Wonky Blocks

I'm sorry for disappearing these last few months; it has been a crazy summer, with trips to visit aunties and Alma Maters, a lovely vacation at the beach and many weeks of driving long distance to (totally worth it!) day camp in the Pinelands.  Thankfully, school starts up again tomorrow and things are settling down again.  I have many projects to show you! Let me start with my latest passion, the "mystery quilt," to which I will give the working title "Wonky Blocks."  (An appropriate homemade gift will go to the person who can guess the actual name of the quilt before it is finished -- I will be dropping hints along the way!)

I am working entirely with pieces from my scrap box and from pre-cut (homemade) charm squares and jelly roll strips so far -- I will need to purchase fabric for a border, backing, and possibly for binding as well.  The process of making the blocks has been quite liberating -- I started making geometrically precise little blocks with the pre-cuts, and finished by sewing the tiniest scraps together in any way they would go and cutting the results into squares.  I'm loving the results!

Putting the quilt-block puzzle together is exciting and hurts my head, and is taking up the living room where D will want to set up with his computer as he is working from home today, and I am not half done yet.  There may be turf wars to come.

Still to do:  piece quilt; determine a size for the quilt (how wide do they make quilt batting, anyway, and can you sew two lengths of batting together to make a larger one?); determine type of border to use and amount(s) of fabric to buy; and so on, and so on. 

Stashbusting; or, I am totally making this quilt

I have officially declared May "No New Fabric Month."  In preparation, I have been rummaging through my scrap bins to identify usable material, and cutting it up into sizes predetermined by the good folks at Moda, who make those irresistible charm packs, layer cakes and jelly rolls lying around next to the bolts in the quilting stores. 

This is what I got out of the "small scraps" bin!

I could buy any number of books of quilt patterns that utilize the pre-cuts, but I was feeling thrifty and started hunting around on the web for free patterns, and I found this tutorial for a Value Quilt.  I love it!  It cries out to me!  I must make one!  You will excuse me, please, if I go back to my scrap bins and keep cutting.  I am on a mission!

Ready and waiting

Here's the quilt I made to take to this week's prayer quilting session.  It's taken from a free pattern I got from Moda when I bought one of their charm packs last week -- hopefully you'll see the quilt I made from those squares soon; it only wants binding.  For this one I made my own "charm pack" out of 5" squares from scraps of vintage bed-sheet fabric. It was a joy to put together; at every stage I loved it more and more.

I was not at all certain about the plaid fabric for the backing, but I dove in with it and I think it gives a fresh, modern look to the old-fashioned florals.  I would have liked to quilt this one but of course the prayer quilts are tied, so I put in pink pearl cotton ties and it's all set to go.  An extremely satisfying 24-hour project.  Will definitely be doing this one again.

Vintage linens

Who has time to post with a collection of vintage linens this pretty? I'm making a prayer quilt, a tablecloth, a set of napkins, a dress (dresses?) and some charm packs for a rainy day out of the scraps. Who has time to clean up the studio with all that to do?

Living Room

Since the cold weather came we've been spending less and less time in the "TV Room," where it's freezing, and more and more time in the Living Room, where it's toasty warm. We read, play, knit, draw, talk, giggle, and fiddle around on our laptops here. The guinea pigs live next door in the dining room (don't ask me to explain how that happened) and we chat with them in their cage, and sometimes set up their play pen in here and let them run around and munch on veggies while we fend off the cats. A lot of living gets done here. And I wanted to mark that, somehow.

Enter Amanda Soule's Handmade Home. Her One-Word Banner project fit the bill just right, I think. The letters are cotton fabric scraps appliqued onto felted wool rectangles, and they're just sewn at intervals onto a length of bias tape. (Ah, the magic of bias tape. Why is there never a sale on bias tape?) As usual, I love that they're red.

While I was working on appliqueing the letters and nearly finished, K walked into the studio; she saw l, y, and a heart. She asked what word I was making, and I asked if she could guess. "Something with love?" she ventured. Yes! Yes! Something with love.

Stacked Coins Doll Quilt

Yesterday's post featured an improvised rail fence quilt taken from mainly reds in my stash. Since I decided to make the blocks first, then determine the layout, there were a number of leftover blocks. Here's what I did with them, influenced by the Stacked Coins Doll Quilt in Remembering Adelia: Quilts that Inspired Her Diary by Kathleen Tracy.

It used up all the leftover blocks and only took a little scrap fabric from my stash to finish. I'm so pleased with both red quilts that I'll be re-creating them in blue and posting instructions for making them here, hopefully in the near future.

