Favorite Things Friday

Since the UPS man just drove up with the fabric that I ordered from Equilter.com so I would have enough for Theresa's quilt, right now my favorite thing is a Big Brown Truck. When you live in Small Town America, you have to depend on the postal service and the other parcel carriers to bring you the things you want and need. The mail truck is always a welcome sight, even when all the carrier leaves is bills and catalogs; I'll put up with those for the days when the truck also brings me treasure.

Today the treasure is fabric. The kind folks at Equilter.com called to tell me they didn't have a 10 yard piece, but had one that was nearly, and two other small pieces, a total of about 15 yards. I bought it all. Now I know that there is no more to be had in the world, and one way or another I will have to make it work.

I still have a little sewing to do before I'm ready to take a picture of the center section. I'll try to get that posted tomorrow.

This is what the very center of the quilt looks like. You can begin to see how complete circles weave together at the intersections. It will be clearer when the melons are added to the outer edge, but even now it's starting to come together.

I've learned a couple of things so far. One is that this background fabric is not printed symmetrically, so it's hard to cut all the pieces indentically. I'm doing the best I can and going for overall effect rather than absolute identity. Another is that there is a LOT of waste in the cutting. Fortunately www.equilter.com had more yardage, so I've ordered another 10 yards just to be sure I have enough. I've tried a couple of different layouts and they all seem to leave about the same amount of waste, although this one with the light center at least lets me get 2 pieces out of a width of fabric. I've also decided I may vary the layout from the center to the outer edge, enhancing the light-to-dark shading effect.

In the piecing, I've had to make two modifications from the way I did James and Crystal's quilt. One was to make marking templates so I can mark off where the cornerstone seam would be if there was one, since the end of the melon background lines up with that, and so I can mark the center of the arc, since it's not the center of the piece of fabric. I've also had to clip the fabric at the cornerstone seam when I sew the arc pieces together for ease.

In some ways the sewing seems slower than it should be, but I keep forgetting that I'm not doing the tedious paper piecing of the arcs. So If the cutting and marking takes more time, I think I'm still coming out ahead. The main thing is to keep everything labeled and right side up. Thank goodness for sticky notes, highlighting tape, and a good seam ripper.

The plan is now final. Even with the fabrics I bought last week, I wasn't sure that I had what I really wanted, so I went rooting through a box of fabrics I had pulled for a set of crazy blocks. Lo and behold, I found exactly what I was looking for, and since I only need one ring of each of these lights, a fat quarter is enough. One of the pieces had been cut into, so I did some tracing of templates to be sure I had enough of that fabric, and I do, so we're good to go.

So here's the plan. The fabrics on the left are the lights, and they will go in the center of the quilt. The ones in the middle are the mediums, and they will encircle the lights. Then on the right are the darks, and they will form the outer ring. The one thing I realized as I was drawing the working diagram is that I need another set for the arcs that will intersect the outer edge of those dark rings. But I have a good quantity of blacks that can be pressed into service; I'm not going to worry about those right now.

The basic plan is the same as before, but it has a lot more tones of teal in it. It will still shade from light to dark from the center out. I'm not bothering to redo my colored pencil sketch, because it shows what I really need it to. The most important diagram right now is this one:

It has every block labeled by row and column and every arc labeled by fabric. When I start to sew I need to know that I am working on block C3 and the arc at the top has fabric L1 and M2 in it. This is the chart that keeps the fabric labels straight:

And to be extra sure I don't get them mixed up I have each fabric labeled as well.

Tomorrow I should be able to start cutting fabric. I'll do the first block with fabric I have plenty of in case I need to adjust the templates. Before the weekend is over I should at least have something sewn together.

I finally have a plan for Theresa's double wedding ring. I've had a picture in my mind of what I wanted for at least six months, but couldn't figure out how to make it, or even get it down on paper. Of course, in all this time I didn't actually sit down with paper or pencils, I just fussed about it. Finally, last night, it started to come together.

It started with a lovely light turquoise and gray print that just seemed to say Theresa to me. Because she is young and hip and graphic, I thought about doing the rings in shades of gray. So I started collecting gray fabrics. And I wanted to have whole rings, not pieced ones, that would intersect with each other across the quilt.

So here's the rough sketch of what I'm going to do:

When I put a template on the background fabric I realized that this too needs to be made in 24-inch rings, the same size as Crystal's. That helps. Once I knew that I could lay out a 6x6 grid and start putting in colors. Of course the grays all look alike in the picture, and the blue shading i put in the center doesn't show up much, but this is the general idea. The center of the quilt will be lighter than the edges, and there is a definite way each of these rings intersects. And each arc will be a single piece of fabric, rather than 7 as in Crystal's quilt.

These are the fabrics I have as of now:

The red/coral will be a sort of "surprise" in the construction, appearing at random places. But something seemed to come alive in the mix when I added it, and I think in a very small amount it will work wonders.

I also bought this lovely shaded turquoise fabric on one of my buying trips. It too seems to add something, but it's not quite the right shade. And I'm not sure what to do with it. So for now, it's on the table waiting for its chance to tell me what it needs to be.

The problem is that all the grays are pretty much the same value. There's some difference, but not a lot. But I just haven't seen any lighter ones that really do the job.

