Brown plus red plus progress

 Hi everyone! How is the beginning of summer around your place? This weekend I stained the small deck off my bedroom. Only two cicadas landed on me, which means I only got huge wipes of stain where I screamed and swatted them away with the brush on one arm. I didn't even spill the stain, as freaked out as I was. This is a major win for me. I still have to do the floor, but the new planters have been screwed into the deck and there are flowers in there! It's very exciting.

You may have heard that my friend Preeti is hosting the Positivity Quilt Along, which is a nice and relaxed QAL that doesn't end until just before Labor Day. It is completely free and Preeti has already shared the patterns and more than a dozen different layouts and the fabric requirements for each. The goal is to create charity quilts, many of which will go to Mercyful Quilts, but all worthy causes are fine. (Jump over to Preeti's for more information and inspiration!) You knew I would jump in, so here are my starter blocks:

 

 

Why is that photo so weird? The blocks are brown, with a red print plus sign. I wanted to make a quilt that felt more neutral, for a man or for someone non-binary, or really anyone who would like something with some darker colors. I had some fabric that I wanted to use, but (as usual) I didn't have enough to make a whole quilt just from that fabric. I added the brown and drew myself up a new layout, moving some of the colors around, and I'm pretty happy with how it's starting to look. Here are the fabrics I'm using for the quilt:

 

 

I know what you're thinking-- those are too many fabrics for the quilt! Not to worry! I have a plan, and it's going to turn out pretty great. 

To make my blocks, I've been strip piecing, which has made it all go really quickly. If you're not using scraps, you can save yourself quite a lot of time by strip piecing:

 

 

The colors in the picture above are much closer to the real colors of the blocks. I think the green grass in the top picture threw everything off. I would have hung them on a tree for a better shot, but you know-- big ugly bugs.

So there's the beginning of my Positivity quilt! It doesn't look like much now, but it will soon. And in that same vein, here is my progress on the Edyta Sitar mystery quilt: 

 

I'm up to step 7 of 12, and it's starting to look like a real quilt top. I've really enjoyed working on this, and I hope to finish off the piecing really soon. Laying out the grid as it is in the pattern and filling it in as I go has been really motivating. I may do this with other patterns, because it really does keep me going to see all the progress. 

 

One last thing before I wrap this up: my friend Bernie is retiring and closing her Etsy fabric shop. Sadness for us, but great for Bernie, who will get a lot more Grammy-time. She is having a big sale on everything, so hop on over if you need some fabric, and who doesn't? 

 

 

Hope you all are having a wonderful and positive week and making lots of progress, and that you find some treasures over at Bernie's shop. Happy stitching!

Sharing at Midweek Makers.

A small bite of chocolate

Hi everyone!  How was your week?  I am still feeling pretty run down from the demon flu, but carrying on.  What are the options, really?

The one thing I accomplished this week was making up the brown Grandma's blocks:

I'll tell you what, I am loving these hand dyes.  They are so beautiful and they sew up so nicely.  Plus I almost never think that brown fabric looks like chocolate, but these totally do! In this case, a nice creamy milk chocolate.  Yum.

So, here's my scrappy confession:  remember all of those scraps I was cutting into usable pieces because they were bringing me down and crushing my creativity? 

Well, I finished cutting them up and then. . .I gave most of them away.

What?!  Yep, they were all nice and pretty in stacks and I put most of them into boxes and envelopes and sent them to various places, including some friends who quilt for charity, where I'm sure they'll be put to good use.  It just made me tired to look at them, and it seemed like a good idea to clear the decks and get them out of here. I feel like I lost 10 pounds! 

I didn't get rid of everything, of course!  I kept enough 2-inch squares to finish a scrappy quilt that I started but is still in pieces, plus all of the 5 inch squares and the bigger chunks.  And I kept all of these:

One and a half inch squares!  I have about 12,000 of these babies, which I've been saving for years. ( No, I didn't count them!  I counted out 500 of them, weighed the pile, then weighed the rest and divided.)  I even traded some with friends not long ago, and it didn't really make a dent. So then I did this (with inspiration from Angela's lovely projects):

Postage stamps!  I finished the dark blue one above and started a light blue one and a brown one. I don't think this is an RSC project but I could change my mind.  I keep finding the last little bits of fabrics that I loved, so it's been fun so far. When I'm done with this quilt I may give the rest of these away too, depending on how I feel about them.  Little bitty seams could make me crazy.

Hope you all have some chocolate or at least some fun this weekend!  It's going to be quite cold here, but our daughter is coming from Maine to visit, so I'm sure we'll be out and about.  And I have to get started on creating some more scraps since most of mine are now gone! Wonder what will happen there?

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, soscrappy for RSC16, and Oh Scrap!

