Easy-Piecing(??) Grid

January 7, 2023January 6, 2023 Lazy Saturday QuiltsLeave a comment

A few months ago…actually, now that I think about it, it was July…my mom and I went to an Inspiration Day at Interquilten in Traverse City, MI. (Time is just passing so quickly!) The theme of the day was Christmas in July, and as it was “Christmas,” there were presents involved. Our gift: a panel of Ten Sisters Easy-piecing Grid and a Christmas pattern.

My first thought was, “I’m never going to make that.” At the time, I wasn’t a fan of the pattern, mainly because I already had a couple of Christmas-themed hangings and wasn’t certain where I would put another one. I also thought that the Easy-piecing grid was just an unnecessary step to add to the quilt-making process.

That pattern and that grid laid on a table in the sewing room for months until mid-December when I looked at it and came within inches of depositing it in the garbage. Gasp! I know. I should have found a quilter to gift it to, but I was suffering from a room full of scraps and piles and was in a tossing mood.

But I ended up giving that pattern a second look. I had Christmas scraps and I didn’t know where else to use them. I figured I might as well give the project a try. I surely had enough scraps and wouldn’t need to buy anything, so I’d be able to whip the whole thing up super quick. It did use “Easy” grid after all, right?

Ha! Ha!

I ended up purchasing a yard of both a red and an off-white fabric as I didn’t have just the perfect fabrics in my stash to make the project look the way I wanted. (Luckily, I got both on sale)

And “Easy?” Lies. Lies. Lies. I’m not going to blame the product totally. We were given it free, so it’s possible it was old and the shop was trying to get rid of it and the glue wasn’t quite at its peak of gluiness. I ironed and ironed and ironed, but I still had squares of fabric falling off left and right. So…zero stars for ease of use. I do give it ten stars for creating near-perfect seams. Would I use it again? No. I think all the ironing and replacing of escaping pieces took way more time than just doing it the normal way.

My goal was to finish the hanging before Christmas. Unfortunately, due to some good-natured grumbling, I ended up spending my sewing time leading up to the holidays making three more stockings. I’d originally made four–one each for our daughter’s boyfriend and his son, one for our middle daughter’s fiance, and one for our son’s girlfriend. Then our son pointed to his sad, droopy stocking and wondered why his looked so bad and why he and his sisters did not have stockings with their names on them. So I made three more stockings. (They were a great way to use up leftover denim scraps and some knit I’ve had for over 15 years.)

Now that the holidays are over, my enthusiasm for a holiday project has waned just a bit. The question is, will I finish the hanging now or will I wait until next December when the Christmas mood strikes again?

crafts · sewing · Uncategorized

The Stockings Were Hung…

December 10, 2022December 7, 2022 Lazy Saturday QuiltsLeave a comment

Where have I been for the past month?

Not in the sewing room, that’s for sure!

Does anyone else get to the holiday season and just find themselves swamped with tasks that aren’t difficult but take a disproportionate amount of time? Ordering Christmas presents, for example. So simple. So easy. One click, or ten, and it’s done. Finished. Complete. All family members getting exactly what they wished for.

If they arrive on time, that is.

Or at all. I’m looking at you, UPS. (Could you tell me whose front porch you left my package on? It wasn’t mine.)

Tracking the packages daily has me feeling like I’m trying to herd cats who are scared of the outside world into a car so we can evacuate the house during a wildfire.

That’s a very specific comparison, you might say.

Yes, it is. Been there. Done that. (Hubby got peed on.) Thankfully the wildfire never came close to the house. (I think the volunteer firefighters may have been a little over-zealous with their evacuations.)

Present buying and package tracking aside, there was Thanksgiving cooking to do, Christmas cards to address, a Christmas tree to decorate, and a few decent-weather days to hit the trails before the snow really starts flying. All that added up to less time in the sewing room.

However…

I finished these Christmas stockings for the newest members of our family. I still have one more to make.

I was excited to find that I had everything I needed to make these. The denim came from old jeans. (I’ve made many, many denim lap quilts over the past 20 years or so.) The red knit lining was from fabric leftover from our oldest daughter’s first Halloween costume. (She was a ladybug.)

