A Very 'No-Pressure' Quilt in the Works

It was a great feeling to get another quilt top finished up the other day!  But then I had to confront THE LIST.  You know the one.  It practically yells 'Don't you dare start another quilt before you focus right here missy'.  So I dutifully got the rest of the prep work done for the borders on my 9-patch series #4 quilt.  Yep.  It's ready for stitching any 'ol time I get the notion (which is obviously not right now). lol

Prep work for 9-patch series #4

Next?  Oh yes.  The Happy Geese quilt which is supposed to be full of attitude.  Hmmm.... Well, forget about that.  I'm thinking this quilt should be thrilled to pieces to still even be in the running.  It started out being rescued from certain doom and has kind of morphed into the quilt where all good rejects discards go to live.

A little 'make-it-up-as-you-go-along' applique

The geese are rescue (pieces of) blocks, the cream background fabric was a throw-away from one of my friends, the brown birds were rejected reluctantly abandoned from a long-time-ago project of mine and the hundreds of yards of bias vine were sewn for a project when I (oops!) discovered it was not nearly wide enough.  Does that ever happen to anyone but me?

The bright border

Moving along.  After I finished up on the applique bits and pieces, I decided to add on a quick border.  This loud, sparky, plaid fabric--yet another throw away fabric--seems to give this quilt a bit of life and helps dispel the sickly sweetness that comes from using way too much pink.

Trying to use up some more hst's

I only added the plaid border to three sides because I really, really don't like all of my quilts to be square.  Still not sure what I'm doing or where I'm going at this point, but hey, lets try to use up some more of those discarded hst's!  The new tan fabric is yet another rejected unwanted piece of fabric being salvaged by this quilty adopter.  Chop, chop when I get to the ends--easy peasy on the measuring.  You know I've been reading up on those funky Gwen Marston techniques.*wink

Adding on a spiky border

Now for the big dilemma: adding more length than width to the quilt without having the entire quilt radiate incompetence.  I decided to cut and sew a quick spiky border with directions from 'Collaborative Quilting' by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston.  Yay!  Things are taking shape and this whole process has been a tremendous amount of fun!  No pressures or worrying about ruining anything.  Very little measuring and/or pinning.  Just free-wheeling through the stages and feeling good about using up the misfits of quilting.  Kinda fun really......

Joining Up With a QAL

I have been wanting to join a quilt-a-long for awhile now, but there are certain requirements that have to be met (by me) before I commit to anything.  Diane, over at Butterfly Threads, mentioned a new QAL starting up at Bloomin' Workshop that sounds perfect for me.  I mean, absolutely, totally up my alley.  I immediately checked it all out and then made myself wait several days before jumping in with both feet.*wink 

8" baskets with handles prepped

First of all, I'm a laid back kind of gal so I'm not interested in anything high pressure or big requirements for fancy fabrics etc.   These sentences on the explanation page particularly caught my attention and made me smile "  This should be a fun, relaxed and laid back quilt-along. No pressure. Just enjoy the process!" 

Baskets finished & on the wall

When can I get started?  hehe  Another requirement that needs to be met before I commit is:  It's got to be a project that I already have on my 'Someday' list.  This Random Sampler QAL appears to be from the 'Liberated Medallion Quilt' by Gwen Marston, which I have, love and desperately want to use.  Points for that.

Where everything starts out...

The other requirements may seem kind of vague to you, but they are real to me.  I don't want to commit to anything that requires me to make any large fabric/pattern or tool purchases.  I'm trying to dig deep into my stash and be as frugal as possible these days.  The only thing lacking for this QAL is maybe some background fabrics of which I can buy a fat quarter or two at a time if I need to.  Check.

