needles (the other kind)

There goes the neighborhood

Set aside a quilt you're working on for juuust a minute and all of a sudden squatters move in.

 

Stitching down the binding on my Quiltalong project, only slightly slowed down by twenty pounds of comfortable cave-dwelling cat.

Top of the mornin'

Finished my top for the Mod Sampler Quiltalong at Oh, Fransson!

I'm so grateful for the time and care Elizabeth has put into the quiltalong, generously sharing the details of her process and her amazing flair for design. Not only am I pleased with the results of what I've done so far, I've really appreciated the opportunity to think about technique, and why we do what we do.

An example: Elizabeth presses her seams open. She's offered a great discussion of why. I'd always pressed mine to the side without question, so reading her explanation really made me reconsider my own preference. In this project I pressed several blocks with seams open, and found, unlike Elizabeth, that I truly do prefer to have them to the side for ease of matching at intersections. In the end, I didn't change my own technique, but I thought about it and tried it instead of just blindly doing what I've always done. A valuable experience.

Another example: Elizabeth's instructions had us sewing the sashing and border strips without measuring. I'd been taught to measure the body of the quilt through the middle and cut borders to that length, then ease that seam so that your outside edge measures the same as the middle. The theory is that you can avoid a rippling border that way. But I was glad to try it the other way, as I am deeeeeply lazy and welcome any method that could result in less work. Turns out I should have measured.

Elizabeth gets amazing results on her quilts in part, I think, because of how meticulous she is — I'm certain her outside edge measures exactly the same as the middle of her quilt. A careful craftsperson probably doesn't need to measure. I...do, I guess, because I ended up with ripples along my border edges. I am hoping they'll quilt out.

(That's my answer to any piecing-related sloppiness.  Sometimes it even happens.)

So next time, I measure. But I'm glad I tried it this way, because it shows me one of my weaknesses and gives me an opportunity to improve. And isn't that what quilting is all about?

(No, of course not. Duh. It's about buying fabric.)

Project Improv block, take 2

This is another stab at a charity block for Project Improv. I think it's a vast improvement on my initial take. Just by spending time looking at the photo pool I've gotten a better grasp on improvisational piecing — just in time to make a block I'm not embarrassed by.

Special bonus: All scraps!

Square-in-a-glare

I spy, with my little eye...

...a really crappy photo.

These are the twelve fabrics I'm sending for the I Spy swap.  Here's a better shot of the ones at the bottom left:

I am not entirely sure what I was thinking five years ago when I bought the Charlie Brown fabric, the Warren Kimbleish cows, and the oh-my-God-kittens, but I was happy to have them in my stash so I pad my swap offering painlessly.  They will be, I am sure, to someone's taste.

And I've finished the last of the blocks for the Mod Sampler Quiltalong.

Loving my blocks, loving the sunshine, hating that terrible photo.

Also hating that my sashing fabric hasn't arrived yet.  I wanted to wait to choose it until I had several blocks together.  I made a terrible mistake: I ordered it from an online shop that was having a 50% off sale on everything.  That means I should be receiving my fabric sometime next millennium.  I am sure the fact that it was cheap will be of great comfort to me when I am too crabbed over with lumbago, quinsy, dropsy, and other old-timey-sounding age-related diseases to actually sew it together.

Finally, my Nest quilt is bound.  Tonight, a label.  Tomorrow, a photo.  Nestward, ho!

Sidetracked

I've gotten quite desperately sidetracked.  What with one thing and another, I haven't finished my Nest quilt yet.  I've gotten the binding stitched to the front of it:

...but I've yet to drag it to the family room for the several hours of handwork it now requires.  I need there to be something truly awful on TV for me to get motivated.  Some eight-hour totalcrapathon of a show I'd be embarrassed to admit I watch.  Note to self: check local listings.

I've also been occupied cutting out novelty charms for a swap on About.com's quilting forum.  A million billion years ago — 2001, I think — I made an I Spy quilt for my nephews.  I've borrowed the quilt to use with my younger son, but I'd like one for us to keep.  So I've spent a fair amount of time getting my fussy cut on.

Most of my prints are cute and innocuous, but I could not resist this bloodthirsty item:

I'll be interested to see whether anyone noticeably recoils.  Could be worse; there could be dangling limbs.

