Queue

We've all been there: a room with a hint of a suggestion of a loose idea of a line. Nobody's officially in charge, but every person in that room knows exactly their position in the invisible queue. Newcomers are eyeballed suspiciously--will they try to jump ahead? Fat chance of that happening; a gentle correction ("I believe she was here before you") generally keeps things well in (invisible) line. The only time I've heard any kind of disagreement in these situations is when one person suggests, "You were here before me?" and the other replies, "No, no--you go first."

This phenomenon isn't restricted to mere mortals, by the way. As various projects were coming out of Leader-Ender status and into Full-on-Project mode . . .

All the triangle squares for the Lady of the Lake centers, sewn into 3- and 5-square strips.

New Tricks

Normally when creating string quilts, I let the corners happen organically. When a triangle fills a corner, it's sewn on and that section is complete.

With this yellow and M&M top (what should I call this, anyway?), however, I wanted the corners to be fairly similar in size, which meant 

*gasp*

planning!

For the first few blocks I used my usual ham-handed method of laying the triangle face up in the corner, carefully turning it face down along the long edge, then scooching the triangle a 1/2" back toward the corner again before sewing it down and hoping for the best. There had to be a quicker way, one with less trial and error.

Bonnie Hunter's Essential Triangle Tool to the rescue! I wasn't very scientific about this: I looked through the corners I had completed so far and found a couple I was happiest with, flipped the corner piece back so I could see the seam, then lined up the ETT with the hypotenuse so I could figure out what line would give me that result again (I really wish now I had taken pictures of what I just tried to describe.) In this project, the scant 1-1/4" spot (using the red lines) fit the bill. Square up the ruler to the raw foundation corner

and the bottom edge is where the triangle hypotenuse goes (these measurements assume the standard 1/4" seam and all dog-ears intact. Again I say: this project.)

 

Trip Around the World, Nestling Seams Tutorial Tweak

Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville has already created a great tutorial for a scrappy TATW, called "Scrappy Trips", so I will credit her but not steal from her. This post contains the various ways I deviated from her instructions, and in so doing managed to make all the seams on all the blocks nestle with each other, no matter which direction a block was turned.

It was at this step

that I discovered two key points to making nestling seams. 

Proof

 "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Just sayin'. Unless you make yours with high-content alcohol, there is never proof in the pudding.

But on to the real topic of this post: nestling Scrappy Trip Around the World seams.

I started sewing together the shoe box full of carefully stowed strips last week. I couldn't wait to get 4 blocks constructed and on the design wall!

TATW, thoughts on.

 Nearly a year ago, near the end of one of my care-giver breaks, I made 35 scrappily planned Trip Around the World blocks. Without a home or drawer or closet into which I could shove them once done, they lurked atop any stable surface on my cutting area. Until yesterday.

Looking for something easy to stitch together, I decided to grab that pile, forgo any previous ideas of grouping like fabrics to create subsections of control and order within the inherent scrappiness, divide the pile roughly in half, and sew together pairs of blocks with abandon. Let's hear it for spontaneity!

Except...

Invasion of the Sleep Snatcher

The whole time I was working on my mother's quilt, another project kept simmering in the back of my mind. It wasn't simmering quietly, either. It was actively invading my sleep with weird dreams. So, as soon as I could in the evening after I finished "Jackson" (my goofy name for it, not my mother's!), I set to work preparing for Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trip Around the World using all those 2.5" strips cut from my bin of N1C (Not 100% Cotton) fabrics last week.

First thing I did was sort those 600-700 strips into lights/mediums/darks. Lots of hard squinting as I examined all those strips covering my cutting table, trying to determine whether a light or dark was really a medium (and vice-versa). That brought me to dinnertime. After another night of weird dreams, I was more than ready to take inventory and figure out my plan of attack.

Trippin'

 As I was working on the mindless string blocks, another project landed in my lap: Trip Around The World.

Not the most flattering of shots, but a true capture of her joie de vivre. That's me in the background, holding the bolt of the "awesome" doxie fabric that ended up in my prototype TATW block.

Last year one of our Magpies flew from this mortal coil. In memory of her, the Nest is making a quilt for her granddaughter--to be given at her Bat Mitzvah--using fabrics from her stash. Her cousin and fellow Magpie is coordinating the effort and getting fabrics to all those who've volunteered to make blocks. I had thrown in my hat when this project was being discussed; I knew I could manage to make 4 blocks during my time home, but that would have to be the extent of my contribution.

While waiting for my allotment of fabrics, I figured I'd get familiar with the tube technique Bonnie Hunter shares on her Quiltville website for a Scrappy Trip Around the World, which is what the Magpies decided to make. Pulling all strips that were 16" or longer from my 2.5" bin, I built this:

Not much WOW factor in this, because it turns out I don't have many long 2.5" strips!

The technique is easy (although I made a tweak to Bonnie's instructions that eliminates the unpicking of one column per block*) and the results are fun.

Obsessed

All week I've been plowing through my 1-1/2" scraps, hell-bent on using them up, and I have no idea why. I've decided on a Triple Chain pattern I screen-shot from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site (the "Leaders & Enders" page listed under "Tips & Techniques!")

Stringin' along

I cannot open my blog one more day to the sight of TFI. This has been sitting in Drafts; time to finish my thought and get it published!

I've been playing with more "neutrals", still getting comfortable with Bonnie Hunter's definition of the term. I also wanted to try a new-to-me technique of making string blocks: using a fabric foundation square instead of telephone book pages. The nice thing about string blocks for donation quilts: there's no wrong answer!

Lovely to meet you, Kay!

Thank you, Kae, for graciously allowing us to intrude upon your solitude this afternoon and giving me a tour of your studio and home and quilts. Such fun! Such loveliness!!

My verbal description of my design wall didn't even begin to convey what was in my mind's eye, and rather than try to match up a bunch of attached pictures to a narrative in an email, I figured this would be easiest.

My design wall, in a room with a 10' ceiling.