Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
This is not a difficult pattern, so it went together quickly. It was especially fast since I already had the striped triangles cut.
As mentioned, I used some mostly blue 16 Patch blocks for the alternate blocks.
I pulled out some older batiks for the back and this quilt top (and back) is ready to go to the Community quilt project.
I finally finished Scrappy Celebration! I am well in time for my niece’s wedding and shower. Now I just need to decide if I want to enter it in the Fair.If I do enter it, I’ll have to add a sleeve.
I don’t have much else to enter. If I do, it would mean not giving it to her at her shower, but I think that would be ok.
I am pleased with how it came out, but I think I want to make another quilt, or something complicated, with my man Phil’s Chrysanthemum print. I don’t know why I like the colors so much, but I do.
The back isn’t super interesting. I was reading the New Jersey issue of QuiltFolk. They said that this type of back makes the quilt a 2-sided quilt! Who knew?
I still don’t really have a plan for 2024 in terms of sewing. I am just not sure what type of projects I want to focus on. I am starting to think that finishing a lot of UFOs was a bad idea. It left me sort of feeling like I don’t want to generate more UFOs.
I still want to sew, so I fell back on my potato chip project: the I Spy pouches. I have some templates coming from Sew Sweetness so I thought I would get ahead of the game and make the pouches in advance. The first one I finished was the Mermaid pouch AKA the Create * Make * Dream I Spy.
I used a different coneflower colorway than I did in the last I Spy. Surprisingly, I didn’t have as much of it as I thought, so the three pouches I made are sort of scrappy. This one looks relatively normal from the front, but I used a mermaid print for the back.
I bought this fabric on a whim at Cool Cottons in Portland last year, possibly for a bag for my sister. This is the first time I have used it, however. It is a fun fabric and I am glad I will have a little piece of it for myself. I still have enough left to make something for Lil Sissy.
I haven’t put any templates in yet, but it will be used for acrylic bag templates.
The other day I wrote a post about gifts for Gerre. I thought I would write one for the gifts I have made for Carrie as well. I thought I had made more, but I have only been making bags for her since the pandemic.
As I said the other day, I had three gifts to make in the early part of March. One of them was a birthday gift for Carrie. Since I was pressed for time, I made a lined drawstring bag. I did an assembly line with Gerre’s bag and got them done in an afternoon.
You can’t see it very well, but I tried to fussy cut an entire color wheel for the outside of the bag.
I use some of the Create ‘I’m a Maker’ fabric I bought just for this purpose. I installed it upside down, but Carrie can see it easily when she looks at it, so I am going with that as a design choice. 😉
This time I put labels on the outside of the bags, which I thought looked nice. I didn’t stuff them and take pictures (see above reference to time pressure).
I find it useful to keep track of all the gifts I make for my friends – and my Mom. It is really fun to see them all together. It is also useful to know what I have made, so I get an idea of what new patterns I can use going forward.
I can see that I could make an I Spy pouch for her for sure. Perhaps I should make those this year for all the bags. Still, I do enjoy trying new patterns and I have several to try, so we will see. I like to make useful bags and the I Spy pouches are very useful.
It is also fun to see the Mega Pinnie. I had forgotten about that. It might be time to make another. I have a whole bag of poly stuffing and no project in sight for that.
It is pretty amazing that I have made 15 gifts for her. It started out as a way to make her smile and has become a tradition, at least for me.
International Women’s Day came around and I forgot to post about the bag I made for Gerre.
I was a little pressed for time and had three gifts to make, so I pulled out the Lined Drawstring Bag pattern from Jeni Baker, In Color Order. As I have said before, this is a great pattern and I should make more of them.
I always have trouble with directional fabric, so I drew a picture this time, like I have done in my I Spy pattern. I hope it will help me next time I pull the pattern out.
I put a few fun things in the bag and sent it off.
After finishing Grey Strip #2, I put the 16 patches that have been waiting in the wings on the large design wall. This is the start to laying out another Quarter Square Triangle block quilt.
I used different stripes this time. I had some squares that were the leftovers from something that worked well for the size blocks I needed. This provides a different look from the others with the dark black triangles.
