Wake Up, Sleepy Blog!

Yes, I've been neglecting the blog for the past two months. No post November, I guess.

There was a quilt finish during the time I've been away:

"Tone it Down" was from an APQ quiltalong several years back based on the low-volume Burgoyne Surrounded quilt in the Feb. 2014 issue. Designed by Lissa Alexander, I believe.

 I just loved all the pastels and bright colors against the low-volume backgrounds, and I used many of my vintage sheets and some of my reclaimed shirtings. It was a fiddly quilt, where I laid out each block with dozens of different fabrics before piecing it, but it was a completely happy quilt to piece.

 It's 75x93", seems to fit a full size bed pretty well.

 I used Bonnie Hunter's Scrap User's System idea of 10.5" blocks pieced together for the backing. I had cut a big stack of fabrics up into these sizes and used them all up for this backing and the one I pieced to go with my Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt, which will maybe be the next one to go on the quilting machine.

 I now have three finished quilts that I plan to give to my sisters and step-mother this month. En Provence above...

And Grand Illusion. That's three quilts quilted this fall and I'm pretty happy about that. Of course, it's just in time for the start of the next Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt-along, "Frolic", which you can find at the link. I've been hooked on these since 2011 and Orca Bay. It and Allietare are still on my bed, I gave away Easy Street, Celtic Solstice and soon the two above, and On Ringo Lake and Good Fortune are waiting to be quilted.

 Frolic is supposed to evoke the happy feeling of a field of Texas wildflowers under a clear aqua sky. I have a lot of scraps in the blue colorways, which I think of as "China blue." They are blues, light and dark, with just a hint of heading to the purple end of the spectrum.

 "Framboise" is the rasberry color that makes this quilt pop. I don't have a lot of fuchsia pinks in my stash and since the three quilts just finished all had pink in them, I wanted to make a less obviously girly quilt... so I am probably going for closer to "cranberry" or "cherry" or "watermelon" with a bit of "burgundy wine" mixed in, but I'm not opposed to a bit of pink. All of my reds have to not be leaning toward orange, but maybe a bit toward purple.

 I have plenty of greens in that yellow-leaning, grass-green shade. I am a little short of aquas. I love the little skull and crossbones on that one but I'm not sure how appropriate it would be. I do want to use what I have, but that is the one color in the mix I am tempted to supplement. I thought about changing the colors, but decided to go with Bonnie's.

Here is so far on Clue #1. Lots of cute little 4-patches. They are so fun to make! I do love a variety of scraps in every quilt I make. I am trying to cut an extra strip or two for my Scrap User's System every time I have to cut a piece of fabric. That way I can use up some of the smaller and older pieces in my stash and replenish the variety in my strips. And if I impulsively decide to start a new quilt, I go to those strip boxes first. Of course, that does mean the quilting process is messy and there are scraps ALL OVER my sewing area!

That's the news on the quilting front! I'll be linking up to Bonnie's show-and-tell post on Monday when it goes live. You can check out what other quilters are doing with this pattern, and join the Frolic festivities!

Quilt Finish: Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt

Grand Illusion, the mystery quilt from 2014, is now finished! I gave it a little airing after the last of the binding was stitched on. The piecing on this started after Thanksgiving of 2014 and finished sometime in 2016, and then the top waited around for three years to be quilted. I am trying to kick out some of my quilt backlog.

I love how vintage the colors make this look. It reminds me of the tile-work in the MAP South bathroom at college, built in the 1930's and more elegant than your typical college dormitory.

 My quilts have been getting steadily more scrappy every year.

It's 88" square, queen sized, backed with a wide backing I bought at Joann's, and has a label and everything. Binding took me a long while with all the going to camps the last month, but it is all done now. Maybe I can find a family member who needs a queen-sized quilt. I have a few too many.

I enjoy hanging out quilts for photography, but the clothesline isn't quite tall enough. Also, glad I did this before the weather abruptly changed over the weekend and it has gotten rather cool and wet.

Yay! for finishing things. The 2015 mystery, En Provence, is now on the frame.

 I didn't get far today, but I used up the remainder of the thread in the bobbin that was left from the previous quilt. My pattern will be squiggle-loop-flower, which I did on the Easy Street way back when.

So far I have two different kinds of flowers. But I didn't really have the energy to get into it very far today.

Back-Blogging: Machine Quilting Update

More back-blogging today. Last time I talked about my machine quilting situation, I was upset with the cat...

who did this to the stitch regulator while the machine was dis-assembled for other maintenance. The "Quilter's Cruise Control" that came with the machine set-up 11 years ago would cost $500 to replace. That is not going to happen, at least not for some time.

This speed switch also came with the set-up. It would only cost $70 to replace, because it doesn't regulate stitch length. Basically, it is a replacement for the foot pedal, with a dial to adjust the sewing speed once you click the switch. So I set it up and loaded "Grand Illusions" onto the frame.

Grand Illusions was the 2014-15 Quiltville mystery, and one of my backlog of quilts needing to be quilted.

 I determined to push through and learn how to use the new (to me) switch setup, despite the lack of a computer brain to regulate the length of the stitches. At least it was easier to set up. And really, once I figured a good setting for the speed for me, the quilting went smoothly. There is only me regulating how long or short the stitches are, but I've had years of practice and it's not that bad. I decided to stick with squiggle-loop-star, easy on the stars, for this first quilt.

