Why Can't Carolyn Count?

So, back to the Arkansas Cross Road blocks and project.

From this layout of all the pieces . . .

. . . I carefully sorted everything into two piles, making sure the blocks with the bright orange squares were equally split between the piles. It doesn't look like it here, but the bright orange really flashed out to me in person, and I didn't want them all grouped in one border or area.

Reading Material

I'd mentioned an interesting brown fabric I found at clearance price at the Wisconsin quilt show, but had forgotten to post a picture of it then. Since it was hanging around waiting for the next load of laundry to accumulate (I hate to run the machine just to spin out rinsed fabrics), I took a photo.

Huh.

Críochnaithe

The Irish Chain flimsy made back in 2019 is finally finished (the Irish word in this post's title). Another finish in the space of 8 days? Inconceivable!

"I do not think it means what you think it means."

Mind Games

When we were growing up, my mother would send me in to help my youngest sister clean her messy room because, as she explained it to me, I could always make a game out of it.

She was right, of course, and it's something I continue to this day--making a game of Tedious Tasks.

The latest "TT" has been a result of my decision to quilt each wonky star by itself--all 80 of them. I made up the game of "4 Esses" to get through them without losing interest or momentum, and to keep myself active as well.

For every Star I quilted, I'd get up and move to the cutting table where . . .

Burying the beginning threads before stitching over them.

Basting another!

Lookit her go!

 

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.

Another finish . . . ish

Last month the CF!Quilters were asked that we not wash our quilts before donating them, as it created some question as to whether they were new or used.

I like to wash everything before it leaves my house, because not only does it get rid of markings, chalk dust, cat dander, and general griminess (that looks like it should really be spelled "grimyness", but the red squiggles under the second spelling suggest otherwise), but it also sends the message that 'Yes! This can be washed just like your sheets and towels.'

Apparently, that message wasn't being received.

So, when I put the last stitch into this . . .

. . . I threw it into my new dryer and put it on Air Dry. Remembering my research into dealing with a down comforter (2021, helping out my parents), I threw in 4 tennis balls to keep things agitated (and, I hoped, knock some of the chalk markings out of the top). It also gave me an opportunity to learn what the dryer thought was long enough for Air Dry (30 minutes--now written on the control panel with a black marker). After an hour there was a satisfactory amount of lint in the trap, and no discernible chalk lines.

Broke, don't work

It's been that kind of week so far. (This title is typical of the notes I'd get attached to non-working machinery when I worked as a Biomed Tech in a lab. So very helpful.)

In Stitches

. . . but ain't nobody here laffin'.

I attached bunny's second arm last night. I generally will follow a pattern to the letter the first time I use it. This pattern instructed the arms be assembled by folding down the top edge, sewing the pieces together all around the perimeter (excluding the top), stuffing the turned arm, sewing the top closed, then hand-sewing it to the body.

Even before making the arms I was thinking "there's GOT to be a better way!" I knew darn well that it was going to be awkward sewing a stuffed something onto another stuffed something, even with the appropriate tool (see curved needle on bunny's hand).

1 in 120

As part of the size evaluation journey I've been taking with the various flimsies hanging around, I cast my eye on the two piles of Leader-Ender challenge blocks lurking about:  

Triple Treat

120 at 6" finished

and Easy-Breezy.

80 at 8" finished

Stash

As soon as I saw the donated partial bolt of fabric I knew exactly what flimsy it was meant for, so I took it home with me after one of the Community First! Quilters meetings. The sheer amount of fabric made it a good candidate for trying the folding-and-pinning method of washing/drying (works wonderfully, and well worth the effort).

(I know, you feel like you jumped in at the middle of the story, don't you? It'll resolve soon.)

Recently,  after washing/drying the last couple of quilts and measuring how much shrinkage resulted, I padded the raw flimsy guidelines to 74"x94" (for a Twin). Suddenly, that perfect piece of backing yardage was a smidge too small, and I'd have to embiggen it with some of my stash.

My stash isn't huge; I'm not sure I'd even categorize it as "large", but in it I found two perfect pieces.

I'll show the resulting back in a future post, once I've finished quilting everything together.

