Final Finish: One Fish Patchwork

When my friend's little niece was in the hospital for a week over christmas, a comforting quilt was in order. I had some fabric leftover from this Dr. Seuss quilt I sewed for another baby earlier in the spring, and it took just a few hours to cut it into squares and sew up a quick patchwork quilt. I ran a little short on fabric, and just pieced a few bits together to make up enough blocks - Double Patchwork!

A nice thick border, and a cute green and white polka dot for the backing and border added the finishing touches. I quilted this in a diagonal grid with my walking foot, and within 4 hours, the quilt was finished!

I know this isn't a Friday, but I thought I'd share anyway and end the year right!

Friday Finish: Inside Out

I was all set to baste a quilt together and start finishing it last week, and then I discovered I'd run out of battings! I tend to stock up on these about once a year when they go on sale, and just didn't realize my supply had run out I guess. I DID happen to have scraps left over from other finishes, so I pieced them all together into a frankenstein batting. This "Inside Out" quilt from 2017 matched the size of it perfectly, so here it is! 

I quilted this in a diagonal grid with my trusty walking foot, and I like how the bright melon colored thread shows up on the fabrics. I wasn't sure how this would work, but I think it's good. The backing is a crazy butterfly print that I had just enough of, and the binding is a random bit of batik I had left from something WAY long ago.

I'm going to try and squeeze in one more Friday Finish before the new year, since I've been on a pretty good roll with this. Not quite one finish per week, I think it's ended up being more like one every other week - but still! Not a bad way to end 2019!

Friday Finish: Merry Grinchmas

It seemed appropriate that I finish a christmas quilt, and one FOR MYSELF for a change!

This was a quick project to sew together back in 2015, and it was a quick one to quilt too, since I just did a wavy grid with my walking foot in the time it took to listen to three "This American Life" episodes.

I'm really liking walking foot quilting these days - if the quilt isn't too big, it's really easy and fast, and doesn't require much skill in terms of keeping stitches even, and trying to make your designs flow nicely and all the other crap you have to think of with free-motion quilting.

The backing and binding are a green print I've had in my stash for awhile, and this is now our sole christmas decoration in the living room. Hopefully it'll be joined by a tree or something else soon, otherwise it'll look like the pre-heart growing three sizes Grinch has taken up residence here!

Friday Finish: Flower Baskets

 Finally! I actually finished this in time for last week's Friday Finish...except for taking the pictures! So, here it is now, a little later than planned.

The quilting on this went pretty well, but I ran into issues with the backing while I was basting it. Turn outs, I didn't line things up properly and I was about an inch short on two sides, but I didn't realize it until I was well into the quilting process. At that point, fixing it wasn't an option (there was no way I was going to seam rip everything I'd already quilted and rebaste the whole thing!), and to make matters worse I didn't have any of the backing fabric left!

The solution was to patch a few strips of fabric that were a decent match, but it looks kind of half-assed. The good thing is that it's on the back, and who cares about that anyway?

Otherwise, this turned out really well, and looking back I'm proud of all the skills I learned while putting the blocks together back in 2015. Applique and y-seams definitely! But I also got a good handle on paper piecing and some other tricky things. It feels good to finally cross this one off the list!

Still working....

I was so close to having this ready to share for my "Friday Finish" last week, but just couldn't pull it off.

It's about 75% done - I did all of the black background in a simple stipple, and now I'm working on embellishing the pieced or appliqued parts a little bit with some additional stitching, just to anchor things a little. It's futzy work with lots of thread changes and stops and starts. Plus, my machine decided to be contrary and I spent almost an hour last night troubleshooting and seam-ripping before finally figuring out what was wrong...which was lint buildup in my machine due to not cleaning it for...well...a very long time.

I'm hoping to finish up the free motion stitching tonight and then put the binding on Wednesday or Thursday. What a beast!

Scrappy Paper-Piecing

While I'm not officially starting to piece anything new, I did have a few old paper-piecing projects hanging around, just waiting for the right scraps to come along.

I haven't worked on my Union Jack blocks in quite awhile, so it was fun to make a couple of those the other night. I can't decide if I should continue with my blue and red color palette, or go wild and start making some in different color combinations. Since I make approx. 6 of these a year, I have plenty of time to figure it out!

