Wordless Wednesday

BBQ and Design Wall

Remember this BBQ, or Brown Bag Quilt contest?

http://www.brownbagquiltcontest.blogspot.com/

Remember that the due date is April 1st?


Well, I've completed all the blocks for my BBQ, and they are on my design wall:

The lighting is rather poor in here, which is why the photo is not well lit. Touching it up with Picnik only goes so far. At any rate, I should be done on time with this quilt. See? Even when I don't blog, I am busy.

Moving right along with a purple house quilt

So.

I'm moving right along with the quilting of the purple house quilt. I'm doing these free motion flowers with purple variegated thread. It's looking great, I think. But the quilting itself is fairly hard for some reason.

Then my worst sewing nightmare comes true.

The needle breaks (can you see it in these two shots?) and a teensy weensy piece of it flies into my eye.

But I am VERY fortunate; it falls out just as quickly as it flew in. By the time I realize what has happened, it is over. But now I am paranoid. I turn off my sewing machine for the night, and go to bed.

Today, I am wearing these.

These are very cool safety goggles

My husband now calls sewing a full contact sport. Phew.

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OH; and by the way, I think I know why the needle broke. It was a thread issue. I'll discuss it in another post.

A peek at a little house

As I finish up this quilt:

I was inspired to try my hand at a house block--something I'd never done before. I recently bought a pattern for it, but it looks like Greek to me, as I am unfamiliar with paper piecing. So, I sketched it out on paper, and pieced it myself:

I'll post full pix once it's done. In the meantime, feel free to let me know what you think. :)

Not so overloaded

Since I explained four days ago how overloaded I was, I decided to commit myself to making progress, one small step at a time.

First, the Modern Siggy Swap.

One day, I sewed all of the small squares onto the larger white squares.

One day, I was sick.

One day, I cut the excess fabric off of the corners, to reduce bulk.

One day, I ironed them.

One day, I trimmed/squared them.

Wait; that seems to be more than four days...

At any rate, they are now portable; they await the final step, which is signing them. I can do that while I wait for DDs in their lessons and such.

I'll get that to-do list for this month whittled down yet.

Overloaded

If you could see inside of my brain, this is what it would look like.

I have far too much I need and want to do, and soon:

The Modern Siggy Swap, by the end of this month

Oops

Skirts for Haiti, by the end of this month

Black and white apron challenge, by the end of this month

Skirts for my daughters, SOON (the fabrics were Christmas gifts; I'd really like for them to wear them as skirts before the season passes!)

Grocery tote bags for the local food bank (I've been working on these for far longer than I care to admit)

A quilt for my daughter's upcoming Rite of Passage (more on that later) and hope chest

A Cheaper By the (Half) Dozen quilt I cut out; I'm auditioning the placement of the pieces in this picture, with the border fabric on the left side (Lisa's got a couple of beautiful ones here and here)

A couple of surprise wedding announcements, both of which are happening NEXT MONTH (a pattern and fabric possibility)

Now, mind you, I am an adjunct professor, and I finished up a term this week, so that meant final grades and all had to be determined and submitted this week. And I start a new term in a few days, so I have a lot of prep work for that.

AND my daughters just finished up a major concert--yes, it happened in the middle of the snowstorm.

Oh, and yes, a wee bit of snow--

Last week

This week

OK, so, what do I start eliminating?

Yellow Brick Road quilt: ME Cherries

Oh; did I mention? I pieced another quilt! This time, I made a quilt using the Yellow Brick Road quilt pattern.

Like the Take 5 quilt that I made earlier this month, the Yellow Brick Road quilt was made from a pattern that is available at your local quilt shop. It is fairly popular; I’d seen a number of these online, and I really liked the pattern. That is what made me interested in making one for myself.

Unlike the Take 5 quilt, I didn’t go out shopping for fabric for this one. In fact, you might recall that when I went in search of a pattern for fabric I already had–THIS fabric, which you see above–I ended up buying new fabric AND a pattern–hence, the birth of the Take 5 quilt. So, I used the fabric that I already had, and used it for the Yellow Brick Road quilt. Did that make sense?

This quilt may have a lot of pieces, but it has some quick piecing techniques, namely lots of strip piecing, and I used the whack and stack method, as well. So, it went rather quickly. All I need to do is sew on the borders; I am merely trying them out in the photo above. But I like them. This pattern does not technically call for an inner and outer border, but I will use them both. I think the red really makes the colors in this quilt pop, and a border outside of the red is necessary. Don’t you think?

Take 5 quilt top is finished!

I am now finished with the quilt top!

Take 5 quilt blocks are done!

I did it! I finished the twenty blocks for my Take 5/6 quilt!

I completed the blocks at some unimaginable hour last night--or, this morning. I probably took about two hours to do the actual sewing, but I think it was because I was trying to be very careful and sew exact 1/4 inch seams. I now need to go grab my instructions and see how to lay them out. I may just do that tonight and try to get the blocks assembled into a top. Can I even get the borders on?

More to come...

Take 5 quilt

Today I went to my LQS (local quilt shop) with the intent of taking a look-see at this month’s trunk show, and to find the quilt pattern Take 5. I’d been browsing online photos of Take 5 quilts which various quilters had made. It looked like the kind of pattern I was in search of; I have a set of fabrics which need a pattern which allows at least one fabric to have large squares. The impact of this print is lost if it is cut into pieces too small. Also, the Take 5 pattern appealed to me, because while it needed fabrics which coordinate reasonably well together, it does not require that some be light, or dark, or medium. Further, the pattern seemed to be able to yield quilts of varying sizes. So, I went to find it.

Well, you know the rest of the story. Almost two hours later, I came out with, amongst other goodies, not only the Take 5 pattern, but with enough fabric to do a quilt in that pattern. Yes, I DID mention earlier in this blog entry that I already had a nice collection of fabrics for this quilt! But I saw the most FABULOUS fabric that I could simply not pass up.

It all started with a gorgeous Alexander Henry fabric in the 2008 Sew Now! Sew Wow! collection–the beauty on the left (below). It had a somewhat retro flavor to me, so I chose similar complimentary fabrics. The yellow, red, and green prints are Wee Play by American Jane Patterns, Sandy Klop for Moda. The black fabric is Mod by Metro for P&B Textiles. The turquoise fabric, which will be for the inner border, is Splish Splash Scales by Moda.

Herein lies the dilemma–hence the title for this blog entry. If this is going to be a true, authentic Take 5 quilt, then I should only be using 5 fabrics. The quilt shop ladies and I inadvertently chose a sixth fabric. Oops. While I want to remain true to the pattern, I love the way the aqua (turquoise?) sets off the fabrics. Oh well. Take 6 it is. Besides, I don’t have enough of any of the other fabrics to use them for an inner border, anyway. The luscious Alexander Henry fabric? THAT will be the outer border, thank you very much.

Ah, yes. About those other goodies. I also picked up some back copies of what is becoming my favorite quilting magazine, as well as the Turning Twenty and Yellow Brick Road quilt patterns. And if that weren’t bad enough, I found out that there will be a Yellow Brick Road class in a couple of weeks! Oh, to have the time off to do that! By the way, the trunk show was great. This month’s show was given by one of the ladies who works at the shop. My, but she’s been a busy beaver; she showed some absolutely lovely things, including a Bloomin’ Nine Patch. Whew; it made my tired just looking at all of the work that she’d put into it.

So, not long after I arrived home, I started cutting the fabrics into squares using the Stack and Whack method. This method is exactly as it sounds; I carefully stacked the five fabrics that I will be using for the squares, and cut them into the required pieces. VERY simple.