Orca Bay: Out on a Limb, part 1

The old sycamore tree by the back deck has the perfect branch for displaying a finished quilt.  And I am pleased to introduce Orca Bay, finished at last!  It has been since February of 2012 that it has been waiting to be quilted.

 It's somewhat anticlimactic to finish something that has this many pieces in it, that I started working on so long ago.  I'm really pleased with it, though.  Bonnie Hunter's patterns are stunning.  You can find it in her String Fling book.

 You can see the squiggle-loop-star quilting (my easy-quilting trademark) and the new, all-machine-sewn binding with accent flange.  I like that binding! I may do it a lot more now I know how!

 At midrange, the colors really sparkle.

I used some fabric my mom had for the backing, and made up a quick label.  Quarta practically lives in the sycamore tree during the summer, that's why there's a bucket to lift up her books and picnic lunch.  As of today, though, the sycamore tree has several thousand new occupants.  More about them in the next post, part 2.

Yesterday, while I was doing quilt photography, I decided to do a little garden photography too.  This is a clump of Nigella.

Most of the mustard has passed the mustard-greens stage and is working on going to seed.  We tend to let it, and that's why we never need to plant mustard seeds.

The red columbine has made itself comfortable by the back garden for several years now.

The California Poppies like the sunny West side of the garage, where our tomatoes and peppers have the best chance.

Up until today, we mostly had Mason bees and bumblebees in our garden.

I'm not sure about bee varieties, but I think this one was a Mason bee.  He held still long enough for this shot.

Daniel is cleaning out the overgrown perennial garden for me.  The outer part of the triangle is formed by the foundation of an old barn or other outbuilding, from back when our house was part of a working farm.  I've been wanting to clean out all the daffodil bulbs and iris rhizomes for some time, and make it more of a colonial/Victorian herb garden with a limited number of flowers.

 Quarta made "bunny salad" for our dinner.  A salad that looks like something cute is always fun.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

Busy week last week!  I figured out that from Friday the 31 (when I gave the exams) to Friday the 7 (Field Day, when I finished the final grading), I graded about 568 pages, less the pages that students tested out of.  Fortunately I have lots of smart students and I've developed ways of grading efficiently.  Then this week has been inservice, and taking Tertia to the orthodontist yesterday for the marathon session of braces installation.  Here she is posing with her bear.  I think it's sweet how the assistants at the orthodontist all ask about the different animals she brings in each time.  This one is apparently called "Susan" and helps Tertia be a brave princess.

So this morning, my first free day in just about forever, I was determined to finish the quilting on Orca Bay, and I did.  This is the stunning design of Bonnie K. Hunter that was her mystery quilt in 2011, and is now featured in String Fling.  I am excited to get it bound and spread it out for a full photo-op, but until then, here's the only quilting I've done this week!

During inservice and waiting at the orthodontist and dentist office (Daniel had his appointment yesterday too), I have finished turning the heels on Steve's socks!  Yay!  These are the going-on-three-months Farmer McGregor socks with KnitPicks stroll tonal in "Kindling."  I used reinforcement yarn on the first sock and ran out halfway through; then decided to use some leftover black fingering for the rest of the first heel and all of the second.  In the spirit of making do, you understand.  Clearly, I am not a perfectionist knitter.  I put the two socks on 2 different sets of needles after the heels because there are a few points in this complex, twisted stitch pattern where the twisting crosses over from instep to heel, and so two socks at a time on 2 circs is really not practical.  Of course, knitting socks by hand at all is not really practical, but that's beside the point.

Look at this lovely green yarn that I received as a teacher gift from one of my students, whose mother is also a knitter.  Isn't it gorgeous?  It is from The Twice Sheared Sheep, which specializes in reclaiming yarn from thrift store sweaters -- and it's 100% silk, 500 yards of very fine laceweight.

Trying my best to get a closeup to show the fine texture.  I will have to spend some time thinking of something ethereal and green to knit with this.  Thank you so much, Penny and young Mr. N!

Reading: I am still working on Suetonius -- talk about a summer potboiler -- those ancient Roman historians could dish the dirt!

