St. John's Day

This has nothing to do with quilting, but I wanted to share a little about a recent foray I had with the lovely herb, St. John's Wort.

Back in 2010 I took a year long course on medicinal herbalism, and one of the things we learned is that when it comes to herbs, what you need often presents itself. The people who have terrible problems eradicating Creeping Charley from their yards most likely are in need of help with their lymphatic issues, gas, allergies, or headaches (Creeping Charley does a lot!).

We also learned that when studying plants you can develop special relationships with certain ones - we called these our healing allies. For me, that was St. John's Wort. There was just something about this herb that I loved - the beautiful color, the lovely delicate smell, it's tiny perforated leaves. I also responded really well to its medicinal properties too - as a sunscreen, as an anti-depressant, as a salve to rub on burns. Somehow though, over the years I forgot that St. John's Wort is an excellent remedy for nerve pain until these three things happened:

1. I had a long discussion with my Physical Therapist about my current neck and shoulder situation and the nerve damage to both areas
2. An old bottle of St. Johns Wort tincture fell out of my medicine cabinet
3. I found a large patch of St. John's Wort growing not far from my house on June 24th, which is St. Johns Day - the day this plant is traditionally collected.

Coincidence? I think not. I don't know if St. John's Wort will help my neck and shoulder, but you can be damn sure I'm taking my tincture! I also have a fresh batch brewing from the plants on I found on June 24th. Healing the body is mysterious, and one needs all the allies one can find!

Cathedral Stars Update

I finally put some of the Cathedral Stars blocks up on the design wall so I could take a look at how things were coming along. This was the first time I paired the stars and Jacob's Ladder blocks together, and I'm totally happy with how they're looking. Obviously I need to play around with color placement a little, but this was good confirmation that I'm on the right track and motivation I needed in order to keep plugging along.

This weekend is the weekend I finish the blocks and start sewing the rows together.

Mystery Fabric

When word gets around that you're a sewer, sometimes fabric mysteriously falls from the sky. The other day, this cute little bundle of corduroy appeared in my office. Sometimes people think they'll get all into sewing and it just doesn't happen, so I'm happy to take their neglected fabric and give it a good home. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this corduroy yet, but it'll get used eventually, no doubt of that!

On the Design Wall...Geese Circles

I quit making the Flying Geese Circle blocks because I ran out of the grey background fabric. Now I'm playing around with adding plain flying geese units in order to make this into something larger. It is SO MUCH FUN to be able develop a project like this over time. I can play round with colors and placement, leave it and walk away, come back to it in an hour or two, make some more changes, sleep on it, my housemate can take a look and give her opinion, or other random friends...for me, it's a completely new way of creating something and I'm loving it!

Learning how to Long-Arm

Long Arm quilting is something I've always wanted to try. Lots of quilters send their completed tops to long arm quilters to finish, and if I could afford it, I'd totally do that too. Having your quilt long-armed is not cheap though - it can cost anywhere from $120-800 depending on the size of your quilt and the intricacy of the quilting.

I learned how to free-motion quilt so I could make my quilts start-to-finish. This is one way I can keep the cost of my hobby in check, while still making the volume of quilts that I do. Sadly, while I enjoy being able to finish something on my own, the quilting is probably my least favorite part of the process. Wrestling with a quilt on a domestic machine, even one with a huge harp space like my Juki, takes forever and is hard on my body.

For awhile, I thought those were the only possibilities - either pay someone to quilt my quilts for me (too expensive) or suck it up and do it myself (not enjoyable, hurts!). Turns out, there's another solution!

About a mile from my house, there's a sewing store that rents their long-arm for quilters to use themselves. I don't know why I didn't discover this earlier, but that's how it goes sometimes. I'm scheduled to take a three-hour training session on how to use this machine (which hopefully will be enough time!), in a couple weeks, and after that I'll be "certified" to rent this machine to use on my own.

I'm super-excited to learn a new skill, and hopefully this will help me take care of the big stack of quilt tops I have piling up, needing to be finished.

Mini Spider-Web

If it's bigger than 1" x 2", I save it!

