ZOMG!

Not only did I finish quilting AND bind the quilt I was working on last night, I also improv pieced another whole quilt top!

It's mainly a bundle of 30cm cuts of Groove from Robert Kaufman that I got for $10 a metre at Stitch and Knit a while back, with another Kaufman (Iota) and a stripe that I bought the other week in Adelaide thrown in. I decided that what I didn't want to do was stand around for 2 hours ironing and cutting all my bits, making me bored with the project before I'd even started, so I cut a half dozen 10cm squares from each fabric, as well as a 7cm and a 10cm strip, and a few random other rectangles. And then I sewed, and sewed, and ironed, and sewed, and cut some more bits, and sewed some more, ironed and trimmed a little, and sewed and kept on going till there was a quilt top there.

Actually, I lie, about halfway through I stopped and got KFC. There was nothing else to eat.

Anyway, it's about 110 by 140, judging solely on the 33cm lino squares underneath. I've no idea what to back it with, nothing in the stash is suitable which is a shame, and even once it is backed I've no idea how to quilt it.

Still, it was a nice different thing to do to (hopefully) kick start me into sewing again.

Happy Birthday Meagan

So 20 years ago today, my best friend was born. I would have been 4 at the time, so my main concerns would have been (probably) playdough and/or brightly coloured paint. I know that at some point at kindy we did the thing where you get really watery paint and blow it around the page with a straw, because I blew out all my oxygen, got very dizzy, and had to lie down.

That's not the point though. Even though Meagan thinks I'm clever because I made her a bag and fixed her computer, her current WIP is an actual human being, and unlike me, she can't do much procrastinating on it - It'll be here in about 3 weeks, though I know she'd rather it sooner.

I, on the other hand, am still ferociously procrastinating, having not actually finished her birthday present.

But the back's all pieced, and I've very neatly basted the entire thing with perfectly regular spacing, so I can do nice neat waves.

In my defence, strips always take longer than you think they will. I think she feels the same way about babies.

OHGODWHATHAVEIDONE? Nah, it's okay.

It took me a looong time tonight to get started, but then, my day started off weird.

An 8am wake up to a pretty sight of the light through the curtains and two quilts, was followed by being up for 45 minutes, and then going back to bed till 15 minutes before I had to start work, because I have mad getting-ready-for-work-at-high-skeed skills.

Tonight it took a run up of another episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, a quite bad werewolf movie and half a webseries before I was ready to get cutting. Also adding to the pressure, I have finally cut into my Central Park stash.

Granted, it's only a 10 cm wide cut along the selvedge (I bought half yards) but still, it feels like a Big Thing. The other big thing of the evening was the sheer volume of white I had to cut to go around it - eleven 13.5cm strips, plus some little bits too - that's a metre and a half of white. But I'm feeling confident that it will look good.

I appear to have developed a habit of finishing for the night at the point where it's all in strips. I'm not sure why.

Question:

When the back of your quilt has more pieces than the front of your quilt, are you doing it all wrong?

Apart from the solid (Prima Natural Unseeded - I stocked up on 10metres today because it was 40% off) there's only one fabric in there that's not from a DS line - the one in the bottom right corner of the back and also near the top middle is from the Flourish line I made Kelsey's quilt from.

This back is for the Green Pavement quilt, and I'm hoping I can manage a fold over bindng for this one, because it's starting to dawn on me how very, very many bindings I need to do.

Quilting

The problem I think with quilting (the bit where you sew the three layers together) is that you can be at it for hours with nothing really to show. And you get sore shoulders.

This is the first time I've done wavy lines in both directions, and apart from a couple of little bunches at the seams (that should pretty much vanish once it's washed and crinkly) it's going okay. I don't think I pulled the back taught enough though, as it's a bit baggier than usual. Still, I did at at 4am, so I'm not entirely surpried - 3am is usually my stop-sewing time.

Hopefully the two-direction quilting will make it super crinkly. It's getting colder now, and since crinkly looks warmer (it doesn't matter whether or not it actually is) I'm thinking the crinky the better.

Working out my issues.

So last night I lay awake angsting over my backing angst. Yes, I angst about angst. I'm pretty meta. But eventually I realised why I was so unwilling to make a start on piecing a back.

Normally, I quilt on the horizontal and/or the vertical. Straight lines or wavy ones, but really, in a maximum of two directions on the one quilt. Which means that I can do very intricate pieced backings (often leading to arguments over which is the back and which is the front) as long as they are set on point, or at least, much nearer to a 45 degree angle, because this way I don't have to match up any quilting lines. But this design has quilting on the diagonal too. Both diagonals in fact, in different parts of the quilt. So pretty much anything I pieced would have to either line up perfectly, or else be cut on some really weird angle, in three different directions, so it didn't line up anywhere.