Intricate Stitches--Brown

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Intricate Stitches quilt!  This month's color is brown.  Brown is not my favorite color, and I don't have a lot of it, but I chose to use it along with pink in this month's block:

I like it! This is a block called Steps to the Garden, a Nancy Cabot block from the 1930s. Do you think there's just enough brown to qualify it for a brown block?  I like the liberal dose of pink, and I  thought about switching the colors but decided that I like it better this way.  It would also work with any other colors as long as there is enough contrast.  A light green instead of pink would look fantastic.

This block is deceptively simple. All of the squares and strips finish to 1 inch wide.  The challenge comes in the precision piecing of the little bits to end up with a 12 inch block.  I tried to make it as easy as possible using one main strip set.  I used a shorter stitch length for making this block and also moved the speed control on my machine to half speed.  I think it really helped with controlling the narrow pieces.

Okay, let's make a pretty block!

Cutting:

From the brown, cut:

     8 1-1/2 inch strips at least 9-1/2 inches long (see note below)

White:

     8 1-1/2 inch squares
     8  1-1/2 inch by 2-1/2 inch rectangles

Pink:

     4 2-1/2 inch strips at least 9-1/2 inches long (see note below)
     8 1-1/2 inch squares
     8 1-1/2 by 2-1/2 inch rectangles

Note:  I used 9-1/2 inch strips because they fit my fabric.  You will need to cut 1-1/2 inch sections, so use any lengths that will allow you to cut 24 1-1/2 inch sections from the pink and brown strips.

That's it for the cutting!

Construction:

Stitch one of the brown strips to the top and bottom of each of the 2-1/2 inch pink strips:

Mmmm, strawberry ice cream sandwiches!

Either press the seams open or toward the brown.

Cut each of the pink and brown sections into 1-1/2 inch pieces.  You will need 24 1-1/2 inch pieces total.

Anybody else remember a licorice-type candy that looked like this?

Next, take all of the white rectangles and stitch them to the brown/pink pieces as shown.  Make 8 total:

Do the same with the 8 pink rectangles and 8 separate pink and brown sections:

Take the pink and white squares and the remaining pink and brown pieces.  Stitch a white square to one end and a pink square to the other end of each strip.  You should have 8 of these pieces.

Assembly: 

All the pieces are made!  Arrange two of each of the units as shown to make one "left-side" block section:

Make 2 of these sections.  Fuss with the block sections and your seam allowances as much as you have to to make them 6-1/2 inches square without any trimming.  (Don't trim! Really!  It will make your block the wrong size.)

Take two more of each of the units and arrange them as shown to make two "right side" block sections.  Notice that these are the mirror image of first two block sections. Fuss with these until they are the right size. Make two of these sections as well.

Once you have all four sections made, press well and arrange the sections as shown and stitch. Some starch or Magic Sizing helps keep all the seams from stretching out.
  

Most of the block sections have very few seams to match, but the final assembly of the block requires matching all 11 seams.  Use lots of pins, and make sure that you have each half of the block oriented correctly.  It's very helpful to mark which seam the block sections should be stitched along so that everything turns out correctly in the final block.

Congratulations--you have a fabulous block! Your block should measure 12-1/2 inches square to finish at 12 inches in the quilt.

Now that this second block is finished, gather up your scraps and save them with the blocks for the center block at the end, then be sure to come back March 1 for another exciting block.  Happy sewing!

Sharing at Linky Tuesday,  Let's Bee Social and soscrappy for RSC16.

The Brown family

Hi everyone!  Are you ready for a lovely fall weekend? I sure am.  The last couple of weeks have been really busy and I am ready to settle down and enjoy some down time this weekend.  Here is the happiest part of renting the condo: the leaves are falling and we don't have to rake them!  Let's hear it for landscapers!

This week I spent some time with the girls, making up the brown dolls.  Here's the family:

Aren't they adorable?  I had my doubts about the browns, because I personally don't own very many brown clothes, but I think they turned out great.

And can I just say that they have an amazing sense of color?  I couldn't wear those dresses nearly as well as they do!

There is one more member of this family to show off, although she is quite shy:

Yep, she's the sister who joined the convent and became a Carmelite nun!  If you don't know (or care) what that means, just know that it made me really, really happy to make this one.  It took a while because the dress is fairly complicated (lots of layers) and I really wanted to get it right, but I think she turned out really well.  And she'll certainly fit in to what is turning out to be a global sisterhood.

Now that we're nearing the end of the rainbow scrap challenge for this year, I think I have come up with a setting for the dolls.  I'm really getting impatient to put it together because I really think it's going to be great.  I'm also trying decide if I should put eyes on the dolls, and if so, just how I should do that.  I know they aren't getting full faces, because there's no way that I could do that without really messing it up, but eyes might add something nice.  I know I don't want to use beads or French knots, but I'm not sure how else to do it.  Any good suggestions?

Hope all of you have a great weekend.  I hope to get some sewing in and maybe bake something.  And I'm just now getting back into the full swing of my usual exercise, so I'll definitely get some walking in since it should be cool and perfect for a nice couple of miles.

The last picture from our house!

Happy fall!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  soscrappy, and Finish it up Friday.

Classic stitches--Brown

Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Classic Stitches quilt! This month's color is brown, and I've chosen a lovely block that will let you show off all of those lovely brown scraps but not have so much brown that it brings down the quilt. Since October can be a stressful month, what with all those leaves to rake and such, how about a nice, easy block that uses only squares and rectangles but still looks spectacular?

This is the Pennsylvania block, a traditional pattern that dates before 1895 and is #2023 in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia. (I swear I chose this before we moved to Pennsylvania!) When set with sashings and cornerstones it resembles a single Irish chain, and can also be known as Criss Cross or Simple Cross.  This block is very easily pieced and would look wonderful done up as a whole quilt.

But we're only making a row! Here we go--6-inch blocks are shown. Instructions for 3-inch,  9-inch, and 12-inch blocks are given at the end.

Cutting:

For each 6-inch block, you will need brown scraps plus scraps of a background color.  Cut one 2-1/2 inch square and 8 1-1/2 inch squares from brown, plus 4 1-1/2 by 2-1/2 rectangles and 4 1-1/2 by 4-1/2 inch rectangles from the background fabric.

That's it for the cutting!

 Construction:

[There are a lot of ways to make these blocks, but I found them easiest to make using this method, mostly because of the sizes of my scraps.  If a different way is easier for you, such as making 4-patches instead of using strips, use that method.]

First, take the 1-1/2 inch brown squares and 2 each of the 1-1/2 inch rectangles.  Stitch a brown square to both ends of the rectangles:

Next, stitch the remaining 1-1/2 by 2-1/2 inch rectangles to two sides of the 2-1/2 inch brown square:

Add the shorter square and rectangle units to the top and bottom, making an uneven 9-patch:

Almost there!  Next, add the remaining 1-1/2 inch rectangles to opposite sides of the 9-patch unit:

Finally, add the remaining square and rectangle units to the top and bottom.  Press and you have a completed block!

Variations:

Fussy cut the center squares, or use an embroidered square.

Replace the center square with another color. Green would be a nice choice.

Reverse the colors, using brown as the background with light-colored squares.

For a 9-inch block, cut a 2-1/2 inch brown center square and 8 2-inch brown squares, plus 4 2 by 3-1/2 inch white rectangles and 3 2 by 6-1/2 inch rectangles. Piece as above. Six 9-inch blocks with spacers between them will make a 60 inch row. Four 9-inch blocks without spacers make a 36-inch row.

For a 12-inch block, cut a 4-1/2 inch brown center square, plus 8 2-1/2 inch brown squares, 4 2-1/2 by 4-1/2 inch white rectangles and 4 2-1/2 by 8-1/2 inch white rectangles. Piece as above.  Five 12-inch blocks make a 60-inch row, or three make a 36-inch row.

For a more interesting 12-inch block, make 4 6-inch blocks and join them together to make one larger block. This is how I constructed my 12-inch block:

I swear that these all look aligned in person!

For my row, I chose to make 3-inch blocks.  For this option, cut a 1-1/2 inch square of brown, plus 8 1-inch squares of brown.  From the white, cut 4 1-inch by 1-1/2 inch rectangles and 4 1 inch by 2-1/2 inch rectangles. Construct as above.  I found it easiest to strip piece the units for these blocks instead of using tiny squares. I thought it went faster and were more accurate.

The three-inch blocks are somewhat fiddly, but are very cute and make a nice row.

Hope that this row is very non-stressful! Our last row is coming up in November, so this is a good time to check and be sure all of the rows measure 60-1/2 inches long and adjust if necessary.  Be sure to come back for the last row on Tuesday, November 3.

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social,  WIP Wednesday, and at soscrappy for RSC15.

First Philly Finish

Hi everyone!  Have you had a good week?  We have had just a lovely time, but this weekend is shaping up to be just crazy.  The pope will be in town!  The road closings (including the freeway, which will be closed for 2 days) and general mayhem promise to make for a very interesting weekend. I don't have any passes to get through the security cordons, so I'll have to find some way to pass the time.  Can you think of anything I could do?

So, this week I'm celebrating my first Philadelphia finish!  Here it is:

Happy dance!  If you recall, this is my Terrestrial Star quilt, which I finished once, then finished again, and have now finally completely finished. Still can't get a picture where the blue shows up well, but I think it looks great!

This finished about 68 by 74 after quilting.  I love how it turned out!