My Tiny Scraps box was getting out of hand, so I decided to spend a little more time on the Spider Web string blocks. I blogged about these a few months ago, and they're something that I pull out now and then, make a few blocks, and put away.

One unit, before trimming

Now with my design wall, I could finally put them up and take a look at how things are coming. These are tiny blocks, so I still need to make a bunch more of them...but that's OK. I have plenty of scraps!

Sewing Room Update: Not quite finished

Things got moved around again in the sewing room over the weekend, mostly because I dug up an old cabinet in the garage and dragged it inside for some extra storage. This necessitated re-configuring everything else, but I'm happy with the current placement of things.

I made my design wall on Saturday out of pieces of foam board insulation which I taped together, and then covered the whole business with batting. I LOVE this thing already! I have some paper-pieced Flying Geese circles up there now, which I've been playing around with for a few days, but I'm going to get all the Cathedral Star blocks up there next and start playing around with those, I promise!

Sewing with Scraps

My sister just finished making a 9-patch quilt top, and she gave me a bag of all the scraps. There were leftover blocks, partially pieced blocks, and just random bits of fabric. I'm still getting used to the space in my new sewing room and decided I needed something easy and low-key to work on while I'm still getting everything where I want it.

I randomly pieced the blocks and patches together, and added a white border. Now I'm going to add another pieced patchwork border, and call it good. This will be a cute baby quilt or just a good random curl-up-with quilt.

Sewing Room Update: Moving Stuff

So, I've been taking multiple trips up and down stairs carrying armfuls of fabric (SO many armfuls of fabric!), boxes of notions, machines, and of course tables and shelves.

Most everything is moved, now it's just a matter of organizing things and figuring out the best place to put everything.

Still on my to-do list:

1. Make and hang a design wall (have to purchase foam board from Home Depot)
2. Remove ceiling fan and install track lighting
3. Hang shelves from IKEA
4. Figure out an alternative to the bricks I have under my cutting table...there has to be something else out there I can use to raise the height of something!
5. Buy a new chair
6. Buy an over-the-door ironing board

Friday Finish: Pillow Covers

Well, this isn't a quilt...but I thought I'd at least share one little Friday Finish I was able to manage.

These are two IKEA pillows that were covered in a black and white hounds tooth.

We love the shape, but the black and white clashed with the rest of the color scheme in the living room.

I used this fabric in my stash, and sewed up some quick envelope-style covers. MUCH better!

Sewing Studio: Fresh Paint

Things are progressing with my new sewing studio! I worked on moving all the old bedroom furniture out of it over the past week, and then on Saturday I got ambitious, taped everything and got the first coat of paint finished. The color is some sort of white - it was a gallon that a friend found in her basement, and it was a whitish shade, which is all I cared about.

Saturday morning I completed the second coat, so now I can start moving!

UFO: Dancing Quill

I've decided to buckle down and finish some of my long-standing UFO projects. I wrote about the Valori Well's Dancing Quill quilt here previously, and while I was enjoying putting it together, I sort of fizzled out and lost interest a few months ago. I only need to put together four more rows, so I laid out the pieces and have been sewing them together a bit at a time over the last few days. This really will be a stunning quilt once it's finished, so I'm glad to be finally finishing it up.

Tula Pink Fox Field Quilt

Sometimes it's nice to have some easy brainless sewing - Log Cabin quilts are great for that because they're just straight seams without any worrying about making seams match, creating perfect points, or some of the other slightly more stressful aspects of quilting.

I really love the fabric designer Tula Pink - her designs are quirky, thematic, and colorful. I haven't sewn much with her fabrics, because they're rarely on sale, and you know I'm a bargain hunter! However, a few months back, I grabbed a kit on Craftsy that uses her Fox Field line, and I delved into it over the weekend.

The design is the same concept as a Log Cabin, only made with diamonds instead of squares. It was fun to play with the colors and just enjoy some easy sewing. This one will come together fast, and I'm in need of something like that after all the putzy bag-sewing I've been doing lately.

Snapshots Quilt-Along: May

The May block for the Snapshots Quilt-Along is called "Kindred Kitchen". I'm not an apron wearer myself, but I think this one is pretty cute!

Sorry for the terrible photo - my iPad's camera is definitely lacking!