Alisa

Small projects & HST Quilt-along

On Wednesday, instead of banging more Latin into my head, I made another bag using Jeni’s tutorial on In Color Order. I added pockets to this one, too — I love the pockets. I think the next time I make one I’ll use a different color for the edge of the pocket than I used on the main body of the bag: I keep imagining how a white stripe there (or even maybe a red or other colorful one) might look. I suppose I’ll just have to try again.

The lining of this bag is also black, as is the backing of the pocket, so keeping all the pieces straight while I was sewing was definitely important!

It’s a nice size for holding all kinds of things — including sewing and quilting tools. I may use it this weekend when I go away for a few days, to be sure I can work on something in the evenings. See how nicely the rotary cutter fits?

As for what to put in the bag, well, I’ve got that all planned out.

I’ll be spending the weekend with my family in CT, in a house that has solar electricity. The system works well (and much better than when I was a kid, when turning on one light meant every other light in the house dimmed!), but it’s still not sturdy enough for much hard work, such as ironing, for example. So I prepped in advance: I cut all the half-square triangles:

And then I ironed all of them flat and ready to be trimmed.

You’ll see that they’re all laid out on little cardboard squares with months on them. That’s because I’ve decided that I’m doing two of each block for the Half-Square Triangle Quilt-Along. I’ve already made one each of January through May (though May was fussy, and I haven’t fixed it properly just yet), so there’s one of each of them, and two for June. Some of the blocks are really fun to make, and I like the idea of being able to put 24 12.5″ blocks together into something with blocks on the front and on the back, or something with matching pillow-cases. Or both: I haven’t done all the math yet to see how they could go together.

Hopefully I’ll have time over the weekend to trim all the blocks square and sew them (at least one block’s worth!) together, and then I’ll have pictures for next week.

A little bag, but a not-so-little choice of fabric

I’m considering submitting this little bag to the next round of the My Precious Quilt-Along, because it took a pretty ridiculous effort to get these fabrics off the shelf. “Surely I can use another fat quarter or something less pretty!” my mind wailed. “Not those ones!”

But, no. These are two of the fabrics from Lizzy House’s 1001 Peeps collection, which I bought when I first started quilting, and which I’ve been having a hard time getting myself to cut into.

The My Precious QAL is brilliant: it got me to actually use the fabrics I bought because I like them, instead of just staring at them in the hopes that they’ll stay where they are forever! I’m pretty sure I didn’t buy them to have them gather dust, no matter how much the little grabby-hands part of me may disagree.

I like the ways the fabrics work together, and I’m probably going to end up making another bag from this pattern. This one is already on its way to a friend, and it was a lot of fun to put together. The pattern is by Jeni of In Color Order, and she posted recently about a modification to add pockets. Both sets of instructions were beautifully clear and easy to follow.

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In non-quilting news, knitting on the subway has netted me half a sock this week, going to and from classes (in Manhattan) and study sessions (in the Bronx), but that’s about all. I’m taking two Latin classes this summer, one in June (classical Latin) and one in July (medieval Latin), and this past week I’ve spent what feels like a lot of time studying for my Latin final exam, which is this evening. I just hope it’s enough.

And hopefully the instructor will give us Cicero or Nepos, not Caesar. Wish me luck!

The Let’s Get Acquainted Blog Hop is going strong.

The Let’s Get Acquainted Blog Hop continues! For links to all the participants, click here, or click the button on my sidebar. If you don’t know what it is, definitely check it out: it’s a great opportunity to find other quilting blogs, and to meet other people in the community, not to mention learn something new and come away with great ideas and inspiration.

The Advice for New Bloggers Series continues today, with great advice from Angela of Cut to Pieces.

For this week’s lineup of bloggers, who will be posting on the 26th and 28th, a link party and a giveaway, click the button below.

And, hey, if you get a chance? Thank Beth for organizing this whole shebang!

Mixtape quilt: zig-zag free motion quilting

I have the house to myself this weekend, which means I was free to set up my sewing machine on the kitchen table for Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday where I’d have plenty of space to move the quilt around and manipulate it, in addition to the benefit of being able to sit at a normal height table. (My usual setup is on a coffee table, which isn’t quite ideal for long stretches of sewing.)

I made my way through 1/6th of the quilt before my free-motion quilting foot snapped my needle, and I spent the next few blocks of it keeping a sharp eye on the foot, as it gradually got chipped away by the needle going up and down. I had to cut away part of the clear foot to keep the needle from breaking again, which worked for only a little while longer.

Then the foot skewed even further, and it became clear that this just wasn’t going to work: the shaft of it was cracked.

I got approximately halfway through the quilt, rolling it up on one side as I went along.

But I only got about halfway through the quilt before the foot broke entirely. I won’t be buying this brand again: it was a waste of time and money. (For the record, if anyone else wants to avoid it, it was this one, which I bought on Amazon.com)

Still, I’m pretty happy with the quilting so far: it looks like I basted well enough to avoid puckering. The recipient asked for zig-zag lines, which I think are working out all right. Seeing as it’s the first time I’ve ever free-motion quilted anything, I’m not unhappy with it — just with the photography today.

Conferencing is tiring!

