Two Colors, Too Fun

It's been a good week. To begin, I finished the miniature blue and white quilt.

I am so happy with how that came out.  I'm really loving that I hand quilted it.  So sweet.

And I made progress on the next red and white. I'll probably branch out with my red and white minis, but to start, I'm pulling patterns from Miniatures in Minutes. This next one is the Everlasting Tree foundation. The red and white print-out is my EQ mock-up.

And here it is with the top sewn up. White fabric. White snow.

I think I'll probably machine quilt this one.  I seem to be on a mission to begin anew and finish the old, so the little pincushion below is the finish of a little five by five block I had sewn up quite a while ago.

And with all the red and white going on, I decided it was finally time to order Infinite Variety. It came this last week. Oh, those quilts. Be still my heart! And look, here's a red and white version of the blue and white mini quilt I showed up above:

I'm pretty sure I'll need a red and white version of my own!  I was playing with this design in EQ and wanted to see if I could work a two-color with triangles in the larger squares. This is what I came up with:

I like that quite a lot. And then, what should I see as I was browsing Infinite Variety, but this variation:

I love that as I play with quilt design, I'm just following the footsteps of all those quilters who came before.  It really is a living tradition.

And because I need to show I haven't forgotten about the GO! Sew Challenge, I have to say my tumbler die has been getting a work out this last week. I've been cutting new and sewing the old. This is only part of the show:

Every bit of progress counts! I do LOVE to start new quilts, but it sure is satisfying to work on the older projects and see them move closer to completion. I have so many unfinished projects, they feel like a burden or a weight of guilt. Working on them definitely helps get rid of that bit of unnecessary emotional baggage. And besides, pretty fabrics, pretty quilts!

What's GO!ing On?

I'm still following my GO! Sew Challenge and this week the GO! has been getting a workout. First off, I finished the little red and white 13-Square miniature quilt.

The GO! has been busy cutting signature patches for a quilt I'll be making for a friend.

And there's some bright and cheerful tumbler patches coming along, too.

And it's March,  which means it's time, of course,  to bring out the miniature Irish Chain quilt.

I wrote about this quilt ages ago -- about my Irish roots here, and how I used the 13-Square foundation from Miniatures in Minutes (the same one as the red and white quilt above) here.

And now that I've finished one red and white miniature, I'm pondering which one will come next.  Let's hear it for Spring Break!

More Progress

It was just so much fun working on the red and white mini, I couldn't stop. I'm hoping I can finish it off this week. Right now, I'm hand quilting the border. For the pieced center, I machine stitched in the ditch.

Here's a few process shots just because.

The patches all added and starting Fold and Sew on the rows:

Once the paper is off, I like to press the seams open so they lay flatter:

At this stage, it is really easy to distort all that tiny piecing. I try my best not to do that, but I almost always need to do a little pressing to get the quilt back into square. I press freezer paper onto an ironing surface and draw a square that allows me to size the block exactly.

I aim to be really careful as I add borders. Still square. Yes!

Yup, that makes me happy.

And here I am:

Not the kind of stitching that's going to win any awards, but it's making me surprisingly happy to hand quilt again. Something I haven't done in ages.

Meanwhile, the sewing room continues to come together bit by bit. My shelf for the wee decorative things.

Oh, some of that goes way back. The little red top was given to me by a beau when I was in second grade. The vintage rick rack and thread bits go back to my grandmother's sewing basket, as does the pincushion on the top shelf. I made the red needle book for my mother back when I was in third or fourth grade, I think -- perhaps my first sewing project. There's a wee ancient Alice in Wonderland that was given to me by a dear friend in college. Add in sewing gifts from quilting friends and a couple Dalmatians in honor of the first dogs my husband and I shared our lives with.

It's what makes a room really special, isn't it? All those bits of history, all the love, and all the connections -- past and present. Every time I look at the bits and pieces on this shelf, I smile.

More practically, there's the cutting table. So clean, too!

It's hard to tell from the photos but the walls are a cream color, a very soft yellow. I'm loving it. In fact, I'm loving my sewing room so much at the moment, I just want to move in food stuffs and a sleeping bag and live there. Of course, I do have other demands on my time. My husband, for one. That's fine -- a nice quiet evening at home with wine and chocolate ahead. I'm not complaining.

Not to mention there are classes to teach, students to meet, and papers to grade. It's nice to know the sewing room is there all pretty and new when I've got the time though.

One last thing: Emmy asked how I hang my quilts on the wall. So, nothing fancy.

In the past, I sewed hanging sleeves onto the backs of my minis. Now I sew triangles (just a square folded on the diagonal) into the binding. There's a lot to like about this method: it's easy and there's no hand sewing. It also makes it really simple to switch between little quilts of different sizes.

I stab two push pins into the wall a little less than a couple inches apart. (I use a level to make sure they are even). Then a narrow little dowel slips into the triangles and balances on the pins. Easy peasy.

For my older little quilts with hanging sleeves I just cut out a rectangle from the center top of the sleeve -- that allows me to still use the dowel and pins. Not a particularly elegant solution, I grant, but hey, it works.

Oh, wait. One last last thing. The latest Westering Women block from Barbara Brackman.  All blues and browns for me with this sampler.

Whew.

Bits and Pieces, This and That

Let's hear it for progress in the sewing room. There's a lot to do yet, but there are corners shaping up.

I've been having fun deciding what quilts to bring out for a change. Those three quilts above? I don't think I've ever had them out for display.  Now, that's just wrong.

Meanwhile, some things remain the same. Lulubelle is back in her corner.

I've taken squatter's rights to the spare room and a bunch of stuff that used to be crowded in this spot is now out for good. Even my own true love noticed. "Wow, that shelf is a whole lot neater." So, yeah, when even the DH can see the difference, I know it's dramatic.

