I decided to take a spur-of-the-moment half day of vacation, today. While sitting at work, this morning, I kept feeling the need to do some sewing. It was a powerful urge.
I accomplished quite a bit!
I managed to make and attach the binding for The Purple People Eater quilt.
The method that I use comes, mostly, from Red Pepper Quilts binding tutorial. However, I do attach my binding before I trim away any excess backing and batting, as you can see from that picture. Once the binding is sewn to the quilt front, I trim off the excess. This time, I was successful at attaching the binding to the back by using the sewing machine, as in the tutorial. Previous attempts were not so successful. Stay tuned, tomorrow, for pictures of the finished quilt. It’s in the dryer, right now, getting its crinkly goodness on!
I also cut pieces for a new quilt that I’ve begun. A few months ago, I stopped into a quilt shop in Lexington, Kentucky and bought a Hoffman Bali Pop pre-cut strip set. This set is all batiks and is in the Mocha Mint colorway. It really caught my eye. When looking for patterns and quilt ideas, I ran across the Tradewinds Quilt. Over the past few days, while waiting on fabric to arrive for other projects, I decided to start on this one. I’ve pieced and cut all of the strips. This quilt will, likely, take a back burner to at least three other projects with deadlines before the summer.
Finally, I began cutting pieces for one of those deadline projects, today. This is #3 in order, but it is the only one that I have all of the fabric for, right now. I am using Elizabeth Hartman’s, of Oh, Fransson!, Nine-Patch Lattice Quilt tutorial and the fabric that she partnered with Fabricworm to provide. This quilt isn’t exactly a surprise, but it is unlikely that I’ll make many public posts about this project until it is delivered. For unofficial updates, check my Flickr photostream. Here is a teaser, though!
This afternoon, I finished quilting the Purple People Eater Quilt. Tomorrow, I’ll buy some black fabric for binding and I’ll, hopefully, complete it by next weekend. I plan to attach the binding to the front by machine and then hand-stitch it to the back during the week. I can sit in the living room with The Husband and do this during the week.
Once I finished the quilting, I started playing around. I was going to try some free motion quilting, but I think I lack the proper tools for that. Instead, I played with some stitches on my machine. There are about eleventy-billion different options. I have no idea what I’d use some of them for. However, here is a small test swatch.
Click through to see my notes on Flickr.
It was usually at this time of the year, when I worked at a CPA firm, that every 15 minutes was painstakingly logged as I kept track of billable hours. This was our busiest season, of course, with Americans being so afraid of doing their own taxes. Now that I’m out of that job and into one much less seasonal and all my time is my employer’s rather than a client’s, I’ve gotten out of the habit of tracking time. At the beginning of 2010, I decided to start keeping a log of my crafting time. Here is January’s craft time rewind:
| 1/1/10 | 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM | Modern Tradition January Block |
| Listening to Pandora – Ben Folds Station, Postal Service Station | ||
| 1/5/10 | 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM | Modify Tradition Quilt Along, extra blocks |
| 1/18/10 | 5:00 AM | Craft Room Cleanup |
| 5:30 AM – 10:30 AM | Cutting pieces for Purple People Eater Quilt | |
| Laying out rows | ||
| Piecing (3 rows completed) | ||
| 1:45 PM – 4:30 PM | Piecing | |
| 1/23/10 | 10:00 AM – 10:15 AM | Piecing Purple People Eater Quilt |
| 11:00 AM – 1:16 PM | Modern Tradition February Block x 2 | |
| Listening to: Ricky Gervais Podcast Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, 1/17/10 episode All Songs Considered, 1/13/10 episode Driven to Quilt, episode 14 The Dinner Party Download Podcast, episode 40 |
||
| 1/24/10 | 11:00 AM – 1:30 PM | Piecing Purple People Eater Quilt |
| Listening to: The Last Kiss soundtrack | ||
| 1/25/10 | 7:15 PM – 7:45 PM | Piecing Purple People Eater Quilt |
| 6:30 PM | Planning Wedding Shower Gift Quilt | |
| 7:30 PM – 10:15 PM | Piecing Purple People Eater Quilt | |
| Listening to: My Morning Jacket – Z, Weezer – Red Album | ||
| 1/30/10 | 10:45 AM | Piecing the back of the Purple People Eater Quilt |
| 11:30 AM – 2:00 PM | Test New York Beauty Block | |
| 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM | Sandwiching Purple People Eater Quilt | |
| Listening to Pandora, Alt Country Station | ||
In total, I was in the craft room for 25 hours and 15 minutes in January. Here’s the breakdown of that:
| Modern Tradition Blocks | 5:15 |
| Modify Tradition Quilt Along | 1:00 |
| Cleaning/Organizing | 0:30 |
| Purple People Eater Quilt | 15:00 |
| Planning Projects | 1:00 |
| TISQ Blocks | 2:30 |
As I mentioned around Christmas, I am currently owing my Aunt Jean one quilt. I drew her name in our gift-giving tradition and gave her an IOU for a visit to her house and a quilt. In the middle of January, my mom, another aunt and I all showed up at Aunt Jean’s. She lives near Paducah, Kentucky – home of Hancock’s of Paducah. I have wanted to visit this quilt shop for quite a long time, but it’s a haul from my home. I thought this was the perfect opportunity. We could all have a nice visit at Aunt Jean’s, we could visit the shop where she could pick out fabrics and I could just wallow in the glory of all of that fabric. It was a plan!
