Fabric friday

Fabric friday, a photo by clumsy chord on Flickr.

I haven’t done a Fabric Friday post in a while, so I thought today I’d do one.

I’ve been washing and sorting my fabric over the last while, trying to get through the last batch of some stuff that got an odour while it was stored away for too long. I still haven’t made it through my collection of beiges and off-whites, but I finished the greys and blacks and browns a little while back. Stumbling across this fabric again was such a pleasure. I’ve had this for a few years, but still love it immensely. (As opposed to some of my long-term fabrics that kind of make me go ‘eh’ or make me wonder what on earth I was thinking.)

I have a couple metres of this fabric, but the selvedge has no markings on it to give away who produced it or what line it came from. I sometimes wish I had more because I think it’d be a beautiful quilt back, but I think too that it’d be great in some sort of old-fashioned geometric block, like a tumbling block, maybe.

Talk to Me Tuesday #66: *crinkle crinkle*

In which I show some embroidery, some sashiko, a quilt block, some quilting, and a small quilt hanger.

Places mentioned
- Sublime Stitching, with transfers from Tara McPherson. The kit referenced is the Ultimate Embroidery Kit
- KimonoMomo: a purveyor of sashiko kits, thread, etc.
- TaDaaStudioStitch: another purveyor of sashiko kits, thread, etc.
- Robinson’s Woodcrafts

The Birthday Block is in reference to the livejournal group. And the Fabric Postcards are in reference to my livejournal group.

I can’t be certain, but I think the pattern for the Double Wedding Ring tablerunner came from the Eleanor Burns book Egg Money Quilts. I learned to make it in a class, but the teacher didn’t make us buy the book the pattern came from, but I feel like the book was called something to do with Egg Money, so I’m pretty sure this is the book. (Interestingly, several years ago, my mom was given a quilt made by my great-grandmother and traded for eggs. The woman who received it had given it to her daughter and when she died the family cleaning out her house figured out that it had come from my great-grandma and returned it, believing rightly that it would have more value to our family than to theirs.)

Twelve for Twenty-Twelve: Post Two

Just finishing up the 12 for 2012 post. I was going to cut this up into two more posts, but hopefully this won’t be too long and picture heavy.

May – Curio Quilt

This is my newest start, and one I’d hoped to have pieced before Christmas 2011. (Hahhaha!) This photo isn’t very up-to-date as I’ve gotten a fair bit finished since this, but it gives a general idea of the project. I still need to cut out a fair bit of fabric for the top. In any case, my goal is just to get the top done, and then I’ll worry about the quilting later, someday…

What Needs to be Done
1. Cut out frames for blocks, get them pieced
2. Cut out sashing
3. Decide on layout and sew blocks into rows and rows into a top
(4. Baste, quilt, bind)

June – Purple Posh Tot Baby Quilt

I don’t have any solo photos of this completed top, but I do have all the materials to finish it.

What Needs to be Done
1. Press top and backing fabric
2. Baste
3. Quilt
4. Bind

July – Green Amy Butler Quilt

This top is significantly further along than this photo shows. I just need to put the blocks together into a top and then finish it off. I don’t like this one at all, though. It’s probably the least favourite thing I’ve got sitting around and I think it’s just ugly as sin, so I don’t like to even think about working on it. But I just need to bang it out and get rid of it. Maybe someone else will appreciate it more than I ever will. (I find that hard to imagine, but there’s no accounting for taste, so.)

What Needs to be Done
1. Piece the top
2. Baste
3. Quilt
4. Bind

August – Origami Quilt

This is another of my very oldest projects. There is quite a lot done since I took this photo – the quilting is finished, though I have some ends to weave in. But there is quite a lot more to finish. It doesn’t look it in the photo, but all the non-green/white patches open up into flowers, so I need to stitch down the petals to give them their shape and I need to sew buttons into the centres of all the flowers. I also need to put some anti-fray glue on the raw seams on the backs of all the flowers so that I can actually put this in the wash. (And it does need to be washed…)

What Needs to be Done
1. Tack down flower petals
2. Sew in button flower centres
3. Bury any loose threads
4. Bind
5. Wash and pray it doesn’t fall apart…

September – Plume Quilt

This is a few years old and I’d really love to have it done so that I could give it to my younger sister. What’s holding me up is the quilting. I’d like to quilt the centre portion really simply, just straight line quilting really, but I want to do a big traditional swooping feather through the large border. I’m really scared of quilting on a pattern that doesn’t use straight lines, though, as I’ve never done more than wavy lines in the past.

What Needs to be Done
1. Press and piece the back
2. Baste
3. Quilt the centre (Easy-peasy)
4. Quilt the border feathers
5. Bind

October – Blue and Orange Big Block Quilt

This is another project started maybe 5 or more years ago. It was intended to be a baby quilt, but I messed up some of the piecing and then added an extra foot in width to “fix” the problem (without unpicking anything) and then I think I added some more, which may or may not be visible in this picture (I can’t remember what it looks like these days!). I pieced a backing for this one, but never got around to finishing it. I’ve been toying since I made it with the idea of tying rather than quilting this one. We’ll see what happens come October, I guess…

What Needs to be Done
1. Press the top and backing
2. Finish piecing the backing (it’s in two halves – I took apart the completed back for some reason, but never put it back together)
3. Baste
4. Quilt
5. Bind

OR

3. Tie
4. Bind

November – Eva’s Paintbox Quilt -OR- 2012 Birthday Blocks quilt

This is a project started in 2010, following along with Oh Fransson‘s Paintbox quilt-along. Rather than using a rainbow of colours, I decided to use a jelly roll of fabrics from Basic Grey’s Eva line (hence the name Eva’s Paintbox). I still love these fabrics, but I found making the blocks very tedious, so I kind of crapped out on it before too long. In this case, I don’t intend to quilt this quilt myself during this month. There is a lot left on this project already without adding that extra step, and if I recall, it’ll be quite a large quilt. I may send it away to be quilted instead of trying to do it myself.

What Needs to be Done
1. Finish cutting and piecing the blocks
2. Cut sashing
3. Figure out placement of the blocks
4. Sew in sashing, put into rows, then into a top
(5. Baste, quilt, bind)

If I decide to do my 2012 Birthday Blocks quilt top instead, it’ll be a much simpler job to complete. I’ll need to add sashing to my blocks (which will look like this, but with brown strips added to the sides), then piece the top. I intend to donate this quilt top to The Linus Connection in Austin, Texas, and will quilt it only if I have enough material in my stash to back the quilt. (The Linus Connection has quilters who will finish projects that aren’t entirely finished.)

December – Sunlight and Shadows Quilt Top

If 2007 was the first year the Birthday Blocks group ran on Livejournal (Birthday Blocks), then that was the year I started this quilt. I believe there were 10 or 12 of us participating, but I had an idea in my head about making a bed-sized quilt with these blocks, so I requested them for a couple of years from that group, and often when I was working on other projects, I’d cut out the necessary fabric to make another block for this quilt. It’s going to be about 7-ft x 8-ft in size, and I think I’ve got enough blocks to finish it. The plan for this month is just to get the top together, not to get it quilted as well, though that would be ideal.

What Needs to be Done
1. Press and sort blocks by size (make sure they’re an appropriate size)
2. Figure out placement of blocks in top
3. Sew together blocks into rows and rows into a top
(4. Baste, quilt, bind… but it’s December, so I’m not holding my breath.)

Twelve for Twenty-Twelve: Post One

Somewhere in December I decided that I needed to do something in 2012 about my Work-in-Progress Problem. The problem being 1. I can’t stop adding more WIPs to the pile, and 2. I never seem to take any projects OFF the WIP pile. So I started tossing around the idea of aiming to do 12 projects over the course of the year. I often have ideas like this, but I don’t very often work up ways to make them happen. You know how goals are supposed to be S.M.A.R.T.? Specific, Measurable, Something, Something, and Time-Bound? I’m not very good at working those bits out. But the lovely ofenjen at Sewhooked (and Fandom in Stitches) worked that loose idea up into something more specific and created a flickr group and a Facebook group and graphics (see above!), which you can read more about here. And now there are other people participating in the idea too, including quite a few of the regular video posters at Talk to Me Tuesday. All of which is pretty exciting.

More exciting, for me personally anyway, is the sheer thought of actually completing 12 projects. Twelve projects that I’ve been sitting on for, in some cases, years. I’m an easily distractable crafter. I like to start new things; if it’s shiny, my eyes are drawn towards it. But it’s just not sustainable. I can’t house dozens of unfinished projects. I hate being asked what I’ve made and having to say Not Much. So here’s my twelve projects for 2012.

I should say, also, that what I’m calling “Done” varies pretty wildly based on where the project is currently at. I don’t want to be too demanding of myself, and thus not accomplish anything, so I’m trying to be realistic about what I’m likely to finish on any given project this year. If a step is in brackets, that means it needs to be done, but I’m not counting it as part of my goal for the year.

January – Double Wedding Ring Table Runner

This is a project I started in 2005 (I think!) and intended to give to my mom. I was living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at the time and took a class at Periwinkle Quilting with a friend of mine. She finished her top (done in black and brights) straight away, but mine sort of languished and then languished some more.

Edited to add: Finished 13 February 2012.

What needs to be done
1. Press
2. Repair (I know there is at least one split seam…)
3. Baste
4. Quilt
5. Bind

February – Mermaid Mod Times Quilt top

This is one of my newer projects, something I started around this time last year. It was part of a quilt-along at Twin Fibers, but I had a genius plan to make mine almost four times larger than the baby-sized sample. I think it’s great looking and I want to have it finished definitely, but it’s sewn together with a million y-seams and it just takes a while to make progress. Also, because you add each piece individually, rather than adding rows, adding each new piece means dragging the entire finished quilt top along to the machine for every seam. Frustrating!

This isn’t a very up-to-date photo as I’ve actually got the first half of it pieced with aqua tiles expanding it out to a much larger size than it appears here on my design wall.

What Needs to be Done
1. Finish piecing the top
(2. Baste, quilt, and bind… or send this one away to be quilted, then bind it.)

March – Poppy Quilt

This top has been complete for quite a while, a year at least, but I want to send it away to be quilted because I don’t think I could do it justice. (Actually, I know I couldn’t. Not right now, anyway.) My part in finishing this one up will be pretty small, just binding it once it’s back, but first I need to find where I put the backing material so that I can send it away. (And I need to get over my fear of the telephone and call a local long-arm quilter about it…)

What Needs to be Done
1. Press the top
2. Find, press, and sew together the backing fabric.
3. Get top and back to a quilter.
4. Bind

April – Pink Bento Box Charity Quilt

I do have more blocks than this photo shows, but this gives a good enough idea of what the project will be like. I can’t recall how many blocks I have, but I hope it’s either 16 or 20 so that it will make a somewhat decent sized quilt, as I intend to donate this one to charity. At my work we always do fund-raising for four charities, including Breast Cancer Research, so this quilt once finished will be raffled off with any proceeds going to that fund. (I hope in future years to create a quilt for Prostate Cancer research, another of our fundraisers.)

What Needs to be Done
1. Piece additional blocks if necessary (I’d like it to be at least 5-ft square, for a lap quilt.)
2. Piece together top
3. Baste
4. Quilt
5. Bind

More later or tomorrow, once I fish up some old photos of some more projects… or you can watch my video where I jibber on about all twelve projects, archived in this post.

Talk to me Tuesday #65: Blocks Galore

In which I show the five quilt blocks I sewed this past week and the bit of embroidery I’m working on.

Places mentioned:
Fabric Postcard Swap
Birthday Blocks group
Modern Block of the Month

See better photos of the blocks in question at my flickr:
Modern BOM blocks
Birthday Blocks blocks

One day I will even write a post using the keyboard and some photos instead of a video camera and my word vomit…

Talk to Me Tuesday #64: Twelve for Twenty-Twelve

In which I talk about 12 unfinished projects that I want to get finished this year (and a quilt kit my mum gave me for Christmas).

Places and things mentioned:
- Maui Quilt Shop
- Sylvia Pippen Designs (The Bird of Paradise is part of the Tropical Flower Series.)
- Birthday-Blocks on Livejournal (I’ve joined this year after sitting out for the last few years.)

I only included very short glimpses of the projects I want to work on in my Twelve for Twenty-Twelve challenge, so if you want to see more, I do eventually intend to write up a blog post with pictures and a little more information about what needs to be done for each. I wanted it done today, but it’ll probably be posted Wednesday or Thursday.