Check out quilting WIPs here, and literary knitting here.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

 The composition book covers are finished!  I used this tutorial by Stitched in Color, and I was inspired by the fact that the graduates I will be giving them to come from Cedar Tree Classical Christian School, for which I made this quilt a few months back:

That quilt sold at our auction, but unfortunately not for as much as I had hoped. (Overall the auction raised quite a bit of money so I'm trying to focus on the positive side).  Still, I'm never tired of making scrappy trees.  The trees on the covers of these notebooks were also inspired by Bonnie K. Hunter's free mug rug tutorial.  Although I didn't really do much more than look at her design and eyeball what size and shape I wanted for the trees.  I've gotten a lot more confident at eyeballing and guesstimating when I make scrappy quilts lately.

 The notebook covers are pretty from the back too, I think.  We have one boy and 3 girl graduates, and the other notebooks were requested by Daniel and Quarta.  I just remember having to keep a journal and turn it in weekly for a couple of my college classes.  They probably do everything by computer now, but I kept thinking how nice it would be to just be able to pick your own unique notebook out of the pile.  Or good for a sketchbook or diary, or whatever.  I enjoyed these little projects and would make more of them.

 I'm somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 way through the quilting of Orca Bay.  Squiggles, loops, and stars in black thread.

And speaking of Bonnie K. Hunter, I was ecstatic to receive the book I ordered from her in the mail yesterday: String Fling: Scrappy, Happy and Loving It!  I own one of her other books; this one focuses on string piecing elements combined with traditional quilt block design for a complete festival of scrappiness.  Orca Bay is one of the featured patterns- of course, I made mine as part of a mystery quilt-along before the book was published.  I am having a lot of fun with quilting rather than knitting at the moment, and even with all the scraps I am using up I still have a lot more.  I have made a small amount of progress on Steve's socks though -- about halfway through the gusset increases.  Poor socks, I just can't get up a head of steam on them.  I really hope I finish them soon, but those twisted stitches are a bit of a drag.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

 Progress on the brown socks is infinitesimally slow.  I did make the first increase row for the gussets.  But I should really have Steve put them on to make sure I guessed right.  Sigh...  I needed to make a therapeutic washcloth this week to overcome the sock ennui.

 

It's that time of the year in my 8th grade Latin class - we are reading Julius Caesar's de Bello Gallico, excerpts.  We just finished the part about the invasion of Britain; interestingly enough, although Henle Latin says it is book 7, it is actually contained in book 4.  My poor students are a bit overwhelmed by what they call Caesar's run-on sentences.  I don't quite have the heart to tell them that Caesar is considered one of the ancient writers with a clear, easily-understandable prose style.  We'll have just enough time left to peek into some of the bits about Vercingetorix, but I'm also quite behind in reading them the stories of the Trojan War, Ulysses, and the Aeneid from Myths of Greece and Rome.  Today I talked about the marks of an epic, and we read the account of Thetis' marriage to Peleus and Eris, the uninvited guest at the wedding.  There seems to be a Disney Princess/ fairytale reference in just about every mythology lesson I cover.

 

 

 Like rabbits, my string blocks are multiplying.  I want to keep making them until my strings can all fit into one container.  I hope my String Fling book comes soon.

And here is Orca Bay.  I got it out from the shelf, along with its intended backing fabric, to motivate myself to get it onto the frame to be quilted.

Linking up to the yarn-along and to WIP Wednesday.

In Which Orca Bay Quilt Top is Finished and Receives Kitty Approval

Two seconds.  That's how long it took Muffball ("Muffin" if you want to be formal) to walk onto the Orca Bay quilt top after I spread it out on the floor to take a look.  I think we both like it.  I know I'm glad it's finally all pieced.  The last borders took several re-dos with a lot of seam ripper action.

Please don't tell me if you see any glaring errors, 'cause I'm not fixing them now!

Kermit approves too. 

See how her paws so neatly frame the cat print? 

