Back in the swing of it

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Now that the room is up, I’ve been making time to spend down there. I also got some Craftsy classes, including Quilting Negative Space. I’m a HUGE fan of Angela already and this class is just great. I’m really enjoying it, even though I listen along as I’m making supper.

Tonight I had the itch to quilt so I decided to practise some patterns from Angela’s book along with encouragement from her course. I already had a baby quilt laying in a sad pile waiting for me to figure out how to do it. I took Angela’s advice to break it up into smaller sections. It’s improv pieced so there’s no real background, but since it’s so wild, I figured it was a great chance to practise different techniques all over it.

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Here I did two long pieces near the middle to start off and warm up.

 

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You can see the loops, back and forth (love this) and some swirls.

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Close up of doing the all over leaf pattern in the next “block”.

 

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In this block I marked a single line diagonally across then followed it to make the sunburst effect. I love how it feels.

 

 

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Two more long strips gave me the opportunity to try the swirl scroll and woodgrain. The scroll needs some work, but it’s good enough!

 

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And there’s all the work I did this evening. Halfway done!

It was quite fun doing a different design in each section or strip.

 

Update: I actually went through a whole bobbin last night, did a quick bit this morning and ran out of the *second* bobbin,

Sewing room again, finally

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We moved, again, but into a bigger rental. I finally have a sewing room! It’s in the basement, but still pretty light. I rearranged things a couple times to suit me.

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Here it is before I started. And this is missing a few boxes of fabrics.

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I now have a really nice sewing station. I’m left handed so I like to have everything off to my left, and give myself loads of space for quilts.

 

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This is my to-do pile. Oops. I have a tendency to start things, but I’m not so good at the finishing. I’m going to try and finish up what I can, and since I took this pic, sorted the pile into almost done, halfway there and need to start. Needless to say one of those piles got put aside.

 

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This was a first pass at organizing the room.

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I added a bookshelf but still felt a little hemmed in, especially when I realized with a bit of rearranging, I could get more empty floor space.

 

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Ah, that’s better! Move the to-do pile, switch the ironing station and the bookshelf and suddenly the room is wide open again!

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This is my somewhat sorted pile of stuff to finish already. My motivation it is a mess, and by finishing it up I can get rid of the mess too.

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Under the other side of my table you can see my sewing machine bag and another bag I have for accessories, as well as two bins of fabric and a very large bag of scraps.

I also got rid of the pile of plastic boxes of fabric by filling up the dresser. While I do like to see as much fabric as I can, it will also help me not start any new quilt tops for a while.

The list is rather long, as I have some sewing projects and garments I want to make for people so I stuffed those piles off in the corner.

I should still make a list though.

holiday sewing

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I’m horribly behind here I know. The holidays threw me off, then we thought about moving (again) and packed up everything. So not a lot of sewing was done.

Here’s what I did do, if only for my own list.

Finishes –
finished reb purse
ayla’s quilt finish
izzy’s jammies
ipad cover

Progress –
started floral quilt
worked on fibonnachi quilt

I finally have a sewing room again after 8 months and boy did I miss it. More in the next post. 🙂

Pinwheels all done!

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Finally! And the pictures uploaded!

As I said in previous entires, I wanted to give the illusion of movement for the pinwheels and I think I got it here.

Note how I used a swooping curve in the plain triangles and left the print areas alone. I knew I wanted them puffy and raised, so I left them.

I went with a heavy back and forth quilting in all the sashing to flatten it and emphasize the pinwheels. I think I nailed it.

I’m also really happy with the 3 kinds of gingham used in the quilt.

The other thing I did slightly differently, was early on in my quilting process I swapped out my usual stitch regular automated foot and just went with the free motion or darning foot instead.

I think I want to write more about that, so someone looking at the Bernina stitch regulator will have some details.

I was away so let’s talk binding

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Ooops! I went away on a business trip and all the pre-trip preparations and post-trip recovery meant no real sewing for a while.

I did baste a pile of baby quilts I had waiting, plus for two I decided to not bind them and sew together using what I call the pillow case method. The one where you place the back and front right sides together with the batting, sew around, leave a hole for turning and then turn right side out.

For the pinwheel quilt, I had a yard or so of red gingham I wanted to use for binding, which meant I had to make it myself. But I was short on time, so I hunted down an even faster method for making binding. Following this tutorial, I did not even have to mark the strips or even use my binding maker.

