Birds of Paradise Stack and Whack -- the End

For your viewing enjoyment,  60 of the 74 blocks that I made from the Birds of Paradise fabric.  These were by far my favorite of all the stack and whacks I have done.  Now to just figure out how I want to set them!!  Many decisions including size, set and whether to use the matching posie blocks, of which I have 104!!  I suspect there is more than one quilt here!!

Part 2!

Part 3!

As I am still confined to the downstairs and doing all my sewing sitting on a bed with the sewing machine in my lap, I sent dear husband up to the sewing room to find my plastic bag full of house parts.  Three trips later and many plastic bags later, he still couldn't find them! He did find a bag of kaleidoscope triangles from a project where I had overachieved the cutting!!  So there will be some kaleidoscope quilts to be made til the pieces run out -- there are fewer blue pieces than the lighter background pieces.  This is a common set of this pattern but I hadn't done one myself before.

I also found a few bags of strips so will sew those together as well.  Wed I go back to the surgeon and maybe will get this cast off and something else put on but don't know.

Sitting outside, I always have my camera to capture some bird pictures.  Today, it was damselflies.  Although I a having some difficulty with identification, I think this is a female Ebony Jewelwing as that was the only one in the book with the white wingtips.   I took about 100 pictures to finally get this one as it is very difficult to get a pic of a small skinny dragonfly sitting on an azalea!

And surprisingly, I saw another damselfly on our Japanese Cherry a few minutes later but it didn't pose quite as nicely and didn't show me his wings.  I believe it is a  male Ebony Jewelwing.  Is romance in the air?

Near the End of Stack and Whack Mania...

 Well this is a change of pace -- hexagons!  This was the first night of something a little different and I wasn't sure how these would be as some of the former ones I wasn't that crazy about (which makes the resulting quilts easier to donate!!)  This was kind of a busy print.  The strips were 3 1/2 inches and the blocks will be about 6 inches across

There were 27 resulting hexagons from the piece of fabric I had.  I am going to put the  into three long strips with strips of fabric in between to make it about 40 x 60 finished  Haven't decided what to use surrounding the blocks but it just  may be white.  These are blocks I want to feature and allow you to clearly see as they are individually each quite pretty I think!

This was my favorite piece of fabric that was hard to cut into!  The repeat was about 24 inches.  I decided to cut it into kaleidoscope pieces as well as posies as I liked the design I did last summer which included both those in the same quilt.  It will be either a very large quilt or more than one quilt.

I couldn't wait the first night so did a few just to see how the posies would look.  Since I had eight repeats of the design, I cut 8 of the same design and then used them to make two different blocks.  Here you can see the "sister" blocks next to each other as I began.  They will finish to 4 inches.  I counted them last night and I have 102 blocks to do altogether!!  Again, not sure how I will finish them.

Here is a whole lot more of the posie blocks from this fabric and I am loving all the differences and amazed at how different some of the "sister" blocks are from one another.  I've only done about half so far!

Greetings From Sick Bay! (But Still Sewing)

This was batch number 2 from which I showed a couple of blocks in my last post.  Relatively pleased but trying to decide on framing which will probably be black again.

From this fabric, I made both 4 inch blocks (these) and 6 inch blocks (the next picture).

Just for a change of pace, I am doing these hexies which will finish to about 6 inches from straight edge to straight edge.  I have finished 20 already and there will be a total of 27.  They turned out better than I thought they would as the fabric is very busy and sometimes this doesn't work well.

One thing I have noticed with all these stack and whacks, is that I must be pinning much better initially as they are very symmetrical.  After I complete this baggie, I only have one left but it contains both posie blocks and octagonal blocks and I think there are quite a few.  After that, I will get my hubby to get a bag of strips (or 2) from my sewing room and I will just sew strips together.  You can always do things with strips! 

Back to Some Sewing!

Okay, this is the third time I have tried to type this post!  I keep erasing the whole thing somehow and no way to get it back.  This is the Janome 760 that a friend from RAFA lent me so I could sew with my feet elevated!  It is super easy to thread, use and control with the start/stop and speed controls right in front.  I have finished up bag one of the stack and whack posie pieces I got together before the surgery.  It has been four weeks today since getting the surgery.  I am supremely thankful for my knee scooter and now my butt cushion which I ordered from Amazon and has made sitting all the time much much easier.  My tailbone was really hurting a lot and I had to shift around constantly wherever I was sitting.  

These are the first four blocks I did just to see how they would look.  I am never certain how it will go until I start sewing them together.  There are 72 of these altogether.  I had 8 repeats of each image so did two variations from each set of 8 block 1 and 4 use the same pieces.

I managed to find a small design wall downstairs left over from a talk I gave so set it up on my sofa across the room from where I sew.  Kneeling on my scooter, I am able to place the pieces up on it although some are a stretch!  There are at least a couple of matching blocks here.  Can you find them?

Here are the next 20 although a bit fuzzy as I am still using my phone camera.  There are matching blocks here also!  I had thought I would surround each block with a yellow, green, orange or fuchsia border and then a black one to frame them but have decided that a black border and then the multiple colors will work better.  Haven't decided on sashing yet but none of that will happen until I have access to my sewing room again which is upstairs!

I wanted to see how the next bag of blocks would go.  I only have 36 of these.  You might notice that both of these have black backgrounds as do the other bags of blocks.  I used to prefer darker colors up here in NY but prefer lighter ones down in NC.  To save myself time and energy, I bought a whole bunch of pre-wound bobbins with black thread on Amazon -- very cheap and came in a small plastic box as well.

Update!

Well I am currently in bed with my leg elevated after surgery last week to fuse a couple of sets of bones in my left foot.  I have to stay off my feet for at least two months!!  Since I sew about two hours a day usually, this is a real change in habits!!  Luckily I am off pain meds for now and thanks to a wonderful scooter, I get around the first floor of my house pretty well and even managed to sit in my family room chair for dinner the past two nights.  My husband claims I will be able to back up a semi after all my practice backing into chairs, beds and toilets (it's my left leg).  Ten minutes with an occupational therapist and a physical therapist at the hospital were a huge help.  Luckily I asked the physical therapist about scooters as I had been discouraged about using one.  He found one in the recovery area and showed me how to use.  I had a small tumble at the hospital (I was a little too aggressive) but learned my limits and am very cautious now and get around fine!  I had my husband order one immediately and it came in a couple of days.  It is saving him a lot of running around with the wheelchair.  I am not using the walker at all at this point.  

Anyway, back to quilting.  The weeks before the surgery I went through my fabrics that I had put aside for stack and whacks many years ago and went through them.  I put many of them in the "I'll use for backing pile as they aren't interesting enough" and then proceeded to cut up quite a few others into mostly hexagon triangles and four patches.  I figured I could audition them and decide how they should go when I could again sew.  The above fabric was the first one i pulled out.  It has about a 12 inch repeat and I had about 10 repeats of the pattern.  I decided not to do a kaleidoscope block as they only go together in one way.  I did pile 8 repeats on top of one another figuring I could do two "posie" (or 4 patch) blocks with each set.  I did a 3 1/2 inch strip and ended up with 72 posies which will finish to 6 inch blocks.  

Below are some of the different versions of the block from one set.  All the photos are with my phone and with them sitting on my lap in bed so not up to the usual standards.

 This is  one of the stacks and below are the two different arrangements I decided to use.

Another arrangement.

Another!

These next three are all the possible arrangements of one set of posies.

These next two are three versions of a posie.  The ones below I initially chose but when I did this one, I decided I liked it better than one of the chosen ones below.  I like them to look as different as possible even with a large focal point like the flower in this one.

Well, I am trying to figure out how to do some machine sewing down here.  I have a little board for my lap and could balance a FW easily on it but how to use the foot pedal is the problem although I may be coming up with a solution before too long!!  I will have to order bobbins as my husband finding bobbins for a FW in my sewing room would not be a pretty picture!!  I think he could pick out thread though!

Having Some Fun!

Well, this is the first of the two baby quilts I did with this old boring fabric and I ended up liking them!  A little more subtle than what I usually do!

This is the second and you probably can't see but there are both different larger pink fabric and an introduction of some more "found" light fabrics.

This is one of several fabrics that I have cut up in the past few days to make some more stack and whacks.  I did a couple that will be hexagons which I haven't shown.  

I have loved this fabric since I bought it as I love Birds of Paradise flowers and have made at least two quilts featuring those from photos I took in California.  The repeat on this fabric is 24 inches and I had two separate pieces but wanted to get 8 repeats so with some finagling I managed.  I have about a yard left in three pieces so I will be able to feature some of this full print in the quilt or quilts I will be doing.  I cut up half of the 8 piece stacks into kaleidoscope blocks (8 patch) and the other half minus a little bit I still cut into squares for posie blocks.  I figure that you can shift around the posie blocks and that you can get two different looking blocks from the same stack of 8 pieces.

I wanted to audition some of the pieces to see how they would look in the 8-piece blocks.  I say success!  I cut the strips for these 3 3/4 inches wide so the blocks will be about 6 1/2 inches finished.

I picked what I thought I was not a very good sample for the posie block to see how close the two variations would look and was surprised.  These were end cuts on the strip and a little wonky so figured it was worth a shot.

I will be off my feet after Monday for 2 to 3 months so have little baggies filled with the hexagon pieces and the posie pieces that I will play with auditioning them.  I never randomly put stack and whack blocks together.  I like hexagons and posie blocks as you can shift them in more than one way to get the look you like best.  You can't do that with the kaleidoscope blocks.

I will try to keep posting in my blog and may put some more instructions and examples in there or the "world of quilting and dyeing" according to Beth!  

Just a picture of the back of my head since Covid-19 has not allowed me to get my hair cut for 5 months!!  I posted it on FB and my hairdresser is coming to my rescue before my surgery as I don't want to have deal with my longer hair and the curls (which only look good for a bit).  She is actually coming to my house to do the cut as the salon doesn't open until the day of my surgery!!  I should say that I have been going to her for almost 40 years!

Mindless Sewing for Now

I made four of these cot-sized quilts (81 x 42), three of which have this border.  I liked the slightly wider border -- 3 inches finished instead of two.

This one finished up to 40 x 40 which is the usual baby quilt size.

I still have some leftover fabrics from the above five quilts but was really bored with using them so gathered  up a bunch of 30's repro fabrics (I thought I had gotten rid of all of them but I guess not).  After I cut everything up, I wasn't sure how dull it was going to be but looked okay with the first few blocks so onward. 

Now I am finding I actually like the quilt and I think I have enough to make at least one more.  What I had were mostly fat quarters.  I was amazed that I randomly pieced some four patches together after cutting some strips and found I was only one four patch short of having just the right amount for one quilt (only one short).  I must have made enough of these that I have a sense for how much to put together.  I can't seem to tire of this layout.  Of course I have been going through bolts of white fabric in doing this!

Surgery is scheduled in less than two weeks and after that I will be out of the machine sewing cycle for 2 - 3 months!!  Can't imagine going that long without my sewing machine.  Hopefully I will have enough info to post some blogs during that time  I do have an English paper piecing project.