Things have been quiet because I’ve spent the last four days at the RBMS pre-conference, which is the annual conference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association. (I’m in grad school for medieval history right now, but I just finished library school, and I want to be a librarian, not a professor.)

There were panels and discussions and round-tables and plenary sessions and a technology petting zoo and a booksellers’ display and receptions and time to go out for lunch and dinner with colleagues, and almost 400 other people who think that rare books and special collections libraries and materials are the best thing ever. It was a blast.

I noticed one or two other people knitting, but mine never made its way out of the hotel room: there was just too much going on!

Now that I’m waiting in the airport, I’m knitting armwarmers for a friend. When I finish those (and I will) I’ll go back to a second sock for myself. Both projects were selected on the basis of being very small and portable, and easy enough to knit on a plane without needing a pattern.

What kinds of projects do you bring with you when you travel?

Smalls and a potential project

I made two other little pouches last week, and while I’d love to say that I intentionally made one of each type, the truth is that I went on autopilot for one of them and ended up with another little flat pouch instead of the boxy pouch I was going for. Both are appallingly pink, but they match the zippers I had on hand, which was the goal.

I also cut scraps for another set of coasters following this tutorial from In Color Order. They’re all a little bit different, because I cut them from my scrap bags, but I think they’ll turn out all right. They sort of match the potholders I forgot to photograph, and they’re going to the same home.

Finally, I think I’ve picked out my next large quilting project (which I’m not allowing myself to start cutting until I’ve quilted the Mixtape Quilt) — I’m fond of the Urban Cabin pattern, and I realized that I have two sets of fabric that might work nicely with that pattern:

I’d alternate blue Ls with brown striped blocks with brown Ls with blue striped blocks, with a white background. What do you all think? Is it too subdued and/or boring, or do you think it might work?

Why all the small projects? Oh! That’s why.

I’ve figured out why I’m making lots of little projects right now! It’s because the next thing I have to do on the Mixtape quilt is actually quilt it, and I’m a bit nervous about that. It doesn’t help that I filled five bobbins with what I thought was the white thread I’ll be quilting with before realizing that it was off-white. Ooops.

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In the meantime, on Monday I made two little pouches, following instructions cadged together from a couple of tutorials, one of which is the Box Pouch Tutorial by The Plaid Scottie. It has fantastic instructions and pictures, and is very, very clear. I didn’t have any interfacing, so I quilted together two layers of fabric and some batting, as I saw in another tutorial whose link I have unfortunately now completely lost track of.

The first one I made is not quite what I was going for. Unfortunately, I didn’t look at the tutorial to see which way to fold the corners, so instead of being a little box, this is a little flat pouch. Oooops. It’s still kind of cute, though.

The lining is a fat quarter from my local fabric shop’s bin, and the outside is Cosmo Cricket’s Circa 1934 Garbo, in cream. I love the way this fabric looks, all typewriter keys and subdued colors and red.

That one was so much fun that I made another one:

The outside is Parson Grey’s Curious Nature, Universe, which I picked up at Purl Soho a month or so ago when I went in looking for a quilting ruler. (Isn’t that always how it happens? Fat quarters seem to just jump out at me and beg to come home, no matter what I intended on buying in the first place.)

I really like the way the pattern of it looks, and I’m a lot happier with this little pouch than I was with the little flat one.

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I made ten little sachets for my sister for her birthday, and managed to only take one picture of them. These are six little teabag-shaped sachets that I made by following Mademoiselle Chaos’s tutorial. Thankfully, she thought they were cute. :)

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Finally, there’s a new button on the sidebar! I’ve joined the Let’s Get Acquainted Blog Hop! It’s a great idea, organized by Plum and June where lots of new quilting bloggers introduce themselves to each other / anyone who chooses to tune in, according to a master schedule.

So go take a look! It’s going on from now until November — there are tons of us, apparently!

Something of a streak

I’ve been on something of a streak recently, making potholders from Jeni B’s tutorial.

I made two blue and two green for friends I visited in Michigan in late May, and boxed them off and shipped them before I realized I hadn’t photographed them. So you’ll have to trust me when I say they came out well. Hopefully they’ll get lots of use.

Then I made a pair for the friend I went to the MA Sheep & Wool fair with, because she liked the blue and green ones, whose loops I was sewing up when I visited her.

I used three different sizes of dots: largest on the back, smallest on the binding. I didn’t have any brown thread, so I quilted them in white. I’m not sure how I like it, but hopefully the recipient won’t be quite as much of a perfectionist as I am.

I made a second pair for someone I don’t think that I’ve ever met. I got a package in the mail about two weeks ago, with no idea what on earth it was. I sometimes half-forget about having ordered fabric, so that getting the package is a pleasant surprise, but I always recognize the package when it arrives. This package, though, was a complete mystery.

I opened it and found a book on watermarks in Rembrandt’s prints, and a note from one of my mother’s former co-workers! Apparently she ran into my mother in the city and thought I might like the book. She’s right — I love it. It has wonderful photographs of the watermarks in the paper Rembrandt used, and all kinds of information about printmaking and paper in his time period. I’m a complete old book geek, so this is excellent.

So I made a pair of black and white potholders for her, as a thank you. I’m going to mail them to her along with a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness, because apparently she’s been getting into early sci-fi recently.

I particularly like the back, because the print is very clear: