Do You Poop Out at Parties? (Edited 8/4)

I'm attending a baby shower this Sunday, so this past weekend I pulled out the remaining flannel pieces from this and this project (started five years ago in an effort to use up mask-making scraps). In with them was a hunk of corduroy, roughly 36" x 42", which looked to be perfect for the backing and also dictated the size of the quilt.

Tuesday, Do-sday

I went to bed last night with the following To-Do list on my mind for my "day off":

1: take pictures of the completed baby quilt

2: figure out which block to add to Celia's starting 6

3: measure and sew the borders on two N1C (Not 100% Cotton) flimsies

4: complete more Frankenbatts, if there's time left in the day

To address #1:

Baby quilt #1

Update 9/15/2020:

From the mother: "And yes, he has already spit up on it. So it's officially broken in🙂"

(Original post on 8/9/2020):

No time or clarity of thought to come up with a (clever?) play on words--I'm off first thing tomorrow morning to do who knows what for who knows how long. I just learned of this change in my life this morning, and have been in a bit of a whirl ever since.

First thing to complete: get the finished baby quilt mailed to Baby Mommy!

The label:

And the cuddly texture after it went through the washer and dryer last night:

In the card enclosed, I expanded on the details in the label, pretty much repeating the thoughts I've written in this blog. 

I'll be out of state caring for my parents and helping all the sibs come to some decisions and actions. It's not going to be easy, and I have no delusions about anything I'm about to wade into (whatever it may be). 

I'll blog when I can, if I can. I've still got lots of pictures "maturing" in the Blog Fodder folder of projects I've completed in the past. If I can't, well I'll eventually be back home and settled into my real life again. 'Til then, stay healthy out there!

On Pens and Needles

Got the first baby quilt pin basted this morning (had to use painters' tape along one side because it was narrower than the pinning table) and decided to use one of my favorite patterns, the heart stipple.

It's a Full Line stencil that uses pouncing powder, but the light blue powder (I cut the blue powder with corn starch) didn't do a good job showing up on the light flannel fabrics. I basically ended up redrawing the whole design with purple chalk. It worked, but with twice the effort.

This stencil is the perfect size for these blocks. Two iterations of the pattern fill 3 blocks.

Details, details

I used to pride myself on my attention to details, at my firm grasp of numbers and how they never intimidated me, but rather danced for me under my pencil.

*Sigh*

Gonna have to give up that self-image, eventually, based on the continued deluge of contrary experiences!

I turned my attention to the 6" segments this weekend (built out to 8.5" blocks), determined to turn them into a 30" x 50" quilt.

Teal and checkered strips added to the photo so I could use them as fill options in my graphics software.

But no matter how I sliced it (figuratively and literally), I couldn't seem to get enough sashings out of the teal and checkered strips I had on hand.

Sunday Sewing Spree

Sometime between posting yesterday and waking up this morning, it occurred to me that a new mother with a new baby doesn't need something big. She needs lots of smaller, nearly identical things, so when an epic case of projectile spit-up occurs, Thing 1 can be tossed into the wash and Thing 2 brought in to replace it.

With that jog to my memory, instead of a 40"x60" toddler-sized quilt, I decided to make 2 baby quilts: a 30"x40" using a 3x4 setting with the ten 9" segments (trimmed to 8.5" squares),

and a 30"x50" using a 3x5 setting with the fourteen 6" segments constructed yesterday. If you're any good on your fingers, you've figured out that I need to make some more squares!

Wingin' It

After making hundreds of masks, I was left with a plastic shoebox full of flannel scraps (the denim scraps fill another box, somewhere). I've been shuffling that shoebox back and forth, up and down for months now, every time I needed to get to whatever it was resting on (lately, the tin holding all my 1" binder clips I use when pin basting).

On a whim, this afternoon I pulled it down (not just to shove it aside) and started sorting the contents, wondering if I could start sewing pieces together willy-nilly, and what might result. Since the masks I made required 9"x6" rectangles, there were a lot of segments that measured 6" or 9" on a side. Lots of long strips in there too, as well as some "chunks" (smaller than 6", but still containing a respectable square inch area). So I paired up all the 9s and sewed, then paired up all the 6s and sewed:

Most of these fabrics were scraps donated by a chorus member who made little girl dresses from them,
as you can see from the left-most column.

Behemoth

I finally have all 99 blocks assembled, and the nearly 400" of binding is in the process of being sewn down. Sometimes you just gotta take a break, you know?

85.5" x 104.5" (each square = 9.5" and no seam allowances are 'lost')

As soon as I had all the rows assembled, I took this picture of the fleece side (with its completely random placement), then weighed that bad boy. It seemed ridiculously heavy when I was wrangling it under the needle, and the scale showed 7.7 pounds (pre-binding). I flang it on the bed to see if it was too heavy to sleep under comfortably, but it really wasn't! It's a nice weight--like a quilt and a half. Not as heavy as the two quilts I have on the bed right now, but cozier than a single quilt.

The label, sewn onto the top right corner (in the picture above), is one of those I made for 2019. Since most of the construction was done in that year (and calendar years are pretty much a meaningless human construct anyway), I used up one of the three I still had remaining.

