Yeah but, Nah but...

Today, I did nothing.

I sewed nothing, I bought nothing, I received nothing in the mail.

My only achievement for the day was washing Mama Jan's quilt and working out how to fold it up so it fit in it's gift box.

In other news, my car appears to be dying again. Not quite as catastrophically as last time, which cost me $1800 and a new engine, but still, he isn't keen on starting. He runs fine once he has started, but getting him to start is... a challenge.

And my mechanic doesn't have a free booking for another 3 weeks.

Greaaaaaat.

While it would be a nice to tell you all that it's in the bag, it's not.

It's on the curtains.

But it hasn't been washed, and I'm hesitant to state any quilt as a success until it's been washed. That's why the rainbow quilt is underneath the repeat-washed retro and bluegreen quilts. It's not so bad when it's mine, but I wouldn't give someone an unwashed quilt, because washing is pretty much an inevitability and I wanna make sure it works. All the horror stories about things falling apart/hideously shrinking/colours running etc. while washing that I heard while working at Spotlight keep me up at night, usually prewashing my fabrics in the hope it doesn't happen to me.

Speaking of Spotlight, I decided not to go there, and since I was at the post office anyway (nothing for me though) I decided I may as well go to Lincraft instead. I had planned on just getting some black homespun but they had new bundles in there (still full price, unfortunately) but with some pretty new fabrics.

The bundles at Lincraft are just random fabric fat quarters all tied together, there's 8 in a bundle and the regular price is $15. Even though they're American-sized fats (and usually quite wonky ones at that) it's still a fairly reasonable price if you like all of the fabrics you get. As a result, I usually spend a half hour or so carefully rebuilding my perfect bundles, and, since I'm a nice person, making sure all of my switched bundles are nice and neat and tidy. Evreyone knows me there (I did work there for a bit) and they know I do it, but the manager is an Auntie, and that helps.

I got 2 each of 5 fabrics in a purple/pink/brown colour way, which all match and feel very nice. I got possibly my new favourite-estest fabric, which is fluro rainbow hearts on black (I wish I had one of those purple lights, it would look awesome) and a couple of yellows and a couple of greens. They've all been washed already since I needed to wash the black for the binding anyway.

I've been having a very distracted day, which is probably why it took me so long to get finished. Whereas Sunday and Monday were serious, concentrating ten-hour-days, today has been more of a work for 20 minutes, then break for an hour thing. I've stopped to shop, I've stopped to read, I've stopped to cook, watch TV, check facebook, and I also stopped when this happened.

I've been ironing out the binding, and now I'm making sure all the corners have mitered the right way, but there's a lump under my fabric...

So I stopped and cooked myself some cow. It seemed like as good a time as any, though of course the smell made her climb out. But she's cute. If a little vicious. Also, she tries to eat pins, which is very annoying.

So anyway, sleepytimes now, before the big wash tomorrow. I'm sure it should be fine, but the uneven quilted distances in the panel are worrying me.

But I'm a worrier. I shall stop for tonight and go to bed.

Grrr.

Casey decided last night that the border for Mama Jan's quilt should be black, not the red with spots I had picked. She was gunna pick some up on the way home from work.

She didnt. So, I will be going into town, returning 2 of the 3 overdue DVDs I have (because Becky has hidden the third) and buying yet more fabric for this bloody thing.

20+ hours so far. And she says she'll give me $50 for materials.

Grrr.

I've also realised that I should probably sort out some kind of hand sewing project do do while I'm dying of boredom on the weekend. But I've never considered myself to be much of a hand sewer. I could do some hexies for Helen, or I bought a yoyo maker from spotlight (it's too small to be the bottom of a stubby holder by about 2cm, but the next one up is waaay bigger) so I could do a whole bundle of those, but then I don't know what I'd do with them.

I'll have a look while I'm in Spotlight AGAIN. I'm sick of buying more boring stuff, when I could instead be buying interesting bundles from eBay.

Grr.

Stuff I'm cross about...

I just found out what the process pledges that I've been seeing mentioned in buttons here and there in the blogosphere means, and it turns out that I've been doing it all along. If I only posted about finished projects then posts would be few and far between, and if I'm not posting, when the hell would I be getting my cross on?

I'm cross at Mama Jan's quilt right now, for being really difficult and still unfinished. I'm cross at my camera, for going missing during the clean up (I'm confident I put it in one of my bags of important stuff last night so it should still be in one of them, but I'm not sure which one, and they have been topped up with more important stuff so they're kinda full now) and making me unable to post progress photos.

