Steamy Summer O' Stash

Happy to have a good reason to make and take a quick baby quilt along for a visit to one of my knit camp friends.

Curiously non-babe colors in the juvenile print fabric my sister passed from her stash to mine.  The maroon print in the center sported some of the same colors as the animal filled backing.  Found some neglected 5x5 squares, the right amount of batting, and voila!  Two days, though rightly could have been a one day project.

Lunch with visiting and knitting leads to completion of October birthday gift.  

Am elbow deep in a couple quilt tops, 14 placemats, and a table runner.   Very steamy day, though.  May have to take some of the latter and go find a table in an air conditioned location for some basting time.

What was that about summer of stash?  I'm determined to finish that table runner and the holiday placemats.  Stash, UFO, call them what you will, they shall be finished.  And leave.

Quilt one - some stash, along with a little new acquisition because all two of next year's grads listed turquoise in lists of favorite colors.  That was the picture from the prior post.  Did I mention that there are four high school grads next spring?  I am on a mission.

Quilt two surprised me today.  Those neglected 5x5 squares I hauled out of storage?  The remainder are now 4-patches.  Culling out some unwanted stash as I move along to put in large alternating shadow blocks.  It will go to church for the young people's quilt making project for charity.  Last summer I  stitched up several from the coordinator's prepped fabric bundles for volunteers.  This summer I am determined to donate some stash as well as sewing to the effort.  The kids start out the year tying some quilts. Later they move into the rest of the process and do some start to finish.  It seems to work well for them to get a start with some prepared tops.

It feels like Progress, though today seems slow moving.  I think I will take another shower and move on to some air conditioned productivity.  

Vacation?

Why yes, it is!

Another From The Basket Of Partly Done

These bags of hand piecing have been in progress for many years:

I finished last week.  Meanwhile, I am redirecting the project.

There was a plan for 8 columns of six - a wall hanging.  I haven't been able to recreate the actual plan - never did make a schematic.

I regrouped and came up with a plan.  Wedding gift table runner.  

Ready for backing and quilting. 

And I'm even ahead - the wedding is September!

Sewing Days

Machine quilting went well, though I may have a faulty machine walking foot.  I refuse to think I wore it out doing half a dozen placemats.

Next?  Binding.  Batch two is waiting for me to assemble and baste layers.

Point of clarity:  tops were assembled a year and a half ago.  I may get these out of here yet!

Former UFO

Done.

This is a particularly odd section of the back.

But done! Binding done!

Where's the UPS? This sucker is outta here!

There IS Something to Small Steps

Binding cut, stitched and pressed.

No bias was used this time, as the fabric had a perfect stretch of on-grain already built into the leftovers from the first quilt.

That's right. There were two of these. One was done, 20 blocks worth, and well over twenty years ago. This one got to 12 blocks done and stalled.

This summer I framed and sashed the miserable set of twelve to get it DONE.
I cobbled together a proper leftovers backing and sent it off to be machine quilted.

It came back this fall.

It sat.

A forgotten piece of fabric used in the first quilt was in the box where the scraps went - surprise!

Binding was prepped. One step to go.

Hot Spots

It's not news:  there is a lot of extreme unseasonable weather for this part of the summer.  Pick your place on a map:  it's either unbelievably hot or, in a few spots, unseasonably cool.

If I had to choose, I'd be in a cool spot.

However, I'm fortunate.  I don't have power outage in my living space.  My work space was shut down for a bit with power outage.  Today I'm using my office as my personal cooling center. 

In other news, my sewing machine has been the hot spot for hopping activity lately.  Made a graduation quilt for my niece*, finished at my mom's on the way to the event.  Nothing fancy - had a perky bundle of flannel purchased from a quilt shop in Iowa.  I had another plan for it, but the idea was only an idea for several years.  In the end I made nearly the same quick, big piece quilt I think they'd featured.  Tied, not quilted, but quickly loved and put to use on a very chilly graduation weekend.  

(Sorry about photo quality.  I need to get the camera back into use.  It's been awol and/or without batteries lately.)

Following that, I have been sewing some quilt tops to help with the grade school charity quilting project at the school where I volunteer. I don't usually help with that project - designed for the upper grade kids to do with the nearby senior center, the project involves the kids learning to sew, making large block quilt tops, and tying them.  The upper grade classes are currently pretty small - and the kids were kind of disappointed they didn't get many made.  New strategy, the project coordinator thought:  get some tops sewn up in advance so the kids can start tying, make progress in terms of quantity, and then start some to do beginning to end.  I totally get the excitement of having a LOT of quilts to donate.  The project coordinator was pretty clever, and she made up some quilt top "kits" to have ready at the volunteer luncheon.  I took one home, zipped it back the next week, and she promptly gave me three more.  I'm game.