And because I'm lazy, both of them seemed too hard, and because it's only 120 wide, I went to spotlight in my lunch break (they were kindly open till 8 tonight, and had 30% off everything) and bought a really really really nice cotton chambray that was 140 wide and only $7 p/m. And you know me, I love a yarn dye, and because this was navy and white it looked grey, cleverly making the backing both grey and blue at the same time.

Having resolved that issue, I got home tonight, basted it all then quilted it.

Pretty quilt lines... I must confess, looking at solid backs makes me want to do something whole-cloth, even if it's just wavy line quilting in a rainbow variegated thread on some black.

Yet another thing to add to my to-do pile. It's getting pretty big.

I was never any good at puzzles.

So tonight I was at the gym and the episode of Buffy I was watching was one I never really liked so my mind was wandering and then I remembered the pink pavement quilt. And how it was sitting, unbacked on one of my shelves. And I couldn't quite remember - was that 120cm wide? Could I try out my new backing for that?

Turns out, the answer is no. I made it be 135cm side, and repeated maths were stating quite insistently that the widest my backing could become was 145cm, and while 5cm is technically the width I trim my fold-over-bindings down to (I like a wide binding) I wasn't positive that it would still be 5cm after I'd quilted it all, so it looks like I might still need to make a new quilt top anyways.

What I can show you however is how you do it. You need 210cm of 112cm wide fabric, with about 6cm of selvedge cut off, since you need to do both sides. This is shown here as a piece of paper 21x11cm, which is why the points of the diagonal aren't right on the corners. I haven't trimmed that imaginary selvedge off.

You cut each of those 45 degree lines and shift the triangles to the other side. They don't have to change direction or anything, just put the top one at the bottom and the bottom one at the top.

It's pretty much the lamest tangram ever. It's now a 145cm square though, and that's the important bit. And all your seams are at a 45 degree angle to the ones on the front, meaning you don't have to match anything up when you're quilting. The only bad thing would be that the points on the corners will make it bulky at the part where it's already got extra layers at a fold-over binding, but given the amount of trimming I do on my corners anyway, I think it'd turn out fine.

I'm bummed I'm not gunna get to try it properly for a bit, but I know better than to try and make anything non-urgent in the week before a BnS.

Still haven't found what I'm looking for...

So I spent about an hour tonight ferreting through tubs in the shed. And because what I was actually looking for were my Buffy DVDs, what I found was quite a lot of the elastic I was looking for 3 days ago before I went and bought more, a big roll of size 3 zipper and a little container full of pulls, a very nice mechanical pencil, and a fabric which I think should make an quite nice back for the salmon coloured pavement quilt. Although this fabric is almost more of a peach* colour.

I confess, I still don't actually know what I'm gunna do with the back. I still haven't decided how I'm gunna quilt it - the lines are too far apart to quilt on the seams, but the design seems too clean to do it any other way. I've seen quite a few quilts just quilted in a big ol' spiral from the centre lately and I think I like the idea, but the wool batting is something I haven't used in a really long time, and when I did use it, it was with my machine out in the lounge where I had lots and lotst of space, and I could neatly roll the edges up and continue sewing my nice, straight, in-the ditch quilting lines. On the other hand, lots of dense quilting should give it more drape which is good, because the wool is stiffer than the cotton.

Honestly, the actual quilting bit of quilting makes me hate quilting.


*This backing fabric is one I bought the bolt of for $2 a metre from spotlight a couple of years ago; the selvedge says "Watercolour memories by fabri-quilt" and I have some in a blue-green colourway as well. The fabrics in the top are Fandango by Kate Spain (the big block and the floral tile), Boutique by Chez-Moi (the long blocks), something from the current range at spotlight (the little flowers), and two similar but different wavy stripes that, alas, didn't have any readable selvedge. Oh, and Prima Natural, which I've always liked better than White.

Bugger, Damn and Blast.

About a week ago I went and did some fabric shopping. I had no real plan in mind, just a Spotlight and a Lincraft catalogue, and a couple of vouchers. I came home with a dozen or so fat quarters, a few half metre cuts an 1.2 metres of fabric to use as backing.

One week, a quilt top and three quarters of a quilt back later, I discover it should have been 1.3 metres.

Bugger.

In slightly better news, I am officially on holidays for two weeks.

Planning ahead.

