blocks. The piles of 4 1/2 inch squares are some for the blocks and the rest for the 4 1/2 inch square box. I have cut some of the

 2 1/2 inch strips into 4 1/2 and 6 1/2 inch rectangles to use in a scrap quilt that is made using a Donna Poster pattern. for now they go in a box with like size pieces.

This tray has 2 inch and 11/2 inch strips and 4 inch squares. For now they will go in a box with like sized pieces.

This is 1/4 quarter of the back of the Garden patch quilt. it is a lot brighter in person. I couldn't lay the whole thing out to phtograph without moving furniture and I am saving my energy for other furniture moving.

Cutting

I cancelled my trip to the LQS yesterday because I was coughing a lot and losing my voice. I stayed home and pieced a backing for my Garden Patch quilt. I used up several "not large enough for anything" pieces. No photo because I have my quilt up on the design wall so no place to lay out the back. I tried putting it on my bed to take a photo, even stood on a ladder to get far enough away but that didn't work
I stayed in again today and spent the day cutting up all the leftover pieces from what I have been working on. I am cutting strips 1.5, 2 and 2.5 inches. I am also cutting  4.5 inch squares for my box of squares for scrap quilts. This is the size I use most often. I also cut a few smaller squares if I couldn't cut anything larger. I threw out a fairly large bag of shreds and my floor looks like I need a rake. I am getting down to 1 box of floral fabs instead of 2 and what I am not cutting up are things I have a purpose for. I am making progress but it is slow going. I am not fast, probably because I am a messy worker and as I go along things get pulled out and not put away. I have reached the point where I have to stop and make some space and get organized. Everything in my sewing room has a place and when it is all cleaned up it looks like I am well organized but right now almost nothing is in it's place. I tell myself things get so messy because my space is small but I know that if it was large I would just have a bigger mess.

QAWM Gardenpatch top 56 x 70

I went ahead and sewed my blocks together. I decided that I liked the murky fabric after all. I had to cut carefully to get all the setting triangles because I had just enough. That is when I usually make a mistake, not when I have lots of fabric and room for error. This time it worked out.

I have left over light blocks because I replaced some with larger scale prints. I am beginning to see why I can't get this box of fabric used up. I tend to slip into the color wash mode when I use these fabrics and there is not enough contrast. When I dug into the box of darker floral prints I liked what was happening. I have been enjoying the interplay of color and pattern as I stitched them together.

I'm not sure what is next except my focus will be to keep working with the floral fabric and make as big a dent as I can in the pile. I want to move on to other things.

Yesterday I had to go out and buy a new iron.  I have not had very good luck with the longevity of my irons and I keep trying different brands. This one has such nice features and I am so happy with it that I hope it lasts a while. The off button and the 3 heat settings light up so you know what the setting is. When it shuts off automatically it beeps 3 times and the off light blinks. It has lots of steam, is easy to fill, all the switches are easy to use and there is an orange ball that floats in the water level indicator which also lights up.

Table topper revisited

Sometimes you just have to go back and fix something. Every time I looked at this small piece I thought it looked like I ran out of fabric and just stuck those triangles in there to get it done. I thought it would like it better after a day or two. That didn't happen so I made 2 more yellow blocks and took out the triangles and it looks better to me.

I am still rearranging the blocks on the larger quilt and trying to decide if I like the setting trianglefabric it has kind of a murky look to it.

I will look at it up on the wall for another few days  before I sew it . I am going to the LQS Tuesday and I think I will wait to see if I find something I like better. I do not want to rip out 14 set in triangles. I know my objective is to use my fabric but in the process I do not want to make what I consider ugly quilts. We'll see