Alisa

Scrappy Trip-Along

I have enough projects half-done that I really ought not take on another one. But we all know how that works, right? The Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt has been flying around, and I’m afraid I caught the bug big-time.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out photographs on the flickr group, or the tag “scrappytripalong” on Instagram. (In fact, even if you do know what it is, go check out those photos, because, WOW, are there some great blocks and quilts going together! I love how very different this quilt ends up from different people’s stashes.)

The idea for this pattern is basically to use up scraps — you cut strips 2 1/2″ x 16″ and put them together more or less at random. The pattern is really quite ingenious. I’ve really only just finished cutting, so I’ve only made a couple of strip sets so far: I’m going to do at least ten, and then pull out the iron and cut them into proper strips and make up squares.

Compared to a lot of people out there, I haven’t been quilting for all that long. And I tend to cut fabric as carefully (obsessively?) as I can, so I went through all my scraps pretty fast and didn’t have enough strips cut for the size quilt I wanted.

So I went through my “mistake” fabrics — you know the ones, the fabrics that looked great on the shelf or in the picture online, that showed up and made you wonder what you were thinking. Then I went through my fat quarter box and pulled a ton of Jo-Ann fat quarters that I bought on sale a few years ago, to so “something” with. And then, with absolutely perfect timing, two scrap packs I bought before I was even thinking about this quilt arrived in the mail, so I cut those all up and added them to the count!

In the end, I cut kind of a lot of fabric.

Why so many? I could tell you that it’s because Brenda, of Pink Castle Fabrics did the math to tell how many strips to cut for various sizes of quilts, and you need 336 strips for a queen-sized quilt. I could tell you that! I’m certainly planning on a queen-sized quilt.

But, um. I kind of just got caught up in the joy of hacking up scraps. I also tossed in every once in a while something that I really do like, so that I’ll be able to look at the quilt and find squares that I love hiding in all the scrappiness.

Now, this quilt thrives on randomness, and I’m really bad at random. So I cheated. I divided up my fabrics into color groups.

In case you’re wondering, I cut 74 Pink/Red/Orange, 74 Yellow/Green, 75 Blue/Purple, 38 Dark Browns, 40 Blacks, 71 Light Neutrals, and 20 OMGWTF ALL THE COLORS strips.

With this pre-color-selected setup, it’s really easy: all I have to do is make sure that each block contains one black or brown, and something from each other pile. Or two from one pile, if I’m feeling in a blue and purple mood. It makes putting together the blocks really easy for me, which it would not be at all if I had to pull from a giant pile on the floor.

I’m trying one new thing for this project: I’m using leaders and enders. I’ve got more than enough 2 1/2″ squares, between my own scraps and some mini-charm-packs I picked up from FatQuarterShop.

I’m using a shortcut for those, too: I’ve divided them into “light” and “dark” and made three piles of each. When I need to pick up another two squares, I match up whatever’s on top of those piles with whatever else is on top and looks best. So far, I’m getting quite a few of them, and it’s really satisfying. Not to mention, not having to hold down the thread ends every time I start a new strip? SO NICE.

I’ve still got a few Christmas presents that haven’t made it up here yet, and a finished quilt to show off on Friday, if I can get decent pictures between now and then.

Gifted and unblogged…

Though my semester was really pretty crazy, I did manage to finish a couple of other projects either in snatches of borrowed time or in mid-December, once my papers were all in.

The one I’m going to talk about here today was another Mabel Messenger Bag, which I put together using Perk Me Up fabrics — I saw them over the summer and instantly knew they were made for a friend of mine who loves all things chocolate and coffee. This collection? Pretty much perfect for her. She asked for a bag she could use for her knitting, and liked the Mabel bag I made over the summer:

This bag is altered in a couple of ways. One side of the bag is a simple piece of Kona Chocolate, with a large print on it as an exterior pocket. The magnetic snap attaches inside the pocket, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but … well, I probably wouldn’t do it again.