I had planned to set this aside as a donation quilt, but I'm growing quite attached to this one (especially now that I know I won't be smothered in my sleep). The finished quilt--the planned side I showed in this entry--will be photographed and posted when the binding is done and it's been through the wash.

QAYG layout

Thursday last I had the day and evening to myself (all-day classes keeping The Loud out of the house and busy teaching), so I had the luxury of trimming up the 99 QAYG blocks on the dining room table (bar height and bigger than my usual cutting area, so it's more comfortable) and planning a layout.

See the light blob in the upper right quadrant? He's planning mischief!

I decided to group the prints to make whole squares, and let the flannel/fleece side of these blocks fall where they may.

Wraith helped.

Design wall expansion

A week ago I felt indomitable, in the pink, ready to take on the world (or at least a new project). Today I'm in day 2 of a cold, with itchy eyes, sore glands, and a non-stop faucet where my nose used to be.

But anyway, last Wednesday I tackled a new project: expanding my design wall. I've been reading the quilting twins' blogs (keryn and mereth) from the very beginning (I'm a complete-ist), and one of them has a design wall that is half light, half dark. That makes so much sense! With a simple change of location of the wall lamp (no rewiring required) I could add another 40" to my existing wall.

After browsing at JoAnn Fabrics I found I just couldn't commit myself to any of the cheap plain flannels. Also, the dark printed flannels were really quite light on the wrong side, the side I assumed I'd be using. It was my thought that eventually when the flannel was covered with threads, I'd remove it and use it as a backing for a quilt.

Reality finally sunk in--a quick wash and dry would probably remove loose threads from the surface of a flannel; therefore, I could use the right side with impunity as a design wall, then as a quilt backing when it got too "thready". With that, I set about looking for a dark flannel with lots of colors that was non-gender-specific.

Add one cheap roller shade of the 37" variety (plus the stabilizing plastic "bar" of the original design wall shade cut down to 42"), and thus is my design space nearly doubled.

Still need to adjust the new shade to roll all the way up

At the moment it's tucked behind an odd piece of thin styrofoam--I've no idea why I felt it so important to save. I haven't found a use for that foam in years, so I think it's a good candidate for the bin this week. If I don't start feeling better soon, I may throw myself in after it.

Still Q-ingAIG

(Quilting As I Go)

Securing the fleece is probably the most important prep step, so a quick baste around the two outside edges is best done before any of the strips are sewn on.

Also, with fleece I like to position the fabric with the fuzzy side showing. That's the soft side that's meant to be worn against the skin, so it makes sense to me to have it available to the touch.

Regrets? I've had a few.

I worked in a fabric store for some time around the turn of the century/millennium, and a 40% employee discount made it very easy to succumb to impulse buying. Three-plus yards of Jinny Beyer's Rose Garden was the result of one of those sprees, and it has been dogging me ever since. I had no plans for it, other than ownership, and have spent years (getting close to decades now) wondering, "Now what?"

Now what? Now this:

A Finish

48"x71"

The Indian Spiderweb is complete! The back is constructed from two reds, white, and light blue flannel pieces.

Under the Needles

Got the first border on the Triple Chain:

 

This flimsy can rest for a bit on the rack while I think about what the 2nd border might be. Something solid, probably, followed by the final border made from the 1.5"x2.5" bricks that have collected.

Jean MaDan: Done

Seeing as binding this was the subject of my last post, this finish is hardly surprising.

72" x 90"

I stepped out of my comfort zone and used a different technique with my free-motion quilting. Instead of marking the quilt (I would've marked the plainer-looking back), or tracing the design onto Press 'n Seal and sewing through strips of that (as I do in a previous post), I printed out the actual size of the pattern I wanted to use and eye-balled it as I went along.

"Fantasy Flame". The paper soon got pinned to the thread guide bar above the spool holder.

After a row or two I was familiar enough with the flow of this to proceed without the crutch of the paper.

CA-bound #6: Simply squares

Quilt #6 sent to Robert Kaufman for the #quiltsforCA drive:

60" x 76"

This was an experiment. The large print was from a stash of polished cotton(?) light-weight upholstery fabric I've been carrying around for decades. My former sister-in-law worked for a while in a fabric store, and would often bring my mother and me upholstery fabric and sample swatches from discontinued lines. I had several 11"x12" rectangles of it, far too many to use up in this quilt (the rest were used in CA quilt #7). Counting the border, 25 rectangles were used from this stash.

Honorable Mention

This wasn't the oldest UFO in my collection (I can think of a wallhanging that still needs finishing, started when the boys were mere ... boys), but was pretty darn close.

As near as I can tell, this was started a few years before the turn of the century, making it at least 20 years old. Someone on the RCTQ newsgroup was selling a yummy floral fabric that I fell in love with. I decided to make a reversible quilt, using the yummy floral on one side, and all the chicken fabrics I'd been gifted (or with which I'd gifted myself) on the other. At the time, we were raising chickens so all my friends knew what kind of fabric to give me!