2020 Planning Party: First Quarter Update

If I went through the trouble of doing some planning for 2020, maybe I should go through the effort of some updates too! (For the original list, see this post.)

After the first quarter of the year, here are status updates for the projects I listed:

1. Quilting my Nocturne Star: no progress. The top, back, binding, and thread are all still hanging out in the same box. I haven't used the batting intended for this quilt, so I still have all of the necessary pieces.

2. A wall hanging from an orphan block. At the retreat in February, I sorted through my blues and yellows to see what I had from the first wall hanging and what else may work

and then cut up a lot of little squares.

Not long after getting home, I sewed the first border of rectangles together and attached them to the center block.

I couldn't find enough of the fabric I wanted to use for the next border. It was a light orange with blue flowers that was perfect in the first block. I did some more looking but never did find any. (Except for the squares of this fabric in my plaidish quilt. I was giving them the side eye for sure.)

When I finally decided I couldn't wait any longer for some to magically appear and wanted to move forward, I worked with what I had. I had enough for 10" of the 12" border. So I grabbed another fabric that isn't the same but I kept mixing them up in my mind, so I figured they were close enough to the same. I put the new fabric in just the corners, leaving the center for the orange fabric.

Not terrible.

Then I decided to press on and sew on the next border, which was also a set of squares. It would have been smarter to strip piece this--make one set 6" wide and then cut them into 1.5" strips--but I didn't think of this on time. So I sewed little 1.5" square together, one by one.

And then they were too long. By a good amount:

I think I can make each seam a smidge bigger and make it fit, but for now the whole thing is in time-out.

3. Sashing Lucy Boston blocks
This got seriously derailed by the Third Block contest in February, but I was able to finished 4 so far this year

and am working on the fifth:

This last one will be block #28 to be sashed, which means...I'm half way! Wow, imagine that!

4. Joy to the World quilt bottom (back)
Good news here, I got the back done!

This got a big push by the #sewthescrapoutofMarch sew along on Instagram (and being home all day every day) and I definitely wanted it off of the design wall.

Here's a close up of the border print:

Carefully chosen by the fact that it was the only red fabric I had enough of to do the borders.

5. Antique red fabric quilt
I bought more fabric for this quilt, bringing in some teals that I think will really help, but nothing else done. If I do the Boston Common pattern I'm looking at I really will need that design board the Joy to the World quilt just vacated.

6. Cashmere "memory" blanket
I got a good start on this one at the retreat in February. The blocks were cut and sewn into rows. Soon after getting back, I sewed the rows together.

I started the hand embroidery to sew down the seam allowances on March 3 and finished in about two weeks. (Another reason my Lucy Boston blocks were slowed down.)

I finished the label just in time to say I did it on this post. I hope to deliver it on Thursday.

Although intended for a couch, here it is
laying on my queen sized bed.

7. Calligraphy
I completed the online "drills" course I started. That was a great start. I did not sign up for any of the following (not free) courses that actually teach letters. I just looked at examples and started. I made these 4x6" cards to hang on the prayer board at church.

I am interested in hand lettering, which is a great thing to combine with calligraphy. Here's the design I put on the postcard I swapped at the retreat.

I'm learning that calligraphy and hand lettering are more about the layout than how well you can make letters. (Although of course you need both.) I took a class on hand lettering at Make South Bend a couple years ago, and both of these experiences have taught me that it's more like drafting than writing.

Here's a fun habit I picked up from the calligraphy drills instructor:

She loves to decorate her envelopes, and apparently I do too. It takes a long time though, so please don't be offended if any mail you get doesn't look like this! :)

I am not keeping up with regular drills so I'll have to "get in shape" before I do any serious calligraphy projects. I also haven't experimented with the "big" brush pen. I could do the same drills with the big tip pen and see how that goes.

8. Skate more
I managed to skate twice in January at the new local skate park:

And a picture to prove I was there:

It was nice. I think after that the weather was iffy and I had things that filled the time gap where I would have went skating. Apparently it is a good thing I didn't get the season pass.

9. Take a trip with Troy: no progress
And now that we are self-isolating (self-isewlating in my case), getting to the grocery store is considered a major trip.

10. Pray more.
I'm definitely doing this, and with all the time at home that I could want, I have lots of opportunities for it. I have kept up a daily practice of Lectio Divina each morning, and small groups that I was getting together to pray with are trying it on Zoom. It's not great, but it's not horrible either.

Well, all in all, not bad I'd say. This might have been a better goal list for the first quarter of 2020, than for the whole year! But then again, I do have that whole quilt to quilt (#1).