I'm also working on finishing up some of those little quilts in process. Hand quilting!

I'm also playing with the idea of making a grouping of little red and white quilts. I thought I'd run through a bunch of the foundations from Miniatures in Minutes and see how it goes. I'm starting with the 13-Square foundation. In retrospect, this is the foundation I wished I had used in the book to illustrate the Fold and Sew technique.  It's the easiest of all the foundations. Works like a charm.

An additional plus? It's another foundation I can use the AccuQuilt GO! for as well. Since the patches for the 13-Square are just one inch squares, I use the 1" Strip die. I run a length through once to get 1" strips and then run the strips through cross-wise in order to get the squares. (The ruler just helps me insure I've got the strips at a 90 degree angle.)

Two passes through the GO! and I have two satisfying little piles.

This is how far I got on the foundation tonight before it was time for evening socializing and wine.

So between this, that, and the other thing, the sewing room is a regular beehive of activity. Color me thrilled.

GO! Mini Half-Hexagons

Well, given the status of the sewing room (or more precisely, the amount of time I've been dedicating to the sewing room -- moving stuff out, painting, moving stuff back in, sorting and sorting and sorting some more), there's not been a lot of time or space for actual sewing. But hey, I finally got the sewing machine back in this past weekend and finished up the half-hexagon mini quilt!

I do love the way some of the GO! dies work together. So here's a half-hexagon and a equilateral triangle lined up and ready to sew:

So easy! And here it is sewn and pressed open:

Now, the half-hexagon mini quilt is all done . . . and Lulubelle likes it!

Who is Lulubelle? Well, years ago I made a cloth doll and brought it over to my mom's house to show it to her. We laid it on her couch.

Mom: Hmmmmm.

Me: Wow. She really matches the color of your couch and chairs, doesn't she?

Mom: Hmmmmm.

(Pause)

Me: I suppose she ought to just stay here, huh?

Mom: I think so.

So, that was that. A week later Mom told me the doll was named Lulubelle. Now Lulubelle reigns over the sewing room and reminds me how lucky I was to have a mother who taught me to sew.

As I finish putting the sewing room back together, I have so many ideas!

For one, all the quilts that had been up on the wall came down. I'm thinking it's time to put up some different ones. Which reminds me of all the little quilts I have in process that I still need to finish. Here's a handful:

I think I'm going to do a little more hand quilting in the near future!

Meanwhile, I'm still on my GO! Sew challenge. So, for this coming week, it's getting patches ready for signatures and well wishes!

GO! All Together Now

Sometimes I hate having bits and pieces left over from a charm pack. I feel like I need (NEED) to get it all used up.  I didn't quite meet that goal with these, but I came darn close!

Just because I have better pictures now, I'll start from the beginning. First came the GO! tablemat for my office.

Then came using the leftovers and the GO! equilateral triangles die along with the Pyramid Triangle Foundation from Miniatures in Minutes to make a miniature quilt (11 1/2" by 12 1/2").

But after that I still had both a handful of little triangles and a few left over charms. I ran a few more bits through the GO! Equilateral Triangles die and then ran some other little leftovers through with the GO! 1" strip cutter. (Run them through twice and the result is 1" squares, easy peasy.)

So I used the 13-Square foundation from Miniatures in Minutes to make a 7 by 7 Trip Around the World -- that became a little zipper pouch.  Because you can never have too many little zipper bags, right?

Next came a 5 by 5 squares block and the Pyramid Triangle foundation.  Those two became pincushions. (For any interested, you can find a pdf on how I use the 13-Square foundation to make smaller blocks here and here).

So, there it is, two charm packs done! (Almost) no little bits leftover. I'll admit to a couple surviving charms, but I can live with that. I have a little private challenge going with myself: can I work on a AccuQuilt GO! related project every week? How long before the semester swamps me and I'm out of my sewing room for a while? Hard to say, but for now, I'm good.

GO! Triangles

When it was Christmas of last year, I just couldn't think of anything I wanted, so I set aside some fun money and waited to be inspired. Come August I was still waiting. I realized that as next Christmas appears on the horizon, this might be a "Use it or Lose it!" proposition. That's all it took -- I decided there were some Accuquilt GO! dies with my name on them. The dies arrived on my doorstep and I headed down to my sewing room.

I began with a very pretty charm pack that I thought would sew up into a lovely table topper in my office.

I ran the charms through the GO! and thought surely I could do something with the little waste triangles on the side.

Sure enough. I realized I could run them through another GO! triangle die that has three sizes, one of which fits the foundation from Miniatures in Minutes.

Soon I had a stack of little triangles. (Yeah!)

But first up was the original triangles. I'm loving the way this looks in my office! All those soft colors just blend so beautifully.

Then it was time to think about those wee triangles. It had been so long since I made one of the triangle foundations, I actually had to look at the book to remember how to do it! Sheesh. Here's the foundation, marked and ready to start adding fabric.

Here are the triangles laid out and ready to sew.

And after the foundation was sewn up and the paper removed -- with a close-up to remind me of why I still love this technique. The odds that I'd get all those points to match when the patches are so small (1" top to bottom, finished)? Uh, let's just say, not good.

And here it is, up on my kitchen wall.

Of course, when it's me behind the camera, the photo is awful. The colors are really much prettier in life, a bit of teal, very soft. Still, you get the idea -- it's just a pretty soft blend of color.

I love actually finishing something. And, hey, a twofer -- two somethings!

Since there's some other new dies on my sewing room table, I'm hoping I can stay motivated and get some more projects done. (Odds?) My goal is to have something to show by the end of next week. We'll see . . .