Another Summer Finish

This one came together relatively quickly and jumped right to the head of the queue.

70" x 90"

Christmas is finished, the Goose is over-fat...

It's a weird juxtaposition when your brain tells you the Christmas projects--and therefore Christmas itself--are done, yet Hallowe'en hasn't yet arrived!

In my last post I'd listed the projects I'd hoped to get finished and donated at the final (for this calendar year) meeting of Community First! Quilters in October:

Advent Calendar

Bunny

Wallhanging

Garlands

Bunny didn't make it (he's still 'living' with me, with hopes of more relatives in the next 12 months) but everything else did!

Garlands

I did it! I made garlands as planned!! When I finally sandwiched, quilted, and trimmed all the strips and scraps, I had 367 strips (7.25"x1.5") to make into chains.

Those Flipping Corners

I'm back in my studio! I realized a few days ago that I had been suck[er]ed into (by a friend's overwhelming enthusiasm) a project that was Too Soon and Too Much, so I asked that we pump the brakes on that until after the holidays. There was no need to dive headlong into things right this minute--which we were doing--and everyone else agreed. Big load off my mind, and lots of time freed up as a result.  

My pile o' squares, after their Big Adventure in Wisconsin, weren't content to going back to Leader-Ender status when we got home.

More Bits and Pieces and Pieces and Pieces

The title refers back to this post, in which I claimed I'd be making three more backs that month. Owa tagoo siam! (It's nearly impossible to find a relevant clip of that Odd Couple episode ["The Exorcists"], but I really wanted to link it here!)

I did manage to make two more backs this week, but that was after getting a head start on this:

Nann had commented, "The black/white top might benefit from some improv cutting and bright inserts." Which tickled me, because it had been included with lots of this in the orphaned bag:

So many random slashes and bright inserts! None of which spoke to me in the slightest. Not in the least little bit.

Proof

I woke Friday morning determined to see if I could make the inner star of this pattern, and if so, was it worth it?

It was! It wasn't difficult, and Proof Of Concept was rapidly achieved.

Finishing and Pondering

First, the finish:

70" x 91"

Bits and Pieces and Pieces and Pieces

The Community First! Quilters recently were gifted a portion of a hoarder's stash and I've been curating it for the past several weeks: sorting, organizing, culling, selling, and generally getting to know every.single.piece. It has easily increased our stash by 50%, a stash which currently is homeless as we've lost our usual meeting and storage space. I've got four bins of our original stash at home with me and the other 15 or so are in our fearless leader's vehicle. When next we meet we'll have a better idea of the lay of the land, and where these bins are landing.

In the meantime! It's been very interesting seeing the results of a hoarder's addiction (which pales compared to the stash Nann had been describing throughout last year.) One of the oddest things I dealt with was scores of BOM bags that had been sold at $6/pound at a store going out of business. I know this because the sign was included with all those bags. A few were unique, but most were duplicates of BOM kits the store had made up but never sold. The biggest duplication was 17 kits of the same pattern/colorway. 

I tried folding all the identical pieces together, but that ended up being awkward and taking up a lot of room in their respective bins. As space needed to file FQs diminished, I finally decided to pull the biggest piles of all those BOM pieces and see what I could make of them. Backs, preferably, so I set up a spreadsheet with the goal square inchage (like footage, but for inches, yes?) of 7,000 (that covers something slightly less than 75"x95"), and started subtracting the pieces to see how far I could get.

Busy Fortnight

It's been 2+ weeks since my last post, a quarter of which was stolen away from me by flu--the old-fashioned kind that requires a clear path to the toilet at all times, and a bucket in hand! It seemed to be a 72-hour bug and I'm back to my old self now.

