Continuous Strip Quilt

All that red and brown must've gotten to me, I took a sharp turn last weekend and pulled fabric from the two and a half inch strip bin; blue, green, purple, jade, teal, etc. It was great! I wanted to make Finn's Continuous Strip quilt (no link) and I wanted fast, no-thinkum sewing.

The bin before

The bin after

The color palette

The pile of strips was actually three times that size because I wanted my quilt to be 45" x 66", so I pieced 42 yards.

This is how I sewed the strips together, quick, on the diagonal. Lay them RST forming a reversed 'L'.

Bring the right hand corner down until it touches the opposite edge, crease with your thumbnail.

Open it up and use the crease as your stitching guide. Continue pulling strips from your pile and sewing them to the continuous strip. I found I preferred to work with strips that were 22" or shorter, I figure the more variety the better! I didn't measure as I went along, but stopped and measured about every half hour, so that I was getting up to move around too. I found I pieced on average 10 yards every thirty minutes, cool!

Trim all.

And I actually threw these away. It was so freeing, I can't tell you. :) I rationalized, if I stitched them again, they wouldn't make good HST's because the contrast would be too low.

Press open.

Next fold the strip in half RST and sew along one long side. Cut the bottom apart and press open, fold in half again and sew along the long side, and do this again and again. It's sooo fun! Everytime I opened it to press, I was delighted by the color play.

Here it is at 16 strips - or 32". Lila came to inspect my work.

On the next row, it turned the vertical into the horizontal. I love it! I didn't know it was going to do that, but I really like it. I was ready to do another one with a different set of strips to see what it would look like!

Close-up

Machine quilted

This took me a Sat/Sun to sew and 2-3 hours to machine quilt on my Janome. REALLY fast for me. I was so psyched!

Border Options

I've been 'staying on task' with the Double Four Patch Strippy quilt. I love the red and browns, the last time I spread it out on the floor - it's grown to 89" x 106" - I was so excited by the *red*.

This is the corner treatment I'd planned when I drafted it in EQ. But when I laid it out, it looked like there was a hole in each corner, what was I thinking?

So back to the piecing stage, rummage around for a few more pieces of that background fabric, which I was running out of, didn't want to add a new fabric in the final stage.

But after all the back tracking and effort, I like the new corners much better.

When a quilt top gets this large, I don't want to sew each border on one at a time, it takes so much effort to muscle all that fabric around and under the needle. So I sewed the pieced border to the final border and added them as one; the blue line drawn indicates where there's another seam. It's not the conventional way of attaching borders, but it goes a whole lot faster!

February Sew Day

Finally called a Sew Day during the President's Day weekend. It seems if I don't have a sew day with friends at least once a month I feel out of touch with my quilty circle. Well as it fell out, I called ten people, the usual attendees and one after another said they couldn't make it; illness, family visiting from out of town, schedule conflicts... Life just has a way of getting in the way!

Chari and Fran came and we had a good time anyway. I made cinnamon french toast strata for morning snack and tuna salad served on greens for lunch. Nobody complained. :)

Fran's working on her maple leaf wall hanging.

And Chari was proud to complete her Broken Dishes mini. She asked me if I remembered giving her the HST's a while ago at another sew day. I'm pretty much the only one in the group willing to work with these cut-a-ways, but that day she agreed to use what normally gets thrown out with the thread bits.

So over a year later...
She said I'd inspired her to try. How nice, I'm a mini grandma!

I continue to work on my leader-ender Ocean Wave quilt. Sometimes I just sit and make HST's, they're very restive.

I have this great bend wood Shaker box that sits on my sewing table.

It holds the sewn HST's until I feel like pressing.

Once in awhile I sew a five and a half inch block or two and add 'em to the stack. Seven down, ninety to go. :)

Victorian Scissor Caddie Necklace

I love it, but I never use it. Can be seen on eBay here.

Not Your Typical Brown Bag

I take my lunch to work and I've been using a double sided fabric lunch bag for almost 15 years. They're easy to make and last about three years with daily use.

I use coordinating cotton fabric, from the stash of course, and heavy Heat n Bond. This is one time the heavy Heat n Bond is really the one to use. It adds body to the lunch bag and makes it somewhat leak resistant.

Cut outside and lining fabrics 12" x 22" Cut the Heat n bond 11" x 21". Following the fusing instructions on the package, iron the shiny side to the wrong side of the lining, leaving a half inch margin of fabric all the way around the piece. Peel the paper backing from the Heat n Bond, place on wrong side of main fabric and fuse.

Stitch a 1" hem on the 22" end. Fold in half with right sides together and sew the bottom and side seam to make the bag.

Open up bag and 'box' the bottom as shown, the side seam will now be down the back. Using a ruler with a 45 degree line on it, measure in 2.5" from the corners. Click the image to zoom in, I've drawn a red rectangle around the corner measurement to help explain this step. Draw a stitching line.

Then stitch the corners as shown.

Turn the bag right side out and press the boxed corners. You could add a velcro strip to close it, but I always just grab and go!

Sunday in the Sun

It's been in the low 70's mid-afternoons lately. Wow! We drove to the coast and I couldn't believe how clear it was, no fog in sight.

