another new cast on

I seem to want to start all the things this spring. Tonight I finally sat down to figure out how to get started on my Clint shawl, which has been #1 in my queue since I wound yarn for it a month ago. Somehow that green and pink sweater jumped the line :) 

It does require some attention, at least for now until I kind of internalize how it works, and the pattern is complicated enough that I just printed it out and tucked it into the handy outer pocket on my project bag. Having e-patterns is nice, but sometimes I don’t want to keep refreshing my phone screen or worrying if my iPad is going to run out of battery. Let’s enjoy some analog in life, eh? I can tell this is going to be potato chip knitting now that I’ve gotten going and I can’t wait to see the quilt block grow. I have three of my four colors knit into it so far and I can say that I’m really pleased with the palette. Adding the pop of fuschia is going to make it even better. 

I now have five things going in the yarny world, so I think I’ll cool it on the cast ons until I finish something. I do have a lot of projects planned with some more very pretty yarn crawl yarn, so I’m motivated. Plus I think all of them are going to be great and I’m looking forward to being able to have the finished objects. Onward!

springy table topper

Last weekend I had a hankering to play with some more scrap sewing. I am really enjoying the stash of “precuts” I made for myself and squirreled away (this reminds me I should do it again with the growing stash of scraps from recent projects). I wanted to make something to grace my dining room table for spring/March so I pulled a quantity of greens and found myself a neutral linen (not surprising for me) to cut to match for patchwork improvising. 

 

I wanted to make simple four patches and combine them to make a sparkly patchwork panel. It was a lot of fun on my design wall moving things around for a couple of days. I bordered it with a great plaid that I think just takes it over the top straight to St. Patrick’s Day. That gave me a goal, to finish it before the holiday today. 

I used this pretty linen-ish garden print for the back and, as has been my habit lately, decided to hand stitch the binding down to the back. It took me a little bit longer, but I finished it by Friday the 13th! I’ve actually been enjoying the slower approach to binding. The hand stitching without need for a pattern or planning is meditative. 

I chose to do crosshatch quilting, in the light gray thread that was already on my machine. It was quick and simple, pretty much the same as the patchwork. This is not an overthinking project. 

It took me a few days to actually “style” the table so it looks festive, but here’s my springtime table scape! Shopping around the decor and things I recently organized was satisfying and fun. I love how it turned out, and I am really pleased with how the handmade items I’ve been pulling out and creating new have made my home cozy and full of personality. 

girly quilt for a colleague

A coworker is expecting, and I know her well enough to feel comfortable asking if she would a) enjoy having a small quilt from a coworker and b) if girly colors and patterns were ok to use. Happily she said yes to both so I got to have a lot of fun putting this piece together. Pulling fabrics was, of course, the best part. I started out thinking I was going to use an entirely different cat fabric with bright colors, but as I pulled both from my bag of scraps I've precut into charms plus some of the pinks and floral fabrics in my stash, I gravitated more towards the softer palette here with purples, yellows, soft pinks, and neutrals. 

I knew I wanted to make something relatively simple because I didn't have much time (said coworker was going to be in town for just a week). Some creative googling led me to a tutorial on the Diamond Chain pattern at Missouri Star and followed that (loosely) to make the center panel. It looks the same, but I didn't follow the specific sewing instructions since I wasn't starting from the precuts that were shown. 

Despite including lots of yellows and purples, it was still feeling VERY neutral and kind of washed out, so I played around with some of the prints and decided to add stripes at the top and bottom. That really changed the character of the whole quilt. The purples popped much better and the yellows sparkle around the pattern instead of blending in. Very pleased with that decision!

I had exactly enough of this wonderful ric-rac stripe print for the binding. If that's not the universe saying "great choice!" I don't know what is. Aaaand it's pretty perfect. I'm finding that working with fabric collections is fun, but my real joy is in these types of projects where I can assemble something cohesive from different fabrics I've collected over time, even better if I use scraps! Some of these are offcuts from trimming quilts after quilting, one is a blender my mom sent from her stash (so quite vintage!), and of course because it's me there's some unconventional texture in there in the form of flannel. Usually it's linen, but here there be flannel kitties. 

