I am making shopping bags this week. Just two, and a zipper bag to hold them. The shoppers are designed like those nasty plastic ones, only they are reusable and washable. Plus they are a lot prettier to look at. The recipient of these bags enjoys visiting London UK, sense the theme here? This is a linen print I picked up as a remnant, Cotton and Steel, I only had a yard, which was enough to cut the main parts for two bags, but only the handles for one. Stash to the rescue, I have a bunch of Essex linen scraps, this gray was perfect. The linings are Bella solids, simple. The zipper bag pattern came from The Polka Dot Chair, I used Annies foam stabilizer in between the fabrics and denim instead of canvas. It is “cushy” and padded, I don’t think is big enough for an iPad, but a good idea for one.

Speaking of stash, on our local neighborhood email group, someone posted a need for fabric and yarn. They are part of a local charity that makes blankets and things for homeless and low income families. I asked if they could use batting scraps, and yes, they could. I found three bags full, and another three bags of yarn, just hanging around. I stuffed them all into my car, for drop off later today. Yay! for de-stashing.

Yesterday I wanted to finish up the quilting on my Grassy Creek quilt, I even turned everything on and got ready to line up the next row. Then I remembered that our power supplier was going to work on equipment near by, which means they shut the power off on our road. For hours. It makes me angry, not that I don’t have power, but that they let the infrastructure degrade so much over the past 50 years, that now they have to replace rather than maintain. Reminds me of another big state in the news recently. Anyway, we had gotten letters saying that they were going to do said work on 3/9/21. Rather than have the power cut while quilting mid-row, I opted to cut out the bags. Of course, they didn’t shut it off, and they don’t have to tell us that they aren’t going to do the work on that day. They’ll just send a re-schedule notice next week. I am hoping to get GC done today. The power company can’t shut us off without 72 hours notice, thankfully. So I am safe for a few more days.

Be Kind.

Actually, needs more fabric is a better title, but I like the old SSNL skit with Christopher Walken. Last month I signed on to Busy Hands’ quilt-a-long for Myra’s Hampton Court quilt. This is a monthly check in, low stress, fairly easy pattern, with nice community of quilters and I liked the quilt. First task was to choose the fabric, I wanted to use the two rolls of 30’s type florals I had bought when Blueprint had a clearance sale. But the more I looked at it, the less I liked the idea. Then the fat quarter stack of ‘Sequoia’ from Laundry Basket Quilts caught my eye, yes, that’ll do. Now to find the perfect accent solid for the pattern, I picked “earth” Bella Solid (small piece in photo), and ordered three and a half yards from The Fat Quarter shop. I then started cutting the strips from the FQ’s thinking I could get it done while waiting for the solid. That chore was finished last week and I still don’t have my accent fabric. Then I had the idea to order a different color/type from a different shop, and it would be here sooner. On average my last few orders of yardage from The FQS, have taken three weeks, precuts and supplies are faster though. I picked a pretty rust colored Essex linen ‘Sierra’ over at Equilter, checked the pattern and read 8 yards of contrasting/background needed, okay, done. I was happy that I had caught my mistake of not ordering enough fabric in the first order. Then I started thinking, wow, eight yards is a lot of fabric for this pattern. Yeah, like four and a half too much, darn it. I mis-read the pattern PDF, in my defense (lol) it was vertical on the screen, and reduced in size, and threes can look like eights. Mmhmm.

Now I have a bunch of fabric coming, a bunch because I had to buy a few more yards to get free shipping on both orders too. It’ll be a fun day when it all finally does arrive. I am thinking that the Earth colored Bella will also go with my collection of Tim Holtz fabrics, definitely a quilt or two worth of those. And, a pieced backing for the Hampton Court quilt will finish the linen. That’s my plan.

I am slowly working my way through the quilting of my Grassy Creek quilt. I am using wool batting and a pretty swirling feathery panto called Seaside Feathers. I like the puff, and the light weighted-ness wool batts give to a quilt. Once GC is off the frame, I have the two Mia Charro baby quilts (above) to get done, and the table runner I made for my DS back in December. Work is just piling up around here. It’s a rainy day today, so the lure of being outside is not as strong, good day for quilting.

I’ve been making progress on the Pet all the Dogs sampler. Started the side border yesterday, and finished the motifs on the right side. I’m kinda wishing I had incorporated a bit more color in this sampler, but I’m committed to finishing it as is. I finally got all the threads and fabric and patterns together for my next two cross-stitch projects, Heaven and Nature Sing and Strawberry Fields. They are all kitted up and waiting.

Be Kind.

The tee shirt quilt is done, quilted and bound. The quilting was finished Sunday and the binding yesterday. I did something “different” with the binding, I used minky. I was a little hesitant, but I have seen it done on YouTube, so it must be do-able. The quilt was so soft and drape-y, I didn’t want to put a plain cotton binding on it, too stiff and scratchy. I had enough left over minky from the backing to cut long strips, perpendicular to the grain/stretch. I started with 2 ½ inches wide, but discovered that 2 1/4 was better. I sewed it to the back right sides together and then folded it to the front and sewed the cut edge to the front. It worked well, as I didn’t think I would be able to sew the two folded edges on top of each other without a struggle. I did use my seam guard set at ½ inch for the back side and 5/8 for the front side to keep it on the straight and narrow. Happy to have this project finished.

After I took the Tee shirt quilt off the frame, I pinned the backing for the Grassy Creek quilt on it. I like doing this, as then when I want to quilt, it is almost ready to go. Unfortunately, I didn’t pin it right and had to redo the top rail, so much for time saving. I seem to remember buying or finding in my panto library, an appropriate design to use, I should write these things down. I think I want to do something leafy and swirly.

