Partially pieced

Hi everyone! How is your week going? I don't mind telling you that it's been fairly good here for the past little while. It has been unseasonably warm and mostly just lovely outside. I spent last weekend at an academic conference in Washington DC without a coat. In January. It was so nice that a couple of us skipped out on the afternoon session and went sightseeing-- and we walked. It was awesome. The conference might have been okay, too. At least my paper was!

So now I'm home and I have a ton of work to do, and the temperatures are about to plunge, just in time for the first day of class. I might even get to wear the new coat that I bought just because it reminded me of the coats I wore in Wisconsin. While I'm waiting for that, though, I've been working on a couple of things.  First up are these:

These are half the 4-patches I need for the January blocks for the Color Challenge at Patterns by Jen. A friend and I decided to make these together, but I read the directions wrong so I only have half as many parts as I needed. Yeah, I know they wouldn't have taken long to finish, but in my defense, it was very, very nice outside.

The other thing I'm working on is this little stuffie:

This is a very cute little kit that I got from Bernie's shop that I've been wanting to make for my tiniest granddaughter.  She turns one year old really soon and I thought this would be a cute little gift. The kit really does come with everything, including stuffing, a sewing needle, and straight pins.  Because she's just a tiny girl, I'll have to embroider the eyes and nose instead of using the buttons that came in the kit, but I think I don't mind that.

The only other thing I'm doing is continuing to put all the new fabric I bought over the last couple of weeks on boards and put them away. I really should not have shopped quite as much, but it's just so easy, you know? I got these pretties from Shabby Fabrics:

I have a plan for the one on the right edge, but the others are just because I had no blues at all and these were a good price.  And these lovely batik pieces came from Jinny Beyer's shop:

I'm planning to use these lovely batiks (plus plenty of others) to finally make a (gigantic) quilt for my own bed. Somehow I've forgotten to do that for all these years.

That's what's up around here for now, along with waaayyy too much computer time.  When I became a professor it was all about the books.  Now it's all about the course website. The world has changed and we must change with it, but I never thought it would involve this much typing!

Happy stitching, friends!

Four patch frenzy

Hi all! How's your life been? We've had quite the time around here. Let's start with this-- I am allergic to cats. So if, theoretically, I moved into a house with carpets and window treatments and such and a cat had lived there before me, my sinuses would swell up and I would have a big headache until I either moved out or employed someone with big industrial rug-sucking machines to clean the place.  And of course ripped out all of the offending window treatments, washed down the walls, and used the big sucking machines on all the nooks and crannies, too.  So when a neighbor mentioned the cat that used to live here, it solved a couple of mysteries and caused some trouble, but at least I'm feeling better now.

And how have you been?

Now that I can breathe again, I've started working in earnest on the quilt for my nephew. If you recall, he wanted orange, and I've been working on making four patches for Kevin the Quilter's mystery scrap quilt. It's turning out pretty well, even though there are a ton of four-patches to be made. Here's how far I am:

Okay, that doesn't look like much, but there are tons of four-patches waiting in the wings. I decided to make the center from two patches so that I could get more variety in the center, which is a pretty solid block of orange. I just don't want to have the same fabrics next to each other. Is that weird?

Of course, I did not have this many oranges in the stash.  I used most of the orange scraps I had, plus I purchased some orange fat quarters to cut up. I thought there was plenty of variety, but you know that you can always use more.  I get bored with stitching the same fabrics over and over, and a little stressed about making sure that there aren't too many that are the same. I'm not done with all the four patches in orange yet, so I think I might get a few more pieces just for a little more variation in the four patches. I think it might need some lighter oranges, just for a little zing. A few brights never hurt!

This is a two-color quilt, and I chose to use gray with the orange, because, you know, Joe is a guy and I wanted it to look masculine but not Halloween-ish:

I think the gray is going to work!  As you know if you have read this blog at all, I am not a big fan of gray and I generally don't have very much of it around. I used every single piece I could find, plus I bought some fat quarters, and I was able to eke out all of the gray that I needed. I *may* have cut one strip from a piece of yardage, but you can't fault me for that, can you? And I used up a lot of gray that was never going to get used in anything else, so that's a win, too.

I actually liked working with the grays a little better than the oranges. They're a little easier on the eyes, and for some reason I didn't care quite as much about how the different fabrics went together.  (I wonder what that says about me?) The grays don't photograph nearly as well, though!

So, now that our new place is cat-allergen free, I am back to it. The sewing room is not yet all together, but all the fabric is out of boxes (again), I've wiped down all the shelves and washed a few things, and I've gotten the books arranged.  And I found the walking foot, too, so maybe there will be a fun finish later this week.  We can hope, right?

This last photo is from the window in my office. By far the best view I've ever had. Usually I'm looking at some kind of building they put up in the 1970s, but all the offices in our "pod" have these huge, tall windows. It's great, and I'm happy to be looking at trees instead. Allergic to those, too, but at least they stay outside!