So there will be more fabric shopping in the near future. But I have something to work with. And that's farther along than I've been so far.

Vacation is well and truly over. Downloading the pictures from the camera makes it official. It was a great week and a half, and of course it was much too short.

The main event was a trip to Iowa to spend time with my friend Amy working on the double wedding ring. It was a day and a half on the road to get there, even without exploring interesting places along the way. I always knew there was a place on this earth where I would fit right in:

On the way home I stopped here to get gas. I got to see the Peculiar Bank and the Peculiar Lion's Club and the Peculiar Pharmacy. Clearly these people are proud of the place they call home. The countryside in Iowa was very green. It reminded me a lot of Alberta except for the terracing of the slopes. Mostly it was planted in corn and beans, just like home. But one thing they do have, that we don't have here, is barn quilts. I saw three or four different ones in our rambles around the countryside. Makes me wish I had a barn.

The best part was getting to spend time with Amy and work on the quilt. It seems like we hardly made a dent in it in the 5 days we had, but it was great fun. There were visits to quilt shops, and routine checks for sale yarn. There was good cooking and good eating. And lots and lots of talking. You'd think we never talk to each other.

Now I'm back home and have to rely on the quilting assistants here. Princess is doing a good job of keeping the quilt from lifting off the table while I work on it. Bart patrols the floor in case orange yarn drops from the sky or a ball of mohair strays from the drawer mohair lives in. I wish one or the other of them would learn to use a thimble and help with the stitching. But meanwhile they do what they do very well. You take what you can get.

The good news is that the studio storage wall has gone from looking like this:

to looking like this:

Yes, it's a shelf piled high with boxes, but the boxes are all similar in size and shape, and they are LABELLED. The labels are even somewhat color-coded, although I ran out of one color and had to switch. Projects that were lurking in other places have been pulled out of hiding and are now assigned to a storage box. The scrap bins have found another place to live. And I pretty much know what everything is.

The bad news is that every one of those plastic boxes represents an unfinished quilt. Some have completed tops and are just waiting to be quilted. Others have a block or two completed. And I wish I could say that's the lot of them, but I can't. There are other projects I don't have boxes for at the moment, and they are just being shuffled off to a corner for the time being.

Still, it's progress. The shelf got dusted as the boxes got taken down. A couple of projects were declared abandoned and the fabrics put back in stash. A couple of others have moved up the ladder to completion, since it doesn't seem like it will take a lot to finish them. And in the process I've created enough new storage space that I don't think I'm going to have to move in extra shelves after all, although I haven't completely resolved the problem of where to store my dying equipment.

Next to tackle the notions and embellishments.

The baby is at the longarmers to be basted. The house feels kind of empty, like when one of the kitties is at the vet or something. A being that should be here isn't. But then very soon Baby will be leaving for good, so I guess this is a good time to get used to the idea.

I really need a name for this quilt, other than "The DWR" or "The Baby." I need a name that says it is this particular DWR, not just any one. It's going to James and Crystal, but it's not really "James and Crystal's DWR." I need a name that describes the unique beauty of this quilt. Something to ponder during the quilting phase.

Meanwhile I am giving the studio a major makeover. At least in terms of pulling stuff out of cubbyholes and seeing what space can be used for what. Right now it's the UFO's in various stages that have me scratching my head. These are the kinds I have identified so far:

1. There are fabric collections and scraps from finished tops. I know as soon as I put them back in stash and use them up I'll want them for something, so they need to stick together until the label goes on the quilt, or at least until the binding goes on. But maybe if they have their own storage area I can more easily monitor those tops and move them along toward being quilted.

2. There are tops in progress. These have at least one block sewn. I'm including in here collections of blocks I've received in swaps, even though I haven't really figured out what to do with them. This group has blocks, fabrics, scraps, and hopefully a pattern. Again, having them all together might help keep this group from getting any larger than it is.

3. There are quilts that haven't been started yet, but for which fabrics have been collected. Some of these are just a collection of fabrics that need to go together into a quilt, without even a design yet. Those right now are living on the narrow shelves under my main fabric storage. There's room enough for everything and I can see what's there. I'm also putting fabrics that have sufficient yardage for backing there.

4. And there are scrapbuster projects. These have no completion goal, they are just things I work on whenever I want to just sew without thinking. There are pieces cut to size, some finished blocks, maybe some directions. These need to live together so they don't get mixed up with other projects that I really do have a completion date in mind for.

I started with putting projects in plastic storage boxes on the shelf over the fabric storage. But I've run out of room, and the boxes are rather untidily stacked, and I just need for it to feel like more of a system. Labels will help. Maybe color-coded labels?

I'm pondering on all of this while I'm finishing up the Sprout quilt. I finished the machine quilting yesterday, and today I will sew on the binding. Just a few more hearts for handquilting, and it will be ready to send off to the new baby.

The assembly of the double wedding ring has begun. The first "block" was a bit scary, but I eventually figured out that it was the same kind of seaming that I had been doing in the construction of the individual blocks, the only new element being the seam through the middle of the 4-patch (yellow in the photo above). At this point 6 of the 9 blocks are sewn together, and I'm in the process of creating the extra "melon" pieces I will need for the left and bottom edges.

