September Stitching Round Up

Here we are at the end of yet another month, with the year three quarters over.  Where has it gone?  

Time to check in to see how I went with this month’s stitching goals.  You can read about them here.  All I can say is that my goals didn’t go well.  

Once again, the main reason is that my sewing room has turned into a big hot mess.  That always does it.  I find it too overwhelming to sort out and just avoid it.  Funnily, I was reading back to this time last year and I could nearly do a copy and paste of that post.

Having said that, I still have been doing bits and pieces.  Let’s see how I went.

ONE MONTHLY GOAL AND CHOOKSHED STITCHERS’ CHALLENGE

As I shared previously, I did get the quilt top made while at Baradine.  Then it just sat until yesterday.  

I finally started to make some headway in sorting things out, excavated Monique, and actually pieced a backing and got the quilt loaded.  (Photo taken to show the tidy side of the room.  We won’t look at the other side.)

I started basting the edges and noticed the thread was unravelling after going through the tension discs.  We tried everything we could think of and have now put in a call to the serviceman to see if he can give me some guidance.  Therefore, despite my best last minute efforts, I have failed to get this quilt completed in September.  Not to worry.  It will get done, all in good time.

Pop over to Deana’s blog to see how the other girls went.

RAINBOW SCRAP CHALLENGE

The colour this month was black.  Not something I want to work with in the split nine patches or hexies.  It would work for the Fish Quilt, as this month is tropical fish.  Well, I printed off the fish pattern…….and that’s as far as I have got.

BATIK FISH

Ditto.  I have the pattern, but have not gone any further…..see above…..the sewing room was too messy.

OTHER STITCHING GOALS

June Chookshed Goal - Koala Baby Quilt - I kitted up two quilts from the fabric I had and got the tops made at Baradine.  Once I get the current quilt finished I will quilt them.  Then I will be up to date with Deana’s challenge.

Quilt Laundry Basket Mystery Quilt - I want to try out a feather pantograph on one of the koala quilts before using it on this one.  Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet.

Deconstruct the crochet rug - that didn’t happen either.

Add the sashings to the Sashiko table runner - nope.

Hand stitching hexies - YES!!! LOTS!!!  This has ended up being my main stitching project for September.  I have made 23 one inch hexy flowers and one two inch hexy flower.  I have now made a total of 53 of the one inch flowers, so nearly half way. The quilt needs 111 one inch flowers and 8 two inch flowers.  I have also started to appliqué some onto their background fabrics and have several more glue basted ready to stitch down.  I’ve used up all the obvious small suitable fabric scraps, so now have to cut into some fat quarters.  I’m really enjoying working on this project…..more than I thought I would.  It also is the perfect project to take to my stitching mornings.

GROUP QUILT BLOCK

Our patchwork group are making a quilt and 12 inch blocks were requested.  I made one at the end of last month and have now made a second one.  The hardest part is to decide on a block design.  This was a fun block to make.

CRUMB BLOCKS

These were made while I was at Baradine.  They are great fun and use up some of those tiny scraps.  No idea what I will do with them.

UNPLANNED PROJECT

While I was at Baradine, Mick went to a garage sale in the street behind us and the lady had some fabric for sale.  He phoned me and did a wander showing us what was there.  

He bought a few pieces and one was a Dr Seuss panel.

After I returned home I wandered up to see what else she had left. One piece is now being used as the backing on the quilt that is currently on Monique.  

She had been making fabric masks during the COVID lockdowns and had a bag of cut out pieces.  She gave them to me.  I sorted them into types.  The solids will go into something at some stage, the batiks are from the same range as the ones I’ve been using for the fish, so they will get used and then there were some nice bright colours, but what would I do with them?  I had a brain wave.

Firstly, I cut them into pieces to make the best use of the fabric.  Somewhat of a time waster, but fun to see the odd shapes transform into something usable.

Then I added one inch borders to the Dr Seuss panels.

Before using the bright scraps for sashing and border.  I’m loving it.  I still felt it needed a border to add some size to it.  Fortunately, I found a suitable fabric in my stash.  That hasn’t been added yet.  It has now been put aside for the minute, until I get all those quilts quilted.

It was such a lovely day that I dug out my baby Elna Stella and set myself up on the back verandah to sew.

AND ALSO….

I nearly forgot that I made the little swap gift for Spring in the Scrub.

And that about sums up what I have been getting up to on the sewing front.

15 MINUTES A DAY

Apart from one day, I have done some stitching every day.

September = 29/30

Year to date = 250/274

Success rate = 91.24%

I’m happy with that.

So, all things considered, despite not achieving many goals, I still have a bit to show for the month.  We’ll see how we go next month.

August Stitching Wrap Up

I did have a rather productive month in August. As I stated after the first week, it makes a huge difference when I actually stay home.

Just to recap, I finished the little Half Square Triangle Baby Quilt.  Thanks to Lou for giving me the encouragement.

Then I finished the little Blue House Sampler mini quilt.

I also achieved my One Monthly Goal and Chookshed Stitchers’ Challenge by completing the Laundry Basket Mystery Quilt top.  I have decided to quilt it with a pantograph, but I want to try a new pantograph on something smaller first.

I was rather productive with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Completing the split nine patches, a crumb block and four orange Hexy Flowers.  The Fish will be caught up next month.

Which brings me to my Scrappy Hexy Flowers.  This was just to be a pick it up whenever type project and maybe do one in the RSC colour each month.  Well, it has progressed, as I cut out heaps of fabrics, then glue basted them and have actually stitched fourteen flowers this month.  That has been helped by taking them to my stitching groups and joining in on quite a few impromptu Zoom sessions hosted by Chookyblue.  They are the perfect project to work on while chatting away.

I have now completed thirty flowers.  I’ve decided on a project to use them in.  It is called “Bigs and Smalls”.  The designer is Anorina Morris and the pattern was published in the May edition of Homespun magazine.  I have quite a way to go, as there are one hundred and eleven one inch hexy flowers and eight two inch hexy flowers.  They are appliquéd onto six inch background squares.  That should keep me out of trouble for quite some time.  There’s no rush.

Although I am leaving my RSC fish till next month I still made my Batik Fish this month.  I made three versions of the pattern, which all look quite different.  I’m continuing to enjoy playing with this project.

The final thing I worked on was making a block for a group quilt that our Wednesday Patchwork Group are making.  The instructions were rather broad. “Make a 12 inch block, any pattern, any colour.”  Eventually, there was some fabric provided to tie the blocks together.  The blue in the centre and the background come from those fabrics.  I will make a second block using another provided fabric.  The hardest part is selecting a pattern.

Looking back at my goals, I didn’t do too badly.  The only one that was missed was working on my knitted jumper.  It will happen, all in good time.

As for my 15 Minutes a Day, this is how I went:

August = 29/31

Year to Date = 221/244

Sucess Rate = 90.57%

At least I am still above the 90% mark……just.

Now to start thinking about September.  It’s always fun to look forward and make plans.

The First Week of August

 It is amazing how much more productive I can be when I stay home.  Who’d have thought?

The first sewing project I worked on was the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It didn’t take too long to piece my two split nine patch blocks.  These were actually completed on Saturday morning, before the big sewing room tidy up.

I cut out two hexy flowers at the same time and pieced them yesterday at my patchwork morning.   Rather glarey, aren’t they.  I channeled my inner frugalness, as the orange floral vintage sheet fabric was left over binding from my Crossroads quilt.  There was the join in the binding, so I decided to leave it in place.  You often see pieced small pieces in vintage quilted.

Just for fun, and to use up some of my tiny scraps, just now I have pieced another crumb block.

Here is my little collection so far.  They are quick and easy, and use up those scraps that most people would throw away. I really should do more.

I have decided to give the Fishy Business blocks a miss this month, as I want to use orange in next month’s fish.  I’ll catch up next month, by swapping colours.

This is how much is left in my orange scrap box.  The bright one at the bottom will be ideal for the fish next month.  Now, everyone has a different definition of a scrap.  Most would call mine crumbs, as I don’t add anything to these boxes less than a layer cake sized piece of fabric.  Most other colours are jamb packed, so some more crumb blocks will be a great way to use them up.

Of course, I finished off the little HST Baby Quilt.

Once that was done, it was time to turn my attention to the little blue sampler stitchery.  I couldn’t resist adding a red front door to the house.

This is what the finished article looks like in Gail Pan’s book.  I felt that it needed something else.

Time to make an almighty big mess on the dining table.  Yes, can you believe it, it was all tidied away before the afternoon was over.

This is kind of what I was thinking.

Then I remember that I have a box of Mum’s laces and trims and found this little cutie that might just work. 

Honestly, I could open an Etsy store with the amount of laces, trims and old linens that I have.  We won’t go there.

I’ve have this lovely vintage coathanger for years and would like to use it as the hanger.  That will dictate the size.

This is where I was up to yesterday.  The fabric that the stitchery is worked on is a linen offcut from my doyley quilt that I made a few years ago.  It already had a hand stitched hem on the bottom.  The two toned ric rac has been added to the bottom of the stitchery.   The narrow lace under the stitchery is also an offcut from my doyley quilt.  The green huckaback hand towel off cut with its lace edging, surprisingly, also comes from the quilt.  Fancy that!  It’s good to find a use for them.

I’m looking forward to having a play with the embellishments.  I think I will use a thin wadding and just do a facing type edge.  I don’t think I want a binding and would have to work something out at the bottom with the lace edge anyway.

