Busy year, but still sewing!

Thank goodness for sewing, its got me through a tough year! 

 I have logged my finishes on the 'finish' tab.

This is a little of what's been happening in the last couple of weeks: 

I have so much scrap yarn-this is my busy bag project, blanket squares for Project Linus

There are about 200 done, clipped into sets of 10, not enough to start making blankets yet as the colours are too varied. 

The next batch  of scraps  is ready for use. I have my mums yarn stash that was used for Linus blankets now, I have to use it somehow. It is impossible for me to sit and watch TV with nothing in my hands so it will be knitted up eventually. I even took my bag to an open air theatre event: there were some strange looks, mostly as I was watching the play, not my knitting!  I would have been too self conscious to knit in public a few years ago, now it has to be done. Idle hands and all that...…... 

***

I made 64 railroad tracks blocks from my 2 1/2" strip stash. I had lots of muddy neutrals that were not moving from the stash, which I paired with darker shades. the blocks came out really well,, I will be keeping this one for me! 

There are lots of other blocks made with the leftover cuts from this project, more of that in the next post. 

***

Leader~ender blocks are coming along, broken dishes made from the 2" string bin.

I cut  up a lot of fabric that would never go into a design of mine normally, use it or bin it! 

Also some four patches from 2" strings. I have enough of these for a queen sized quilt now.

I need to browse some designs that include random four patches for inspiration.

***

This is the second sandwich I have quilted this week.  The pattern is Bonnies Garlic Knots, from 2" strips. I loved the pattern, but using the white sheeting for a background was too stark for my taste with the dark 'knots', so this is one for Project Linus, boy themed with rhinos. I find that many of the Linus quilts I make end up a bit girly, so I went with these little grey tough guys for a border. 

The binding wont be sewn down for a bit, I like to do that in batches in the cooler weather. 

***

This little darling came into the family on Valentines Day

I am going to be looking after Ellen one or two days a week. 

She already has too may blankets! 

****

Stripper

I raided the string bin for neutral strings, then chopped into rough 5" strips. I also cut off some selvages as the cream stash was handy and used some uglies up. 

 

 

 

 

Pieced onto 4 1/4" strips of paper: not ideal as it was quite heavy paper, but it did the job.  I used strips from 2 1/2 to 3/4".

My Daughter in law happened to come over and got rather excited about the peeling process! She had not seen this before, so we both worked on the papers for an hour, then I finished them the next day. Help was gratefully received!  I recon I have enough for three borders for king size quilts! Each strip is about 11"; pressing and trimming at a later date, as I could cut them in half for 2" sashing too.

I also made some pieced squares with the larger crumbs as I was going. I can use these as centres in a charity quilt. 

***

 Still plugging away with the 3" finished broken dishes blocks as leaders and enders. I have sewn a lot into sets of four as I keep loosing the bits if they hang around on the sewing table too long between being needed. Much more user friendly. I have quite a pile now. I spin the seams as they come off the machine, but don't iron.  These need a lot of accuracy: as they are so small there is no wriggle room.

*** 

This weekend I am working on the Allietare blocks, tricky little things to get the points to meet! Taking it slowly. The blue is my 'red' from Bonnie's design.

 A few more geese were needed for accuracy practice.

 ***

I was all sewed out in the middle of the week: I found some short lengths of yarn, a couple of metres each (I am not a hoarder!) and made a scrumble, very therapeutic.

 ***

Other evenings have been spent ironing blocks and ironing blocks and ironing blocks......

....these are done

 and these are done.

 About the same to go!

I put the mini ironing board  and iron on my lap on top of a cushion in front of the TV, I don't feel its such a terrible chore then.

Cat-napping

It seems the word went round the neighbourhood that I no longer have a resident quilt inspector. The vacancy has been filled: he does have a home (somewhere), but obviously no duties there. Every time the door is open, he is in! So much for ironing the backing and patches!  Encourage him? Noooo, 'course not!

Testing my lap for comfort too-my last cat didn't do this in 17 years so I made the most of it! 

 He is a bit gorgeous, is genuinely pleased to see me and had a marvelous purr. I am clearly not properly trained yet as I don't act like his real servants at home, he tries to tell me what he wants but I don't understand!

***

 Allietare four patches have been waiting since December to be sewn, so I cut the strips that had been hanging over the door for three months and got on with it. 

