Two Finished Quilts! And other quilty updates

I haven't been blogging much in the past few months, but I have been quilting. There has been an attempt to revive the quilting group that meets at my church, but we're not sure if that will take quite yet. Still, I demonstrated a basic, Snowball 9-Patch quilt pattern that is very user-friendly. Daniel needed a quilt for his full-size mattress that he has now, so I dug into my scraps and came up with this; pieced in a week or two, quilted in a few days:

The longer I stay in this quilting hobby, the scrappier my quilts get. The weather cooperated for quilt photography outside today, but it was starting to sprinkle by the time I was done. This will need to be boxed up and mailed to Daniel soon.

 This is Allietare! The mystery quilt from two years ago, and probably my favorite of all the ones I've done so far. It felt wonderful to get this one quilted. I used the same squiggle-loop-star overall pattern that I've settled on as the easiest for me to use on the Megaquilter.

 I really like that scalloped border and binding!

 This is a queen-sized quilt, so will probably eventually end up on our bed.

Celtic Solstice, a mystery quilt from even farther back, maybe 2013, is on the Megaquilter now. I'm having a few issues with bumpiness on the carriage rails; I think the plastic tracks are abrading and need to be replaced. I'm doing a wavy border and outline quilting on the wild geese, and then squiggle-loop-star in the central area. After this, I still have at least 4 tops to quilt, 2 of them Quiltville mysteries! I'm going to do my best to crank them out.

 Here is my design wall with my Frugal Patch color study. I can't remember whether I blogged about this much, but it's a project I have had in mind for 10 years. I spent a lot of time several months ago cutting jillions of rectangles for the "paths" of colorwash, and the squares for the diamond "pavement" squares. My basic idea is to fade in rainbow order along the paths, light and dark, with the diamonds being a complementary color to the paths, although there will be a few surprises. And the background of the diamonds will be neutrals from white through beige through gray/brown/navy/black.

 I did a lot of fussy rearranging of the dark blues in the sample block, and decided I needed to just piece them into pairs and arrange from there. Hopefully that will make it easier.

Here are several of my warm-color diamond patches. I'm really curious to see how this will turn out. Sometime soon I need to decide what size and how many blocks to make for the quilt.

Quilting update and Stash Report

So yes, I have not been blogging as frequently as in years gone by. But this year I have recovered a bit of the will to stitch, and I am modestly proud of progress made in both quilting and knitting.

The Farmer's Wife Quilt (of many years' duration) is now off the frame, and I chose to put Allietare on, of my backlog of tops needing quilting. Rather than the fussy feathers and custom-quilting each block I used for the Farmer's Wife, I am doing my standard, very do-able "squiggle-loop-star" quilting pattern, which goes quite fast.

In fact, if I hadn't broken off for spring break I would probably be finished by now. It's a good thing I'm not, because I'm still stitching the binding down on the Farmer's Wife. Tonight we watched two episodes of Man in the High Castle and it's close. 

 Another hour of tv watching will probably do it. I'm going to go ahead and count the yardage for the backing of Allietare, and the binding of Farmer's wife, in my ongoing tally of fabric used, to keep myself accountable for using things up rather than buying new. I'm guesstimating 8 yards total for backing one, and adding binding and hanging sleeve to the other.

 I haven't tallied any yarn yet this year, and it's time to start, since I bought some recently, and finished these three projects.

Stash Report:

Fabric tallied this week: 8 yards
Fabric used year to date: 16 yards
Fabric added year to date: 0 yards
Net fabric used: 16 yards

Yarn used year to date: 900 yards
Yarn purchased year to date: 1700 yards
I'm in the red with net 800 yards added, but I hope to finish an old UFO soon to change that.

Let's see if I can keep up with the creative energy I've rediscovered so far this year. It feels very good to be making crafts again and I have at least the desire to de-stash, organize and have fun in the process.

Updates

I would need several days of blogging to catch up on all that I've missed, so I'll just share some of the highlights from our mid-January snowstorm and the sewing I have been working on. I'm sure there will be more left for a randomday post tomorrow.

 About 13 inches of heavy snow in 12 hours tested the bendy-ness of our birch trees.

 We took a walk across the street. In all this year there have been 8 snow days for Tertia and 9 for Quarta. They will have extra days in the summer.

Trying to shake off the birches a bit.

