It’s Wednesday, so WIP on

Finally! I have a use for my phone app, purchased so long ago and hardly used.  Anyone else like that?

Yep, it’s Wednesday so that means I’m thinking about my works in progress.

Well, today, it was Schnibbles.  I really had fun making last month’s quilt and although I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to keep this up, winning a prize for my Schnibbles certainly helped my motivation.  It hasn’t come yet, so I can’t tell you what it is, but Mr. Random Generator Number HATES me, so I was pretty surprised when Sherri emailed me with the news.  But as I lay in bed the other night, listening to the night sounds and thinking about if I should do this month’s pattern, all of a sudden I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  It involves old sheets.  But not vintage floral sheets.

Long before Martha Stewart ruled the linen universe and long before everyone’s beds looked the same, you could go down to the department store and there’d be all kinds of sheets in all kinds of patterns, mostly percale, but a variety of eye candy for the bed.  One day in Wisconsin, in their department store, a set of Porthault knock-off linens were in the marked down bin.

Porthault?  I was stunned, and snapped them all up: pillowcases, top sheet, bottom sheet and an extra sheet.  The cool part was that the top sheet and pillowcases had a gentle scalloped edge that was taped with blue linen tape.  Verrry classy.  Well, I wore out the bedding, but still had that extra sheet.  Some years ago, I cut it into large squares to use as table decorations for something-or-other, and I knew I still had those lovely lily of the valley pieces of sheets.  Somewhere.  I rummaged through the boxes in the garage last night and found them (you don’t have fabric in the garage?  Really?), and went to work today making my Schnibbles.  I have a set of papers coming in on Tuesday when I enter the Grading Galaxy, hoping to return just before my sister and her husband arrive for a week.  Now you know why I thought I ought to get busy and get this done.

Here’s the second iteration.  The fabric has two-toned blue lilies of the valley and yellow mini-tulips with green stems and little red dots here and there.  So I added some red thread and some green thread to two of my spools, along with some yellow spools just for interest.

Here’s a close-up of the fabric.  I have my row tag on there, ready to sew up the blocks into the top.  I have enjoyed digging into the stash for this quilt, pulling blues from all sorts of different kinds of fabrics. I do like sewing with one line of fabric, I guess, but I always seem to sneak an extra bit from what I have so as to break up the quilt.  (I guess that means I don’t really like sewing from just one line of fabric.)

I cut strips of my Porthault knock-off sheets into strips for the first border, and angled the ends to help disguise the seams–I have a lot of seams because I’m cutting from those squares from long ago.

First inner border with cornerstones is on in one of those dreaded nighttime photoshots.  I stopped here for the night, and will figure out the outer border in the morning.  I was able to slide in three blue blocks made with fabric from my very first pieced quilt (#3 on my 100 quilts list, never blogged about).  I like using this fabric in quilts here and there.  I like tying both ends of my quilting life together like this.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced.  For sure, I will be at the end-of-the Linky list tonight!

And here’s the only picture I could find of the sheets on the web.  Sorry it’s so teensy!

I just went and looked up Porthault *online* and a sheet set is going for about two grand.  Yep.
Of course, it is the real thing, and not the knock-off.  Makes quilt fabric look like a bargain.

WIPs, early

I have the Four-in-Art reveal tomorrow, so am writing about my works in progress today.

DONE

Take Me Back to Italy, both a Schnibbles quilt and a Finish-A-Long quilt

Four-In-Art #3 (check back tomorrow)

And if you read my Instagram, you know I cleaned out my sewing studio drawers this week as I was looking for a spool of thread and one thing lead to another (plus I was doing Grading Avoidance, a truly marketable skill I’ve developed), but while doing all that, found this sweet little Polaroid patch that Debbie sent to those who participated in the Polaroid Swap last summer.  So I was able to get that stitched next to the label on onto Snapshot, and calling it FINISHED.

Not one, but two quilt squares for the Mid-Century Modern Quilt Bee.  I don’t tend to press the heck out of my blocks, as I don’t believe in wearing out my quilts before I get to use them.  So maybe the one on the right doesn’t look quite as spiffy as its twin.  But it is just fine, really.

WORKS IN PROGRESS, or  LOST IN SPACE

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’m still thinking about it.  It’s my EPP quilt, and the top is completed, but I’m not going to show it until I’ve finished it.  It’s coming.

A new crazy idea that surfaced one day last fall, and has taken this long to bubble up.  I’m showing you the bitsiest vision of it I can, because frankly, at this point, it’s really really a Work-in-Progress.