 About a quarter of the way in, the cheap plastic cover of the on-off switch (center) cracked and popped off. I had to disassemble the switch to find the plastic bits that had fallen inside. It's roughly the size and shape of a push-button on a ball-point pen. Now you know why this is so much cheaper! Still overpriced at $70. I went to the hardware store to see if this was a standardized part I could easily replace. It wasn't. The employee I spoke to advised a pencil eraser cut to fit and glued on with a dab of superglue.

What I used instead was a wooden dowel with an old rubber thingy that snugs onto it. I'm still thinking about the dab of superglue to attach it, but at least now when it jostles and bounces out, it doesn't break and fall through. Analog solutions for the win!

I finished quilting Grand Illusion in one day, even with the trip to the hardware store and fixing up the dummy switch. It requires more concentration, but it's so cumbersome to stop and start that you push through and it gets done quicker. I'll give the final quilt show-and-tell in the next post, but I was pleased that quilting is still possible. Maybe in my next quilt I will try a few more fancy figures.

The Airing of Quilt Tops

The Megaquilter is disassembled, and I successfully put cut the track segments needed to replace the worn ones on the carriage.

They are now inserted into their grooves and the carriage is back on its tracks, which aren't worn enough to need replacement yet. But I haven't put the machine itself back on the carriage yet. It's still sitting on the round table in the family room where all the stuff gets put. I've stitched a bit with it to put it through its paces, and I think I'm almost ready to put it back on the carriage now and load another quilt.

I made this cute little thread-holder on July 4, in patriotic colors. It's replacing an old brown-paper lunch bag that was held on with masking tape. I love how it looks like a pair of suspenders!

This is how it will hang from the carriage assembly. It's very easy to snip threads and reach back and put them in there when I am having a marathon quilting session.

Also on July 4, I hung out the finished Celtic Solstice on the clothesline. Then I decided I needed to see all my quilt tops awaiting quilting. I definitely need a kick start on getting some tops finished.

I didn't have enough clothesline. These are the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilts I haven't quilted yet. Left to right are Good Fortune (last year), On Ringo Lake (year before that), En Provence (year before that), and Grand Illusion (2 years before that).

 I tried the panorama feature, but it came out kind of weird. I HAVE finished four of the mystery quilts since I started doing them: Allietare (2015), Celtic Solstice (2013), Easy Street (2012) and Orca Bay (2011)

 I took a close-up of On Ringo Lake.

 I have two tops that are not Quiltville mysteries.

 The Tone it Down quilt was the APQ quiltalong a few years ago. It's enjoying another round of popularity on Instagram, but I've had this top finished for a few years. It's a Burgoyne Surrounded block, but in scrappy low-volume fabrics.

 And this is one I've been saving for maybe the longest... I call it Country Stars and it was inspired by a quilt I saw years ago in a Lake Oswego quilt shop.

Photobombing provided by Quarta.

So I need to get some backings ready and just dive in to quilt these.

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!

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!

Randomday - With an Actual Quilt Finish

This week we were blessed with back-to-back phone calls from our two college sons.  Peter called to report on how his classes are going, and let us know he is joining the crew team.  Exciting news for him and a new sport to pick up.  He is finding his way around the U.W. campus and his room has ended up being a single, which is fine with him.  He's taking classes toward a business major, including one on the hospitality industry, and two music classes.  He missed a lot of social opportunities by coming in as a freshman just this semester instead of in the fall, but I'm sure he'll be making it up in no time.  Daniel is in his final semester at Grove City, taking an honors English seminar and slated to write a seemingly impossible number of words per day, and figure out his future plans in the space in between.  The house has been quieter since they have been gone, and cooking for only 4 is strange.

Tertia's theater class put on a play this week: Cafe Rio, a series of vignettes from larger works on the theme of how theater addresses social justice issues.  So they had an opening scene from "Cabaret," a French Resistance scene, a bit from Anne Frank and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a bit about the arrest of Alan Turing for homosexuality, a scene from Anouilh's Antigone, a scene from Tesich's On the Open Road, and then Tertia's scene... she had no speaking part but was a background walker in a scene from "Mr. Universe," a play about two drag queens in New Orleans.  I'm not sure how it portrayed social justice issues, but Tertia walked her little heart out in the background and had a fine time doing it.  

Quarta's friend G. came over yesterday evening for a sleepover; they watched the Star Wars episodes they hadn't watched the last time (6, 1, 2, and they are in the midst of 3 as I write), with some breaks for Target runs, frozen yogurt, sleeping, making makeup out of Crayola crayons, and doing their nails.

I've been following the East Coast blizzard news with interest; my brother Andy was planning on making his annual bus trip to the March for Life but it was cancelled and he is enjoying a snowy weekend at home in Virginia instead; I hear there are several busloads stranded on the PA turnpike, and it reminds me of the March for Life of 1989 when I was in a similar bus during a similar storm.

 And in a little time in my sewing nook today, I made my first finish of a quilt (top) in 2016... and 2015 as well, for that matter.  Here is Grand Illusion.

As Tim Gunn from Project Runway would say, "It's a lot of look."  Busy in a very nice, mid-century way.  It reminds me of my Grandma Maffett, her greens and blues, her black and white tile floors, and her favorite pink flowers. The individual fabrics are really whimsical and varied, though, which is part of what makes this type of scrappy quilt so fun for me to make.  Now let's see if I can get Allietare together.  And get some of these tops quilted.

Gotta go and watch the final lightsaber battle.

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.