The backing is just a couple of large leftovers of a couple of the prints that are pieced together. I quilted it with gray thread and a simple cross hatch in the center panel and "in the ditch" along the stripe seams on the top and bottom. It ended up being 32" x 44". It was a gorgeous morning today, so I snapped a couple pictures outside before heading to work with quilt in tow. I'm pleased to report that it was well received. 

happy new year, a quick quilt top

[Note, I will be back filling this blog with posts "written" at the time the projects were actually done, I will be writing now but my sensibilities are much more satisfied with backdating them. There's been a few things since 2021, but not a whole lot to catch up on until quite a bit this past year, so I think it's not too crazy to do this. For now, I am actually starting to write real-time again in January 2025 because I have found the mental space to miss it.]

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I can't quite believe how happy I am with this project. The fact that so many of my quilts-in-waiting are now finished (minus one) has really lifted weight off my mind and allowed my creative juices to start swirling around big projects again. 

I have had most of the fabrics I used for this quilt sitting together in a stack for a long time. I knew I wanted to use them together, I just did not know how. Those mustang prints from Melody Miller are large scale and I have struggled to imagine cutting into them and losing most of the "fun" I get from the pattern. I like that they are horses running together - having a random ear or head in a half square triangle block or something like that just wouldn't do it for me. There's also a great print from Sarah Watts called Horseback which, appropriately, has sketches of horses with bright saddle pads on the perfect greenish blue. Note for the interested, it's the Honeymoon line for Cotton + Steel (just in case it ever gets re-released, I'll remember what it is from this note). Regardless, a special collection over time for sure. I had a hankering to play with these fabrics now that my table and mind are clear, and so I just started laying them out and adding a few more leftovers of prints that I thought might play nicely. 

I was binging on some Missouri Star Quilt Co. tutorials on YouTube while all of this was going on, and one of the projects that came up was a slant rhyme to a coin quilt. While coin quilts are usually smaller strips, this Simple Stacks quilt was stacks of 5"x10" cuts of fabric, ideal for large prints. I didn't buy the pattern, but the great thing about those videos is it gives you the gist of the pattern well enough for a person who has quilted a bunch to be able to do it on your own. I did watch the tutorial a few times to absorb what was going on, and then I committed to cutting out some big bricks of fabric. I adjusted the size to be more amenable to the fat quarter and half yard cuts I had, and away I went. 

It didn't take long, maybe a couple of evenings, to get all of the fabric cut. I used as much of my stack of curated fabrics as I could and then augmented with some Anna Maria Horner scraps and one mustard tree fabric that I don't remember the origins of. It matches those mustard mustangs pretty perfectly. I was doing math on the fly to see how many bricks I would need and about how large the quilt would end up being. My goals were to have something that would use up fabric and be proportional, so I was pretty much making it up as I went along. In terms of fabric placement, I resisted the usual impulse I have to be deliberate. I made myself improvise a bit and just try not to put things near each other that were too similar. And guess what? I didn't die. And it looks great.

In digging through my cabinet for fabric to use for sashing, I found leftovers from an all-white jelly roll that was hiding in the back. What. A. Gift. It was so easy to just piece a bunch together and go to town on sashing the thing. By the time I was done, it was tempting to leave it without more of a border, which is what I usually do. The "modern" look of no borders is generally appealing to me. But. I laid it out on my bed and it was so close to being the perfect size to drape nicely over the sides of my mattress that I decided to go for it. The teal linen was leftover from my shot cotton quilt and I found a floral print that I remember buying yardage of thinking "I'll use this as a quilt back, or something. It's on sale and it's pretty.". I debated adding the more 'traditional' looking fabric with the more tribal/geometric mix I had, but it actually worked out pretty great since there were a few florals thrown in there anyway. Mixing the two also makes it feel a bit more bohemian to me, which I like. 

I'm really proud of how it all works together without having been a designer's collection. How did I have all of these great things in my stash?? The top measures 84"x96" and it's going to be epic. I'm pretty sure I will finish it on my machine with the wavy preset stitch pattern. I'm not sure what thread color to use yet, but I have some time to mull it over because I don't have a great backing fabric at the moment. It took me just under a week to work this up, and it feels like a great way to start this year's creative adventures. 

gentle reintroduction

I took stock of my sewing room recently. I have a lot of quilt tops. Like - a lot! They are all neatly hung in the closet waiting their turn out of the way, but they do feel "in the way" mentally. Whenever I think of starting a new sewing project, I feel them staring out at me suggesting that I might consider finishing something first. And so we baste. 

I already had batting measured and cut for this quilt top, and the piece is on the smaller side compared to some of the other things in there, so it felt like a gentle reintroduction to sandwich and baste just this one. 