My stacks of little string-pieced blocks continue to grow, and after starting to sew them all together a few months back, I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through with these. I'm making an oversized queen bed quilt with these that my roommate has spoken for, and we're both really liking the way this is turning out.

I crank out a bunch of these in a few nights, then I have to wait a month or two until my stock of scrappy strings builds up again before I can make more.

Basting

Once people cleared out of the office a few days, I took over a conference room and did some basting! Remember this beauty from 2015? Time to get her finished!

It's a massive quilt, and after wrestling it through my sewing machine for two hours last night, I'm really regretting my decision to anchor it all with some straight line quilting before getting out my free motion foot and going wild. It's too late now to reverse my decision, so I'll continue the struggle and hopefully it'll pay off in the end.

Obviously, there's no Friday finish this week - this one is definitely a two-week job!

Friday Finish: Spools

It took a bit, but I finally got the hang of quilting the double tear drops! Every here and there, an errant spiral pops up, but overall I really like how this turned out. I think the quilting adds nice texture to it, and I'm happy I went back and made changes to the color scheme, all without having to take anything apart or seam rip! Very clever of me.

The backing is a Tina Given's print that I had just enough of to use for this. Now, it'll be a furious rush to try and finish something else in time for next Friday!

Quilting Spools

I've had my scrappy spool quilt basted and ready to be quilted for months now, and I decided to start tackling it over the weekend. Once I spread it out and took a good look at it, I realized that I wasn't happy with some of my color choices for the spool bases. I used a lot of black fabric leftover from a Jinny Beyer project, and I just didn't like how it looked with the blue pastel background and other colors. So, I decided to change them

This is rare for me. I don't like going back and re-doing things, and I usually just go with whatever I've got and convince myself I like it. But for some reason, this irritated me enough to actually fix it! There was no way in hell I was going to take apart the quilt, especially after it was already basted, so I decided to applique new pieces right over the offensive parts. This worked really well for about 90% of the blocks! If you look really closely, you can see some dark bits underneath some of the new bases, but true to form, I've convinced myself I'm ok with that.

I'm quilting this in a sort of double tear-drop pattern, which I've only done once before, so it's a little not so good. I keep forgetting I'm doing tear drops and morph them into spirals, so this is a mash-up of the two. I think it works just fine.

A Lofty Goal

My drawer of finished quilt tops has now morphed into THREE drawers somehow, and you know what that means. Time to start finishing some of these up!

I emptied out the three drawers and laid them all out on the guest room bed, just to take inventory of what I have. That was fun! Some of them I'd completely forgotten about because they were made years ago. It felt like finding hidden treasures.

I have a goal of completing one quilt a week between now and the end of the year. This is pretty lofty and ambitious, especially for someone who's not goal-motivated whatsoever. But I'm putting this out there and we'll see what happens.

Friday Finish: Flower Garden

I just got back from a lovely week in Maui with my mother. We went to visit my sister, who's lived there for three years now without a visit from me! I don't know what took me so long, because Hawaii is amazing and I want to go back soon.
 

I finished this quilt before I left, but wasn't able to get a picture due to the week of rain we had. I quilted it using my walking foot because I've been into that lately. I like free motion quilting, but there's something satisfying about just sewing straight lines, pedal to the metal. Walking foot quilting seems to work well for smaller quilts, since it's too difficult to maneuver anything too big through my machine - and with straight lines, you're just going back and forth and up and down your quilt, so there's LOTS of maneuvering.

I had this finished in about two hours, and it's about time too because the baby this is for was born back in June!

In Formation

With my Wild and Goosey blocks all assembled, the next step was to get them sewn together into a quilt top!

I opted to put a neutral strip in between each block, spaced out with cornerstones like I did in the centers. I'm slightly second-guessing this decision a bit, just because it makes for a really busy, maybe chaotic look. All the twinkling cornerstones, all the little geese, all the colors...it's a lot.

But, you know me - moving on! This is a pretty small quilt, so after sewing the blocks together I decided it needed some borders; both as way to enlarge the whole business, but also to maybe give the eye a place to rest. I think the finished product looks pretty good. I like what the borders add, and despite my misgivings all the little pieces are so vibrant and charming. Yep, I'm all good with this now.