Basically, all my aside the ditch on the little blocks is done, and I've been doing a, frankly a teensy bit crap, sew around the edges of various things in the center panel. Progress was slow and difficult, and made me wish quite fervently that I could free motion, since I had to either swing the whole thing round or switch into reverse, where you can't see where you're going. So there's a bit of bunching, but nothing catastrophic, and mainly where I've zigzaged up and down in the grass area, where it just makes it look all swooshy. I could probably get away with stopping now, but there are some big spots without any quilting, and that makes me nervous. All of the people are outlined, as is the horizon and the tree, and I still need to do some rays around the sun, go around a few of the zebras and maybe do some wispy cloud shapes but in the same colour as the sky. If I could free motion, that thing that looks like a flattened stipple would be good, but I'll just make something up, as always.

Tomorrow though, as my arms ache from all the quilt rotating.

Oh, I've just remembered, I'm also cross about the massive pimple on the corner of my mouth. It really hurts and it wont die, no matter how much I scribble over it with the pimple killing pencil, which has killed 2 other pimples this week.

I found it!

The other night when I was feeling bummed, going on eBay to shop my sorrows away didn't really work, because I had randomly decided that the thing I wanted/needed to make my life complete was a bundle of the mingle fabric (same as I used for the wonky mini quilt)in the purple/green/brown colourway. 

Noone had it on eBay and my short look around the internet failed to bring anything up, but then the internet is a bit too big to search thoroughly. This morning though I was doing my blog catch up, and the guy who quilts had done a post on a quilt he had received in a swap that was made of the same mingle colourway as the wonky quilt. At the bottom of the post he did some links to his sponsors who still had the range in stock, and the only bundle anyone had left was this one.

*happy dance*

Understandably it was A LOT more expensive than the stuff I'd bought on eBay - $23 compared to $15, and the postage was still $13, making it way over my usual $3 per fat quarter budget, so I bought 2 bundles and that made it $3.25 after the currency conversion, and that's reasonable.

Plus, since I got 2, I've got enough to do a very decent sized quilt, my usual size requiring 12, and I've got 20 to play with.

The bad news though is that I haven't made any progress on the quilting; since I needed to wash the backing sheet I took the time to sort through my junky tubs and clean out one of the cupboards. 2 big garbage bags of coats and dresses, mainly stuff that I got cause the ex liked, have made their way to the Salvos. Now though I need to hem some curtains for Mum, and then it's back to it.

It'd be cute...

...if it wasn't so freaking annoying.

Approximately 12 hours ago I started with this pile. At this point I had string pieced them and chopped them back up.

I've no idea how many that is. Originally this quilt was going to be done onto an actual single bed quilt I bought at the store, but since the purple quilt, done with the same stuff, has been tucked away unfinished, I decided it would be better for everyone if I just used regular batting, and since my math defaults itself to 120x150cm batting size I went for that, so there was a fair few left over. Depending on how I'm feeling once the actual quilting has been done, I might do matching pillows.

Anyway, I just now got finished on the top, after stopping for tea and then staying stopped for Big Bang Theory, Offspring and Married Single Other. Damn the fact that there's a TV in the loungeroom but not in my bedroom.

I cant quite remember where I put the red sheet I bought to use as backing, and moreover I'm quite certain I didn't wash it. I think it's in the tubs, but I can check tomorrow.

I'm very much hoping that I can get the quilting done tomorrow, and it would be great if I could get that and the binding done, though I'm being realistic about it. I've managed to get 2 very productive days out of the last 3 (yesterday being a fail due to a sister's netball grand final and feeling quite ill) so it's probably too much to ask for that my family leave me alone for another day. But if I can get it finished in the next 2 days at least, then I can try cram as much cleaning into Wednesday and Thursday as I can before we leave for Rainbow on Friday. I think the key will be accepting that I need to actually just give all the stuff I'm not using/wearing to the Salvos instead of going "nah, keep that, I can sell that on eBay" because I wont. It will just sit around, taking up space, until my room gets this full again and the cycle repeats.

Should I go into work tomorrow and ask for another week off? It'll still be school holidays, so they'll have plenty of teenyboppers wanting hours... 

I'll decide tomorrow night.

Dinner Break...

For something I so very much didnt want to have to do, I've made a huge amount of progress.

That said, I've worked on it for probably 6 solid hours today, to get it to the point where it's now in 7 pieces (6 strips of squares and the panel.)

I had decided to randomly put in squares of a miniature version of the panel, and then today when I was revising the maths I decided to do them as a kind of speckled border.

Here's my confusing little paint document that I was using.

