Beyond Orange

This week I only managed to work on my OMG project. Yet there was plenty of orange in that quilt top and that’s what I worked on first. The quilt moves into teal and green from there and I finished that section today. I know I have lots of teal scraps and will try to make some good use of them in March. Here is a picture of the orange corner of my quilt. The fabric on the cutting mat is what I’m using for the side and corner triangles. They look brown in the picture of the quilt, but in the sunshine the orange and some of the other colors show up nicely. 

I’m nearly half finished with that quilt now, see my post Sewing and Unsewing to see the whole quilt on the design board. 

Sewing and Unsewing

One Monthly Goal for February achieved. Wow. I’ve not ever been much of a goal setter, especially when it came to quilting. Having a single specific goal for this month has been so motivating that I’ve gotten more done than I had hoped.

My goal for February was to figure out the design layout for this quilt I’m finishing for my niece and to at least get started on sewing the blocks together. I reached that goal last Friday with the design complete on the design board and the first four rows sewn together. I was glad for the extra week before I had to post my finish and hoped to get to the half way point of having the top sewn together.

I have the middle row sewn together and pinned to the next row down. Three seams to go to have the first half of the top sewn together. I’m just not going to manage it tonight. I’ve been sewing and unsewing all day. 

I’m checking each block for size before sewing it into the row. My niece made many of the blocks when she was quite young and completely inexperienced at sewing and pressing seams. I’ve taken lots of seams out to fix what was short or crooked. The block pictured here missed that 5” mark by a full quarter inch. I’ve replaced a few blocks completely because they were just too short, my bad on that, I was the one cutting the fabric. I also had to unsew an entire row because I missed the quarter inch setting on my machine. 

In addition to correcting existing blocks I’ve made nearly a hundred extra blocks this month. The original plan for this quilt was for a small quilt made by a little girl with fabrics from my stash. Well, she is no longer little, will turn 20 this spring and has moved into a place of her own. The little quilt we had planned wouldn’t fit her grown up bed, so the quilt has expanded considerably.  

Below are some of the blocks I added to the quilt. They also came from my stash. The only part that hasn’t come from  my stash so far is the fabric for the corner triangles. The original plan was a straight set for the blocks, so putting them on point made more cutting during this month too. I happened upon the fabric for that part of the quilt when I wasn’t looking for it, and am so glad I found it. It’s a beautiful batik with all the colors of the quilt in it.

Even with all the corrections and extra blocks that needed to be made this has been a very positive experience for me and I will certainly set another OMG for March.

I’m linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts
https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/02/one-monthly-goal-february-finish-link-up.html

Home for an Orphan Block

I ran across this floral log cabin block while cleaning out my scrap bins the other week, It’s the first time I’ve seen it since we moved to the new house in 2017. I wondered where it was. I’ve had it a long time and have never known what to do with it until now.

Cleaning out the scrap bins made my whole sewing room a big mess, so this piece got laid on top of my small pressing mat next to my sewing machine so I wouldn’t loose track of it in all the chaos.

I like it there. I would rather look at it instead of the unattractive pressing mat. So I pieced together a couple bits of scrap batting, and pulled out a scrap piece of white flannel for the back and quilted it. I had barely enough 2” strips of a single fabric left over from the quilt to make the binding. So my Slow Sunday Stitching project for today is sewing the binding down on the back. It’s been a busy week of doctor appointments, an out of town trip, and working on my OMG project, so having today set aside for something slow and quiet has been a blessing.

I have begun hand quilting the log cabin quilt, but have not gotten very far. Life interrupted as so often happens to our plans, and I’ve not gotten back to it since life has settled back down a bit. It’s a queen size quilt and will take more than a few slow Sundays to finish. I will likely write about it when I get it back in the frame and start working on it again. Until then I have plenty of smaller projects in various stages of completion to keep me stitching slowly on Sunday.