Before we visited, I gave my aunt some homework. She didn’t have a design in mind for her quilt, so I told her to check out some of my favorite quilt blogs for some inspiration. She settled on a favorite. Of course, it was from one of my favorite places for inspiration: Film in the Fridge. She loved the look of that patchwork quilt, and I was ecstatic. Sweet! Simple patchwork. That’s something that I am sure I can deliver a great finished product!
For the color inspiration, we used a print hanging in my Aunt Jean’s guest bedroom. It is a Georgia O’Keefe print that she loves (and I do, too!)
You can see it in action, here, with my Aunt Jean and my mom.
I didn’t take pictures at Hancock’s because I had more important things to do, but it was pretty amazing. The size is intimidating. I tasked my Aunt Jean with finding her favorite fabrics. Once we had plenty, we could start to weed out. She was a genius and had prepared by picking up paint chips and choosing those that would coordinate best with the inspiration print. I thought this was a great idea. Paint chips are just fun, but they’re also easily portable. Chips in hand, Jean and I worked our way through the shop, choosing fabrics. Her favorites were batiks, of which Hancock’s had quite a large selection. Here is a slightly blurry picture of the fabrics chosen.
Since then, the patchwork pieces have been cut, laid out on my guest bed and pieced.
I pieced the back and took all the makings to my parents’ basement. I made up the quilt sandwich in that big space, using 505 basting spray. This is my first attempt with basting spray, so I’m hoping the quilting goes well! I left it there, overnight, to dry. I’ll start quilting, this week.
Funny little story for you. My husband got the mail, on Wednesday, a job that I normally do because I am the first to arrive home, after work. He handed me a package and said, “It seems like you’ve been getting a lot of packages like this, lately. What’s that all about?” I told him about the online quilt bees that I’m participating in. At first, he dismissed it as weird. Then, he decided, “I guess that’s a good way to try new sewing things and learn stuff.” I told him that was exactly why they are so useful. Then, I opened the package, and my jaw nearly hit the floor. Inside was Jen’s great fabric and wishes for a New York Beauty block. This block means paper piecing and piecing curves. Those are two things I have never even thought about trying, before. I guess it’s time to learn. 
During my sewing time on Saturday, here is what I whipped up.
This could easily appear on some craft version of the FAILblog (NSFW). It is chock full of puckers, wonky seams, and showing stitches.
I think the paper piecing portion (the purple/light blue triangle portion) actually went quite smoothly. Once you grasp the technique, it’s actually pretty simple. I love the neat seams and crisp points that paper piecing provides.
Piecing the curved edges of each piece is where the big FAIL comes in. I used a tutorial that recommended attaching the paper template pieces to the fabric and piecing with those template pieces in tact. My results probably aren’t a reflection of that tutorial. I’m just not skilled enough to execute it, properly! I think I had a hard time because of the stiffness of the paper. I’m thinking tissue paper may have been a better choice. I will definitely try another test block, altogether, and probably attempt to foundation piece (paper piece) the entire block. I’ve been going through it in my head and I think it will work.
