I was still not quite ready to start this project, but I did need to decide on the background.
These two Sawtooth Stars are 4.5″ each. I used the Philip Jacobs print for the center and a couple of different background possibilities.
I really wanted the leaf print (right) from Simply Color by V&Co to work. I really like that print and wouldn’t mind having yards of it around. It would work with some of the solids I have chosen for the project, but, as you can see, with prints it would be a problem. I want the stars to be crisp and this print, sadly, makes the stars mushy.
I’ll put it on the back.
This conclusion meant that I needed to use the square dot print. I like it very much. It wasn’t what I expected to use, but I think I will like it. I wanted to do some more tests with some of the different fabrics, but the way manufacturers go through fabric lines, I had to get it quick before it was gone. The place I wanted to buy it was out, sadly ($4.20/yd!), but I found the amount I needed and am waiting for it to arrive.
Sunday, I worked on the A-B-C Challenge back. I finished the top on Saturday and got busy with the back on Sunday. It took forever. Well, it seemed like it took forever.
I think I was just tired. I took last week, mostly, off, but with one thing and another, I did a lot.
Another thought is that I have really high expectations of what I can accomplish in a given number of hours. I don’t usually count requests for my chauffeur service, laundry duties, lunch, etc.
For once, I was very careful about pressing the seams open, though Colleen never says anything about that. I am proud of myself.
I am also pleased that I could use another giant piece of Martha Negley fabric. I love her prints, just like I love Philip Jacobs prints. Putting the large flower on the back of the Flowering Snowball was such a great experience that I wanted to repeat it. This particular print has some odd colors, but they go well with the Empire gold that Pat Bravo loves and includes with her collections. Also the green goes well with that border fabric.
I am trying to use larger pieces and make simpler backs. They take less time. Can you tell how simple this back is compared to the Stepping Stones back? I wonder what I was thinking!
Yesterday I detailed all the BFSI comments you wrote (keep ’em coming!) and the prizes I gave away. I actually did get sewing done, which was great. I don’t feel like I got as much sewing done as I would have liked, but I got enough done. I guess.
As an aside: Is it ever really possible to get enough sewing done? I don’t know what enough sewing is, so I can’t say. I would like to try to figure it out, though.
Enough of that.
I know that there were a number of people who had to work, Kati had problems with her laptop, so could only follow along and others had family obligations, so I feel lucky to have gotten done what I did get done.
I started out the day by getting up a bit on the late side…for me. I got up around 7am and since we had 24 people over to eat the night before, I got the first load of non-china dishes going in the dishwasher while my tea steeped. There were also some things that needed to be soaked, so I put them in hot water as well. I could hear the call of Twitter, though, throughout the chores, so I didn’t stay away for much longer.. My phone has been acting up, so I gave it a good talking to, which encouraged it to work. I was able to use it during the day as well.
I kind of think that I did some #BFSI warm-ups earlier in the week with the cat beds and the donation blocks. Who doesn’t need a good warm up?
I promised to make two pincushions for the BAMQG raffle basket, so I decided to get busy on those. The meeting is next week, after all, so I didn’t have much time.
I used a charm pack from Sandy Gervaise called Objects of Desire and the Petit Gateau pattern from Fig Tree quilts. This is the pattern I used before and I liked it.
In general, I like Sandy Gervaise’s fabric designs. They are fun, generally cheerful or have a bit of humor. She also usually includes dots, which I love. I have found, thoughn that her color choices are usually a bit too beige for me. She often has a really good and fun print on the front of the charm pack, but as I pick through the fabrics (which is one reason charm packs are great!), I find many of the fabrics to be ‘Meh.’ I don’t hate them by any stretch, but they aren’t my favorites.
Pincushions in progress
Why choose ‘meh’ fabrics for pincushions, you ask? In small doses they are a relatively cheerful and a nice combination of fabrics for a pincushion. It took me some time to get them together, but once I made the half square triangles, they went pretty quickly. I sewed a couple of charms together to make the gusset piece. I thought about digging around in my fabric closet, but have plenty of charms, so that worked for me.
