Various & Sundry #9 – Late August 2014

Knitting Request
If you are willing to knit or crochet a hat for a man going through chemotherapy, contact me privately. Hats for work especially needed. Thanks.

Projects
I am so lucky that people share their work with me.

Gretchen's BOM Block
Gretchen’s BOM Block

Gretchen shared a block from Fat Quarter Shop BOM. I love this block design and think I will make a block like this. It has a lot of pieces so I am not sure it would work for a donation quilt, but in the Star Sampler (or a similar type of project) it would have shone!

I have never done a BOM and am not sure I will, though I never thought I would do a mystery quilt and look at Scrapitude! I love the dots in this block, of course, but am not so fond of the overall look of the fabric. I wonder if you can just buy the block patterns and make the quilt in your own fabric.

Gretchen says that this is block 2, so I assume it is a 2014 BOM, but I can’t see which one it is on the Fat Quarter Shop BOM page. Try them all! 😉

I like the style of this eReader cover. The fact that it has some style is awesome! Yes, part of the style is the fabric, but there is also that curve on the foldover cover. Very nice. [The nagging back part of my mind wonders if that curved pointy part would get caught on other stuff when you stuffed it into a bag?] There are some tips on the Whistlepig blog, but you can buy the pattern from Whistlepig Creek Productions. I saw it first on Pinterest.

Mrs. K"s Quilt Back
Mrs. K”s Quilt Back

Mrs. K has also been hard at work on her project, which I wrote about in a previous post. She shared a picture of her back with me and I love the back as much as the front. I feel so fortunate to have friends who will share their projects with me.

Fabric and Thread

Have you seen Leah Duncan’s fabric? It reminds me of Marrimeko. I like the colors of her Aurifil thread as well.

I am just amazed at the variety of thread boxes that Auriful is putting out lately.

Media

I saw this site posted on FB. If you need a bit of eye candy, take a look at Quilt Inspiration.

Here is a sensible 12 Step Program for quiltmakers.

I happened across the blog post on La Vie en Rose. I love reading about why people make, what they make and how they make. No matter how much we love the rooms in House Beautiful and Elle Decor, I think we all feel compelled to put our own stamp on our surroundings as well as to leave a legacy.

As you might remember, I linked up to Design Wall Monday on the Patchwork Times last week. It was a whim. I don’t know if I’ll do it again. I probably won’t do it every week. I decided to go back and look at some of the other design walls. I was actually kind of disappointed, because the first several I clicked on were beautiful finished projects not design wall. I felt like the one person who showed up to the party wearing a costume only to find that nobody else wore costumes. I really put myself out there and others didn’t seem to. In all fairness, I may not understand the rules.

The Rosie’s Quilt Cupboard blog got questions from the The Quilting Life and answered them in a recent blog post. The writer is funny, though the jokes are subtle. I especially liked her cave drawing comment. 😉 I also liked her comment about not annoying women with sharp pointy things. I’ll have to use that line sometime. It is amusing to read her answers to the questions and think about my own. I followed along with Weeks Ringle on her Modern Quilt Studio Homework that . These questions are a good opportunity to get the brain working again. I am considering answering these questions as well, but we will see. Thanks to Sandy for tweeting it.

You know I love leaders and enders. Great news for those of you who don’t know what to do with those leaders and enders you have made into blocks: Bonnie Hunter’s new book, More Adventures with Leaders and Enders is out. Take a look at her blog for more details. I like the cover.

I like the tips in this TextileArtist.org post on keeping an art blog. You might have wondered why my posts don’t have a lot of different topics in one post. This post explains it very well.

Tutorials, Tips and Tricks

I found a post that details caring for your scissors.

Want to make a coffee cozy? Here is a Fat Quarter shop Tutorial via I’m A Ginger Monkey. I know there are thousands of coffee cozy tutorials out there. Perhaps this one will work for you?

Around and About in QuiltLandia

Want to enter a contest? This one is about animals.

I heard there is a Bainbridge Quilt Festival! Go visit Bainbridge Island Saturday Sept 13th.