I also machine sewed the binding on by sewing it to the back first, then flipping the binding over to the right side and stitching it down. Repositioning my needle to the far left also helped with this step.

I’d have a picture to show you, but alas – my trip wore out my camera batteries and I forgot all about it, os right now my batteries are charging.

I think my brain batteries need charging too. 😉

And yes – I still need to post exactly how I quilted the pinwheels! I’m happy with how it turned out. I guess I did squeeze in time to actually quilt it, but not enough time to blog it.

So – how do you bind your quilts? All the same way? Different ways depending on your mood or the quilt?

Too much on the go

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I did not get a lot of quilting or sewing time in this week, just a bit here and there.

For Ayla, the teeniest grandbaby, I did start to whip up some much needed pants from some clothes I was tossing anyway. Mini yoga pants made out of my old yoga pants, and another pair made from long sleeves cut off a too-large tshirt from one of my daughters.

I worked on the back of Ayla’s quilt as well, slicing the back fabric in two and inserting a strip out white. It was just a teeny bit too short for the back, so I had to do something. In the strip I fused on some letters for her name. I will applique around then, and even though I’m not a fan of doing applique I will do it for her. 😀 I haven’t yet done much applique on my Bernina so maybe that will change my mind. Currently trying to decide between regular satin stitch or something fancier. (leaning towards buttonhole stitching – or maybe a different one on each letter?)

I also did some work on the two purses I have to make, one for my mom, one for my BFF Rebecca. And darn it, I realized I had enough leftover fabric to make matching wallets. And I can’t find the pattern I had, but the idea won’t leave me. I also thought I mis-cute some fabric for one purse, cut new pieces, then realized I was right the first time. That’s when I knew maybe I was too tired to concentrate.

And I still have to repair a purse for my aunt, for her birthday. That was in April. (oops)

Too much to do! Not just in my sewing spot. :-/

Gearing up to quilt Becky’s pinwheel quilt. Also: Babies.

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My family is funny. In my last post, I showed the finished quilt for my aunt and her new baby. My aunt is my age, because my mom is her oldest sister and this aunt (Tammy) is the youngest. So it works out. 😀

Well. Tammy also has older children. Old like mine! So her oldest is newly married with a new baby too! Thus a quilt for both mom and daughter with their new babies.

And my son and his wife had a baby this year too – so my grandmother got a new grandchild, great-grand-child and great-GREAT-grandchild all in the same year. And within 6 months of each other. 😀

So. Becky’s quilt.

No idea how to quilt it other than FAST and maybe something to show motion around the pinwheels. It’s bright and cheery, just like Becky.

Ideas anyone?

THe pinwheel sare all 30’s repro prints, sashed by yellow gingham. The backing is blue gingham and I’ll bind it in red gingham. (Between my mom and I we have a ton of gingham.)

Fibonacci and Angela Walters

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I swear I’m not stalking Angela, honest! Just a huge fan. In her Free Motion Quilting book, she has a quilt on page 92-92 that she designed and quilted. The book does not contain the pattern for the quilt, but it was pretty simple. Just strips spliced with squares, randomly arranged on a solid background.

Inspired, and with a jelly roll of Tula Pink’s Parisville, I set to work. Got the jelly roll on sale at Craftsy. Great place! I was even going to go with white, but at the fabric store I saw they had a really nice grey solid and grabbed that instead. I haven’t done anything on grey yet. I think it goes quite will with the Parisville colors.

I wanted a random placement of strips and did not want to copy Angela’s quilt exactly, since I also wanted to make it bigger.

So given the strips are 2.5″ wide and there were a few squares, I used 2.5″ as my “unit”. The Fibonacci sequence is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.. so I have to do a little multiplication to figure out how long to cut some strips. I stopped when I got to numbers longer than the jelly roll.

For reference, I cut some pieces like this, not counting the squares (1 unit):
2 – 5″
3 – 7.5″
5- 12.5″
8 – 20″
13 – 32.5″
21 – 52.5″ so that was too long to cut from a 42″ strip of fabric.

More playing around:

I also started to cut some of the grey background fabric in the same lengths but will probably use longer pieces, or add more grey. I want a lap or maybe bed sized quilt. Something just for me to curl up under.