June State of the Studio Report

It's been a while. I was going great guns for a while, and then I got caught up in the Ravellenic games and some yarn stash-busting and sewing just sort of hasn't happened for a while. But in the last week or so I've begun to switch gears and get more into summertime mode, which means less working on big lap projects and more time spent on things that don't trap extra heat. So it's time for a State of the Studio report.

First, a couple of projects did get finished. The Kaleidoscope top is finished. I decided to let it be crib-sized, mainly because I got tired of cutting triangles. For now it's hanging out in the drawer with other unquilted tops; someday I'll get it out and quilt it.

The Tilted Stars did finally get completely finished. The new packaged binding doesn't match the old exactly, but I wasn't about to take the whole thing off and start over, so it is what it is. I seriously doubt the kid that sleeps under it will care.








I ended up with a good bit of strippy fabric left over from the Kaleidoscope, so I got out a set of cat panels that I've been saving (hoarding) for a while and decided to put them together with strippy sashing. There are 30 panels all together, so this will be another crib quilt. It's hanging here because the design wall is currently occupied by another project.











This block is known as Anita's Arrowhead, and, like the strippy quilts, it's coming into existence because of a Craftsy class taught by Anita Grossman Solomon. The construction is interesting. You start with 2 squares, sew 2 seams, then cut the squares apart and reassemble the pieces. I had seen this technique years ago when Anita wrote it up for a quilt magazine but the class was the incentive to actually create a quilt using it. I had a set of 10" squares I had acquired on a buying expedition and some dark blue tone-on-tone that seemed like a good companion. I'm going to end up with 42 blocks that are 10" square, so it's going to be a generous twin-sized quilt. I've finished more blocks since I took this picture, so I'm nearly half done with the piecing. I'll work on color placement when I get the first 21 blocks done; there are 2 of each fabric so the 2nd half will mirror the first half in some way.

Because you sew, then cut, then resew, this quilt has taken up nearly every surface in the studio. You can see some pieces of it on the sewing table next to the machine, along with the bag containing the spoils of my last trip to Vicksburg. There are also bits of it on the cutting table and the ironing table.

As for Robby's quilt, here it is, still in the bag I brought it home from the long-armer's in. I haven't gotten up the courage to work on it yet. The new projects are meant to be a kind of warm-up exercise, getting my quilting brain and muscles talking to each other again. You can also see the pieces of Theresa's quilt on the back of the chair. The good news is that's all that's in the chair except for a couple of stray tools.




All the rest of the junk is piled here, as always. I'm more interested in sewing than in tidying right now. Some day I'll work on this.

So this is the state of the studio in mid-June. I hope there will be progress to show by the beginning of July.