I found a great post from Weeks Ringle about their participation in the Million Pillowcase Challenge. I liked it that she was able to find out about the recipients and make some pillowcases that might go with their decor. She has some good tips about making them to fit into a decor about which you don’t know much.

Something Completely Different

Better LivingThrough Sewing
Better LivingThrough Sewing

This was a ‘cheap date’ ad on Google. Yes! Isn’t this a great line? Isn’t it true?

More on Field Day

I really don’t know why the Field Day prints appeal to me so much, but they do. They really aren’t my colors and more than one person has said that they aren’t my colors. I needed to be careful not to use a background that would make the top/piecing too depressing for me to work on.

I found that the backgrounds I posted before were too … too…. too something. Too wrong? Too boring? Too expected. They weren’t right.

I took some of the rectangles, as I said in the Thursday post, with me to Beverly’s to pick out a different background. Maureen met me there and helped.

Kelly suggested some kind of bright turquoise. I went to the store fully intending to buy some kind of turquoise. They didn’t have the new Jamaica colorway, which I thought would be perfect. I wasn’t excited about some of the other turquoises that were available. So, I started looking at other colors. I picked up Sangria and really liked it.

Maureen pulled some other colors and we looked at them as well. I bought more than one background color, because I still haven’t decided. I may make more than one just to use the different backgrounds and see the difference in the look of the quilts.

Creative Prompt #273: Cage

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Nicholas Cage

birdcage

John Cage

La Cage Aux Folles

1989 movie

Rapper Cage

App for simple, online design collaboration

Cage the Elephant

Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Bicycle waterbottle cages

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. – H.L. Mencken.

Faraday cages shield their contents from static electric fields.

Cassie Cage is a new fighter that will be introduced in the upcoming Mortal Kombat X.

The Cage is Anchorages premier baseball training facility, offering eight cages with slow pitch softball through very fast pitch baseball.

Definition: “Cage (enclosure), a structure made of mesh, bars or wires, used to confine, contain or protect something. Examples include:

    • Batting cage, an enclosure for baseball players to practice batting
    • Bottle cage, a bicycle accessory used to affix a water bottle to a bike
    • Casino cage, the location where chips are exchanged to or from cash in a casino
    • Faraday cage, an enclosure formed by conducting material
    • Human rib cage, a part of the human skeleton within the thoracic area
    • Mine cage, similar to an elevator, used to transport miners and their equipment to/from the working face of a shaft mine
    • Roll cage, a specially constructed frame built in or around the cab of a vehicle to protect the occupants from injury
    • Shark proof cage, used by scuba divers to examine sharks with better safety
  • Cage (bearing), a component of a rolling-element bearing

Abstract concepts

Cage (graph theory), a regular graph in graph theory with the fewest vertices for a given girth and degree
Iron cage, a concept introduced by Max Weber

Acronyms

CAGE questionnaire, a screening tool for determining alcoholism
Cap Analysis of Gene Expression, a molecular biology technique
CAGE, Commercial and Government Entity

People

“Christian Cage”, a former ring name of Jason Reso, a Canadian-American professional wrestler
David Cage (born 1969), founder of videogame development studio Quantic Dream
John Cage (1912–1992), experimental composer
Michael Cage (born 1962), former NBA basketball player
Nicolas Cage (born 1964), American actor
Steven Cage, member of the Conservative Party of Canada
Stuart Cage (born 1973), English golfer
William Cage (1666–1738), English politician, MP for Rochester

Places

Cage, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Cage, Croatia

Music and dance
Artists

Cage (band), an American heavy metal band
Cage (rapper) (born 1973), Chris Palko, an American hip hop artist
Byron Cage (born 1962), African-American gospel recording artist
John Cage (1912–1992), American composer

Ballet

The Cage (ballet), Jerome Robbins, 1951

Songs

“Cage” (song), a 1999 single the Japanese rock band Dir en grey
“La Cage” (song), the 1969 début single by Jean-Michel Jarre
“Cages”, a song by Deas Vail from the album Birds and Cages

Fiction

Cage (film), a 1989 action film and its 1994 sequel, Cage II, both starring Reb Brown and Lou Ferrigno
“Cage” (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
John Cage (character), a fictional character in the television show Ally McBeal
Johnny Cage, a fictional character from the Mortal Kombat series of video games
Luke Cage, a fictional character portrayed in Marvel Comics
Xander Cage, the protagonist in the film xXx, starring Vin Diesel
Cage Midwell, the protagonist of the video game Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars

(all of the above, after ‘Definition’, from:Wikipedia)

hamster cage

Luke Cage (Marvel Comics)

The Cage Athletic and Recreation Center is a focal point of student activity on Berry’s 27,000-acre campus.