The northern California coast is mostly bluffs, signs say "Coastal Access", not "Beach Path."

But we found a beach... and we had it to ourselves for hours. Man I couldn't believe how beautiful it was, smell that!! How long has it been since we came out here last? Too long...

The sound is just so soothing. How can something so big and so constant calm rather than annoy? Always a wonder to me.

Went home tired, but happy.

Ninepatches for Bumblebean

Blogland is an interesting place. Quilters write about what they're working on, swap with friends they've never met and put out requests for fabric or blocks, which are readily answered.

I read Christine's blog, which asked for blocks for Bumblebean and so many quilters responded that she closed the request within two days! I'm sending mine anyway. I'm sure they'll find their way into a charity quilt somewhere along the line.

I made scrappy

and planned. Which kind do you like to make?

Christmas Charm Exchange

This entry harkens back to December so if you don't want to think about Christmas quilts in January, stop reading now.

During the first week of December Finn, of Pieces From My Scrapbag , was working with her Christmas prints. It got me thinking about the Christmas Charm square quilt I've been adding to alittle each year.

Fifteen years ago I received a pack of 5" Christmas charms from a quilty friend and began sewing them into rows with a green-white-red diagonal pattern. The prints were from the 1980's and 90's and had the country charm of that era. Over the years I've added a few rows now and again, usually working on it during the Christmas holiday, as new charm squares came to me.

Finn and I had a great time e-mailing back and forth about my Christmas charm top and we exchanged 30 squares. They're great! Out of thirty I think there are only three that I already have. Pretty good trick! And they're from the same era, country charm.

I think I might be able to finish this top now.

Thanks Finn!

Baby Cardi

In among the machine piecing, hand quilting and machine quilting these days, I cast on for a baby cardigan this weekend. I got the urge to knit last week and couldn't *rest* until I had yarn between my fingers. I found this cute pattern at Free Pattern Friday.

Changed the colors of course, I don't seem to leave anything alone.

The pattern is worked from the top down, which is a first for me.

Do I really know what I'm doing? No, but I'm having a great time!

Baby Snoopy Baby Quilt

Just a quick quilt for a niece and her baby-to-be. But the print is sooo cute, Snoopy in his puppy-hood. Click to enlarge.

The Whole Nine Yards

Three down and one to go... I think there's about eight yards so far. I love they way they look.

Designing Quilts on a Computer?

I've offered to teach a series of Electric Quilt 6 classes to quilters from my guild and the surrounding area. Intial interest was really high, among those that know what EQ6 is. But trying to promote the classes has been a challenge. I guess quilting and computer drafting don't readily go together in most quilter's mind.

For the last few weeks I've been building the class content. This is the outline for the first class entitle: Introduction to EQ Easy Draw:

Easy draw: Setting up the drawing canvas: block ratios, graphing, snap to point, snap to node
Draw tools: Select, Edit, Line, Arc, Grid
Additional tools: cloning, rotating, symmetry; partition, stagger
Draw a traditional block.
Edit a block from the block library to create your own
The Sketchbook: Saving to Sketchbook, Viewing Sketchbook, Editing
Why don't all the lines in my block show when I click on the color canvas?
Problem solving 'broken' blocks
Coloring the block, using airbrush to compare colorways
Quilt layout
View yardage
Print options
Creating paperpiecing patterns

Practice: Draw Dove in the Window. What dimensions would you use, what graph and snap to point ratio? Draw the block using diamonds, use clone and rotate. Draw the same block with half square triangles. How is the drawing canvas set up for each?

And that's class one! Class two walks you through Patch Draw and three through Applique' Draw. I hope the participants have as much fun with the class as I've had preparing the content. I'm learning the program to a deeper level, it's cool.

To teach is to learn twice!

2008 Tally

Fabric and quilt related purchases in 2008: $181.53
Gift cards: $39.00
Total spent: $142.53

Hey, that's $4.65 less than 2007. Good Deal!

Just Do It

I've been on Christmas vacation for almost 11 days, you'd think I'd have that pieced border done by now. But I've been doing the procrastination dance with myself, draggin' my feet because I hadn't done the math for the QST's yet. I know there's a formula... I have the handouts that tell me what to measure, and where to add and multiply... but I always put this sort of thing off until my free time is almost over.

I won't tell you how many false starts I made before I got it right. It's embarassing to admit that I measured and cut and measured and cut over and over trying to get it right. In the end, when I thought I had it right, I cut the strips from the yardage too narrow and I HAD to use that background, it was the one that was intended. I shouldn't sweat myself so much.

So putting that all behind me I just sewed... then it got better.

The procrastination is done, the road block has been removed. Now it's just assembly.

Can you tell I'm pleased with the way it's turning out? All these pictures! Unfortunately vacation's over, *drat*

Winter Walk

We've been in the house for dayz. It was time to get out and do something.

My son's always taking pictures through the windshield while on trips, so I took one. It was about 37 degrees yesterday, but the sun was shining so we put the top down on the Miata.

Then we walked at the lake. Did I say we need rain? This is the *lowest* I've seen it in the 15 years we've lived here; and this is our water rez too.

The wind was cold. Okay, enough fresh air and sunshine. We went home and sat by the fire.