I'm thinking of making a doll bed, complete with mattress, sheets and pillows, out of a cardboard box (because those make the best toys, as everyone knows), to give to K at Christmas.

Here's the top

I'm high as a kite from finishing the top of my scrappy four-patch quilt about forty-five minutes ago. It took that long to spread it out on the floor and chase the cats off so I could photograph it for you. You'll notice that the navy blue border I'd had my heart set on was replaced by a subtle medium blue print from my stash -- thus saving me the need to buy any new fabric and, I think, coordinating well with more of the greeny-blue blocks that show up all over the quilt.

Now my job is to piece together a backing that is at least 95 in. by 85 in., to set aside enough medium blue fabric to do a self-binding, and to baste the top and the backing together with a lovely organic cotton batting I purchased at Jo Ann's today. With luck I'll even have enough blue fabric over to make pillow slips. Here's hoping!

Quilt quickie

Just dropping in to say that I have waffled once again and I am quite pleased with the results. I decided that I liked the hippy-dippy folksy appeal of the simple four-patch layout and, just for the heck of it, laid out a 10 x 12 array of blocks. It looked great -- just what I had envisioned when I started the quilt!

So I'm currently in the process of sewing rows of four-patches together. I thought it would be tedious work, but I'm finding it curiously relaxing. In the back of my mind I'm churning about what sort of backing I want to do (pieced, I think, using fabric from my stash) and whether I want a border and what color it should be (narrow and navy blue print, perhaps) -- more about those things later.

I'm loving the rhythm of piecing right now, and am using it as a reward for getting some amount of housework done. Projects in the works: A hooded towel for my new first-cousin-once-removed, some receiving blankets and maybe a star quilt for my niece-to-be, many tote bags because I have such lovely home-decor remnants piling up, and of course the mama-daughter pajama pants from the lovely vintage bedsheet. Right, I'd better get busy!

Nowhere fast

Well, after an hour or so of fiddling, I have come to the conclusion that I need professional help.

Oh, you knew that? No, really, stop laughing.

I'm going to the quilt store downtown and ask the ladies what they think. Laying the blocks out in a "random" pattern is simply not working, it's just driving me insane and it looks sloppy and unpolished. I need something to pull it together, some sort of lattice work and border to pull it all together, and I am simply too inexperienced to figure out how to do that on my own. So I'll go stack my blocks back up and put them in a little box and cart them down the street and see what they say. You don't ask, you don't get, right?

One patch, two patch, three patch, four...

Well, all of the four-patch blocks have been sewn together -- the picture above shows them stacked in their neat little piles. That was a job! I spent a fair amount of time the other day laying out possible combinations of 4x4 blocks but found myself stymied in the end. Hmm... Wheels are turning as I type. I had been thinking I needed to make 4x4 patches and then sew those together, but I'm liking the simplicity of the four-patch blocks juxtaposed as they are in my photograph, perhaps with a little tweaking so that all of the dark patches "climb" in one direction. Hmm...

Obviously the thing to do now is lay them out on my fabulous huge design wall WHICH IS STILL TOTALLY IMAGINARY, thank you very much, I will be laying them out ON THE FLOOR, and count out how many I'd need to make a such-and-such size quilt. Which means I also need to figure out how large a quilt I want to make. Oh, how tedious. But these things must be done, so off I go.

Mishmash: Lost weekend edition

February went by in a flash! Crazy things happened, the likes of which I will not delve into here. The most important thing is, I was happily reunited with my sewing machine and we immediately began with that all-important project of re-covering the ironing board -- without which no other project could proceed. I've had the prissy yellow oh-so-utilitarian print in my stash for over a year now, and the ironing board seemed like the perfect place to put it to use, with a big floppy white bow to hold it in place.



My major project for the month was a scrappy four-patch quilt which is sloppily spilling over into March. I ransacked my "large scrap" bin for pieces I could cut into 3 1/2" selvage to selvage strips, then rummaged through the "small scrap" bin and found shamefully many more such strips, cut and pressed them, and sewed them together in pairs. I'm currently cutting up the paired strips and sewing them into four-patch units. I haven't decided exactly where I'm going to go from there, but I want to make a tied quilt large enough to go on our new queen-sized bed, preferably not too ugly, so stay tuned.

I tried to set myself a "No New Fabric" resolution for the month of February. You can see below how that went for me. I only really had three remnant-shopping trips to Jo Ann's, two of which are represented below, but they were fruitful ones. And I bought some vintage bedsheets and pillowcases which, for all intents and purposes, could not be considered new, could they? And see how lovely? I'm going to make matching pajama pants for K and me out of that blue flowery stripe with the wide trim at the end -- for $3.99 at the Goodwill, who could fault me?