I have a lot of charms from the pack left so might make a couple more pincushions as gifts. They are fun and cute.
I have some hand stitching to finish, buttons to attach, but I am pleased with the way they look. They are cheerful and I like the different scales of fabric.
I also worked on the A-B-C Challenge. I know I talked about it before, but in order to get to the stage of FINISHED top, I worked on the border on Saturday as well. I spent most of the time that I worked on this piece on the grey inner border.
Patchwork Wheel #7 & 8
I also always need leaders and enders. That is mostly how I am getting the Patchwork Wheel blocks done. I doubt I will get a quilt top from them finished by the meeting next Saturday, but I can finish it by January.
Sandy talked about her BFSI experience on her blog. Sarah detailed her progress and she had to go to work! Pam did a lot of sewing work, but admitted to finishing the Star Wars quilt during the Black Friday Sew-in. Katie made major progress on her Orca Bay quilt. She was being good and trying to finish it before Easy Street started.
I am really pleased to say that the Spiderweb top is finished. There are still a lot of things to do to get this finished into a quilt, but I am pleased, really pleased, that the top is finished.
The paper is still in most of the blocks. I had to pull out some of the paper as I sewed, but there is still a lot to pull out.
As usual, the piece looks a lot better sewn together. The sewing together brings the whole thing together. I am pleased with the overall look, though I still think the background is a bit dark. I can tell that my tastes have changed, because the new blocks are filled with much clearer fabrics, more pink, aqua, and chartreuse. I do wonder what this piece would look like with a lighter background, but am NOT making another.
Spiderweb Top
I have enough fabric, I think to make a binding. I have been thinking about the binding and wonder if I should make a straight of grain binding rather than my usual bias binding. There are bits of the border on the bias, because of the kite shaped pieces.
Because I couldn’t match up all the bottoms of the webs, there are some that don’t match up. I am going to be ok with the differences.
I really hope you can understand this when you read it. I stayed up too late watching the election Tuesday night and, as I write this, the exhaustion is taking over.
The last time I wrote about the Spiderweb was last December. Nearly a year later, something is finally happening. But the worst part of the story is that I started this project in 1998. I looked at the blocks many times and my tastes had changed and I didn’t really want to work with dark backgrounds. The project languished, but the 26 Projects list has forced me to get to it. Forced is a strong word. I could have donated all of the blocks to the Charity Girls and been done with it, but something prevented me from doing that.
I started small by buying some Carol Doak foundation paper. Then I continued by printing the main foundations for the border blocks. Then I started sewing and found I printed the foundations the wrong size, so I started over. Finally, I was able to sew enough to get some blocks put together.
In the process, I found something really remarkable. I feel really good making these blocks. I don’t know why. They don’t seem especially gorgeous, though they are pretty. I get a warm glowy feeling inside each time I work on them. It is so odd.
Spiderweb Border Block detail
I have all of the center blocks done, but, like the Flowering Snowball, I needed to make special border blocks so the border plates weren’t cut up. I wanted them to be finished.
In the photo, right, I have put numbers on the border blocks. You can see the differences, if you compare them with the center blocks.
The border blocks are definitely brighter and more cheerful, because of the newer fabrics I am using. I hope there isn’t a big disparity when the quilt is finished.
My biggest problem, however, is that I have nowhere to lay this quilt out. My design walls are full and the quilt, since there is foundation piecing paper on the back of the blocks, wouldn’t stay on the design wall without pins anyway. For the moment it is on the floor in front of a design wall and blocking the closet. This isn’t going to last long, but I don’t have a solution right now.
At the moment, I have 7 border blocks complete and one needing some trimming and pressing. The quilt will be 8 blocks wide and 10 blocks tall. I have about 32 more blocks to make and I hope I don’t run out of the border fabric. If I do, I will have to make the quilt smaller and donate a few of the leftover blocks to the Charity Girls.
You will be pleased to know that the sashing drama is over. The quilt top is double sashed.
“Double sashed” means that I have sashed each block and then added sashing between the blocks.
A-B-C Sashing Complete
I did not chunk this quilt and I am partially sorry I didn’t.