King of the Cage is the finest in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competition

Post the direct URL (link) where your drawing, doodle, artwork is posted (e.g. your blog, Flickr) in the comments area of this post. I would really like to keep all the artwork together and provide a way for others to see your work and/or your blog.

We are also talking about this on Twitter. Use the hashtag #CPP

The Creative Prompt Project, also, has a Flickr group, which you can join to  post your responses. I created this spot so those of you without blogs and websites would have a place to post your responses.

Wonky 9 Patch

Remember this quilt? I haven’t worked on it in a while, thought it has been on the list for awhile. Working on it what I did on the weekend when I wasn’t at the races (wearing a big hat like I was at Ascot or something), doing laundry or answering one of the 1000 questions I get asked when I am at home.

I also don’t think I wrote much about it. The first time I wrote about the piece, it seems like it was in a very embryonic stage. The last time I wrote about that piece, the top was done. Hhhmm. Talk about quick projects.

The project has been on my mind. I got a bug in my ear to quilt it myself and that was sitting in the back of my mind taunting me. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me. I wanted to get it done during these two weeks (last week and this week), because I was off work and I could devote some serious time to quilting.

Wonky 9 Patch - quilting
Wonky 9 Patch – quilting

Because this quilt didn’t have a border and I didn’t think the design called for one, I put on what I call a ‘quilting border’. A quilting border gives me something to cut off when I am squaring up the quilt and don’t want to chop of points or parts of the design for a piece that didn’t end up quite square. I learned to do this after chopping off points and designs on the Punk Rock Quilt. the only tricky part is to make sure you cut off enough so that the edge will be completely covered by the binding.

Orange blocks quilted
Orange blocks quilted

First, I quilted straight-ish lines in all of the orange wonky 9 patches. I used Aurifil #2145 for the orange blocks. I didn’t intentionally follow any lines or do any in the ditch quilting, except when I was trying to get from one part of the block to another. I did try and keep the three lines in each block about the same distance away from each other. However, sometimes I veered off track a little to make sure that there was a relatively even amount of quilting in each area. I also wanted the quilt to drape so that was another reason not to quilt too densely. That went pretty well and I didn’t see any puckers on the back. I quilted all of the orange blocks in a few hours on one afternoon.

 

Plain block quilting
Plain block quilting

After the orange blocks, came the hard part.  Shockingly, I had an idea for the plain block quilting as well. I found a vaguely Celtic design that would work for my idea. I wanted it to be round, but all of the round designs I found were too complicated. I used Paint to enlarge the design.

I also didn’t want the design to scream out at viewers, so I used a companion color to the blue fabric (FYI: Aurifil #2740). I also used a walking foot on all of the quilting. I don’t usually do that, but it worked pretty well in keeping the puckers down.

I used Saral paper and a Sewline pencil to transfer the design. I really use the Saral paper. I don’t think there is much of the yellow left. I used the Sewline to fill in when the Saral rubbed off and I wasn’t finished quilting.

I quilted a couple of the plain blocks and figured out how to stop and start only once, assuming all went well. Not all of the blocks are perfect but, as Frances says, the Muggles won’t know. I think the overall impact is pretty striking.

One thing I wish I had done was use orange in the bobbin on the plain blocks. As it stands the blue quilting really stands out on the back.