Recipe Time: Kielbasa and Cabbage Skillet

https://www.budgetbytes.com/kielbasa-cabbage-skillet/

With cooler weather starting to set in here in MN, I finally feel like cooking again! I'm still getting my weekly CSA box, and this recipe was a perfect match for using up excess cabbage, onions, and potatoes.

This was easy, quick, and very yummy. I followed it almost to the letter, except for adding a few cubed potatoes to the onions and sauteeing things a little longer in order to allow them to cook all the way through.

The recipe author suggests adding cooked egg noodles for a variation. Since I already tossed potatoes in there, I opted to skip the noodles, but I think they'd be great!

Mini Dresden Borders

I finished up my little Tula Pink dresden plates and have sewn them all unto light seafoam green background blocks.

I'm making the borders out of paper-pieced strips of leftover solid scraps - half of them out of blues/greens, and the other half out of purples. I'm not entirely sold on this color scheme, but I'm mostly done with all the border blocks and I'm running out of scraps (yay!), so I'm going with it.

I've been doing lots of paper-piecing lately, between these borders and my little "Wild & Goosey" blocks, but I'm not sick of it yet. For this project I'm using the paper more as a guide to work with as I sew scraps together willy-nilly and it just helps with keeping everything neat and within the dimensions I want.

Nothing to do with Quilts

" Up until that time I had not seriously doubted the rightness and especially the truthfulness of Gilead’s theology. If I’d failed at perfection, I’d concluded that the fault was mine. But as I discovered what had been changed by Gilead, what had been added, and what had been omitted, I feared I might lose my faith.

If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering."

 - The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Margaret effing Atwood is a genius. Her sequel to The Handmaid's Tale is controversial, with lots of people saying it's not needed, not necessary. I'll just say, I really needed this.

That's all. Back to sewing now!

Geese Families

Sewing my little geese into blocks of four has been tons of fun. I decided to separate each unit with a small neutral strip and a little center block for an extra pop of color.

One bonus of paper piecing is that it's extremely accurate. You don't have to worry about having a perfect seam allowance (which I NEVER have) because you're simply sewing on lines and as long as you can do that, you're guaranteed perfection.

I notice this especially when sewing these little guys together - there's no fudging on making things fit, no tugging or gathering, or all the little tricks I usually have to employ to get everything to match up. Would it be like this all the time if I simply became more accurate in my everyday sewing? Who can say? It's never going to happen, so for now I'm just enjoying this temporarily during my paper piecing projects!

More Little Geese

I did lots more Wild & Goosey blocks over the weekend, and after I counted them up and realized I had about 160, I decided that was enough for now and maybe I can take a break. I also started running out of tiny little scraps, which is great!

My next project will be to remove the papers from the backs of these, best accomplished with a tweezers because of all the little pieces.

This is a great type of project to do while watching something good on TV - there are SO MANY shows to watch right now, I'm a little paralyzed. Stranger Things? Succession? The Affair? The Great British Baking Show? Unbelievable? Fleabag? The Politician? Carnival Row?

These are ALL on my list to watch, and lots more coming down the pipeline that also look good. This is the best type of problem to have, and one of the very few things that makes me actually look forward to colder weather coming!

Wild and Goosey

These tiny little paper-pieced blocks have been in progress for awhile now, and for some reason my interest in them really took off over the week. I didn't want to stop sewing tiny pieces of fabric scraps to tiny pieces of paper!

Paper-piecing has a rhythm to it that becomes a little hypnotic over time - sew, press, trim, repeat. I like to work on these assembly line style and 12 blocks takes me about an hour, give or take. It helps if I can organize my scraps ahead of time into piles so I can just grab the next color off the top, sew it on, and move to the next one.

Eventually, these will get sewn into blocks of four with maybe some sashing strips in between. I have about 60 of these made, which is enough for only 15 blocks, so I have a ways to go.

Goodbye Summer

We're having a summer last hurrah here in MN the past few days with temps in the 80's and lots of humidity. I went walking/hiking over the weekend at one of my favorite spots. This is part of an area sacred to Lakota indigenous tribes, and is one of a few spaces I feel called to visit every now and then. I like to leave a tobacco offering out of respect for the sacred traditions still practiced here, sit in stillness at the medicine wheel and then plonk myself in the fields of bee balm and other healing plants and just breathe for awhile.