For a pattern, I simply traced around a store-bought stocking we already had.

crafts · Quilting · Quilts · sewing

Halloween Fabric Haul!

November 2, 2022 Lazy Saturday Quilts1 Comment

After an incredibly rainy start to autumn, we’ve been enjoying a bit of warm, dry weather.

Well, perhaps “enjoying” is too strong of a word. “Enjoying” would involve hiking miles and miles every weekend. And, while it’s true that we did spend several days hiking in Pennsylvania and walking along beaches in Georgia and Florida in early October, all we’ve been doing outdoors lately is working, working, working. The list of fall chores seems endless. We’ve cut down trees. (No “we” here, actually. I’m not really trusted to handle things that can cut off fingers or other important body parts after a rotary cutter incident several years ago.) We’ve hauled wood, stacked wood, raked leaves, blown leaves–burnt up a leaf blower and bought a new one–turned over the dirt in the garden, and painted the trim around two front doors. We’ve got more wood being delivered this weekend, so guess what will be going on next week? Yup. More wood stacking.

On the plus side, I’ve not had to “exercise” for a week and I’ve lost 3 pounds despite eating my way through half a dozen Oreo cupcakes. (What can I say? Fresh air makes me hungry!) On the negative side, I’ve not really had any time to sew.

I did take a day last week, though, to go to Inspiration Day at Interquilten in Traverse City with my mom, where I was excited to find Halloween fabric on clearance! I’ve wanted to make a Halloween lap quilt for a long time, but with fabric prices edging over $14 a yard and a stash that I probably shouldn’t be adding to taking up space in the closet, I’ve been resistant to purchasing any new fabric.

But that Halloween fabric was on sale for less than $9 a yard. Yea! I had no pattern in mind when I made my purchase and still don’t (mainly because I haven’t had the time or energy to devote to any projects). I ended up buying a couple fat quarters, 1-1/2 yards of most of the fabrics, and 4 yards of what I plan to use for backing. What’s really thrilling is that the images printed on the fabrics glow in the dark. I can’t wait to see those creepy skeletons glowing at night!

I also found some rolled 1-yard cuts of fabric in the “Last Chance” bin. So much for not adding to my stash. Ha! I couldn’t resist them at just over $6 a yard and hope I can find something to pair them with that’s already in my stash.

I noted to Hubby that, while we have some cute turkeys to hang on the wall for Thanksgiving (Doesn’t the one on the left remind you of Flo from Progressive?), we don’t have a Thanksgiving runner for our kitchen table, which is an oversight I think I should rectify this year.

What a conundrum I find myself in now. Do I finish one of my bazillion unfinished objects? Do I start on my Halloween quilt? Do I find a cute turkey table runner pattern and get sewing so it’s ready to display for Thanksgiving dinner?

I guess we’ll find out what I’m going to choose when I finally get all the fall work finished and get back in the sewing room.

crafts · sewing · Uncategorized

Guinea Pig Hay Bags: The Quest for the Perfect Pattern

October 15, 2022 Lazy Saturday QuiltsLeave a comment

The past few weeks have been chaotic. I’m so thankful for the ability to write posts ahead of time and schedule them to post for me when I cannot get near a computer.

We enjoyed a wonderful week of vacation. Our plan A of visiting Shenandoah National Park and Congaree National Park followed by a wedding in Florida at the end of the week had to be scrapped due to the crappy weather thrust on the eastern US by Hurricane Ian. We decided to go with plan B which was to take the week one mostly spontaneous decision at a time. This was tricky for a planner like me.

We ended up spending three days in Pennsylvania, hiking through state parks and along the Allegheny River Trail. (Side note: I lived in PA for 4 1/2 years as a child, so it was wonderful to see the mountains of my childhood again.) We hiked 50 miles in three days and returned a pair of lost dogs to their owner. Then it was on to Georgia for a stop at Jeckyll Island State Park and Florida for a visit to Anastasia State Park. Attending a family member’s wedding on Friday night marked the end of our vacation fun. Then it was two full days of driving to return home.

*Driftwood Beach, Jeckyll Island State Park, GA*

(If you’d like to know more about our vacation adventures or our other adventures, check out my other blog at https://100booksin1year.wordpress.com/ If you just like to look at pretty pictures of nature, you can find mine on Instagram at s.wild.photog.)