One of the benefits of chunking is that all of your sashing lines line up. When you put a quilt together in rows, it is possible that your sashing lines will be off from row to row.
I did not sash, because I didn’t want to have the checkerboard problem I had earlier this year with the inside border for FOTY 2011, which was that the white looked weird because it didn’t line up problem. I wanted to have really long pieces of sashing so that there would be as unbroken a line as possible.
At this point I am not sure it would have mattered. I am pleased with the red and white dot fabric I used. I think it is inspiring me to have a Year of the Dot in 2013. We’ll have to see if I can figure out what that means.
A-B-C Sashing in process
Next step is to figure out what else I need to do for the borders. I worked on different things last weekend, but didn’t come up with anything that excited me. If I had more of the Sevenberry red dot, I would put a thin line of the grey around the edge and then a fatter strip for the border. I don’t want to go hunting for more fabric. I’ll find something I have to make it work.
As you might remember there were good comments on the next to the last post I wrote about the border of this quilt. Rhonda was right, not that I doubted her, of course. This quilt looks a lot better with a red border on it.
I did a trial run of the border in another post and, then, sewed it on last weekend. Do you ever have times in your quilt work where you have a lot of little things to do – make a binding, sew on a border, fix a hole, print foundation templates – that all seem to stack up before you can move on with projects? I had a weekend like that last weekend. I never feel like I get a lot done when I have those lists of things to do, but the weeks that follow are full of amazing productivity.
I really am so much happier with this quilt now that it has a red border. One thing I completely forgot about was the binding. I had made a white binding, which was no longer appropriate for this quilt, so I also made a red binding for the quilt.
As I have mentioned, I may quilt this myself. My quilter has so many of my quilts and they are languishing a bit. My machine is so much easier to use and no longer frustrating since it was serviced and I have a spool of thread that would work. I think I could quilt this quilt – simply and get it out of the house.
Quilting a quilt does take up space on my machine and does hamper my piecing productivity. I guess I have to become OK with the entire quiltmaking process. I have been avoiding quilting for the last couple of years. Perhaps it is time to get back in the saddle.
To find out how to participate in the Labor Day Sew-in, read the previous post.
I don’t feel like I got as much done on Day 2 as I did on Day 1, but I am still pretty pleased with the amount of work I got done.
4 Pink & Green Donation blocks
I worked on the donation blocks and think I have 9 more to go before I can start chunking.
I feel like I should have gotten all of these done, but I made a couple of journal covers, which required more than straight mindless sewing. Still 4 is good, right? Immerhin, right?
Journal Cover closed
Next up: Journal covers. Did I say somewhere that I started a new journal this past week and needed a journal cover? If not, I started a new journal this past week and need a journal cover. I didn’t believe my own directions, so that meant that I made one and it was just a tad too small. I was able to cut the covers of an old journal and use it, but I still needed a cover for my new journal. I followed my own directions this time and came up with one I could use. It is a tad too large, but works.
Journal Cover open (back cover)
I am not sure why I like using journal covers, but I do. I like seeing cheerful fabric. I liked the softness and a journal cover gives the impression of more privacy. Real privacy? I don’t know, but the impression is ok with me. My journal doesn’t often leave my sight.
I adjusted the sizes slightly and might try another cover tomorrow (LDSI3). I always need covers for new journals, so making another one would mean I get a bit ahead. I would like to go back and cover all of my journals, but I just don’t see that happening right now. Someday, perhaps.
A-B-C Challenge Blocks – more sashing
I also worked on the A-B-C Challenge Blocks. I used the last bit of the half yard that TFQ returned from the Super Secret project. I was able to sash a lot of blocks with that half yard. I am fortunate I was able to find more of the grey, so I started pressing and cutting into that.
I expected to get more done, but am happy with how much I got done.
This is a fabric I bought at Quiltology. I didn’t have the blocks with me, but I thought it might work. In the end, a person has make visually decisions visually. Looking at it with the blocks on the design wall, I am not so sure. I think the grey has too much beige or brown in it, but it isn’t terrible.
Grey circles sashing
I have to make a few more blocks, but the more important thing I need to figure out is this sashing thing.