 

Current Projects – August 2014

Finished 2014 Quilt Projects

  1. Disappearing Pinwheel: Finished 5/30/2014
  2. Fabric of the Year 2012: Finished 4/24/2014
  3. Flower Sugar Hexagon: Finished 7/1/2014
  4. Fresh Fruit: Finished May 3/3/2014
  5. Infinity Quilt: Finished 3/3/2014
  6. Scrapitude Carnivale: Finished 6/3/2014
  7. See: Finished 8/11/2014
  8. Spiderweb: Finished 2/22/2014 WHEW!
  9. Star Sampler: Finished 7/3/2014

Finished 2014 non-Quilt Projects

Still WIPs

  1. Aqua-Red SamplerFrances and I are back at it regularly and I give Frances full credit as I have been letting her “drive the bus.” I did work on the hexagon tutorial as promised. It is ready to post, but I could have taken a few more photos and might still do that. If you look at it and think there are a paltry number of photos, check back.
  2. The Tarts Come to Tea: I still haven’t worked on this since April 2011, though, periodically, I think about working on it.
  3. Pointillist Palette #4: Fourth is a series of 6 quilts; needs tiny square patches sewn together. I still haven’t worked on this, though, I did find a bunch of squares already made. That makes me hopeful.
  4. Self Portrait: started in 2006 at a class at Quilting Adventures in Richmond, Virginia. My career counselor breathed new life into this project for me. She asked a simple question and the end result was inspiration for this piece. I am working on printing images on fabric and looking at the shoulder fabric. I am still trying to decide about a mouth and I need to find some monsters. 😉
  5. Under the Sea: class project; like the design, but not the colors much. Possibility for abandonment. I have to face reality.

Ready for Quilting

Wow! Everything on this list is new.

  1. New:* Wonky 9 Patch: Basted; started quilting on 8/21. All orange blocks done and working on plain blue blocks, needs binding. (Not on original list)
  2. New:* Super Secret Project #4: at the quilter
  3. Table runner: Basted; needs quilting and binding. I am planning on free motion quilting this myself for practice, which may be a challenge when my main machine is not working. (Not on original list)

In the Finishing Process

Nothing at this time, which is kind of odd.

In Process
I decided that I had better put in an ‘In Process’ category. The difference, at least in my mind, between ‘In Process’ and ‘UFO’ is that I am actively working on a project that is “In Process.”

Hunting and Gathering

  • Blue Gradation Quilt: cutting 2.5″x4.5″ blue rectangles
  • Blue Lemonade: cutting blue, green, purple 2″ squares
  • FOTY 2014: cutting out 3″x5″ rectangles.
  • Pink Gradation Quilt: cutting 2.5″x4.5″ pink rectangles
  • Spin Wheel: really not started, but supplies gathered. I probably have enough fabrics and just need to decide to start.
  • Stepping Stones #2 using Bonnie & Camille fabrics Bliss, Ruby, Vintage Modern: made two test blocks, but still in the thinking stage while I decide on the background colors. I want the contrast to be good.
  • Stepping Stones #3 using the Macaron pre-cuts from Hoffman. I just remembered this project. It isn’t started, but I have all the pre-cuts and should think about actually using them.
  • Windmill quilt: Still hunting and gathering. I will use a grey for the background, because if I use more of the cut fabric patches, the pattern will be lost. The pieces are too oddly shaped and I don’t want to lose the pattern in a mass of scraps

Abandoned

Nothing so far for 2014

You can find the last update for the Current Projects list provides a good comparison to this month.

I thought you might want to take a look at the first list I made, the one with the 26 Projects. I started the list in October 2011. I have made REALLY GOOD progress. Up until last month, I was still planning to stop this post when I had no more projects from the original list to write about, but now, that the end is in sight, I am not so sure. It is so useful to keep track of all of my projects. Since I still have some pretty old projects on the list, I don’t have to decide right now.

*New – Project started after I started working on the 26 Projects list

Making Progress Again on the Russian Rubix

August 2014 Blocks
August 2014 Blocks

These blocks had been sewing into quarters and placed on my design wall, where they stayed like that for weeks. I think I had some sort of grand illusions of adding in different colors or something. Last weekend, I just sewed them together, photographed them and put them in the pile with the other blocks.

There will be other opportunities for messing with color on this project and I was sick of looking at these blocks. I also wanted to make progress on shuffling around the stuff on my design wall.