Now, I love scrappy.  Scrappy quilts and I get along just fine.  But this is by far the scrappiest scrap-fest of small scrappy bits that I have ever made.  I may have to do a matchy-matchy quilt with big pieces next, just to use different quilting muscles.  But Orca Bay is now a complete top, waiting in the queue to be quilted.  Check out the other Orca Bays over at Quiltville in the link-up party.  It's really quite inspiring that so many ladies from all over the world made this quilt.  They are all gorgeous.

While I was sewing Orca Bay together this last week I made 4 new Farmer's Wife Quilt blocks as leaders-and-enders (that's when you reach the end of a seam and just keep sewing new patches together without lifting the presser foot).

#87 - Star Gardener.  I thought of a gardener in outer space, so I thought this cactus-y fabric looked exotic in that way.

#88 - Star of Hope.

#89 - Steps to the Altar.  I used colors that made me think of my own wedding and bridal bouquet in this.

And #90 - Storm Signal.  I will try to lay out all my Farmer's Wife Blocks on my design wall next week so I can begin to think about sashing choices.  I realize they all have very little in common, but I'm trusting the scrappy vibe to see me through. 

Now that Orca Bay is done, I've got the sports quilt for the Cedar Tree auction to piece a backing for and get on the Megaquilter.  After that I need to quilt my UFO of the month, Aunt Maggie's Quilt.  Not so much regular piecing for a bit, maybe... but we'll see.

I'm also linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, where lots more is going on.

Design Wall Monday and Stash Report - Orca Bay top is almost finished

Orca Bay is on my design wall.  I'm so close to being finished, I considered linking up to Bonnie's final link-up party as well as Judy L.'s Design Wall Monday, but I'm hoping to actually finish the border for the top in the next few days and link up then.  That's when I'll calculate the yardage used in the whole top, for next week's stash report.  I was struggling a little bit with those long seams and stretchy-edged string blocks.  There are a few spots that I should really rip out and work on getting points to come a little closer to matching.  But it's so busy with all the tiny pieces, I'm not sure I'll bother.  I'm just not that much of a perfectionist.

 

For stash reports I'm only counting quilting stash at the point of a finished quilt top or backing, and I use the figure 1 yard of fabric = 1584 square inches to help me calculate it.  So I'll multiply length by width of the final quilt top (in inches) to get the total number of square inches, and then divide by 1584.  And I'll probably add a yard extra to cover all those seam allowances in the string blocks!  But with all that said, there was no fabric stash used up this week.

 

Knitting yarn yardage is calculated at the end of a project, too.  I have a new shawl finished (but not blogged yet), so I'll include that in this week's tally.

 

Stash Report

 

Fabric used this week: 0 yards

Fabric used year to date: 7.4 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 0 yards
Net used for 2012: 7.4 yards
Yarn used this week: 450 yards
Yarn used year to date: 864 yards
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 492 yards (all handspun, not purchased)
Net used for 2012: 372 yards

WIP Wednesday and January UFO Check-In

Judy L. at Patchwork Times is having a challenge to finish up 12 languishing UFOs in 2012; January's number was 5, which on my list was to prepare half of the applique pieces for the setting blocks of the 1996 Piecemakers' Calendar quilt.  And I prepared all of them and have started the long applique handwork process which will probably take another year, so I'm declaring victory for January.  The other "half", when it's chosen, will be to go back and prepare applique or embroidery to complete the actual main blocks.  Number 1 is the pick for February; on my list that means I will have to machine quilt and bind my Aunt Maggie's quilt top, which I don't have a picture of yet... it predates my blog, but it's not nearly as old and neglected as the Piecemaker's quilt.  It feels so good to get working on something that has sat around for so long.  Seriously... 3 kids have been born since then, and one is in High School!

It's WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced, and I do have a few progress photos of my more current projects.

Orca Bay: a tiny bit of progress, but it's now hanging out on a new, more spacious design wall!

Crumbs: signed by all the school students, quilted, binding machine-stitched on and now being hand stitched to the back.  ALMOST done and ready to be signed over to Cedar Tree for the auction.  This is just a teaser photo; hopefully tomorrow will be the big reveal.

My other auction quilt, working title "Play Ball!": top finished this week.  It's about 65"x85" and will go onto the Megaquilter next, as soon as I piece a back for it.  I like how Bilbo acts casual, as if he's not plotting how to jump up on the quilt as I take the picture!