All the Quilts; All the Time

It's perfectly normal for me to have many quilts on the go, especially since I tend to work on a quilt on and (mostly) off over at least a few years, bringing it out and packing it away for each new session. But this week I've taken it to a whole new level.

I'm sure this is the first time I've had four different quilts out and going, at the same time! Phew.

It started with an idea I had for the back of my Merrily Christmas quilt. I think I've mentioned that I wanted to make a second top to put on the back instead of a plain back. I'm not going to have many Christmas quilts about so I may as well get double duty out of this one. :)

I came across this book at the thrift store when I was visiting my mom:

and I was intrigued. Soon after I had the idea to sew up the words of the carol Joy to the World. Not so long after that, I was well on my way!

I really enjoy the improvisation of the process. The process uses strips of fabric in various widths and you build the letters up step by step, no measuring or figuring. This is my work station:

Sewing on the left, cutting/trimming in the middle, and ironing on the right, plus all the strips laid out on the parts of the ironing board I don't need to press on. Everything close and convenient. I did start to make myself stand up for pressing just so I would move around more. (I just read a book on ergonomics so it's still running through my mind.)

Making the letters is a prime opportunity to do some leader/ender sewing. The idea with leader/enders is that when you get to the end of a seam on the main project where you can't follow with another piece, you sew a seam of the secondary project. It works better to start sewing a seam when there's fabric under the needle and it saves on thread too, if you're counting that.

Well, as soon as I saw the Plaidish quilt pattern on Instagram, I knew I would be making it. You can click the link to see some samples--it's made from scraps and uses light, medium, and dark values to make a sort of plaid pattern.

The pattern was offered for free, so I downloaded it right away. Following the cutting instructions, I went through all of my scrap stash and started cutting pieces.

There are three different blocks and each requires three or four pieces so I kept them all organized in jars and whatever containers I could find while I was cutting (including an empty Kleenex box!) I got all of the pieces except a few of the dark squares from my smaller scraps! That's a win right there.

I put everything in a cookie sheet and set it by my machine so I could sew a seam whenever there was a gap in the main project.

 I had laid out some of the pieces to see if there was any way to organize the colours

but determined that with this many colours, it was just going to have to be random. But I couldn't do it all random. After sewing pairs together (like a rectangle or square to a narrow strip), I did some planning of what would be sewn to what. I wanted to maximize the contrast and not have the same fabric together in the same block.

I'm pretty far on this project by now. All of the A blocks and B blocks are sewn, and I'm working on the C blocks. Once the blocks are all sewn, I'll lay them all out to determine their placement. I'm sure I won't be able to put them together randomly.

Truth be told, I am really itching to get this one done; I'm excited by it. So sometimes I force myself to make some more letters just so I can piece more of these blocks! The letters take a lot more brain power and get tiring after a while, but having this project gets me fired up to go again the next time.

In the middle of July, I was getting a lot of quilting done on my bright stars on black quilt, including the borders, which obviously weren't quilted the way they were marked!

But then we had company coming and I thought that we might want to use the living room (where I was working) so I rolled it up and put it on a chair:

Which is were it has been sitting. I have the majority of the quilting done, but I was slowing down because I knew I couldn't get any further before I made the brightly coloured flange I was going to put along the binding.

Well. While I was going through the scraps for the Plaidish quilt, I came across a nice pile of leftover brights. So I started cutting them up too.

They are mostly left over from the bright diamonds quilt I made, and the pieces that were already cut into strips were the width I was going to use. Boom. That saved me a lot of cutting. After getting it cut, I measured about 500 inches of strips, so that will be enough to go around my 95 inch square quilt. Next step is to decide what is going where and to piece the lengths together.

And. Then. I could no longer wait to work on my Lucy Boston quilt. I had bought the solids I wanted for the sashing in July with my sister. (She patiently helped me pick out the perfect shades of grey among the many options. And then once we had a group picked, I saw three on the shelf that blended much better. They had more of a brown tone than the others, which is what I was trying to avoid, but the blend was so good, I went with it. So a lot of fussy work to narrow it down and then a 3 second decision to go with this other set. I told you she was patient with me.)

Another reason this project was on hold was that I was debating using another system than cutting shapes with a template and gluing the fabric to paper shapes. Linda Franz has a system she calls Inklingo where you print lines on the fabric for cutting and for sewing. This way you can sew the pieces together without the steps of gluing it to paper and removing the paper later. It was very tempting because it's a very slick system. But the very fact that I hadn't gotten to it was telling me that it was not the method for me. I enjoy the paper method.

So, I cut some strips and then cut some honeycombs:

I'm not going to cut them all out because I need over 1,300. I'll make them as I go. I got enough to start putting them on the first block,

 and just finished it last night.

One down, 55 to go.