And last but not least, since I'm on this Use-It-Up-And-Be-Frugal kick.... I dug through my orphan blocks to see if there was anything to jump start a new project.  I just love to rescue cast-offs and discards!  There was a large applique block that I had abandoned for some strange reason, quite a few small hst's in lovely homespuns my sister had dumped on me years ago, and a stack of larger hst's leftover from a border issue on one of my previous quilts.  Yes!  And they all look like they could play very nicely together.  You can see where I have already started picking and choosing fabrics to introduce into the new project using the applique block as the base.

Obviously, the project starts out with basket blocks.  One of my baskets has extra piecing in the background fabric because I didn't have enough of that fabric to cut the rectangle properly.  That is the way I intend to approach this entire quilt.  Hopefully it will end up with an old fashioned 'make-do' charm that doesn't look all contrived and fake!

A Marathon Day

Somebody once told me that I was stubborn.  Believe it.  I blithely cut out and started sewing the first Texas Twister block thinking 'I can do this!' because you know, I'd made this block once before five or six years ago.  Apparently I was a better seamstress a few days ago too....

1st one's a big fat FAIL.

It ended up in the trash where it belonged and I almost bagged the whole idea right then and there.  Who needs fancy schmancy cornerstone blocks anyway?

Test block looks like it may be do-able.  Maybe.

 After a very stern nice little talk with myself, I decided that I was better than that.  I could rise above and at least give it a decent effort before I just gave up.  I decided to at least try a test block and maybe try some simple remedies like making sure my 1/4" seam was really 1/4".   Who knew?  My machine was set for a sloppy scant 1/4".  Good enough.  I've never tried to push myself off as a precision seamstress.  Never ever.  The test block wasn't great, but it was just good enough to goad me into going for the big four.  Okay.  Good place to break for the night and press on the next day with a clear mind.

Love these centers.  They would make perfect flowers!

Honestly, it was a marathon day.  I'm out of practice.  I am not used to pointy things that have to match up just so.  And I had to use a crazy amount of pins and sweat a lot.

Can you believe this mistake?  Seriously?
The sun must have been in my eyes.

Then this block happened.  And I couldn't fudge anything because it totally messed up the other block and made things look really bad.  Again, I almost gave up.  These are not even my favorite colors to work with!

Okay, definitely not perfect, but they'll pass the
galloping pony test and that's good enough for me.

 I took another break to make dinner because the natives were getting restless and I just needed to get some air, flex my fingers and stretch my back.  How do people make this look so easy?

Coping strips added on.  Now I will have
floating cornerstone blocks.  Good job me.

In the end, I had four blocks that looked kinda like the picture in Judy Martin's quilt book.  They're a little poofy in the middle and I have a least one pucker that won't go away.  My spinny little circle in the middle isn't super great--not by a long shot and the points don't match up like they should.  Did I already say that?  THE POINTS DON'T MATCH UP!  Oh yeah, and I cut the tips off of a few stars.  Seriously, it was an agonizing day.*wink  You should try it sometime.

Something Different

Life is unusually crazy and insane for us, even more than we've become accustomed to for April.  It could be the fact that we have four kids who have very busy and active lives, but I know it's more than that.  The economy has made for three very tough years for us and it impacts so much of our everyday lives. Fuel, groceries, rising electric costs and higher basic rates on every other bill just grind away at our bottom line.

Did I really make this?

I have been so glad for my quilting hobby even when I have to stomp on the overwhelming urge to buy all that beautiful new fabric that continually tempts me.  And tempts me.  And tempts me.  There is a time to stock up and unfortunately Spring is not my season to reward myself with new treats stash.  Time to dig through the totes with a fresh eye!*wink

