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.

Scrappy blue stars

Hello again, friends! Yes, I know, it's been a busy week.  And before we go any further, congratulations to fellow blogger Lane at That Man Quilts? He got married yesterday!  Many blessings and much happiness to them and to everyone who ran to the courthouse yesterday to get married.  So wonderful to see so much happiness!

So now, just an update on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.  I made some actual progress this week!  I've finished up the light blue crumb star and the larger frame for it:

How cute is that? As ambivalent as I've been about the crumb blocks, I really like this one.  The frame fabric is the very, very last of some fabric that I loved from about 2007.  I have just a few squares of it left, but otherwise it's finally used up.  I'd say that's a good use of resources.

Just as a reminder, the frames for these blocks are from the Moda Love pattern, which is a free pattern in 3 sizes that can be found HERE. (Should go straight to a pdf pattern.) Such an easy and versatile pattern, and I'll bet that I'll use this one again many times.

[You know, other bloggers have pictures of perfect, lovely blocks, but mine always have strings and threads hanging off them.  Sighhhh.]

Since there is no separate aqua month this year, but I have a bunch of aqua scraps, I decided to go ahead and make up some aqua string blocks:

Those will fit right in. I'm leaving the paper on these until I get to constructing the quilt.  I've noticed with the crumb blocks that they can get very stretchy because of all the seams, and who wants to try to put together distorted blocks? 

Since I had the aqua scrap box out, I dug to the bottom and made an aqua crumb block as well:

Don't know which I like more, the block or the day lilies!  Amanda at crazy mom quilts is offering a quilt along for her Scrap Vortex quilt, and I tried the basic method she describes for this block.  It worked well enough.  Turned out a little bit "log-cabiny," but it looks okay.  And yes, that's a little white bit in the middle there.  The aqua dot and white were left over from a strip and already sewn together and I was too lazy to rip them apart. I think it worked fine.

I haven't made a star or a frame for this one, and I think I'll hang on to it until the end. Usually we have 11 colors, so I might need this one for an extra block to finish off the quilt, or I might want to replace a color, like brown.  I'll have this at the ready, and if I don't need it, it can go in with the string blocks as an interesting element.

On a related scrappy topic, does anyone else ever get tired of the scraps they have left over?  I keep seeing the same ones over and over and passing over the same ones.  I'm seriously thinking of taking the colors we've already used and cutting everything left into 1-1/2 and 2-inch squares. I already have a bunch of pieces in these sizes for a couple of "someday" quilts (one of which takes 10,000 1-1/2 inch squares) so it's not completely crazy.  Anyone ever done this? Am I nuts? Seriously, what's the worst that could happen-- I'd have to buy more fabric?  Tragedy!

Hope everyone is enjoying a lovely summer weekend!  Be sure to turn on the air conditioning in the sewing room so you don't get too warm to sew!

Linking up to Scrap Happy Saturday with Angela at soscrappy.

It's magic!

Hello all, and greetings from my very soggy home! Seriously, it will not stop raining.  As you'll see in the following pictures, there are puddles everywhere, and the grass feels like a sponge.  The sump pump is running quite a lot.  The sad part is that we're still down several inches from where we should be because the last couple of years we were in drought.  Some of the pictures today are darkish because I had to dance between the raindrops to get them, so sorry about that!

Today I am showing off the completely finished Mutant Elephants quilt, complete with a really snappy machine-finished binding!

Well, at least you can really see the quilting! I was going to quilt this myself, but I chickened out.  Just too big, and with limited time in my life, it was better to send it to the longarmer.  I know the turtle and the frog are a little wide-eyed, but I like them.  Plus, those birds are flying, because I forgot to give them legs.  Next time I'll piece some legs in, but for now, they're flying.

I took this lovely little quilt to the park and tried to get some good pictures, but it was really wet.  See the puddles?

Who's going to lay their quilt on that?  Not me!

For this quilt, I did the machine binding again using the tutorial for Susie's Magic Binding, found HERE.  It really is magic! I think it looks fantastic. Look how it turns out:

This binding took me about an hour and 45 minutes, with several breaks, mainly because of the pressing involved.  And stitching that looooong seam in the binding, which was tedious but not difficult. I used my zipper foot to stitch this binding down on the front and it worked great. Plus, last time someone suggested that I do the sides and then do the corners last.  This was a great idea, at least until I get the hang of machine binding quickly.  Even with the "piping," my corners turned out great:

My only trouble with this binding is that I didn't realize that so much of the under fabric would be "lost" and the stripes would essentially be invisible.  Here is a swatch of the two fabrics I used:

See how much of the stripe pattern was hidden?  Next time I'll put a solid on the underside.  The good part is that you can use less of each fabric since they are both cut narrowly, so if you have a really cute fabric but not quite enough for a binding, you can still use it along with something else on the underside. Win!

Everybody have a great weekend.  I'll be checking my north side for moss.  Imagine finding some--wouldn't that be a situation? 

One last thing: The Academic Quilter is now listed on QuilterBlogs.com! We'll see what happens.  This does NOT mean there will be ads.  Still non-profit! But if you are looking for something new or different, head on over there to look around! 

Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict and also Finish it up Friday.
 

Happy news

Hi all! Don't know about you, but I got up this morning and realized that we are very close to the end of June.  How did this happen? Stop rushing by so fast! I have too much to do this summer for it to go so quickly!

I have some very happy news to share with the world today.  Let's see if you can guess what it is from these quilty pictures:

Pretty! And artsy, too, there in the tree. 

Didn't guess from that block pattern name? Okay, try this one:

This is a lovely block, but I swear I am never making it again.  (Which means, of course, that I will make it again because it's just so darned challenging, but would look lovely in a quilt.)

Still didn't get it?  Well, this will do it:

Yes! We are very happy to share that our daughter is getting married!  We are so happy about this.  Her fiance is a wonderful young man and we like him very much. The wedding is next April.  I'm told that's not very long to plan everything, but I do like a challenge.  They are fairly relaxed as these things go, so it should be all right.  Right?

It's hard to photograph white fabric, but I tried.  Of course, that's the paper doll pattern that is one of my RSC15 projects. The veil is just tacked on since I'll have to remove it for quilting.  Actually, I'll probably find some tulle instead of this netting and just stitch it into the block. 

For anyone who wants to know, the top block is called Single Wedding Ring and is very easy to piece.  The pink flower block is called Bride's Bouquet and was a real bear to piece, even though I paper pieced it.  I actually think it would be easier to hand piece this one than to paper piece it.  Fitting those yellow triangles into squares was a fairly bad idea!

Before anyone asks, there will be a wedding quilt for them, but it won't be a surprise. I want them to choose the colors and some of the fabrics so that they can enjoy it for a long time.  I'll put some special touches in there, though, so there will still be some surprise. 

Anyway, that's the happy news from this quarter!  Hope you are having a happy day too.  And if you have any wedding-planning advice, I'd be glad to hear it!

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