Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
Cathy went straight to work almost as soon as we arrived. She brought some of her Pointillist Palette chunks to work with.
I keep looking at this one and seeing different things.
It is great to see other people’s work in the quilts. Two of my donation blocks were included. Cathy also used Joelle’s word chunk from a previous swap.
I finished cutting out the Friesan pouch at Sew Day and had an hour until it was over. I could have left, but instead Mary C and I decided to work together to make another donation quilt top in an hour. It was a charity Sew Day after all and both of us had been working on our own projects.
We used some fabric from one of the first retreats that had been sewn together into a block of rectangles. It was not very attractive.
The first thing we did was to cut it in half and they cut the halves on the diagonal so we could insert some strips and break up the parts that were unattractive.
Mary C had some strips and strips sets leftover from a quilt she had just finished that we ransacked to make the improvements.
I selected some grey from the abundance of solids that Peggy has and we used that color to fill in other places.
Adding the seafoam green strips REALLY helped that rectangle go from unattractive to attractive. The addition also lightened up the piece.
To make the two halves large enough, we added the strip set and sewed the pieces together.
We decided we wanted to use the ‘bird’ blocks as well. They were mostly made from the same fabrics, so they fit in well. I had to build up the green block, which was not nearly square.
Mary sewed the brown bird into a large-ish chunk with the intention of putting on the bottom of the piece. I thought it came out well.
While she did that, I built up the green bird block into a shape we could use. The green strip along the bottom allows that darker green and orange section to float a bit which was a happy accident.
Eventually we ended up with several large chunks. We wanted to add those half circle pieces, which took a bit of time to work out.
In this endeavor, Mary did the sewing and some ironing while I trimmed, pressed, matched fabrics, cut strips and brought her stuff to sew. We had to make little bits to allow us to fit the chunks together. There is a freedom in this kind of improv quilt. I happily hacked off pieces of the blocks and chunks to make them fit.
We had a charity Sew Day on 4/2. Often Peggy will provide a pattern, but this time the activity centered around orphan blocks and chunks.
Maria had been collecting orphan blocks and chunks for awhile. The first thing she did when she arrived was start pinning them to the design wall.
Maria put up a random assortment of blocks and chunks and people took what they wanted and worked on donation tops.
As mentioned, I didn’t really want to do the activity, but others got right into it. Since I made the Missouri Star donation top and brought it, I didn’t feel guilty about it. Nobody said anything to me either.
After I finished cutting out the Friesan Pouch, I ended up working on a quilt with Mary C and found that it was a fun activity. I prefer to do these types of quilts with someone else.
I talked about this quilt after I put the design walls back up. I haven’t made all the colors in the rainbow for the Color Strip & Chunk donation quilts, but I have made several. I thought the rainbow quilt would be the crowning glory, but the reality is that I have a lot of stuff on my small design wall and I want it gone or finished. The blocks that were hanging around are now having their turn.
Over last weekend I starting making more strip blocks as I was working on the Cha3 table runner and the Missouri Star donation top. I made a couple of black blocks, the purple blocks you see and that one red-violet block. I am not working on more greys, thought I don’t know if I will need them. I need some green and yellow blocks as well.
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.
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 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.
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.
Lee Ann brought Tim’s quilt back to the guild for donation. It was part of, what Peggy called, the Bind-a-thon. I think the last time I talked about it was in July.
I had totally forgotten about it (out of sight, out of mind). I am glad it is finished and it on its way to some needy person.
Ends n.13 is another in the series of quilts that I talked about a couple of days ago. Yes, I made two this week.
I used the leftover pieces from Ends n.12 to get started and then added some additional pieces from my stash of ‘ends.’
I decided I needed to get this one finished. All the projects left on my design walls when I put them away were a lot less interesting when I saw them again. I didn’t want to toss them, but I did want them finished.
I started it last year sometime. The first time I talked about it was July, which was right before we dismantled my workroom. I was concerned at that time that I wouldn’t have enough scraps to make a decent sized baby quilt. It’s still a concern as I am piecing tiny scraps together and expect to have no yellow scraps left.
I spent time over the weekend making good progress.
I finished the HST Star quilt in time to give it to the community quilts team.
I am pretty pleased with the way it came. A sort of dull charm pack (why did I buy it??) turned into a cheerful quilt top.
The quilt isn’t very girly and I wanted it to be suitable for boys as well, so I chose an Italian restaurant print I have had for years. It is time to use it and this is a good use of it.
I am working on a donation top. I saw a picture in Today’s Quilter and thought it would give some relief to poor Peggy who has been the recipient of a 100 or so HSTs recently.
I started going through my charm packs after Peggy asked for HSTs for donation quilts. I used up 4 charm packs (2 of background) and sent the HSTs to her without making a quilt.
Finally, I decided that was a little mean and I was inspired by a Sawtooth Star quilt made from HSTs. One day last week on my lunch hour I started sewing the center blocks together. I made three HST 9 patches in about half an hour, which made me very happy on a lot of levels.
Stay tuned for the finish (or another in progress shot.
While this is Mom’s UCAB, I tested it on my travel sewing machine bag to see if it would work for me. The key is to adjust the back sleeve to fit over your rolly bag handle. I have no idea if there are standard sizes for those, so make sure you check before you sew everything to the exterior.
I plan to put my smaller items in the UCAB. I am not sure how I am going to reconcile this bag with the Tupperware box.
The picture below shows the bag empty, but trust me when I say I filled it up. It isn’t completely filled.
I need mine to contain all my to go items – notions and rulers, etc. I put them in the various pockets of the sewing machine bag, which has a lot of pockets, but it makes some of the zippers hard to open.
I had a day off the other day and really wanted to finish my UCAB.
In order to finish the exterior I had to sew the lining. I decided to put in an ironing pad even though I don’t think I will use it much. I have my new Mini Maker Case, so I may actually use it. I will try it out regardless.
I had to cut all of the pieces for the lining before assembling the interior. Construction of the lining went pretty smoothly.
Another task was to finish the exterior. I sewed the three parts together (back, front and bottom), which was pretty easy. I did have some trouble with the pleather bottom sticking to my machine’s bed. I held up both edges and kept as much of it off the machine bed as I could. Then I sort of shoved it through, but will need to rethink that strategy in the future. It doesn’t make for nice stitching.
Laid out like the photo left doesn’t do anything for the overall look of the bag, but you know how it is. It always looks worse before it looks better.
I wanted the bottom to be flat, so I sewed two layers of Peltex to the pleather – kind of like quilting it. I was careful to keep the Peltex away from the edges so that the edges wouldn’t be too thick. I don’t know if that strategy will work, but it seems to be flatter than I could have hoped.
To encourage the bottom get into (and stay into) the right shape I thought of sewing a seam along the edges where the front and back fold up. The ironing pad extends into the bottom of the bag, so sewing a seam would create a bump. If I want to do that, I’ll probably need to omit the ironing pad.
I also cut out the sides (from a template) and put those together. They are an odd shape, so I used scissors. I also pressed the folds into the places where the pockets will be inserted.
I got a fair amount done, but didn’t finish. Progress! Not finished, but progress.