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!

Updates

Gotta update the lists.

Double Irish Chain, scrappy, with multiple backgrounds.

Polka Dot stars

The Nautical Quilt

One I'm not sure about. The pattern is "good to be square". I know I don't like it as it. Will a border help? So it may not be an "official top" yet. 

2015 Counts: 

Tops: 8

Finishes: 10 (2 quilts, 8 "other") 

(Guess I better get busy with the quilting so I can add to the finishes!)

Busy-ness

Updates from the past week.

While attending a quilting retreat at beautiful Camp Blanding, 

I managed to get a lot of piecing done, leaving just the border work needed to get a bunch of projects done.

Special request top for my niece - Jacksonville Jaguars fabric. Ready for the quilters 

Cute little wedgie top sold as soon as I put it on Instagram, so I get to count it as a "finish". 

Finished quilt. Simple checkerboard pattern using Eclectic Elements (Tim Holtz). See Redpepperquilts.com for the tutorial.

Another top from fabric I've had for awhile.  Ready for the quilters.

Spectacular light on my walk this morning. This tree filtered it beautifully.

A Quilt for Alli

Another finish. This tumbler quilt just needed binding.  While I played "customs agent" at Cinnamon's Quilt Shoppe for the shop hop this weekend past, I was able to accomplish that task.

This quilt will go to my cousin Alli Maxwell, in El Paso TX.  Happy to know it will have a good home.  

2015 Finish count: 11

(3 quilts, 8 "other")

Abe's Quilt Finished

Done, and ready for delivery. This one is for my nephew. It actually has a purpose!  This is from one of Karla Alexander's "stack" books - New Cuts for New Quilts. I've made a number of her patterns and have enjoyed the process in each one.

Onward! There are about five or six more UFOs needing only the binding. I'm getting them finished!

Thanks for stopping by.

2015 finish count: 10

(2 quilts, 8 "other")

First Finishes of 2015

I finally did the binding on this strippy quilt. It's the first finish of 2015. On my screen, the greys look blue: there's not a bit of blue in this quilt. It's "modern" in feel.  I don't remember the fabric line, but I just had to make it. I completely copied the shop sample! How totally uncreative. :)

When I took the Fractured top to the quilters, I also took them a practice piece. I had batiks and non-batiks, and a slippery thread I wanted to use for quilting, so I thought it would be good to give them something work on for getting tensions right, etc. From that practice piece, I cut 8 wristlets. They didn't turn out as nice as I thought they would. The expandable piece in the bottom of each is the same color as the strap, but because you don't really see it, there isn't enough contrast. I guess this makes them useful in their "neutralness".  Regardless, they're done and count toward 2015 finishes. 

I had chickens from the grocery, so Monday night I put the carcasses in the crock pot and made stock overnight. Yesterday I used the stock to make chicken rice soup (also in the crockpot - love that thing!), had some for dinner, then froze the rest in portion containers. I've done a lot of that over the last month and probably will be able to survive any zombie apocalypse with no need to go foraging for food. Ah, well. I really enjoy cooking and have been doing a lot of it! More experimentation will be coming up: I also enjoy trying new recipes.

Any suggestions on how to give chicken soup some flavor, though? Honestly, it's quite boring and in need of some pizazz. 

And that's my update for now.  Thanks for stopping by!

2015 "finish" count - 9

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.