After an hour or so outside it was nice to come inside and sew. I monopolized the family room floor for a day or so. The snow turned to freezing rain and Portland shut down; I just kept sewing.

 Outside the gutters overflowed with freezing rain and the icicles just got longer and longer. The back porch was covered with an inch of very slippery ice... we didn't go out that way.

 I finished the En Provence quilt top and the sun came out just in time for this photo shoot on the old sycamore tree. The front fence would have been too snowy.

This is embarrassing... I have a rather extreme backlog of the 2013-2016 mystery quilts now waiting to be quilted. Plus a few extra...

 Front to back, En Provence, String Star, Allietare. On the frame (for more than three years!), Farmer's Wife. Not pictured, Celtic Solstice and Grand Illusion. This was the picture I took to goad myself on to start machine quilting Farmer's Wife again. It worked! (Pictures of that maybe another time).

I enoyed the mystery quilt this year: it managed to give me the kick start I needed to at least attempt to get back into my neglected quilt corner. My everyday Viking machine is in working order this year, although it just suffered breakage of the "accessory box" and now only functions in free-arm mode. I hopped back into the APQ quilt-along of a low-tone Burgoyne Surrounded, also from about 3 years ago. I've been cutting many strips for my Scrap User's boxes and binge-watching Call the Midwife, and I may very well have yet another finished top if I keep up at this rate. I hope I do, and I hope I manage to get some much-needed house cleaning and organization done as well. And knitting, and spinning. It's really quite amazing what is possible when I'm no longer teaching every day. In a small way, of course... I'm not claiming the house is neat or anything! And there is no denying I need to have some serious purges of excess stuff.

In previous year's I've tried to do various things to keep me accountable to work on UFOs and WIPs. I haven't been blogging enough to make that realistic this year, but I will try to do periodic updates on progress. It's what I originally enjoyed about blogging years ago, and it gives me an incentive to keep on. So here's to keeping on!

After Christmas, Mystery Quilt Progress

Christmas was great, and went by fast. We were able to get someone at church to snag a picture of the whole family:

 And Steve took one of the kids. That's pretty much it for family photos this year, everyone is in such fast transition. We only have the boys for a few more days, and it may be quite some time before Daniel gets back.

It has been harder to get multiple blog posts in a week this year, so excuse me for sneaking in family photos. But for some reason, Christmas season also kickstarts my lagging quilting and knitting, and I like to document them on the blog. First up is the En Provence Mystery quilt, and I'm linking up to Bonnie Hunter's blog with lots of other people sharing their progress: Part 5 Link-up

 I was able to get clue 5 done pretty easily. My purple stash is pretty well depleted at this point.

 I have the pieces for the mystery quilt in a small storage box, and since I finished this week early, I decided to work on some other sewing projects that had been lying around.

 Everything except the borders of Allietare had been done since last January, so I finally trimmed the edges and put the borders on. I think it's just a stunning quilt pattern, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

You can't see it, but Orca Bay is underneath it on our bed. That was the first mystery quilt I did and I've been hooked ever since. This is the sixth straight year I've joined in. If you are happening to hear about this for the first time, you have a chance to get the clues for the current mystery still, at the website linked above. And you want to grab them while they are freely available, because Bonnie takes them down at some point so they can be included in a future book. I never thought I'd enjoy doing mystery quilts so much, but these are really quite addictive. My only concern is that I've fallen way behind in getting them quilted.

The other thing Bonnie got me hooked on is organizing my scraps. I still haven't perfected it, but I have been cutting strips of various commonly used sizes as I have different fabrics out, and today it was time to organize my 1.5" strips. Here's how they looked midway through. The box was completely overflowing when I started.

 Here's me laying them out in color groups,

And here they all are, fitting into the same bin neatly with room to spare! It made me really happy to get this done today! I'm partway through with the 2.5" strips as well. The 2" and 3.5" strips had to be organized to do the previous steps of the mystery quilt.

One other bit of sewing got done today. It was sad, considering the untimely death of Carrie Fisher, but I threaded up my machine with black and went ahead on these Star Wars boxers for Steve. I had wrapped the fabric for him, with the promise to sew it up after Christmas. Got it all done today, start to finish.

 And both boys were very happy with their handknit socks... they put them on right after unwrapping them.

