Depleting my stash, salving my conscience, creating some beauty, and keeping a record of it all, since my memory's gone kompletely kaput.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
I've been without my sewing machine, Suki the Juki, for almost two weeks and it's driving me CRAZY!!! I've got all these projects I'd like to be working on to keep my hands busy while I fret about the land, but none of them are to the handwork stage yet.
I know I said I wasn't going to be posting anymore strippies for a while, but I found out that friends of our had a baby boy, and it really was a strippie situation, if you know what I mean.
Five different fabrics again, which works out well with 11 strips each cut 5" wide, because you get the first, middle, and final strip in the same fabric. The final dimension is just under 39" by just over 49". Big enough to make the transition to being a toddler's cuddling quilt.
I meander-quilted along each seam. It's my most successful attempt at that yet, but still I don't feel extremely confident about it. Practice, practice, practice.
You know how some colours are just more difficult to work with than others? That lighter turquoise was one of those fabrics that sat in my stash for ages and ages. I bought a metre of it because it looked like a good semi-solid, and it was on sale, but once I got it home it eluded every attempt I made to use it.
But I got this Fossil Fern "Bluebells" in the mail, and the colours weren't what I was expecting. Guess what! Somehow, it brought all these fabrics together for me, and away I went. The darkest blue, which I had oceans of, is final whittled away down to just a few scraps, and the same for the turquoise.
Just the hand-stitching left on the binding now, and it can go North to G.P. We're stopping at a lake today after we look at some houses, so I'll bring a lawnchair and a needle and thread and maybe I'll get that finished while the kids swim.
I finished this quilt at least a year ago, and maybe two. It's been in daily use ever since, and was starting to look badly in need of a wash.
But -
I'd never finished the binding! It was basted on, but the handstitching was incomplete. Why do I do that?
I got pretty sick a couple weeks ago, and didn't have the energy for anything but sitting around, so I found the black thread and got 'er done. Yippee! And into the wash it went!
I used roses and blues, grouping them into diamonds, but it works a lot better divided by lights and darks, rather than colours. The backing was a Benartex flannel, Cherry Fizz (?), in the Fossil Fern line. It's worn extremely well, and when I need a flannel backing I'll head to the Benartex corner first.
I need a purse. I've had the same little purse for the last five or six years, and it's taken a beating. So, I went pricing leather purses and nearly had heart-failure - a wincy little black purse On Sale for $139! Guess what. I think denim and quilt cotton will do admirably, and I can make it out of scraps. I'll keep you updated.
This was the companion strippie quilt I completed as a mate to the one that was "rejected" in favour of another girlie one in my first post. Originally it (and the first one) was commissioned to go to a set of twin boys, but the lady doing the commissioning didn't contact me for a long time, so I eventually gave one to my cousin, and one to a friend. Friend was 49 when she had this child - and it was her first!!!
I had a lot of trouble with the yellow in this quilt. Yellow isn't one of my very favourite colours, and this particular yellow was a screamer.
Not one of my quilts that I was really attached to, for that reason. But there you go. Only stern truth will do on Kotton Frolik.
I made these placemats without templates or a premeditated design. It was completely off the cuff, using bowls for my circles and sewing the "straight" lines by eye. I had a lot of fun with this project, and I'll probably make an entire quilt this way not to far in the future.
I recycled and tea-dyed an old sheet for the backing, which worked alright until I went to hand-stitch the bindings on, and discovered that the thread-count was so high that it made it very difficult to push the needle through. Live and learn. Used flannel for the centre bat.
Another note for future - placemats need a lot of quilting, so they don't "pull apart" in their layers with wash and use.
I love the ridges in this photo. And the natural light, of course, which is ever so much kinder to fabric than the flash.
I made this top and put it away and completely forgot that I had it. Nice surprise when I was rooting through the bins looking for something else!
The pattern is created by lights and darks. Each block is made by placing two squares together, one light, one dark, faces together. Draw a diagonal line on one, pin securely, and sew a 1/4" seam on each side of it. Unpin, and cut along the drawn line. Twala! You've got a block of two triangles, without ever sewing a seam on the bias edge. With this block you can play and come up with several different arrangements. I'm pretty keen on this diamond set-up, and on pinwheel blocks.
Another quilt that went up north. This lady had a baby this spring, and her husband was killed a couple months later in a car accident. Tough row to hoe.
I made another quilt like this that I gave to my neighbour when she had a baby a couple years ago. It was all in blues, light and dark, and it really turned out nicely. I think I prefer it all in one colour family.
My first Log Cabin, other than an apron bib in Grade 7 and a couple of pot-holders. I was surprised by how time-consuming the piecing was, but I really like the depth that many colours and shades give it. About 40"X50", the usual baby-quilt size I make. I used some of the wine-red flannel from the backing in the blocks. I hope it's standing up to use alright. Black centres. The white floral in that fabric was too stark, so I tea-dyed it. I believe I used the black as the binding, too. This picture was taken before the binding went on.
