Little Baskets - Embrace the Rainbow

If I had to guess, Little Baskets was started 4-5 years ago. 100 block sets were cut with a die cutter from pastels and some white. It was worked on at home and at a retreat, and then the reality of what to do with 100 4.5" blocks left me stymied.

It has been sitting in a box with only a note that 40 blocks were finished. When trying to decide on a pattern for a friend's upcoming grandchild, I took another look at the pieces. All of the basket handles of the 100 blocks were finished. A piece of white polka-dot fabric with multiple colored dots was in the box. After conferring with several friends with grandchildren and/or baby quilt making experience, I decided to set the blocks with an alternate square of the polka-dot fabric, making a larger quilt. A backing fabric from stash was pulled--checkers with almost matching colored squares to the polka-dot fabric (a completely different fabric line.)

Little Baskets, 67.5" x 58" Quilted with Snapdragons

I did end up making several more baskets of red fabrics, as there weren't any but the background dots and backing fabric both had some soft red. Overall I'm happy with the colors, though if I were to make the quilt today it would look much different.

Backing and corner close-up

A rainbow color layout made sense, rather than scrambling all the colors. It's my first rainbow layout, and I can see doing it again, perhaps with more planning next time.

This project also taught me to keep better notes when sewing a fussy design. The little handles are sewn down by machine on one side, and the template was still with the pattern, but to get a nice smooth curve, the bottom end of the bias strip just barely goes over the seam line. It's now on a note with the die cutter.

Fancy Fox

The Fancy Fox pattern by Elizabeth Hartman was gifted to me by a quilter friend. It was fun to look at all the finished quilts online, lots of different color combinations. Originally my thought was to use an ombre green for the background, but that proved too challenging. Another fabric in the stash was found, a leafy print that worked well cut into strips for the blocks. The fox I saw once near home, at a park was a red one, so red-brown prints were pulled.

Fancy Fox, 62.5" x 50"

The blocks are a bit exacting, and honestly a bit dull to piece. Most of the parts were sewn at a quilt retreat, as they were not too complicated and breaks were welcome. Sewing the columns of blocks together took a bit of time, but worth fussing with seams to get them to fit with the vertical sashing pieces already cut to size. It's interesting how some patterns need a scant 1/4" seam, where this one needed a generous 1/4" seam.

Fancy Fox close-up, Groundcover quilting pattern

I took enough care with this all-stash top to justify buying a coordinating backing (on sale, of course). It looked like a burlap-print green online, and when it arrived it looked more like a lawn - with the kind of stripes you see on baseball fields. Fortunately there was enough to match the stripes on the back. It had to work as binding too, as almost every scrap of the background leaf print had been used up.

Catch-up and Clean-up

Gumdrops String quilt - working through my strings. Simple tumblers made using the Fat Cats ruler, working with pinks, yellows and oranges with a black on white background. This cheerful quilt was popular with visitors to my studio, and was donated to charity.


Gumdrops, 54" x 46", quilted with Butterflies

For Mother's Day, my son gifted me with several hours of work. He chose folding fabric over yard work! That helped me get started on the long-overdue process of organizing my stash fabrics. I still need to get to a few more drawers before they are all done. Eventually it would be great to fit all quilting fabric into the drawers, and out of tubs. I have a growing stack of fabric to bring to quilt group and also donated some nice wool yarns to a local charity shop.

I'm slowly working through projects in boxes, and with the help of a new serger, finished three t-shirts and a camp shirt. It's been a learning curve to work with 1/4" seams on garments (both happened to be Kwik Sew patterns.) It's challenging to cut knits accurately with such a small seam, I missed being able to clip into the seam for alignment marks. Chalk has been the replacement, and is so much easier with chalk wheels (Chakoner or Clover.)

The first shirt made was from inexpensive cotton to test the pattern, so I knew that it fit. Two of the t-shirts were from fabric that I'd ordered from Spoonflower a while back. It was great to get a short-sleeved tee from one yard of wide knit fabric. Spoonflower only sells in 1-yard increments, so a long-sleeved tee from their fabric will have some waste and may just cost too much.

A twin-sized charity quilt using the Disappearing 4-Patch is finished, not pictured. It is well made and cozy, made from blue & green reproduction fabrics.

Knitting has slowed for a bit with the heat we're finally getting. I'm still working on charity projects, and also developed a knit stitch for scarves that is mostly garter with occasional slipped stitches. It gives an interesting accordion-like, reversible pattern. I finished a new scarf for myself with this stitch, and got to use it for a couple of weeks before it got too warm.  Another, shorter scarf used up a skein of self-striping yarn. They are pictured on my Ravelry page.

Love All Around

Love All Around Blocks

I came across a tutorial for these blocks at http://www.maychappell.com/2017/01/20/love-all-around-tutorial/ last weekend, and immediately thought of a bundle of floral prints waiting for a project. Those fabrics didn't make the cut, instead this mix of reproductions and modern prints came together. I sized up the block to use my die cutter, and these finish at 12". They'll get sashing, possibly scrappy to make a small wall or cuddle quilt. The tutorial is excellent.