Hope you're all having a good, allergy-free week and getting some stitching in. And if you're selling your house, be sure to tell people about your pets! Or at least spring for some rug sucking when you move out!

Cold, with something sunny

Hi all, and welcome to a very, very cold Wednesday.  I need another layer today, how about you?  It's actually not too bad here, but our friends and family in Wisconsin are really freezing.  One year when our kids were small (so at least 20 years ago) the actual temperature-- not the wind chill-- fell to about 20 below zero.  We hung blankets over the windows and everything because the furnace could not keep up.  It's a fond memory now, because we snuggled under quilts and played games and drank hot chocolate and such, but back then it was really pretty scary (for the adults, at least). 

Here's a somewhat commemorative block that I made just for the cold this week:

I call this a "polar vortex" block.  It's actually only 3 inches square and is going into my temperature quilt for the day my new granddaughter was born.  As you can tell, it was quite chilly that day, though the baby did not seem to care.  By the way, I am happy to report that she is absolutely adorable and a very happy tiny girl so far, not that we expected anything else.

There has not been a lot of other stitching going on the last few days, both because of the new little one and because I have a very big project due February 15 and I've had to be working on that.  I did figure out what I'm going to do with the little 4-patches I've been making, though.  I decided to put them together into these blocks:

This is a Sunny Lanes block, which is a Nancy Page block from sometime in the 1920s-1940s.  You can see that I decided to go with a green solid as an accent for the four patches.  I like how it turned out!  The green is Kona Cabbage, which is one of my favorite Kona colors because it's so nice and fresh.

Sunny Lanes doesn't look like a very exciting block until you start to put some of them together, which is when the magic happens.  Here are two of the secondary designs formed by multiple blocks:

Radiating squares

Stars and stripes

There are a lot of other designs that you can make with these blocks, including diagonal stripes, depending on how you turn them, so I think these will be fun to play with and will make a lovely quilt once it's done.

The blocks finish at 8 inches square, so I'll need at least 56 blocks for a decent sized quilt, depending on what I want for a border.  I don't seem to have made a dent in the 1-1/2 inch squares yet, though, so it's a safe bet that there are more than enough in the bin for at least one quilt.  We all know they're multiplying in there, too, so I'm pretty sure I'm safe.

Other than the shivering, that's about it from here! I'm hoping to have a spring-like top finished this week and I'll show it off if there is a chance for me to take it outside and get a few pictures.  Hope all of you stay warm and safe in the cold. Think warm thoughts! 

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and Oh Scrap!

Tiny foursomes

Hi everyone, and thank goodness it's Friday!  I could not wait for this week to be over.  I spent a good bit of it with a really terrible migraine, the kind where all you can really do is lie down in a dark room and whimper.  Sadly, few people can take that option for very long, so I actually had to try to *do things.*  I was unsuccessful at most of it.

Thankfully, my head is mostly better now, and it's the weekend, so I can just kind of rest and try to catch up.  Obviously I got no real sewing done, so now I'm behind where I wanted to be.  I swore that this year I would stop feeling like I was "behind" on sewing, but that lasted all of ten days.  I will try to work on that some more.

One thing that I can talk about today is this four-patch project that I've started as a leader-ender scrap project:

Aren't those cheerful? Leaders and enders are little bits that you stitch together in between parts of another project, and you can read more about them HERE if you want.  I've thought this was a great idea, but mostly I've failed at it.  These little four-patches might turn the tide, and they build up amazingly fast (or maybe I just sew too much.)

These little bits will finish at only 2 inches square.  When I'm saving scraps, I save the pieces as chunks until it's time to use them, then cut what I need.  When the scrap gets pretty small, I cut it up into 2-1/2, 2 inch, and 1-1/2 inch squares so I can squeeze every last bit of value out of those pieces.  I've been saving these in bins separated by size:

This is the 1-1/2 inch bin, and I think it's time to use these up.  There are thousands of squares in there! And I just keep adding to it as I cut more scraps.  I saw THIS quilt project from Amanda Nyberg (now retired!), called Lost in the Crowd, and was seriously inspired.  This would make a great use for thousands of squares, don't you think?

I've been keeping this container filled with squares next to the machine and grabbing pieces when I remember, then tossing them into a basket. 

Believe it or not, this container is a repurposed produce container.  Our grocery store sells cut fruit in these, with one kind of fruit per compartment, for a ridiculously expensive price.  Sometimes I get some, though, because stress is a real thing and it's better to eat fruit than chips. 

I want to stitch these into double 4-patches when I get a chance, to make blocks that are a little easier to handle, so I tried out some alternate block possibilities:

These are Kona Butter, Bahama Blue, and Cabbage.  I'm really drawn toward the green, which is also what Amanda used.  What do you think?  Maybe I should make up a couple as an experiment.  I think the Butter is definitely out, but I do love both the others.

That's about all I accomplished this week.  For the weekend, I'll be resting my head and checking my phone obsessively as our daughter should be having her baby any day.  A new granddaughter-- I can't wait!  Hope your weekend is good!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, and Oh Scrap!