So they fit, the boys like them, and it looks like I could knit socks and sew boxer shorts and my menfolk would be happy for Christmas presents and birthday presents. Seems like a pretty good deal to me! I still wish I could figure out that trick like they do in Harry Potter to make the needles knit by themselves, though. It takes me about a month to knit a pair of socks. 

Allietare and Other Quilt Progress

Amongst the end-of-term teacher stress and exam grading, (you can see above what happens when I walk away from it for a few minutes) I found some time to work on quilts this week.  Allietare is seamed together, the center part with all the blocks, and I just have to determine the fabrics I'll use in the borders.

We had scattered sun a few times on Saturday. This was one of those times.

I think I've said this, but I really love the mix of colors in this quilt. And I've seen a lot of different color combinations, and it really seems to look good in any color combo.  Check out some of the other Allietare quilts at Bonnie's linkup.  Some people already have theirs quilted and bound! 

This above is my current top contender for the narrow inner (gold) and wider outer (red) borders.  The red is one that didn't work out for my Country Stars quilt, and I'd be glad for it to find a home in this quilt.  I also have enough of that really light, subtle gray for either an inner border or the binding.

Not quite so sure about this lighter yellow (the same one I used on the narrow border in Grand Illusion, ironically)...

 The only black fabric I have that there would be enough of is this yardage... but I think it has too much brown in it and would take away from some of the liveliness of the colors.

And then this.  I really am leaning more to the red.  But let me know if you have any opinions on the matter.  It should come together relatively fast once I make the decision.

And of course, I have a charming helper! She's there right now.

I have the rest of the January blocks finished for the 365 challenge.  I love making a variety of sampler blocks, but I'm not completely convinced about the 3" size of these.  We'll see if I can come back and catch up on February's blocks after this week of teacher work is done.

Here is the one finish I have for the year:

It's a simple flannel baby quilt.  4.5" squares, with a 2" border, backed with another piece of flannel but no batting.  This makes it an ideal weight for swaddling a baby, or for a toddler to drag around and wrap up in. I sewed it around the border with right sides together, leaving just enough space to flip it right side out and then topstitch around the edge.  This avoids having to bind it, and it really doesn't require much more than utilitarian quilting along a few ditches.  I have enough flannel squares for at least 4 more of these, but maybe without the border.  My mother-in-law made several of this basic kind for my kids, and it's really a nice, cozy gift to have on hand.  And will use up some fabric I no longer want to keep in my sewing room.

I'm also linking up to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday and
Stash Report:

Quilting Fabric:
Used this week: 2 yards for the baby quilt.  Maybe next week I'll have the Allietare top done!
Used year to date: 14 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 3 yards (+ 1 sheet)
Net fabric used year to date: 11 yards

Knitting yarn:
Used this week: 0 yards
Used year to date: 0 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: undetermined amount from sweater (from Goodwill) that needs to be unraveled
Net yarn used year to date: 0 yards

Design Wall Monday and Stash Report

 Let's be completely up-front about it... when it comes to putting together a bed-size quilt like Allietare, my design wall is just not big enough.  You need the family room floor, and you need to vacuum first if there's been a sleepover last weekend.  So after I came home from teaching today I unpinned the sampling of blocks from my design wall and started laying them out on the floor.  Then I decided I really had to change into jeans, because there's a fair amount of crawling around and rearranging.  This is what I came up with, trying to keep a pleasant variety of both reds and golds throughout.

I love the scrappiness of this quilt -- I decided midway in that I was going to go broader in my use of reds and golds if I had to be more restrained in my blacks and neutrals, and I'm glad I did.  It makes the overall effect very lively, to have such a wide variety of tones.  Including those red/white/black prints that wanted to play! They jump out and say "notice me", but in this quilt, that's going to be okay!  I double checked to make sure no two gold squares were matchy with each other at the corners, and I think I caught them all (is anybody else bothered by scrappy quilts that aren't scrappy enough?)  I don't think that will be a problem for me with this one!  Now to find time to stack and label the rows from NW to SE, and I can begin the sewing together.

I'm linking up to Patchwork Times for this. And while I'm at it,

STASH REPORT!  It has been about a year since I've tried this, and SOMETHING needs to be done to keep me accountable.  Plus, I finished the Grand Illusion top Saturday, so that means I can count stash used.