What was waiting for us at home was nothing pleasant. We’d boarded our dogs for the first three-quarters of our trip. Our daughter picked them up on Thursday and stayed with them until our son could return home on Saturday to take over their care. (We usually like to leave the dogs with the kids when we travel, as both dogs don’t handle separation or stress well, but two of the kids are still in college and this trip did not correspond to their breaks. Our eldest lives a few hours away now, so she wasn’t available to pet sit either.) Both our daughter and our son warned us that the pups were experiencing some very unpleasant tummy troubles. I won’t go into detail. Let’s just say that I’m so thankful we own a carpet cleaner.

This past week we’ve been feeding the doggos a bland diet (chicken, rice, hamburger). The little guy started to feel better fairly quickly. Our old girl, though, couldn’t seem to get past her troubles.

So it was off to the vet for her yesterday, where she was diagnosed with colitis caused by stress. A couple prescriptions and 12 cans of extremely expensive special food in hand and $172 less in our wallet later, and we were on our way home. Thankfully, she seems to have improved overnight.

(I didn’t look until this morning at the cost of those special cans of food. It’s $4 a can! The serving size for a dog her size is three cans a day. That’s $12 a day! I don’t think Hubby and I eat $12 of food a day. She’s totally worth it, but I’m glad she’s only to be on that food for a few days.)

Between the doggos digestive distress that had Hubby and me monitoring them continuously for signs that they needed to get outside RIGHT NOW, doing copious amounts of vacation laundry, and a back injury that sidelined me on the couch with a heating pad for a couple days (I’ve apparently reached that age where one innocent movement can cause injury), I hadn’t had much time to get into the sewing room.

Until yesterday.

A few months ago I made some new hay bags for the two tiny potato-shaped tyrants that live in my “office.” (It’s labeled as a living room on our house plan. For many years we called it the Reading Room. Now we refer to it as the Guinea Pig Room. Our son refers to it as nothing. He does not like Guinea Pigs and refuses to enter the room. I just happen to have a desk in the room, so I consider it my “office.” The piggies will be packing their little suitcases and moving out when our daughter graduates from college this coming spring to go live with her, so we’ll need to come up with another name for this room then. I’m thinking it will become the Plant Room.)

*Basil and Winston*, *the bossy little boys*

Anyway, I digress. Back to the hay bags.

Having no pattern to follow, I made up my own. Unfortunately, I made the holes for the hay too big. Winston and Basil could pull the hay out too easily and would yank it all out, leaving it in heaping piles on the floor of their cage, where it would remain to be peed upon, trod over, and mostly ignored. They would then cast about for food, acting as if they were going to starve.

Middle daughter, to whom the little cavies belong, attempted to stop this wastefulness by sewing a strip of fabric across the middle of the holes, which she believed would make it a bit more difficult to pull out massive amounts of hay with one tug.

It worked.

For about a week.

Until they ripped those strips of fabric off with their very sharp teeth.

So when I set about designing a new pair of hay bags, I went with slightly smaller openings. Nearly 18 hours after filling them up for the first time last night, they are not empty yet. I think I might have finally gotten the pattern right. (You’ll note that my stitching isn’t perfect. I was fine with that. These hay bags are going to get chewed on, peed on, and ripped up. And Winston and Basil don’t care if my stitching is straight.)

crafts · Quilting · Quilts · sewing · Uncategorized

Owl Progress

October 8, 2022September 29, 2022 Lazy Saturday Quilts6 Comments

Fall brought with it some icky weather, but I persevered through the grey skies, the days and days of rain, and the lack of sunshine by working on these cute fall owls. Last week I had them all wonder-undered to the background fabric. This week I blanket-stitched everything in place and added the colorful pieced border.

If you recall from my last post, I was uncertain what type of thread I was going to use for the blanket-stitching. The choice was between using the clear thread that I had on hand and hate working with or purchasing thread to match each piece of fabric used. I ended up choosing the clear thread. Mainly because I am CHEAP.

