Sage Spots

I love watching the transformation of a quilt.  Once I made all the strips for this quilt (and swapped out the really light green for something a little darker) I played around with the layout.  I tried to spread out the darkest strips across the quilt and make sure I didn't clump specific fabrics next to each other.  I had a few fabrics that were nearly identical in shade and color.  I was amused that I ended up with one diamond with the bird fabric on nearly every corner.  Oh, well.

So that looked cool.  Then I stitched the blocks together and it looks even better.  Nice clean squares.  I can see a little better how it will really look in the end.

Surrounded by Green

We're finally moving out of the muddy grey spring season and into many shades of green.  Ahhh....  Spring arrives a week or two later up here on the hill than it does in the center of town.  Our trees are seriously thinking about leafing out in the near future while a mile or two away trees have real leaves.  Alas, the weeds are growing as fast as the grass and my perennials.  I still love the lushness of it all.

Scrap Stars

This is the first finish of three scrap quilts I'm working on.  Not one of my favorite pieces but it uses up a series of diamond rejects (too small or badly pieced) as well as a bunch of grey triangles and some crumbs.  Good practice for free motion quilting as well. 

It's a small piece - a little over two feet wide.  I thought I'd give it away but it ended up in our master bathroom.  It turns out that replacing the shower curtain with a glass door makes for a very echoey room.  Normally I would not hang a quilt in the bathroom.  In this case I have a home for the quilt and it makes the room seem less cavernous.  Win-win.

Sharing with:
Quilt Schmilt - To Do Tuesday
A Quiltery - Put Your Foot Down Thursday

Inkblots and Green

All sorts of projects in the works.  Two quilts pinned and ready to quilt.  I just need to figure out what pattern I want to do.  

Spent way too much time surfing Pinterest for scrappy, crumb and string ideas.  Ooh, what do I want to do next??

I also got around to cutting the fabric I originally bought for the kaleidoscope blocks.  Look how they turned out!  (Design floor in use because I used all the batting that was on my design wall.  Need to replace that soon!)

Quilted Cushion Fabric

My sister wanted some seat cushions for her dining room chairs.  She asked my mother to stitch them up... at which point they came to me to see what fabric I could offer.  

I dug through my stash, brought out some orphaned blocks before pulling out several sets of crumb blocks.

Piecing and Pinning

The last Project Quilting challenge comes out later today - so I was able to focus on clean-up projects this week.  I have almost cleared out my backlog of Winter Stars scrap.  Whew!  I pieced together a backing for the Lone Star quilt.  Then I ripped out a few of the center star's seams and restitched to get rid of the bulge I had complained about in an earlier post.   The center points are a total mess but absolutely no one is going to notice those.  The quilt is flat enough to ease out any other ripples when I quilt it.  

I started sandwiching it before I noticed a few jagged edges along the black and red Vs I had intended to address (the other missed points are more forgiving).  The frustrating thing is two of them had already been ripped and restitched.  Thankfully third time was the charm (and kept to my two-rip-and-restitch rule).  This quilt is officially sandwiched and in need of quilting inspiration.  

Points All Over

It was fun using up my grey and black pieces.  Then the lone star quilt took on a life of its own and I had to curtail my designs lest it get too big to hang on the wall!  I'm now trying to figure out how to finish the corners without introducing yet another fabric.  How many diamonds or partial diamonds do I need?  And how to square it?  This is the drawback of designing a scrappy quilt as you stitch it together.   

Design Walls Are Taking Shape

I don't quite have enough batting on my design walls to completely lay out what I'm working on.  It's kind of a jumble.  

Case in point - there's only enough room to put up half of the lone star.  But it's enough to get a feel for what it will look like.  I'll use up all my remaining grey and black triangles (converted to diamonds) and will actually have to cut some additional diamonds.  At this point I'm debating how big to make it and how to finish off the star.  Wall hanging or throw quilt?  We'll see...

Grey With a Splash of Red

 

I'm starting to make a dent on my leftovers of Winter Stars.  Oddly enough, the one project is growing into three.  

I had to scale down my original design for lack of triangle and diamond pieces.  Instead of nine stars I'm down to four.  Currently I'm playing with border designs before I stitch the four blocks together.  

 

Bits of Black and White

 

I've spent the last week or so making stacks of 2, 3 and 4-inch squares as well as stitching together lots of crumbs from a year's worth of sewing projects.  Much of that was from Winter Stars.  I made a nice stack of crumb pieces simply from that quilt's fabric.

Project Quilting 16.6 - Swirling Spheres

The last Project Quilting challenge of the year was called Button it Up.  My first thought was a shirt or a coat.  Boring.  I have a pile of buttons I want to use up, so how to use them?  Creating a postcard or a mug rug seemed awfully lumpy (and not very useful).  Maybe a pillow or a wall hanging would work better with the texture?  After some research on button quilts I found some interesting designs featuring circles.  I was fully inspired by this and ran with it.

