{Post 1,020} Fair & Square Finally Finished

You are probably soooo tired of seeing this quilt.  This AM I watched Mirror, Mirror and hand sewed the last of the binding down.  Then I washed and dried it.  Love it!


It measures about 78" x 92".  Very large.

{Post #998} Fair and Square Quilted!

Wow--this is a big finish.  I have never done machine quilting that was so intensive or dense.  I.  love.  it!!


I am looking forward to seeing it washed and dried.  I sewed the binding onto the front.  I used one shirt and had enough to go around another two sides.  Much more fabric there than I thought.

{Post #996} Fair & Square Quilting...Cool!!

I tried a new machine quilting continuous free motion pattern.  It is loosely based on a pattern I saw somewhere, but I don't think the designer would want to be associated with me, so without further ado...may I present my new design?  

It is going very slowly.  Lots of places to be very careful.  I just took a break to debone some shirts.  I bought 8 yesterday.  The thrift store was having a 50% off sale.  It was very crowded.  Fun times!

~Joan, who is desperately trying to keep herself from starting any new quilts.  H-e-l-p!!

{Post #995} New Sewing Buddy!

Look who's stitching!  My youngest, Isaac (12), tackled the daunting task of learning to run a sewing machine tonight.  First he laid out an I Spy on my design wall.  Then I showed him how to take it off to make it easy to web it.  He.  did.  an.  awesome.  job.  


He got a whole I Spy top webbed (the horizontal rows sewn together).  In a couple days we'll work on it again...tomorrow is booked solid.


Here he is in action...nose to the "grindstone"...

I also finished the top of my Fair & Square quilt as well as piecing a back for it.  I needed 5 more inches of length beyond the WOF.  In the drawers under my cutting table I found a stack of 3-1/2" x 5-1/2" rectangles.  I have no earthly idea what they were intended for, but the fabrics are very old.  That ship seems to have sailed, so I pieced them side-to-side and put them between two pieces of gold fabric for a backing for Fair & Square.  There were just enough rectangles :)

~Joan

{Post #961} Fair and Square on New Design Wall

Here are the 30 center blocks, corner triangles, setting triangles, and one strip of the outer border for my Fair & Square quilt.  The top left corner has 3 rows actually sewn together.

It is hard to detect in the picture, but I have a second design wall on the left side.  The "old" one is on the right.  The new one is taller.  My husband cut down and screwed the insulation board to the particle board this past weekend.  This AM I stapled the tablecloth onto it.  Again, pics don't tell all.  The above blocks cover a huge area.  Scale is hard to determine in pictures.  Looking forward to finishing the piecing on this one.


Truth be told...I've started 3 other shirt quilts.  I am in the process of cutting the shirts apart.  I would rather only handle them once.  So as I cut off the collars, sleeves, cuffs, and yokes, I deposited the pieces I cut out into 2-1/2" x 16" for a scrappy bargello, 2-1/2" x 10" for Rectangle Wrangle, bricks and squares for Hand Me Down blocks, and the smallest strange-sized pieces into an old plastic spinach box for a spiderweb shirt quilt.  I have a few blocks of each one made (just to see what they would look like, of course).


To my surprise, I came across a stack of 9" wide x WOF woven plaids.  I THINK I might have gotten them from my sister in this purchase.  Anywho...I cut them up.  My process...as I cut the shirt parts down, if a strip was 2-1/2" wide, I cut it into 16" if it was long enough, and 10" if it was long enough.  The Hand Me Down blocks take sets of 4 or 8, so I had to see if there was enough for those.  The string box quickly filled up.  Pics of the spiderweb string later.


~Joan

{Post #958} Fair and Square Nearly Ready to Set

My Fair and Square quilt blocks are nearly ready to set out on the design wall.  I have to sew the second set of black pieces on about 20 of the blocks and trim down the string blocks to 10-1/2" square.  I had barely any time to sew at all today.  I don't know how you readers who have full-time jobs get it all done.  I ran just a few errands today...two banks, Wal-mart, filled car with fuel, daughter to piano and violin lessons, two chats (separate in-person visits) with college students, son to karate, shopping, drop off daughter at nursing home to minister, take son home, go to nursing home to sing and play flute with daughter, home.  I'm worn out just reading it.  How could I do this if I had to WORK??


Hubby (oh, dear, sweet, hubby) is making me a second design wall tomorrow.  Mine is only 4' x 6'.  That is probably huge to some of you.  I would really like to lay out a whole quilt at one time.  My design wall is portable...it's not attached to the room wall.  I just lean it against my fabric shelves.  How much harder would that be with two?  Not enough to matter.


Anywho...here is a sneak peek of how my quilt will look:

And a smackerel closer...

I am every so glad that I made the string-pieced blocks.  The main reason is that they totally depleted my stash of homespuns (oh, there might be a thread or two still in there, but they are for the most part GONE!).  I think the strings add to the look of the quilt.  I didn't want this quilt to weigh a ton.  I thought the strings would be so heavy, but I cut them in fairly wide widths, so it isn't too bad.  


Recently I got a machine quilting DVD set and have watched them all the way through.  I'll probably be selling it at the next online yard sale.  But it did give me some ideas for how to quilt this particular quilt.  Love, love, love it!!


~Joan

{Post #957} One Quilt At A Time...or Three!

I noticed something unusual...I get more done on a quilt when I only work on that quilt.  What a concept!  But I find myself working a bit here and there on other quilts while the main quilt is in process.  That's usually because as I am cutting for the "main quilt", I cut pieces for other quilts I plan to make in the future.  Plus, there's the whole leader/ender thing.  Ironically, the future is now (I think that's a quote from some famous historian, but I don't know who)...I can barely wait to see how one block of "future quilt" looks, and next thing I know, I'm zipping up a couple blocks, then another...


It's a vicious cycle.  But I was looking back at my recently finished quilts.  Florabunda.  Bow Ties.  Two I Spy baby quilts.  Scrappy Trips Floral/Plaid/Thimbleberries scraps.  Hmmm...there's a pattern here.


All that to say that I finished MOST of the piecing for my Fair & Square quilt last night.  I need to add the black 1-1/2" wide sashing to about 20 blocks, then I'm ready to lay this quilt out on the design wall.  Finished piecing, starching (it pains me to even type the word), and removing paper foundations from the last 29 string blocks.  So if I can find some piecing time today, this might be ready to lay out next week.


Here are the last 11 1-1/2" strip 4-patch blocks.  In spite of having few shirts, there is a lot of variety in each block.  Once again, my goal was to separate the attention-getting fabrics (you know who you are!).

Here is my design wall as of last night.

In the back are a few of the finished sashed and pieced string blocks.  On the right are the two outer border pieces I have done so far.  They are folded in half and are much longer than they appear.  They are pieced from 2" strips.  


What is that on the left side?  Oh...that's what I was referring to earlier in this post.  As I am handling all these plaids, I have been cutting strips for a scrappy bargello plaids and stripes only quilt.  Nearly all are shirt strips.  I just HAD to see what one panel would end up looking like.  I had a picture in my MIND, but I wanted to see one on the WALL :)  This is the result of 40 2-1/2" strips.  The panel is 80-1/2" long and 12-1/2" wide.


There are only 6 panels in the quilt I plan to make, so I am 1/6 of the way there!  If it weren't for the cutting of all the strips, I could have one of those made in a day, I think.  Quilted and all!  Sooooo fast.  Truly, as with any good scrap quilt, ANYTHING goes!!  No matchy-matchy fabrics.  Just toss it in there.  I might use a jelly roll that's been languishing in my fabric storage for one of these.  They are just that fast and easy.  


I thought it would be difficult to cut the tubes of squares from the original panel.  It wasn't.  In fact, I was fairly frightened about the process because instead of cutting my strips 18" as suggested (I couldn't stand to throw away such a large chunk of fabric), I cut mine 16", giving me only 1" total of waste.  So after I straightened up one side, I had just a smidge to trim from the other.  All was well.  Perfect, in fact.  It didn't pain me at all to throw away <1" of fabric total from each strip.  If I had the 3" piece, I would have been racking my brain to come up with a way to USE it!  Really!  Just ask my daughters :)


Off for a busy day.  Graduate brunch, airsoft war, and opening season for the baseball team my son is on.  Glory!


~Joan

{Post #955} Fair & Square Coming Along

My Fair & Square quilt is coming along.  What a difference a little solid black makes!  The top picture is a few blocks and a couple string-pieced alternate blocks.  I did a little searching and found the solid black I had purchased (a year ago?) for this.  I sashed 4 blocks, and voila!

You can see that I am using my outer border blocks as the leader/enders for my string-piecing blocks.

I was in a tight plaid spot.  I even wrote to my b-friend, Julie, about it.  Julie loves plaids.  I needed her advice.


Years ago (many, many years ago) I purchased a kit on eBay that was all plaids.  Much to my chagrin, most of them were homespuns, not tightly woven plaids.  I hated to pitch them, but it looked like that might be a possibility.  I spent a few minutes here and there the last week cutting them up.  I used a few for the 1-1/2" strips for the blocks surrounding the red squares in this quilt.  I cut some 2" strips for the outer border.  Then I cut up all the rest of it for the string-pieced blocks.  All of my homespuns are gone (used in this quilt).  I tried to border most of them with muslin or more tightly-woven fabric so they would not stretch.  That way they were in every unit of the quilt, but not all together to make them weak or stretchy.  We'll see how that works out.


Today is one of the few times I've had to sew this week.  It was good to see a little progress on this quilt.


Sew many quilts to make and sew little time!


~Joan