The majority of the fabrics used in this wall hanging were batiks. I really, really, really like the one with the swirls of purple and brown. And the yellow one with the sunflower print. Actually, I really like almost all of them. (I got lucky at a going-out-of-business sale at a quilt shop and scored a ton of batiks really cheap.)

(See my last post for pattern info.)

crafts · Quilting · Quilts · sewing · Uncategorized

The Unfinished Object List Grows

October 1, 2022September 23, 2022 Lazy Saturday Quilts4 Comments

Whilst in the middle of my sock drama a few weeks ago, I went on the hunt for a more well-written sock pattern. (Which would be the exact opposite of the sock pattern I’ve been using). I began this quest by perusing my notebook full of miscellaneous knitting and quilting patterns, where I located two (!!) sock patterns I’d previously purchased but had never used.

The question is, “Do I dare attempt a different pattern?”

I am, after all, familiar with the rotten pattern I’ve been using, and I’m about 50% certain I will eventually figure out all of the quirks (i.e. mistakes) in that pattern.

Time will tell if I take the plunge into a different set of knits and purls that will eventually yield another pair of socks. As it is, I’m stuck with what I’m using for 1 and a 1/4 more socks.

But…

Whilst flipping through patterns plucked from magazines or received free at shop hops, I came across two wall-hanging patterns I had completely forgotten about.

And…

Because I love having lots of UFOs (Unfinished Objects) laying around the sewing room, I started on one.

However…

Before I show you what I’ve been working on, let me present a couple pictures that show the dangers of time and sunlight.

No, these aren’t photos of my skin. I’m not that old, and I never lay out in the sun.

As I dug through my tubs of fabric, I came across two pieces of fabric I’d used in two wall-hangings in the past. I should take a moment to point out that these fabrics were purchased from JoAnn Fabrics probably in the late 90s or very early 2000s. I got my sewing machine right before our daughter was born in 1999, and the fabric on the left was used in the first quilt I completed. So that fabric is older than my daughter, it wasn’t the highest quality to begin with, and the quilt has hung on the wall for over 20 years. It’s no wonder it’s a little worn out and faded. The fabric on the left was used in a small wall-hanging that is slightly less than 20 years old.

I’m not sure if there’s a lesson here. Things age, but I wonder if higher-quality fabrics age better? (My guess is they do.) And, obviously, sunlight on quilts is probably not the best.

But back to digging through my stash.

You may remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about whether a stash was a good thing or a bad thing. Well, having a stash came through for me this week. I was able to find enough fabrics in my stash for the wall-hanging I wanted to make. How great is it to want to make something RIGHT NOW and you’ve got everything you need?!

Now I need to see if I have the appropriate thread for finishing up this project. I haven’t decided if I’m going to blanket stitch around everything or if I’m going to use a clear thread and a straight stitch to hold all the edges down. I’m not a fan of clear thread, but I think blanket stitching everything might be a bit too much.

I also need to sew a pieced border.

This pattern is called “Hoo’s Waiting for Autumn” and was a “Fall Skinnie” from the Quiltmaker Magazine July/August 2013 issue.

crafts · sewing

The Cutest Little Pouch

September 24, 2022September 21, 2022 Lazy Saturday QuiltsLeave a comment

When I found this pattern http://www.free-tutorial.net/2017/09/patchwork-zipper-pouch-tutorial.html, I knew a little pouch was in my future.

I purchased a zipper in the loveliest shade of orangey-coral without having any idea if I had any fabrics in my stash that would match. I wasn’t worried, though. If nothing matched, then I’d create something so hideously mismatched that it would end up looking cutely intentional.

Luckily, I had two pieces of orangey-coral fabric that matched perfectly, and I had a pretty black fabric to pair with them for the bottom. (The pattern showed a patchwork pouch, but I opted to not make a patchwork strip.)

I cut the first piece of fabric and realized I wanted a larger pouch than the pattern produced. So I did a little math using ratios and whatnot so the dimensions would be proportional to the original and ended up cutting my three different pieces for the outside sections at 12″x 2-1/4,” 12″ x 4,” and 12″ x 3-3/4.” I adjusted the interfacing, lining, and inside binding pieces accordingly.