I fell in love all over again with the design and the rainbow of colors. It was fun to see all the bits of fabrics from projects-gone-by and to remember how proud I was of myself when I had the gumption to actually cut and organize all of those rectangles. 

I might not know how I want to quilt it yet, but getting it to this point feels like an accomplishment and a significant toe dip back into this room after a long hiatus. 

quilt in a week

My cousin is having a baby soon, and mom wisely suggested I sit down in my sewing room and try to make a quilt. The creativity hasn't been moving too well for a long time and the stash cabinet has been neglected, but it was fun to sift through and find some beautiful things. 

This fabric was an extra from an order at the height of the pandemic (from Hawthorn Threads maybe?). It's quite a nice, thicker weight cotton with just a small amount of sheen and was meant to be a pre-printed pattern to cut out to make kitschy masks. Well, I didn't do that since I had a lot made already, but I did like the prints so it got folded up and stashed. 

It was relatively quick work to cut things out, rearrange, and sew them back together in simple patchwork style. The colors are really classy together, so I had to add these quirky kitties on the back to lighten up the mood a bit, and I used a really pretty pink, gold, and gray feather print for the binding. 

Quilt fort

January is finishing up and so am I. This fun project came as a special request from my brother for my nephew. I had a lot of fun playing with fabrics on this one.... so much character, literal and figurative.

The challenge was “hey can you make like a hanging thing I can put around my desk so the little guy has a hidden room down there?” Like a quilt fort? Yes, yes I can. Basically I made a short, wide quilt that is long enough to wrap around the dimensions of the desk he had in mind and a couple inches shy of the height from desktop to floor. I sent some sticky Velcro tape along with it so he could customize where the anchors were based on the obstacles/potential anchor spots on the desk architecture. 

Serendipitously, I had a couple of Star Wars prints sitting in the cabinet: one colorful print that I just looove and one black and white Mandalorian print that Mom recently found. Hurrah for the remnants bin at Joann’s! I pulled a bunch of fabrics from my scrap pile that I thought coordinated well with the retro rainbow and hemmed and hawed until I had a good combination. Of course leftover Minions had to make it in there, and I even got to use an orphan block from a really cool quilt I made a long time ago for a wedding present (that red and yellow patchwork). 

For the pattern I decided I really wanted to pull something from one of the many quilting books and magazines I have on my shelves. Not that I’ll stick with this intent, but I’m hoping to work out of my hard copy books and patterns more this year both for sewing as well as knitting. We’ll see how it goes. The pattern I chose was out of Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters. I modified it a bit to serve the dimensions I needed and the fabric on hand, and I changed up a couple of the squares to be solids as opposed to square-in-a-square, but the inspiration was definitely from the book. I added (what else?) linen to the top and bottom to make up the height I needed as well as to serve as a bit of a visual frame and a fun yellow polka dot print to the ends to make it long enough. 

I thought for a hot second about making a second pieced panel for the back and then thought better of it. I have FINALLY used up all but a small rectangle or two of this green swirly print. It started out life as a duvet cover from Ikea and has been extremely useful in many projects since it was retired to my fabric stash. Don’t get rid of your old duvets, people. You obviously loved the print/design/colors when you bought it and there’s so much fabric there! As long as they are still in decent, non pilled, non gross state of course. 

Quilting and binding went along uneventfully, especially since I got those little clips to hold on the binding as I sew (which you can see in the picture above). I swear I don’t hate binding as much as my face suggests. For the quilting I echoed one of the prints in the quilt, a navy with waves of dots, and did the preprogrammed wave pattern from my machine. The front got orange to pop on that retro Star Wars print and the back got yellow. Look at the Darth Vader and Storm Trooper heads. Isn’t that awesome? I know. 

I’m really happy that my brother thought to ask me to make this. It’s always fun to make for other people but it was especially fun to make something that was actually requested!

omg it’s under the tree

Approximately one million nine hundred and seventy two stitches later, it’s done! Last time I left this, it was August and I had plenty of time until we put the trees up. Ha! The stack of hexies definitely hung around in my “to do” basket until at least early December. 

The issue I was having was this: I was feeling much too lazy to hand stitch them all together, but I didn’t think that zigzagging along all the seams would look very good, even if I used gray thread. Soooo. They sat. And sat. And sat some more. I think the fact that we actually had the trees up and last year’s (perfectly fine) tree skirt was under the little tree upstairs was what got me going. So the next many evenings and afternoons were spent whip stitching these all together. I finished one afternoon when Mom and I were in the studio and she snapped this picture.