I know it was wildly optimistic of me but today I went into Spotlight to buy some more fabrics for the back of the new quilt, which I'm realising more and more (as I blog about it) desperately needs a name. Maybe Offset. I like that.

So yeah, today I went and bought some more fabrics for the back of the Offset quilt. I'd already bought 1.2m of a green floral, and kept a 10x40cm piece of all the front fabrics, but I wanted some brighter fabrics too. And I had to get them now, because I didn't want to get home and find I had the urge, but not the materials to follow through.

The bottom green is the print I have lots of, and I got 20cm of each of the others (and a fat quarter of the yellow because they were out of yardage). The maroony print is the same as the green, the blue fabric with the little flowers* is on the other side too, and the peach with the flowers is from a totally different range but it goes quite nicely. The other green is what I've chosen (so far) for the binding - I may go with something brighter in the end.

Since the urge didn't strike tonight I've still got to work out what I even want to do with the back - I need to start by measuring the front but I can't find any of the 43 million tape measures I own.

Oh, just realised, math. 37.5 (block width), a² + b² = c² (53.033), quilt is 3 point-set blocks long and 2.5 point-set blocks wide, quilt measures approx 159x132cm. Yay for math! It's easier than getting up and finding a tape measure...

Obviously, this is a really really horrible rendering, but maybe something like this.

It will not, thankfully, look anything like that drawing.


*I get really really bad deja vu every time I look at this fabric. I am so, so sure I have seen it, or something really really really similar before. It's driving me a little bonkers.

I think...

I quilt too much. I quilt like I shop. Impulsively, and with little thought regarding what I will do with them one I have them.

So I've finished over 40 quilts now. Taking out of that count the four at Helen's, two at Kelsey's, one of Maddy's, four on my bed, one on my wall and one in my swag, and one that's been sold to the lady from Flannies that she still hasn't picked up yet, and thats still 26 quilts that have no home or designated use. And I've started another one. Because clearly, I need another one. It's blue and green solids with a few spotty fabrics in there too. A boy quilt, for if should I find myself "needing" one.

Unfortunately, although there was allegedly some sunshine this morning, I slept through it so no pretty on-the-grass photos from me. I have some flat out on the kitchen floor photos though.

The last one had a solid back - the advantage of a quilt less than 110cm wide. I really love the backs done with the big random squares though. The blue one especially. It's fun piecing stuff randomly and hoping for the best, and it's even better when it works out.

My big problem now is that lately I have been getting around to the fabrics I had assigned to projects for myself. It's fine when it's only a technical experiment or a casual urge to work with some certain fabrics but Autumn Nutmeg was for me, the Mingle Star quilt, once the bindings get here, is for me, and I'm starting to worry that eventually I will end up as a terrible inverted version of princess and the pea, except instead of sleeping on a dozen mattresses I will be crushed under the weight of hundreds of quilts. And then you'll all have to hack my blogger account, and I haven't even written up a will regarding my stash yet.

I should have a think about doing that. And updating my completed quilts list. And cleaning my room, charging my camera(s - I bought a hot pink 10MP Fujifilm one today for $60), mending some clothes and backing up my computer.

There, all thought about. Not done, obviously, but I've thought about doing them, and decided to go to bed instead. I'm good at making decisions like that.

Help!

It's not working.

This was my original plan for the back of Helen's quilt.

Except, y'know, with the gaps filled in with the bits that stick out and all sewn together neatly and everything.

Thing is, I'm hating it. But am I hating it simply because it's not my style and not my colours, or am I hating it cause it's crap?

This is no better. I wanted it to be about the birds though, and my other two fabrics are way brighter than they are.

And if I put them in, they'll need fairly big cuts, since they're fairly large scale prints, and the birds will be fading into the background.

Can someone wave their make it all better wand for me? Mine appears to be broken and my stylus isn't compatible.

It is however, very handy for those nights when you're scoffing froot loops from the packet, and your fingers are sticky and not liking the touchpad. Hooray for the fact that something tonight is working.

I have made progress...

And it feels good. It also felt very slow, because I was fussy cutting a repeat that wasn't printed straight. Not fun, so the progress I've made is barely enough to blog about, but I have cut wonky strips of birds into nice neat rectangles 20cm high by 45.5cm long. Took me just under an hour, and I must say, couldn't have done it without my awesome new 60cm ruler.

The birds are for the back of Helen's quilt, and while I had originally planned on doing something more random like my recent backs, I'm going to just make it a zigzag. 18.5cm of birds and 22.5cm of blue leaves on beige. Sound a bit dull, but it should look modern, classy and refined. That's what I'm telling myself anyway. If it does, fantastic, if it doesn't, I like the idea that Helen will like the front better on at least one of the quilts I've made that live at her house.