The other side is a patchwork of the various different fabrics in the Perk Me Up collection.

One problem I had with my first Mabel bag is that the strap slides a lot. For this bag I made two changes to help it stay in place. I made it scrappy, with seams that add a little bit of body to the strap every few inches, and I made it just a smidge wider than the pattern called for.

The inside has a simple unzipped pocket, just the right size for knitting needles, scissors, crochet hooks, etc. It’s going to be used as a knitting bag, so I made sure it went to its new home with some yarn and a set of DPNs. (The green blob is a lace shawl, which will show up here as soon as I block it. Don’t hold your breath: I’m terrible about blocking things.)

I really enjoyed making this pattern for a second time: it makes for a very smart bag, and I think I managed a couple of the details like the snap and the bag’s strap a little better this time than I did last time. It was a lot of fun to revisit the pattern.

Baby K’s Quilt: Finished!

Last … July? I started a quilt for my neighbors, who were having a baby in late August. I chose Baby K’s Quilt, by Audrey of HotPinkQuilts, which she featured during the her spot on the Lets Get Aquainted blog hop organized by Beth of Plum and June. I had high hopes of finishing it and giving it to them as a baby shower present. Then the semester began, and all my best intentions, well, we know what happens to good intentions.

Well, I finished it just before Christmas. Finally! This is what it looks like:

I used scraps for nearly all of the postage stamp squares, though I fussy-cut some 1001 Peeps and the little blue pigs. The green is Kona Clover, the stripe is Hello Pilgrim.

I’m really pleased with how the postage stamp squares turned out:

I free-motion quilted the squares using Elizabeth Hartman’s orange peel pattern. My peels aren’t quite as plump and pretty as hers, but I’m not unhappy with them.

I quilted the borders on each side of the seam, which was, well, not quite as much fun as the orange peels, but I’m happier with how it turned out — though I need to learn how to adjust my stitch length better next time.

I waffled on the backing for a little while, and finally settled on fleece: I talked to friends this summer who had a little one, and their favorite part of the quilt their mother had made was the soft fuzzy backing. As a bonus, it shows the quilting well:

So that’s one of the things I started last summer and finished in December!

Linking up with Thank Goodness It’s FINISHED Friday. Because, really? I’m so glad this one is done.

WiP Wednesday, January 2013

New Wave quilt:
I’m using the Sunday Best bundle from Pink Castle Fabrics, but I replaced the two white prints with blue and grey, because I didn’t want white tumblers framed by white sashing.

(I promise, those ones that look white are actually light blue or light grey: I can’t find my real camera, and an iPod can only do so much…)
To-Do:
-Piece tumblers and sashing into strips
-Piece together strips into quilt top
-Figure out a backing (dark blue?) using extra tumblers
-baste, quilt & bind

Strip and Flip Quilt
I altered this one a little bit — I cut the strips 2 1/2″ wide instead of 2″ and I was very careful sewing the strips together, to keep as much length as possible, so it’s a bit larger than the pattern suggests. The cat is thoroughly unimpressed by it, but I’m looking forward to finding my camera and taking proper pictures of it.

To-Do:
-buy binding fabric, bind the quilt, figure out who on earth it’s for.

Simple Math:
This one hasn’t gone much of anywhere since I last posted, because its blocks are sitting on the back of my sewing cart, and apparently out of sight is out of mind. Oops.
To-Do:
-finish trimming blocks to 6″ square
-find sashing fabric
-baste, quilt & bind

Kitchen Window:
This one has only seen a little bit of progress since the last time I posted, too, but I’ve got parts of it halfway done — enough that the next time I have black thread on the machine I can start piecing blocks together to see what they look like. I think part of the reason I keep putting this one off is because it’s for a queen-sized quilt, and the idea of that large a project is a bit daunting. Still, just a step at a time, and I’ll get there eventually.
To-Do:
-sort out the second half of the cut fabrics into groups for individual blocks
-cut the rest of the black fabric for frames
-cut the rest of the green fabric for background parts
-start constructing blocks
-fiddle with layout
-make back
-baste, quilt & bind