As I went along, I had to refer to a photo of the whole thing put together because I decided to go with the completely mixed up version, and that’s much harder to remember what goes where. I used hand quilting thread and a quilting between to stitch and used a simple whip stitch, just as if I were doing English paper piecing. The cream thread is visible on the back, but not on the front and that’s where it matters most. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. To be honest, when I finished it (under the wire) I thought it looked too small and was pretty bummed. But it’s a perfect fit under our little tree that we put on the blanket chest. And it’s kitten approved! It took him a few days to want to sit on it though, I think all the prints kind of blew his mind. 

Holiday quilt

Of course one of the first places Mom and I capered off to when she got here was the fabric store. Despite being the middle of fall, there was already lots of holiday fabric out on the shelves. They had a super good deal on the flannel prints, so I couldn’t resist grabbing a yard or two (or three...). 

 

I’ve been admiring some blankets I’ve seen that are buffalo plaid using related prints. This blanket is an homage to those I’ve seen. The front worked up very quickly, as you’d imagine. It took me some time to want to sit down and sort out a back for it. I do like what I came up with though! I used up the rest of the flannel prints, a few more pieced square panels I had left over, and then raided the cabinet for some red and neutral fabrics to finish off the size I needed. I especially like that bit of corduroy in the corner. 

It’s a holiday blanket, but I wanted to keep it red with neutrals rather than including the green. The plain squares are the linen blend I just love using in all my work, and I used some red and black jelly roll strips from a holiday roll I picked up at some point this season to bind. It never dawned on me just how EASY using jelly rolls as binding is. Save that little nugget of wisdom for later! The quilting was simple grids outlining the seams. Every time I sit down to quilt now I feel like I should be practicing more free motion, but honestly that is going to have to wait a while until I’m willing to use it on a bigger piece like this. 

The front only took a yard of the black/red camping print, a yard of the linen, and two yards of that adorable woodland creatures print. The flannel was quite easy to work with. I wonder why we don’t think of using it for quilting more often? There are so many cute prints. (I may find out when this is washed....) So, next time there’s a silly good sale on flannel prints at the fabric store I have a great excuse to pick up a yard or so of some irresistible ones. 

Halloween catch up

Ha! Well predictably since my folks got here I have been spending much less time on the computer. That doesn't mean that I haven't been making things - in fact we've done lots of crafty things (including some festive Halloween masks!) in the last couple months. I'm going to round up the Halloween bits in this one post and then the rest of the things are wips that I can write about as the holidays approach. 

First things first, I finally finished my set of spooky pillows. These were really fun to make and they were good opportunities for playing with some more complex quilting. First the large ones. The one on the left got a geometric square spiral treatment across the whole pillow while the one on the right got some nested diamonds in the big arms of the X's. It definitely takes a lot longer than just straight line quilting but it looks really cool when all is said and done. 

I backed those pillows with this very appropriate print from Ruby Star Society. I'm not sure it was meant to be a Halloween print but it certainly plays the part well. It also works really well with the dusty blue zippers I used. An unexpected color given the holiday, yes, but that bluish purple moon pulls it all together and makes it look like it belongs. I've got just a little bit more of this print and I can already say it's going to be a precious commodity.

The set of smaller pillows look a little more "fall" and a little less "Halloween". They got a lot of different free motion quilting treatments on them. Unfortunately I was lazy and didn't put a back on the quilt sandwich when I did it (i.e. just the block on batting, no third piece of fabric) and I think the texture suffered. Instead of pulling the fabric down from the front, the threads just sunk into the batting from the back to relieve the tension. 

Kind of a bummer, but again fun to practice different shapes and swirls - and to realize how difficult it is!! I had a bear of a time getting my curves to look nice. Somehow I thought doing all those fun wavy lines and circles would be easy. Psh. Once I survived the quilting, these got a heavy gray canvas backing and some bright orange zippers. 