I have done a tiny bit more today, but the light is too bad to take a photo. 

As you can gather, I managed to achieve my 15 minutes of stitching each day.

What else did we get up to?

Can you believe that I actually tried not one, but two new recipes?

The first was a recipe I came across on Instagram.  It was a one pot wonder chicken and rice dish.  It was cooked on the stovetop and ended up rather gluggy, hence no photo being shared.  However, it tasted great.  I reckon that I will use the ingredients/flavours and translate it to an oven baked risotto, using aboria riced.  That should be a success.

The second was a whole orange cake, also from a recipe I came across on Instagram.  Let’s call it a middling success.  It wasn’t a boiled orange cake, rather the orange was just chopped up in the food processor.  It rose rather unevenly and is a tad dry.  It was still very tasty and there is none left.  However, I think there are probably better recipes out there.  Actually, I have had one for years, that my old next door neighbour gave me, that I have never made.  I should give it a whirl.

That pretty much wraps up all I have to report for the week.  Now to see what next week brings.

Playing With Scraps

I have been playing with scraps over the last few days.  Why?

1.  I’m starting to think about Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2024;

2.  I want to have a play with crumb piecing;

3.  My little scrap tub on my cutting table is overflowing; and

4. Maybe it is a diversionary tactic to avoid dealing with the mess that is still in my sewing room…….OK, this is the main reason.

My scraps are stored in these little tubs above my sewing area and sorted by colour.  

So, what do I consider a “Scrap”?  For some it is anything smaller than a fat quarter, for others it is much smaller.  For some it is nothing smaller than 2 1/2”, for others nothing smaller than 1 1/2”.  For some everything is cut into specific sizes.  For me it is much less rigid.  Most of my “Scraps” are less than the size of a layer cake.  They are not cut to specific sizes.  They can be strips, chunks, triangles and some are really small, as they are still useable for appliqué.  However, they have just been chucked into the tubs and aren’t terribly user friendly.  I have been using any pieces that I can in the RSC over the last couple of years, so there aren’t many left.   I do have one tub with scraps of binding and some 2 1/2” short strips.

I have wanted to try some crumb piecing for quite a while, but can never decide what size to make and how I would then use the finished blocks.  In the end I decided to just have a play and decided to make the blocks six inches square.  That is easy to square up with my little ruler and small rotating cutting mat.  I just pulled random pieces out and was very happy with the result.  Best of all, it was fun.

What did become apparent was that I really needed to get the scraps a bit more organised, so I pressed them all and then put them back into the tub, sorted into large chunks, 5”, 4 1/2”, 4”, 3 1/2”, 3”, 2 1/2”, 2”, 1 1/2”, random strings and then all the tiddly bits were put into a zip lock bag.  Some of those sizes only had one or two pieces, but at least they were in some sort of order.  I didn’t cut anything down, except to trim little bits. I was surprised at how many random strings I had.

Now that it was in some sort of order I made another block, this time an improv log cabin.  I really like how it turned out.  This makes good use of all those random strings, as I don’t want to make any diagonal string blocks at this stage.

All enthused, I then started to press and organise some other colours.  I don’t have much orange or purple, so not sure what I can do with those, probably just let them breed some more.

I was surprised how much yellow I have, so made a couple more blocks.

I have quite a bit of green, but I know I have to cut lots of leaves for the Laundry Basket Mystery Quilt that is waiting patiently for me to get back to it, so I  pressed and sorted them but didn’t make any blocks.

The tub with the most scraps was unsurprisingly the blue one.  There were so many tiddly pieces that I actually sorted them into triangles and other bits.

I decided that I would sort the blues into dark, light and aqua/turquoise and make a block of each.

It created another mess along the way.

I made a dark and an aqua block and decided to go with the log cabin style again and in the end struggled to have enough long strings for the final sides.  I still have to have a go with the light blue scraps.  

The next aqua and dark blocks will have to be random crumb piecing.  There are so many little triangles that I could have a session of just creating tiny improv HST to use.

That’s as much as I have done at this stage.  I did enjoy it and hope to do some more.

Did I do anything with the little scrap bin on the cutting table that is overflowing?  Mmmm, nope.  It is still sitting there.

What will I do with the crumb pieced blocks?  I dunno.  Maybe I could add points and turn them into twelve inch star blocks?  Maybe I could add a shadow on two sides?  There are endless possibilities.  There are still plenty of little scraps to play with.  I’d like to use a lot of them.  I’m not sure what I will do with the black/grey, brown/tan and low volume scraps.  I think they can just breed for the moment.

As far as making scraps, I think that when I need a couple of 2 1/2” squares of tone on tone fabrics, I may cut a complete strip off the fat quarter and start to accumulate those strips for future use.  We’ll see.