That and trying to make the blocks lie a little flatter. Since I'm going to be taking it to a long-armer for basting I don't want any major bumps or bubbles in it. Today I decided to try giving the block a good spritzing with water, letting it sit for a minute or two to "relax" the fibers, then pressing the seams well and letting it come to nearly dry on the ironing table. I will then let the blocks lie flat overnight to finish drying. It seems to be helping a lot; as I suspected, I did a fair amount of stretching of the fabric as I sewed, and this is giving all that a chance to relax back into shape. I also changed the direction I pressed the seams partway through (when I went back and reread the directions in John Flynn's book). so am correcting that as much as I can as I go.

Still meditating on how to quilt the large background areas. I'm saying to myself over and over again "Keep it simple, stupid. Keep it simple." It's not just a matter of time; I don't want to do anything that's going to compete with that lovely pattern. Some is needed for the sake of keeping the batting from going wonky. But I'm thinking as little as possible. I even read the instructions on the batting package yesterday; it says 2-4 inches. There's still time to think about that, and Amy may have a good idea too.

Last week I decided it was time for a change of scenery, so took advantage of the slow holiday week and took off for the Ozarks. In order to have an objective for the trip other than just getting out of Dodge I planned a quilt shop hop. Arkansas Quilters Guild had done a mammoth shop hop at the end of April and their list of shops was still posted on their web site, so I was able to look at that list and a map, and plan a trip that was reasonably sensible. I left right after the Memorial Day service at the cemetary on Monday and got home by suppertime on Wednesday. Between Tuesday morning and noon on Wednesday I visited 9 shops, and came home with some lovely fabric and a few other treasures to play with over the coming weeks.

Visiting those shops gave me an opportunity to reflect on what makes a quilt shop worth traveling out of your way to visit. For me at least, the first criterion is fabric selection. I want enormous variety. It's why I visited Kay's shop in Vicksburg even when the stuff was so crammed you could hardly move and the lighting was terrible; she has the bolts, and no one else aroun here does. (And her new store is lovely, and I hope she's proud of what her hard work has accomplished.) And of all the shops I visited, The Country Corner in Harrison, AR definitely had the fabric. I had to resist the temptation to spend all my money there and go home. I did, but I still left with 2 bags full.

The second reason I would put a quilt shop on my "Visit Again" list is atmosphere. Some shops have an ambiance all their own. Whether it's the way things are displayed, or the selection of merchandise, it's clear that the shop owner has a vision and isn't trying to do everything, just what she or he can do well. Remember Me in Mountain Home, and Quilted Heart in Horseshoe Bend were two that fit this category. They were the kind of shop that is fun to poke around in, because you know you are likely to find something that not every shop has.

The third reason is the staff. I will visit a shop with a spectacular inventory even if the staff are indifferent, but a competent and friendly staff will make me revisit a shop that has even a humdrum inventory. Quilter's Corner Fabric in Heber Springs is definitely in this group. Their collection of fabric is small (although the bargain prices help make it attractive), but I had a lovely time chatting with the owner. And at the end of my visit, she presented me with a tote bag from the guild shop hop; it was that personal touch that put that shop on the "Visit Again" list.

So, a lovely ramble through the hills, in spite of the heat. Met some interesting people, saw some interesting places, and came home with toys to keep me occupied for a little while. And 4 shops out of 9 that are worth going back to. Pretty shop hop, I say.

I can finally show the picture of the first quilt I've finished this year:


I made it as a birthday present for my friend Amy, so of course I couldn't show it until she had seen it, since she does pop in here once in a while. I bought the fabric on my last trip to the Ozarks about 5 years ago, and found it when I was going through scrap bins looking for fabrics for the Sprout Quilt. I had a great time working out the setting. And the fabric for the backing is just fabulous:
Amy likes it, and I'm pleased with it, even if some of the points aren't quite perfect and the quilting isn't professional quality.

I've started the quilting on the Sprout Quilt, but have temporarily put it aside until I can get to Monroe and buy more lime green cotton thread. I decided to work a feather stitch over the seams between the blocks and the sashings, and that takes a good deal of thread. I'm working on a list; I know I will need more battings soon as well.

While I had the surfaces cleared I decided to go ahead and baste another top that will work for a young child's quilt. Can't get a picture until the basting is done, and I'm waiting on an order of tatting thread to do that.

So with everything else stalled out, it's back to the Double Wedding Ring. Blocks are getting assembled. I can count how many of each type of piece I need. It's a number less than infinity. This is progress.

I'm not sure why it is, but this time of year seems to be a particularly creative one for me. I'm working at a furious pace in the studio right now, and remembering that it was about a year ago that I was doing exactly the same thing. Not sure why that should be, but I'm not going to insist that the muse follow the calendar. I'll take inspiration whenever it comes.

Maybe it was the announcement that the next honorary grandchild is to be a girl. It made me rush to the shelves and start pulling out lime green and pink fabrics and dig through the scrap drawer for the more "girly" kiddie prints. This was the result:

Right now it's about midway through the basting process. I took another picture of it this morning on the table:

This photo shows the colors better since I used my "real" camera with the flash instead of the iphone. It also shows that I'm trying to learn the technique Sharon Schamber uses for basting quilts. The test will be when the back comes out smooth with no puckers.

Right now I am in a basting and quilting mode. I had to clear off a lot of surfaces to get there. The ironing table needed to be cleared so I could iron whole quilts and backs. The cutting table had to be cleared to hold the quilt being basted. The sewing table had to be mostly cleared so I could scoot a quilt around under the machine arm and not send things crashing to the floor. As long as I'm set up, it makes sense to keep going. There are at least 2 more quilts ready for basting. And I'm learning that if I do a little bit at a time I don't get pains in my back or blisters on my needle-pulling fingers. So switching off between the basting and the quilting makes sense.

But in the mean time --- My friend Amy just finished a quilt that she started sometime back in the 80's, and one of her friends has just pulled out one of her antique projects and is giving it aother look. That made me think of a project that's been lurking in the dim dark recesses of my studio. And this morning I decided it would need to come out and play.I've been planning a quick get-away for next week to do a self-directed shop hop, and it occurred to me that this would make a fun project to work on in the evenings. So out it came:

I'm not really sure when I started this quilt, but I know it was in the 80's. For a long time it was a travel project; I have memories of working on it on trips to the mountains or to visit relatives. It's entirely hand-pieced. The hexagons measure 3 1/2 inches across. There are 32 full blocks, and I think each one has a different blue and a different cream floral print.

Two bits of good news. One is that the layout is done, and each block is labeled. If I can sew 1A to 1B, I'll be okay. The other is that all the fabrics used are in the box. I know I will need some partial blocks at some point, and there is plenty of fabric to create them. For now, I'll just see if I can get what I have sewn together.

Looking at the difference between those fabrics - which I was inordinately proud of at the time - and the ones I use today makes me wonder what I will be working with 20 years from now. Part of the evolution I know is that there is so much more variety available now than there was in the 80's, and that was a vast improvement over what had been available 10 years earlier. I just want fabulous colors and lots of choices.

And in the spirit of finishing projects that have been hanging around forever - I finally made the last 2 wire cubbies to finish out this fabric storage wall.

I've had the kit for at least 2 years, but there just didn't seem to be any rush to get it done. On the other hand, it makes me ridiculously happy that it is finally done. I even had enough pieces left over to create a small free-standing unit with 2 more cubbies. Not sure where it's going yet, but for now it's holding the stuff I needed to move off the ironing table - just standing in the middle of the floor. I wonder how long it will take me to move it from there. Meanwhile, the yellows looks quite happy to have a home of their own, separated from the oranges. And clearly they need more playmates.

I can't believe it's been over three months since I updated my blog. What I really can't believe is how much of a difference having DSL makes to being able to upload pictures. What used to take hours now is done in less time than it takes to eat a hot dog. So maybe this will happen more often.

It's also true that I couldn't show or talk about most of what I was knitting during November and December since it was destined for gifts. The Canadian bunch all got scarves and wraps -about 60 feet worth of scarves and wraps. It was a lot of knitting in a short time, but it made me happy to do it, and the smiles and hugs were definitely worth a few late nights.

But now it's January, and I'm off on new adventures. At least new variations on old themes. Because it's winter, I'm working on hats for the Arkansas Children's Hospital, with a goal of cranking out one a week. I'm also working through old acrylic stash because I'm tired of looking at it; by the end of the year I'd like for all of it to be gone and replaced with newer, better quality yarns. Hat number 1 for the year is this one: It's the basic 80-stitch watch cap, but partway through I began to 1)worry about running out of yarn, and 2) think this was terribly dull for a young person. So I threw in some purled stripes. That got me thinking that it would be fun to see how many variations on the 80-stitch watch cap I could come up with in the course of a year without using lacy stitches.

Hat #2 came out like this:

It started out as a kind of diamond pattern, but I didn't like the points, so decided to hide them behind bobbles. These bobbles are a bit large, but I decided to just leave them alone and try something different on the next hat. In the process I learned how to knit backwards so I didn't have to turn the work while I was making the bobbles, and that was totally cool. So I'll play with this idea for a bit and see what happens.

My other new adventure for the year has to do with knitting socks. This is my last pair made from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks book. I have loved working from this book, and this pair, made from a blend of merino wool and possum, are among my favorites. I worked them toe-up with a short-row heel and they fit my feet perfectly.

But of course, having achieved perfection, now I have to try something different. Last summer I found Cat Bordhi and her innovative ways of shaping socks. At the time I didn't want to think new thoughts about making socks, so I put the book away. But as the new year approached, and other knitters talked about spending a year with Elizabeth Zimmerman or other designers who provide challenges, I decided 2010 would be the year of Cat Bordhi for me. I dug out New Pathways for Sock Knitters and sat down to patiently read through all the instructions. I even followed the suggestion of knitting a "learning sock" to get the basic idea of the architecture before starting in on an adult sized pair. This is my first learning sock.

I didn't follow the instructions about being careful about gauge, and so this sock will not fit any normal human foot, but I fell in love with the way the increases are made at the top of the arch and the back of the foot just wraps around to make the heel.

The next challenge was to measure my own feet and develop "magic numbers" that would translate into a pattern that would fit my feet. I did that this week, and started a pair of grown-up socks in this pattern. I only have a couple of inches done, but I slid it onto my ankle yesterday just to prove that I had done it right - and I have! I can hardly wait to get to the arch and the heel.