Possibly my favorite Halloween project was this wreath. Mom and I were out at Joann's and couldn't resist the pretty fall picks they had on sale. Well, we picked up a handful of those and a grapevine wreath and had some fun. It didn't take long at all to get this together and I looooove it. It was a nice addition to the decor upstairs

Along with our pack of pillows, our house had Halloween covered.

week twenty six

I really got on a roll last week with the Halloween decor. We have plenty of festive decor already but I LOVE fall, so what’s the harm in a few more pillow covers? In the same vein as the piece I already completed, I took some more inspiration from quilting magazines for many of these blocks. It was really fun to try out some new to me blocks. I especially enjoyed making the pinwheel in the bottom row. 

Four of these blocks were intended to make just one more large pillow cover: the leaf, the pinwheel, the churn dash, and one of the blocks with the orange corner stones that is in the large gray four patch. I wanted it to be scrappy looking but when I put all of them together it just didn’t look right. So I pulled out the two “less Halloween” looking patches and made another couple of blocks - the two with the crow and skull fabrics. Turned out the gray spider ones didn’t look as good with the black bordered ones, so I played around with just some big scraps and the rest of my gray spider fabric to end up with the improvised blocks in the big gray four patch. It was fun! And look how these things multiply! I’ve decided to make the pinwheel and churn dash into covers for smaller pillows I’ve got lying around - they’ll be good throughout fall I think and not just Halloween. 

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the other two blocks. I thought about pillows, but I might just keep them around to think on a bit longer. The black frame was a nice way to showcase that big crow and skull print, but I just love this leaf block. Originally I was going to use the purple background as the leaf but I’m glad I changed my mind and used the cats instead. So cute. 

week twenty four

This afternoon I started on some improvisational fabric play. I pulled out my bag of “precuts” that I made out of my scrap jars and went to town. I mostly made a mess at first until I landed on a set of 2.5” squares that I liked together. These are some of my favorite colors all pulled together into that Amy Butler floral print. It pairs very nicely with polka dots and penguins!

I saw a block online a few weeks back that I really liked. I decided to try to recreate what I saw using the pieces I had, no final size in mind. It turns out that you can definitely make a square in a square block using a 2.5” center piece as well as 2.5” squares cut in half for the edges. I read around a bit to see what different tutorials suggested and most had very specific, different sizes to use for the center vs the edge pieces. But I’m lazy. In the end just tried it out to see what would happen. All I had to do was trim a little bit when they were finished. It worked great. They were just a little over 3.25” and when everything was sewn together the block ended up being just shy of 9 inches square. The seams are crisp, the points match up, and it looks fantastic. I’m not sure this would work as well with bigger squares, there might be way more waste. I potentially landed on just the right size starting squares to make it work out ok. Dunno. 

I really liked how the first block turned out, so I decided more were in order. As I worked on my penguins and florals I noticed that the colors were slant rhyme complementary (red/green) and so I decided I would do a couple more blocks in the other complementary pairs. This block below is also from all 2.5” squares and is fashioned after a picture of a pillow I had saved in my Pinterest inspiration boards. I don’t like it as much as I like the first one, but for now I’m going to keep it around. I think I want less of the lighter colors if I’m going to use them together. Between the white and the peach print it feels a bit washed out when sitting with my first block. It is about a half inch smaller in dimension, too, so will be more difficult to put together into the same piece. Still, I stuck with my initial plan of not worrying about finished size to keep the freedom of playing intact. 

This last one turned out super cool. I actually was on the phone with a friend as I played around with squares and colors and layout for this one. I even sewed it while we talked. I started with some simple four patches from 2.5” squares and then from there made the other two blocks starting with large HSTs made from some 5” squares. I wanted more interest, so I started snowballing corners and using waste HSTs from that to do the same to the other side and ended up with two awesome looking blocks. They look hard, but totally weren’t - remember I was on the phone and randomly making decisions while doing this! When I sewed the four together I trimmed up the four patches to match the size of my improvised diagonals and that makes them look less symmetrical. I totally lucked out that the magenta triangles match up well with the two inner squares to make a cohesive shape. And I love it. It surprisingly turned out 9 inches square, the same as my first block. I think I may be making a different orange and blue one... 

What to do with the fruits of my labor? Well, the photo for the first block was part of a tutorial on how to connect blocks that have already been layered and quilted. I think I’d like to that with these blocks, too. They will be fun small pieces for me to work on my quilting skills. I want to play with some shapes other than straight lines and see how I can use different shapes to enhance the block designs rather than just using an all over design like I have before. Then I’ll join them together. I think a 3 block strip for a wall hanging might look pretty nice in my studio. Then it can serve as a reminder that a little bit of unplanned sewing can be satisfying, too.