Another Monday String update

Whew, this has been a busy week. A lot of it not blog worthy. Nobody wants to hear about my adventures in ditch digging, gravel in-filling and garden clean up. But that’s where I was every non-rainy day.  Some tangible rewards for my effort: puddle area in front of clothes line is no longer a puddle, ruts from wheels in driveway gone, seeds in the ground.
To the left, a row of snow peas and spinach, hidden by my shadow, a row of kale. Picture to the right is my garlic that was planted in October. I’m tilling up the area in front where I planted a fall crop of carrots and beets.
For the plants that can’t handle April, we have set up a grow light and started our tomatoes and peppers.

On the days that it was raining and those seemed to be too frequent, I worked on the rainbow Bargello. With some string units as leader and enders.








My current dither is whether to go on with the bargello, adding another column or stop now and add borders. It came out long and skinny, 33 X 53.5. Which is sort of like a crib blanket size.  It probably needs another stair step unit, and I am just being too eager to get on to something new. That happens, short little attention span in action. And I do have two new projects to get on with.
While we were at a family function yesterday an invitation was issued for a cousin’s wedding. Why a verbal invitation? We weren’t on the original list but are being included as the transportation of my husband’s parents. As in; if you want them to attend,we will have to drive them. So now a wedding quilt needs to be done…. in six weeks.  I have a plan. More about it later, the sun has decided to come out and I need to get outside to do stuff before the rain comes back.
Now to link up with Jo: String Challenge

Update to String Challenge

Looking back on last week’s post I see I was about to sew together all the string blocks I had made.  Did so and found I had 11 3/4 blocks. Looking at them laid out, it did not seem to be enough to call it finished, leaving aside for a moment the last 1/4 that needed to be done. So back to the cutting table for more grey kites.
These are being made with the Missouri Star Wacky Web papers. I picked up a pack of them during a close out sale at one of my local fabric stores. I thought I could cut the kite shape using Bonnie’s directions but it didn’t quite work, so broke down and bought the kite template from Missouri Star. Depending on the time this package was made, there are either 250 or 100 papers in the pack, either amount is more than I need or will be able to get out of this length of grey fabric.  My goal at the moment is a 4 X 5 setting for which I need 20 blocks of 4 subunits. That should keep me busy for a while.
And if that wasn’t enough, there is the Checkered Past quilt to work on. I sandwiched it and machine quilted along the sashing. Now I am hand quilting inside the blocks. The effect I wanted just wasn’t possible with machine quilting. Well, I didn’t think it was possible without a lot of wrestling with the quilt top and a whole lot of starts and stops. Not what I call fun. Inspired by the hand quilting I was doing last month I decided to do what I wanted by hand quilting.






Basically just a cross hatching of the checkerboard and outline quilting around the pocket and the edge of the pocket square.  One and a half done out of the 20, lots of quality book listening time ahead.
And that’s it for here this week, other than the ice storm over the weekend that has now turned to rain. Puddles every where. Ah spring.
Linking up with Jo’s String challenge to see what everyone over there is up to.

Progress on Strings

Finally a  Monday Link UP where I have some strings to show.
Unlike Saturday’s Block of the Month, which got totally sidetracked. So much so, I didn’t even try and post. We had an  unexpected visit from my in-laws that absorbed most of our time and effort in the afternoon. Then my son dropped in for his usual Saturday visit albeit several hours earlier than usual. He has developed a habit of showing up just before midnight, loading up the washing machine, snacking on whatever is to be found and watching TV all night. Ah, feels almost like he still lived here.  Not complaining, mind you, we both like that he is comfortable coming back to hang out here. The point was, he came early enough in the day that we took him out to dinner. And there went any evening sewing.
Sunday more than made up for it.  I got the back for the Checkered Past all together. This was a twin coverlet I had found with a ruffle around three sides. Once I took it all apart, there was a lot of fabric, but most in narrow strips. So I combined them with a black and white and came up with something big enough.




At the same time, I finished up the last strip of the giant bargello that I had originally considered for a back. Now intending to showcase it as a front in it’s own quilt.

Just have to find a back for it. Oh wait, that sounds so familiar, isn’t that how I wound up working on this?



And, having gotten hooked on the bargello pattern again, I worked on another strip in the baby rainbow bargello. These are taking time as I carefully select each fabric to eliminate duplicating one in the next row. So a fabric may repeat but not in the very next stairstep. Just a touch nit-picky but I think it makes the finished product look scrappy and not matchy.

And some of you might have picked up on the detail that this bargello only has four steps before the change.
A mistake in math and cutting on the first strip. Some how I got it in my head that 10 inches would give me five sub-cuts. And it would it they were 2 inch and not 2.5 inch. So in the time honoured tradition of " just go with it", I carried on doing 4 sub-cuts.

I know, by now you are saying “ where are the strings? None of these are strings “


I pulled out the bright SpiderWeb project Sunday afternoon and cut some more kite shapes for it.  And by bedtime, I had enough for 12 blocks. So today I am going to sew the 12 blocks together and see now it all looks.

Ta da ! Strings

Wednesday Link-UP

I have been linking up with Jo for a long time, mostly for UFO challenges.  It has been helpful to have a focus. And I’m sure it has resulted in more progress than I could have made on my own.  However, I’m more than willing to switch over to a general link-up as I’m working more than just UFOs lately. Jo's Link Up
After I finished the Irish Chain quilt for my Sister-In-law, I went back to making a back for my hubby’s retirement quilt.  The first thought I had was to do a Scrappy Bargello. Why? Well, I found another panel already assembled and a big stack of strips already cut. So for a few days I worked on that.
Then I had second thoughts about it.  And I had a look at the stack of fabrics I have accumulating for backs.  One of them was a twin coverlet in a faux crazy quilt pattern.  After taking it apart, it looked like it would work, with some help.
While I was working on these two items, my hubby put in a request for another baby quilt for a co-worker. The first thing I thought of was all the lovely fabric in the order from Quilted Twins I had just picked up.
And I went flipping through past projects looking for something fast and easy. Coming up with a Chinese Coins using the Crayola fabric supplemented with the Toy Chest 2 from Penny Rose fabrics.
It came together as fast as I had hoped.
The border looks red in this picture but it is really a bright raspberry. It was so much fun to do.  Now I’m using the Toy Chest fabrics to make a Baby Bargello.
So that’s what I’ve been up.