So I'm off and running for 2010. Lots of plans for the year. There are babies to be born and weddings in the works, and my feet still love handmade wool socks on a chilly day.

New month. Time for a status report on works in progress. Officially, there are eight of them, but I'm taking a couple of them off the active list.

The Double Wedding Ring is coming along. Whether it will be done in time to take with me when I head north for Christmas is becoming doubtful. But the blocks are more than half finished, and there are pieces to make more.

Christmas Applique is my current hand-quilting project. Three of 15 blocks are quilted. I have no particular time line in mind for this, so any forward movement is okay.

The same is true of Appliqued Kitties. This is a hand applique project that gives me something small and manageable to work on when I don't feel like knitting. I'm working on block #6 of a projected 20 blocks.

Turning Twenty Again is ready to be basted and prepared for quilting. I want to use this piece to try out a method of basting that Sharon Schambers uses that seems to hold promise for large pieces (like the Double Wedding Ring). I've used a modified version of the method on a smaller piece and I liked it very much, even if I did give myself a blister.

The project that I basted is the Pieced Christmas wall hanging. It is now ready for machine quilting when I need a break from the DWR. I've tested out some thread combinations, and I'm not really happy with any of them, so that will be the next thing to explore. I want to use a somewhat heavier thread than regular sewing thread, and none of the stores around here have anything suitable. I guess I'll have to order some samples the next time I place an online fabric order.

The projects that I'm removing from the list for the time being are the Spring wallhanging, the Stack 'n Whack Fans, and the Swap Blocks. I'm not motivated to work on any of these right now, so I'll just set them aside and work on other things.

As for knitting, this is peak season for Knitting for Noggins, the project for Arkansas Children's Hospital. I will be away all next week attending various meetings, and my bag is already packed with yarns for a variety of hats. And I'm planning ahead to Christmas, and have an assortment of gift items planned and in progress; but of course I'm not going to share details of those.

Time to get back to work. Stitches don't grow on trees.

This is what I've been slogging away at for the past month. It was meant to be finished for a July wedding, but now I'm hoping for Christmas. I didn't want to show it until the wedding couple had had a chance to see it, so it's been the mystery project up to now.

It's still in the block construction stage, but moving well along. My goal is to have the blocks finished by the end of this week. At the very least I want to be started on the quilting by the end of this month. I'm not planning anything fancy for the quilting; the story here is all in the fabric.

For those that want details, the blocks are 24 inches. The finished quilt will have 36 blocks, so it will be a generous king-sized quilt. The arcs are being paper-pieced, which helps make sure they come out the right size and helps control all those bias edges. And of course the background pieces are all fussy-cut to highlight the pineapples and the love birds.

I almost like the way this quilt looks in the photo better than I do close-up. The picture gives me a chance to step back and see the overall effect, and I love the alternating light and dark effect in the rings.

Now back to the sewing machine.

A long-overdue update. July was about getting ready to go on vacation, then being on vacation. And I've been too busy sewing and otherwise being creative since I got home to take time to upload pictures. And while I was on vacation I discovered Facebook --- nothing more needs to be said about that.

A couple of finishes to show off. First is the little quilty wall hanging:

I didn't do anything fancy in the quilting, just an echo around the figure, and some random cross-hatching in the border. It now hangs what was the one last blank bit of wall in my studio, and stands guard over the baskets holding current works-in-progress. The kitty seems happy to be finally out of the drawer and doing what she loves best - snoopervising.

The second finish was the leaves quilt:

This one too had been languishing for far too long, and I'm happy to have it done and ready to hang when the season changes. And in the process I got back into the rhythm of hand-quilting, and figured out how to get enough light to see what I'm doing while sitting in my favorite chair, so I already have another hand-quilting project in the works.

The real news is that I'm taking a class in dyeing fabric from Quilt University, and these are the results of my first efforts:

The far left fabrics are the results of the first pass through the bucket of dye - bright, clear, primary colors. There is a little bit of mottling on the red and blue, but I would use these fabrics in a project, since I mostly think mottling adds character to the fabric. The middle column shows what I got from the second pass through the buckets; these fabrics are much paler and more mottled. And finally I did some color mixing with what was left over: blue-yellow, red-yellow, red-yellow-blue. Again, they are mostly quite usable colors, although the tan would not be my favorite.

I had great fun doing this. Old Chemistry Teacher Brain kicked in from time to time, and reminded me how to handle powders that I didn't want drifting around the room, and the importance of wearing my rubber gloves, no matter how much I hate them. I'm really looking forward to the next lesson, where we'll learn how to make secondary colors and how to get mottled fabric on purpose.

There are quite a few projects in progress at the moment. I dug out an old applique kitty project to take with me on vacation, so that's officially a WIP again. There's the hand-quilting project, which is a Christmas throw I put together a few years ago. I made a set of blocks from the Turning Twenty Again pattern, and have now turned them over to my friend Mary Jane to work out the layout. Today I finished sewing together the fans from the Stack-n-Whack fan project. And there is the Double Wedding Ring. There may be more, but these are the ones that are taking up space on my work surfaces.

The wastebasket next to my sewing maching is overflowing. There are fabric snippets and random threads all around it on the floor. So something must be getting sewn, even if I don't seem to have a lot of progress to report.