In knitting, I finished my Nautilina shawl, the second shawl of my 12-shawl challenge, this morning but still need to weave in the yarn ends and block it, so here's another teaser photo.  I really loved working with this yarn and used every last inch.  It's my handspun from a batt by Butterfly Girl Designs.

No progress this week on Farmer's Wife blocks, or cleaning my sewing area.  A tiny bit of spinning went on yesterday.  But mostly this week it's been grading, grading, grading.  And I have laryngitis, so teaching was real interesting today!

Design Wall Monday - New Design Wall! ... and stash report

I think I'll keep up with the combined Design Wall Monday and Stash Report; both link back to Judy L. at Patchwork Times.

I have a new design wall!  The old one was just not big enough to see a whole quilt at a glance, and the string between two nails was not sturdy enough to make it any bigger.  I took a long piece of half-round molding we had in the garage and supported it between the two window frames, 68" apart, with a nail on either end to secure it. 

Then I zig-zagged a few more strips of old batting onto what I already had and staple-gunned the batting to the molding.  It hangs flat and is big enough for Orca Bay, which hasn't really grown much since last week, I've been too busy with other things.  I tend to make almost all bed-sized quilts, and it's a real pain laying them out on the floor when they get too big for the design wall.  Now I have a bit more space to play with.  I did cut a hole in the batting to reach the light switches for my sewing area -- I used to have to reach behind the "curtain".   I'm hoping to get Orca Bay all together soon.

Stash report:

Fabric used this week: 4.15 yards - Sports quilt top and binding for Crumbs

Fabric used year to date: 7.4 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 0 yards
Net used for 2012: 7.4 yards

Yarn used this week: 0 yards
Yarn used year to date: 414 yards
Yarn added this week: 492 yards (handspun light fingering BFL)
Yarn added year to date: 492 yards (all handspun, not purchased)
Net used for 2012: -78 yards

WIP Wednesday: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

My daughters recently heard about a little ritual that was supposed to produce a snow day off of school: you sleep with your pajamas inside out, mismatched socks, and a spoon under your pillow, and the next day there will be no school.  They tried it Sunday night and it didn't work (for the Cedar Tree kids: Tertia had no school because of the MLK holiday).  But I think I may have come up with a better trigger: finish and block a shawl using Madeline Tosh Merino Light:

It was really more of a slush day, but I was glad of it because I woke up with the same headache that never went away yesterday.  I did have to protect the camera from the drips when I took it outside.

That was my 414 yards of yarn for this year!  I finished with about 6 yards left in the skein.  So what do you think -- have I hit on the key to causing a snow day?  It happened this way last year, too!  I would be more than happy to knit with TML lots more from now on if it really works!

I made two more Farmer's Wife blocks this week: this is #83, Spider Web.  You may remember I am using something vintage, thrifted, or repurposed in every block of this quilt; the blue stripe is from an old dress shirt of my son's, and the green is scraps I found at the Goodwill outlet bins.

Block #84, Spool.  The tan has been in my scrap bag a long time, I think since I stuffed a bag with scraps at the store that Quilter's Newsletter Magazine used to run in Colorado... so at least 15 years ago.  The pink is leftover from a patchwork dress I made at least 10 years ago.  I think.

I've started sewing the pieces into rows for the Orca Bay quilt.  It goes a bit slowly and I have to be careful with the stretchy edges of the string blocks.  But it's coming along.  It's too big for my design wall: I should really do something about making my design wall big enough for the typical big quilts I usually  make.

My Crumbs signature quilt is still at school, waiting for one last Kindergartner's signature and a few staff members.  Then I'll see about getting it on the frame and quilting it in time for the auction.

Here's another quilt possibility for the auction: leftover sports-themed fabric donated by my Mother-in-law, very simple 8" blocks.  I have almost enough to make a twin-size quilt.  It would be a nice counterbalance for the bright pink Stars quilt.

Oh, and since some are weighing in about the SOPA bill and how to stop online piracy without hurting free speech rights, here's what I think: I think we should stop piracy by going after the pirates, not after successful businesses.