Sunday Stash Report

I was all set to put this strippy on the frame this afternoon and discovered I had... no backing. Rummaging around in the stash earlier in the week, I realized I have a disproportionate number of pieces of fabric that are a half yard or less and tons of fat quarters. This is not particularly helpful for quilts like these strippies, borders, or backings.

It was this fact that brought me to Marden's where I bought, oops! not 18, but 22 yards of fabric, a little more than I realized. I did cut out 6 strippies that are all ready to assemble for a total used this week of 15 yards.

But back to the backing, I finally managed to locate two pieces of muslin I can seam for the backing, but it would really be stretching it to find enough for 5 more strippies. So I made the monumental decision to buy a bolt of muslin from Hancock's. I already got tired of worrying about where the next piece of batting was going to come from and piecing together batting scraps, so I bought a whole roll of Warm and Natural at a 50% off sale at JoAnn Fabrics about a month ago. A bolt of muslin should keep me in backings for a while. I don't know whether to count that as a stash addition or not, so I guess I'll worry about that later.

Here's the Stash Manager's Report:

Fabric used this week: 15 yards
Fabric used year to date: 97-3/8 yards
Fabric added this week: 22 yards
Fabric added year to date: 162-5/8 yards
Net year to date: - 65-1/4 yards

Still headed in the wrong direction, but that's nothing new, is it?

This afternoon I went to the Maine Machine Quilters chapter meeting, their last for the summer. There were about a dozen ladies in attendance, most longarm owners with five or less years of experience, and just a couple midarm owners, like me. It was primarily a business meeting, with not much discussion about machine quilting particularly.

At some earlier time the machine quilters worked on a small challenge project, each quilter working on her own; and the finished quilts were presented for the first time to the group today. Each participant used the identical pattern and fabrics for her quilt, so the only thing that was different from one quilt to the next was how each person quilted it. Upon close inspection, there were wobbles in the quilting, lines that weren't perfectly parallel, lines of quilting that crossed over where they weren't supposed to--and it was all just beautiful. I am a perfectionist by nature, but looking at those quilts today made me realize that this is *hand guided* machine quilting. The very nature of it means there will be imperfections, so I shouldn't be so hard on myself when I wobble off that pantograph line or when I zigged instead of zagged. That was probably the most valuable lesson I learned today. There can only be so many Linda Taylors or Diane Gaudynskis in the world, and I won't be one of them; but if I can make my work resemble these ladies' work today, I'll consider my venture into the world of machine quilting a success.

A Strippy A Week

I spent nearly all of the last week trying to finish up a quilt for Koleen, a new pattern I'm testing for her. With 32 twelve-inch blocks and 3 borders, it's the largest quilt I've ever made. I used Civil War fabrics; and although my husband and I both like the fabrics very much, the quilt looks positively plain on the design wall next to my Orange Crush, which is very bright and also still under construction. At this writing I've sewn the first plain border on the quilt top for Koleen and am still in the process of finishing the piecing for the second border.

At the live auction for our quilt chapter a few weeks ago, I purchased about 6 yards of a colorful bug fabric with the idea of using it to make some strippies to practice machine quilting. Yesterday I went to Marden's and bought some companion prints to go with the bug fabric. After working with all those bright fabrics in the Orange Crush, I couldn't wait to buy more of them; and at $3 a yard it was easy to go crazy. I bought mostly 2-yard pieces of half a dozen different fabrics for the strippies.

Today after a trip to the dentist, I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting out pieces for the strippies, and I cut out enough for 6 complete strippies, plus some of the pieces for about 7 more. What I'd like to do is make one strippie each week, right down to the quilting and binding, and then donate it back to Marden's for their Project Linus drive. That seems like an achievable goal, and it will give me some much needed practice with my Lizzie. At the rate of one a week, it wasn't really necessary to cut out so many tops today, but I was having a really good time making different color combinations. I really like this lime green and turquoise combination.

The peonies in my yard have faded and been replaced by these small yellow blooms. I have no idea what they are. They appeared on their own and could be a weed for all I know, but I like them so I left them in the garden. They don't seem to spread like the violets, so I'm okay with that! By the way, we have managed to eradicate the violets almost entirely from the lawn now, and I am overjoyed about that.