The major news is that the kitties thoroughly approve of their new cozy pieced onto a dryer sheet foundation. I put this together on Sunday, and brought it up to the house, where it was thoroughly ignored. I realized that this was somehow related to the code of kitty ethics, so I tried not to get worried and did my best to ignore that it was even there. Monday morning I was rewarded by Bart checking it out, then Princess figuring out that he had something neat and bugging him to death until he left and she could check it out. Eventually they figured that it was almost big enough to share, and they have been doing so quite nicely for the past two days. The only major problem was a tendency for the thing to skid when they leaped up onto the credenza. I may add some puff paint paw prints to the backside to make it less slippery.

I finally got up the nerve to cut the fabric for the Stack-n-Whack fan quilt. I know I'm not the world's most accurate cutter, and I was worried that my cuts to create the stack that gets whacked would not work. Once I realized that this initial cutting was followed by squaring up and opportunities for accurate alignment of the layers I was fine. The fans look quite stunning, actually, especially on the cheddar yellow background. I'm not sure yet just what the finished product will look like, but I think it will turn out quite nice.

This weekend I am off on a ramble. There's a quilt show in Birmingham, and that seemed like a good excuse for a road trip. So as soon as I get finished in Lake Providence tomorrow I will head east. Friday I will do some general shopping, then be ready to hit the show early Saturday morning. I plan to come home with enough background fabric for the fans to do nearly anything I want to with them. And who knows what else might come home with me. And I'm going to take the tesselated leaves with me; if the light is good enough in the hotel room I will work on that in the evenings. And of course there will be knitting, probably socks.

I've been pondering what to do with these swap blocks. For the immediate future, the answer is to put them back in their basket and work on something else. But there is a plan for them. I just can't do it now.

The first thing I saw when I put them up on the design wall was that they were a pretty uninspiring lot. Lots of pretty little calicos, but not consistantly. There's one block that's black and white, and another that has some pretty vivid yellow hand-dyes in it. There's a good bit of brown, and blue and green, but they don't really go well together. And the overall effect is pretty muddy and blah.

So I turned to Sharyn Craig for inspiration. She has a whole book devoted to setting blocks that takes ugly ducklings and turns them into pretty respectable swans. The first message was that the finished quilt can be whatever color you want it to be. And she shows examples from blocks laid out on different colored backgrounds to make her point.

Now these blocks are pretty small and plain, and there are quite a lot of them. I don't want to make two quilts, and I don't want the finished quilt to be enormous, so that limits how much extra fabric I want to add. But I decided to pull some strips out of the scrap bin and see what I liked.

The red seemed to do the most for the blocks, and there is no clear red in any of the blocks themselves. So that seemed a natural choice for the sashing. But then yellow is my favorite neutral color, and I immediately saw what I wanted the sashing to be:

That pretty yellow star does quite a bit to distract from the surrounding blocks. But by itself it's not quite enough. The colors are still pretty muddy. So the next step is going to be to overdye the blocks and see if that will add some zest to the mix. I can visualize the final product - a bunch of blocks of varying shades and intensities of blue. But right now I don't really know how to do it.

The good news is that Quilt University is going to be offering some dying classes next month. So I will be patient and take the classes and get some guidance in my experimentation, and then see what I can turn these blocks into. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other things to work on.

I have a new Fab Four list. The first is a project that was actually on the last list. It's called Tessellated Leaves;

I think the original pattern was by Doreen Speckmann. I started hand-quilting this top late last summer, but I haven't gotten very far with it. And actually, I'm not sure that this is the best way to handle this top. My original vision for this top was a bit different. So I will have to decide how to proceed from here. I've decided that at least in this case "done is NOT better than perfect." There's potential here that needs to be developed.

The second I am just calling Spring for now. I did this as a mystery top several years ago, and as soon as I got the leaves and yo-yo flowers on it, I realized that just one blob of dimensional applique was not enough. So it went into the drawer, and there it has languished. I've gotten as far as pulling out all my Baltimore album books and assembling a stash of fabrics, ribbons and buttons that might eventually make their way onto the finished top. Experimentation will be the key here.
Number three is a small hanging that I made from a purchased pattern a couple years ago that just needs quilting. I think stippling or close cross-hatching in the black area, and something simple to just hold the layers together in the border. Nothing to detract from the applique, since that's the star here. I hadn't looked at it for a while, and was actually quite pleased with the quality of the stitching still. So it's time to finish this little cutie and hang it somewhere in the studio.
Finally, number four. This is a collection of blocks that I acquired in a swap. There's 55 of them (some look like ones I made and didn't send in the swap) and they're 8" blocks, so there's enough to make a twin sized top. I don't remember what the block name is; it looks like a "Framed Four-Patch," except that the frame uses a partial seam technique. The problem is that the colors and fabrics are all over the map and frankly the quality is marginal. I'm not willing to throw them out, but I don't want to invest a lot of time or money in the finished product either. I'm hoping that the right sashing will do wonders for them and make me fall in love with them.

So that's the new list. There's a variety of tasks and levels of difficulty presented. They are things that can be worked on in short bits of time in between working on the secret project. This week I did get the new folding table and some flamingo pink stacking baskets, so these UFO's-now-WIP's will have a place to live other than my ironing table while they are in process. Now all I have to do is quit talking about what I'm going to do and get to actually doing it.

