One ABQ and One Start

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This one’s done, “All But Quilting” (or ABQ). Finally! Five years in the works! I haven’t decided how to quilt it yet. I did a little Pinterest research on quilt designs for quilts with embroidery in them and most seemed to go for an overall design of some sort that would help hold the embroidery in place. I don’t want to do much as I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it (it’s just a goofy Halloween wallhanging after all) and the quilting needs to not distract from the embroidery, which is what I took five freakin’ years to finish.

Anyway….Any suggestions? Corner-to-corner diagonals for a diamond grid? Meander? What color thread? I’m pondering, so ponder with me!

And so, on to a new start. I had a bit of a reprieve on the wedding quilt I had designed for my niece out in California. Their wedding was scheduled last April. Due to the pandemic, they ended up getting married on the beach with just parents and a couple of very close friends, and none of us right-coast family flew out. At that point, they said they’d do a reception in August, so I put aside what I’d designed while I dealt with all sorts of other pandemic-stress, and returned to it for a few days to get ready for an August finish date.

Then August got cancelled. So it got put aside again, but this time with no definite deadline.

Now they’re talking about trying again next April. At this point, I’ve decided not to worry about a date so much (‘cause I’m skeptical we’ll be traveling yet in April 2021) but I’d love to get it done and off my mind.

I’m doing a traditional Storm at Sea using the Accuquilt block die, which finishes to 9”. Since I’m making a King-sized quilt, roughly, this puppy has 120 blocks involved.

I’m doing it in beachy colors—blues and “sand”—and all in batiks.

I’d collected fabrics over a period of months for this but it had all gotten mixed in with my stash at some point, so I had to go digging again. That actually helped me as I realized how much of my original collecting had veered towards same-same, so I was able to mix it up with some other stuff that’s been in my stash for awhile. I felt like it had a little more spark when I was done.

I was a good little quilter and did a b&w version so I could check values. Some of my darks veer just a bit into the medium in the monochrome version but I’m not worried.

I love the look of batiks but the resulting quilt isn’t exactly “cozy.” They never really soften up in the way the way woven cottons do. At least I think batiks are more durable, and as it’s going to live with young adults with dogs and a still-transient lifestyle, durable is a necessity.

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I sat down and did the math of how many pieces I’d need to cut—subcuts and final cuts included. (Subcutting, for those of you who don’t have an Accuquilt, is when you cut a piece of fabric to a size just slightly larger than the die itself. It’s not absolutely necessary but for something like this it’s helping me stay organized.)

This took me a little while as I’m doing it scrappy, so I had to figure out roughly how many pieces of which fabric I needed. Then I got to the end of a bunch of calculations and added “and whatever else I end up cutting.” If I cut too many, I’ll throw in a pillowcase or two.

I subcut a handful of fabrics so I could run a set through the die to make sure I’d thought it through correctly. This is how it looks when it’s laid out on the die.

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And this is the final (pre-sewn) version.

(Boy, that light looks super-light in this photo. It’s really much more sand colored.)

Pretty nifty. I’m digging this Accuquilt thing. If I’d put my mind to it, I probably could’ve had most of the quilt cut out in a couple of hours.

I didn’t sew this test together as I want more variety of fabrics in each block, but I was able to see the basic layout and make sure I’d done my figuring correctly. Once I have more fabrics cut, I’ll take another pause and sew together a few test blocks.

I’m so excited. I’ve been wanting to do a Storm at Sea for so stinkin’ long!

Another finish! Baby Quilt #2

What a week. I did some protesting last weekend which, go figure, being outside all weekend in the pollen-filled air, subsequently felled me for much of this week. I did go in for my COVID-19 test as suggested for all protestors and it came back negative. I wasn’t expecting anything else. Everyone was masked at the protests and although we weren’t always able to keep the 6’ distance with a couple of thousand of us marching through city streets, it was still pretty amazing that no one even bumped into me. I’d say we were keeping 3’. All of my symptoms this week were my regular ol’ allergy symptoms—sinus, fatigue, itchy eyes, etc.

So, unfortunately, although I’d planned on finishing baby quilt #2 last weekend, I didn’t feel up to doing anything with it until this afternoon.

Yay—it’s done!

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To recap: This started out as a way for me to play with some of my (at the time brand-new) Accuquilt dies, and a fat quarter collection I’d had for a long time, focused on the alphabet fabric. I scanned the fabric and did a quick design in EQ8 to figure out fabric layout.

I then miscut the fabric that was supposed to be in the corner squares of the star blocks, and didn’t have enough left to be able to fix it with the same fabric. Lo and behold, I decided to fussy cut some valentine fabric I’ve had in my stash for years, not using any squares that had “Feb 14” on it so it could be more generically lovey-dovey. Don’t like it as well as the original posy fabric but it works and I’m glad to have that fabric out of my stash.

When it came to the border, the butterfly fabric was the only thing I had that was even close to the right red. Again, wouldn’t have been what I picked if I were in a quilt shop with all sorts of options, but it works and, again, nice to have that fabric out of my stash. (I believe both fabrics came from the same scrap box from Fat Quarter Shop or wherever I used to periodically buy those from. Neither of them are anything I’d have selected myself for my stash.)

I dug into my strip stash for the binding and found four strips of the same mottled red that works just about perfectly. Phew.