Both Rob and my mother thought I was crazy attempting a wall hanging in less than a week, especially since I was still cutting and ironing circles on Friday morning.  I had a final layout by Friday evening ready to fuse in place.  Saturday morning I fused, sandwiched and quilted.  I had hoped to quilt it all with one color of thread (for speed reasons), but quickly hated how it looked.  So I took the time to rip what I quilted and switch matching thread.  It was quilted and bound with corner pockets for a hanging rod by early afternoon.  It had to be!  I ran off to dance the rest of the afternoon and evening.  I brought the quilt with me to the dance and spent the dance break burying threads.  Whew!

Crumbly Fabric

My crumb containers were overflowing from scraps generated from several quilts.  I spent the last week sewing them together.  My last set of crumbs ended up in my Hexie Crumble quilt.  This time around I lumped similar colors together: black, gold, purple, orange, red, brown, green, blue and cream.  Some fabric doesn't fit into a single category the scrap already had different colors sewn together, so I have some multi-colored patches, too.  Right now the green and multi-colored ones are biggest.

Big Floppy Sun Hat

I saw a sun hat made of strips of fabric.  I loved it!  The concept seemed so simple, like a coil rope bowl.  I wish I had taken a photo of it (I may have at the time, but if I did, I accidentally deleted it).  It seemed so obvious that I thought I could find some tutorials or examples online.  Nothing.  The closest one was a tutorial that twisted fabric, but nothing that showed a flat, shiplapped design.  I did some random research, tried to remember as much as I could about the hat, and struck out on my own (no surprise to my regular readers).

Observations and Tweaks

My trip to Kripalu gave me a chance to play with a couple of my recent projects:  a yoga mat and a water bottle carrier.

Overall I've been really pleased with the yoga mat's performance.  I have been using it sporadically at home the last several months and brought it to my yoga weekend for a good workout.  

I had already made modifications to the grippy sections (by adding on those triangle sections above the chevron) after a week or two.  The center tends to stretch because the block bias runs top to bottom.  It would have been better with a  different pattern and likely a solid, unpieced back.  It creeps about on the rug a bit.  That's fine at home, but I was afraid it would really slide on the hardwood/linoleum floors at Kripalu.  

While I was there I placed my mat over one of their yoga mats, which stayed put really well.  On the one hand, that kind of defeats the purpose of making my own mat.  However, it made me happy to take my classes on such a colorful mat (and I dislike the way their mats smell). 

I Like Thursday: Marching On

Wow - I've blown through March.  I suspect I'll be spending part of April just catching up!  Lots of likes to share with LeeAnna's I Like Thursday. 

Ducks!  There's a farm near the bottom of our street, and a sanctuary appropriately named Duck World.  So often I need to stop and wait for assorted fowl to cross the road, but this time I managed to get evidence.  The chickens usually hustle across but the ducks take their sweet time and there are always stragglers.  The turkey and the geese are the worst, though.  They'll stay put and stare you down, daring you to get by them.  Always a chuckle!

In Progress and Reworked

I finished the weekly clue for the two color mystery quilt.  One of a few finishes this week.  I'll be curious what comes next!

QAL and Projects

I've finished the rick rack baby quilt (photos soon) as well as the latest Project Quilting challenge.  Time for some cleanup projects:   straightening out my sewing room, figuring out why my quarter inch foot doesn't like my Singer 201, even organized my fabric stash by color.  You know - the odds and ends before picking up the next big project.

I also joined a mystery quilt-a-long hosted by Canuck Quilter.  I've eyeballed several mystery QAL over the years, but haven't been willing to take the plunge.  No time.  Too many other projects.  And what if I hate the blocks when I'm done?  But a two-color mystery quilt?  Seems pretty hard to go wrong with that.  

Project Quilting 15.5 - Water Bottle Holder

The latest Project Quilting challenge was called Wearables - the piece should either be something to wear or made from clothing or inspired by clothing.  The rules stated a bag could be worn ... so I figure water bottle holders count, too.

I have been wanting to make a water bottle holder for years - so long that one of the tutorials I had bookmarked popped up with a 404 error when I accessed it (yay for Wayback Machine!).  This was a great opportunity to use up the fabric I made from a stack of ¾-inch strips.  And then there's the satisfaction of crossing this project off my list.

I find the blues and greens so calming.  I really loved the fabric I used for the strap.  Unfortunately it was just a little too short - but I found another batik almost the same shade of blue.  The difference is hardly noticeable!

I added a lining, which made for a smooth top edge.  The bottom inside, though, has raw edges.  I wanted to make sure the lining didn't stick to a wet bottle and pull out.  I figure no one will ever see it. 

Lots of Little Leftovers

Lots of little leftovers from two recent quilting projects.  First are my small citrus sections from the Project Quilting challenge.  I'm thinking of making another small wall hanging with it.  Right now these layouts measure about 14" across and 25" long.  I think 1, 3 and 6 are my favorites.  A couple of those layouts remind me of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

The other leftovers are from the rick-rack quilt.  I was left with a pile of ¾-inch strips from trimming down the fabric rejects to make the squares I used in the backing.  The colors went together so nice on the backing, I decided not to throw the scrap away, but sew it all together.

Finishes for 2023

This was not a big year for quilting.  The majority of my finishes were done in the first several weeks of the year for Project Quilting.

Watership Down post cards, mixer cover, smartphone carrier
Dresden pillow, pink wavy pillow, bowl cozies