Stash Report:

Quilting Fabric:
Used this week: 12 yards (according to Bonnie's estimate at the beginning, I'm claiming it!)
Bought this year to date: 3 yards (3 Goodwill shirts, already deboned)
Net fabric used year to date: 9 yards

Knitting yarn:
Used this week: 0 yards
Bought year to date: undetermined amount from sweater (from Goodwill) that needs to be unraveled
Net yarn used year to date: -? yards

I will try to do these updates at least monthly, and get my consumption of fabric and yarn up so that my cupboards can be more neatly organized. Yay for a new year and a new start on organization!

Works in Progress and a Reality Check

It was one of those "if you give a mouse a cookie" moments.  Although I still haven't been blogging much, I have been chipping away at various quilting projects in an attempt to get back to having something to blog about.  There is Allietare, with all the blocks finished and needing the setting triangles and borders:

There is Grand Illusion, which looks like this at the moment:

You'll notice I ran out of the gold constant fabric that shows up in the squares, and I had to substitute the gold stripe for the inner borders.  That's because, when I was playing catch-up last month, I mis-read one of the clues and I made 25 of each kind of 4-patch, instead of 25 of the one and just 4 of the other:

That means I have a lot of "orphan blocks" to use in a future project, and also I used too much of the original gold and had to use the other gold. But I actually like the stripe better, so it's all good. There was getting to be a large pile of fabric on my worktable as all these different scrappy quilts piled up, and I hadn't put any of the old fabrics away yet because I wasn't sure I was finished with them (and this was taken a few weeks before Christmas!):

But! I never met a scrappy quilt-along that I didn't want to jump into, and some of the chatter on the Quiltville Facebook page led me to the 365 Challenge from Australia.  The idea is to make a block every day, and the ones they were starting with were easy and cute.  All 3" squares so far.  I decided to go scrappy blue and green, and added that to the mix (Allietare red, gold, black and neutral; Grand Illusion green, pink and aqua; and the flannel baby quilts and string quilts I had been working on as well).  Here's the first 19 blocks:

 (Yes, that's Dr. McCoy in block 6, scraps from some boxers I made with Star Trek fabric).

There's no denying they are awfully cute little blocks.  But little! Did I mention they are only 3"? I have no guarantee that all the different fabrics will work together, but I did make the Farmer's Wife Quilt a few years ago (even though it's STILL on the quilting frame) and that all worked out.  I certainly am not worried about running out of blues or greens.  But I'm not sure whether I'll stick with it all the way.  I think it's a sampler quilt that wants to be more matchy-matchy than I am necessarily willing to be. It's kind of cool, though, to be able to do tomorrow's block today because it's already tomorrow in Australia.  But I discovered, in one of those necessary reality check kind of moments, that the huge mess of scraps, bits of fabric, and multiple projects in my sewing area, had made me lose my triangle ruler.  So I went looking for it.  The more I looked, the more it wasn't there, so I resolved to take the necessary action and remove all the mess from my sewing counter and put it on the floor of the family room:

 Um, yes. I need to deal with all that.  I have bins for strips that are 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3.5", and bins for some special fabric collections, and bins for strings and squares and bricks.

 First I had to declutter around the sewing machine, and vaccum the lint and dust it nicely.  I raised enough dust that I have been suffering from bad allergies for the last few hours, and that's why I'm blogging now instead.

I'm happy to report that my cutting counter has now also been cleaned and dusted.  I'm using it as a staging area for cutting up the rest of my flannel into squares (I'm getting out of the flannel storage business by making a bunch of utility baby quilts that I'll eventually give away). Oh, but I did also find my triangle ruler -- it was under some of the other mess on the cutting counter, and I did go ahead and make tomorrow's 3" block. The clean-up of the family room floor is going forward; most of my fat quarters are now put away, as well as yardage. There are about 4 bags or bins of scraps that need to be cut into usable smaller strips, strings, or squares.  That's a lot, but I can manage it if I work steadily.  And throw out some of the scraps I don't like anymore.  I've been discovering quilt projects that have been neglected for a long time. Some of them I don't like anymore.  I will eventually have to make some decisions about priorities.  Maybe I'll get together a UFO list for the year sometime.  But I have learned one thing for sure:

Apparently 4 active quilt projects going at once is the point I start to lose things.  And the warning sign is when your cat starts sleeping on your fabric pile.  She has had to move:

From on top of the lovely sweater I bought at Goodwill to unravel for yarn, Muffball rebukes me for taking on too much at once.  I know, I know.  I think I'll go to bed.  Tomorrow's block is already done.