And then, because I'm a sucker who subscribes to newsletters put out by people who sell stuff I'm inclined to buy having merely been reminded of the shop's existence, I've bought another 7.5 yards of fabric from The Fabric Quarter. $18 for this lot of postage - no more flanelette, so it's flat-rate-envelopeable. $5 per yard, probably less depending how the dollar is feeling tomorrow afternoon.

I have a rule that says you're not allowed to buy something from a seller when the previous package you ordered hasn't arrived yet. If they continue to time their newsletters for the day after I get their package in the mail, I could end up buying a lot from these guys.

Yeah...

I have a fabric as my desktop background on my laptop. Have done for longer than I've been a quilter. Does this make me a massive loser? I don't even know what fabric it is. But I bought the rest of the bolt when it went on clearance, and made 2 handbags and a laptop bag out of it, and I like to coordinate.

I really think my earlier idea would be a massive success. Though possibly in this case it might just be easier to look through my selvedges.

Sometimes I worry that actually, I have enough fabric. Unfortunately, this makes me kinda sad and then I go on ebay and etsy and buy more. It's a vicious cycle. Today I bought the missing Central Park I needed to complete my set of ones I wanted, and 5 yards of the Mingle fabrics I didn't yet have, and some Birdie that was cheap, and filled out my postage quota. I'm a sucker. I'm also waiting on a bundle from Fabric Shack, and a bundle from somewhere else too. I can't remember the website, but it's a big box order.

I wish I could sew faster. I wish I could get my ideas onto fabric before they got replaced by the next idea. I wish I didn't put as much effort into my backs as I did my fronts, because I could finish my quilt in half the time, giving me more time to make tops. I wish I could free motion quilt, because indecision with how I'm gunna quilt the basted quilts I've got backed up is the thing that's holding me up the most right now.

I wish I hadn't eaten as many mint dark chocolate sticks tonight as I have, cause now my tummy kinda hurts. I wish I knew where my camera was, but more than that I wish it was sitting beside me, so I could upload the photos of the Autumn Nutmeg top and back.

Guess I'll have to pause the movie and go find it.

Found it. Found some toast too. The mint choc sticks make me want it.

Here, finally, is the top for the Autumn Nutmeg Quilt.

And the back. Basted and rolled up while I decide what colour thread to use, and how to quilt it.

And now, after having a grumble bum, here's some stuff to cheer myself up.

I love the sound of rain.
I love the glow of the toaster in a dark kitchen.
I love watching movies on my tablet in it's funky new stand while I'm on the laptop.
I love electric blankets.
I love nights when my sisters are off at their boyfs and I've got this end of the house to myself, and I don't have to worry about the volume.
I love this new charger that Steven gave me, cause it works.
I love being able to think to myself toward the end of one movie "I want to watch Coyote Ugly next" and being able to download it before the credits of the movie finish.
I love staying up late.
I love the fact that all my half done projects have been half done for ages, and I didn't get halfway through anything tonight.
I love the fact that my biggest worry is that I have to much fabric. Cause that's not a worry at all really.

Shit's still good.

Sweet...

I am loving loving loving how these backs are turning out.

Finished back to the Blue, Green and Purple Disappearing Nine Patch

Don't get me wrong - it's still feeling like a slog. I think it's the lack of "sew, press, proceed" routine that's getting to me. There isn't really much more of a plan to it than "42cm long, 10, 15 or 20cm wide. Sew into squares to liking"

Back in progress for Autumn Nutmeg Quilt. Edge triangles have been sewn together, but whole square blocks are just lying there. I realised just now that I don't have a photo of the top either, so I'll have to do that tomorrow.

Still, this will be my third back done in a week. That's good progress. Granted, it's not progress on what I should be making progress on (Quilt for Helen for her birthday, 8 days) buuuut... Remember when I said I was gunna get half my unfinished projects done before #50? I'm gunna get there. I've got quilts at every stage; cut but with no piecing done, blocks pieced but not assembled, tops with no backs, basted quilts, quilts with binding half attached, and freshly finished quilts.

I have one to fully bind and one to finish binding on, three, nearly four (with my half done one above) to quilt, and one more (Helen's) to make a back for. And with the two mini zigzag quilts, and the Newsprint Mingle Quilt, that's over half my unfinished quilts all finished!

Well, it will be, when I'm done.

Guud.*

Do you ever think, "things are so good right here at this very moment, and I don't want to say anything just in case I jinx it"?

