Chains, Thorns, and Sea Glass

Whee!  Quilt guild tonight!  Also, theoretically, the three fruit trees I ordered arriving today, so I'm off to Home Depot in a bit to get a spade.  Meantime, here's the finished Double Irish Chain quilt laying atop the guest bed:

It is actually on top of my bright tumblers quilt as well.  Because one can never have too many quilts, or something.  (Squiddle currently sleeps under three.  And sometimes his blanket on top as well.  You'd think we don't have central heating.)

Last night I stitched up another half-dozen Thorns blocks (five of them in pieces in the stacks below).  And while I was cutting for those, I pulled all the scraps from the Blueberry Park collection and cut those into 2.5" half-square triangles as well.

Don't they look a bit like sea glass here?

I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with them, so for now I'm using them as leader/enders and stitching them into squares....

Turning Corners

I'm determined to be good and not start anything new until I've finished the piece I'm working on.  Which means pedal to the metal on stitching this binding down!

I turned the third corner last night and am now about halfway down the last side.  I should be able to finish this quilt today, and then toss it in the wash with some color catchers tonight.

Tomorrow, I'll hopefully make up the block of the month for next week's quilt guild meeting, and get seeds started.

Quilting, Done!

Yesterday morning I pushed through and made myself finish those last three and a half motifs.  Here the quilt is laid out for an in-progress beauty shot:

And flipped over to the back to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped any motifs:

I mostly did white bobbin thread so that the stitching in the open white areas would be unsullied, but I quite like the way it shows on the backing:

And I trimmed away the excess backing and batting, pressed the binding, then stitched it on.  I had cut the binding along the length of the fabric, not the width, so I didn't have to do my usual little tug when joining the two ends, as the warp of a fabric has much less give than the weft.

And, finally, I dug through the shoebox of thread that I'm trying to use up, found a good color match, and started stitching the binding down.  I take a double stitch every tenth stitch or so, so that (a) if the thread snaps not as much will come undone, and (b) I don't end up pulling the thread too tight.  I actually measured, and my usual length of thread apparently gets me about 28" of binding sewn down.

I did three lengths of thread yesterday, and got one of the long sides stitched down.  Hooray!  Today, amid laundry and cleaning, etcetera, hopefully I'll get some more done.

(I also dug out that multi-gallon bag of sea-colored fabrics, as March is going to be teal for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge....)

An Oldie But Beauty

Three and a half motifs left to go on the Double Irish Chain quilt, and then I can press and attach the binding... and wait until my nails grow out and my fingertips heal up a bit before sewing the binding down to the back.  I have soft fingernails that I really can't grow past a quarter of an inch long before they rip.  As a couple did the other day, nearly down to the quick.  So I trimmed the rest to match, but it's coming back to bite me now.

Ah well.  It is what it is.

Since my executive dysfunction was kicking in yesterday (I need to vacuum the upstairs; I need to wash the guest room bedding; can I? nooooo~) I rerouted my daily tasks to something else: unpacking the boxes of clothing that've been hanging out in my bedroom closet for months now.  I went through two and a half boxes (the half being Wonderful Husband's; he gets to unpack his own clothes because I don't know where he'll want them) before I ran out of hangers.  Most of it is stuff I can't wear yet, summer-weight things.  But I found a few more pairs of jeans and my sweatshirts, so having those again will be nice.

I also opened a box I'd gotten a couple months ago: a quilt I bought in a Goodwill auction.  If there's one that interests me, I usually only bid the minimum.  This one, I bid a little bit more because I really wanted to take a pattern from it:

Isn't that cool?  Despite the machine quilting, I'm pretty sure it's hand-sewn.  The pieces are... not uniform, which will make pattern-taking interesting.  And I'm fairly sure it's set into the background, not appliqued on top of it.  This pattern is probably somewhere in Barbara Brackman's books but I don't have access to them at the moment, so I'm calling it the Circle Star quilt.

Most of the blocks are in pretty good condition for a quilt that (judging by some of the fabrics) probably dates to the 1930s.  The outer border, and this one block, are, however, shreddy:

Even that's a bit useful, however.  For instance, I now know that the interior is a flannel sheet, not batting.  I'll need to look at this section more closely later to tease out more details.  For now, however, I leave you with this sweet probably incidentally Christmas colored block:

Isn't that just so pretty?

Keep On Quilting On

Yesterday I kept chugging away at the Double Irish Chain quilt.  I finished the blocks I'd drawn the quilting motif on, and had to lay it out on the floor to sketch in the rest:

The colored chains have a simple cross-hatching going on.  Here's the motif I'm free-handing into the white areas:

I also went to quilt guild last night!  It was the meeting of Quilters by the Bay, where we string-pieced 10.5" half-square triangles.  I forgot to grab pictures of my group's blocks!  But we made ten, and altogether the guild churned out forty-nine blocks in a little under an hour.  I also donated some magazines and books to the guild's sewing room sale in May.  Out of my house into someone else's!

And since the guild knows I make mini quilts, the scraps from the strip piecing came home with me:

Oh dear!  Now I need to think of what to make with them.

Give It To Me Straight

Well, a day of quilting (or, more honestly, a few hours snatched here and there between laundry and getting boys to and from school, and while Jazzy was napping), and the straight stitching in the colorful blocks of the Double Irish Chain is done!

I also figured out the design I want for the open white spaces, and drew it on a few with a water-soluble marker.  I stitched one to test it, and it'll work.  Today, I draw more motifs and hopefully stitch a few of them!

