OBP a few more flimsies

 Ok so i changed my mind on this one.  

 Again,

But the 12.5 inch blocks were too big and too dark, so I yelled "PIVOT!"

and these 6.5" blocks magically appeared.

It's all sewn together now, so there is no going back

This Ocean Waves quilt came to me as separate 12.5" blocks

All she needed was some borders to embiggerate

not everything needs to be a death struggle

{Keep telling yourself that sweetie}

Who said that?

Then there is this lovely lady made of the pile of 9.5" blocks

She's a sweetie and went together with no trouble at all!

I wish they would all be that simple.

Looking at you 12.5" black strips!

Orphan block jam

So here we are again, In the throws of another orphan block storm session                                                                                                                         and the question of, what do I do with all these blocks?                                                                                                                                                        In some instances I just put em together and be done with them.                                                                                                                                         Like these scrappy squares, which came to me in 9x9 blocks.          

They aren't all going to be beautiful Like the brown brick wall quilt          in the last post,                                                                                           and they aren't all going to be difficult to figure out either,                                                                                                                                               Like This around the world quilt of half square triangles,                               which was just a pile of 4.5" HST's when it appeared in the pile.                                                                                                                                         I just sewed them together and added a border                                                                                                                                                                        No real thought just sew and be done.

                                                                                                                           Now these 12.5 inch have been moving around my design board                                                                                                                                        for a week and I still don't like it.                                                                                                                                                                                             It's OK,                                                                                                            I could do it                                                                                                                                                                                                                              But I don't LIKE it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       So I decided to use more of the 6.5"strip blocks, of which I have about a bazillion,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

to surround the 2- 17" Churn dash blocks at the bottom of the pile                  but I had to cut them down to 6"squares to make them fit,                          no loss we have 400,                                                                                        I am not even joking we will be seeing a lot of these babies!                                                                                                                                                And in order to look at what I was doing on the design board                        I had to move the 12.5" blocks over and                                                           Happy accident! The darker of the 12.5" blocks looked good alongside the Churn dash blocks with their strip borders, Woo!                                                                                                                                                                    I just need to make the border a little longer and add some, A(?) border between the 12.5" blocks and that one is done too!                  

Going to an Orphan Block Party

I have this Growing Pile of orphan Blocks that I and my friends, 

Because a pile this big has help,

have contributed to over the last 3-4 months

I have made 3 quilts from this pile and it's not getting any smaller

so It's time for drastic measures

it's time to pick a block size and quilt everything in that section

Then see whats left over 

I did a gypsy quilt and I have more than plenty to do more but 

I want to eat down the pile first

Because I have a another trick up my sleeve 

to knock down the pile where,

I started with the biggest block in the pile 

I also had 6 Dresden plate blocks and these 9 patches 

that sort of matched, kinda sorta

I also have this Ginormous bag of 6.5" strip blocks

We will be seeing a lot of these babies

so now we have a 43" square I need to make it x60

so 10" of what?

I tried random blocks but they looked terrible, Hmmmm

whadoido?

Side Quest

 I attend a bunch of groups run by my quilt guild and some of them get a lot of donations from
downsizing families of elderly quilters. So on 10 March we got a big donation of 4 lovely bins of fabric and parts at our Tuesday at the Grange sit and sew from a lady downsizing her mothers sewing room.

In them were all kinds of goodies and amongst the boxes were finished blocks of various sizes. When we finished sorting everything there was a pile about 8" high, I took those home to see what I could come up with.

I started to organize them from largest to smallest, trowing the 4- 16.5" blocks up on the design wall. hm. found 7- 15.5" blocks put them up there with 2- 13.5" blocks. foo, still not enough for a whole quilt or even enough to fudge it!                                                                         

After scrap pack, on the last Wednesday of the month I found or was given, another pile of finished blocks. I now had 45 or so 12.5" blocks, I made a 60x60 flimsy and had enough for a 48 x 60" flimsy, mmm, not quite big enough so I added 7- 8.5" blocks down the middle, I've plenty of those. That made that one 50 x 60", hey I have an Idea, Make a gypsy quilt!

I have always wanted to do one and this was the perfect opportunity, I have a tottering stack of finished blocks!

A quick rearrange of the design wall later and here we go!

a few 6.5" 4" 2" and 1.5" insert rows where needed and we have a whole quilt!

This is the finished result, I quilted them all with a loopy pattern, all they need now is binding and these can all go off to community service donations. Woo!

Not bad for a 3 week side quest.

Now back to the dungeon of the Tumbling blocks Quilt.   Which is having trouble fitting together *Sigh*😔            I wish I could just say "Play nice!" and they would.           Why I think it will work for quilts when it didn't work with children I don't know but one does have to try anyway doesn't one?

Well that was fun

 So new update

it's not almost done

Something was not working out for me so 

I tore it apart.

very carefully

on the good side I was gifted a lovely Burgundy velvet skirt that just looks luscious as a border so 

I finished hand sewing on the corners before I tore it apart

of course because, reasons.

I'll get back to you on that when I have it figured out.

The plan is make it wider?

fix the blocks that bug me.

I want to embroider silk ribbon vines in the velvet borders

hopefully actually finish it and not take a year doing so.

And here is what would have been the last block

Had I not decided to shred that idea.

Embroidered water vase, Brass instruments, silk ribbon Flowers.

