WIP Wednesday — Auditioning Borders

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Suzanne

My sister and her family headed home yesterday but got stuck in Chicago due to weather delays at their destination. They ended up spending about 5 hours on the plane for a flight that only takes about 1.5 hours. With a not-quite-2 year old. Ugh. I know how antsy and crabby *I* would have been, I can’t even imagine doing it with a toddler. Poor kid.

I’ve got the body of my niece’s quilt put together, now I’m working on the borders.

I don’t have enough of any one orange to do an orange border, so I’d do the orange with alternating prints if I put the orange in. I think I like the look of Option C the best, but: In order to have the math work out right, it really needs to either be no inner border or the wider border which is why A and B have the lime green plaid stuck in. Or I need to think of something else entirely. I thought about using the stars in a narrow border, but I’m not sure I like the idea either.

I ended up going to a quilt shop to get some more blues in order to do the scrappy pieced blue border.

Any opinions, or ideas for something else I haven’t thought about yet?

We had our first run through of Grease last night — start to finish. Sort of. It was choppy as some of the kids were finding out about blocking and things for the first time. We have about 4 weeks until dress rehearsals. One of the directors said she wasn’t nervous yet. Really? Not yet? Cause I sure am….

Have a great Wednesday!

Suzanne

WIP Wednesday

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Suzanne

I’ve missed a couple of WIP Wednesdays, mostly because I haven’t had much in progress that was worth reporting about.

I have to admit to being more than a little….manic? Obsessed? Something crazy like that when it comes to new projects lately.

As evidence, may I present my niece’s quilt:

All of the 10 inch stars are done, as well as the 5 inch stars. There are 10 inch 4 patches that are done, the 10 inch blocks that are going to be made up of stars, 5 inch 4 patches and 5 inch squares are just placed, not sewn together. The circles are not appliquéd yet either. This was just my first whack at throwing it all up on the design wall — I can tell that I probably need more large circles, and that stuff will need to be moved around before it’s all done. I’m also thinking about offsetting some of the rows so that the larger stars might end up being half a block off set from each other in certain places. That sentence doesn’t make sense, but I do know what I mean, which is all that counts right now, right?

I’m just making this up as I go along. Actually, that’s not entirely true: it did all come to me as a fairly fully formed idea, it’s just been a lot of math to figure out how many of each type of unit I actually wanted to make in order to have it all being interesting and balanced and so forth.

This gets the quilt to about 80 by 90. I’m not entirely sure where I’m going after this, I’d like it to end up at about 90 by 100 or so. I did have plans for a border of the blues, but I’ve already basically run out of the blues (well, all of you quilters know that’s not true: I have scraps, but the scraps are all small, not the 5.5 by 10.5 rectangles I was envisioning). When I bought the fabric for this, I didn’t really have a plan, I just bought half yards of most, plus yardage of one of the blues (for a binding) and several yards each of the star and circle prints.

So, anyway, that’s where I’m at: I need to quit and actually get the cleaning done that I am supposed to be doing before my houseguests arrive on Friday.

Have a great Wednesday!

Suzanne

WIP Wednesday

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Suzanne

AKA More things to get you in the mood for Christmas

The Snowman Row quilt is hanging on my design wall, waiting for binding and a decision on whether or not I’ll be sewing buttons on the vests.

Meanwhile, the heat and humidity has decided to sock it to us again, and it’s so bad today that the school is sending the kids home early. Most of the school is NOT air conditioned, so it gets pretty miserable in there. I think the heat index has to hit 105 before they’ll decide to dismiss. Yuck.

And here in my cool house my WIP is yet another unfinished wintry/Christmasy project. This particular quilt was a block of the month from Joann’s, from way back in 1999/2000. I started quilting it on my Gammill, somewhere in 2002. I was unhappy with some things, and took it off the frame. It has been ignored ever since.

I did decide to do some frogging — the red borders were partially quilted with a feather, and there was no possible way I was going to be able to recreate the feather and have it look the same. My style (and skill) are vastly different than they were back when I was a newbie.