The die cut pieces gave me some challenges, and only after finishing the blocks did it become clear that keeping in mind the direction of the fabric came into play. It's recommended to have the length of grain (warp) going parallel to the length of the die, and since several of these fabrics were directional, that was overlooked.

Two charity quilts are ready for batting, one more ready to quilt. All of them are the scrappy strips from 2.5" pieces.

My collection of fabric strings is being thinned, organized and cut into ~7" lengths. Using them as leader/enders, as well as testing tension on a new-to-me straight stitch machine, 23 blocks were pieced this week. First in line is a lap-sized tumbler quilt, using pink, yellow and orange strings.

Outtakes

Usually the cat tries to get in on every photo shoot. A few days ago it was the puppy, and right now he is sitting behind me at the computer, demanding attention though his treat ball was just loaded with kibbles.



Arne, almost 7 months, American Lab

He is also a big fan of yarn, having chewed the edge off a small wool blanket that lived on the sofa, and investigates any project in progress (knitting basket on the floor instead of out of reach.) Last night he climbed on my lap while I was in my low comfy chair reading, and settled in very quietly.  Time to go outside and make some snowballs with the remnants of snow before it melts.

Handmade Holidays 2016

It just doesn't feel like the holidays without a few last-minute projects. Narrowing down gift ideas brought me to several smallish projects, and one large quilt. Having some larger than expected work projects kept me busy late in the month.

Microwave bowls - made from cotton batting and fabric, using an excellent tutorial written by my local quilt group's leader. I had missed a retreat where she gave a demo, but had seen some of the completed projects. The bowls are used under dishware to act as a hotpad when removing the heated food. I made three sets, each with a larger, flatter bowl and a slightly smaller, deeper bowl. I plan to make a set for us and also for a friend who saw them and thought they looked useful.

Deep stash - Patrick Lose

My Sister placed the large bowl on her head...had to explain what it was

Pattern weights - to accompany some sewing notions. Many of the online tutorials made larger weights, and used squares. I used a single rectangle cut 6.5" x 3.5".

Pattern weight pyramids

The largest project was finished today - a quilt for my nephew. He is quilt-worthy, as he told me how much he enjoys the graduation quilt I made him (which his parents told him was "too nice" to take to school.) On Christmas Eve he opened a box containing some of the blocks, but I kept the overall design a secret. The Fractured design is from Making Quilts by Kathy Doughty. The sub-block has been around a long time, and I have several templates cut from plexiglass in different sizes. I did mirror some of the shapes as in Kathy's quilt, though I drew it up for sizing with all blocks (except the center column) the same orientation. I pulled the colors from the backing, Animal Spirits by Robert Kaufman (I was gifted just under 5 yards of it.) Some batiks, some hand-dyes, Fossil Ferns and others, all from stash.

Fractured, 82" x 69"

Fractured backing

Two other finishes include the quilting and binding on Flight Path, and a small Homespun Scraps chair seat cover (a utility quilt.) This uses the same block as the Pink Jelly Roll Scraps quilt, not yet quilted.

Homespun Scraps, 30" x 30"

Flight Path quilting - spirals

I would really like to play with the Christmas Sweater block that I purchased from xxx, but have several clothing repair projects and some serious sewing room cleaning first.

I've completed five knitted charity hats in the past two months, and have the 6th on the needles.

Jelly Roll Scraps

Jelly Roll Scraps are blocks made from leftover 2.5" strips. I tend to group scraps by color, and also have a small stack of 2.5" strips that are full width of fabric. Pulling one busy yellow paisley fabric with pink, green, orange and white in it gave me a color palette. In a scrappy quilt the more the merrier, and there were several pinks and yellows that gave some pop. Soft greens fit too, and a cream with a sage green print gave some light to the mix.

Block layout step 1

Initially planning on 16 10" blocks for a small charity quilt, I stacked up 16 piles of strips to spread out the colors. Each stack was sewn end-to-end with a straight seam, pressed then cut into 10.5" strips. Rather than trying to sew sets of 5 strips together, I started with 4 strips, sewed the pairs, then each pair together, and pulled a 5th strip. When chain piecing it's much easier with even numbers.

There were enough for 20 blocks. After pressing the blocks it was apparent that some of my strips had not been a full 2.5" wide, so the blocks were trimmed down to 10.25" so they were square. Every other block was rotated in the layout to give a bit of a woven effect.

Jelly Roll Scraps top ready to quilt

This was another fun and satisfying project. It's great to work on casual, fun sewing. Pink flannel is ready for the backing, and it will probably be quilted with a butterfly pattern.

I've pulled fabrics already for a small chair cover for the living room with this block, using up a collection of brown, blue and red homey fabrics.