Two shopping days before Christmas, not that that's relevant to my life other than peripherally. Ninety-seven days ago someone on the Heartstrings group noted there were 99 days left until Christmas Eve, and wouldn't it be fun to challenge ourselves to complete a task a day? I chose to interpret that as 'make daily progress on something sewing-related and stay accountable by reporting it to the group'. In that time I've completed the Twin Hugs, my Mom's wall-hanging from my Dad's shirt, and my brother Steve's quilt started by my Mom. I've made progress on other WIPs and started a new top as well. But while I'm encouraged by and happy about all the forward motion this challenge produced, I'll be so glad to end the challenge and stop holding myself publicly accountable every day!
One of the Big 2 under the needles lately is my latest idea of what to do with my rolls of scraps. This is how that unnamed one stands right now:
The other of the Big 2 is Hubris, on which I've been making satisfactory quilting progress. After quilting feathers in the dark areas, I felt emboldened to feather in most of the neutral areas too. First though I wanted to do the 'easy' and smaller sections of neutral close to the middle (they look like side-by-side bowties.) My doodled idea was a simple line through the middle, 3 loops into each corner, then through the middle again to the other end of the 'bowtie'. The problem with doodles on a picture is that the picture doesn't begin to match the scale of the area needing coverage. So, when I quilted the first bowtie using my original idea, it wasn't nearly enough quilting so I went back (and forth) and added 4 more loops:
Rather than quilt a continuous line/direction of feathers in the outer neutrals, I opted to start at the two long edge mid-sections, feather a short swag (sketched at bottom of picture), then start at the middle of the short sides and quilt a long swag around each corner (upper right of picture).
In real time, it ends up looking like this where the swag ends meet:
Again, the scale of picture vs reality really threw off how big these feathers were going to end up being. I can live with it, but in future projects I'll keep the feathers much smaller!
This morning I finished the gray square quilting.
I had started with echo quilting in the middle areas and hated the first/only two lines I put in. Echoing the outer areas worked well, however, and stippling in the center finished it off.
Next up is the tan square, and that'll conclude the quilting on this beast. I'm mostly using Aurifil threads, with a King Tut (Sphinx) in the neutral areas.
What size scraps comprise your scrap rolls? Do you sew a bunch of strips together and immediately add them to an already-started roll, or do you have several rolls in progress at a time? (Yes, I am over-thinking this.)
ReplyDeleteI started the rolls some time ago from all the short strips and bits that never seemed to get used up in any string tops. Over the years I figured out that anything under 4" will always get passed over, and anything under 3/4" was hardly worth the effort, so scraps fitting those criteria were thrown in a different container (as were some larger pieces I was just tired of seeing). I guess one day I gradually started sewing stuff together just to tame the mess, and over the weeks ended up using the (trimmed to 2.5") result as a border for a spiderweb top (12/8/18 post). From there I just kept going, saving anything under 4" and periodically sewing the mess together when nothing else seemed interesting. Over the years I'd also started a 3.5" (finished) roll as well as a black/white/gray roll (probably the scraps from Hubris). I think it was one of your tops that made me think of using the resultant rolls in this manner.
ReplyDeleteAs of now, the only roll still in existence is the 2.5" roll, and as scraps accumulate I'll periodically sew some together and either throw the pairs back in the container for another day, or sew them into a long strip, trim to 2.5", and attach that strip to the existing roll.
I've tweaked the criteria so that now anything under an inch and shorter than 2.75" isn't worth saving for my projects. They'll give the landfill worms something to work on.
The genesis of the border rolls: http://cbottsprojects.blogspot.com/2018/12/design-wall-jean-madan-stacked-blocks.html. The previous post gives a pretty good idea of the random state I'm likely to encounter when I open the container these days.
ReplyDeleteI'll be interested in what you come up with. I usually make mine about 8" shorter than the length of the quilt and then add sashing and a 4" border in something dark and plain. Bam, done. I did make one or two where I set them at 45 degrees, with sashing and then cut across them and set the others at 90 degrees to those. I must have a photo somewhere.
ReplyDelete