Success !

After work today, I found myself at my favourite thrift store. As  usual I found a few lengths of fabric but I also saw a cute little bookcase.  The idea came to use this case in the sewing room to hold some of the plastic bins full of fabric.

Dragged it home and started sorting and organizing. Beginning with the yardage on the closet shelf and working my way all around the room, down one wall, across and up the next.  And in the far corner, the very end of the line, I found the missing binding.

Where the X is, right down between the cutting table and the extra ironing board.  It had fallen off the cutting table.

A fine day, but not a sew-day

Tried to get some more done on the Rick-Rack Nines but things keep coming up to interrupt me.
An out of bobbin event turned into a machine needing service  as a thread became jammed.

Then DH wanted my help in the backyard, building a greenhouse.

When it got too cold to work outside, I thought I’d get back to sewing.  Easy-peasy, just switch to a different machine.  However, someone had his say in that.

And frustrating day

Yesterday was so frustrating I could almost chew iron and spit nails. I had a plan for the day involving packing up a UFO to mail off to Jo whos  has offered to quilt tops for West,TX . Unfortunately I couldn't find all the pieces ( front, back, binding ). Had everything but the binding.  Which I know I've seen somewhere in the sewing room this month. But which plastic container crammed full of fabric?  Searched any and everywhere. Still no binding.
What I did find was more UFOs.  And decided to try and get one of them to flimsy status.

This is Rick Rack Nines from Adventures with leaders and enders.  A WIP for 3 years. Since I haven't worked on it for at least a year, I am declaring it finished, end of the line. What is, is.  What I really should be doing is organize all these plastic boxes better. Instead I'm trying to empty them.

Decisions

Two weeks ago, Jayne at Jayne’s Quilting Room ( http://jaynesquiltingroom.blogspot.com/ )  blogged about her Diamond quilt made with  Kaffe Fasset fabrics. It is gorgeous, even drop dead gorgeous.  Her directions made sense of this intricate pattern and I was inspired to do one myself. So inspired I went on eBay and bought up 15 fq’s of Kaffe Fasset florals to make it. They started arriving Friday and I decided to carefully layout the diamonds to get the most of the fabric since it is only fat quarters. Turns out I can only get 9 5” diamonds from a FQ. The smaller version of this pattern called for 11 diamonds across. Curses. Foiled again.

Then I remembered one of Pat Sloan’s patterns. A giant churn dash using florals.

Or I could have re-done the Floribunda quilt by Bonnie (block on right). But after a day or two staring at these two blocks I’ve decided  the churn dash with the 4.5” centre square shows off the large scale fabric better.

Just waiting to dive in.

But first I need to put borders on two tops.

This is the Hello Kitty top and I don’t have a picture of the Sister’s choice top yet. Spent a good chunk of time staring at fabrics deciding on which to use. Only to come back to my first choice.

A Piecing Frenzy

 

I’ve been slicing and dicing and piecing up a storm these past few days. And as I ran out of bobbin thread last night while finishing the last block of a batch of Sister’s Choice blocks, I looked up at my wall of fabrics and thought “ What happened to my goal of working on the Hello Kitty quilt this week?”  Some introspective revealed I had procrastinated on this project because I didn’t like what I was doing with it.  So I had to come up with another pattern for Kitty.  Off to bed with some quilt books to peruse. In the morning I found my plan.

A different layout inspired by a pattern with a similar block. This meant I didn’t have to un-sew all the disappearing nine patch blocks I had already done.

So now I’ve sewn up three flimsies in as many days.   

I just might get something crossed off my to-do list.

Playing around with Dick and Jane

 

Spent Saturday playing around with a test block. It has, of course, taken over and become the primary project.  I wanted to find a block that would showcase a novelty print, specially requested by a co-worker. So I turned to a book I got just for novelty fabrics. Not sure who mentioned it in a blog or what bread-crumb trail of sites I traveled to find this book but it is  What a Novel Idea by Pat Sloan.

And here is the test block, along with some more I made today. It is a big area, 8.5” so pulled out the Dick and Jane fabric from Michael Millar.  I loved this print but the figures are so large I’ve had a hard time finding a place to use them.

I’m liking the pattern except for the  use of 3” squares to do the 2.5” half square triangles. This is the second pattern I’ve found doing this. Which means you cut three times to get the unit.  Cut a 3” square, sew, cut in half, cut down to 2..5. Once I realized she was trying to get a 2.5” unit, I pulled out the 2.5 strips and started cutting using the triangle ruler. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but so far I’ve used three strips of 2.5” WOF yellow, which means I would have trimmed off 1.5” of fabric if I started with 3” squares.

This is the fabric that was originally going to be in the star block. Decided instead to do the disappearing 9  patch with it. The pattern repeat was too small for the large block.

A break from the baby quilts

Needed a change from all the baby related fabrics I've been working with so today I worked on finishing the Texas braid border on my Hopscotch Butterscotch. Just trimming and sewing the fourth side now.