Winding Ways went from a gleam to a finish in these past 16 days! Before being felled, I had added borders (finding the perfect fabric in the CF!Q legacy stash, as I'd hoped), made a back from the blue dot fabric that didn't work in the front (including a couple more FQs from the CF!Q stash), sandwiched the lot and outline-quilted all the inner blocks. Contrary to all teachings and advice from time immemorial, I made the borders to the size the blocks should measure, not what reality might dictate. As a result, the sandwiching involved quite a bit of careful pulling and close pinning so nothing shifted.

A Quilt Block Winds Its Way into a Bar . . .

. . . and says to the bartender, "Tell me a funny joke. I like to be kept in stitches."

And so was I introduced to the "Winding Ways" block this weekend, quite unexpectedly!

A Finish and a Sandwich

This got bound, photo'ed, and tumbled in the drier today, ready for donation to Community First! Village. Diamonds and Pinwheels, finally ready for its new home.

71" x 90"

Slow and Steady

I'm definitely not winning any races with this approach, but things are getting done! 

Two weeks ago in my last post, I showed these columns, the medium lights and the darks sewn together.

Those were moved to a different location as the other half of the columns were created from the light and medium dark strings, filling the design wall once again.

And naturally from there everything got sewn together.

Stare Down

Kicking up my feet after a walk to the grocery store. It's a new one and it takes me less than an hour to walk there, shop, then walk back, all on paved surfaces if I choose to use them (there are alternative routes). The Loud has started accompanying me, making it a bit slower but the companionship is nice. He brings his own backpack and between the two of us we can get quite a few groceries schlepped home on our backs!

I finished the final Woven Log Cabin block yesterday, then hauled out and erected the big ladder so I could get up to the ceiling and finally adjust the roller spring on my second design wall, so it will roll all the way up. With that done, I can put an entire twin-sized-worth of blocks in one area.

Each block is 18.5" unfinished

This 'n' That

It's been a fraught couple of weeks, filled with new challenges to lose sleep over (but ultimately meet successfully, while filled with dread at the newness of it all). I've found myself retreating not to my usual Killer Sudoku puzzles (Expert level, thankyouverymuch [she says smugly]) but to rereading fondly-remembered Dick Francis mysteries (fondly- but not always fully-remembered. The bad guy is often a surprise all over again!)

Still, I have done some sewing and will have four quilts and a block to present tomorrow at the Community First! Quilters' monthly meeting. The quilts have been discussed, but the block only mentioned briefly. I had the presence of mind to photograph it this afternoon.

The Chapel photo . . .

. . . and the raw-edge machine applique block I agreed to make (all the pieces already drafted by the instigator of this project, bless her!):

This will be trimmed down, so I hope the unfinished stone path at the left will be truncated in the final product. If not, the assemblers have scraps of the stone fabric.

New Queue!

Fans of Eddie Izzard will hear his excitement in the phrase "New Queue!"

That's what the orphan legacy scraps (left over from this quilt and this quilt) and my bulging string bin have decided to form: a new queue of projects.

Another Floral Finish

Yippee, skippy!

72" x 91" (I've since cleaned off the smudge that makes that vertical strip look faded and blurry.)

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!!

Broken Cross Check

That sounds like a reference app that's on the fritz, doesn't it? What I've really been doing is checking potential 36-patches for an inadvertent swastika image. I put up pairings for 20 blocks on the design wall, then took a photo and gray-scaled it for simplicity.

As long as there was a definite light frame around the center four dark squares, there was no danger of offensive misunderstandings in the blocks. Here's how they look in color:

Much more fun, yes? These are all "half pinwheels", in that there are only two pinwheel blocks used, paired with two plain 9-patch blocks. I have scores of plain 9-patch blocks already made; not so much with the pinwheel blocks, so in the interest of time I've opted to use what I've already got.

A Third Pinning, and a Finish

After a few days my back agreed to coöperate and I got a third top pinned.

By this point I was fast running out of my bendy basting pins and had to scrounge through all the other sizes I've collected over the years. I eked them out and didn't have to resort to the diaper pins (or those equivalent in size) that I also have.

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.