Then I cut the next stage. The patches were not meeting at the points properly when I sewed a few. (:@{

I had leftovers of the 2" strips, rather than add them boxes, as I had cut a few as goose blocks (too small) I trimmed all the leftovers down for the mini broken dish blocks and goose centres for future use. 

 

Then I sewed a few goose blocks to work out where the accuracy was failing by two whiskers on Allietare blocks. 

I think I have worked it out now, after much goose beheading and broken wings. 

Next update will tell!   

***

I have sewn up trimmings from other things to 10 1/2" strips as I go for the crumb quilt, to keep the piles down.

***

I am wading my way through ironing several hundred pinwheel and broken dishes blocks, sitting on the floor in front of the TV with the mini board and iron on my lap, on top of a cushion!

These will take a couple of days. 

***

I was feeling stressed yesterday morning so sat down to push a few random mini triangles through the machine, it did the trick.  I am thinking these could make Ocean Waves

***

We have Storm Katie hitting the south of England today, roof felt/fence panel lifting winds. I will venture a short walk, then it's back to sewing related occupational therapy for me  and finishing this...

***

Happy Easter!

Cutting corners

Literally.

And thousands more to go!  

Triangles. I see them in my sleep. 

***

As an antidote, I have finished this ten stitch blanket from scraps.

 

It is a double, that will be a car/picnic blanket. 

It took 2 years on and off, 1/3 million stitches! 

***

The next on-off scrap blanket is this one....

It is really interesting to knit, no seams as it's knit as you go and grows quickly. 

***

The clipped triangles are still being made into broken dishes blocks for a friends housewarming quilt. I am making the more random sets into pinwheels for charity quilts

A couple of hundred to have the seams spun, then be pressed, about the same still to piece. 

***

I sewed the crumbs up that I had made from cutting mini broken dishes blocks, as they were all from 2" strips and easy to sort.

The crumb strips join the three sacks of  string and crumb strips waiting to be trimmed down for a crumb quilt and piano key borders!

***

Odds and ends

Still finding little stashes of random bits-today's find was a bag of blue two patches that must have been left from making  250 nine patches some time ago-I am using them as leader-enders to make nine patches to add to the stack whilst making more box kite blocks. 

I need 99  of these 9" finished blocks to make a quilt with no borders or sashing inserts.

 Today's hoard:

 I have watched all of Bonnie's Quiltcam archives from the last year in recent weeks whilst I have been sewing.  Time to go back to the beginning now!

A boring jobs next: I have to draw diagonal lines on the goosey squares I have been cutting to go with the pinwheel blocks; also lots of sets of box kite triangle pairs to press.

Purging the greens and planning a new learning curve

 I have made 395 green/brown pinwheels for two projects from the pre-cuts.

 There were a lot of two patches and four patches over from The Big Green One. 

 The four patches were dubious, so I made them into 240 six patches, I have a plan for these. 

 I made 347 4 patches from the remaining two patches, with greens that are better matched in each block, to be put by for a future project TBC.

A lot of the two patches have been hand sewn,  I took them on holiday about 5 years ago!  It made for very easy seam spinning of 395 sets.

I used some of the very odd four patches, (here the centre blocks are really brown and yellow!) to make scrappy nine patches to join the pile of over 100 I have already.

Thirty seven of these made, you can't really tell they contain a green/neutral four patch.







I have  chain sewn sets of triangles  for Box Kite, to be pressed:  I  made 14  blocks so far.  I really like this block. The top centre one doesn't fit with the others as the blue is too pale. There will be enough for at least two quilts, so I can sort them into tone block types when they are all done.

I also did a few Perkiomen Daydreams blocks.  I will be pressing the ones I have to check the accuracy (it's difficult to determine without a press as they finish at 1"). If I am not happy  I will abandon this project. I can't work out why my pinwheel accuracy is almost always spot on, but simple squares seem wonky.  This is Bonnie's  block and its perfect! 





I have been investigating one block wonder quilts. They are not a difficult to construct as I thought, helpful videos found on Youtube.    Bruce Seeds's Flickr page shows some informative pictures about fabric choices.



I found these in my stash, good quality fabrics bought at silly sale prices as backing.










I also bought  several metres in the sale from Lady Sew and Sew ( UK), one of my favorite online shops, of this Makower fabric that I think will do well, lots of colour and shape variation. Don't know about the size of the print yet, as it hasn't arrived!

I stashed some ideas on my Pinterest page too.