Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
I am still making a few of the regular guild donation blocks. I have started work on the next Color Strip Donation top to go with the others. The HST 9 Patch is made from leftovers from the HST Star quilt top. It is larger than the other blocks – 12.5×12.5 rather than 8×8. Peggy said she would do something with it.
I made good progress over the weekend on the Cha Cha Cha table runner. That name is a pain to type so when you see Cha3 you will know what I mean!
It looks a little static. I probably should have used the black for those small 1.5″ strips instead of using more of the colors. I still like it and think it will be a cheerful addition to my table runner collection.
Remember a few months ago when I tried out a Missouri Star block that I had seen on their weekly show?
I like this block, but I did not enjoy making it. I has been hanging on my design wall for months and I wanted to do something with it. For a few weeks I have been thinking of adding another round of star points and making it into a donation top. Over the weekend I did that.
I used my Triangle Technique to make HSTs. While this is a great chart, and covers the most used sizes, it doesn’t go up to making 8″ (and larger) units. I guessed about the starting sizes and was a little bit off.
I had to add a little strip to each HST to make them fit. It is not super noticeable and will be fine for a community quilt. Lesson learned.
Another month of La Pass is finished. This was a lot of pieces, but I powered through and I am really happy I was able to keep up especially in light of my trip to Portland.
It was kind of a hassle to haul this giant piece across states, but it was also good for me to have some sewing to do while I was away. It was a little of a stressful trip and sewing always helps me relax.
We stayed with MaryM to and from Portland. I love her house and would love to spend time working in her sewing room.
On our way home, I picked up some items MaryM made for the door prize bags.
She said the bag is made from a pattern I sent out. I need to find it again. When I do, I will link it.
I am always really excited to see what people are inspired to make for the door prize bags.
I ended up buying the pattern for the Cha Cha Cha table runner. Aside from wanting to support independent designers, I didn’t want to spend time trying to figure out how to make the table runner with the required supplies.
After reading the directions, I decided to make it a different way. Mostly I am not cutting the border up into a 100 pieces. I will put it on in long pieces so as not to break up the motifs of the fabric design.
What that means is that instead of cutting 100 border pieces I cut only the pieces I need to fill in the gaps when I skew the lines of pieces, then I will cut longer pieces for the border. I haven’t cut the borders yet.
I did all of the cutting after work and before dinner. I wanted to be ready to sew today. I will cut the border pieces when I am ready for them. I am also still fiddling with the layout of the fabrics.
The fabrics are Birthday by Sarah Watts of Ruby Star Society. There are some dots I am tempted to buy more of for future projects. I’ll try to use up my other favorite dots first.
Before I went to Portland last week, I finished a bunch of half hexie stars. I think La Pass is good for the other EPP project.
These are pretty cheerful. The purple one in the upper right hand corner is a Tilda print I bought at Calico Creations in Mt Vernon last year. Don’t you love the way the flowers came together in the center?
I was fortunate that Amanda had some free time and we were able to hang out a little. Of course, we went to quilt shops. I didn’t have a whole day to spend as I was working while I traveled.
We definitely made time to visit Pioneer Quilts again. I wrote about it a little while ago. The shop had refreshed fabrics and had moved some things around in the lobby area, but was otherwise the same great shop. I looked for ideas for the wool felt I bought last time. I refrained from buying more wool felt, though I was tempted.
I saw some pincushions I could make and also some table runners, though they used black as a background (patterns from Primitive Gatherings). I don’t want something that dark or folk-arty, which is why I was thinking of buying some wool felt yardage. I didn’t as I got the idea to cut overlapping ovals (or another another shape) from what I have and putting them together to make a table runner for the buffet. I’ll check the wool felt I have at home and see if I can make something large enough with the wool felt I have.
I never noticed the door handles before, but they were beautiful. I took a picture thinking that I might be able to use some or all of the design for something.