And, most absorbing, I've also been participating in Oh, Fransson's Mod Sampler Quiltalong.  I've been having a great time — this quilt wasn't part of the plan, but I'm really pleased with it so far.  I've finished five out of six sets of blocks:

...and am having a fine time decapitating the birds in Anna Griffin's Sierra print.

Nest-laid plan

This is the top of my Nest quilt before borders, draped over my ironing board. I laid out the blocks five times (hated it; hated it; "needed" more blocks with more fabrics; cat disrupted it; I snarled up the order hopelessly during chain-piecing). I don't know that I'm ecstatic about the layout even now, but I do know I'm tired of monkeying with it.

The disappearing nine-patch is a strange beast. I kept running into the four-color map problem as I laid the blocks out. There was always something touching something else that it shouldn't. I suppose there are ways to engineer the placement of fabrics during construction of the nine-patches that will make the problem easier to avoid while still allowing a pleasing feeling of spontaneity, but I don't know it. It hurts my planner's heart to look at parts of it.

But with its colors and birds and surprises here and there, it also makes me really, really happy.

Nesting

A quick shot of the disappearing nine-patch blocks I'm making using Tula Pink's Nest:

This is going to be a lap quilt just for me, just because. I saw a handful of Nest fat quarters at my local quilt shop and snapped them up in an attempt to convince the owner that there are at least a few of her customers who actually like and seek out contemporary prints. Mostly she stocks Moda florals, which are soft and muted and lovely and not at all my cup of caffeine-free Diet Pepsi.

I took the project to an evening quilting event the shop hosted and worked on my blocks there. Polite astonishment ensued: "You mean you're not using a pattern?" "You just...cut it?"  "Wow, those colors!" "Ohhhh. [Silence, not especially approving.]"

It's loud, it's scrappy-looking, it's spontaneous, and I love it. Next step: fussy-cutting a whole flock of Tula's birds and arranging the whole glorious mess into something resembling coherence.

Project Improv

I've signed up to participate in Project Improv. By working alongside other better more experienced modern-style quilters, I'm hoping to stretch myself beyond my own rather narrow comfort zone. As many of my quilts show, I tend to be a planner. I'd like to feel comfortable with a more spontaneous approach.

This block is a contribution for one of the project's charity quilts. Brief: to make an improvisionational Log Cabin block in blue and green. Just facing my stash I felt semi-paralyzed. I realized, looking at the blues and greens on hand, that that section of my stash is populated with really dull, muddy colors — very few ultramarines and hot greens, and an awful lot of olives and gray-blues. Maybe this is why I've never been able to get excited in the least about working on a quilt in blues: the blues I have mostly suck.

By way of stretching myself, then, I think my approach to Project Improv is going to be fourfold:

1. Work from my stash. This will be a challenge because my stash is a fairly traditional one — lots of tone-on-tones, not many eye-catching or modern-looking prints.  But I have far too much fabric to justify buying more for every project.
2. Use the blues. By committing to using the blues I have, I will either deplete my stash so that I can buy better ones, or become more comfortable with what's there. Either way is a win.
3. Don't plan so much. Stop being quite so square.
4. Get inspired.

That last is the easiest. I mean, come on, how could I not?

Home stretch

Tonight, we bind.

Brett's mother's quilt top, and an irritating myth about the Amish

Brett's mother's quilt top is finished.

Although it's composed almost entirely of prints from Heather Bailey's Pop Garden and Bijoux collections, I think my favorite part are Tula Pink's four birds from Nest.  They give the whole thing a touch of whimsy.  (I was going to type "a touch of the avian flu," but then I worried they'd get offended and peck out my liver while I sleep.)

Biggest mistake of this quilt so far has been what I like to think of as my Amish block.  Some quilters believe that Amish craftspeople intentionally introduce errors into their work to promote the idea that only God is perfect.  I for one don't buy it: I think the presumption that one would have to try to make mistakes is kind of, well, uppity.  And I haven't met too many uppity Amish.

But as for my sad little block, it only proves that even without trying I make more than enough mistakes to keep a whole damn pantheon of gods feeling smug and superior.  When I was sewing the blocks into rows, I noticed that one had a little nick in it from careless rotary cutting.  It would only worsen, I knew, with quilting and washing, so it had to be replaced.  But I had only scraps of the floral print left, and no patience with trying other combinations that would work in its place.  So I pieced it, clumsily.

And it's fine.  If that's the most noticeable mistake I make on this quilt, I'll trade in my Elna for a butter churn.