I’m linking up with Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy’s Quilts  https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2020/02/slow-sunday-stitching_23.html

I’m linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts
https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/p/omg-one-monthly-goal.html

I’m linking up with RSC at So Scrappy https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/p/rsc19.html

Orange Obsession

I once took a class from local quilter extraordinaire Cindy Needham. I believe she was the one who told the class to include a little bit of the color they liked the least. Well that was quite the challenge for me. I had no ORANGE fabric in my stash because I basically didn’t like the color, opposite of my favorite purple. But a strange thing happened when I started looking for an orange fabric to include in my quilt, I fell in love with it. I am drawn to it, I find it exciting, I want to buy fat quarters of it every time I walk into a quilt shop. Thank you Cindy! 

 

Today I’m working on the orange corner of my Roman Square quilt which is my OMG for February. No, it isn’t scrappy, at least not this corner of it, but I am using the few scraps of orange I have left, just not in the expected way. I have a bunch of very small scraps that I use as indicators instead of using sticky notes. 

For my current project, I’m using numbered scraps to keep my blocks in order while I’m chain piecing. I’ve used tiny scraps in this way for years. They help me with things like labeling fabrics for different pieces and keeping my pressing direction consistent. The scraps in the baggie are from one of my very favorite quilts. It’s a kaleidoscope wall hanging that I made using a template from “Paper Piecing with Alex Anderson.”

  

I did simple stitch in the ditch quilting for the interior of the quilt but for the border I quilted following the fabric design, one of my favorite techniques. I actually have a fair number of good sized scraps from the border print, but it doesn’t read orange, though there is orange in it. The quilt pictured below is a scrap quilt and used up the last of some of my favorite fabrics, I even mixed in a bit of flannel. 

This is the only “art” quilt I’ve ever made. Plenty of orange in this quilt too. This is my own design except for the sunflower. That was a pillow pattern from Debbie Mumm’s “Quick Country Quilts.” I had made the pillow cover but it never actually worked as I wanted so it sat unstuffed for a few years until I had a sudden idea to use it as the centerpiece and build a quilt around it. It’s an odd little piece, but I love it. The cat reminds me of our orange tabby Marmalade, who is no longer with us. I can’t draw a cat face so we get to look at his back as he looks down the road. 

I’m linking up with Rainbow Scrap Challenge at

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/p/rsc19.html 

I’m linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts at

https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/02/one-monthly-goal-february-link-up.html

Joining the 2020 RSC

What a week it’s been! Last Saturday I decided I would join the RSC challenge and make something from my orange scraps. I love orange fabric and thought there should be plenty of scraps to work with, I just had to find them. Thus began a nearly week long reorganization of my stash, especially my scraps.

I had three large bins stuffed to the brim with scraps, and I do mean stuffed. No organization, no order whatsoever. And I was having a very hard time finding anything useful in orange. I was having a hard time finding any orange. So I abandoned the plan to make something until I had established some order to my scraps. I knew I had to get them out of the bins and into something else. I had plastic stacking drawers that were not very organized either and decided to empty them and use them for my scraps, each drawer could hold a different color, or two or three related colors.

This bin was the worst and most embarrassing. Most of it was unusable shreds I saved to put out for the birds to use for nesting material. No more. I love the birds but they can find their own supplies.

It took a couple of days to get everything in those bins sorted and put in a labeled drawer. While I was at it I decided to move my project boxes to a more accessible location in the closet. That meant some rearranging of what was in the closet. First of all the scrap drawers needed to go in the closet. And that couldn’t happen until a lot of things unrelated to quilting had to be moved out of the closet and out of the sewing room.

While making room for my project boxes (pictured left) I pulled down a large box that was only labeled “fabric.” It was stuffed with fabric and scraps from my mother-in-law’s studio that I saved for my stash when we moved in 2017. I hadn’t touched it since moving in. Well it was a treasure trove of fabric and scraps and took another two days to wash, sort through and get put away in the appropriate bins and drawers.

On Wednesday my friend Kathy and I took a road trip to a fabric store we had just found out about. More on that for another post perhaps.

Finally on Thursday I was able to get some orange scraps out and made the little piece pictured at the top of this post. My first practice quilting for my elephant quilt had not gone well so I needed another sample to work on and I had barely enough orange scraps to put that little piece together. My second attempt at quilting that simple pattern went much better and I think I will use it to quilt the elephant after all. See my post The Elephant in the Room.

Yesterday I cut more fabric, some of which was orange, for the Roman Square quilt which is my OMG for February. Finally, today I finished sewing the blocks for that quilt. See my post On the Design Wall.

Don’t know if I will get anything else done in orange this month, though I think I will try. Also, since I’m joining late I have catching up to do to cover the green for January. There was loads of green fabric in the big fabric box from Mom’s studio so I have plenty to work with.

I’m linking up with Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2020 at https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/p/rsc19.html 

I’m linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts at https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/02/one-monthly-goal-february-link-up.html

The Elephant in the Room

Canyon Rim Quilting

I started this quilt a  couple of years ago for my great nephew Beckett and finished the top a couple of weeks ago. He will be getting a baby sister soon so I think I’d better get his baby quilt finished before he isn’t the baby of the family any more.

This is my first attempt at a quilt made up of two inch finished squares. And the first time I’ve constructed a quilt from a cross stitch pattern. Probably the last time for that sort of experiment too.

Even though the pattern I used created some awkward places, I think overall the little elephant came out pretty cute. Leave a comment below if you’d like to suggest a name for this little guy. I’ll post again later when it’s finished and say which name I’ve chosen.

I have the back ready so just needed to decide about the quilting and then get it layered. I think I’m going to go with just a simple pattern of diagonal lines through the squares after outlining the elephant.

This is also the first time I’ve made a practice piece to try out a quilting pattern before layering the quilt. It showed me that I’m not ready for free motion quilting without a pattern.

My thought had been to do this simple design on the elephant and the diagonal lines on the background. But the stitching on my sample came out pretty wonky, so unless I can come up with a decent template to trace and follow I’ll stick with diagonal lines for the whole thing.


Next Post: Joining the 2020 RSC

On the Design Wall

This quilt began long ago when my niece Abigail was about 11 or 12. During a weekend visit with us she chose fabrics from my stash and began a quilt for herself. I cut fabric while she sewed the pieces together, doing her best to maintain quarter inch seams. Turns out sewing wasn’t that much fun for her so her “quilt” languished for years. I’ve pulled it out from time to time and sewed some pieces together, but with her lack of interest and my having plenty of other projects to work on, not much got done. But now Abby has moved into her first apartment and I would like to get this finished for her.

The pattern is called Roman Square and comes from the book “Quilts, Quilts, Quilts, the Complete Guide to Quiltmaking” by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes.  Their example quilt is set on point and made up of scrap fabrics except for the corner triangles and borders. I’ve tried a couple of layouts already, neither of which I’ve liked. What’s on the board now (pictured above) isn’t a design, just a place to get all the block components together.

My first design attempt.

My second attempt

I like the second attempt better than the first so will be keeping the design on point, but plan to make significant changes to the layout. My goal for February is to finalize the design layout and begin piecing the block components together.

Next post: The Elephant in the Room

February OMG

On The Edge

We moved onto the canyon rim in Paradise California just a year before the Camp Fire that devastated the town and destroyed the homes of most of our friends. Our home was on the edge of the fire, the entire canyon behind us burned. A few nearby homes also burned, but most of our neighborhood survived with little damage. We are grateful that our home was spared and are adjusting to the changes that the fire imposed on us, the distance of our friends who have had to move away, and the distance into nearby Chico for most services since very few remain in town.

Yet the beauty of this place remains, the once blackened canyon is taking on its lovely spring green and from my windows the only remaining evidence of the fire are the dead trees along the canyon rim and on the ridge across from us. This is the first home I’ve had with a designated sewing room and it’s wonderful that the window of that room looks down canyon into the valley. The view of the canyon, the valley below, and the Sutter Buttes in the distance thrill my heart each time I glance up from my sewing and gaze at the scene out my window.

Though this is a quilting blog, it seemed appropriate to begin by writing about the place where quilting happens. Having a sewing room means many things to me, and one of the best is having room enough to share with other quilters. It’s a pleasure to spend time with a friend as we work on our various projects. It’s also nice to have input from another quilter on various aspects of any given project, as well as another set of eyes on the design board. I also appreciate having a place where the mess of creativity can be left for as long as it takes for a project, or at least an aspect of it, to come together.

Next post: What’s on the design board and what I’d like to accomplish this month.

This afternoon’s view