I also bought a few things, including a new Yoko Saito bag book. The shapes of her bags are amazing! Look at that one on the cover! The ribbon is another Renaissance Ribbon that I hope to use the ribbon on another bag soon. Pioneer Quilts was the first place I saw that type of ribbon in person.
The pinks on the bottom right might be great for the Friesian Pouch with those great pink zippers, especially the circles. I have some of that fabric in a different colorway. I haven’t seen that colorway before.
Pioneer Quilt Shop
3101 SE Courtney
Portland, OR 97222
503.654.1555
info@pioneerquiltshop.com
We stayed with Mary in Ashland overnight on our way to Portland. This area is a quilt shop mecca, but I want to use fabric not buy much more, so I had to balance my love of quilt shops and quilt shopping with my bursting fabric closet.
Mary directed us to Green’s Sew & Vac, which is a sewing machine and vacuum sales & repair shop with a HUGE selection of bag supplies and 2000 bolts of fabric. They had one of the best selections of bag making supplies I have seen. They also had bags made up – A LOT OF BAGS – and hanging near the patterns, so shoppers could see what the bag looked like and how big it would be. I liked this store even before I talked to Vickie, the owner/operator of the part of the store where the bag making supplies lived.
I didn’t pay much attention to the machines, but I saw Janome, Babylock, and Bernina for sale. I think that one in the front is a M7 Continental. I am still enamored of that machine, but can’t buy it now. There was also a whole room of vacuums, which I didn’t explore.
The shop has so many different aspects. The first thing I saw was a 70% off sale of Accuquilt. You bet I looked at what they had. One thing they that I would have bought in a second was a die for a bowl cozies. I still want to make bowl cozies as gifts for DH’s cousins. Sadly, it was only for the Accuquilt Big not the Accuquilt Go!**, which I have. I might have been tempted to buy an Accuquilt Big, but they didn’t have one. Probably a good thing. I don’t have anywhere to store it at the moment.
In terms of fabric, they had a good selection of quilt fabrics, but also more canvas and heavier weight fabrics like canvas than I have seen at other stores. I didn’t see any of the Echino canvas like I bought in Ashland at Sew Creative last year.
They don’t consider themselves a quilt store, which Vickie made clear to me. They consider themselves to be a bag making store. I think that is a good business model as there aren’t a lot of stores that specialize in bags. They had a lot of quilt-adjacent supplies and the fabrics could, mostly, be used for quilts as well as bags and other projects.
One thing I saw was a lot of embroidery supplies: Kimberbell**, thread, interfacing and things on which to embroider such as tea towels. I didn’t recognize the interfacing brand and I wasn’t in the market so I didn’t investigate.
Some of the bag making brands available were Sallie Tomato, Emmaline and ByAnnie. I haven’t actually seen Emmaline in person before, so that was a mini-thrill. The shop carried a lot of hardware, much of it I had never seen in person. I was thrilled with what I saw and wanted to buy everything.As you know, I like online shopping, but there is something special about seeing bag hardware (and fabric) in person.
They have just started this part of the venture, Vickie said, so are adding supplies slowly.
One of the bonuses at this shop was their YouTube page where Vickie has a live session, called “How Vickie Does It”, every Thursday. She told me that she focuses on bag making in these sessions.
I bought a couple of things. I am not going to embroider on the tea towels. I am just going to use them in my kitchen. They are perfect for my decor.
I bought the small triangular pieces. Sadly they didn’t have the corresponding lobster clips.
Green’s Sewing & Vacuum Center
1017 Knutson Ave., Medford, OR
Tel: (541) 779-3411
https://greensdirect.com/
https://readysetsewclasses.com/
No masks required
**Obviously, you should shop at local quilt shops. However, I use affiliate links and may be paid for your purchase of an item when you click on an item’s link in my post. There is no additional cost to you for clicking or purchasing items I recommend. I appreciate your clicks and purchases as it helps support this blog.
As crazy as it was, I brought La Pass Month 8 with me to Portland. I was able to get a few pieces sewn down once we got to Portland.
I am adding Month 8 pieces to the Month 7 rosette in a ring like I did with Month 1 and 2.
I don’t know if I am sewing the pieces in the most efficient way, but my method is working for me. It is also just evolving. On this piece, I started sewing a whole section together. You can see that on the top towards the right. It didn’t seem to make sense to me to do that way; it seemed awkward somehow.
I tried to think of the pieces in the Hearts and Cones configuration I talked about before. I couldn’t see the pieces that way and nobody in the La Pass/Pink Door FB group made any suggestions. I decided that getting the black diamonds in place would get them out of the way and they would be less annoying to sew on their own. They are to see because of the black table, but they are in between the butterflies.
Later, I wanted to sew while the YM cooked, but I didn’t want to bring my entire kit into the kitchen so I sewed the mineral (acid green fabric) pentagons into sets of two then added them to the Month 7 rosette later. I haven’t added them all yet, as I am trying to alternate the sewing the star points with sewing other pieces. Once I get all of the mineral pentagons then I will just sew chunks of small pentagons and star points to the piece.
I am still enjoying this project. I can’t wait to get back to it later today.
As mentioned, this came as part of the Happy Box from Sew Hungry Hippie. Mine is a little wonky, but is still fun.
It is also really large. For the moment I am keeping it, but I may end up giving it as a gift.
I decided to use the leftover improv strip blocks for one donation quilt. I just slapped them up on the design wall so I could see what I had. I will definitely do some kind of colorwash effect in the final layout.
There area lot of colors missing, so I will make some more blocks in the missing colors. I think I need about 28 total blocks to make a reasonable/useful sized quilt.
I bought the templates to make this pouch and is coming up fast on my list.
Sometimes I buy a pattern and it languishes for awhile, then all of a sudden I have a bug in my ear to make it. This happens all the time with Sara’s patterns since buying a Minikins set means that I get 12-13 patterns at once. That is what is going on here.
This is an interesting pouch because of the way the two sides flap down when you unzip them. As shown in the photo, the front and back of the pouch would be a good place for fussy cutting some great fabric. In my case, I want to make one for myself and, possibly, use those fun pink zippers Julie gave me.There are some black zippers, too, so, maybe a pink and black theme? I thought of pink and turquoise to go with the A Place for Everything Bag, but I am not sure that Philip Jacobs fabric would go with the black zippers. I think I would really like those zippers to pop since they are so awesome.
This makes me think of the Pink Kaffe Quilt. That uses a lot of his fabrics and they go with the pink sashing. Perhaps solid pink for the center and some of the Philip Jacobs fabric for the outsides?
I might make two of these at a time – one for a friend who has been super kind to me lately. I could make few and get gifts ready for later in the year. We’ll have to see.
The pouch is from Sara Lawson’s Minikins Season 3 group of patterns. Sara Lawson owns the Sew Sweetness website and pattern company. She was kind enough to allow me to use her photo while I muse on fabric choices for this pouch.
I know that you know how much I like her patterns. You can see how many of the Minikins patterns I have made. They even have their own page!
I made another scissor cozy the other day to give as a hostess gift. As I said when I made Maria’s and Gerre‘s, I like making these. I don’t know if they are useful, but they are kind of a unique gift and something not everyone makes.
For once I remembered to quilt the piece before cutting it out. It was quite a bit of quilting, but I think it looks nice.
I can’t quite decide how long to make the leash, so this one is pretty long.
I used some fabric I have had for ages, which turned out well.
The long lost and latest addition to my Ends quilt series, Ends n.12: Pop Parade, is finished. I mentioned it the other day in my design wall post. I decided just to make a back and call it done.
Ends n.12 is another in the series of quilts I am making using the cut off edges of quilt backs. This quilt, as mentioned, uses Pop Parade, the never-ending fat quarter pack.
This was mostly done. I had to sew a piece or two on, but mostly I had to make the back.
The back uses the rest of that Italian Restaurant fabric I talked about recently.
This will go to Peggy at the next Sew Day.
See all of the Ends quilt on their own series page.