Moving Right Along

Do you remember the picture from this recent post? In that photo, only the upper left was sewn together and the upper right was waiting. I am proud to say that I've been moving right along on this top, because I now have three out of four sections pieced together. I am hoping that by EOD tomorrow the fourth will be done and then I can layer, baste and quilt.

I am lovin' how this is turning out.

Wordless Wednesday - A Winter Day

Double 4-Patch Update

I committed to finish one UFO by June of this year, 2011, at Myra's PhD Challenge. Why only one? Because this quilt is a barter quilt and I have already received the bronze sculpture. It is hard to get a quilt done quickly when one works outside the home so I am focusing all my attention on this one quilt. I usually only get one good day a week at the sewing machine, so I try to take advantage of that one day.

Last weekend I was able to get all the blocks constructed for the quilt. My client wanted 'earthy' colors so I raided my stash and came up with greens, blacks, dark grays, browns, golds, blues and dark reds for the blocks. 140 blocks that will finish at 8".

Because of this size of this thing and since I am doing the quilting on my domestic sewing machine, I will have to do a divide and conquer and quilt it in sections. I have gotten one quadrant totally put together and have another quadrant placed on the design wall ready to sew together. I am quite pleased with the way the first quadrant looks. I am wondering about that one light green block in the second quadrant. I'll have to keep looking at it.

Can you tell that the layout is in the barn raising style?

Wordless Wednesday - Garlic

Something New

There is a yarn stash in Casa del Quilter. Does that surprise you? It is mainly sock yarn but there is also plenty of yarn to make up a sweater or two. The problem with my yarn stash is that there was no rhyme nor reason on the purchases so when I want to use a certain yarn, I have to search for a pattern, any pattern, that will work with the weight of the yarn, the recommended needle size and, of course, the amount of yarn on hand. A percentage sweater will hopefully eliminate that problem. The beauty of knitting this sweater is that if one know the chest measurement, then the rest just falls into place, because you do not need to follow the needle size. It's your yarn and your needles.

I just cast on for a child's sweater using this method. I have no children running around here, so this will go into the donation pile. It is a good learning sweater and the learning curve isn't too high. An added bonus is that now I don't have to spend a whole lot of time searching for just the right pattern for the yarn.

Progress Report, January 2011

Not a lot of sewing has been happening around Casa del Quilter because of a bit of home renovation. CarGuy removed the railing and spindles around the stairwell to the basement on Dec 31 and I have been living in abject fear of falling over the edge! Finally, I mean FINALLY!, the carpenter came on Monday of this week and the house has been torn up since. There is wood, drywall, drywall mud, primer, texture and paint involved, not to mention the enormous amount of dust. The stairs to my basement sewing room are currently impassable.

I knew the carpenter was showing up on Monday, so last weekend I spent a bit of time at the sewing machine and whipped out this calendar cover. I like to use a small wire bound week-at-a-glance calendar for daily use and it has my life in it. But I always cover them so I can get a place marker (see the ribbon?) and pockets on the inside where the cover slips over the calendar. Unfortunately, this one is a bit small and I may have to make another before the year is out. For now, tho, this will work. The fabric is a deco fabric from my trash bin, that I free motion quilted in wavy lines, the ties are what was left on a card of seam binding picked up at a garage sale and the ribbon was also from stash. 

When the sewing was done, all machines were tenderly wrapped in bath towels and put away. Not a speck of that pesky drywall dust was going to touch my babies.

I also spent a bit of time prepping the December block of the Hugs and Kisses BOM. Once again, it is unfortunate, but I cannot work on it since the sofa is currently in the middle of the room with no direct lighting and no place to set anything. Knitting has occupied my evening hours and kept my hands busy. I have finished a hat and a pair of fingerless mitts since this ordeal began. And just this morning before work, I cast on for a vest. 

When all the construction is finished (maybe Saturday?) then the cleaning commences. *sigh* I keep telling myself how nice it is going to be when it is finished. Yes, that's the spirit.

Wordless Wednesday - Blue Moon

Forty

That’s how many seams I had to un-sew. I was blithely sewing along on the Double 4-Patch and stitched up a stack of 50 blocks. When I started to press them I realized that I had sewn ten correctly like in the first photo. But then I must have flipped the block when I put it under the needle because the other 40 were stitched like this one:

Not exactly the look I was going for *sigh*.
I am sewing up over 200 of these blocks, which is actually more than I need but I want enough blocks to be able to swap out if I want.

Faithful Circle Redux

In 2008, I attended a small quilt show in Gunnison Colorado at the Arts Center while CarGuy attended a car show. The majority of the quilts in the show were vintage quilts from the 1930s and 1940s with a sprinkling of contemporary art quilts. I snapped a photo of this sweet quilt at that show as it was quite unusual and caught my eye.

Fast forward to 2010. I acquired a booklet of old patterns during the summer and this pattern caught my eye. It was the only pattern in the booklet that I liked so I scanned it and gave the booklet to my quilt guild’s garage sale. Then in December I did a post about the pattern and a stack of fabrics I was using to make the quilt.

I decided that the best way for me to make this quilt is using the English Paper Piecing method. So to that end, I have all the ‘papers’ cut or purchased for this quilt. Because of the size of the equilateral triangle papers purchased, I had to redraft the hexagon and my squares are now rectangles. BTW, knowing how to draft your own shapes is a handy skill to own. The pieces and parts are in their ‘to-go’ container waiting for Saturday which will be the first time I will work on it other than all the prep work. The white has not been chosen and I am waffling on fabric: plain white (like in the first photo) or a white-on-white that will work with the reproduction fabrics that will be used. Any suggestions?

I never even connected the fact that I had a photo of a completed quilt plus the pattern! That is until I was mucking around in my Flickr account and spied the first photo. Serendipity? I think so.

Eternity Scarf

One of my goals for this new year of 2011 is to make more comments on blogs. It is always nice to receive a comment, now isn’t it? I made a comment on Nancy’s Wyoming Breezes blog back in December and ended up winning this beautiful scarf! It is hand knit of angora/lambswool/acrylic/nylon yarn. And it is beeeeutiful and O so soft! Thank you so very much Nancy!

BTW, the photo was lifted from Wyoming Breezes.

Wordless Wednesday - Wurm

Double Four Patch

I love a good barter and I can't seem to stop trading. What did I do this time? It is for another bronze statue. This is from a young new artist. He wants a king sized quilt in earth tones and I wanted this one of a kind bronze. The majority of the four patches were already made as leaders and enders ala Bonnie Hunter so I didn't have to make too many more. I raided my 5" square bins and came up with a lot that will work by cutting them down to 4.5". The rest of the squares will be cut from yardage and fat quarters. This will be a true scrappy stash quilt even the batting and backing are from stash.

This is  the UFO/WIP that I need to finish first. Stay tuned for progress reports.

UFO Challenge List

Okey dokey. Here is my UFO Challenge List. There are ten projects here, but the Number One project is that Double 4-Patch. It is a commission quilt and WILL BE worked on first until it is finished. After all, I have already received payment so I must deliver, right? There is a lot of applique here folks, five to be exact. Plus one hand piecing project that is more a WIP* than a UFO**.

*WIP - work in progress
**UFO - unfinished object