My thoughts on this project:

It was fun to make something that didn’t involve tiny scraps of fabric, as I’ve mostly been doing scrap projects for the past many months. Obviously, since the pieces used are so small, this project could be made with larger scraps.
The project took (I’m estimating here) around 5 hours to complete. Making a second one would probably take less time now that I’m familiar with the pattern.
I would like to figure out how to eliminate the exposed inner seams that end up being bound. Binding the seams was a tad tedious. I’ve made purses in the past where all seams are encased between the outer fabric and the lining, so I know this is possible. I just didn’t want to spend the mental energy on figuring this out the day I finished this project.
I like the size I made my pouch. I’m not sure what would even fit in a smaller pouch. A few Q-tips, perhaps? A pair of socks? A tube of lipstick?
I have no idea what I will use my pouch for. For now, I just like looking at it and admiring how nicely the zipper went in!

crafts · knitting · Uncategorized

Sock Drama Part Trois

September 21, 2022 Lazy Saturday Quilts4 Comments

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows my sorrow

-Louis Armstrong

Need I say more?

Knitting socks and trouble. They go together like peanut butter and jelly, eggs and bacon, turkey and stuffing. You can’t have one without the other.

Well, perhaps you can.

Maybe you have zero sock drama.

Maybe you never tangle up your five needles. Perhaps you never drop any of those tiny stitches. Is it possible you don’t get hung up on turning the heel?

Some people have all the luck. Me? Let’s just say disaster comes calling whenever I pick up my partially-knitted sock. Which might be acceptable (annoying, but acceptable) if I had never knitted socks before. But this is my third pair and, frankly, this is getting embarrassing.

Last night I decided it was time to work on the dreaded heel. I was halfway through the heel flap, and things were looking good. I made short work of the remaining heel flap rows, and then it was time for the much-dreaded picking up of the stitches for the heel gusset.

I worked slowly. I counted carefully. I did a little hocus pocus to somehow find 15 stitches to pick up though there were really only 12 there to work with. I knit my way through those stitches, worked my way around needles two and three, then did a little more hocus pocus to conjure up another 15 stitches for needle four. Just when it all looked like it was going to work out, numerous stitches escaped from needle one.

I picked everything back to needle one, because there was no way I would be able to pick those tiny miscreants back up. I did everything a second time. I counted and counted and worked my way back to where things had gone wrong, and despite my careful counting, I discovered much too late that I had only 14 stitches where 15 needed to be back on…you guessed it…needle one.

Back to picking things out.

The third time was the charm, and it seemed things were finally going my way.

Until something weird happened somewhere between the first row around on the gusset and the fifth row around when I realized I was missing a stitch somewhere.

At this point, I was ready to chuck the sock and the yarn and the needles out the window. But I persevered.

After more tiny stitch picking, I finally found the issue.

Then I went to bed. It was late, and I was in no mood for any more drama.

crafts · Quilting · Quilts · sewing

Project Updates

September 13, 2022 Lazy Saturday QuiltsLeave a comment

Good morning on this beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Actually, it’s raining and gloomy, and all I wanted to do this morning was stay in bed reading a book I’ve been struggling to put down. (Don’t you love it when a book is that good?!) Plus, it’s 65 degrees in the house, and staying under the covers sounded nice and toasty. (We should not have to turn the heat on in mid-September, right? I refuse to do so.)

I forced myself out of bed. Partially because I try to maintain some sort of image of a mature, responsible adult, but mostly because the dogs needed to go out. Except they weren’t too keen on the idea of going out in the rain. Luna took one look at the water pouring from the sky and her forward momentum out the door (which wasn’t too fast to begin with) stalled. I had to give her a gentle push on the rump to get her moving. Nevy, meanwhile, was being his usual ornery self and hadn’t even come down from upstairs. He likes to make me climb halfway up before he charges down toward me. Once we finally got outside, he took care of business with more speed than usual since he hates rain. (See photo below showing his disdain.) He didn’t even try to pull me toward the neighbor’s house as he usually does in hopes of catching a glimpse of his hero: neighbor dog.

The rain, which has been falling off and on, for the last few days, has put a damper on all of the outdoor fall tasks that need to be completed before winter. Not that I’m complaining. Clearing out flowerbeds, hauling logs in from the woods (which I did for what felt like eons last weekend), washing windows, and finally getting to some painting (a couple outside door frames) are not high on my list of Things I Can’t Wait to Do. However, they’ve got to be done soon because once the leaves start to fall there won’t be time to get to them.