Another start was a baby quilt for a regular customer. Coincidentally, I had just finished designing a block to use with the Mia Charro Forest friends fabrics. It is so sweet and springlike, as luck would have it, the baby was a girl and my customer liked the pretty flowers and animals. I decided to make two while I was at it, since I had enough fabric and I was using my Accuquilt strip cutter. For the first top I cut the individual squares and chain pieced the blocks. There are four blocks, but they are 20 inches square, really 16 ten inch blocks. The second top, I wised up and cut the strips and sewed sets of five together.

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I ran into a bit of a problem with the animal prints, they are 4 1/4 by 6 inches. When I was figuring the block sizing out, I used 4 1/4 by 6 ½ inches. I had to increase the upper and lower white pieces to 2 3/4 inches wide and it all worked out. I ended my day with quilt #1 on the design wall, waiting to be put together and the strip sets for #2 sewn together. I think I have enough pink minky for the backings for both, I may even do another minky binding.

I need to get to cutting the pieces for the Busy Hands quilt along quilt, Hampton Court, this week. I decided to use this pretty pile of fat quarters from Laundry Basket Quilts, called Sequoia. I am wavering on what color to use for the contrasting blocks, I bought some ‘earth’ colored Bella solid, but it isn’t here yet. I may use tan, or gray, or white, maybe green would work too. So many options.

Pet All the Dogs stitching has been happening too. Once I finished the house, the other motifs are a breeze, I’m trying to get a bit of the lower lines done now. I’ll probably finish the right tree tonight and the brown dividing line. I ordered a bunch more Weeks floss for the Heaven and Nature sampler and the few skeins I needed for Strawberry Fields this past weekend.

I also saw a beautiful (free) blackwork quilty type sampler at Blackwork Journey , called Tiny Treasures. There is a square and a rectangle version, I downloaded the PDFs for a possible future project, this one would require the magnifiers assistance.

Time to get a move on.

Be kind

This morning while I was pretending to sleep in, I started thinking about the words pretty and ugly. In reference to my current quilt top in progress, the Serpentine String. Lately I’ve been de-papering it while watching the quilting happen on the tee shirt quilt. Pulling all the foundation paper off, reveals all the fabrics in their glory. To me, pretty ugly means sort of nice looking, like not THAT ugly, good looking ugly? Or it could be an oxymoron ugly and pretty at the same time. Then there is quantitive pretty, a little less than very, as in that quilt is pretty ugly. I’m going to call it Pretty/Ugly, like those dogs that are not so cute, (bull dogs anyone?) but endearing in their own way. That is what this quilt is to me, all the scraps and strings from so many other projects that were pretty. It’s endearingly pretty ugly.

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It started with the simple task of clearing off the top of a shelving unit. The box had a pile of string blocks from a swap circa 2001-ish. I had cut them into triangles at one point, and then put them in the box “for later”. I started playing with them and Bonnie Hunters Serpentine Quilt popped into my head. The puzzle I had completed just the week before, features this quilt along with six others from the book String Frenzy. I found a few yards of yellow and a pile of newsprint papers and was on my way to making blocks. The string pile I ironed last year was ready for use too. I started with the intent of making a lap quilt, but as I was making the blocks I found that I liked making them and they used a lot of strings. I ended up making 41, one too many, and used up most of the yellow solid. Once I had them all together though, I thought the top looked unfinished. Needed borders, yep, and there were plenty of strings left. I cut the newsprint sheets in half and make a bunch more string blocks of parallel strings. I briefly thought about extending the serpentine into the border to loop back into the next row, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the angles involved. When I put the string border next to the center, it looked too busy and “mushy”. I needed a spacer in between, the yellow would have worked, but I didn’t have enough left over, and not enough of any other yellow in my stash. Blue, when all else fails, add blue, I have lots of blue too. The blue strip was a backing scrap, and there is even enough to make a binding with.

I finished removing all the paper today, what a mess. I’m thinking I’ll bring the shop vac in and vacuum up all the scraps of paper in one go. I have a feeling though, that the little scraps are going to be around for the next week. I need to iron the top flat again too. All those seams are sticking up and not going to play nice with quilting. I have not picked out a quilting design yet, it should be something fairly open, but I want it to add a little texture. I just did a baby quilt with a plain Baptist fan design, I have a few others with different options. I am also thinking stars for some reason. Maybe tomorrow morning’s musings will arrive at something, hopefully better than the name Pretty/Ugly.

Be Kind

I got some things finished yesterday, including bindings on two quilts. My morning goal was to get the blocks for the serpentine string quilt put together. I got the columns done, four more seams to do today, I’m contemplating a stirring border for it, which would really finish up my pile of strings. I feel like the top is just floating, but I’m getting a little tired of string piecing. I did get to do another three rows of fan quilting on the second farm charm quilt, and ended my day with a little roofing of the house from “Pet All the Dogs”. The roof stitching feels like it is taking a bit longer, I’m using variegated thread and one is “supposed to” stitch each cross singly to get a more visible variation of the thread color. I am slow to get the rhythm of it though. I’m looking forward to doing one of the smaller motifs on this sampler, this house is 95 stitches across and about 70 tall, lovin’ the 32 count linen, lol.

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Yesterday I got the backing for the tee shirt quilt cut and re-pieced, now it is wide enough. There are lots of little minky fluffs floating around the sewing room today. I pieced the backing with three center stripes of burgundy and blue, I must remind myself to load it sideways. Sideways loading prevents the humps of seams that develop when rolling the backing onto the frame. The humps can mess with the tension of the backing (especially stretchy minky) and in turn make a mess of it. I have three more rows of baptist fan quilting on the Farm Charm 2 quilt, then I can get to the tee shirt. I’d really like to have this off my to-do list.

Linking up with Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict today for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? today. Then I am off to sew on this rainy morning.

Be Kind