This post will be brief. I’m not supposed to be on the computer, very long, because I had LASIK eye surgery on Thursday. Today, I felt good enough to sew. My current project is a quilt for my aunt. However, it is at a stage where many seams need to be joined and my eyes just aren’t up to that amount of detail work, yet. Instead, I worked on LeAnne’s blocks for the Modern Tradition Quilt Bee. I am ahead of the game when it comes to this bee, as LeAnne’s blocks are not due until the end of February. I wanted to sew, though, and these log cabin blocks were just the ticket.
I like the riot of color that LeAnne has chosen. The fabrics all coordinate, but it is a whirlwind! I hope she enjoys them as much as I enjoyed making them.
Today, I’ve worked on a few mini-blocks to use as filler for the sampler quilt I’m creating with the Modify Tradition quilt along. These blocks are just miniature versions of the 12.5″ blocks I’ve made.
Three mini bow tie blocks. I like the way these form a sort of path.
Some miniature flying geese blocks. I love the way these look with the white sashing. How great would a whole quilt of these, look? Each block with the sashing is 6″ square. These were made from leftover triangles from other blocks, so they turned out a bit wonky and were fussy to piece, but I like them.
The first miniature nine patch. There will be more of these!
I am still trying to work out in my head how I’ll put all of the blocks together to form a whole quilt. I’m torn between lots of sashing like Crystal is doing and going for a look like Lesly did at Pickle Dish. I really like both looks.
One of the problems I am having in making a decision is that I don’t have a great place to layout the whole quilt at one time. I need to clean off the guest bed and use it as much as possible. I also need some organization in my sewing room. Take a look at what a mess it is!
I need to build some shelves, hang that fleece block layout board, find a better working layout for the laptop and keep my cutting service clear and neat. It also looks like it’s just about time to empty the trash!
As some of you may know, my real job is to account for pennies, nickels, dimes, dollars, millions, etc. This time of year is always hectic. An old year has to be put to bed while a new one needs coddling and everything overlaps until you can’t remember the last time you ate lunch or which year it is. It’s also that time when the threat of snow storms makes a normally dreaded trip to the grocery store feel like the ninth circle of hell. That’s why we had Mexican food, tonight.
Also? I’m addicted to video games. How did that happen in four days when I spent most of those days working? Um, and, I’m totally late to the party. The last time I owned a game system was about 1989 when the first Nintendo game out and we played Duck Hunt with a plastic gun you pointed at the TV. This morning, before work, I played three songs on my plastic guitar and unlocked a new venue. Did I really need something to up the nerdiness factor?
So, posting may be a bit sparse. The crafting definitely is. However, I am SO looking forward to my upcoming trip to Hancock’s of Paducah in a week and a half! I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures.
Here is my first official block for the Modern Tradition Quilt Bee. This one goes to Melissa and is made from a block pattern called Best of All. My test block turned out just okay. I love this one, though. It really proves to me that good quilting fabric is worth the money – especially solids. This white Kona cotton is so much nicer than the white solid I bought at JoAnn Fabrics and currently have about 4 yards in my stash! It sews and presses better, as well. The orange and robin’s egg blue polka dot is part of Amy Butler’s Love line. It is the Sun Spots in Tangerine.
This block will soon be in the mail to Melissa, but the pattern will remain in my list of potentials. I think a whole quilt of these 18″ blocks would be really stunning.
Look at how great it would be on point:
One of the new things I’m starting, this year, is to log the time I spend in my sewing room. This block took me two hours. That includes all of the cutting, pressing, sewing, and photographing. Keep in mind that I think I am a pretty slow sewist. I really don’t have any idea, but two hours seems like a long time to me. I listened to Pandora (my favorite!) stations that I created – one for Ben Folds and one for The Postal Service. I deem them excellent sewing music!
I began working on this quilt block on a Sunday. I cut everything just fine but then mis-pieced the first two blocks, incorrectly. Three times. I had to put it down and do something else.
Besides those little hiccups that I attribute to too many Christmas cookies, this block went together beautifully (tutorial here). I really like it and think it would be pretty stunning as a whole quilt top. That’s what I love about this quilt along. I’ve got 12 great blocks in my knowledge base, now, and can pull from those when planning future quilts.