Two more finishes to brag about. The first was sort of finished a couple of years ago, but I was never really satisfied with it.

The vast expanses of solid pink seemed to overwhelm the Laurel Burch fabric that was meant to be the focus of the quilt, and it's hard to overwhelm Lauren Burch. At the same time I didn't want to do anything too fussy. I thought about using the spaces to display collectible Laurel Burch buttons, but they are much too expensive to just slap onto a wall quilt that will mostly hang in my studio. Covered buttons were the solution. I even removed the shank wires that come in the kit and glued them on with E6000, following a tip I read in the latest American Quilter magazine. So a problem solved in a pleasing way. And I've got another project in the works that might benefit from covered buttons. I guess I'll have to start keeping them in stock. Some fused applique helped cover another problem and add interest to the center at the same time.

The Sunflower quilt was inspired by an awesome piece of fabric and a book called 9-Patch Pizzazz by Judy Sisneros. It uses large cuts of the large floral print and 9-patches to fill in and blend. It took a while to get the design just right; lots of arranging, photographing, rearranging, photographing again, then sitting back and waiting for what felt right. The subtitle of Judy's book is "Fast, Fun, and Finished in a Day." Well finished in a year more like it. There are some deviations from the "straight and narrow" that are not immediately apparent. Some of the yellow squares do not belong to a nine-patch; in fact there is one that is just appliqued in place. But they somehow helped create the flow of color through the piece, and so are ultimately necessary. The other deviation is in the quilting. It's just a simple diagonal cross-hatch, except that every yellow square has a quilted X through it, but the lines are not necessarily carried through to the larger pieces. Again, it was about continuity of a certain kind, but not necessarily traditional. The result is a nice wall quilt to use in late summer or early fall.

Meanwhile I have been hard at work at a quilt that I can't show pictures of yet, but which involves paper piecing and fussy cutting and a lot of precise but tedious work. In between bouts with that I am working on kitty cozies. The one with the big green and white + in it started life as some blocks pieced from scraps onto dryer sheet foundations. As I was going through boxes of scraps I found the green and white strip, left over from another project. It was too good to cut up, so here it is. I haven't tested the dryer sheets with the kitties yet to see if they approve of the residual scent; when this one has batting and backing I will let my crew give it a test nap.

The other one I put together today in about 30 minutes. I had strip sets left over from Hunter's quilt, so trimmed them to a consistent size, discovered I had 8 of them, and found a coordinating cat fabric to slap into the middle. Instant kitty cozy top. And no dryer sheets on this one.

So the studio is a total wreck but good things are happening there. I had to take this set of pictures with the quilts clipped to my fabric storage bins because the design wall is occupied with the secret project. In fact, I'm beginning to think this is the time to get the sheets of homosote and do the design wall properly, so I can have multiple projects at that stage. So far I've resisted it, but there comes a time when half-assed will no longer do. I'm also going to invest in another folding table, so I have more surface area to cover with projects in process.

I started this year with four projects that I wanted to finish before the end of the year. Three of the four are done; the only one that is languishing is a hand-quilting job that now has to be at the top of the pile because it's the only one left in the pile. But that means it's also time to sort through the bins and pull a couple more UFO's out of hiding that might become potential finishes. Having a list of four was a good idea; I could ignore all the others and not get weighted down by the mass of them. And each of these needed something different; I'll have to think about that too as I try to decide what should go onto a new Fab Four list.

I have been dying to show off this quilt. I think it is one of the coolest things I have ever created. Usually by the time I finish a project I just want it done. This one I'm still in love with, warts and all. I think I love it so much because it is truly a creative effort, not just following a recipe created by someone else. I will bet money that there is no other quilt in existence quite like this one.

The official name of the quilt is "Choosing Hope Over Fear," a phrase taken from President Obama's inaugural address. In many ways it embodies my prayers, my hopes, and my fears for this new president who is determined to chart a new course for America.

This quilt began with Friendship Star blocks obtained in a swap in 2003.The blocks were made by quilters in an on-line group and come from the length, breadth and heart of the United States. Each woman wrote her name, city, and state on the blocks she contributed, so the geographic diversity is easy to recognize. At the time I received the blocks, I thought something along the lines of "Red States, Blue States, United States" I bought some red, white and blue prints to serve as companion fabrics, but then set the blocks aside. Something was missing.

On election night, November 4, 2008, a different on-line group was planning to spend the night working on a "vigil project," since there was every reason to believe we would not know the winner of the Presidential election until very late at night, if even then. I decided the red, white and blue theme was appropriate to the occasion, and started making reversible blocks using Sharon Pederson's method of quilting individual blocks and joining them.

The final creative spark for the project came from Cat Bordhi, a knitter. On the morning after the election she wrote in her blog:
The Moebius *appears* to have two surfaces and two edges - ie, polarities such as black and

white,right and wrong, good and bad, Republican and Democrat - but when you follow the

surface around you will run right into your starting point without ever having changed to the
other “side.” For there isn’t one. Everything flows into itself. Polarities are an illusion. What
lies beneath the apparent polarities is oneness, beauty, and grace. In a Moebius you can see

it, hold it, be awed by it.
I realized the quilt needed to be a mobius in order to truly capture the idea that there was no such thing as a right or wrong side, and that even the idea of "taking sides" was not helpful in current political conversation.