2012 Year in Review

1. FinalWhole, 2. FQ-Close, 3. Front_garden, 4. Full_front, 5. BlueBlack-staggered, 6. Henrietta1, 7. Notebooks, 8. Sarah’s potholders (front), 9. Black bag 1

In 2012 I started quilting seriously, started blogging, met a whole bunch of really lovely people and learned tons from advice and tutorials and quilt-alongs, and finished a lot of small projects and several quilts, including one that isn’t featured in this mosaic.

In 2013, I’ll be joining the Inspire circle of do. Good Stitches (which I’m really looking forward to) and trying my best to keep up with the Pile O’Fabric Skill Builder Block of the Month in hopes of learning how to sew curves at the very least. And ideally, I’ll be a little bit better at keeping up with this blog during the spring semester than I was this fall.

Coming up for a breath!

I hope everyone is having a happy and relaxing holiday season! Things are going well here in Brooklyn, and I finally have enough space to breathe, and to post again. I’ve missed it.

I’ve been in an absolute rush all fall, between a full course load and finishing my MA thesis and a part-time assistantship (and the 12-hr/week commute doesn’t really help, though I read on the train). There just wasn’t much space for quilting, or for much of anything else, really: I sort of disappeared for a while there from all aspects of my life other than SCHOOL.

Thankfully the semester is now over, and all I have to do between now and January 13th is finish editing my MA thesis. (Hush, you. That totally counts as a vacation.)

I did manage to get some knitting done, because it’s more portable than quilting, and socks fit well in my bag for those times when I’m just too tired to read for school while I’m on the subway. I made these socks for my mother for Christmas:

And since the semester has been over, I’ve been able to get a little more sewing in, which I’ll post about soon.

Blog hiatus

As is perhaps obvious, the return to school has left me completely unable to keep up with this blog. It’s not even a question of having time to make posts: I don’t even have time to quilt, most weeks.

Once the semester ends, in late December, I hope to pick things up again. For now I miss having the time to comment and interact with folks: it feels very lonely.

—

On a different topic: I’m in New York City, which was surprisingly hard hit by Hurricane (Superstorm?) Sandy. I was very lucky: our house was untouched, and we didn’t so much as lose power. Since then, we’ve given blood and bought supplies for the shelter near our house, and signed up to work shifts, and been very, very grateful to have been spared and to be able to go on with our everyday lives with so little disruption.

But thousands of other people were not so fortunate, and the city is looking to try to house something like 40,000 families until their houses can be reconstructed or repaired. Not to mention the more than 100,000 people who are still without power, just in the five boroughs of New York City.

There is apparently a send-quilts-to-victims project, if you have the time to participate.

And if you’re financially able, the Red Cross is in desperate need of donations to be able to continue helping victims. Even $5 helps, if enough people kick in what they can. Thousands of people are in need of drinking water and food, and the Red Cross is doing a great job of getting to areas that were hard-hit.

My best wishes to anyone hit hard by Sandy, and I hope the recovery effort continues long and strong, because this isn’t something for which there will be a quick fix.

EZ Dresden Challenge

Wow, has the beginning of the semester swamped me. Now that I have a full load of coursework in addition to my MA thesis (and a part-time assistantship), well, I have a little less time for quilting. Knitting socks is going well, though even that has slowed down: I need to read on the subway, instead of knitting.

That said, there are a few things I want to point out, because the Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild’s EZ Dresden Challenge has ended, and they’ve got link-ups of a huge variety of excellent projects.

Mini-quilts are here.

Innovative quilts are here.

Traditional quilts are here.

Go check them out — you’ll be astonished at the variety of quilts people constructed using the very same ruler.