Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
Leann brought the White Strip Donation Quilt to the meeting last weekend. It has been a long while in coming, but she quilted it and was finishing the binding. I am so pleased to see it done.
I finished the top in 2019, so it has been languishing for awhile. Fortunately, fabric doesn’t go bad. There is something about this one that I really like. Soon, I will have enough scraps to make another.
Friend Julie has been diligently handing me groups of blocks whenever I see her.
Here is the latest batch. While it may look paltry compared to my bonanza, keep in mind that she has been keeping up and I haven’t. She gives me a few at a time whereas I procrastinate by making bags. I tried to work on a block or two during my lunch hours and after work. That works pretty well when I have the colors already matched to the postcards.
Carrie, one of my students, has been sewing up a storm of bags. She is on the Door Prize team and has just blossomed into an amazing and very creative bag maker. She has also been finding random patterns that interest her for free on the web.
She made a few of these Accordion pouches and they came out really well. She said they were easy to make, but hard to make perfectly.
I think it looks like a very cute pouch. I can see using something like this in my handbag. I seem to have a lot of random items rolling around in it, which could be corralled in this little pouch.
It could certainly be used for sewing as well. I can see putting smaller items in it for travel to retreats or Sew Day, then putting it into the Kit Supply Tote. I might have to make one of these just to try it out, not that I don’t have 500 other projects on which to work.
The other day I showed some red and dot donation blocks. I brought them to hand in at sew day and Peggy immediately grabbed them. Very quickly, she came up with a block with my donation blocks at the center.
This is such a cheerful block. I love the way she used HSTs instead of Flying Geese to vary the color of the rays of the star. I would say the block is probably 16″ in this form, but I didn’t measure.
As the day wore on, Peggy continued to work. Midafternoon, she came up and showed me the quilt top made with my block at the center.
I know I say this all the time. I love this about the guild community quilt program. I can hand in something half finished and Peggy or someone will take it and make something fabulous.
I wonder if the Spiky 16 Patch #5 inspired her?
This is such a cheerful quilt top and was very quickly finished. It will also be good for a boy or a girl.
Hooray! I finally made some Pantone blocks! I’ll be able to give some to Julie next time I see her.
After the meeting on the weekend, I cleaned out the Chubby Charmer I take to the meeting and found a bunch of stuff leftover from Retreat in the bottom. Among the items was a bunch of Pantone Project blocks that Julie made. She must have handed them over at the Retreat.
This group looks very Fallish/Autumn-like to me.
I feel terrible that they have languished unremarked upon for weeks. My only explanation is that I left for a business trip only a few days after I returned from the Retreat and really didn’t do a great job of putting everything away.
I have some fabrics chosen for some blocks for Julie and I am determined to get some done.
Mary has finished piecing her Traverse quilt, which looks great. She brought it to Sew Day as her project. She is now using Big Stitch to quilt it.
This is one of two Traverse quilts she has made. I believe they are for her daughters and are made in different colors.
Metro Twist** is another pattern by Sew Kind of Wonderful that uses their Quick Curve Ruler**. You might remember that I made Metroscape** a few years ago with this ruler.
I showed the quilt that Amy made at the Retreat using the Metro Twist pattern in a previous post.The colors she used and the curves made this a very popular project at the Retreat.
At the last Sew Day, she was putting on borders and preparing the top for quilting. I was able to take a photo of the quilt and it looks great!
I didn’t really realize how popular this project was until I heard that Amy will be teaching the guild how to make it at the next Super Sew Day, in July. I also had a clue when Mary C said that a bunch of people bought the pattern and the ruler after seeing Amy’s quilt.
I talked to Amy and offered to help her teach. She hasn’t told me what she needs me to do yet, but I am kind of excited about it. I really need to find some fabrics I want to use. I love Amy’s choices of Tiny Dots and Tiny Stripes, but I don’t want to copy what she did.
The quilt on the cover of the pattern isn’t super appealing and I don’t think the Tula All Stars (if even still available) would work for this pattern.
**Obviously, you should shop at local quilt shops and small businesses. However, if you are too busy or can’t find what you need there, I use Amazon 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 sat down and sewed a few more blocks for Julie. I also picked out more fabrics to make more blocks. I just haven’t made them yet.
I am really happy I made some progress, but annoyed I haven’t made MORE progress.
As I have said, it takes time to choose the fabrics. If I can do that, then sewing the blocks isn’t difficult. One thing at a time!
Because our family is growing, I thought I might need more Thanksgiving napkins for Thanksgiving. I bought some new embroidery designs for my SIL, though I think they were too big.
The turkey on the platter is, I think, a test embroidery. I am pretty sure we didn’t use that one before. I didn’t buy white napkins either. I think the design is amusing now.
