This is a static export of a blog I put on ice many years ago, that still has personally relevant content. No promises can be made around linkrot, styles, or working functionality.
I haven’t been sewing much in the past week or two, but I have made a bit of progress on the Organic Spins quilt. Most of the hybrid-pieced-to-applique pinwheels are complete, and I’ve spent a lot of time with the iron pressing under edges of some of the smaller ones that are just going to be made of triangles with no piecing.
But somewhere along the way, I found that I might be a bit masochistic at heart, because for some strange reason, I’ve decided that I should hand applique them all down. I’m not sure why my brain would insist upon this course of action, since I am not hand-sewing’s biggest fan (an understatement), but it hasn’t been that bad, thus far. It certainly has allowed me to not be tethered to my machine.
I’m evidently stuck on designing with pinwheels lately, so when I was thinking about how to make the quilt currently titled “Organic Spins”, pinwheels popped to mind yet again. As the design progressed in my head, however, I realized that I didn’t want a ton of seams in the background of the quilt. So, the idea of making a whole-cloth quilt with appliqued pinwheels came about. But, it still requires piecing part of the pinwheel together before being able to applique it on.
Last week, I played around with some scrap fabric to make a proof of concept. I finally cut into my fabric and started piecing at the Utica Modern Quilt Guild meeting/sew-together on Saturday.
Here’s the final product:
This one finishes at about 10.75″ across. It’s the middle of three different sizes I’m using (well, plus one much teenier size that will be paper pieced).
I’ve made enough progress on my WIP list from July that I feel comfortable starting a new project, finally. And, it’s one I’m keeping.
This one has been in my brain since the end of May, when we traveled to Missouri and I got the chance to stop at Sew To Speak Shoppe in Columbus, OH (I’m in love and want to move there, just for this shop). Among my purchases was a small FQ stack of Cut Out & Keep by Heather Moore for Cloud9 Fabrics.
The current SYWTQ topic is sewing curved seams, so we are doing drunkard’s path.
Pulling out a small pack of FQs that my not-legally mother-in-law gave me, I decided to give it a whirl tonight, even though our current homework assignment is simply to think about the layout and fabrics to use.
From my research, there are a couple of circle-cutting rulers that can be used for drunkard’s path, not to mention a plethora of shape-specific templates. Fan that I am of Omnigrid (all my rulers are by them), I thought I’d give the OmniArc a try.
So, I pulled out the psudo–jelly-roll of Lollipop that I bought in March and made this:
I began with an idea based on the Jelly-roll Race 1 Choice 4 Quilting sponsored a few months ago. However, my fabric wasn’t exactly a jelly-roll. It was a roll of scraps from a LQS. The tag said it was 43 strips, 2.5″ × 22″. So, sort of like half a jelly-roll, except instead of half the number of strips, it was a full roll of half-length strips.
If you happen to be my sister, and happen to be older than me, and your name happens to start with an ‘S’, don’t read any further. You’ll see this in person soon enough.
The sun was peeking out just enough for photos this morning, so I finally shot the Synchronized Squares quilt! Above-mentioned sister is perhaps a little obsessed with frogs, so Prince Charming by Tula Pink and a selection of green prints from various lines—as well as a few solids in green and complimentary colors (including a corduroy!)—made a great choice for this.
I was actually quite productive over the weekend. I pieced most of the back for the Strip-pieced Lone Star/Star of Bethlehem quilt, although I had to stop before I finished, because it was just all going wrong on Friday night and I needed to step away. It happens.
Then, I managed to finish the top and back of the Synchronized Squares quilt, but don’t have photos of either, thanks to the torrential rain we received Sunday courtesy Irene.
As of last night, it’s all sitting on the back of the couch ready for me to baste it. I just couldn’t bring myself to crawl around on the floor, not to mention my painter’s tape seems to have disappeared.
Do you call the diamond-based star a Lone Star or the Star of Bethlehem (or even the Mathematical Star if we want to go back to very early quilting)? I suppose your answer depends on your region, religion, and how long you’ve been quilting (or who taught you). Based on shady research (that is, I Googled “lone star quilt” [over a million results] and “star of bethlehem quilt” [83k results]) Lone Star seems to be the more prominent name at present (I guess you really don’t mess with Texas).
But, since this quilt is quite traditional—in my eyes, at least—and is intended as a Christmas present for my grandparents, I think I’ll call it a Star of Bethlehem—at least on the label. If nothing else, it brings to mind the Christmas carol, so that seems fitting.
My date with the farmer came a bit early last week: I sewed these three blocks early Friday afternoon. But then on Saturday, we left home at 6:30am to travel down to NYC for the day (5-hours each way for a combined car/train trip) to visit dear friends and see Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Met. If you can make it there by this Sunday, Aug. 7, I highly recommend seeing the exhibit. It was wonderful and worth the 2-hour line, in my estimation. I’d never been to the Met, but now look forward to returning to view more of their permanent collections someday. I don’t plan on another day trip down though—it was a bit brutal. But anyway, we did that, arrived at home just a few minutes shy of midnight, and I proceeded to laze around doing nothing more than light cleaning and binge reading for the next two days. So, finally, here are my week 6 blocks.
Earlier this month, Sharon from Craizee Corners put up a post soliciting blocks for a quilt for Project Linus.
So, after my date with the Farmer this afternoon (the post for which will go up Sunday, I hope), I took a stab at the two blocks I volunteered to make for her.
The patterned fabrics were all from a stack given to me by a friend, so I’m not sure what each one is. From what I could tell from the selvedges, the two reds are American Jane, and the fabric in the ‘L’ of the green/orange block is Nest. The orange fabric is another Moda, but no clue on who the designer/what the line is.
