Knit-Spin-Quilt

Prepping for the school year

I’ve been making notebook covers for my various courses, using Rachel’s tutorial at Stitched in Color.

It turns out that this pattern is perfect for my long-cut quarter-yard NYC prints from the City Quilter.

Here’s a fuzzy instagram picture of the first one:

The next one will be black and white using the skyscraper print from City Quilter, in the same design as this one, and the third will be burgundy and yellow/gold, to match the colors of the Plantagenet kings. That one will be all red on the outside except for a thin vertical band of yellow at the edges, and the inside flaps will be yellow, with a pocket the right size for index cards.

I tweaked the measurements for the tutorial, because I’m using 8 1/2×10″ spiral-bound notebooks instead of composition books. I cut my cover to 12.75″x32.5″ because the notebooks are a little bit larger, and followed the tutorial otherwise, while adapting the pocket flaps to be the right depth for my notebooks. It’s a great tutorial!

Baby K’s Quilt (& WIP Wednesday)

First off, I find it hilarious that Audrey, of Hot Pink Quilts called this quilt Baby K’s Quilt, because the baby I’m making for it? His last name starts with a K! It fits perfectly!

Part of the challenge for me on this one was to work entirely from stash: I’ve got a lot of fabric, and I really need to use it! And as much as shopping for more fabric is fun, I really can’t justify it right now, with the volume of stuff I already have.

Luckily, I was able to cut nearly all of the little squares of it from scrap!

The only ones that didn’t come from scrap are the little black and white Daiwabo elephants, the blue pigs and the 1001 Peeps fussy-cut people and horses. Everything else was leftover from previous projects — and I’ve been cutting scraps into 2.5″ squares for a little while now, which was a big help.

The borders were a quandary. I have a lot of black and a lot of white, but neither of those says “baby” to me — particularly not white, since, oops, stains! I had a yard of Kona Kelly green that had no particular intended use, and two half-yard cuts of the green stripe from Hello Pilgrim, which (when I stood back and looked at my stash for a moment) started hollering “baby quilt!” at me. I think the two of them together should work nicely!

There was one oops: I cut three strips of the Hello Pilgrim stripe before I remembered that I wanted the stripes to go lengthwise, not width-wise. Ooops. Now I have a few strips of 3.5″ wide green stripes. I’m sure I’ll find a use for it eventually.

That reminded me that I’m not certain how I’m going to make sure that the stripes in the pinwheels line up properly with the stripes in the borders (problem with a directional patterned fabric!) but I suppose I have time to fiddle with that. And if it’s not perfect, it’s not perfect.

I’m going to use a half-yard cut of an adorable Japanese train-line print for the back. Zoom in on the picture above and see what the various stops are called: I love it. I think it’s the perfect print for a NYC baby.

I was worried that I would find piecing the little squares together too tedious, but it turns out I really enjoy it! Neither of the two blocks I’ve finished so far are perfect, but they’re still really cute, if I do say so myself.

I’m really looking forward to getting to work on this more! It’s been loads of fun so far. I’m going to free-motion quilt the little blocks with Elizabeth Hartmann’s Orange Peel pattern, but I haven’t decided what to do about the borders just yet.

As for other projects, I’ve completed my second June and July blocks for the HST Block of the Month Quilt Along, and one August block. I pieced them all on the Singer 66, and one of them came out a little too small, but I can live with that.

The Mabel messenger bag hasn’t really shifted much: I need to fuse the pieces with interfacing, now that it’s arrived in the mail, and start putting it all together. Simple Math has gotten a few more blocks trimmed, but that’s really quite tedious, so they’re not all done yet.

Knitting-wise, I finished one pair of socks, and started another. I’ve still got a pair hanging out on the needles waiting for the cuffs to be finished, which might turn into a TV project, and my enormous baby-blanket-log-cabin project, for which I have to do only two more sections, but of course they’re the largest ones.

Spinning-wise, I’m spinning up a merino/yak blend by Spunky Eclectic in a green-and-brown colorway called Walden’s woods, and I was making really good progress on it during the Olympics — now that I have fewer excuses to sit down in front of the TV, it’s going more slowly.

My (new) sewing space

I just re-organized quite a bit so that all my crafting materials are in one room, and my desk and schoolwork are in another: having the sewing machine next to my computer was too good for procrastination.

I pulled a table and an old TV cart out of the basement, and now one wall of my bedroom looks like this:

(I haven’t found a chair yet. The step-stool works okay for now.)