I probably just jinxed it. Oh well, I'm feeling good right now, we'll be seeing if it all turns to shit soon or not.

In the meantime, I've been working on the back for the blue, green and purple disappearing nine patch I made just after christmas. Same kind of back as the newsprint mingle got, but planned better. It's still taking bloody ages though. This time I've gone with cutting standardised widths so I can get all the blocks sewn in one fell swoop, which seems like a better idea than the higgledy piggledy method I used last time. Should be all done by tomorrow night.


*This is the slightly munted way we pronounce "good" in our house.

I'm Glad.

I'm glad you all like my slightly silly Sausage Stand. The best part about it is the fact that it's completely different to most of the stands thought up by proper stand manufacturers. It pretty much sums up my designing tendencies. Odd, unique, functional, made of fabric and well padded. The only thing wrong with it is that it hasn't got a handle, and the moment's passed and now I'm not sure how to attach one in such a way that when I lift it, the base and the tablet rise neatly and can be sat down without readjusting. Oh well, it's good as it is.

Now that that distraction is sorted, I got properly stuck into finishing the backing for the Newsprint Mingle Twist quilt top.

I love it. I had some hassles with getting it done since I was using mainly 15 and 20cm cuts of fabric off the bolt, but if you used American fat quarters (the three check fabrics were fqs) it would be super easy, since each square is 42 cm, or about 17 inches, and that can easily be cut from an 18 by 22 inch fat quarter. Cut each one into a variety of 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8" strips, and join them together randomly to make 17 inch squares, then place and rotate till you're happy with it. That above, which came out to about 110 by 130cm, would need nine fat quarters.

I've started the quilting, which I'm gunna do as one-way lines in the wavy stitch - I've gone over the main seams to match the front and I'm gunna put another 5 rows of stitching through each row of blocks, so it's gunna be pretty densely done. Most of my favourite quilts so far have been.

Day off tomorrow. Hurrah!

I remember now...

Remember how I had a big whinge the other night about how much I hated doing backings but how I kept on doing them anyway to challenge myself and explore new things and keep myself from getting bored? Turns out I was wrong. This one's only half done (well, the blocks are pieced, which took way longer than it should have because I got distracted by a bloody brilliant invention that no-one but me will ever need but which I'm gunna make a proper version of tomorrow anyway) but it's So. Freaking. Gorgeous.

I wish I had the courage to do something like this for a top. I probably will eventually but this will do for now. I'm glad I decided to do this tonight rather than start the next mingle quilt. I might have missed the magic.

Photos tomorrow when it's all done :)

Done. Sorta. Just.

Sometimes, you've got to suck it up and tell yourself "Look, if you do it tonight you wont have to do it tomorrow."

Sometimes, that's enough to get it done, if not done well.

The colours don't look this horrible in real life, I promise.

Whenever I piece my backings, I like to do so on a diagonal, so that I don't have to match my back to my front before I straight line quilt. If the alignment is meant to be wrong, it doesn't matter if it's a little bit too much or too little wrong. A regularly intersected line is as well quilted as an echoed line. As a result, I'm quite cross with myself for putting that horizontal line smack bang across the middle, but really, right from the beginning this was always going to be a bit demented - as the queen of pre-planning and quilt math, you would think I could have realised before I started that if you align your four big triangles to the corners of a rectangle, they wont meet in the middle and so maybe that's not the best plan. By tonight it was very much a case of "just do what needs to be done to get the damn thing quiltable" and I did. Just. It's a good thing I do wide bindings, especially on the back, because there's some places where it just doesn't fit.

I solemnly promise and swear to think a bit more about the back of the next quilt I do, before I start hacking into the fabrics.

Hooray!

I think the thing that annoys me most about pieced backings is that they are a completely unnecessary evil. They're not like bindings, which you have to do, and so I always get part way through and wonder why the hell I'm doing it. I don't have to... I've got plenty of full width fabrics I could use. I could be doing plenty of better things instead.

But I keep on deciding to do fancy pieced backs. For reasons I can never remember when I'm part way through. Something to do with constantly challenging myself so I don't get bored, or, more likely, making me appreciate my lovely geometric repeating patterns.

Because I never do them for my backs. I always go for some crazy random angles and piece as you go techniques. Which are so very not me. Which probably explains why I got halfway through tonight and gave up. But hey, progress, remember? And I got the monster patterns scanned and posted, and even managed to fit in a little self indulgent icecream and Mythbusters.

I hereby declare tonight to be a resounding success! To celebrate, here's an advertising banner that popped up tonight alongside my emails:

Hooray!