It's interesting to sense the change in seasons. Even in the heat there's an undercurrent to the air that you can FEEL...winter is coming! And with that comes an energy shift that for me usually means moving inward and a more intense focus on creative pursuits. This is good news for quilting, and you can expect to see more frequent updates in this space as I delve into new projects and tackle old ones with renewed energy.

Finishing Things

In my last post I wrote about going through my half-finished projects. These might languish for a variety of reasons, but mostly it's just boredom. Sometimes I lose interest in projects and set them aside till they pique my interest again. I don't like to slog through stuff - this is my hobby and it should be fun! So, I start things, I set them aside, I may or may not finish them. That's my prerogative.

When I was going through my stash of unfinished projects, I pulled out a few that made me excited again to see, and the rest I threw out. Yes, into the garbage. Yes, I wasted fabric but I'm OK with that - there always seems to be plenty more.

Way back when - maybe 2014? I took some of my Tula Pink scraps and made tiny little dresden plates from them. I thought they were SO CUTE, but making tiny things take time, and after I made a few I got bored and started something else shiny and new.

Now, at least five years later I have a lot more Tula Pink scraps, so I pulled them all out and went to business cutting out more of these little three inch blades and sewing them into 12-point plates. I have enough for 20 blocks, and my plan is to sew them unto a background fabric and maybe border each block with something...I have some ideas percolating and we'll see what happens. 

Friday Finish: Courthouse Steps

A couple years back, I started a spur-of-the-moment scrap project using my excess fabric strips and making them in to Courthouse Steps blocks. These are similar to Log Cabin blocks in that you just work your way around a square. They're nice, because accuracy isn't very important, you just trim things up as you go and keep going until you end up with the size you want.

I enjoyed working on these for a few days, but lost interest after awhile and set them aside. I recently went through all my half-started projects and got rid of most of them, but I like these blocks! So instead of throwing the whole business out, I just decided to sew them up into a little baby quilt.

I quilted it in a simple diagonal cross-hatch that took all of 30 minutes and here it is - My first quilt finish in forever! The backing is a few random fat-quarters that look pretty wild sewn together, and the binding is from some yardage that I had - there are some strips of it in the blocks also, so it seemed appropriate.

This will go to my mother, who seems to know lots of people who have babies and is always pestering me for quilts to give them. Here you go Mom!

Friday Finish: Persisting

Thought I'd pop in here with a surprise Friday Finish. It's not a quilt, because I'm not finishing those these days, but a little embroidery work! This is a shout-out to my shero Elizabeth Warren...although I can't decide if I'm disturbed that the quote is actually by a man I find completely odious and morally bankrupt ABOUT Elizabeth Warren...but in the meantime while I sort that out, look! Pretty colors and flowers!

The pattern is by Namaste Embroidery, but the color scheme just ended up being whatever I had some extra of in my embroidery threads pile.

July Update

Lake Vermillion, MN

Apparently I only post about once a month on this blog these days...sorry loyal readers! My sewing mojo just isn't there lately, and I'm fine to go with that flow for now. It's definitely better for my back and neck not to spend hours at my machine each day, and there are lots of other wonderful things to do, such as:

• Re-reading all the Outlander books, and then watching all the Outlander TV seasons. And then wasting deciding to prioritize time watching youtube videos of the TV cast being adorable and catching up on everyone's twitter feeds
• Outdoor yoga classes on the deck at my gym
• Discovering the joys of Costco's premade margaritas. They are good!
• Midnight swims at my favorite minneapolis beaches (swimsuit optional)
• Time spent at other people's cabins with family and friends
• Working on eating all the vegetables from my CSA box each week. Cucumbers, no problem. Pea shoots? Slightly more difficult

Of course, I've been doing SOME sewing, and here's an update on those projects:

A friend just had a little baby girl, so I'm working on this cute large scale flower quilt for her. The pattern is from Camille Roskelley, and it's easy. I started it before I knew the colors she was decorating her nursey in, which was a risky little game, but then I went over to her house for a tour and it's going to be perfect and fit right in with her color scheme! The top is finished, I just have to quilt it now and hopefully get it to her next week sometime.

I sewed all my Pineapple blocks together and decided it needed a little something more, so now I'm adding a Flying Geese border to it. Flying Geese blocks are my favorite block to make, but they are kind of slow, so this will take a bit. I'm 1/2 way done.