It was another commissioned quilt. The recipient was a Native lady who had a baby girl, and she is particularly fond of the reds and blacks and natural colours that are most common in Native art. They aren't colours I would normally use, but that's what I like about requests. They push me outside of myself and force me into a more creative space.
Mustn't forget - don't meander-quilt diagonal sections without very secure basting all over. I should have hand-basted this one, because I quilted some ridges into the back, which was quite a disappointment after all that work. Still, I like it a lot. Maybe I'll make one for us one day.
Yeah, right, I always say that!
Wait - now that I see the first picture enlarged, I can say for sure that I did use the same fabric on the binding as I did for the centres. Oooh, deadly memory!
This is a Double Irish Chain made by the strip-piecing method. I straight-stitched with a walking foot through the diagonal, and meander-quilted the centres. I made the top a couple years ago, and finally pulled it out of the basket and quilted it this past winter. It went to live waaaay up North with Dear Deena-Anna-May. ;-) It was approximately 4' by 5.5', I think. A reading quilt if ever there was one.
I made two of these bags, and Poppy has abducted them both into the fastnesses of her room. I'll have to snitch one back and remember how I made it. I drafted the pattern from an Edmonton Public Library bag (the heavy plastic ones), and hopefully I didn't throw my template away.
I used cut-up old jeans for the outside, print cotton on the inside. We use them for library books, when Poppy lets them free of her grip. They'd probably make fairly decent diaper bags, too.
The question is, of course, where did this quilt go? I think it went to Mel's youngest, up in McMurray. I guess I could phone and ask what the quilt looked like that I sent their way, but would I sound like a complete idiot?
Another strippie, obviously, made with that "happy whale" fabric I'm having such a devil of a time using up. I just finished another quilt top with that in it, alternating with nine-patch blocks, and it's frightfully busy. Quilting always brings it around, of course. Still, I think it's going to be more than a little frenetic. It'll need to go to an inherently placid baby.
I think I'll make another denim tote-bag and use that fabric for the lining. That should knock it back to just a few scraps.
This is a quilt I finished this spring (I think, help me Grannyfiddler) as a consignment. The young lady who recieved it on behalf of her baby girl has a twin sister, and the twin sister is expecting a baby boy this fall. Another quilt is in the works. I haven't quite sorted out patterns and colours for that project yet.
I think I have a scrap of paper somewhere with the dimensions of the pieces and blocks. This quilt was made from my own design, pinwheels alternating with a cobblestone block. I like how the negative spaces form a twirling star or modified pinwheel design of their own.
Oh! That's where that piece of mauve flannel went! Now I remember. I used it as a backing, and used it to piece a couple of the blocks, too. Seek and ye shall find. I guess I don't need to be rooting around in my bins for that one anymore, huh?
Update - okay, I found that piece of paper.
Pinwheel squares were cut 5.5", laid on top of each other, sewed diagonally and cut, etc.. Finished block was 9 3/4".
Alternate block - centre square was cut 3.5", surrounding strips 3 3/4". Trimmed block to 9 3/4".
Triangles for sides were 10" blocks cut on the diagonal.
When Alex was expecting twins, a boy and a girl, I gave her one of the pink/purple strippies I had on hand from when we thought we were adopting the triplets, and made a primary-colour one to coordinate. When it turned out that (surprise!) she had two girls, I sent her the second pink/purple one that I still had in my closet, and got the primary-colour one back.
And I just remembered, Noha got the third of these girlie strippies.
That's why I need this blog. I forget everything. And it's good to look back at what I made in the past, and realize that yeah, these very simple strippies were lovely. I'd been remembering them as some kind of quilter's cop-out, too simple. But right now, the simplicity seems restful, and I think I'll make another next time I'm on the baby-quilt warpath.
I know I said I wasn't going to be posting anymore strippies for a while, but I found out that friends of our had a baby boy, and it really was a strippie situation, if you know what I mean.
I love the ridges in this photo. And the natural light, of course, which is ever so much kinder to fabric than the flash. 
My first Log Cabin, other than an apron bib in Grade 7 and a couple of pot-holders. I was surprised by how time-consuming the piecing was, but I really like the depth that many colours and shades give it. About 40"X50", the usual baby-quilt size I make. I used some of the wine-red flannel from the backing in the blocks. I hope it's standing up to use alright. Black centres. The white floral in that fabric was too stark, so I tea-dyed it. I believe I used the black as the binding, too. This picture was taken before the binding went on. 
I made two of these bags, and Poppy has abducted them both into the fastnesses of her room. I'll have to snitch one back and remember how I made it. I drafted the pattern from an Edmonton Public Library bag (the heavy plastic ones), and hopefully I didn't throw my template away.
The question is, of course, where did this quilt go? I think it went to Mel's youngest, up in McMurray. I guess I could phone and ask what the quilt looked like that I sent their way, but would I sound like a complete idiot?
This is a quilt I finished this spring (I think, help me Grannyfiddler) as a consignment. The young lady who recieved it on behalf of her baby girl has a twin sister, and the twin sister is expecting a baby boy this fall. Another quilt is in the works. I haven't quite sorted out patterns and colours for that project yet.