Weekend RR Blocks
Weekend RR Blocks

I sewed a lot of triangles to octagons, but many of them are not finished. For the ones that were finished, I started to put them together into quarter blocks and hang them on the design wall. I thought I might be able to sew a few more blocks, but the quarters were just about all I could manage.

As you could see from my Design Wall post last week, I worked a lot with cool colors, which meant that the quarters had a lot of cool colors. I tried to keep the cool colors in each block to a minimum, but still have some arranging to do.

I am still wondering about the ratios of colors in blocks. I have a lot more warm colors to work with. Intuitively that seems to mean that I should put more warm fabrics in each block. Practically, I don’t know.

 

 

 

Black/Grey Donation Top – Serious Progress

Black/Grey Donation top
Black/Grey Donation top

I made serious progress on the blocks for this quilt last weekend. As I mentioned, I took photos Friday (a week ago). That really prepared me for knowing what I needed to do to make some progress.

Finding the blocks, which had gotten stuff under a pile of fabric, was a really good start.

I laid out all of the blocks and realized that though it is getting there, I still need more blocks. The layout is 6×5 right now, but I might need to make it skinner and longer. Mrs. K’s quilt is on my mind, though, and putting the blocks on point is skittering around on the edges of my brain.

6 more Black/Grey Donation blocks
6 more Black/Grey Donation blocks

As soon as I had an idea of where I was, I gathered up all the parts of blocks that were on my sewing table and sewed them together. That added another 6 blocks to the group of blocks above.

My blocks have a lot of fabric repeats, but I think when all the blocks are put together (like above), the duplicates don’t matter so much.

I also think that Jackie and Cheryl’s blocks blend in nicely.

I didn’t sew any new blocks as I tried to work on the Russian Rubix using parts for a new journal cover as the leaders and enders.

This project is fun again!

FOTY 2014 Update – August

FOTY 2014 - mid-August
FOTY 2014 – mid-August

I has been nearly a month and a half since I posted new rectangles I have cut for the FOTY 2014 piece. Before the past weekend, I felt like I haven’t been in my sewing room much in the past month. I know I have been in there, at least a little bit, since there have been no shortage of posts to prove it.

I didn’t press and cut very much in that time, though, so the wall where I keep new rectangles has looked the same all this time. Then Friday I started pressing fabric and cutting some new rectangles with a vengeance.

I went to put them away and found my container full, so I have to figure out what to do about that. The work room overfloweth, that is for sure.

Creative Prompt #272: Bend

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all of those acts will be written the history of this generation. -Robert Kennedy

Post the direct URL (link) where your drawing, doodle, artwork is posted (e.g. your blog, Flickr) in the comments area of this post. I would really like to keep all the artwork together and provide a way for others to see your work and/or your blog.

We are also talking about this on Twitter. Use the hashtag #CPP

The Creative Prompt Project, also, has a Flickr group, which you can join to  post your responses. I created this spot so those of you without blogs and websites would have a place to post your responses.

Bend, Oregon

bend in the road

Bendables

going around the bend

Bayou Bend Gardens, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

bend of the river

Turkey Bend Recreation area

bend don’t break

Carrick Bend

X-Men: Days Of Futures Past: The Bent Bullet

South Bend, Indiana

Bend it Like Beckham – 2002 movie

Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge

“Nature has a funny way of breaking what will not bend”

Engineering and construction

  • Bending, the deformation of an object due to an applied load
  • Bend, a curvature in a pipe, tube, or pipeline (see bend radius)
  • Bend knot, a general term for a knot used to tie two ropes together

Places

Music

Transportation

Other uses

  • Bend Elks, baseball team located in Bend, Oregon
  • Bend (heraldry), a colored band that runs from the upper left (as seen by the viewer) corner of the shield to the lower right
  • Decompression sickness, commonly “the bends”
  • Bend, Not Break, a 2012 memoir by Ping Fu and MeiMei Fox
  • bend, an inspired, fitness apparel brand featuring an eco-friendly, bamboo fabric (www.bendactive.com).

Definition (bending): “In Applied mechanics, bending (also known as flexure) characterizes the behavior of a slender structural element subjected to an external load applied perpendicularly to a longitudinal axis of the element.

