Pinwheels Progress


Pinwheels Progress
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
It's been awhile since I posted--sorry. I've had a lot of evening commitments lately and what time I had free I was trying to spend sewing. That being said, not a lot of sewing getting done! I've got all the pinwheels done for the center of my wallhanging. I'm partway through with the pinwheels I'm doing for the corners of the borders. The pinwheels in the center won't be set like this--I'm going to be doing white sashing to float them a little bit.

Haven't entirely decided what I'm doing with the borders yet. I'm debating a couple of possibilities--I'll make the final decision once the center is done.

And then I'll have fun with some embellishments!

I'm on the road this weekend so I'm not sure I'll get a lot more done anytime soon. Fortunately, this is an easy project to pick up where I left off anytime I can get back to it.

More progress...and a new trick

More progress--another four pinwheel blocks done. This is only half just to show you the color combo so far. Two more colors (and 8 more blocks) to go.








I tried a new trick tonight. I've seen it demo'd lots of places and it's in lots of books; I'd just never tried it myself.

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It's hard to tell from this picture, but peer very, very closely and you can see that the center of the block where all the points connect is just a little puffy. My points came together exactly as they should, but because of the bulk of the seams in the center, it pokes out a little bit. Used to be, I'd just live with it. But I decided to take the time to make it better.
 Here's the result--see how nicely the center lays? It even makes the points look even better!


So, how does that happen?


Instead of pressing the center seam all one direction, you press half of it going the opposite direction--so all the center seams are now chasing each other around the block, so to speak. You then pick apart the center where all four seams come together and press it flat. See that cute little itty bitty pinwheel? How adorable is that?

Cute, but a little bit of a pain. With a pinwheel block there's all sorts of seams coming together and it takes a bit to sort out which ones want to go in which direction. You might have to pick apart a couple of stitches as well.

But boy, does it make a difference to the block. I like this little trick!

And My Next Project Is... (Drumroll please)

OK, I think I know what my next quilty project will be. We finally finished putting away the Christmas decorations today--they'd been down for some time, but stacked on our dining room table. For awhile. It's amazing what you can learn to ignore. My husband decided to tackle the job this afternoon and got everything packed away, then turned to me and asked, "Do we have something more springy to hang up in here?"

The wallhanging I have in our dining room is actually non-seasonal, but I will admit it leans towards fall and winter months better than spring and summer. It's a 9-Patch Pizazz in coppers and golds. It's supposed to go with how we'd planned on decorating our dining room when we first moved in, but we never quite got the dining room actually, well, decorated. It's still a bit plain. So the 9-Patch Pizazz pretty much determines the mood of the room completely on its own.

As soon as my husband asked me the question, my mind immediately started running through my stash. "I don't have anything yet...but I could make something!" I scurried right up to my sewing room for a fun hour of choosing some fabrics, scanning them into EQ7, and creating a design. I'm keeping it simple--just pinwheel blocks, each of one of four different colors, a couple of borders, and multi-colored pinwheel corner blocks (pictured). I played with several variations then showed my husband the top 4--he liked one better than the others so I let him make the call. I was pretty evenly divided between a couple of them.

The only thing stopping me from diving right into this tonight is the fact that my design calls for white-on-white background and I ran myself completely out of that on my MIL's quilt. I'll have to make a run to my LQS sometime this week.

The design only requires about a third of what I have of each of my chosen stash fabrics. I'm thinking if I really get going on this, I may make a tablerunner for the dining room table or for the top of the buffet out of the remaining fabric. Might be fun to have something that coordinates. One of my 2011 quilty goals is to have more seasonal quilts to use year-round and I have almost nothing for spring and very little for summer, so it'll be nice to meet one of my goals while still doing something purely on impulse--what fun!

I'll let you know how it goes...

Dang. And It Was Going So Well...

Another evening in, another opportunity to spend a few hours in my sewing room. Companionably, even, since my daughter is sitting on the floor in my sewing room with her computer (a long story having to do with hitchy wireless and ethernet cables), the two dogs are here, and my son's voice is coming to me out of my computer speakers since tonight's his DJ night on campus radio and I was streaming his show.

I was merrily cutting along to my son's music, not always my taste but I generally find it mostly entertaining. Everything was going swimmingly. His show ended just about as I finished up my last cut. I shut off my computer and went back to my cutting table to neatly stack all the pieces inside labeled plastic bags, when I decided to review the pattern instructions to see what I needed to cut next.

Wait....what? TWO 6-1/2" strips?? I had only seen that I was supposed to cut one of each successively longer size rectangle off of each set of 2 1/2" strips. But apparently I was supposed to cut two of one size, and I hadn't caught it.

I had leftovers of all of strips, of course, so at first I didn't think it would be that big a deal. Pull out what I thought had been scraps, trim it to 6 1/2", call it a day. But darn if five of those scraps weren't too short. Several more have some selvage showing at one end but it's not the white part--it's the part that would pretty much blend in, especially considering seam allowances. I could probably get away with it. But those five, there's no help for it. Even steaming the hey out of them wouldn't get them close enough for horseshoes.

So now I have to decide how to problem-solve. I've got some ideas but, frankly, ran out of steam. My daughter's school woke me up way early this morning with a robo-call to tell us school was closed so I'm about ready to head to bed as it is.

As my Dad always used to say, "Get a good night's sleep...it'll feel better in the morning."

Ok, Dad. Good night.

The Vacation is Over ... Report

My vacation officially ended yesterday--I had Friday back in the office. I'm very proud of myself, however. Typically I suffer complete amnesia over the holidays and it usually takes me almost a full day just to remember where I was on all my projects, track down which emails I was supposed to be responding to when, and figure out what I'm supposed to do next. This time, though, I did such a great job preparing myself for the break--leaving myself all sorts of bread crumb trails and scheduling pop-up reminders for myself for when I got back, that not only did I catch myself up in about an hour, I was actually able to make progress! Woohoo! Yay, me!

Unfortunately, not so much in my sewing world. Friday evening I pressed some fabrics. That was it. Not insignificant given that some of them had creases in them the size of the Grand Canyon after being in my fat quarter drawer for several years, but still--not particularly exciting. There is something very relaxing about pressing, though. I don't mind it when it's fabric. Hate it when it's clothes, but that's another story.

Today I did somewhat better--I got the background for my niece's wallhanging pieced. I did 6" (finished) squares--5 across and 5 down. I'd originally thought I'd use five fabrics in all, too, but then I realized that would mean I'd have little bits cut off several fabrics rather than using up most of a couple--so I switched gears and only used two fabrics. I think it probably works better, anyway. Tomorrow I start on the hard part. I'm paper-piecing a foundation pattern I had to design myself, my daughter did the math for, and I then tweaked the results. It still doesn't look quite right to me, but I think I can fudge it.

Hopefully, if I get some good time at the project tomorrow, I'll have some pictures to post.