Basically the green bit is the panel, the yellow bits are the little prints and the white is just random red squares. When I quilt I like to sew it into pairs, and then sew those pairs into squares, and then pair and square again. I don't like doing strips, because I worry that it will warp and stretch out of shape, so I try to keep my bits as square as possible. This time though, after I'd done about 20 squares, I realised that it wouldn't quite work, so I went back to the math. the big squares were where I used those squares, and because the prints were already paired to the left of red squares, I had to work out how to fit them. The cats were fortunately entertaining themselves outside leaving me with free reign of the floor, and the little lines are what I had worked out I could put into pairs and string piece... once I had gotten that much done I was in the swing of it so I wasn't as worried about marking stuff off any more. The other big help was that the red pairs were bi-directional - I could align then vertically without issues and squeeze then into the awkward spaces caused by the print squares. But I still had to get them into big rectangles I could join together, and I've ended up with this.

But I've had to stop now, because the cats have come inside and Mum wanted the kitchen to cook tea. Not that I can eat any of it, as my throat is still shredded and food tastes weird. So I figured I'd blog while they ate and get back to it once everyone's left the lounge.

The quilts so far...

I just went through and re-tagged a heap of posts, since I stopped putting quilt numbers at around #6.

#1 is the big rainbow quilt.

#2 is Maddy's quilt.

#3 is Levi's (friend from work's baby) quilt.

#4 will be Mama Jan's quilt, which got a number when it was in planning stages - that's how long it's been on the gunna list.

#5 is the retro quilt

#6 is the BlueGreen quilt

#7 is the purple quilt (not yet completed)

#8 is Esther's quilt

#9 is Dad's quilt cover (quilted, but not assembled)

#10 is my wonky Mingle mini quilt.

#11 is what came to be known as the Bubble and Squeak mini quilt (which has also gone to live with Esther, not that it will ever get used because I tied a bow around it in matching fabric and Helen thinks it's too pretty to unwrap)

#12 is the Honeycomb quilt I finished today.

Now I need a way to put that somewhere I can remember it - on the sidewall or something.

*Drools...*

My Robert Kaufman fabric bundles got here today, and the Autumn Nutmeg one is so achingly gorgeous I considered buying it again, but instead I have ordered a 23fq bundle of fabrics from Moda's Make Life range, for AU$65, which seems pretty damn good. It's about $2.80 per quarter, well in budget, and they look like a good set of gender neutral fabrics, seeing as how I've decided to keep the drool worthy greens and browns to myself.

My mum was soooo right. They're just not suitable for a baby. What a shame. I'll have to keep them.

As for the blue/brown/orange bundle? I like it, except for the spotty ones, which seem a bit boring. And I've no idea what to use it for. I mainly got it so it would drag down the average price of the other ones. Still, its not like I don't have a hundred other fat quarters with no real project in mind.

I don't think I'm very good at this whole "working from a stash" thing. Sure, it worked great for my first quilt, but there's probably 100 different fabrics in it. For the most part, when you're only using maybe 20, and you want them to go together, getting stuff from the stash doesn't really work. They're never quite right, or you choose a dozen that work but you still need that again in something that matches, and they never quite do, so you buy more than you need, and take out maybe half of the original ones, till its 75 or 80% new fabric anyway...

Not that I have any room in my schedule for any new quilts anyway. There's the retro quilt (#5) to bind and quilt, Mama Jan's quilt (#4) to do, The blue/green quilt that's all bought for and washed and ironed and sitting quietly in a zip lock bag waiting to be cut, the quilt for Helen's still-gender-neutral baby (which I'll probably do in the Make Life fabrics)my queen sized rainbow patch sequel, as well as the rainbow brights that are assembled but still being pondered over, and of course the brown/green/pink scary corners and loops quilt.

So, no more buying of a bit here or there, unless it's a certain addition to something that's in progress. Fabrics for backing or binding aren't included, obviously, and an exception is in place for if/when the lincraft 8pk bundles are on special, or for buying a coordinated bundle off of ebay.

I'm still considering getting the Eden bundle, though I'll be waiting till I can justify it, or until the dollar gets even better. It's at 86c at the moment, and if it gets back up to 90, I'll get it.

Quilt # 3 washed up beautifully, babycat is just under 300g, has opened his eyes and has learnt how to drag his fat little belly around his nesting spot, and I'm wondering what to do next.

Mama Jan's quilt would be the logical choice, as I've got all the fabrics and it's pretty much organised, but it's really just squares, and they're a bit boring, so I'll probably stall on that one till it's really needed.

Spotlight is currently between sales (they usually go for 10 days from Thursday till the Sunday week) so there will be no going in to buy more stuff and from all of the fabric I have now, I cant seem to put together enough to do something nice. The retro quilt needs it's unifying background fabric, the PinkBrownGreen quilt is still scaring me too much to start, and having decided to do the randomised pastel squares quilt as a queen sized blanket, I'm stalling on that one too, for when I'm not trying to do it around full time work.