The structural element is assumed to be such that at least one of its dimensions is a small fraction, typically 1/10 or less, of the other two.[1] When the length is considerably longer than the width and the thickness, the element is called a beam. For example, a closet rod sagging under the weight of clothes on clothes hangers is an example of a beam experiencing bending. On the other hand, a shell is a structure of any geometric form where the length and the width are of the same order of magnitude but the thickness of the structure (known as the ‘wall’) is considerably smaller. A large diameter, but thin-walled, short tube supported at its ends and loaded laterally is an example of a shell experiencing bending.

In the absence of a qualifier, the term bending is ambiguous because bending can occur locally in all objects. Therefore, to make the usage of the term more precise, engineers refer to a specific object such as; the bending of rods,[2] the bending of beams,[1] the bending of plates,[3] the bending of shells[2] and so on.” (Wikipedia)

 

The Kindness of Not-So-Strangers

Cheryl's blocks
Cheryl’s blocks

As I mentioned last time, I was really feeling quite stalled on my Black/Grey donation quilt project. Jackie and Cheryl, who I mentioned briefly (in a subsequent post), sent me a total of 5 blocks, which when I laid it all out, ended up creating a whole row of the quilt top. I like the clock fabric that Cheryl used. Even though it, and a few of the other fabrics are not specifically  grey, it reads grey, and the other fabrics add interest and blend well, with all the other fabrics.

The fabric choices add to the interest of the quilt, I think.

Jackie's Blocks
Jackie’s Blocks

Jackie also made some interesting choices. I think when I mix these up with mine, they will add movement and make some of my duplicate fabrics not as prominent.

Thanks, Ladies!

Finished: See

Finally!

Finished: See
Finished: See

After YEARS, this piece is finished. I am pretty pleased with it. I think it looks good and I did a good job on the quilting (click on the photo to see the quilting close up).

Please do look at the quilting, because it was a pain to do and I am pretty proud of it.

As you may already know, I started this piece in a class with David Walker, held in Capitola, in 2003. I can’t remember who sponsored the class. I want to say a shop, but I am not sure that is right.

The piece includes Machine quilting, fusible Applique’ with satin stitching, and reverse machine applique’. This is one of the few art quilts where I have not added beading or hand embroidery with Perl cotton. I just didn’t think the piece need it even though I had planned on doing both.

Finished: See - back
Finished: See – back

I was pretty proud of how you could see the quilting so well on the back, but after facing and labeling, there isn’t much to see.

I actually sewed the label on by hand, which I don’t like to do, but really had no other choice. The piece didn’tlend itself to including the label into the back.

This piece is based on a Chinese character, the character for our word “See”. I made it as a reminder to really look at things, not just glance at them, snap a picture and move on. It is an ongoing process for me to really look and see things.

This has more significance than just a finish, because it means I can cross it off my UFO list. When I do that, it will mean that I am one step closer to having only current projects, albeit a lot of them, but current projects only.

Previous Posts

Field Day Zipper

Field Study Fabrics
Field Study Fabrics

For some reason I became enamored with the Field Day print fabrics by Alison Glass. These are not my colors, they are somewhat muddy and have a flair, or feel,  of the turn of the 20th Century. This ‘feel’ makes it so odd that I actually want to work with them. There is something about them that appeals to me.

My favorite print is the dark blue  with the turquoise kelp-like print on top.

Shortly after receiving the fabrics, I came across a pattern I will use with these fabrics. It came from the Missouri Star Quilt Company and I found it in their Block! magazine (watch for a review soon). It isn’t a hard pattern, but there is something about it and the fabric that went together in my mind.

I washed the Field Day fabric last Friday, then started cutting 2.5″ strips on Saturday. I have about 10 strips cut. I need to cut them into 2.5″x5″ rectangles, but have only done that for one strip so far, because I still haven’t decided what to use as a background. Also, I still have about 10 FQs to cut strips from.

I thought about looking at the coordinating solids that various online shops suggest. I did that, but did not want to chose gold, chartreuse or deep garnety red-purple for the background. I want something lighter, brighter so the quilt doesn’t seem depressing.

I have the following background options:

IKEA large text print
IKEA large text print

I love this print, but think that the large letters will get lost.

Painter's Canvas in Vanilla
Painter’s Canvas in Vanilla

This is my favorite, because it brightens up the muddiness of some of the fabrics.

I also have a lot of grey.

Grey print from search
Grey print from search

I would probably have to use a few different greys as I only have a yard of this one and I think I will need more. I don’t mind using different greys as it will add interest.

The funny thing is that after I started cutting the Field Day, I came across a friend who I think needs a quilt and this one might be perfect.

Design Wall Monday

Design Wall -Friday
Design Wall -Friday

I decided to join in the Design Wall Monday posts that people write and discuss. Why not?

My design wall looks remarkably similar to the last time I posted about my design wall. I did note that I have made progress. Though we had some things to do this weekend,  I decided to make progress, thus the two photos – before and after. The Before photo was taken Saturday morning about 8:45 and I snapped (HA!) the After photo yesterday in the late afternoon.

I can’t discuss every little detail of everything on my design wall, but there are a few things. First, deciding to make progress meant that I had to actually clean up my sewing room. Horizontal surfaces were stacked with stuff, so I had to clean those off on Friday. That led to me taking photos of projects in process. I finally had a chance to lay things out.

Each of the areas are numbered, so you will see the numbers in parentheses below.

Second, (#3) those octagons are taking up a lot of space, so I decided I would start with the top row and sew all of the octagons in each of those colors until I had sewn the triangles on to each color. Once the stack on my sewing table had been sewn, I would take the octagon off the design wall and sew that. As I took them off, I would have more space on the wall.

Third, (#1) the FOTY 2014 patches had been up there a long time. I have a big pile of fabric to press, so I pressed some of that on Friday in order to fill in the group of patches,

Next, (#4) those Russian Rubix blocks had been on the all for a long time. There were pieces and parts of others on my sewing table, so those were sewn pretty early.

Fifth, (#5) I had pieces and parts of the black/grey donation blocks so I sewed those together as well.

Sixth, (#6) That Stars in Stripes 8 pointed star got very close to being made. I have to unearth the templates or rotary cutting directions for the background, so close, but no cigar.

Seventh, (#2) I am still making those turquoise and red four patches. I have a lot more patches than four patches at the moment and need to get busy. Too many other leaders and enders right at the moments.

Eighth, (#7) I made the 9 patch, but the Young Man sewed the button to the middle in Cub Scouts. I am still trying to think of a project in which to include it.

Last, (#8) those are some of my favorite ATCs. I keep them near my sewing machine so I can be reminded to be creative.

Design Wall - Sunday
Design Wall – Sunday

After sewing, truly, like a maniac, on and off all weekend I did make some progress.

The four patches didn’t change except that I thought about sewing them.

I took the late July/ early August batch of FOTY patches off the wall and started pressing and cutting a new batch. The ones you see on the wall happen to be Field Day.

I finished a few of the Russian Rubix colors from the top row. The last purple/violet (on the wall on the right) is a bear to get through. I cut extra octagons, so I am sewing for a long time to get through them. Clearly I was afraid someone would steal that fabric in that colorway and I wanted to have plenty. In between I have been sewing other colors as well, so there is some variety in the new blocks.

Since I had so many new quarter blocks for the Russian Rubix, I started laying out new blocks.

That 8 pointed star is still there, as you can see. It is, really, getting closer to the top of the list.

What do you think about my progress?

What’s on your design wall?

I linked up here: Judy Laquidera’s Patchwork Times

Star Donation Quilt

Star Donation Quilt
Star Donation Quilt

We got an email just before school let out saying that one of the Band moms had breast cancer and she was being treated quite aggressively.

We got an update at Band Camp and I decided to ask for one of the quilts made by the BAMQG Charity Project. Michelle and I met on Friday and she gave me this quilt for the Band Mom.

I can’t decide if it is a star or some kind of ring quilt. I forget the name of the design. It is very scrappy and cheerful and I think will make the Band Mom feel better.

Star Donation Quilt Back
Star Donation Quilt Back

I sewed a small label on to the back for historic purposes.

I just have to wrap the quilt and will give it to the band director soon.

Wrap it Up
Wrap it Up