I thought how nice it would be to have a garden this summer, but we weren't about to dig up any part of the yard after just tilling it up to replant grass. Still with food prices being what they are, I wanted to grow something somewhere and decided to try container gardening. I was given a grape tomato plant at work, so one afternoon we went to the nursery and bought a couple of pots, soil mix, another tomato plant and a few herbs, and some fertilizer, then potted it all up.

We had a garden years ago, but I've never grown herbs before, so we stuck with oregano, basil, and thyme, which all seem to be thriving so far. I took this photo of the pots on Monday, and the big tomato has already grown over the top of the cage.

The hole in the side of the pot is a place to pour water into the reservoir in the bottom of the pot. These are self-watering pots, which is something I never heard of; but I thought it was a good idea for me, since I am forgetful about watering. There is a wick in the bottom of the pot, and the two ends sit in the reservoir, which keeps the soil moist. It works like a charm.

Pins, Pincushions, and Quilt Books

I haven't gotten a lick of work done in my sewing room this week, so I thought I'd blog a little about more of my favorite sewing things. Nicole at Sister's Choice Quilts initiated some interesting discussion about pins and pincushions. Apparently she sews over her pins and has bent or broken quite a few and wanted to know what pins others use. A barrage of comments ensued, some of which chastised Nicole, some punctuated by stories of breaking pins flying up into one's face, which would be scary.

I am also one of those people who likes to sew over pins. Usually I bend the pins and break the needles, but the worst thing I did when sewing over a pin was that I broke the needle, drove the tip of it into the bobbin case which damaged the case, then lost the broken needle tip in the bottom of the sewing machine, and had to pay to have it all fixed. Not good! As many of Nicole's readers admonished, I have since learned to slow down to a crawl going over the pins or to stop and remove them before I get to them.



My favorite pins are the $1.89 pack at JoAnn's with the glass heads so I can see them when I drop them in the carpet. I have a fear of driving a pin or needle into my foot, which I've already done once. Not good! My favorite pincushion, and it's not a pincushion at all, is the $1.89 blue metallic one which also seems to attract my scissors and seam ripper. Get it close to the pincushion and it practically pulls it out of my hand.

My next favorite pincushion is decorative only, because the top is really too shallow to put pins in. My son, who is now 18, made it when he was about 8 as a cub scout project for Mother's Day. The cubbies used baby food jars with a little batting and velvet glued to the lid, covered in trims, with a few plastic flowers for further beautification inside the jar. Of course I have to keep it and love it because he made it for me.

Next is a wool pincushion with a needlepunched design on it, made by my good friend AnnH, as a Christmas gift to those who held positions in our local quilt chapter (I was the Treasurer for three years and am retiring shortly). It is a very large pincushion, by pincushion standards; but it's sweet, simple, and colorful, and it reminds me of how much I like Ann.

Becky, the Quilting Booklady, is having a giveaway for her birthday on June 23. I wonder how old she'll be. To qualify for her drawing, she asked that you post a picture of a favorite quilting book; and if you also post a picture of a quilt you made from the book, you'll get a second entry in the drawing.

My favorite quilt book is this one by Jinny Beyer. One reason I like this book so much is that Jinny skips all the color theory and gets right down to the business of how to choose coordinating fabrics. Her approach is unique, easy, and produces great results. Choosing fabrics is challenging for a lot of quilters, including me; and Color Confidence for Quilters continues to inspire me.

This is not a very good picture, but this is a quilt I made from the book. Red, blue, and green is one of my favorite color schemes, and I enjoyed using so many different fabrics in the quilt. I love this concept--one block, different fabrics in each block, same color placement in each block for unification--and would like to try this with some other blocks sometime.

Credit where credit is due:

Midnight Star design by Jinny Beyer, Color Confidence for Quilters

Sewing Room Storage Containers

In celebration of her 300th post, Sweet P at Coffee Time Quilt Studio posted a contest of unique sewing room storage containers. Each day for six days she posted a different one she uses in her sewing room and invited others to do the same. Initially I didn't pay too much attention to it, but I got caught up in it this evening and couldn't resist sharing some of mine.

