To catch up: part one and part two.

This whole bribery thing is working pretty well — I’m actually getting a lot done on the machine quilting front:  I’m pretty excited about this little mini-quilt and want to get back to it as soon as I can!

Last year, when I made the Radiant Star Quilt, I did a pretty long tutorial about how I make tiny half square triangle units (HSTs).  That is a great technique for getting perfect small ones, but it can be a bit fiddly (OK, a LOT fiddly…), and it isn’t appropriate for the larger, scrappy HSTs I’m making for this small quilt.

I started with the 3.5 inch squares, and while I could have draw lines on the back, and sewed, and then cut apart, I skip the whole “drawing lines” part, and just cut them in half first:

And then, after I unbury my sewing machine, find the right thread, fill a bobbin, and oil the sewing machine, I sewed them all up into HSTs.

I’m going to cut them down to size so it doesn’t matter that no matter how careful I am, I can’t seem to sew these together without some of them ending up wonky.  I just whack off the wonkiness.

But that’s a later step, first, I have to press these babies:
OK, before that I need to eat some lunch and quilt some more, but THEN I’m going to press these, and after that, I’ll trim them to size.

And yes, I did just cut up red squares and then sew them back together to make…red squares.

I’m a quilter:  one of the definitions of quilter is “person who cuts up perfectly good fabric into tiny pieces and then sews it back together.”  Didn’t you know that?

To catch up: part one.

I feel like I somehow need to prove that I did the pebbling, but I’ll be honest, one pebble looks like any other, so after this photo, we’re going to have to assume I’m working on the honor system here:

Trust me, those are new pebbles.

Step 2 of my mini quilt: pressing and cutting.  Pressing, because a bunch of the fabric I pulled out was from my strip box and those get pretty mangled.  As I said, it’s not a very big quilt, so that big pile of fabric in the previous post got whittled down to:

Ignore the nasty ironing board cover, please.

I need:

3 cream strips, 2.5 inches wide.  I’ll cut to length later

8 blue strips, 1 inch wide.  Ditto

32 red squares, 3.5 inches, they could be smaller, but I had 3.5 inch strips, so I’ll go with it and cut my HSTs down to size later.

OK, time for more pebbling, and then I have some half-square triangles to make!

My sewing machine has been underutilized this summer:  it’s only been turned on to

1. alter several t-shirts
2. alter 2 of Mark’s work shirts (holes in elbows: now he has 2 new short sleeve shirts…)
3. do a tiny bit of strip piecing

The longarm has been working, but not the Bernina.  I thought I was going to end that drought last night, but I couldn’t decide what to work on, so I went to bed instead.

Today, though:  I woke up with an idea!!  It’s just a little doll quilt, and while it won’t get quilted today, it should get completely pieced…in between doing some pebble quilting on a quilt.  I can only pebble for so long at a time, and this will be my reward for being a good worker bee.

I have a plan (which I’m not sharing, I don’t want you to see what it is yet…).

I have the fabric:

And in a little while I’ll be back with an update.

Yes, it’s my normal color palette, I figured that I’d go with something super easy that I know well!

But first?  The pebbles are calling me!