Yearly Archives: 2015

February Goals • 18 Comments

sarah • February 7, 2015

I'm participating in Sarah's 4x7 Sewing Challenge of doing some "selfish sewing" for 30 minutes a day. I started purchasing purple fabric for my bed quilt last May. I had trouble finding a blender to match my purple ninja fabric. Since I decided that this project would be my focus of the 4x7 Challenge, I brought my fabrics along with me to Intrepid Thread last Friday for help from Molli Sparkles (Thank you again!) on his visit from Australia. I walked away with a perfect coordinating blender (top left) by Valori Wells for my project and I'm excited to get started. Finishing this purple ninja king size quilt top is my ALYoF February goal.

So Day 1... I was all set to pre-wash fabric for my 30 minutes of selfish "sewing"... and then the downstairs sinks backed up and that became the matter that needed all of our attention... that and I was afraid to run the washing machine while we had a plumbing problem elsewhere in the house. Instead I focused my efforts in the evening to cut out my bee blocks for Stash Bee (Hive 1), The Bee Hive (swarm Tisha) and do. Good Stitches (Promise Circle). I've decided that in keeping with my commitments to the bees, I'll make bee blocks a priority the first week of the month so it felt really good to get the pieces all cut out. I even started piecing my improv log cabins that evening. :-)

Day 2... Called the plumber. ;-) And spilled milk on my laptop keyboard. (Thankfully, it's just fine after 24 hours in rice.) I did manage to get the fabric all prewashed once our plumbing issue was fixed. That was my "sewing" progress.

Day 3... Daughter throwing up... son came home early from school sick. I still managed to get my 11 yards of fabric all ironed and started cutting pieces for my project.

Day 4... In prewashing some unrelated fabric, I had a minor laundry catastrophe. More progress on cutting ninja quilt fabric.

Day 5... Finished cutting all my fabric for the ninja quilt. Woo hoo! Started piecing my 2" strips.

36 squares and 72 2" strips for the blocks

Day 6... Pieced nearly half of my 2" strips.

Day 7... Finished piecing my 2" strips. Yay! It doesn't look like much, but I should be able to start cranking out blocks this next week. Thanks for the motivation, Sarah!

Other projects on my radar this month:

Patchwork City Metro Area BOM
Bee Blocks for do. Good Stitches (done), Stash Bee, and The Bee Hive
Helping my son finish his quilt
Finishing the quilt top on my Rainbow Mini Swap quilt
Finishing the quilt top for my purple Charm Dash quilt

Linking up to ALYoF February Goals and the 4x7 Sewing Challenge Week 1.

So Then This Happened • 19 Comments

sarah • February 4, 2015

I try to pre-wash my fabric and get it neatly into my stash as soon as possible. On Friday, I got my first Patchwork City BOM kit, the rest of the fabric I need for my king sized ninja quilt, and I picked up some other odds and ends. As always, there was some other fabric around here that I hadn't yet pre-washed. So the last couple days have been spent pre-washing and ironing. The washing end is in sight (there's still a healthy pile of ironing left!) and this morning I put in one of the last groups of fabrics, including some Cotton & Steel Viewfinders, some lovely Alison Glass Sun Prints, and some solid purple yardage. Darks. So I threw in a couple color catchers. Then I started up the washer and went about my morning.

When I came back to move the fabric to the dryer I was a bit confused at first. I opened the washer and picked up the top piece of fabric, and three color catchers. Hm. I thought I only put in two. Perhaps there was one in there from the previous load. I started trimming the unraveled edges of the fabric and there was something on it. Crud, looks like a piece of paper or a tag somehow got into this load of fabric... ya know, like how a tissue disintegrates in the washer, little bits of brown on my fabric. :-P I dusted the fat quarter off a bit then threw it into the dryer. Then I picked up the next piece of fabric and it's covered in brown bits, and underneath it were about fifteen color catchers. In that moment I knew what had happened, I WASHED THE ENTIRE BOX OF COLOR CATCHERS! Well, at least none of the fabrics bled. ;-)

A *few* more color catchers than needed.

Now I'm pretty sure when a small cardboard box disintegrates into wet cardboard dust, it results in about a million little brown specks... so yeah, they weren't exactly coming off real easily. So I shook the fabric around and kinda dusted it off with my hand as best I could and start loading it into the dryer. Then I had to babysit the dryer so I could empty the lint trap when it filled up, about every 4 minutes. At least this mostly took care of the problem and a second wash and dry seems to have left all my fabric looking like new again. You non-pre-washers are pointing and laughing now, aren't you?

See that... stuff... that used to be a cardboard box.

In summary, here's my pro tip: Don't put the entire box of Color Catchers in the wash.

Stellar Wind – Finished Quilt • 18 Comments

sarah • January 31, 2015

In July, I participated in the Astronomical Quilts! Block Challenge by completing a 9.5" wonky star block. I decided I really liked the block, but didn't want to make a ton of them. Hence, The Giant Wonky Star quilt (working title). I had enough of the background fabric to make the star 48" x 48". With the three additional borders, it measures 62" x 62". I had the quilt top and pieced back done in August. It went together so quickly. I even made a quilt label for it's September completion. Oops. (I've made a new one.) Thanks again to ALYoF for helping me get a project from the back burner to the finished column this month!

I was searching for a cosmic name for the quilt. With some help from my husband I settled on Stellar Wind. Stellar wind is the flow of particles from the atmosphere of a star, and is not generally symmetric. Perfect!

I think part of the long delay in quilting it was my inability to decide what design(s) to use. With help from my sister I finally came up with a plan last weekend. I decided to do square and triangular spirals inside the star. Then for the background I used a swirl and star pattern I'd used before when I quilted Frieda. I stitched in the ditch between each border, extending the background pattern to the second border. Then on the outer border I made a variety of planets. If you look very closely (okay, maybe you can't tell) you'll see that I ran out of the thread I was using and the last 6 or so planets are a different color. ;-)