I thought the grey Half Moon Dot would work, but looking at in the photo makes me think that the dots are too large and it makes the piece look too busy. It’s too bad. I do like those dots, but not for this piece. I do have to think of something to do with the Half Moon Street Collection, though. Soon.
Large dot sashing
The dots were a good idea, though, so I looked at some other dots I had. No shortage of dots, of course.
I have to use a fabric of which I have enough (one of the bad things about stashing fabric is that you might have the perfect fabric, but not have enough of it: design challenge, I think, yes.)
I like the large dot a lot. I like it because it looks cheerful. I also like it because it showcases the blocks better than the grey does. I do worry that the white will run into the white of some of the backgrounds I used. I also worry about the colors of the dots not being the same, but I think the colors of the dots are similar enough, so that is not so much of a worry. I don’t think the Zoe Pearns Sweet Nothings dots don’t conflict too much with these large dots.
Small dot sashing
This small dot works, I think, but the dot might be too small.
Click to make the last photo larger to see how the small dots look against the blocks. The small dot works well with the Zoe Pearns Sweet Nothings in the blocks. It is also bright enough, but the white doesn’t seem to suck the life out of this piece.
After not having much time to sew, as described previously, I spent a lot of time sewing over the weekend. In fact, aside from a quick trip to dinner and a movie with my favorite date and a few other minor chores (no gardening!), I spent the whole weekend sewing.
The Corner Store seems to have taken me a long time. Looking back, I don’t think it should have been on my 26 projects list. After all, when I wrote the 26 Projects List it was just a placemat and an idea; it wasn’t really a UFO. Still and all, I put it on the list and I have decided that everything on the list will get a disposition.
Over the weekend, I made significant progress on this quilt. The picture above shows what I had done previously – most of the blocks were sewn together in groups of four. I had started to sew those groups together, but didn’t get very far, so that is what I worked on.
One after the other, I sewed the groups of four into groups of 8 and then the groups of eight into groups of 16. Basically, I chunked them.
In between, I pushed bits of the Pink Donation Quilt through the machine and made significant progress on that as well as a bit of progress on the yellow version which is the next donation quilt on the list. Another post for another day. Stay tuned.
Corner Store Finished Top
I finished the top and am well on my way to finishing the back. I am going to use a big piece of a Phillip Jacobs print called Japanese Chrysanthemum. This fabric was destined to be a very nice bag, but I think, even though I bought the pink colorway, that there is too much brown. I am just not a brown person.
I had planned to put a spiky border a la Gwen Marston. The Molly Flanders blog has a very nice tutorial, which shows a similar quilt to this one with the spiky border I decided not to make.
Ok, here is the confession. This is a pretty quilt top. It is well made, my corners match, etc, but this top has no soul. If I weren’t compulsive about getting project finished, then it would be an interminable UFO. I don’t know why it has not soul, but it doesn’t. I’ll finish the back, get it quilted and then figure out what to do with it. It is a little too girly for one of the boys, but we will see. So it goes, sometimes.
It is hard for me to sew during the week, but I am making some progress.The iron issue is not resolved, so I have to figure that out (return current iron, which stinks to high heaven when on), but I am trimming and arranging blocks. My design wall is starting to be too small, but I will have to make it work.
I have 289 blocks to work with and I may make more. I don’t know what size I am aiming for, but my mind keeps saying “BIGGER!!!!”
I probably have enough triangles to make at least 50 more blocks, I don’t plan on making 50 more blocks, however you never know what the muse will scream at me.
I love the blue and orange together. Complements, what could be better? In addition, the orange just makes me happy.
I am trying to think of whether or not I have used this much orange in a quilt before. Looking at my orange scrap drawer, I would say no.
The other interesting thing, which I always find when working with a monochromatic palette, is how different, in this case, the oranges are. Some are peachy, some are more red, some have a pink tinge. There were a few prints (my man Philip Jacobs!) with browns. It is so interesting to me how those browns took on more of an orange cast when used withe oranges.
I know you can also see that some are multi-colored and so non-orange colors show up as well. I think those add some interest.
