Sunday, October 24, 2004


Strings

Weekly report

I've started working on the string quilt, finally. I did a little bit on this last week, although I don't think I remembered to mention it. I have a photo of 16 blocks I'll put up later. I actually have 18 blocks done, which sounds good except that this is 6" blocks so I'm going to have to make a good many - I'm thinking 80 blocks, which would make a 48x60" quilt. This is the first time I've tried making a string quilt with a common fabric, and so far I really like it. I also made my last one without a foundation, but I'm using one this time. It's much easier. (I think last time I just starched the crap out of it hoping that would help the bias edge problem, and it worked ok, but I'm really trying to avoid using a ton of starch on things these days.)

If you're wondering about the autumn leaf quilt, well, it's obviously not going to be finished this autumn anyway - and for that matter I said from the beginning that it probably wouldn't. I'll probably come back to it pretty soon but I'm not in any particular hurry about finishing it. The string quilt is a gift and thus has a deadline.

I didn't ever post to say that I skipped quilt guild last week - I didn't feel well at all that day, my allergies have really flared up in the last week or so. I hear the speaker was good, though.

And I keep thinking the quilt show (i.e., Houston) is this week, but it's not, darnit. I guess Market starts a week from tomorrow. I'm taking the Thursday and Friday of next week off - the 4th and 5th, I think? I can't wait.

Cowgirl Rose


Believe it or not, my mother didn't have anything new to photograph this week, so here's one that's a few months old - it's been in my Webshots album but I'm going on the assumption that everybody doesn't go look at that. This is a Moda panel, but I really like the way she set it.

(Oh, and I got the info for the pattern for that one from last week, for whoever was asking - I'll put it in the comments.)

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Last week's quilt


Here's the 9-patch/snowball of my mom's that I didn't get a picture of last week. She used a couple of toile-type fabrics* and a couple of florals. I really like this.

* I need to look up the definition of "toile" because I have a search that runs every day on eBay for toiles and I see some things called toiles that I don't consider to be, personally. (Which isn't unusual on eBay, when it comes right down to it.) What I really think of as toiles are the one-color pictorial fabrics, but I've never checked into this. I'll have to check and see what the actual definition is and report back. Anyway, these are in multiple colors but they definitely are in a toile-type style.

199 leaves


Apparently I miscounted. (See the space on the bottom left?) You can't really see them in the picture, but I have the 4 blocks for the corners done. I'm just missing that one red block, darnit.

Now I'm trying to decide if I need to do any more rearranging - what do y'all think, does everything look pretty balanced? Some of the lighter background fabrics show up more than others, that's the thing that's bothering me most. I think there's a couple of blocks I could move around to work on that a little bit. But I don't think it'd look bad if I put it together exactly as it is.

Mom's quilt of the week


She was cutting out the fabric for this the last time I was there sewing (week before last), but I don't think she started it until this week. She's quilting on it now, but she's not finished yet.

(I don't remember where this pattern came from. As always, if you really want to know, say so in the comments and I'll try to remember to ask her!)

Pretty colors!


block for Mom's bee (I think it's going to be a Lopsided Logs block) - the cat is machine-embroidered.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Random quilt picture


One of my older quilts. This was a graduation present for my friend Ryan. (He requested "Yankee blue" and dark green.) If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't use that blue and white check, which I think is somewhat distracting up close, but from a distance it looks great. Really this is my favorite of all my log cabins.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

We interrupt this program


NLDS game 3, 10-9-2004 (or, the reason I don't have a quilt report this week)

My mother did have a project of the week - a 9-patch/snowball variation in toiles, it's very cute. She's been sick all week and she made this quilt from start to finish while she was sitting at home. However, I don't have a picture because the batteries in my camera decided to play out. I'll get one next week.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Bonus quilt picture

I thought I would just start throwing up a random quilt picture when I have nothing else to say.


Here's the quilt Karen and I made for Beth and Jeremy last spring. (This is before it was quilted.) There are lots and lots more pictures of it - including detail pictures of all the photographs - in Karen's gallery.

I also want to throw up my standard disclaimer about this quilt: whatever Karen may tell you, she did most of the work on this quilt. I made some of the units and did share equally in the assembly process, but she did all the rest, including printing all of those photos, which had to have been a whole lot of work! (I keep saying this because she has a habit of making it sound like I did as much work as she did, and I'm really really certain that that's not true.)

Monday, October 04, 2004

Playing with leaves

I don't have a whole lot to say about Saturday, really. My mom was gone part of the time, and while she was gone I raided her stash because I needed greens, and I forgot to bring any (it's certainly not that I am lacking in greens, believe me - it's just that I'm ADD girl and I forget everything) - I couldn't find her main box of green but I found the Christmas fabric, which had enough usable greens to do the job. All it takes to make a leaf block is one strip - 2x12" will do - of colored fabric. (And an equal amount of background. But I have plenty of background.) When my mom got back she said that most of her greens were in a box under the daybed - I had looked under there but apparently it was in the back and I didn't dig deep enough. And of course she didn't mind me taking the fabric; I knew that or I wouldn't have taken it in the first place. She ended up giving me a couple of strips from the fabric she's using to make the table runner, too - I didn't touch that because I didn't know for sure that she didn't need all of it.

I also washed fabric while she was gone - the bee where we're doing the batik trade is this week and I needed to cut it and before that it needed to be washed. So while I was at it I washed all the fabric I'd bought lately from the retreat and eBay and the Painted Pony trip last week.

I needed 20 blocks (16 for the body of the quilt and the 4 for the corners of the border) and I wasted enough time looking for fabric and washing and ironing that I didn't get all 20 done. I did 13, most of which are green. I rearranged a little and double-checked, and what's left to do is 1 orange and 6 reds. That's it.

Right now the four corner blocks are green. I was thinking that I could change that, if I cared to, but I have to make up my mind before I start sewing all those blocks together. The way the colors radiate out from the center, the inner diamond (yellow) has 4 blocks, the 2nd row (greens) has 8 and the one after that has 12, and so on. (It keeps going until you get to the edge of the quilt and then it starts diminishing again until you get out to 8 and then 4 again at the corners. I had to count to be sure this was right, but it is.) So if I changed the 2nd row with the 3rd row - which I think is red - I would need 12 and I could use up those extra 4 greens for that, and then I'd have 4 reds left for the corners instead. I may try it to see how it looks. The reason I'm not sure I want green leaves in the corners is because I don't know yet what color the borders are going to be. I should have decided all this before I made the 4 extra green blocks, but obviously I didn't. Anyway, that gives me 2 choices and I'm pretty sure one of them will be fine. (It's also possible that I could do some further exchanging and end up with extra orange instead, or even yellow. I haven't done the mental gymnastics to be sure that would work, though.)

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Mom's project of the week


This table-runner is from a commercial pattern she bought in Brenham.

(Incidentally, I think "Mom's Project of the Week" is going to be a regular feature. I really just started calling it that to be funny, but the fact is, she almost always has something new going. So if she does, I'll try to get a picture.)