Fortunately, I didn’t need them in November, so this project could be shoved off until her Christmas projects were done. I went over during Craft Night the other night and started work.
SIL #2 sat me down in front of her computer and I selected colors for some of the designs. She is pretty well organized and had recorded the thread colors. I was able to select from that group so the napkins will all, pretty much, match.
She always has to reduce the number of colors, because she doesn’t like to switch threads once the machine has started. I think her machine can handle 6 threads at a time. I always forget to look at the number of colors and inevitably buy a design with 25 colors!
I really like that pumpkin motif and I worked to make it really pretty. I think it looks great on the blue napkin.
I started changing colors so they didn’t have the issues that bugged me. There were some black threads that looked too dark to me. It may be that the shading was removed, because of the limited colors. Regardless, I am thinking about greys and, maybe, even some browns to soften up the hard blacks.
On the mauve (dusty rose??) napkin, the blue really shows up. I used that blue thread, which I really like, only on this one. It would have been lost on the blue.
Choosing embroidery threads is hard work. I’ll go back when we have Craft Night again and choose some more.
I was so pleased to receive a really nice swap gift from Sue G!
Not only did she sew some scrap bins/thread holders, but she gave me some of my favorite Art Gallery fabric as well. All of it came wrapped in this bag filled with festive tissue paper.
On the form we had to fill out, Isaid my colors were turquoise and red. Sue knows that I like my red to be more towards the pink than the orange and she did a great job choosing fabric.
The large thread catcher, or soft bin, isn’t huge, but everything else fit inside. In the bin is another bin and four half yards of fabric. I didn’t realize there was another bin inside when I opened it, so was very surprised when I opened it.
The small bin will go very well on my ironing board. Normally, I just pile up threads as I iron fabric until the wad gets to big or falls on the floor. I think the small bin will look much nicer.
I haven’t quite decided how I will use the larger bin. The mini-charms falling out of the 1 hour basket in the fabric closet might fit – or some of them might.
Thanks, Sue!!
I received a nice package of blocks from Friend Julie the other day. It is so interesting to see these blocks. Julie mentioned that it looked like a real project now when she posted about the blocks I sent to her last week.
I can’t really see what they will end up looking like, but I can see that they will end up as something. I can see the possibilities now.
I have received more postcards and need to match them to fabric. I might be over the hump of fabric selection being a big barrier. We’ll see how it goes with the next group.
My mom made a baby quilt for our new family baby.This is the same baby for whom I made the Diagonal 9 Patch. The baby, born in October, received at least 4 quilts. That’s what you get when you have aunts who sew.
It is an adorable panel she bought while we were visiting Portland last time. She actually bought it at Just for Fun in Vancouver, WA. For those of you who haven’t been to that area, Vancouver is just over the river from Portland. It’s an easy drive. Just for Fun had a lot of panels.
Mom quilt this quilt herself on her Featherweight during Craft Night. She bought the binding when we were together, too, and I really like it.
Tim brought his newest quilt to Sew Day. I really like his work. Even though I wouldn’t use these colors, I think the whole piece is really appealing and attractive. I especially like the checkerboards.
I thought he was making this quilt for himself, but he is giving it to one of his nieces.
Gerre and I finally arranged a sewing day, which consists a lot of talking and eating with a little sewing thrown in. I worked on cutting out pouches for upcoming holidays and birthdays. I decided to make some small Moto Pouches, from Sew Sweetness Minikins Season 1, for the nieces as well as a large Hackney pouch Minikins Season 3.
Gerre worked on her Harmony & Light Quilt-a-long quilt. She bought the fabric bundle and her quilt is coming a long very nicely.
One of the things we talked about was her needing some handwork for some upcoming recovery time on the couch. I asked her if she had any UFOs. She does some hand quilting and I was thinking of big stitch. Instead she talked about an EPP project on which she was stalled. It was made with Malka Dubrowsky fabric. She brought it out and I was gobsmacked by the amazing design, the beautiful colors, her amazing stitching and how far along she was. Those hexies are 3/4 inch!
She said she got stalled at some point and put it away. I gushed about it, because I really like it and we talked about design. After I was done gushing, we talked about what she needed to do to finish it. She needs to make a center and finish the edges.
She said I gave her the All Points Patchwork book. She brought it out and we looked through to see if we could get some ideas for finishing the edges. In looking through it we found a hexie design that would be perfect for the center. We discussed different ways of finishing the quilt, like adding pieces to make the edges straight, cutting off the edges and appliqueing the edges to another piece of fabric.
I got really excited about this project and she did, too. It will give her something to work on and she will get a UFO completed. I can’t wait to see it finished.