All this work on two different Broken Dishes quilts has got me to thinking.  Ever since waaaay back when I wrote this post, I have considered trying to piece together a small quilt top without using my rotary cutter and ruler (then I would chicken out--every single time).  The last couple weeks build-up of run, run, run and my underlying stress levels all finally combined to make me crack and make it a reality.  Don't ask any deep questions.  It is what it is.  I took the only two large pieces of solid fabrics I owned (plus one fabric that was close enough) and started hacking away with my scissors.  This large--approx. 40"x40"--Broken Dish block was the result of about 2 hours of pure drive and energy.  I was all sweaty and wrung out by the time it was finished because I don't purposely do big messy, out of control quilting stuff--ever.  And let me tell you!  It was exhilarating!  Then my daughter came into my quilting room and commented that it wasn't straight.  She doubtfully asked if I realized that?  Then she commented that it didn't look like my work at all, did I like it?  Oh well.  Kids.  It'll be years before she can understand the rewards of a hobby like quilting in an all-to-often imperfect adult world.  And that's the way it should be.:)

Learning About Creativity

I used to have this love/hate relationship with quilting blogs.  I browsed until my eyeballs felt singed and then I ran away and hid for weeks.  There's this worry some of us more ordinary folks get that too much exposure to brilliance will quite possibly suck all the creativity right out of our brain matter and we'll become sheeples, clones to the industry.  We don't have enough confidence in our own creativity to waste a single drop of it you know.  One amazingly important thing about creativity though:  it doesn't produce so well in a vacuum.  Yay!  Bring on the quilt blogs!

Quilt top sewn together

I can't seem to get a good picture, blah, blah, blah...  You've heard it all before.  I do feel good about this quilt top regardless of the lousy pictures.  When I first gathered the fabric together, I had some misgivings because it's really not my normal color palette.  I'm trying to stretch myself though--even though it's hard and frustrating and yes, even nerve-wracking at times.  And although there are hundreds of beautiful quilt patterns I want to make some day, I just couldn't fit this fabric into any specific pattern I saw.  Maybe because I dug deep into my fabric totes and ignored how ugly the fabric was and tried to focus more on what the color said to me.  Yes, some of the fabrics were rejects from other quilters.  Shhhh...  Don't hurt their feelings.  They feel loved and appreciated now.*wink  You have no idea how much I had to seriously fight off the desire to rush to the quilt store and buy enough fabric from the Sweetwater line for all of my applique backgrounds though.  That just seemed soooo easy.

I couldn't resist this background fabric....

I only had one fat quarter of that particular fabric and let me tell you, I used every bit of it except for one tiny little square!!  Which meant I had to spend an entire afternoon just in the piecing together of seven applique backgrounds so that every single background had a little scrap of that fat quarter in it...  Personally, I think it gave the quilt more character and depth in the end result.  Bingo!  Another lesson learned:  Easy isn't necessarily a building block for growth in creativity.  Huh....

I added the year onto a block that was out of proportion and bugged me.

There is so much I don't understand about creativity.  It doesn't come naturally to me at all.  The thing is, I want to embrace it in my quilting and learn how to put 'my stamp' on what I produce.  How do some people make it look so incredibly simple?

Motivation to Keep Plodding Forward

As of yesterday, I now have all of my little green baskets completed!  I decided to take a picture of all the finished blocks together so as to encourage me to keep pressing forward with the next color group.

Completed Blocks

On a whim, I put the brown and black baskets (yet to be appliqued) up next to the other stacks of blocks.  The color looks a bit strong, but hopefully that will not be the case once they're actually sewn onto the background?  Plus, if I ever get to the Fleur De Lis blocks, they are going to be in those same black and brown colors.  Of course, this is where I start to seriously agonize about my color choices.  Did I mess it all up and more importantly, after all of this work do I even care?  In case you hadn't realized after the hundredth picture I've posted of my baskets, I have become quite attached to and fond of my little baskets.  They look very sweet to me, especially the ones I obviously worked on in dingily lighted gyms.*wink

My little stack of black/brown baskets in comparison.