Can I show the fabric that is headed this way?  I finally dipped my toe in the Spoonflower water, and purchased a ten-pack of fat quarters from their weekly contest.  I already have an idea.  This:

Yep, I swiped this photo right from Anne’s website (she’s having a sale on her patterns).  I think the chickens will look fabulous running around this quilt.

Don’t we all have too many ideas?  And not enough time?  That’s my set for this week.

Linking up to Lee’s WIP Wednesday.

WIP–Not the last person to post–Wednesday

The last few weeks I’ve been the last person to post on Lee’s WIP Wednesday over at her blog Freshly Pieced.

Or at least in the last five.  There’s a whole bunch of us that bring up the rear–we’re kind of like in our own special club.  We have our own T-shirt, motto and mascot.  (I’m just kidding about the last part.)  But I’m determined to be near the front of the bunch this week, so I’m posting this in hopes that I’ll be in the middle of the pack.  Like how I’m mixing metaphors–Bunch (of bananas)?  Pack (of wolves, or Cub Scouts)?  That’s what happens when an English teacher gets tired.

I’ve been working on Sherri and Sinta’s Year of Schnibbles quilt.  It’s an interesting size–bigger than my art quilts, smaller than my usual quilts.  I love the Italy fabric by Dear Stella–there is still some in the Fat Quarter Shop last time I looked.

And the tea towel I picked up on Lake Como is perfect for the back.  At first I thought I’d bought it in Milan, but it was so hot that day, all we did was hang out on the roof of the cathedral in the shade–I don’t remember buying anything.  But I did hit the few shops that my husband would stop at when we were in Bellagio on Lake Como (and no, we didn’t see George Clooney).  Anyone else has a husband who will just keep on walking when you stop to invest a few dollars in the local economy?  Hmmm.  Thought so.

So that’s what I’m working on.  I finished up the art quilt (check back in a couple of weeks for the Big Reveal), and you saw that I completed Christmas Treat (last post).  When I know I have papers coming in (like I do in two days), I kind of wind down the sewing so I won’t be fretting while correcting mixed metaphors and cleaning up typos.  I don’t want to be wishing I was sewing, although that’s next to impossible, really.

Linking up to Lee’s WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Really? It’s Wednesday?

I’m not yet “jammified” (in my p.j.’s) but I could be, for how energetic I (don’t) feel.  Bob Hope noted that “You never get tired unless you stop and take time for it.”  So I’ve taken some time for it this week, after my Ta DA! post of earlier.  I also heard Joyce Carol Oates once talk about how, after a novel was newly finished, she took her time to coming back from working–she read poetry until she felt sufficiently ready to start work again.

I was asked to teach a class on the Lollypop Tree quilt, as I’ve noted before, I made up my own pattern, and thought I should get going on the class sample.  It was intended to be a Kaffe-fabricked Christmasy design on Kona red.  What it ended up becoming was a whimsical Kaffe-fabricked design on aqua polkadots.  The red one is still in my future. . . perhaps tomorrow, after I grade some of the late essays and finish up prep for class.

I became stuck on this one leaf.  You can see the progression, of trying desperately to become unstuck, and I just noticed I put two of the same in the photo.  Ignore that.

I finally got to this point, and although I’m still not happy with parts of it, most of it is coming together.

Eric Maisel said that “If, because of anxiety and self-doubt, you procrastinate and only think about working, you’ll feel more exhausted than if you’d created for hours.” I certainly had a lot of that going on today, but I think it was also because I was listening to the end of a Graham Greene novel, which was driving me a bit batty.  Then I switched to This American Life and listened to the two-part episode about Harper High School, which starts *here* and ends *here,* which I’m still thinking about, and which should be required listening for every American, no matter where you stand on the gun-control debate.  It was sad, frustrating, illuminating and it got me working through my puny problems of how different pinks should go where.  Perspective is always a valuable thing.

Then I went downstairs to the kitchen and made two dinners: tonight’s and tomorrow’s, as I don’t get home from class until later and my husband and I just aren’t up for cooking, or for going out.

After dishes, I finished off a good book–the latest Guido Brunetti mystery–and then traced off and cut out another Lollypop Tree, ESE-style, to begin again tomorrow with a red background, for my  shop sample for the class.

I was talking to a biologist friend once, describing how sometimes I felt as there was nothing creative coming forward (this was when I was an undergrad in Creative Writing) and yet the deadlines didn’t seem to go away.  ”Ah,” she said.  ”You’re in lag phase.”  I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but the gist of it was that while I felt like I was doing nothing, my ideas were percolating, growing, or “metabolically active” as a biologist would say, before I entered a time of real growth (log phase, if you must know).  I’ve experienced this more than once.  During that time, I feel unfocused, blasé, wiped out, or just plain stupid, if you must know the truth.  I ingest vast amounts of silly internet videos, or lollygag through quilt images online, or read blogs without commenting.  Then slowly, something shifts, I become truly bored with being bored and I get back to work.

“If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.” –Sister Corita Kent

 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

This and That for a WIP Wednesday

Many thanks to Lee of Freshly Pieced Fabrics for hosting all of us quilters on WIP Wednesday.

Picked up this pattern at the Glendale Quilt Show and slid in one more project before my Spring Break ended.  I love the vinyl see-through fronts, so I can find those scissors. . . or spool of thread.  I’ve already packed up one with a hand-sewing project.

The project is a little bird pincushion made of felted wool fabrics.  Now to find some movie-watching time to work on it.

What else am I working on?  Our next Four-in-Art reveal is about a month away, and we had to move the deadline because some of us were panicking.  I resolve to not panic anymore.  (Which involves getting stuff done early.)

I’m teaching a class for a local quilt shop (if peeps sign up. . .) and while it’s based on the idea of large globular shapes in a roughly floral design, I didn’t want to copy Kim McLean’s fine work.

So I pulled up the original quilt from the 1880′s, and tried to combine elements that had that funky vibe.  I just finished it, and after I order some kind of Kona red (do you know how many reds there are in the Kona fabric rainbow?), I’ll start constructing a vaguely Christmasy-Hollandish wall hanging for my sample in blues and greens on a red background.

I’m also working on this one — in my mind.  The quilt top is pinned to its backing and laying over the chair in our living room while my subconscious mind figures out a way to quilt it.

I’m trying to be patient.  Lollypop Trees isn’t even pinned to a backing yet as my subconscious can only handle one quilt at a time.  There are many other ideas working their way forward, but that’s enough for today, I think.  Click *here* to head back over to Freshly Pieced and see other fabulous Works-in-Progress.

Another Sashless Quilt

Starting another sashless quilt, based on what I did in the Sunshine and Shadow Quilt Tutorial.  But this one’s for my newest grandson Chris, adopted into our family this past December.  Chris is eleven, so a “baby” quilt just won’t do, but every grandchild has a quilt from me, and soon he will too.

In pieces, on the pin wall.  Having a pin wall is a real luxury, I think.  Short of a stiff breeze, all the pieces stick there until I’m ready to sew it together (tomorrow).

The rows are marked.  My Spring Break is half over and I still have a few things to get done, as Robert Frost noted:  ”And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.“

Another late WIP post, but if you get a chance, head back over to Lee’s Freshly Pieced blog and see what unfinished projects others are working on, plus the beautiful blocks that Lee’s crafting.

Lollypop Tree Top Finished

Rhonda and I started talking about this about three years ago, thinking we’d do it together.  We’d both admired it, yet were daunted by all the work.  Yep, it was a lot of work, but I’m happy to say that I’ve finished the top and ready to start obsessing thinking about the backing and how to quilt this thing.

So I guess you could say my work in progress is ongoing, but I prefer to think of the next phase as different quilt; while in actuality it is the same, I think I’d prefer to swivel around in my chair while I’m grading, gaze at this draped in all its glory on my pinwall, and just enjoy a completed top for a while.

I’m linking up to Lee’s Freshly Pieced Work in Progress Wednesday, guest-hosted by Claire.  She has a wild shot of a quilt by an airport control tower that’s worth seeing.  Great commentary, too.

But — hallelujah! — tomorrow I’ll have a picture of my first March finish. See you then.

WIP and FAL are real motivation!

I’ve been doing Lee’s Work In Progress Wednesdays for a long time now, and I love participating and reading her blog.  Head back there to see more of what others are working on.

And Leanne’s Finish-A-Long has certainly focused what I’m working on.  I’ll get back to posting up Road to California pictures next post, but here’s what I’m working on today.

I’ve finally figured out the outer pieces of my EPP quilt.  And the border after this, too.  Now just to sit and watch something interesting on television, so I can finish it up.  What to watch now that Downton Abbey’s all finished, and the Oscar broadcast is over?  I do have some interesting Netflix coming.  By the way, if you like quirky movies, I can recommend Moonrise Kingdom.