If you turn to your left while sitting at the table, you see this:

All of my fabric, fiber and yarn in one place. There was some serious tetris-like packing going on while I organized this, and I have a sinking feeling that it’s going to be like packing a suitcase for a trip: on day one, everything fits, but by day three, you can’t shove it all back in no matter how hard you try. So far, though, it’s been great incentive to use what I have and work from stash, because I simply don’t have enough space for more fabric to join me.

The bookshelf below actually holds a lot of books that ought to be in my study, but they fit here, so I have to get up and go get them, if I suddenly need something on Troilus and Criseyde, or on how to date manuscripts, or late medieval literacy rates. The top right shelf is history/biography that’s not related to school: I call it the “shelf of depressing” because it’s all things like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, and a biography of Ernest Shackleton, and 1491, and so on. Interesting stuff, but a lot of lying, betrayal and death, none of which is fictional.

But back to crafting. Here’s a closer view of just the supplies, not the books:

The basic layout is: top row fiber, second row mostly fabric (but some fiber on the right), bottom row mostly knitting stuff (but fabric & books on the left).

There’s very little on those racks that isn’t yarn, fiber or fabric, so I’m using an old TV cart to hold tools & supplies. When I’m not using it, it fits snugly under the table like so:

The cart’s organization is still something of a work-in-progress itself, but it’s working well so far. The top left is a box that holds my rotary cutters and scissors and sewing machine feet, as well as any small random things that I don’t want to have to get up to put away right away. The top left is my sewing kit, with chalk pencils, velcro, binding tape, needles, pins, a pincushion, etc. Behind them is a work-in-progress: my second Mabel bag, which is waiting on the arrival of more fusible interfacing.

On the bottom left, there’s a box that holds my bags of scrap fabric. On the right, there’s a little Lane cedar box. When it opens up, you see:

Some of these are spools I’ve had for years (from well before I knew how to pick thread) and I’m planning on gradually replacing my thread with better quality as it runs out, but for now, I’m using what I have.

The top of the tv cart is where I lay out works-in-progress. The tabletop I’m using as my bench is only about 18″x36″, so the extra space is handy.

Speaking of the tabletop, here’s what it looks like close up. The left side has pieces for my Kitchen Window quilt:

The center is where the rotary cutting mat lives! It has pieces of the Hot Pink Quilts baby quilt I’m making for our downstairs neighbors, who just had a baby boy:

The right is where the sewing machine lives. I move it to the back when I’m cutting, or line it up along the edge of the table. It’s not perfect, but it works!

Overall, I’m pretty happy with it: it makes a distinct space where I can sew and quilt, which doesn’t overlap with my desk at all.

I do have to be careful, though — if I leave the tv cart out, I can’t get into my closet! Gotta love living in NYC.

—
PS: I’m still de-stashing fabric and a little bit of spinning fiber.

EZ-Dresden Mini Quilt

This quilt is my entry in the EZ Dresden Challenge:

I considered trying to do a queen-sized traditional Dresden quilt and then decided that, really, I’d like to come out of August with my sanity intact. So I took the little mini-Dresden medallion I’d made up for practice, added a larger one and some fans, and ended up with this:

I’m pleased that this fabric set worked so nicely together: it was a lot of fun to play with it, and I was really pleased when I could cut out a little teacup and have it be just the right size for the center of the medallion.

I’m proud of the way some of the spokes line up:

Though there are spots where they don’t line up quite as well as I might have hoped:

The fans in the corners aren’t perfect, but I think they came out pretty well:

I’m proud of the way the quilting looks on the back of it, though I’m sorry I didn’t go get more fabric: the seam is more distracting than I expected:

Still, it’s going to hang on a wall (see the little corners?) so I suppose the back won’t get all that much attention:

And one more shot of the whole thing:

Now I have a question for all of you who have made Dresden quilts before: do you find rounded or pointed spokes easier to make? I found the pointed ones much easier than the fans, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to round the edges that I didn’t think of.

WiP Wednesday, 08/08

Last week’s To-Do List was:
Re-organization of space, Mabel Bag, Mini Dresden, Simple Math, Kitchen Window, Knitting, Spinning.

I actually got a good bit done! I re-organized, and now have my sewing machine set up on a table that’s at actual table-height, not coffee-table height. This is very exciting. :) The re-organization resulted in some stash culling: find the things I know I’ll never use here, in a de-stashing sale.

I finished two:
Mabel Bag & Mini Dresden quilt. I’ve already posted about the Mabel bag, and will be posting about the Mini Dresden on Friday.

Some progress on:
Knitting (socks on the subway, hooray!) and spinning (merino/yak while watching the Olympics. Well, while not-watching the Olympic ad-breaks.)

No progress on:
Simple Math blocks still need to be trimmed, Kitchen Window blocks need to be arranged & sashing cut, etc.

New projects:
Since I’ve finished two projects, I can start two more!

1) I’ve cut fabrics for another messenger bag, which will be a knitting bag for a friend. I’m using the Mabel pattern again, but I’ll be adding an interior dividing zipped pocket — wish me luck! I’ve never done this before, but I figure it can’t be impossible to do.

For the exterior, there was a panel print in this fat quarter pack that I simply couldn’t resist: it’s going to be an exterior pocket, so it’s visible.

The other side of the bag was going to be brown, but that’s boring: instead, I’m making a patchwork of these various prints:

The lining will be a light blue:

2) My downstairs neighbors just had a baby, so I’ve picked out a pattern for a baby quilt, and am challenging myself to make it entirely from stash.

I’ll be using the pattern written up by Audrey of Hot Pink Quilts in her Let’s Get Acquainted blog hop post. All I know so far is that I’m going to be using Kelly green (Kona) and the green Hello Pilgrim stripe for the borders, and pulling the little squares from stash.

I’m considering using Elizabeth Hartmann’s suggested interfacing-layout method from her Stamp Collection quilt for these 2.5″ squares. The patchwork parts of this quilt are nowhere near as work-intensive as the Stamp Collection quilt, but they’d still be a lot of piecing.

Reorganization = De-stashing!

I’ve just done a massive re-organization of all of my fabric & yarn & spinning fiber, and have set up a DE-STASHING SALE ON ETSY.

Hopefully some of these things can find homes where they’ll be used, instead of sitting in a corner.

Mini-Dresden progress

Well, I have to admit to not following my own to-do list when it comes to this one. I decided that I wanted to machine-quilt on the Dresden medallions, and that tumblers on the back would detract from the effect of the quilting. So instead I pieced together two pieces of dark brown, to provide a little bit of contrast from the more chocolatey brown of the front, and machine-appliqued the two medallions on.

Here’s what the front looked like just after that step:

Here’s what the back looked like:

Isn’t the concentric pattern pretty?

Then I finished piecing and ironing the fans for the corners, and attached them, again by machine applique. I’m definitely doing all pointed medallions for my larger quilt, because folding the edges under by 1/4″ on the fans was a huge pain.

Now I need to decide what to do for the center of the circle and the centers of the fans. I may fussy-cut a teacup print for the center of the main circle, and then use quarter-circles of pale blue or dark brown for the corners. I think probably brown: I don’t want something as eye-catching as the blue for the corners, because it would draw attention outwards, when I want all attention on the medallions!

I think that since this is a mini-quilt, probably destined to live on someone’s wall (I’m planning on putting in little hanging-friendly corners when I bind it), that appliqueing the medallions and their centers down should be enough quilting to make it sturdy enough: I can’t think of any way to quilt the border areas without detracting from the clean lines it has right now. I’m tempted to try to quilt a zig-zag line that mirrors the Dresden’s spokes, but I don’t think I could pull it off successfully.

Then I just have to make my mind up about binding!

Signal boosting

Do you like modern, designer quilting fabric? Consider this:

When you sign up for the swap you vote for designers you’d like to see included. Participants will be split into 8 groups of 7 people, and each group will be assigned a designer. You get two yards of different fabrics by that designer, and cut each into 56 charm squares. Collate them AB, AB, AB, etc. and send them in! Get back charm squares representing 14 fabrics each by 8 different designers. This sounds like a win-win scenario to me.

I’ve got my fingers crossed for Lizzy House, Riley Blake or Denyse Schmidt, though I’m also looking forward to discovering new designers!

As of right now, there are 16 open spots. Come join us, and help get this thing going! I can’t wait to get cutting. :)

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And, just in case it’s fallen off your radar:

This past week, we had posts on July 31st from Audrey, of Hot Pink Quilts and M-R from Quilt Matters. On August 2nd, there were posts by Jennifer, of GH Quilting and Danny, of MommyFor Reals.

This week, we can look forward to posts on August 7 from Liz of What I Did On My Summer Vacation and Susan, of Canadian Abroad. On August 9, we get posts from Kirsten of Gemini Stitches and Stephanie of Sewing By Stephanie.

This blog hop is a ton of fun, and a great way to meet new people, find awesome projects and get a ton of inspiration. Drop by their blogs and see what they’re up to! Even better, leave a comment — if they’re anything like me, it’ll make them happy.

I’m not up to bat until the very end of the blog hop, but I’m already thinking about what my project / mini-tutorial is going to be. :)