Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
I joined the three rosettes I talked about the other day. It was hard because I couldn’t grab the two pieces properly.
I think it looks pretty good. I wasn’t as stunned by the completion as I was after the first join.
This entire piece is about the same size as one of the larger rosettes. Obviously, it isn’t the same shape.
I put the blocks I with Friend Julie’s backgrounds on the design wall so I could look at at them. I took them off, cut out the back and put the block on the ironing board to be pressed.
Half the blocks are Friend Julie‘s backgrounds and half are Adrienne’s. The top four rows are Adrienne’s backgrounds and Julie’s circles. The bottom four rows are Julie’s background and my circles.
I decided to look at them together as I moved Julie’s off the design wall. It turned out that I needed to put Adrienne’s blocks on the design wall to select the fabrics for the second round of circles.
I only had cut about 10 squares to make circles for Adrienne’s blocks. I thought I had cut all I needed, but I am glad I didn’t. I ended up looking at each block to decide what it needed.
My first thought was to lighten it up.
It was a good mail day on Saturday, though DH had to get up from his nap to answer the mail lady’s knock.
Last October I pre-ordered some Tiny Beasts and new True Colors fabrics by Tula Pink. They arrived on Saturday.
The stripes and dots are great. I think the Tiny Beasts were kind of an indulgence. I need to figure how to use them right away.
The colors are great, though.
There has been some reporting in the La Pass group that there isn’t enough of one of the fabrics. With this delivery I have plenty.
Short, but sweet this month.
Projects, Classes, Patterns & Tutorials
Want to know how to make a binding for a curved corner? Check out the Sewn Handmade tutorial. Tutorial is a little bit of a stretch as it mostly just talks about cutting the corner. You will still need to make the binding and bias binding is best for curved corners.
Craft Gossip has a post on 8 easy (HA!) ways to cut your fabric straight.
Tools, Books, Fabric, Notions & Supplies
My guild hosted Carolina Oneto Tapia to speak about colors. Amy included links to various value finding tools on the web.
Julie mentioned shopping at the French Seam. Great name, don’t you think? I like the clean, fresh look of their website. I noticed they have the Painter’s Palette solids. That fact is worth keeping track of. In their notions section, they have labels for bags and quilts not personalized, but similar to clothing labels except with funny sayings.
In the past I have talked about using a towel holder to put zipper heads on zipper tape. Zipper jigs are now very popular items for sale. Sara Lawson of Sew Sweetness has one for two sizes of zipper heads. SewHungry Hippie stocks one as well.
Articles and Other Information
Mosaics! Fascinating article from the New York Times about a town built on top of a Crusader era city and the mosaics people there are finding.
Sara Lawson of Sew Sweetness has posted a video on printing PDF patterns. This is useful whether you make Sew Sweetness bags or not (though you should)
Other Artists
Friend Julie put out her May Cornucopia the other day. Go see the crazy clown/merry-go-round photo, if nothing else. She has some great links and not all are sewing or quiltmaking
I spent Saturday getting down to Orange You Glad business. I had started the applique’, but needed to get it done as I wanted to send the package to Adrienne on Tuesday. I had some other packages to mail and wanted to make one trip.
These are Julie’s backgrounds and my fabrics for the circles. I am pleased with how they look.
This is also the large first quilt I have put up since my design wall was re-installed.
I had made a little bit of headway on my fabric usage, but my Tiny Beast and True Colors order arrived and now I am back in the red. Bags take time, but don’t use a lot of fabric. I should be up to almost 50 yards used right now. Oh well.
Finished 2022 Quilt Projects
Finished 2022 Small and Non-Quilt Projects
This category covers bags, toys, aprons and knitting as well as other non-quilt projects.
Doing Good
In Process or To Make
The ‘In Process’ is used to denote projects on which I am actively working or are on the design wall waiting for me to stitch. I am continuing to try not to put away projects. I find putting a project away ensures I never work on them, because I just lose steam.
Quilts
Small Projects to Make or in Process
Most of my progress involves thinking or just cutting.
Handwork
I decided that some of my projects are in a different class because they are hand piecing or embroidery or beading. They take longer. Thus I created a new category and have moved some projects here.
Ready for Quilting
In the Quilting Process
In the Finishing Process
Still WIPs
I still have WIPs. Who doesn’t, after all? A project in the ‘UFO’ category means I am stalled. A nicer way of saying UFO is a WIP. The list is a lot shorter and the projects are newer, for the most part.
I am annoyed that some of these are still WIPs. I just need to work on them!
**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.
Yay! Month 11 is here! The pretty pink package arrived the other day and I getting ready to baste.
This was supposed to be a beast because Pink Door had to move some of the rosettes due to shipping delays. It doesn’t seem awful to me.
There is a lot of fabric, however. This is the first month that will include Tula’s new line, Tiny Beasts.
The rosettes also include the Alice fabric. The directions say to fussy cut her face, but I am going to skip that part. I’ll figure out a way to use the other parts of the fabric.
All the fabric is washed, so I can get started as soon as I have a spare minute.
I finally finished all the Take a Stand /Without a Trace bags I was making. This one is mine and it matches my A Place for Everything bag. I don’t know how I am going to use this bag, but I am sure I can figure something out.
I am kind of happy to be finished with the ByAnnie bags. She has great shapes and useful patterns, but they seem to unnecessarily complicated.
There are also things I don’t like about the bags. ByAnnie doesn’t always finish the inside of her pockets. It might seem stupid, but I don’t like any raw edges showing.
After seeing Tula Pink cover the zipper joins with ribbon, I now do that, which also covers some raw edges. You can see the with grey dots ribbon at the top of the inside of the front pocket. ByAnnie does say to seal some of the edges, so I did that with the bottom before I assembled the whole back. I don’t consider those raw edges to be completely covered, but they are ok.
I didn’t do anything very special with the inside of this bag. I used some Zen chic fabric I consider to be a background fabric. I like it and I have used it for other bags I made for me.
The inside is light and airy and I will be able to see whatever I store in it.
This is a La Passacaglia heavy week here on the blog.
You can see the new fabrics I highlighted in my post “That was Then This is Now” the other day in the Month 7 rosette (upper left).
If you look at where the Sew Tites are placed, you can see where I will join the two sections (Month 7 to Month 6 and 10).
I spent some time the other night adding the various pieces I needed to Months 6 and 7 so I could join them to Month 10. The yellow arrows point to the star points as well as the star points/diamond combination (middle top).
I am ready to sew the three rosettes together. I was going to do it Friday, but got home too late and was tired.
I definitely get a different view when the rosettes are even set together. This realization makes me wish I had spent more time looking at the rosettes together.
After seeing one of the donation quilts quilted by Lee Ann last month (? or maybe the month before?), I decided to make another of the Plus quilts with a charm pack I have had for a long time.
The piecing is done with a charm pack from American Jane. I am working through charm packs I don’t think I will use in other work.
I like American Jane, but the colors are just dull enough that they don’t go with other fabrics I use. This charm pack has been hanging around my workroom for too long. It is time for it to go.
Because it is a charm pack and I am not using a pattern, I am missing 3 5inch squares needed for one more 9 patch. The sticking point for moving on with this quilt is finding fabrics that will do with the others so I can finish the last 9 patch.
My goal for this weekend is to find 3 charms (or 5inch squares) that won’t look out of place with the other fabrics. I am sure I have a red I can use, and probably a cream, but will have to look for a third fabric.
As mentioned, I had to change out some of the fabrics on Month 7. Month 7 looked like:
Notice the light green Fruit Snacks fabric on the pentagons on the right?
Now this rosette looks different. I didn’t want Fruit Snacks to be next to other Fruit Snacks, so I changed out the pentagons to the emerald fabric I used in Month 9.
I like the way it looks and the Fruit Snacks star points can be seen.
The other day I talked about joining two rosettes. This achievement emboldened me to join another piece to those two rosettes.
Of course, joining more rosettes gets more complicated, because joining pieces are required. What I call ‘joining pieces’ are pieces that need to be added in between the rosettes so there are no holes. I am not sure why these weren’t included when we sewed the other rosettes, but it doesn’t matter.
It was easy for me to add one more rosette to those two rosettes I joined the other day except I had to include a joining piece.
When I set the three together, I saw the hole. I went and looked at the layout map we received and also at the book. The book, not clear in the best of circumstances, was pretty clear on this point.
This meant I had to figure out what to do. Or do nothing.
Laying the rosettes out allowed me to look at them to see how the rosettes fit together.
The circled point is where I had to fit in a fabric. I wanted it to look as though the rosettes fit together well. That spot is not is not ideal as it is not really any part of any of the three rosettes.
The start point was already cut and basted. It is attached to the bottom rosette with a clip so all I had to do was decide on a fabric for diamond.
After looking at the whole piece I decided on the peach hexagon fabric. Look carefully in the middle to see it laid together in the spot. It kind of looks, which was my intention, like the peach and orange rosette is peeking through from behind the green rosettes.
I got distracted by finishing the Take A Stand bags, so I haven’t joined them together yet. I still may be able to do it before M11 arrives.
I finished Month 10 a few days ago. As mentioned, I am waiting for Month 11 to arrive. I started looking at the piecing directions for all of the rosettes and decided to dip my toe into joining some.
I was a little stunned after working out the details and doing the sewing. I am not going whole hog into joining all the rosettes, mostly because I have nowhere to store larger pieces. I do plan to join more as I have time.
I think the two look great and I can’t wait to see more of what happens as I join the pieces
I keep calling this bag the Without a Trace bag rather than the Take a Stand Bag. Do you remember that TV show, Without a Trace with Poppy Montgomery? I liked that show. I started the three on April 30, finished Mom’s in time for Mother’s Day and am on my way finishing mine. Yes, this one uses the same fabrics as my APfE v.2. They are a set. Will I make a Running with Scissors to go with them? I don’t know. I am done with ByAnnie patterns for awhile.
I was able to spend enough time on Saturday and Sunday getting the pockets on, concealing the strap holders and generally fiddling with the details.
I had to pay attention to covering up the strap that holds the shoulder strap. You can see it above because a triangle ring is hanging off the top. I originally cut those pieces of webbing too long. I couldn’t figure out what was going on when I attached the first one, on Mom’s. I finally did realize that it was too tall. I ripped it off, trimmed and resewed. Then I trimmed the straps for the other two. I checked the directions and know I cut them properly, so there was something I didn’t understand.
With that whole escapade fresh in my mind, I carefully placed these straps. Note they are placed so the end is covered by the pocket. That means that I had to be sure the end WAS covered by the pocket.
I eventually succeeded and now need to put the ends, the top zipper and bind everything.
**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.
I took some time to choose fabric for my Mom’s piece and was able to finish on Saturday. It is ready to hand in for quilting.
The batik is not an obvious choice, but I think it works. I chose it because of the bits of gold included in the surface. I also didn’t want an exact match to any of the other fabrics because they would blend into the border.
That particular batik, and its sister on the back, have been hanging around my fabric closet for a long time. It was time to use them up.
I don’t get a lot of fabric usage bang for my work, because the main part of the quilt was Mom’s fabric and work. Still, every little bit helps and the point is to make something beautiful so someone knows I (or someone) cares.