This was long armed in an aspen leaf pattern in a green thread that matches the green in the quilt. And I zipped out a machine binding again, which only took me about an hour and a half for this whole quilt, including cutting and piecing the binding.  That is a major win in my book.

This quilt will be a gift for a friend, after it gets a wash.  I was looking for good picture places here near the condo, and found many promising places, including the little park on the property and this lovely gazebo.  I discovered after I took the picture, though, that this gazebo had been unused forever, because the dirt on those benches made the back of the quilt really filthy.  I was so sad!  My poor quilt!

I'm sure that it will wash fine, though, and very shortly be on its way to my friend.  That's my number one task for this weekend, then we may make some popcorn and watch the pope on TV.  Or maybe I'll sew!  What a novel idea!

Hope everyone has a great weekend with no traffic troubles! Happy sewing!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict  and Finish it up Friday.

Re-finished

Hi all! How is everyone on this summer weekend?  I have some sore muscles.  Our son and daughter-in-law just bought their first house and we have been helping them clean it (and, oh, baby, did the former owners leave it in terrible condition!) and paint, do some landscaping, install new appliances, etc.  There's a reason why younger people do most of this.  We're exhausted!

But not too exhausted to sew!  This week, I finished the Terrestrial Star quilt for a second time. Yes, I took apart a perfectly good finished quilt top and redid some of it when there was nothing even wrong with it.  Sometimes a quilt just tells you that you're not finished with it and refuses to be quilted up until you do something else.  Here is the new version:

By the dawn's early light!

Just for comparison purposes, here is the older version:

Better picture of the colors, at least!

I think the new one is a real improvement!  As you can see, there were several changes.  First, I changed the corners of the center star and replaced them with the light blue fabric.  I love the fabric that I removed, but it just didn't really work.  I like the quilt with the blue much better.  It looks more like a star with a sawtooth border now.  Plus I can use that lovely fabric for something else.  Something small, but something.

The big change was the borders, of course.  I used all of the leftover brown strings I could find to string-piece 4-1/2 inch borders on paper.

It was super-easy, if a little time consuming, and I think it turned out great.  The best part is that the pile of brown strings went from this:

to this:

Imagine how happy I am about this.  And how tired I am of brown strings!

This new version is just barely a rectangle, because I didn't want it to be square, and measures about 70 by 75.  The top and bottom borders are slightly wider than the sides, which I like for some reason. 

Anyway, I like this version much better! I think it's more visually interesting and doesn't look quite so "vanilla."  I know there was nothing wrong with the first version, but I wasn't happy with it and now I am. So now I think it's ready for the longarmer, which is always cause for celebration!

Hope you all have something to celebrate this weekend, even if it's just some good weather.  Remember that winter is always coming, so we have to enjoy the warmth while we can!

Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict and also Finish it up Friday. Come on over and join in!

Rethinking

Hello everyone!  Enjoying the summer?  We had a mostly-dry weekend! It was great. And since there is a big holiday at the end of the week, this is a short work week for Best Husband Ever, which he loves, even though it will cut into my library time.  I guess I'll just have to make up for it with some brats and beer or something. Does testing different barbecue sauces count as research?

For this week, I am working again on a quilt I thought I was done with. Remember this one?

I called this Terrestrial Star and thought I finished it off  back in May.  Well, even after I showed it I wasn't really pleased with it.  There's nothing wrong with it, but it just didn't feel right to me.  Plus, I had this to deal with:

Yes, a big pile of leftover brown strings! Wow, that's a lot. What to do with them all?

So, what I finally decided to do was take the borders of the quilt off and expand the center using the strings.  I cut several pieces of this paper in half lengthwise:

This is just extra-cheap paper from somewhere, maybe a dollar store, maybe a big box store.  As I said, I cut some sheets in half lengthwise, which makes them about 4-1/2 inches wide, and just started string piecing across the lengths. 

I'm thinking that I will put a row of these around the center and then see where I want to go from there.  If nothing else, it will be more visually interesting than what I had. Thankfully, I have a bit of the green left, so I can still finish off the borders with that beautiful green.

As I said, there was nothing wrong with the quilt the way it was, but I just wasn't happy with it. So I guess it's back to work-in-progress status.  The good news is that the string piecing goes really fast (I do them at least two at a time to keep the strings flowing) and I should be finishing this up really quickly. I hope!

So, that's my project for this short holiday week.  Not sure that I'll get it done, but it's nice to have goals.  I also did make some more progress on the Kaleidoscope quilt and bought this fabric for Roman Floors:

 Don't those look yummy?  I can't wait to start work on that quilt in earnest.

Hope everyone has a great week and gets to do something fun.  And a very happy Canada Day tomorrow to all my Canadian friends!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, and WIP Wednesday.