Been Doing Lots and Lots of Cutting!!

Well, I finished this one block wonder and then decided it was time to "unstash" some of my fabrics that were in various and sundry places and not big enough to really do anything with.  I decided on 5 in squares and 10 in squares.  If the pattern was really pretty and largish, I would make 10 in squares and then cut 5 inch squares from the remainder.  Occasionally I had enough for some 2 1/2 or 2 inch strips.  I rarely threw out anything more than 3/4 in wide but filled a waste paper basket!

This is a 12 inch by about 18 inch plastic box which contains all the 5 in squares which are standing up so  you can easily see everything.  I noticed there really weren't any greens, blues or yellows to speak of.  I use a lot of these colors and must have most of them down south or in larger yardage.  This was mostly cut from fat quarters or quarter yard pieces.  Lots of hand dyes and a few marbled pieces that were not good enough to keep whole.

While going through the miscelaneous boxes, pulling out the small pieces, I came across several (what I thought) were really nice pieces of hand dyed fabrics from a long time ago.  I didn't want to cut into them as they were fat half quarters so decided to put them up on my design wall for inspiration.  Immediately I thought of jackets or large totes.  I really don't need another jacket, but one may find its way into one when I get back to the south where my favorite pattern is!

This was my favorite and most likely to be a jacket back in the future.

 

This will find its way into a tote I think.  So will the next one.  They are fat quarters.  

 

This is also one of my favorites and is tied with that other one for a jacket favorite!

Great Blue Heron Top Finished!

Working on the Great Blue Heron still and this was my first iteration of placing the blocks so that the straight edges were along the vertical axis.  Because of measurements, I decided that this was not the way to go.  I didn't want to lop off a big part of the central panel which I would have had to do.

Almost done here.  I hand applqued the hexies along the  long side and made them line up by making the seams a little bigger.  The challenge was the straight seams and I had to do some unnatural things to get them to line up!  It ended up a  little wonky but I think I can quilt out the difference.  The nice thing about these one block wonders is that they are a bit busy and so your eye doesn't really notice irregularities without studying it.

It is finished here and now will have to find some backing and get it basted.

I had a pile of these left over from cutting the diamonds -- they were the side pieces.  I decided they had a 90 degree corner so they could end up as four patches so I took a break and sewed them together.

This is what they looked like before sewing them together.

This one is all sewn together!

They are slightly different sizes and are not a traditional posie block but I like the off-centered nature.

I'll figure out something to do with them eventually.

 

Baby Quilts and Great Blue Heron Progress

I made extra large half square trangles for this series of quilts.  I had a big bag of 4 1/2 in squares that I sewed into four patches.   I used 18 in squares of the fabric to make the 1/2 square triangles since the blocks needed to be 8 1/2 inches (8 1/2 + 8 1/2 + 1 = 18).  This was my first iteration where I just used random blocks together but I didn't think the same fabric for the half square triangles was enough to bring it together.

This was the second iteration where I used like colors but didn't like the pinks on the outside like I thought I would!

This was the final arrangement and the quilt measures 40 x 40.

This was the second quilt I finished.  They go really fast!

I made a few more four patches and took the ones I didn't use from the first quilt and came up with a third one.  So now I have 10 neo-natal quilt tops that have to be basted and quilted.  

Decided it was time to get going on the one block wonder quilt using the heron fabric  There are 98 blocks to be made!!

Have progressed further than this but will save for a future blog!  This one is a bear!!  The panel is 28 x 41 and the blocks on the shorter side finish to about 6 inches and about 7 on the wider side.  This was my first iteration set up like I set up the Canada goose blocks.  The arithmetic didn't work though as I would have to cut too much of the central panel away to made the blocks fit.  From the picture, you can see the straight along the vertical axis and the overlapping triangles on the horizontal axis.  I have since reversed that.

 

An Ode to My Sewing Machine...

No poetry from me but glances at the latest two quilts that I have machine quilted on my new Juki which I love. I can't remember which book this quilt came from but it is just two different values of 2 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch rectangles.

You can see the stitching here which was just loopy-loops as it was bright and cheerful.  It has a great fish print on the back in blues and oranges like the front.  You can also see the block here which is the two light colored rectangles in the middle, then blue rectangles added at either end and then two sets of dark and light rectangles are sewn together and attached at the sides.  Each square has 8 rectangles.

This is the last of the one block wonders that I did using an absolutely hideous print.  I am not sure this final product is a lot better and is my least favorite of the three I have quilted down here.  I just did overall stipple quilting with light colored thread.  The back is red as is the binding.  Guess it will be a Christmas quilt.

This is the final iteration of the Colin block.  I have found I have enough fabric (whew) down here to do a variation of the quilt that  I accidentally created when doing the collage of progress several blogs ago! It will be called (I think) Deconstructing Colin.  This is the block with Colin Firth's  autograph.

And this is the Juki TL-2010Q which I have used exclusively to do the machine quilting on the 9 quilts I brought down here with me.  It has an intelligent needle down (goes up when you use the automatic thread cutter -- banging the foot petal) and stays down the rest of the time (although you can adjust it up if  you want).  It also has the knee lift like the Bernina.  The tension is perfect for both machine quilting and for putting on binding.  The only thing I haven't succeeded at is the automatic threader which I haven't successfully engaged yet!  The speed of stitching is very very easy to control.  So just a satisfied customer.  I had to buy mine online (from Texas) as there were no local dealers but it worked out just fine -- it got here in about two days and has a five year warranty from the dealer.  It came with several accessories -- two quilting feet and an even feed foot.  You can tell I really like this machine and sadly it will probably replace my Featherweight for piecing!  I am still pretty much overall a Bernina fan though and love my old mechanical 830 and my newer 170.

Catch Up on Quilting Activities

During the rainy days we had last week, I got to finish machine quilting several of the quilts I had brought down for the beds.  This is the first of the quilts where I practiced a bit with  my new Juki.  There is a lot of free hand quilting in the striped fabric but you can't see any of it!  I also quilted in the ditch around everything.  I love the speed of this machine as well as the perfect attachment of binding.

This is the second of the quilts to be finished also sitting on the king sized bed.  I stitched in the ditch up and down and then on the diagonals and called it quits.  It could stand with a little more but nothing shows anyway and there is enough to hold it together!

This is one of the blocks in the first of the one block wonders to get done.  If you double click you can see I am doing quilting in the "motif".  I did this in each of the hexagonal blocks and it did take a bit of time -- first having to determine what I would quilt around and then what was the most efficient way to do it.  Another feature of my Juki that I love is the thread cutting -- no more spending hours cutting all the loose threads on the back of the quilt while I am sewing the binding down!  I am almost finished with sewing the binding down on this one.

Another of the motifs.

 If you look closely, you can see the spiral pattern I quilted in the border.  I did a really bad job of putting on the borders (too big) which is too bad as this is turning out to be a pretty quilt.  There is no way I would take it undone though!  This was el cheapo Cranston fabric from Walmart that I bought years ago.  It did make a nice quilt though!

This is the quilt I am now working on.  The hexagons are smaller in this quilt so I am "stitching in the ditch" around each one and then will just do one round of quilting on the inside of each block which should be relatively fast.  It will be nice and perky for the beach house.  This was again one of those hideous (what was I thinking) fabrics I bought many years ago on a flatfold table in a discount fabric shop no longer in existence!

This is a picture of the new toy with my set up.  I am using an old wooden sewing table with a FW card table behind it to hold some of the weight of the quilt.  I have a luggage rack on the left hand side for the same reason.  It isn't bothering my shoulder so mustn't be too high.

No day would be complete without some butterfly pictures.  This is some sort of skipper  or duskywingI would guess -- less than an inch across on a dandelion in our very long grass!

Another one of the small butterflies -- lots of these hanging out -- maybe a checkerspot?  Very bedraggled.

This is a sulphur and there are always a ton of these flying around.  I have seen some of the other common butterflies from my third floor site but none have remained long enough for good pictures.  This one is taken with a telephoto from my third floor porch and is in the next door neighbor's flowers!  So hopefully a little fuzziness is forgiven!