And then, because I can't seem to help myself, I started another project this week.  I was sewing the sample block together when I realized that my Prairie Vine quilt with the owl had been made out of broken dishes blocks as well.  It just looks so different when it's not all scrapped up!  How could I not realize?  Too funny that I was once again drawn to the same block.  Oh well, series work is always very tedious informative.  Also, these are very similar fabrics to the ones I'm working on in my 'All Grayed Down' quilt but that's okay too.  Seriously, very okay.  I'm adding oranges to this quilt and trying to work with a lot of black and white fabric--a challenge all on it's own to this 'brown is my favorite neutral' quilter.  If you don't work on what your mind is trying to puzzle out, you'll lose steam and end up with stacks and stacks of fabric and no real energy to do anything with it.  At least, that's my justification today for starting yet another quilt....

Broken Dishes Part Deux

A Challenging (for me) Pieceable Souls Project

Okay, I'll admit that I've been working on this little Pieceable Souls project a very, tiny little bit here and there.  Not much, because for some reason, I've been dragging my heels about it.  The plan is to meet back in January with everything cut out and lots of chain piecing done.  And so far all I've managed to do is find out that I don't follow directions very well and thus, I have ran out of my background fabric before my strips are all cut out.  Gah!!  It's because of the white fabric, I know it.  I don't do well with white.  Never have.  It's so uninspiring and it just stares at me like a dead fish while I'm cutting on it.  My husband and I got to spend a couple days in Spokane last week and on the way home we stopped in at the Buggy Barn quilt store outside of Reardan.  Now there's a quilt store that has lovely, gorgeous fabrics.  It's chalk full of Kansas Troubles type palettes and wonderfully muted and subdued fabrics that are obviously grayed and browned down versions of what I'm having to work on for this project.  Okay, okay, obviously the colors above are part of the challenge for ME, which will no doubt be extremely rewarding in the end....

Series #4

This project is seriously making my eyes cross and my brain matter go on the fritz.  I probably better go clear back to the beginning.  Our 'Pieceable Souls' quilting group had a four part series challenge last Fall/Winter.  #1 started with a basic block pattern (I chose a nine-patch) which could not be made with more than 2 fabrics and had to be set together in a simple design.  Each new series had to be made with the same basic block pattern, but the challenge elements changed.  This would be the project from series #4 in which I still (obviously) use nine-patch blocks, but they are incorporated into a much bigger block.  Which would be the main source of my frustration.  What did I think I could accomplish with 20 inch blocks???  I found this particular quilt in Sharyn Craigs' wonderful book called 'Great Sets', although I think it was actually made by Sally Collins plus it was a much, much smaller quilt.  Regardless, that quilt had a fantastic border that totally made the quilt.*smirk.  Enter my gynormous quilt blocks and queue the music for total depression.*sigh  I won't tell you how much time I have spent trying to add cute little bits of applique or how many fat quarters I've wrecked auditioning fabric for said applique.  On to the border! Because I am determined it needs something.:)

I didn't know I was going to turn out an 'almost' Amish look

The discarded border candidates & lots of lint and thread

On a different note, I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed whacking away at the edges of each big block, (blunting the edges of random triangles) as I squared them up to an even steven 20 1/2".  The right side of my brain was positively dancing with glee.  Maybe that's why it's seems to be so frazzled trying to figure out what to do next?

Selected Fabric Stash Revisited

This color combination doesn't mean much to most people, but for me, it's a challenge because I NEVER use gray.  Ever.  Although, now that I look at the pictures, it becomes obvious to me that somehow I have managed to weaken the gray with a browny gray.  Which means I'm actually working with taupe. Groan.....  

Revisiting a stash of hopefuls--because this intrigues me.

Adding in the bright prints in the wrong proportion--OBVIOUSLY.

Getting my ideas down on paper and doing the calculations.

I'm a planner.  I like to know where my quilt is going before I make my first cut, even if I'm pretty sure it won't actually get there in one piece.  (No pun intended.)*wink  Sometimes it takes me ages to make up my mind and occasionally I even dump a selected stash of fabric into yet another quilt altogether because, lo and behold, it's a color palette that I seem to be working on all over the place.  So I guess what I'm telling you is that I'm also a plodder.  A planner and a plodder, that's me.  Getting quilts sewn together one little stitch at a time.