In the grand question of “do you buy for a project or do you buy for a stash,” this project is an excellent example of why it’s handy to buy for a stash. I created this whole quilt on impulse without buying a single piece of fabric. We won’t include the money spent on the AccuQuilt, of course.

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If you remember some previous waffling I was doing about this, I did end up doing the whole binding by machine this time.

I watched a quick refresher video from Jenny Doan (I’ll post it below) and realized that in my past efforts I’d chosen stitches that required me to stick right along that seam line and have everything lined up with a precision that just made life more difficult than I needed. After watching the stitch that Jenny Doan used, I decided to use a fun loopy stitch on my machine and life was ever-so-much simpler!

And can’t beat the speed. I had the whole binding put on within 30-45 minutes. Sure, it’s a small quilt, but still. Love that kind of a finish.

I’d mentioned during my “waffling” comments that I’d had difficulty with the corners in previous attempts at machine binding. That was the only reason I’d gone to the Jenny Doan well, to see if she had good tips. And sure enough she did—just sew right over the top of them! So I got my miters folded down neatly and then just continued the design right around the corner. It worked really well, 50% of the time.

Best corner in image on top; worst corner in image on the bottom. The other two were pretty dang good and not quite so bad, respectively.

The worst corner was the last one, and I think I was having problems with stuff getting a little stretchy by then. Plus I was wearing out (still allergy-ridden), so I wasn’t being quite as patient and careful.

But what do we say? Altogether now…

“Baby quilt. Baby quilt. Baby quilt.”

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And in the same theme of using up my stash, the backing was a random yellow flannel sitting on my shelves that I can’t identify at all. No idea where or how it came to be living in my sewing room. Apparently it was waiting for me to have a new baby niece.

You can see the extremely simple ditch quilting I did on this puppy. I really wanted this to be as worry-free a baby quilt as possible for the parents, so I made an effort not to make an effort, if that makes sense.

Now that it’s done, I’m going to toss it in the wash with a handful of color catchers and a prayer that all that red stays exactly where it is.

Baby quilt. Baby quilt. Baby quilt.

Saturday Doings

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This isn’t quite as exciting for y’all as you didn’t see the “Before.”

This morning, I took all the fat quarters out of this drawer and took them down onto the kitchen table for my family to choose which fabrics they wanted me to use for their masks. When I brought the stash back up to my office, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to restore order in what had become an extremely dysfunctional drawer.

Over the last couple of years, as I’ve been getting Sew Sampler boxes and other things but not having time to do much with them, this upper drawer got stacked. The few times I rummaged through the fat quarters themselves they’d gotten every-which-way and I’d not been good about putting them back systematically.

Now they’re separated and sorted by color again within their categories, as they used to be: batiks in the far left; regular cotton fabrics on the far right; and a few collections that I wanted to keep together plus neutral batiks in the center. Much easier to use. I also sorta-kinda took a pot-shot at cleaning up the drawer below it so at least I can open and close it now. But the only help for that drawer is to actually use a bunch of the scrap strips, jelly rolls, and charm packs that are crammed in that one. Now that I’m back to sewing, I have hope!

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In other news, I’ve spent most of the week in EQ8 finding or drawing the blocks from the Eleanor Burns GoCube Sampler book that came with my AccuQuilt. The blocks were super-easy to draw as they’re all based on traditional grids. I just had to move lines around from one block to the next. Now I’m just doing the tedious work of importing them into my Favorites library so I have them ready for easy and fast quilt design. I’m hoping to have all of that done by the end of the weekend.

Meanwhile, I scanned into my fabric library one of the sets of fat quarters I’d rediscovered, and played with designing a small baby quilt/playmat with them, using some of the Eleanor Burns sampler blocks I already had in there. I went for something that would be really fast to put together, and it turned out kind of adorable. I’m ready to rock n’ roll on this cutie!

Look, ma, no gray!

Look, ma, no gray!

Off-topic, I finally bit the bullet and did my own in-home hair dye job this weekend. I have vivid memories of my Mom doing her own hair when I was young. I hated the smell, and I could see what a mess it was for her to do, so I’ve always avoided it like the plague. When I started having my own hair colored, I was stylist-done all the way. Things have been getting desperate, though, so I “put on my big girl panties” as a friend of mine often says, ordered my color kit online, and tackled it this morning. It was relatively easy and turned out great and I can’t recommend Madison Reed hair color enough! My hair looks fantastic. The gray is completely gone, and my hair is so shiny! What’s best? NO SMELL. And no, I don’t get a kick-back. Just always happy to pass along a recommendation when I have one.

The family’s choices of mask material.

The family’s choices of mask material.

And yes, I spent more time on masks today. This time, though, I tried a pattern that includes a pocket for adding filters. And then I looked at another pattern—the proportions are different on each. I’ve finally ended up doing a pattern mash-up using a modified pocket instruction from one with the rest of the design from the other. But now…I’m almost out of elastic. I have enough to do one more tomorrow (I ran out of steam today), and then it’s pause for a bit.

And yes, I know I have options, but the 1/4” elastic ear loop is my preferred style and my family prefers them as well. And we’re not in a rush.

So I’ve got a handful done but a boatload more I need to get done just to cover the immediate family and my mother-in-law. I guess I’ll just have to stay inside until we get enough elastic to get everyone else’s done, and then mine!