So the quilt is a mobius. It can be rotated freely around the hanging rod, although for the sake of taking pictures I coaxed it to lie fairly flat. The quotation from Cat Bordhi has been printed onto printable cotton fabric and sewn along the edge of the quilt; this same strip extends to become the maker's label.
The last stitch in the quilt was taken today, April 29, 2009, President Obama's 100th day in office. It seemed an appropriate way to mark the day.

The logjam has finally broken free. The stuck has become unstuck. Water is flowing again. Whatever cheesy metaphor you want to use, use it. The fact is, finished objects have been pouring out of the studio this week. Finished quilted objects, not just knitted hats (useful as those are!).

It started with National Quilt Day last Saturday and a need to do something to mark the day. But with a table piled high with unfinished projects, it had to be something that I could reasonably start and finish in one day. Obvious choice was a baby quilt, and the Super-Sized Nine Patch was even more obvious.

I went in search of three fabrics. I got really inspired and pulled out a piece of flamingo fabric. Mingo fabric tends to be "precious," not to be squandered on mere baby quilts, but the day was right, and I realized I had hoarded this fabric for at least two years, and it was time to quit hoarding fabric that would ultimately end up in a yard sale after I die.

The other two fabrics were happy to be partnered with the mingoes and within an hour I had the pieces cut for the trio of quilts and was starting to put the first one together. By the time I quit for supper, and ultimately for the day, the first of the mingo quilts was finished except for a few feet of binding. Definitely an accomplishment for National Quilt Day.

But I still had not accomplished my goal, so Sunday saw me back at the machine finishing the binding on the first mingo quilt. With it done, it was on to quilt #2. Meanwhile I showed finished quilt #1 to Mary Jane, who promptly decided she needed two of the three for the newborn twins of one of her friends back home in Canada. (I had suggested that grandson Hunter needed some mingoes in his life, but she decided the quilt was a little too pink and a little too "girly" for Hunter). Back home to finish quilt #2, which was done by Monday and delivered.

The first two just had a flannel backing and no batting. I decided since #3 was to be saved for a future need it could be different, so it got batting and a cotton backing. It was done somewhere around Wednesday. It then acquired a rust stain from the iron as I was giving it a final smoothing, which then meant waiting for a sunny day so I could apply lemon juice and salt to the stain; that finally happened yesterday, so it is now washed and dried and waiting for a baby that needs it.

But then of course, that left Hunter without a blankie. On an expedition to the quilt shop on Monday I found a perfect piece, and bought a yard. Of course, since the print was directional, I should have bought an extra quarter to do the Super-Sized Nine Patch, but I didn't realize it was directional until I got it home and laid it out on the table. That meant coming up with a Plan B, but a very simple Plan B, since the same expedition resulted in the acquisition of a very large amount of fabric destined for a Double Wedding Ring quilt that needs to be finished on a deadline.

The result of Plan B is here:

I finally finished it today, all the way to a label on the back. It turned out quite nicely for a little boy with musical parents (his daddy plays guitar and his momma plays piano). His daddy's favorite color is orange, and there is orange in the print, so that was an obvious choice (the same color is on the back). The red has musical notes printed on it. And the other fabrics are just happy baby colors and prints. It was quick and easy and I hope Hunter enjoys it this summer.

I was also happy to see that Princess, the new ruler of the household, has taken on the job of nap-testing quilts:

This was mostly Callie's job, although Buster was quite capable at it. But since their departure, there was no resident nap-tester (Bart is more into yarn than fabric things). She immediately came to see what I was doing when I was trying to get pictures of Hunter's quilt, and knew immediately that she was to get in the middle of the quilt. Getting her to sit still long enough for a picture was not easy, but I suspect that this will change as she gets older.

Hunter's quilt was finish #4 for the week. After months of finishing nothing quilted, this was a major accomplishment. But the day was not over, and there is still a rather large pile of unfinished objects cluttering up the studio that need to disappear if I'm ever going to work on a gigantic DWR. So work continued.

The next closest project was this kitty cosy:

I had made a couple of these for Buster's carrier while he was making regular trips to the vet, Andrea, and he really liked them. So I decided to make some for Andrea to use at the clinic. This is a "biscuit quilt"; each square is individually stuffed with polyfill, then the squares are sewn together, and I've added an extra layer of batting between the "biscuits" and the backing. This one shows definite lack of planning in the arrangement of colors, but I know the kitties won't care, and it's off the table. They're not exactly a speed project, but they do use up scraps, and they serve a useful function. And Princess has already checked this one out and has certified its "nap-ability."

Five finished objects in one week. I know that's a record for me. But it feels so good to have something to actually take pictures of and talk about for a change. I'm still working at clearing the decks for the DWR. Next in the pipeline was the election quilt, and I made some progress on it before I quit for the day. I'm going to continue to work through the projects on the table at least through Monday, and possibly one more day (starting the DWR on April Fool's Day seems amazingly appropriate). Whatever isn't done then will have to be stashed away. I'm hoping that there will be very little to stash, and more pictures here.