Between fall tasks and kids being home for the weekend from college and a college scholarship awards banquet and a housewarming party for our oldest daughter and a church community service project, my sewing time has been at an all-time low.

But I wanted to share the little bit of progress I’ve made on two projects over the past week.

First, my English paper-piecing quilt has grown by a few “flowers.”

Each “flower” takes me approximately one hour to piece and add to the project, as I’m not the fastest hand-sewer. I’ve not yet decided how big this quilt is going to be. But, at the rate I’m going, I should finish it in about fifty years. I like to put a show on Netflix while I work (currently Virgin River) or listen to audiobooks with Hubby (currently Picture of Dorian Gray). Since this is simple work, neither is distracting.

A hint I would like to share is to purchase moleskin to use in place of a thimble. Usually, when I do any hand-sewing, I find that the eye of the needle pushes painfully into my middle finger, sometimes even piercing the skin. I don’t like the inflexibility of thimbles, but find that moleskin works wonderfully. You can buy it by the roll on Amazon.

The second project I’ve been working on (usually at night while Hubby and I watch television) is a cross-stitch project I started early in 2020. I’d had the pattern for years, and, though it isn’t really applicable to my current life (not too many ASAPs or SOSs in my life, although I do have a bit of piled-up work to do in the form of logs in the woods), decided to work on it since I had everything I needed. I’ve completed all of the regular stitching and have started on the backstitching. (Some of those things that look like blobs right now will actually look like something once I get the backstitching finished.)

Though it doesn’t really fit my life right now, I do like all of the bright colors.

crafts · Quilting · Quilts · sewing · Uncategorized

To Stash or Not to Stash: That is the Question

September 3, 2022August 30, 2022 Lazy Saturday Quilts5 Comments

Are you a stasher? Or are you a person who buys fabric, yarn, and craft supplies for projects as needed?

I’m a little bit of both, but mostly I’ve been a stasher.

Now, I’m a reformed stasher. (There should be a 12-step program for stashing addicts. I can see a step being, “Forgive yourself for purchasing fabric that you loved 12 years ago but hate now.” Another might be, “Forgive yourself for buying 1/4 yards (not fat quarters) that looked cute but match absolutely none of the other fabric in your stash and are too small to do much with.”)

I had a real problem. (That is if you think stashing is a problem). I’d see a fabric, think it pretty, and buy a yard. Or two yards if I really liked it. (I once read in, I think it was a Debbi Mumm book, that you should never buy less than two yards.) I’d see clearance fabric and add it to the stash. I’d buy little bags of scraps and toss them into my already ridiculously heaping pile of scraps. I bought until I had three huge storage containers and several smaller containers full of fabric.

Sure, I’d pull out a piece now and then to use in a quilt, but I never seemed to have just the right color or the right amount of anything for whatever project I wanted to make. And that is the problem with a stash.

Well, that and the fact that as I aged, my tastes changed. The cute fabric is now blah. That Noah’s Ark panel I planned to use for a kid’s quilt? My kids are now all grown. Those I Spy-specific fabrics? There aren’t enough babies being born to use them up!

I admire the women who have the willpower to purchase just what they need for a project, and I aspire to be more like them every time I enter a quilt shop. It’s actually rare now for me to purchase any fabric. I’m not saying that stashers have it wrong. I’m just admitting that I have enough. Too much still, in fact. So much that if I don’t up my quilting speed, my kids are going to inherit a mountain of fabric.

All that said, here are two projects that I made entirely from my stash. I’ve shared each previously. While I had specifically purchased a few of the fabrics in the quilt on the left for previous projects and had bits left over, I did not purchase anything for this quilt specifically. The quilt on the right was made entirely of batiks that I purchased on clearance when a shop in our town was going out of business. I did not have a pattern to use in mind when I purchased the 1 to 2-yard pieces.

(By the way, Hubby makes all my quilt hangers.)

Side note: If you’re looking for a way to use up those fabrics in your stash you now find icky, they are great for pillow forms. That way you don’t even have to look at them.