Some Semblance of Self

I'm going to take a page out of Lane's book blog and insert anything political, that I feel I must get off my chest, at the bottom of my entry under a line of asterisks. I am also giving a hugely grateful "Thank you!" to Nann and Caroline for their comments of support and virtual hugs. Those, along with reading some of my favorite bloggers (The Bloggess in particular) and having Real Time conversations with friends (of both persuasions), have helped me work out and through my feelings and get back to a semblance of my normal, bubbly-but-sarcastic self. I'm singing again, ready to perform for The Great Unwashed in our upcoming Holiday gigs.

On a completely surprising note, in the midst of my utter depression I had a dream about making a colorful quilt from a panel of this fabric I have on hand. There was hope yet, and I clung to it!!

I've been sewing (keeping my DVD of "Best In Show" running in the background to drown out The Voices of Doom). Nearly two weeks ago I took pictures of the steps for making a quilted garland, as requested by Nann, so without further ado:

Each link of the chain measures 1.5"x7.5" finished. So I cut 2"-2.25" x 8" pieces from holiday scraps (not really knowing how much draw-up would result from the quilting). I also cut 2.5" strips (WOF) from the flimsy green fabric I decided to use for the back of each link. Adding strips of batting scraps (at least 1.5" wide), I sandwiched all three elements, butting the holiday fabrics end-to-end, closer than this picture indicates (staged for clarity):

You can see how thin the green backing fabric is--it's see-through!

Baste everything together along the long edges, mainly to keep shift under control during the quilting stage.

I chose a green thread for the bobbin and the gold, left-twist, half-pound cone of thread I bought 2 years ago from a Salvation Army thrift store for the top. Dropping the feed dogs and lightening the pressure of the foot, I FMQed figure-8 loops over the surface of all the fabrics, using my regular sewing machine. The start was a bit iffy (not much fabric to grab hold of to manipulate), but I left plenty of room for trimming off these kinds of boo-boos.

Ran out of bobbin thread one figure-8 into the quilting!

Once quilted, the links can be separated and trimmed to size.

I tried using a scallop-edged rotary blade, but wasn't comfortable with that (it kept hitting the ruler) and didn't know exactly how to measure things. Pinking shears would make a cute finish. I'm sticking with plain-vanilla straight edges.

These pieces get linked to each other and the ends sewn together. In this photo I've merely pinned them for effect. Most instructions would have you sew a 1/4" seam (as you can see in the initial picture), but I think an overlap would be a neater, more elegant solution to joining the ends (as I've done here with the pins).

 

A full garland would take 100 of these links. Many people use holiday fabrics for both sides. I want to use up the nearly 10 yards of the crappy green fabric.

Once I cut through all the scraps I'd pulled from the CF!Q legacy stash, I started working on chunks. From them I cut larger pieces, 5.25" by any multiple of 8" I could manage. That would give me width enough for four links. If I couldn't manage that, I'd cut a 3.5" by any multiple of 8". That would give me width enough for two links. From the backing fabric I cut WOF strips of 5.5" and 4" (or thereabouts).

I haven't quilted any of the large pieces yet, but when I do it'll be a close pattern, either more of the figure-8s, or a stipple/meander.

I've been working on the penultimate floral top, the diamonds and pinwheel 9-patches. This is the last picture I took, with everything pinned to the design wall:

As of this writing, it's in two sections of 4-columns and 6-columns. One more seam! Because of the magical and inexplicable properties of fabric (that phrase brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department), I was able to find enough additional floral scraps to make all 40 diamond blocks needed for a Twin flimsy. So, no borders on this. Holy mackerel, is it a riot of color and scraps!

"Penultimate", you say? Why yes, dear reader, there's one more flimsy in the making, an attempt to use up the final scraps of all the floral fabrics I pulled from the CF!Q legacy stash. Inspired by this photo in one of Bonnie Hunter's blog posts . . .

A project of one of her retreaters.

. . . I've decided to make Split Rail blocks using 3.5" squares (or 3.5" x any other length, to be sewn together to create a 9.5" length) of the floral scraps as the middle rail, and an assortment of teals pulled from the stash (I brought home the green/teal, blue, and Christmas fabrics bins after October's meeting) as the outer rails. At this writing I've got all the 3.5"x9.5" rectangles cut from the teals--80 blocks-worth--and have sewn them to most of the middle portions. That project is well on its way, pictures to come soon.

Glad to be back, thank you.