And I don't mind some sewing to do while I plan the next sewing.  Witness the quilt of guilt that came out for finishing.  I knew one reason it stalled out, but I'd forgotten the other reason - I still had blocks to build.  Found a few stray triangles and squares cut out amidst the rest of the fabric.  And the fabric was AWFUL for triangles.  Way too much biasing,  I had one of the cardboard templates.  Who knows what kind of miscalculations there were in the math.  I don't know how many more I planned - probably another eight blocks, and those eight blocks inadvertently put this project on pause for YEARS.

I did the only reasonable thing.  I went for the finish line:  frames around the squares. wide sashing with contrasting blocks at the intersections, and a pair of wide borders.  I'm still contemplating one extra round of border, but I may call it quits.


On to the back.  I have nothing suitable.  I don't want to go shopping, when I have an embarassment of fabric to use.  Or at least that's what I thought until yesterday when I melted in the heat.


Looked at some of my fall purchase of blue quilt plaids I'd left here in my shop.  Not enough of them to substitute for a whole back.  I'm back to the first plan. I smell some kind of artsy finish.

I hope it isn't too odd.  It's hot.  My senses may short circuit.

*a quilt which is NOT the quilt begun when said niece was an infant..... that one went back to the back burner

Ugh. A flaw. Moving on.

Why does a flaw in the fabric surface after cutting and stitching. Why?

On to the reverse manual.
And on to piecing a section of the border, as naturally, not enough for a full piece.

That ugh also signals the path for machine quilting. Easier to camouflage that new seam....

From the Land of UFOs

A Guilt Quilt -

The blocks have been languishing for decades. Blocks are imperfect - fabric not all pure for quilt sources, and there's a bit of bias wobble and iron shrinking. (Golly, there's fuel for ignoring quilt finishing....)

Blocks were framed up with navy print two weeks ago. Sashing done this weekend. On to the borders and the backing!

Can't decide if I will tie it as was my circa late 80's plan and custom, or if I will ship it off to my former local quilt shop for machine quilting.

They may mock me. Some of those prints are lightly brushed, and there's a whack of polyester along with the cotton in those fabric blends.

Oh - the guilt part. I checked in with the friend. She'd be pleased to have it.

Some UFO's I can dispense with. This one I'll finish. The space opened up in the fabric drawer AND in the guilt pack will be amazingly free!

Now it's a holiday!

It really is the start of summer break if I'm sewing at my mother's dining table!

Great towering cat blankets!

My mother and I compared notes about what we did on the 4th. "My usual," she said. She cleaned and did laundry, preparing for her sister's visit today.

I did much the same, though my company is further down the road. I continued my summer project of cleaning out the Andy Warhol boxes from various stories and stages. Filled up bags of paper recycling, found - at last! - the missing box of denim scraps. Washed up a bunch of fabric and sorted vintage sewing supplies, putting some in the freezer for quarantine, some into bags to donate to the shop, and the rest of it into the right places on the sewing shelves.

I gave myself a break by tackling the towel and sheet shelves of the closet. This extended to purging and tidying the storage of other household textiles in other closets, tubs, and bags. Packed up a bag for the Animal Care League. Towels are topped by a stack of 8 quick little cat quilts - pillow cases with stitched-in folded quarters of old mattress pads. None of the materials would have been suited for thrift, and it took no time at all to whomp them together.

Time to go drop them off at the shelter.

I know. None of this is particularly sexy blog posting. Still, the amusement of it all is keeping me on track.

Wonder what I want to get done tonight....?

Fashion Circles

The 80's are returning with a vengeance. I'll step out of the fray of discussions on that subject, but I do have some evidence of fashion circles in my trunks and files. This 80's pattern from Elle Magazine (September 1985) led me to an early, wearable sweater. Please note that this is pattern #1. (I did make a couple of the other patterns from the back pages of that magazine.)


I was too impatient to make it as long in the body as recommended, and truth be told I was still learning about gauge. I wore the sweater a LOT. Very itchy, but I managed, and I wore it into the 90's, since it wasn't the full-on 80's tunic the pattern meant it to be.


The next fashion cycle is the one where it's now too small for me and too itchy for nieces who might be interested in fashion cycles. I think it may go enter the Reuse Cycle and turn into a fulled bag. It's been worn and washed enough that it could be an annoyance to frog, and frankly, I have enough on the to-knit list right now.