I am short of the same white, but will cut a different white. It will be fine and I get to use up more fabric. I think I can finish this before Sew Day. It would be nice to hand in two quilts.
Because it can’t really be helped, I have started the Improv color quilts for the black-grey-brown scrap drawer. These miscellaneous pieces will end up being two donation quilts at some point in the Color Improv series.
Ignore the pink and grey 16 patch at the top. Design wall space is at a premium these days.
As you can see I have a lot of black pieces from working on the black strip donation blocks. There is also a slowly growing grey piece that I think has promise. One thing I notice about it is that most of it is made up of squares and rectangles.
I am not sure if I’ll have enough to make two whole quilts, but we will see.
As you know, I don’t quilt much. I really enjoy the collaborative effort of making a top and allowing someone else to quilt it. Thus, the quilts below are mostly tops, but I will include a finished quilt once someone else finishes it for the group.
This category covers bags, toys, aprons and knitting as well as other non-quilt projects.
Nothing at the moment
WIPs are projects on which I am working. This means that I am past the cutting out of pieces stage, some sewing has taken place.
I still have UFOs. Who doesn’t, after all? A project in the ‘UFO’ category means I am stalled, it hasn’t been worked on in awhile or it is waiting its turn to be worked on. The list is a lot shorter and the projects are newer, for the most part.
I am annoyed that some of these are still UFOs. I have to give myself credit for completing some of them last year.
Admin
The Minikins page is updated with my recent Piebald pouches and some other links I needed to add.
The Quilt Class and Teaching page has also been updated. Do you want to be ready for anything in quiltmaking? Get in touch if you want to learn a wide variety of techniques. I am hoping to start a class at the end of July.
I updated the Color Improv donation top page with some new information.
I finally was able to take some good photos of my Pointillist Palette quilts. I will show each one in its own post down the road. In the meantime, I have updated the Pointillist Palette page.
Projects, Classes, Patterns, Techniques & Tutorials
DH thought up these fun decorations for his flycasting club potluck. Aren’t they clever?
Carrie shared a cute bird block pattern with me.
At Bag Club, we talked about Noodlehead patterns in preparation for our group project, the Oxbow Tote. In the course of the conversation, Lynette mentioned the Noodlehead Open Wide pouch, which is a free pattern. Be sure to look at the updated size chart as well. Perhaps I’ll make one to reacquaint myself with her patterns.
Judy Martin wrote in her most recent newsletter “…one common practice makes absolutely no sense to me: cutting strips on the crosswise grain. The lengthwise grain is parallel to the selvage; the crosswise grain is perpendicular to it. Why does this matter? Primarily because the crosswise grain is so much stretchier compared to lengthwise. There is simply no reason to start your sewing off on the wrong foot when lengthwise or crosswise strips take the exact same effort and skill. You can see a vivid demonstration of how stretchy fabric is on the crosswise grain compared to lengthwise…
Another advantage of lengthwise strips is how well the strips follow the print. I cut my strips 18″ long and call them short strips. That length works perfectly for the fat quarters and half-yard cuts of fabric that I use so often. Since I usually make scrap quilts, the shorter-than-your-usual crosswise strips offer much greater scrap variety. Best of all, you don’t have to throw out everything you’ve learned about rotary cutting to start using short lengthwise strips today. Everything is the same except the length of your strips and the direction that you turn the fabric when you cut it.”
See what she means by watching her video. I have known this technique for years and I should do this, but I don’t like cutting off strips parallel to the selvedge. That seems really dumb, so I may have to change my ways.
Tools, Books, Fabric, Notions & Supplies
Have you seen the new line of Philip Jacobs fabrics? I saw them at Sew Hungry Hippie. I am totally in love with this print. I am usually not much of green girl, but this is just so fabulous.
He has quite a few flower prints in his new collection. I am not surprised, but very pleased. The Dorothy designs are interesting.
I haven’t been a huge fan of his feathers, but I really like the yellow colorway. The floating Hibiscus from last year is still available and very tempting. He has a new flower print (coming in August) called Papaver in a grey that is different from some of his other prints.
Martha Negley has a new vegetable print that is similar to some she has had in the past. No idea when it is coming out. I really need to sew faster!