In an effort to get this DONE, I’ve decided that even though the top and bottom wide borders are quilted with a certain design, the side borders are going to be different. I would never do that for a customer, but this is mine, and it is just the way it is going to be.

I pretty much just have parts of the various borders to finish, plus about 1 or 2 of the blocks to do. We should be sleeping under this one by Christmas time for sure!

I wonder what song this one will have me singing this afternoon?

TTFN-

Suzanne

Gage’s Quilt

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Suzanne

The blocks are all sewn together:

Jan commented about the quantity of John Deere fabrics in my stash: there are actually only 2 John Deere prints in this particular quilt. One is the yellow with tractors on it, the other is a green print with black tractors. The actual color scheme for this quilt came from one of the stripes that I used — I didn’t really want to make an all green/yellow quilt. When I put the stripe that has yellow/blue/green/turquoise with the John Deere prints, I knew what to look for for coordinates. I’m planning on some more black for a border, and beyond that, I’m not sure. I do have yardage of the yellow print, but a little bit of yellow goes a very long way……..I’ll probably use that for the back…….

As far as other John Deere fabrics in my collection:

I do have to admit to having bought a fairly large amount of this print a few months ago:

Look, Mom! It’s paisley!

Over the years, I’ve had other Deere print fabrics as well — we have a few pillows around (pillow panels…). I also had a plaid (blues and blacks) that had the Deere logo on it, that was used to make my father-in-law a quilt. That quilt has a blue flannel on the back that has a bunch of John Deere logo caps on it.

I also bought some fabric that has the words “Nothing runs like a Deere” repeated over the whole thing, but the weird thing is this: the yellow background is a completely different yellow from the other fabrics in the line, so it doesn’t go with anything……..

Why so much John Deere logo fabric? Have I mentioned that my in-laws farm? And that my DH works as an engineer for Deere?

The quilt above is intended for my cousin’s baby — Gage’s Daddy is a farmer (and Gage’s grandparents farm…)

Well, now that I’ve gotten most of the piecing of that quilt out of my system, I’d better go get back to work sorting and folding and organizing. I’m making progress, even though it really all looks worse than when I started….

TTFN-

Suzanne

The Attention Span of a Gnat aka WIP Wednesday (on Wednesday, even!)

Posted on August 15, 2007 by Suzanne

So, the plan was: little to no sewing until the studio was put back together, and definitely no new projects until a goodly number of things got finished.

Yeah, right. Like I was going to manage that.

Last night, after I posted about the quilts that I thought I needed to be working on, I went back to my studio for more sorting/folding/etc. And started thinking. And manage to cut 216 3.5 inch squares in order to make a John Deere themed quilt for one of the baby cousins I mentioned.

And then today, I managed to sew all of those into 9 patches:

And then start whacking them apart in order to make:

Disappearing 9 Patches. Horrible picture, sorry.

I did manage to sew the binding on a QOV that has been sitting around waiting for binding for next to forever. (The fabric got uncovered in the piles this week. Woohoo!)

It’s been washed and is now waiting for me to find it a home. Will do that tomorrow.

I also keep finding MORE fabric to fold. MORE fabric bits to put into the scrap pile. MORE strips of various sizes. My 2.5 inch strip box outgrew the original bin and has been moved into a new one.

Where did all of this fabric come from? Did one of you shove it in my closet when I wasn’t looking?

My new mantra: Don’t Put It Down, Put It Away. It’ll be hard for me (I’m a horrible piler), but I’m going to try.

I also spent time today dreaming about a table from IKEA. Patti has one in her newly fabulous studio, and I think I want to get one for my own studio. The only problem is that the nearest IKEA is 4.5 hours away and I have no idea when I’m going to be able to go get it. WAIT!!!! OH MY GOSH!!! I just remembered this very instant that I’m going to be there in mid September!!!! I can take the truck and get the durned thing myself, and not have to wait for my DH to go with me! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Wow. I’m so excited.

Phew. I’d better go to bed before I hurt myself.

Suzanne