I missed having a project to sew while sitting on the couch too brain-tired to sew more letters. And I missed working on these blocks. Besides, football starts tonight so I need some hand work to do! This project should be more than enough to keep me busy through the football season.

A Constellation

I may put a project aside and not work on it for a while, but it's rare that I stop thinking about it. If I know what the next steps are, I think through how I'm going to accomplish it. If I'm undecided, then I think about different options. Of course, sometimes during this mulling stage, what I think I'm going to do is replaced by another idea that occurs to me.

I got the bright stars on black quilt back on track in preparation for the family craft retreat in February. I completed the centre section of the top, finished up the border stars and laid it out to figure out where they should go.

But I spent most of the retreat working on my blue and white quilt. So this quilt came home in the same state it left.

Sometime between then and last Thursday, I settled on how I was going to arrange the little stars in the outer border.

The squares of the centre were cut at 5" and finished at 4.5". The stars in the border finish at 5", so I knew they weren't going to line up. I thought all I had to do was calculate the number that would evenly space the stars across the quilt.

Then I thought about spacing them unevenly, closer together on one side gradually moving to further apart on the other. I played with some numbers and found a series that not only fit within my idea, but worked out on even 1/2 or 1/4" measurements.

And boom! put it together:

It was super windy this day. (The beginning of the storm that brought snow the following night.) I clipped small books to the lower corners to keep it down and the wind happy waved them around like nothing.

I moved inside and was able to get a better overall shot:

The effect of the different spacing between the border stars wasn't as noticeable as I hoped, but it's what I could do within my constraints. (For one thing, I didn't want a huge space on the one side - that meant I couldn't make the space very small on the other.) And it's not so bad to have subtle effects in a quilt. :)

The other thing this uneven spacing did was spread out the border stars better. I didn't have quite the variety I needed, but I tried to match them to the colours in the middle of the quilt. I didn't really have enough purple (top left) or blue (bottom right). Putting the wider spacing there kept the blocks of similar colour lined up better. See why I jumped on this idea when it occurred to me? It solved a problem that was nagging at me and I thought I would just have to live with.

Next step for this quilt is layering and quilting. I thought about using a black batting (for my first time) to avoid any noticeable "bearding". (That's where batting is pushed through the fabric and visible on the outside, usually by the stitching.) But I've decided my bigger priority is to keep the bright fabrics bright, and a white batting will have that effect.

I have oodles and oodles of this black fabric, but it's all in smaller pieces (most about 12"x15"). I think I'm going to piece the backing out of it just to use it up and because I don't have a better idea. The binding will be black as well, and it's going to be extra wide to act as a final border around the outside of the quilt.

Hmm...or maybe I should add a black border and then do a bright scrappy piping inside a black binding. I'll have to mull that over for a while...

A Day of Quilting

...but it's not what you think.

My sister and her family came for a visit over the Canada Day/July 4 holidays. She and I had planned on a half-day of working on a quilted wall hanging kit that we had each bought a year or two ago. Monday morning we got the machines set up and started to work on it.

When asked, her daughter and son said they would like to work on a project too. Her daughter wanted to work by machine, so I got her set up on my extra one. I had her choose some of my 2.5" strips and got her going on strip piecing.

I even had her working with the rotary cutter and she did well.

Anything I told her, she put into practice on the next step. It was amusing to overhear her talk herself through each step. I could tell she's been around quilting because she was familiar with the lingo and was able to evaluate each block on whether her points were matching well enough or if she should redo it.

Pretty soon she had some very good 4-patches:

While trying out a layout for a top, she decided she didn't have enough and set herself up for making some more.

Her brother wanted to sew by hand, so he worked on a 9-patch (on and off) all day.

You may have seen this one on Instagram.

He also chose fabrics from my 2.5" strips. But we subcut into 2.5" squares first, then he laid out his blocks. I had him trace a 1/4" seam on the squares to help him with his seam allowance. Every time he finishes a seam, I showed him which one to sew next.

He was very proud when his block was done:

He didn’t work on it steady so I wondered if his interest had waned, but no--as soon as the one was done, he asked if he could start the next. (Well, of course!)

And in case you aren’t impressed enough, I even had them furling their seams:

Yes, they did all their own pressing too.

Meanwhile, his sister had put together her top:

But I found out she wasn't done...she wanted to add borders. Well, ok! She looked through my fabric and found one that would work. (And that I would let her use. Let's be honest--I wasn't giving over my latest favourite batiks!)

I showed her how to measure the top in three places and to use the average for cutting the length of the border and that you add it to two ends at a time. In no time, she had it finished:

Something to be proud of!

And that is how I didn't get much sewing done but had a very enjoyable day of quilting!