More Wonky Blocks
I decided to make the Wonky 9 Patch a bit larger. As I said before, the problem is the blue. TFQ said she may have some of the blue, so I sent her a swatch.
I made more of the blocks, so I am ready. One thing I did differently was press the seams open. It made cutting the blocks much easier.
I decided not to sew the one new row to the rest of the quilt, though I did consider it, if for no other reason than to make progress.
I think this project will progress in fits and starts. I made the new blocks (on the right) while I was piecing the Flowering Snowball. I used the Corner Store blocks as leaders and enders. Such a useful, productivity improving technique.
I find that I put the blocks up on the design wall and I become uninspired to make more. Not sure why. I like them; I think the piece works well, is interesting and pretty. As a project I work on steadily, it wasn’t working for me yesterday. However, as leaders and enders in between a different project, I make a lot of blocks. What is that about?
And, the other question is, if I don’t work steadily on the Corner Store, what should I work on? I need some bang for my buck. Can I finish another top next weekend? VIMH#1 says I have to enjoy the process not just go for finished product.
All Corner Store blocks - May
I put all the blocks up. I have quite a few. They are small, though, so it isn’t enough. There is still a lot of red and pink. I made an effort to make blocks with no red or pink, but I have a lot of red and pink triangles, so it is hard.
This is not the final arrangement. I slapped them up on the wall and did a tiny bit of rearranging.
I also have to buy some more Kona Snow as background. The Pure Elements Linen, of which I have plenty, is different enough to be noticeable.
Sunday was a nice day. It was Mother’s Day and, though nobody in my house said anything specifically, I did whatever I wanted and didn’t have to do too many chores. I received a depressing, if very true card and an iTunes gift card from the Young Man and then spent the rest of the day finishing the Flowering Snowball. Not finishing as in quilted and bound, but finishing the top and the back.
Flowering Snowball top
So, the top, back and binding for the Flowering Snowball are all done and will be sent off to the quilter soon.
I am pretty pleased with the top. Since the project spanned several years, some of the fabrics are fabrics that I would not choose to work with now. Also, since I wanted this to be a scrap quilt, I should have stuck to using each foreground fabric only once.
Still, none of the fabrics jump out and demand attention and the variety of fabrics is significant, so there is a lot to look at.
Of course, I can think of things I would do differently if I did the quilt again and the VIMH#1 is musing about making one on the machine and color schemes while VIMH#2 is getting ready to slap her. I have plenty of projects on the design wall that need attention before I can circle back and make another one of these.
I have to admit that after I started chunking the top, I thought that I could have made more blocks so that the center would be wider. I was thinking that two more rows of blocks down the center would be great. I am not doing it. What I have is enough and I will think about this as a lesson and carry it forward.
Flowering Snowball back
I am doing backs in a little different way now. I decided that the large Philip Jacobs and Martha Negley prints I love so much would be great backs. I am taking some of the giant pieces I bought recently and putting them on the backs. I am still committed to piecing my backs, but am taking a break from tiny pieces. I am trying to use larger pieces. This makes making the backs much faster to piece. It also means that those large prints are shown off to their best advantage.
In this case, I tried to pick fabrics that went with the Martha Negley print and, further, with each other. I ended up with a very pink back.
the librarian in me has to tell you that I called the pattern “Cross Blocks” until I found that Barbara Brackman had cataloged it. In EQ7, the notecard lists it as “Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Quilt Patterns #3081 – Aunt Kate 7/65.” It is from the Classic Pieced, Orange Peel family.
The Sunday Stash Report (a la Pam at Hip to be a Square podcast) is 8 yards. More on that later.
I can’t believe that this approximately 6 year project is finally done. this means that I am down to 20 projects which need serious work. Some of the 6 are still at the quilter or need to be bound, but I consider this to be good progress.
I don’t know what project is next. I’ll have to work on the Flower Sugar Hexagons again just to get some more of them sewn and added. I also have some blocks to make for the A-B-C Challenge.
Nota bene: the WordPress media uploader has not cooperating. I have been having trouble with it for the past few days so I added the photo of the top, but it is large. If I can make it smaller, I will.