On another variant of the "everything old is new again" tune, I made a silly wrap skirt for summer wear. Perky, isn't it?

==========
Had a very lovely time last week, if brief, joining Elizabeth of SABLE and a group of really fine women at The Other Knitting Camp. Elizabeth was an amazing organizer and facilitator - really an excellent host. Fine and funny conversations, interesting people, great food, and a perfect break -- these things never go out of fashion!

Oh, yes --there was open air knitting and spinning. Heads turned.

One domestic Saturday

From a pair of cotton pants summer that were happily worn in grad school, pants that would pass for great pajamas these days, pants in which the elastic was shot and I just couldn't pitch them because I'd enjoyed the print so, faded as it is now, and it would make such lousy rags, tight and crisp a cotton as it was, why finally, some progress was made.
(Phew. Withstand that sentence, did you?)

I made a bag for bags. Even though I'm doing better with every passing day to shop less and to carry a bag, once in awhile there are some plastic bags. I save them for my trash bags. I have not purchased plastic garbage bags for years.

I also made a clothespin bag. It was a fitting set of little moments in a very productive, very domestic Saturday.

Re-use

That old quilt was definitely a history of reuse. I had come back from a summer of camp in Maine and knew for the next summer I wanted an extra quilt, the kind that wouldn't be hurt by camp cots and pine pitch on the back of the shorts. I had the bag of old shirts and dresses I knew could be used for something, if no longer for wearing. And then a housemate who had finished her craft project stint with a vacation bible school session gave me a bunch of vaguely square muslin pieces.

Log cabin was clearly the order of the day.


I don't know if I ever took a picture of the quilt when it was in better shape. You can see where the red flannel plaid strips are just frayed bits along the seam lines. That was the first flannel shirt I made for myself. Wore it through the elbows. Still, you know, there was decent fabric in the shirt tails - isn't that the usual reference made by the quiltmakers of years gone by?

The lighter toned red plaid was a plisse dress I wore in the 80's. It just got to be too thin to be decent, but there was enough poly in the blend, so the fabric still doesn't seem to have given up the ghost.

And just off center in most of the squares, on the lighter halves, is an old plisse fabric, white with little starbursts of red, yellow, and blue. That was one of my dad's shirts. I wore it out. My mother thought that shirt reflected an appalling lack of judgement and taste. It was a designer shirt. Pierre Cardin, no less. Strictly 70's. And it was not much more than pajama weight plisse. Oh, she thought that was an appalling expenditure, and tacky.

Most of the other pieces are scraps from sewing projects. Most of them were mine, but I may have co-opted some of my sister's scraps.

More to come on the extended thrift-life of this quilt.

You know I'm talking myself up to doing some more practical quilts, of course.

It's not all false starts around here

Some things are finished.

This quilt has been nearly done for ages. Had someone volunteer to help me get the binding on. I made sure she was paid. I am perfectly capable of binding, but I'll tell you the poor quilt sat in a bag inside of a box for a few years as I "meant to finish it."

The poor thing suffered from "out of sight out of mind" neglect.
Fortunately, that was all that it suffered. It should land shortly. It has been shipped to the recipient.

The battery was dying, so these photos which should have been adjusted for fluorescence are what they are. Most of the fabrics are batiks or kindred. The quilt was a mystery quilt project in which I bent most of the rules in the steps.


That'll be it until August. I'm going out of town for a bit.

Hello, Skirt!

This is all the glamour I need from this skirt. I have a nice self-fabric casing and I took care to edgestitch. I have a lightweight, bring-on-the-heat casual summer skirt.

The skirt's only as frumpy as I let it be. I'll wear it.
The dress? It languished for a couple summers.

Say Goodbye to the Dress

I really liked this dress. Purchased the fabric at a quilt shop set up in a chicken coop. I bought the fabric for this very purpose, and I made it and wore it during the season in which I bought it. No stash story here!

I was even tickled by the way the very utilitarian and old brown buttons looked with it.

The neckline was very expansive, and with the length of the dress, very casual country summery 90's.

I was asked if I was expecting the last time I wore it. I cried a lot.
Having since come to terms with mid-age change (even though I hope to continue my healthy summer habits), I must redo. It looks good on the dress form, but she has no belly.

I talked about this last summer. I've now moved it to the more active to-do list. Next stop? Skirt.

Berry Picking

Purchased the cotton for this blouse for what, $1.00 a yard last spring.

The fabric reminded me of my grandmother's blouse, the one I wore often to go out berry picking in the summer. The buttons are very plain, somewhat old.

I'm happy. Much better than a t-shirt, for my tastes at the moment.

Next?