These socks mean that you will always have a color wheel with you.
Media, Books and Articles
A follow-up article to the Women’s View exhibit was posted. You can still see the show. It is open until April 26.
In a recent New York Times article from the Well section, they talk about working with your hands. In the article, Dr. Lambert has another hypothesis. “With depression, people experience something called learned helplessness, where they feel like it doesn’t matter what they do, nothing ever works,” she said. She believes that working with one’s hands is stimulating to the brain, and that it could even help counteract this learned helplessness. “When you put in effort and can see the product of that, like a scarf you knitted, I think that builds up a sense of accomplishment and control over your world.” The article is well worth reading and distributing to others.
Events, Shops, Exhibits and Shows
I visited the East Bay Heritage Quilter’s Guild show last weekend. It was held in Oakland, once again, after many years in Richmond. It was clear that the show was very well organized and had a lot of interesting stalls outside of the quilt show. There were a number of interesting quilts. I was attracted to the geometric quilts in bright colors. I was disappointed that most of the vendors were clothing, housewares, jewelry and skincare vendors. I was in the mood to buy quilt things and there was not much available. New Pieces was there with a few fat quarter packs. They didn’t bring any yardage to cut.
Other Artists
Want to see some one-of-a-kind tapestries by Kaffe? Take a look at his gallery. They are amazing.
One of the quilts at the EBHQ Show was by someone who did the Julia McLeod “Lone Robin” prompt project. I found some of the prompts on the SFQG website. The prompts are from 2021, so it would have been a pandemic project. I don’t know when EBHQ hosted the project or whether the artist engaged in the project at another show. I thought it was a good idea and I really liked how the quilt came out.
I am back to less than my normal number of donation blocks, but I have been working on two donation quilts, at least. I want to make 30 blocks a month, but I’ll have to keep working towards that goal.
I have started making green strip donation blocks, so my hopes for next month’s tally are better.
Yes, the Cal Piebald is finished. I think it came out really well. The fussy cutting, as mentioned, looks great!
In this image you can see the long loop I talked about when I started it. I used my own hand to figure out the length and I think it is ok. We’ll see what SIL #4 says.
I also fussy cut the bottom even though it won’t be seen very often.
One of these days, I’ll have to try adding Odicoat to a finished bag to see what happens. I am thinking a lot about what happens when people actually use the bags I give them. I want them to use the bags, so I should prepare them better to be used.
This pattern has an interesting stitching pattern for the loop/handle. The directions say to stitch the the part of the loop not attached to the bag with 4 lines before attaching it to the bag. This meant that I had to calculate exactly where the loop hit the bag, thus there was a bit of pfaffing around with my hand in the loop and trying to mark where I thought the loop would end.
Note: if you make the loop the size indicated in the pattern, there is no pfaffing around.
The rest of the loop is stitched to the bag using the four lines again. I think it is pretty secure.
I think the lining matches really well. It is a little bit baggy, which is weird, but it isn’t terrible, so I am not going to stress about it. I sewed the lining with a fatter seam allowance, so it shouldn’t be baggy. Who knows? Another mystery to try and solve while I make other bags.
So, this is done. I am pleased. I am not sure when I will give it to SIL #4. I’ll see about giving it to her when I see her on the weekend.
I am really pleased that I was able to finish the Grey Strip #2 donation top the other day.
I got all the blocks together and, again, the quilt was a weird shape – long and thin vertically. I didn’t like it, but I also don’t have enough grey scraps to make 4 more blocks. I know that is good news, but it didn’t help me here. I also really didn’t want to spend the time.
I decided that I would make the side borders larger than the top and bottom. The blocks are 4.5 inches unfinished. I cut the borders 5 inches unfinished and I think the top looks like it will be a useful size.
I found a large piece of grey last time I was rummaging in the fabric closet, so I used that for the back. I didn’t have to do any piecing! Yay. Next up is another QST 16 Patch.
I laid out the La Pass quilt in order to work more on the border. I am struggling this this section, which is getting on my nerves.
I don’t know if I want to keep those butterfly pentagons in that place or replace them with background fabrics.
I consulted with my friend Lindsay the other day and she has some good ideas, which I am contemplating.