Radio Silence

I hadn't meant to stay quiet for so long, but although I've been busy, I haven't had much to point to and exclaim, "TA-DA!"

This morning I put the final quilting stitch into Sugar Skull. I'd decided on diamonds in the white strips, which meant straight-line quilting, which meant my Brother 1500 on the "dinner" table.

I marked and quilted all the outside strips first so I could sew on the binding and cut away the excess batting/backing before continuing. I knew I'd be manhandling the quilt through the 8" throat and didn't want the batting shredding/shedding all over the place.

Feeling quite productive, I was merrily sewing my way down the third side when I discovered this:

An entire side had been skipped in the initial diamond-quilting process! Nothing to do but change back to the quilting threads combination and finish up those strips before continuing on with the binding. Needs must, and all that.

The diamonds proved to be every bit as tedious as I thought they'd be. I've got some choices going forward: 

1. don't do diamonds again
2. get better at straight-line quilting on my Juki mid-arm
3. suck it up, accept it's going to be a tedious process, put on my Big Girl Panties and get to quilting.

To help ease the tediousness, Wraith kept me company. He's an extremely stand-offish cat, but insists on being within a foot's reach when I'm sewing!

If he fits, he sits.

At the end of May I came home with 3 of Community First! Quilters' fabric bins: Florals, Greens, and Beiges (there's not enough room at our meeting place to store the entire stash of donated fabrics--members need to 'adopt' a bin or two each month). It was my intent to make at least 2 floral tops and give the stash a little breathing room.

I pulled all the large-scale florals with an eye toward using this pattern:

From any smaller pieces left over after cutting out a 12" square (two, if there was enough fabric--I'll make a second top with different dark strips), I cut 3.5" and 4.5" squares with an eye toward making something like this (the 4.5" squares were for making the triangle squares):

With the remaining large pieces, supplemented with some of the beiges . . .

. . . I'll make a backing for one of the tops. My plan:

Because I'd created so many cut-into pieces of medium florals, I thought perhaps I'd cut them down further into 2.5" posts for the Easy Breezy Leader-Ender blocks. Then I remembered a big wodge of fabric I had pulled from the stash back in March, during the Big Reorganization, which turned out to be an unsewn 8-panel maxi skirt. Awkward shapes to use in a backing, but cut down to little squares? Perfect use for it.

In the meantime, though, I needed to decide on a setting for those Easy Breezy blocks. Back in February I wrote, "For the moment, I'm considering a 6x8 setting with 5" borders (and perhaps making another 16 blocks for a second top), or a 7x9 setting without borders, and using the excess blocks in the back." These are such easy blocks to make (Easy Breezy, one might say) that I made 16 more (using some of the medium floral scraps). Then I cut all the light sashes I'd need for two tops, then all the posts from the maxi skirt fabric (still a big wodge of it left), and started sewing them onto two sides of all the blocks.

Here's where things stand at the moment. As a block is sashed on two sides then ironed, I put it on the design wall. I don't care which direction the dark diagonal is going when I sew on the first sash, and at these early stages I'm not concerned about samesies "touching".

Yet another project reaching completion is one of the tops that underwent Size Reduction Treatment: the string flimsy. A column was removed, as well as several lower blocks, to bring this to a 16x20 setting (4.5" finished blocks) for a 72"x90" top.

I reached out to the Keeper of the Backings and she gave me several choices. This is the one I picked for this top:

At first I thought I'd back the flimsy with this fabric as-is, but then I started looking at the four rolls of left-over columns of blocks in addition to several single blocks. Rather that save those as starter dough for another top (I really don't want to start anything else with the cheap cotton and N1C fabrics that make up these blocks), I'm going to extend the four rolls to 21 blocks (for those extra wiggle-room inches top and bottom), then edge them with some teal fabric, then alternate them with the 10"-wide lengthwise strips of this fabric. Things have been cut toward that outcome:

The wider teal strips, lower right, will be the outer edges of the backing and provide the extra inches needed for wiggle room.

Circling back to Sugar Skulls: there's one more piece of work I need to complete, other than stitching down the binding, before this is complete. I discovered a tear in one of the squares, something that might be overlooked now but will only get worse with wear:

I found a piece of this green in my 2" bin, but what I really want to do is celebrate the repair--instead of try to hide it--with a Sugar Skull eye over this tear. I couldn't find a single scrap of that fabric anywhere in my stash! I finally cannibalized a 9-patch to get what I needed.

Since I've already started, I might take out that rightmost light square too. It's too similar to the middle pinwheel for my liking.

Whew! Thanks for hanging in to the end. As I said, lots done but little to celebrate. However, with all this prep work, celebratory posts should be coming fast and furious for the rest of Summer!