Quilting 2020

I know it's March 2021 but it sure feels like 2020 2.0. Nothing has changed and I really haven't done much in the last couple months. So I decided to write a few different post summarizing more of my 2020 craft activities. 

Quilting 2020:

 

I started 2020 finishing a very large queen size quilt. That of course involved lots of sewing, machine quilting separate sections and solving some construction problems because I made the quilt using the Machine Quilting in Sections method as taught by Marti Michell. She has an excellent Craftsy class on the subject that I referenced multiple times.  It was the only way I could achieve my goal because I don't have a sewing machine that can accommodate the machine quilting of something that large.  It was the end of April before I finished and was thrilled to be done and happy with the results.  But by then I was pretty tired of sewing.  It was the third queen size quilt I made in a row. I'd made two in 2019 before I started this on and I needed a break from sewing.

I moved on to other crafts for several months.  After taking a long break I didn't do any more sewing until the annual Project Linus quilt challenge in October.  That is always a fun easy quilt to make and a fundraising event for Project Linus.  The challenge only last about 8 weeks and you receive complete instructions and access to video tutorials if you need them. My problem is I love finishing the quilt tops but take forever to get around to finishing the quilts. I have several quilt tops sitting in my cabinet now just waiting to become real quilts one day.

After I finished the Project Linus quilt top I was ready to finish a Christmas project I'd planned a couple years ago or so.  I have collected a lot of different winter and Christmas themed fabric and planned to make a table runner for a  coffee table out of some blue and white snowflake fabric prints.

 

 

 

I have a list of planned quilt projects that I already have the fabric for.  It's just a matter of deciding what I feel like working on at any given time. But then there are the unplanned projects usually made from leftover fabric pieces that are the remnants of previous completed projects. They end up becoming any number of things. Having just finished three queen size quilts I have a basket full of extra cut fabric pieces and scraps from both the fronts and backs of the quilts. I experimented with some strip piecing ideas and ended up with enough blocks to make another table runner and I have some random small quilt blocks made from leftover project Linus fabric. They may end up being zipper pouches or place mats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Aileen

End of 2017 Wrap Up

For several weeks in October and November I worked on another Project Linus Mystery Quilt Challenge.  The theme this year was Ethan the Elephant and his travels around the world. Each block represents a different continent or area of the world. You can see more about this challenge at the Project Linus website.

I also worked on a another artwork challenge with the monthly ArtSnacks box:

And designed a Christmas Card and Christmas towel with some artwork my son created and a little Photoshop magic. The towels were printed on cotton canvas fabric at Spoonflower.

 And the cards were printed at Shutterfly.

And with just a little sewing we have cute new Holiday towels.

I found time to sew a couple more fun zipper pouches. They are big enough to hold pencils, pens, markers and small notebooks.

I love the Ghastlie and Sebastion Cat fabric.  I think the grouchy little cat is cute.  I have a skinny 17 year old cat and I've seen that look before. 

Several of the fabrics I used to make this pouch are sample prints of designs I uploaded to Spoonflower.  The solid fabric is from the Grunge Basics by Moda fabric line.

And made a mini traveler's style journal and filled it with homemade mini notebooks that I made using Star Wars themed fabric for the covers.  The secret to using fabric like this for covers is Heat'n Bond Ultra Hold Iron-On Adhesive between a layer of fabric and paper.

Thanks for reading.
Aileen

Time, Chaos and the Tip of the Iceberg

What happened to March and April?  I have been busy, just not with craft projects to post about. I got into a serious spring cleaning project and totally sorted and reorganized all my cloths, shoes, linens and blanket storage areas. I picked a ton of stuff to clear out and loaded my car trunk with everything nice enough to give away and hauled it all to Goodwill. The remaining items were either trash or to be recycled as rags, or craft materials. I've made many rugs from old sheets, curtains or t-shirts in the past. It's a good feeling to be organized even for a little while. Life always tends toward chaos so this exercise will be repeated again sometime in the future. 

After enjoying the contentment of being organized for awhile I started on my next big project that I have to admit has been planned for a couple years! The goal is to paint the kitchen/dinning room (all one large area) and laundry room. I knew I would need about a month to do it and it would be disruptive and physically tiring for me so I've procrastinated for as long as I can. I had to start it no matter how I felt or what ever else was going on. That's a lot of wall, odd spaces (like behind the fridge), a lot of small and large items to move out of the way and a lot of woodwork to paint on hands and knees. I started in late March and I'm still not done. I was being overly optimistic to think I could get it done in a month. I can't work on it every day. I have bad days (bad weeks) when I can't do anything that physical and I have to rest a day or more after doing something very physical. So the project drags on but now that I've started I will finish it. Eventually. 

So that's what happened to most of March and April and on into May. But I do take time to work on some crafts because they make me happy when everything else feels like work and drudgery. 

I've been working on some fabric designs to print at Spoonflower. I've done a little of this in the past and while I'm still learning how to make the most of this service, I put together files to test print my designs. The fabric prints never look exactly like the digital file. The colors look different, the edges are fuzzier, some colors that are distinctly different in the digital file look nearly the same color printed, and this time some of my design detail was completely missing in the printed fabric version.