This serendipitous find led me to ponder a few things, such as 1) how great it is to have a place (or two) to donate my handiwork, 2) how great it is to have a definite size (limit, in some cases) to work within, 3) how lucky I continue to be to have just the right fabric on hand for making/finishing these tops, and 4) would anyone care what my stash looks like?

An Ass out of ... just me

I'm great with assumptions. I make them freely and rarely question them, so they feel comfortable floating around in my brain. They know they won't get kicked out anytime soon.

What's wrong with this picture?

The bus windows were fussy cut from a fabric printed with mirrors

Hint: it's not the lack of wheels going 'round and 'round.

The Main Event(s)

Leader-Enders, by their nature/description, presume a "main" project is being constructed, the L&E pieces merely spacers. To that end, I needed a main project so I could advance the Lady of the Lake blocks, my chosen L&E challenge this year.

Last month in a bin of 'please take and use this!' fabric at the Community First! Village Quilters meeting room, I found some peach fabric that I knew would be a great color to back one of the N1C (Not 100% Cotton) Trip Around the World flimsies I completed last year. There was nearly 4 yards of it and I hoped it was enough.

I also needed to add some borders to the flimsy to get it to twin size, and I found some cute pink heart fabric in my yardage drawer. It had come from Nann for the backing of a Magpie hug, and there were 2 hunks of it wrapped around the cardboard.

Not ready for March

Like most people, February ended way too soon to suit me. I don't know why we can't borrow a day or two from other months. January can afford to be a day shorter, and March would never miss a day here or there. Too bad those decisions aren't mine to make.

Because of various factors eating up this month, I've decided to forgo the vintage machine swap out and resume it again in April. I'm already happier!

For the past several weeks I've been quilting the Shoo-Fly Leader-Ender project from 2019. I chose a clam-shell pantograph that came with the New Home quilting frame I bought way back when. Because the Glad Press'n Seal is twice as wide as the pantograph strip, I doubled up the pattern so I could trace everything in one go. The paper was long enough that I could loop it around the table and secure everything with binder clips.

Disappearing Ink

There were only two borders to hide threads in, not three as I feared yesterday. It took about 75 minutes.

Three-fourths of the way through marking the cross-hatching yesterday, the blue water-soluble half of my marking pen just gave up the ghost. Against my better judgement, I finished the job with the purple air/water soluble half, figuring I'd start with those lines today in case they didn't last very long.

They didn't even last 24 hours. How very disappointing/disappearing.

This border was fully cross-hatched yesterday morning. You'd never know it today!

On the bright side, I wasn't very happy with the spacing of the final two lines and had done some fudging of the lines on either side of them to try to hide the problem. Now I have a chance for a do-over! I'll work on the other three borders first. Perhaps the blue half of the pen will refresh itself enough over the next several days to finish the marking job. In all likelihood, I'll end up buying a fresh marking pen between now and then. Can't trust that purple stuff.

Hiccup

I was contentedly quilting along this morning, the time of day when I get the bulk of any quilting done, when suddenly my Brother/Nouvelle 1500 was useless. The needle wouldn't go all the way down and was blocked by a piece of metal!

I'd done nothing different from one minute to the next, except that one of the pin heads of the heavily pin-basted quilt sandwich

managed to hit the thread cutter button on the face of the machine as I was shoving the quilt through the 8" throat.

Penultimate TATW

Burying threads is a great way to spend time thinking of other things, such as the layouts for the final two N1C (Not 100% Cotton) quilts. I had been spending my days (after using up my 'good' vision quilting first thing in the morning) sewing up the strips for tops 5 and 6. I knew by now that I wanted the classic Trip Around the World setting for one set of strips, but offset. So: to the computer! I set up a 5x7 grid and started plopping in images of one of the blocks I had sewn up, et voila:

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...

Ugh

The tablecloth isn't working out at all. It slips, slides, and shimmies all over the place as I'm sewing, and draws up something awful. I had to pick out all the corners of my first line of quilting, because as I approached each corner again (in the inner light green borders), the top would bunch up and fold over on itself.

The tablecloth as a back is causing all this puckering. I wasn't sure how bad it was until I compared today's photo (on right) to yesterday's.

I've only done the two outer thin green borders, so it won't be difficult or too time consuming to pick it all out again. I've got plenty of white-on-white fabrics that can be used as a proper backing. I suspected I'd have to as I worked on this last night anyway, so I'm not discouraged yet.