No work at all was done on the craft room during February -- it makes me want to crawl into a closet and shut the door to write that publicly. But I've acquired several new inspirational books to leaf through, that have made me want to continue to take my time gathering thoughts and furnishings for the new room and really make it both my own and truly as functional as it can be. This, however, is no excuse for the sacks of paperwork needing to be taken out and shredded or the bin of photographs to be waded through. I must get on the ball, I must.

The loving house

How did it take me so long to think of this? K's easel has been sitting in the great room being an eyesore for years now, and I've been afraid to slip it out the back door and down the highway to the Goodwill lest I incur her wrath, but now it is a thing of beauty and purpose.

What has changed? Well, that big remnant of white polyester felt that I bought against my better judgement some months ago has finally come into service. I clipped it to the top of the easel and voila! Flannel board! Way cooler than writing on a white board that's been stained with permanent marker, or a black board that's been marred with waxy crayons. K and I (well, mostly I) immediately began cutting shapes out of scrap felt to put up on the board.

The story on the flannel board at the moment is that there is a"loving house" -- because Valentine's Day is coming up, and anyway the scraps are pink and red -- that is guarded by two knights (they look like upended fish to me, but whatever.) I'm not certain what comes next, but that's part of the fun. I will try to find the time to cut out some "surprise" shapes for K when she's not looking today.

Isn't it amazing -- the beautiful dollhouse she got for Christmas, with the fancy expensive dolls and furniture and even tiny clay food, and she wants to play with felt scraps. I'm not saying this in an ironic or bitter way, I'm honestly fascinated at the way children gravitate toward the simplest toys. Even the day after Christmas, she was sailing in a cardboard box boat. Amazing.

My apprentice

Yesterday was my Big Big Clean Out the Sewing Room Day so that I could clear out my craft closet so that we can get on with the process of turning the office upstairs into my craft studio. Unlike most "clean-out" operations of mine, this one did not include getting rid of a lot of junk -- I had done that last summer -- so mostly this was just putting away loose items and repackaging piles that had outgrown their containers. I did, however, decide that I was never going to make a quilt or anything else from lightweight plaid flannel scraps, so I gave a hefty stack of those to K.
This turned out to have delightful ramifications for both of us. For me, most immediately, it gave me over an hour of peace and quiet so I could finish organizing. For her, it gave her something Just Like Mom Does that she could do All By Herself and make satisfying, genuinely usable finished products. She set to work with safety scissors and abandon.

She invented aprons, bibs, dresses, blankets and a cape. Oh -- once she invented the cape it was all over with the "sewing" and she wanted to play Fabric Superhero. D was willing to oblige and took on the persona of a Fabric WonderTwin: "Form of ... CORDUROY!!!"

Today we're going to measure the former craft closet and spend some time at Ikea looking at possibilities for a cart/desk/table that D could use for his desktop computer, so we can move his home base out of the office. It's happening. It's really happening!

Sick day

D stayed home today to take care of K while I slept off what I can only conclude was the tail-end of the flu. I'd been up all night coughing and doing other unpleasant things, and spent most of the day sleeping or staring into space.

I did manage to spend a few hours experimenting with doing some patchwork on the covers of some Moleskine cahier notebooks, ruining four of them and producing one "giftable" one, with another in the works. The idea for these came from Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson and Anna Williams, which has been providing me with creative fodder for the last month or two. It's so satisfying to work with scrap fabric, both for it's "green" appeal and for the pleasure of rooting through the past and visiting old, beloved projects and the people I made them for.

In the middle of finishing up the first notebook, K came home from school and wanted something to do. Having had no responsibilities all day, I was feeling pretty benevolent, so I sat her down with a book of Christmas crafts and suggested she come up with some ideas.

"But I might need help!" she complained.

"But you might have some," I suggested.

She thought about this and started turning pages. She got pretty grandiose about it, and I had to gently redirect her to things we could reasonably do right now. We ended up making pomanders out of clementines and cloves -- which is exactly what I had intended for us to do when I handed her the book. She thoroughly enjoyed herself for about a quarter of a clementine, declaring that this could be our "Mom-and-kid" Christmas tradition. My heart swelled. Of course, about a minute later, she was done. I've saved out the materials so we can work on it again after school today though; I think as long as I'm sitting with her she'll enjoy fiddling with it for fifteen minutes or so.

Not bad for a so-called "day off."