This is a one yard piece of Kona cotton fabric printed with designs I'm working on:

This is a collection of indigo prints I designed.  I'm happy for the most part with these but the background color printed as a solid blue and it is suppose to be a scratchier aged looking background. That detail in the digital file was completely lost in the printing process. 

I designed this simple half square triangle geometric using my favorite colors. (digital version)

This is the final printed version of the colorful geometric design shown above.  This photo doesn't show how nice it really came out. 

This is a collection of half square triangle quilt design elements that I use when designing new quilt patterns.  There are 256 different elements and it's a fascinating design process that has intrigued me for years. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this. I just wanted to see it printed on fabric. 

And this is a sample of a pattern I'm trying for a topographic or contour line fabric. In this case the fact that the fabric print comes out just a little fuzzier than the digital file actually helps the appearance  of the design. I'm encouraged by how this looks in this rough form. 

More recently I just sat down and did some sewing. I just feels good to finish something I can use right away.  My husband thinks I'm a little late in getting this done.  I told him I was actually early. 

This is a Christmas table runner. 

I think of end products as the tip of the iceberg. So much of what we do has hidden behind it hours of planning, training, trial and error, time and energy, skill, practice, repeated efforts, anxiety, frustration, maybe even pain and suffering. The thing you admire in the end is the sum total of all that went into it.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen

Stringing Pearls and Other Stuff

I didn't really know I liked pearls until I saw these bumpy colorful freshwater pearls. The way a pearl shines is uniquely different from metals or polished stones. But they have the weight and density of a piece of rock. I'm hooked on them. 

Today I made a simple necklace with pearls and hematite beads. I'll probably just wear them around the house. 

I also finished up an ornament I started in December.  There are several more of these I plan to make but for now I'm putting that project away until next Christmas.

And I'm going ahead and working some more on Christmas quilt projects and just need to sit an do some quilting on a table runner and place mat. 

Finally, I'm still working on some artwork. There is a painted collage that refuses to be completed but I think I'm almost finished it. And the continuing pursuit of the perfect turquoise abstract. Now I'm just painting on heavy fabric.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen

Small Christmas Quilts for Decorations

I finally finished something I started so long ago I actually don't remember when I started it.  

Christmas Bells.

This is one in a series of several small wall quilts I'd started all at the same time. I completed the applique, piecing and quilting of all of the mini quilts with only the embellishment with embroidery to be done last.  And that's when the entire project came to a screeching halt after I'd finished about four of these little projects. I got halfway through the Christmas Bells that I have just finished and stopped. Now I still have six more to finish.

There's the angle quilt that still needs at least hair embroidered.

The snowflake that isn't frilly enough. I plan to do some embroidery in white around the white snowflake shape.

And several Christmas trees that have no decorations. 

Obviously sitting and doing embroidery is not one of my favorite pastimes but I do appreciate and admire beautiful embroidery.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen 

Quilted Christmas

I can finally check one thing off my long list of Christmas projects. I'm frustrated because this is taking me too long. The actual time spent on a project is not unreasonable but the elapsed days from start to finish is too long. I only work a couple hours at a time at most and skip some days. At the rate I'm going I can only get one small quilted item done every 7-10 days. I should have started these projects six months ago, which actually was the plan, but I didn't, so now my plan is to do 2-3 other items before Christmas and will very likely end up only doing 1 or 2 items.  I'll probably be working on Christmas projects in January and February next year!

But for now this small quilt is done. 

It's based on a dark/light HST design I created on my design wall. I don't usually use the design wall for this step in the process. I usually use a drawing program on my computer or plain old graph paper but I didn't want to mess with that this time because I expected to make several changes to find a design I liked. It seemed like it might be faster to use black triangles on the white wall to work out the layout.

I don't know if it was faster but when I was done the design was right there on the wall to guide me while I put the actual block together.  I might do this again when I'm working on a design where I want to play around with the placement of the dark and light elements.  And seeing the design closer to a 'real life' scale rather than on a piece of paper or computer screen I think is a bonus.

Below is the finally quilt before washing. Of course my machine quilting is horrible.  Even with the walking foot my machine struggles getting over joints in a design like this. Some of the triangle intersections are eight seams coming together into points. That's a bump no matter how much you iron it. But I do machine quilting now because it's fast and the only way I can get anything done quickly. But I'm not a big fan of the machine quilted look but I am a big fan of getting things done. 

And in the end after all is done and the quilt is washed all those imperfections will become lest noticeable.

I guess.

I still see them. 

But I really didn't feel like spending 12 hours hand quilting this. It's a shame because the piecing came out really accurate. I spent the time to pin every intersection so all the points came out nice and pointy. Now I feel like I ruined it with that crappy machine quilting. 

But it looks nice enough for its purpose, covering an end table. 

And my end tables are usually piled with all kinds of stuff and books. 

So I guess this one is good enough. But I will still try to do better on the next one. Which I plan to make using the same pattern but with a red and white snowflake fabric. I'll be back in 7-10 days, or more, with pictures of the next one. But first I'm making some ornaments.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen