{Post #965} Blue and Tan Spiderweb

There's been very little sewing time this past week.  I am so close to having the center of this baby quilt finished.  I used tan for the center piece for the spiderweb units.  I realized the blue looked much better because I had so many shirts with blue in them or that coordinated better with blue.

I wanted to finish all the spiderweb shapes in the center, so I framed it with the blue.  A friend is having a baby in a little over a week.  She had false labor this past Wednesday, so I need to get this show on the road--before junior shows up!!


I hope to finish the piecing tonight.


~Joan

{Post #964} All In A Good Night's Work

What a great night!  My son had another baseball game.  He got a smashing hit.  I was so proud, I nearly burst my buttons.


The team arrives 30 minutes early to warm up.  I took a "busy basket".  It's a little storage basket I got today to keep strings in.  Tonight it held 5 newly washed shirts and 40 paper-pieced spiderweb blocks.  It seems I never want to just sit and debone shirts or remove paper backings.  By the time the game started, I had nearly all the papers removed.  Of course I took a plastic grocery sack for trash.  It was windy, and my bag kept nearly blowing away.  Then ingenuity took over, and I buttoned the handle of the bag into the front of my jumper (yippee for button down jumpers!).  Here is the work completed:

Somehow I never missed a pitch and got all 5 shirts "deboned" and removed all the papers from the blocks.  I was doing the last snip as the time was up for the game.


Here is a sampling of the blue base for the spiderweb blocks...I like this a lot more.  The blue is too bright for my Thimbleberries...it wouldn't play nicely with them, but with the shirt strings?  I think it makes them SING!!

I see that on the top right section 3 blocks are adjacent that have the blue and white plaid...those are not their final locations!


TTFN,
Joan

{Post #963} Two New Shirt Projects

I am showing the two small projects I have started.  Both are going to be baby quilts for boys.  


I asked the Dad of one of the boys to donate a shirt to the cause.  I don't think their family ready my blog, so I'll share this one here:

Here is the second project.  String quilts are so easy and "mindless" if you want a super easy project.  Here is mine so far...

These are both patterns from Bonnie Hunter.  I am going to make a larger Spiderweb one with a brightish-blue constant after I finish this one.


Last night I saw and visited with my daughter and took apart a few more shirts.  I don't think I've cut into the fronts/backs of any shirts, and just a few sleeves.  The fabric I've used so far is just yokes, cuffs, sleeves, and pockets.  It's amazing how much fabric is in a man's shirt.


Off to run errands and come back to face Mt. Neverest, aka laundry.


~Joan

{Post #962} Never Saw This Before!

On our way home from church Sunday morning, I saw this sight, and I just kept repeating, "Susie--look, look, look, look..." until she did.  I could barely believe my eyes!  Susie had her camera in her bag, so as we got closer, she snapped pictures.

It got ever more nerve-wracking when the dog STOOD UP and started changing positions.  He had a hard time getting footing (or paw-ing, I guess), and that made for a very exciting few moments.  Another church member said he had actually pulled up beside them at a red light.  The dog's owner told him the dog had ridden with him 50,000 miles on the bike and had never fallen off once.


Whew!


~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