My Chevron Dresden Plate blocks are complete - the dresdens have all been sewn unto the background blacks, and now I need to sew them together into rows with borders in between each block. Sewing the rows together is my least favorite part of quiltmaking, so I'm putting it off for now.

That's it for now - see you in August!

Chevron Dresden Plates

A dresden quilt was the very first one I made when I got back into quilting in my late 20's, so I've always had a soft spot for this design. Awhile back I bought a bundle of these cheerful Riley Blake chevron fat-quarters, and decided to make them into Dresden blocks, alternating the chevrons with a matching solid.

I haven't been spending much time on sewing lately (in case you hadn't noticed), so this has been a slow project. First, all the chevron pieces needed to be cut out with a template, so there was lots of fiddly tracing and scissors work. Now I'm working on sewing each chevron blade, which then needs to be turned out and pressed to create a nice point.

My template must be a bit off, because the chevron circles are a little too big, so I'm having to go back in and re-sew the blades together so they'll lay correctly. With my next batch I'm going to sew with a bigger seam allowance and see if that corrects the problem. As you can see, I have quite a few left to complete, but I'm liking how they're turning out so far.

Tidying Up My Sewing Room

Like everyone else these days, I'm Marie Kondo'ing my space after watching a few "Tidying Up" episodes on Netflix. I read "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" a few years back when it was all the rage, but I couldn't get past the part about folding all our clothes because they have souls and get tired being hung up on hangers.

Also (and I know this sounds like an excuse) - I go through my clothes every season when I transfer them over from closet to storage, and sure - I could be better about keeping my space tidy, but beyond that I just don't have a ton of stuff. The one exception to this minimalism? My sewing room of course! When my sister said I could have an old shelf she was getting rid of, I decided it would be the perfect time to combine storage systems, get rid of things, and generally spiff up the space.

As per Marie's instructions, I took every piece of fabric I had out and piled it all on the guest room bed. Wow. I know this is nothing compared to some people's fabric stashes, but it's a lot. It's also way more than I need.

Going through it all didn't take too much time, and I soon had a large basket full of yardage, kits and bundles ready to rehome. Fitting it all on a single bookshelf was a little more challenging, and I had to go through and get rid of more several more times until it all could fit.

I decided to bring my rejects into work and just put it in the break room to give away, despite me not knowing if there were any sewers or quilters amongst my coworkers. I guess there are, because all that fabric was GONE in about 1/2 hour. So that was easy!

I'm still working on everything else, and I'll post a picture of the final reveal soon!

Recipe time: Creamy Spinach Artichoke Chicken

I love skillet meals. They are generally easy, fast and you only have one pan to clean up! This creamy delecious dish was a big hit when I made it last night, and I think it'll become part of the regular rotation, especially since it lends itself to lots of easy variation!

The recipe is here: https://www.budgetbytes.com/creamy-spinach-artichoke-chicken/
 and I followed it pretty much, aside from the following things:

• I added some sauteed mushrooms because I had them on hand and didn't want them to go bad - mushrooms and artichokes and spinach are yummy!
• She recommends pounding your chicken breasts so they're pretty thin, but then says to cook them 5 -7 minutes on each side, which is way too long. 3-4 minutes is plenty, especially since you set them aside while you cook the sauce (so they'll continue to cook during then), AND you add them back into the sauce for a few more minutes where they can cook some more. Avoid tough chicken - nobody likes that!
• I didn't add the parmesan cheese to the sauce, I sprinkled it on top at the end. It's a texture thing, plus I enjoy the taste of the cheese on it's own vs. blended into a sauce. 
• I served this with rice- it would also be good with other grains or pasta.
• Concerned that this has too much fat in it? Don't be silly - fat is good for us! If you're stuck in the 80's though and can't get over it, use light sour cream and cream cheese and milk. 

Friday Finish: One Fish, Two Fish

When my mom decided to throw a baby shower for a cousin who's having a boy, I knew right away what my gift would be!

This was a kit I bought way back when from Craftsy and was saving for that special someone. I love Dr. Seuss, and knew I didn't want to cut into the precious fabric for just any old baby!

There was very little piecing involved in this, since the main blocks are just cut from a large panel of fabric. I only had to make the blocks with the big arrows and sew it all together in rows.

I quilted this in a large stipple, and backed it in a blue material I got from Connecting Threads ages ago. I think my favorite part of this is the striped binding!