And I finished appliqueing all the pieces on my Lollypop Tree Border Blocks.  Now I have to cut away the backs of those that have freezer paper in them, pull out the paper, then press them.  When that happens, it means that all the components of the Lollypop Tree quilt will be ready to be put together.  I first saw Kim McLean’s pattern on the blog for Material Obsession–a blog you should defininitely have in your Reader.

A few of my favorites.  Happy Quilting!

Still Plugging Along

Well?  The name of this linky party is Wednesday Works in Progress, right?  I’ve made great progress, for I’ve gotten some projects off the pin wall and other blocks out of the box.

This is the project I removed from the wall–the pillow shams for my wonky star quilt.

And here’s what took its place.  The first version.  I had made a lot of wonky blocks in blues, and then a bunch in green/reds.  I had made these in November of 2011–so it’s been a while since I’d seen them, or even remember the idea I had.  I think it was to intersperse the green/reds inbetween the blues, but when I tried that, I hate it.  Of course, I was also watching the Inauguration and kept breaking off my concentration to wait for Mrs. Obama to appear so I could see what she was wearing to the Inaugural Ball.  Jason Wu, apparently.

I like it better with just the blues.  Now somehow I’ve got to get it together.  Probably not this week–too many interruptions.  Like going to Road to California quilt show.  Or as I like to refer to it (because the jurors who pick the quilts seem to LOVE spangles and crystals on their quilts), Road to Hollywood.  But still, it is a quilt show and there are vendors and lots of interesting people and old friends and good things to see and I’m totally jazzed about it.  Any one else headed there?

So now I’ve got 19 green/red blocks that don’t have a home.  Maybe I’ll put them on the back?  However, I already purchased some lovely blue/white variegated thread to quilt it with.  So two quilts?  I only have enough energy to do one more Christmas quilt, so these will probably go back in the box until November.

Click back over to Lee’s blog, Freshly Pieced to see more Works in Progress.

WIP for the New Year

I can’t believe I’m still working on this. No, it’s not the Christmas quilt, although that is still very much in play.  It’s the Autumn Quilt.

Since I started collecting fabrics for this oh, 8 or 9 years ago, and started cutting and sewing this quilt 2 years ago, it’s no wonder that I let it sit for a while after getting it back from the quilter as I couldn’t figure out what to bind it in.  You know we all hunger and thirst over the cute bindings that Red Pepper puts on her quilts, but sometimes it’s best not to over think this quilting thing and just move forward.  This is a plaid that was in the quilt, spliced up with a couple of other prints, as I didn’t have enough of the plaid.

I don’t know why, but I love the autumn colors.  Living in LA, I get autumn about NOW, in January, when the liquid ambers turn maple-like colors.  I went looking for quotes about autumn to find this quilt’s title, and all of them were about  the fall that they have on the Eastern seaboard, or New England or mid-western areas of the country–so romantic about leaves and color and the “twilight of the year” and death and harvest and so on.  I found a quote I like, but I’m still letting it mull over in my mind.

I mean, I can’t just call this “Autumn Quilt,” now can I?

And this is where I am on the pillow shams for my wonky star Christmas quilt.  I decided to make a normal star, as they are 16″ finished, slap on some fabric on the top and bottom to get it to equal the size of a pillow sham: 20″ by 26.”

I want a flange around the outside edge, so I cut about another 100 2-1/2″ squares, and sewed them together in strips.

So now they look like this.  I stopped because I’d taken the quilt over to the quilter, and gave her the red/green thread I’d purchased at Superior Threads when I’d gone through there at Christmastime.

I stopped because I had to get the syllabus and the course calendar and the expanded course calendar done and sent to the school copy center, and while I was at it, I sent over vats and barrels of more things to the copy center, trying to prep up for the first few weeks of school, which starts next week.  But it was oh-so-nice to not have to create those things from scratch–to be able to find them on the computer and send them over with minor alterations.

I may actually get more quilting done this semester than last, given the fact that I’m teaching a course I’ve taught before.  And that is a very good thing.

And lastly, I had a lovely surprise from a fellow quilter: she heart-attacked my door on my birthday, which was this past week.  I’ve never been heart-attacked before, so I laughed and took a picture to remind me forever.  Thank you Lisa!  I had other lovely gifts to celebrate that day from other friends and family, phone calls from my children and some friends.  A good birthday, for sure.

And then, just to remind me that I’m no spring chicken anymore, my back went into spasms the next day and I’ve been wincing, whining and moaning a good girl and not complained once about it.  Like all things, this too will pass.

Hope you are all getting your new year off to a good start with reacquainting yourself with Works in Progress.  Head back over to Lee’s at Freshly Pieced and see what others are doing.