So, there's two things I could do. No 1 is get the bundles of fabric that are coordinating really well but aren't numerous enough to make into a quilt, and fill in the missing pieces. There's a really nice blue and green lot that I've been putting together slowly, but is still only at 6 when I need at least 12, and a really bright lot, that I have over a dozen pieces for already, but that I cant seem to sort out into a cohesive design - naturally, I'm assuming that buying more will fix this problem. And of course there's the retro one, which needs perhaps a half dozen more mixed fat quarters, or maybe just a metre or so of a solid... What I really need to do is take them in with me when I shop, instead of just buying something and hoping for the best.

The other thing I want to do is but some fat quarter bundles off of ebay. I want the Eden bundle, even though I already have a half dozen of the fabrics, and I've found all 30fqs for less than $100 including postage, which is not too far over my standard $3 per fat quarter. I've found the Soire'e bundle for $100 before postage (usually about $15) and that's got 36fqs so that, technically, is even cheaper. Or I can get the 40fq Hunky Dory bundle for about $120, which is in budget. But some of the fabrics I'm not as keen on, and it's a bigger outlay, and I really should stop spending money, so...

I'll just keep getting out my fabrics every night, and spreading them out and making new piles, hoping new ones will magically appear and give me a perfect set to start my next project.

The Sale Dilema...

Lincraft is having a 30% off sale for the next few days, meaning it's only going to be $16.10 for a pre-cut cot size bamboo cotton quilt batt. The thing is, do I go mental and buy up big, or do I think, maybe, or even probably, I will get bored with the whole quilting thing before I get around to using them, leaving them languishing in a tub for a few years, till the next cat to show up has a baby on them?

That sort of thing does tend to happen with me, because I think of myself as a "soft engineer" and I enjoy much more the process of figuring out the best way to make something, rather than the actual making. Once a design is worked out, sorted, easy to do, it becomes boring. Maybe that's why I wanted to do this blog, because I spend (waste) countless hours working out the best/easiest/quickest ways of making various things, then, once that is done, I make one or two to show people and move on. Usually leaving behind the dozen or so lots that I cut out to make, now that I had it sorted, as well as all the stuff I bought specially for them.

That said, I currently have 4 in progress projects that are about the right size...


The baby quilt (quilt#3) is now into its nine star-patterned blocks and will be made into one big bit tomorrow, and hopefully, basted and quilted immediately after.


Mama Jan's quilt (quilt#4) will be made that size, because my sister was quite blasè with regards to directions, and that is my biggest hate as a crafter, so she will be punished with a 120by150 quilt no matter what size she was expecting.


The retro quilt (quilt#5) is officially sized at 120x160cm, but I can shave a bit off of that without much hassle.


The PinkGreenBrown quilt has no number, because I'm still a bit nervous about it and its triangles... its official size according to the paint document I've been using to try and get my math sorted out is 136cm square, so I'll be holding off on that one.

The rainbow pastels quilt also has no number, but it might get bumped up and end up being a decimal placed number, because its one that's all squares, and totally for me. It's pretty much going to be a pastel coloured copy of quilt#1, which looks like this...


And which is way bigger than it looks in this picture - its actually big enough across for my queen sized bed, even if it is a little short on the up-down way, by about 3 rows. Each of those squares is a bit over 8cm, if you want some idea of scale. That one however was done completely randomly, and there are some fabrics only in there once, or only in there on the far right side (because it was originally going to be square, and made in 4 days for a competition - when I found out is was not that thursday but the next thursday, giving me an extra 7 days to do it in, it was increased.)

The pastel rainbow quilt though has been specially bought for, and as a result I have, for the most part, about 20 squares of each colour, so I could do it a bit more uniformly, although I cant help but think that that would kind of ruin it. So I'm gunna wait on that one for now. Also, since I already have about 350 squares for it, and the maximum number of squares for a cot sized precut is 270, I'd probably be doing it on off-the-bolt wadding.

Nonetheless, that's still 3 precuts that are pretty much definite, well, 2 that are definite and one that is highly likely, and since maddy's quilt (quilt#2) was done on a precut, and I really like that size for a casual couch blankie, I'm thinking I'll probably be aiming my sizing math at that it in the future too. But does that justify buying 9 or 10 or them? Should I just get 5 or 6 and maybe buy some meterage as well? It's the same price for a metre of the 2.2 wide stuff as it is for the precut, but for just one big bit, say, possible pastel quilt sized (1.8x2.2) its $30, and that seems so much more expensive, even though, by square metre, its about the same.

I've allowed myself $160 to stock up, which is either 10 precuts or 6 precuts and 1.8 meters off the bolt... I guess I'll decide when I get there.