Some things that got finished

The Double Irish Chain is finally finished.  I bought this fabric bundle at PIQF in Santa Clara last fall. Of course I had to add to it so it would be bigger. I'm thrilled with the way this turned out.  Love the quilting! Although it's not really noticeable in the photos' there are 16 fabrics in the binding. Scrappy quilt, scrappy binding. Love this one!

Finally finished the gecko piece. I'm not sure it'll ever be "finished", really, though, because I'll be adding embellishments.  Lots and lots of embellishments.

My scrap play is also finished. I first tried alternating the red "cross" blocks with the scrappy blocks, but it was too much red.  I randomly replaced cross-blocks with more scrappy blocks until I was happy with the look.  The stars are from my Parts Department.  (See either of Freddy Moran/Gwen Marston's books for ideas for Parts Departments.)

So three more finishes for 2015, and a bunch more getting close.  Thanks for stopping by!

2015 counts

Tops: 9 

Finishes: 26 (16 quilts, 10 other)

Scrappiness

Along my journey as a quilter, I've accumulated billions, maybe zillions, of strips. Not just the 2 1/2" kind, but skinnies, and somewhat short. Mostly these have come from various classes, most of them  taken at Empty Spools. Many of those classes have involved the random cutting of strips without the assistance of a ruler.  Just me and my rotary cutter, and whatever (skinny) cut looks interesting. I have so many of these strips now that they occupy a double cabinet in my sewing space. Time to tame them.

I started by making simple strippy blocks. Random widths, lengths at least 6 1/2".  If a strip was too short, I added more to it. Sometimes I used sub-cuts from strata made during the aforementioned classes.  So far I have this:

My original intent was to put them together, simply alternating the orientation from horizontal to vertical - something like this:

Whoa! Too noisy, even for me (and I like a LOT of noise going on in my quilts).  Well, I kept on making strippy blocks, pondering what to do. As often happens, an idea developed while doing my morning journaling.  Black and white is soooo predictable, so what if I took Freddy Moran's philosophy to heart ("red is a neutral color") and went down that path?

Now look:

Still fun and loud and noisy, but now the orchestra has a conductor. Much better, yes?

The blocks have been trimmed to 6" square. They are made up of straight strips, curved strips, pieced strips, and anything else I could think of to do to the strips.  At this block size, the width of the individual strip needs to be small to keep the blocks interesting.  (A bunch of 6" blocks with 1", straight strips would be so very boring, don't you think?)

This has become my Monday project.  Each Monday, a bunch of us gather at Cinnamon's Quilt Shoppe for a day of sewing, chatting and cameraderie. It can be such a pain to decide what the heck to work on every week, so I've settled on this for my Monday project for the next few months.  I'm not sure how big the eventual quilt will become, so for now I'll just keep making blocks. I have a long way to go before decisions will be needed. I'll keep you posted.

Never having been the type of person that has one thing going on at a time, here's a peek at what's currently up on the design wall:

This is not just one project - it's just a glimpse of what's up there providing me with inspiration at the moment. Oh the stories behind the majority of those pieces! But that's for another day.

Stay tuned!

Below are a few pics of where  I was at the end of April. I sure enjoyed myself! Thanks, Penny, for the trip.

Pacific Grove. Home is where the heart is, so that home for me. I don't live there, but my heart is there, for sure.  I attended the final 2015 Empty Spools session, taking a class from Jacquie Gering. It was great. 

Mount Shasta, California, as seen from the car on the drive down from Washington.

Multnomah Falls, Oregon

The Columbia River Gorge, Oregon side.

We have a beautiful country - I can't say that often enough.

Thanks for stopping by!

New Year's Eve, a little late

I was feeling a little adventurous on New Year's Eve day. I started with these two "sets" of raw materials. 

In the kitchen:

In the sewing space, playing in the scrap bin:

A few hours later, I ended up with Honey Garlic chicken, made in the crockpot. In spite of 1/2 cup of soy sauce, the final product still needed salt. I think a few more tweaks to the recipe will improve it, even though it was fairly tasty in the original.  

I was feeling the need to do something small so I could "get it done". Digging through the scrap bin, I made 28 tissue covers. Not a bad binge, if one must go on a binge.  (Much better than the food binge I just indulged in after my daily walk!)

A little adult beverage capped 2014 for me, then off to bed so I could wake to see what's going to happen in 2015. 

A late post beats no post! Happy New Year, and thanks for stopping by.