Double Irish Chain and Weekly Thrift Store Treasures

After making my decision, I laid out and basted the Double Irish Chain quilt Saturday night:

The quilt is 70"x90", so it's not as small as it looks here.  I did trim away the extra batting before I spray-basted it, and put it in my pile for either bolster pillows or rag quilt squares.  It feels like the spray baste manufacturer switched nozzles at some point.  The older cans didn't used to aerosolize nearly this much!  It's a subtle sensation on the floor, but I'm pretty sure I now need to mop around the basting area.  The excess backing I trimmed away after basting.  Such a luxury to not have to piece a backing!  I've cut and joined four 2.5" lengthwise strips from the leftover backing fabric to be the binding.

I only went to one thrift store last week, and other than a couple deconstructable toys for the boys and a big tub of sidewalk chalk that has already been broken into, these were my finds:

The picture frame was $3.75 and it is a perfect size for the couple prints I've bought from Ikea.  (The Dalarna horse unicorn here being one of them.  Celebrating my Scandinavian heritage!)  It's already hung on the wall downstairs.  I also lucked into nine old quilting magazines, a vintage crochet potholder instruction manual, and a Ball canning publication for $.25 each.

Decisions, Decisions

After finishing off the dozen log cabin blocks Friday night, I admitted to myself that I don't really feel like piecing right now.  I want to keep quilting!  I want to use up some of my massive stash and somehow decrease the excessive amount of fabric I have out in the garage.  So out I went, and dug around in a couple places where I knew I had tops and backings stashed.

First option:

A vintage Double Wedding ring quilt top which I think I got at the Zion Thrift Shop in Fullerton, California.  Some idjit washed it at some point in its history, so even though it (fortunately!) doesn't need any seams repaired, it does need to be pressed before it's basted and quilted.  This backing fabric doesn't match the vintage feel of the quilt top, but it's pretty and pale; I wouldn't have to worry about possible bleed-through.  I think I could use the walking foot to quilt the pieced arcs; I would need to free-motion something in the open spaces.  Another tick mark against it (after "needs a pressing") would be the need for a bias binding, with lots of stops and starts and angles.

Therefore, I'm slightly more inclined to go with this second option:

A Double Irish Chain quilt top I pieced last year.  I kind of like this red piece from last week's thrift store adventuring for a backing, though I would need to be very careful with color catchers in the wash.  Like the Double Wedding Ring, I could quilt most of it with the walking foot (and FMQ the open squares).  Unlike the DWR quilt, it doesn't need a careful ironing first, and the binding will be a straight-forward affair.

So I think I will go for the "easy" quilt first, and then, if I still feel like quilting after it's done, have the more complex quilt as a follow-on.

Misc Bits

Ugh.  I woke up this morning with a stomach bug.  Not fun!  And not good timing, since today I was going to pick up Squiddle from school, pick up our co-op order, take Squiddle to the library, and then go to the quilt guild tonight.  None of which happened.  Fortunately Wonderful Husband was able to take care of picking up Squiddle and our co-op order.

Here are a few of the photos from my phone I keep meaning to put up on the blog.  First, the rainbow cupcakes I took into Squiddle's school for his birthday last month:

And our two apple trees.  This is the view out of my bedroom window, on the second floor of the house:

And a basket of bounty. The two trees are two different varieties, though I don't know what they are:

A patch I sewed on the tear on the back of our $35 auction sofa.  Had to find my curved needles to do this!  Eventually I'll reupholster it, but the sofa cleaned up pretty well for the most part, so it's a very low priority.

And about two-thirds of the scrappy Double Irish Chain quilt as I was laying it out on the floor to sew up over the weekend:

Wednesday Workings

Instead of being good and basting another UFO for quilting, I've been block-making.  I've finished the five extra yellow/black Churn Dash blocks to make my BoM winnings into a top.  I've also pulled out my quart baggie of 2.5" squares and started sewing them into 5x5 blocks for a scrappy Double Irish Chain.  Whee, what fun!  But the REAL winning sewing is this:

Squiddle (age 4 years, 4 months) has been asking me for sewing lessons for... four months now.  I'd promised to start teaching him when he was four.  He's recently stepped up the requests, so today I finally pulled out his great-grandmother's (absolutely pristine) Singer 128 hand-crank.  The one I hauled all the way back from England several years ago.  He picked out three fabrics from my stash, I pressed and cut them, and we proceeded to make a 10" square reversible drawstring bag (roughly like this one).  He sat on my lap and turned the crank while I fed the fabric under the foot and pulled the pins.  (He helped put a couple of the pins in.)

And when we were done, he gave the bag to Daddy!  And he wants to make another one for Jazzy (he has already picked out the fabrics for it) and then one for himself.

And in non-sewing things, meantime, Jazzy is continuing his streak of independent precociousness.  While we were in England, he figured out how to go up and down staircases by himself.  No one showed him.  Today, he figured out how to climb the ladder to the playhouse that's part of the swings/slides set in the backyard.  The first time, I was hovering behind him in case the rungs were too far apart.  Then he went down the 5' tall slide.  Not fifteen minutes later, I looked up, and he was up there in the playhouse again all by himself!  He now no longer gets unsupervised time in the yard for a while.  And, according to Wonderful Husband, tonight while I was at writing class and he was getting the boys into their pyjamas, Squiddle was being stubborn about not knowing where to put his clothing.  Jazzy marched up and pointed to the hamper.  And when Squiddle was being stubborn about not knowing how to put on his undies, Jazzy picked up two more pair of his undies and threw them at his brother.