My husband built this white birch spool box for me several years ago for my birthday. It held my entire thread collection for a long time, but I've acquired some larger spools that won't fit into it anymore because the shelves are not deep enough. This is one of my favorite things my husband made for me. One of my other favorite things my husband built for me is this quilt rack that hangs on the wall in my son's room. It's also made of white birch, just like the hardwood floors and doors in my house, so it goes beautifully.



I bought chocolate covered blueberries in this metal tin, which makes a very portable container for all my sewing things if I want to sew at a retreat, a friend's home, or if I want to take some handpiecing with me. I have a small tote bag that the tin fits in, along with a 4" square ruler, a 6" square cutting mat, a small sandpaper board, a small Brooklyn revolver, my nylon bucket, and the project of the moment.




This is my nylon bucket. It's about 4" square and collapses flat, so it fits in my tote nicely. I have two of these--one sits next to my sewing machine and holds pencils and paper, scissors and a 1" x 6" ruler; the other holds trimmings and other trash generated from my sewing. I also have a tiny Longaberger basket next to my sewing machine with bobbins, a couple spools of thread, needle packs, a couple of sewing machine feet, and the key to remove the throat plate on my machine.

This storage container is not unique, but it is one of the most useful containers in my sewing room. I have about a dozen of these and wish I had more. I bought these very inexpensively at Walmart, I think. They are stackable, and they contain bits and pieces of projects and ufo's in various stages of completion. Because I often like to work on three or four projects simultaneously, these are pretty handy to keep everything together, and I can just grab one out of my cabinet and stick a different one back in there.

I am off the next two days and am hoping to make some real headway on the Orange Crush mystery quilt. I now have 13 of 20 blocks done for Step 5, all 4 corner blocks, and 1 half block for the edge. As so often happens with me, I like this quilt so much more than I thought I would when I first started it.

Sunday Stash Report

This week I sewed as much as I had time for and succeeded in making a few more blocks for Koleen's quilt and a few more for the Orange Crush. I didn't use any fabric for these blocks that hasn't already been accounted for, but I did add 15 yards of new fabric from the Live Auction Monday night. I counted over 6 yards of a single bug fabric with a white background, and that will keep me busy for a while making more strippie quilts to practice on. There's probably some yardage in all the scraps I won, but I'm not going to worry about trying to figure that out!

Here's the Stash Manager's Report:

Fabric used this week: 0
Fabric used year to date: 82-3/8 yards
Fabric added this week: 15 yards
Fabric added year to date: 140-5/8 yards
Net year to date: - 58-1/4 yards

No Reply!

I recently had a couple of ladies who requested information about something I posted on my blog, but alas! neither of them left me an email address. One of the ladies had a profile on Google but no email address. I finally had to go back to the original posts, one from February and one from some other earlier month, left my answers, and hoped each lady would see it. In case they didn't, the skillbuilders machine quilting panels can be found at Keepsake Quilting or at Ericas. Each store has a website. Unfortunately right now I can't remember what the second question is.

I'd bet most bloggers enjoy comments left on their blogs and are more than happy to answer questions, but readers need to supply an email address in order to do that. Mary kindly let me know that one day when I asked her a question on her blog, and I realized I needed to add an email address to my profile too. Help us out here, folks!

And this makes me think of something else. I set up my blog so any comments are automatically forwarded to my email address, so I don't have to keep going back on the blog itself to see if anyone left comments. Is that what everyone does? If it hadn't been for that, I'd have never known that those two ladies left posts on my blog because I don't go back and check the old posts anymore.

Liberated Quilting

Liberated Quiltmaking, a book by Gwen Marston, has been out of print now for a long time. I have hunted high and low for this book and have found it online at a couple of places but for a really ridiculous price. Lazy Gal Tonya has contacted the publisher to request a reprinting, and AQS has asked how many would commit to pre-ordering the book. AQS has apparently set a deadline of the last day in June.

I have two of Gwen's other books, and they're wonderful. Please pass the word by posting about it on your blog, and please visit Tonya's site and leave a comment.

Thank you.