The last two Blocks

 We are in the home stretch on this part of the project

The last two blocks are done

Bead Spider and web sewn with fine silver thread surrounded by greenery as is very common around here 

At this time of the year they are huge and covered with dew so at least you can see them before you walk through them.

The satin stitched Octopus was sewn over an outline and some padding of chain stitch, the coral rocks are an old piece of tatting from my mother-in-laws stash and some small charms and beads

And the last Block which is not yet done 

I have 2 sre folded flowers and leafy DMC branches in the white

A DMC embroidered vase with water streaming out is done but the seam treatments around it are not

and I have an idea for the dark panel but haven't gotten much farther than that

Thanksgiving was lovely but I still need to clean up a bit from the chaos of the run-up to the day and the day itself.

There is also all the stuff I need to do in the studio, customer quilts to be finished and projects to be started. There never seems to be enough time in the day to start, let alone finish, but it all seems to get done eventually, so I won't sweat it here.

Fixing the original tumbling block, plus 3 finished blocks

This poor wobbly block was my first draft

I was testing out my color choices and wether I could take a step out 

by sewing the 3 diamonds together as a piece.

I decided I didn't like the look of it this way as it was too easy, for me,

to "scribble over the lines" and loose the definition of the three separate blocks which was the look I liked in the first place

                                        bUt

why waste a perfectly good block?  I tried to fix it.  AAAnd I still didn't like it, so I set it aside. 

For about a year (2 actually) and went ahead on other projects and Since I already had the studio to build, I did that instead.

When I had the mojo back for this project, I started again

It's much better now.

Here are 2 other blocks put together, in what I think is, the proper way

They don't look any different you say?

Well good! I did a good job of it then.

Stay tuned for more blocks of diamonds you've already seen.

They are working well together though, I had this fear they would look weird, but I always have that fear. Just because I can name it, doesn't mean it goes away.

I want to finish with the embroidery / embellishment on the rest

 of the diamonds before I put more of the blocks together

Because as you can see by these three I already have a little problem

That is 2 are dark on one side whilst the top one is dark on the other

Sounds like an old Star Treak episode doesn't it......

It was then that our heroine discovered all her dark and medium blocks were not all going the same way

Well Foo!

This means some rows will be dark/light and some rows will be light/dark

Why does this matter? Well I'm not sure just yet

And this is why I need to finish the embroidery first.

I'm fairly certain no one will notice any of this but me.

CQ Tumbling Blocks so far so good!

So here we are again in update land I am trying to get at least 2 of these blocks done a week

I have finished making and binding all my diamond blocks so after they have all been embellished I can just sew the blocks together

I'm now in the process of adding lace, ribbon and what-not to each piece 

before starting to embroider and embellish the individual pieces that will make up each 3 piece block

I Embroidered two Bullion Birds and a bird bath 

with some fancy ferns made from curl of stem stitch

 and lazy daisy stitches  followed by

a seam made from 2 Cretin stitch and beads

This one is a bit plain (For me) >

 I added a line (Lump?) of daisy chain stitches

to continue into the block, then added the spray over each bead cluster

I embroidered a feather stitch along the seam and layered the metal flower onto a lace flower and the fern is from a bigger piece of lace

Placed a bit of ribbon to the seam and a seam treatment of chevron stitch over that with lazy daisy and beads

On this piece I used a satin stitched Bird, was started on felt cut out and tacked onto an embroidered branch

with french knot hydrangeas which were embroidered separately on muslin 

cut out turned under and tacked on. The leaves are silk ribbon and I'll finish the seam treatments with beads later

The Feather was embroidered with variegated silk thread in steam stitch I placed a bead at the top

The seam treatment above it is picked out in alternating button hole with lazy daisy and red glue on beads that I drilled a hole in and sewed on (After all I'm not a heathen!)

The feather stitch is laddered down the yellow seam and there is another bit of slanted button hoe below it I'll embellish those a bit more later

On this piece I ran out of thread for that alternating button hole stitch one or 2 stitches from the end and covered it up wit a bit of daisy lace there are rice shaped plastic pearl beads and yellow glass beads for embellishment

I completely covered the cretin stitch seam treatment with silk ribbon rosebuds and leaves and some glass flower beads

The other corner is a bit of lace and a piece of sequin embellished ribbon lace

 the wings of the dragonfly were done separate on a bit of gauze with gold thread, they are my first attempt at stumpwork wings and not great but good enough for a first attempt I think. the rest of it are a real pearl and a glass button followed by fake plastic pearls.

 I just didn't have the spoons for this last one, I threw a bunch of loose odds-n-ends at it, tacked it on and called it good enough.  

 And thats ok. 

I figure I have 75 diamonds, making up 25 blocks. 

I can fudge a few here and there, and not feel bad about it.                  Right?

I'm still working on that last bit.

It's all about giving yourself a little grace.

Gold work update and some sewing stuff

Here Mr. Snail has gotten his body                                   antennae to come

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      I'm working on the stems now.                                                                                                                                                                        It's very slow going mostly because working the stems is fiddly.                                                                                                               More fiddly than clumping them all together, as you can hide some mistakes in the mash potatoes.                                                                                                                                                                             You can't hide a single strand of Purl Purl when it's all alone.        It's lumpy af all by it's self.

And any mistakes are going to trumpet their ick everywhere                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Doesn't look so bad this way

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       The bottom of the stem didn't look thick enough                                                                                                                                                             I added some more smooth Purl, cut small and threaded at an angle                                                                                                                                 Which gives the lower half more definition and makes the stem look more able to hold up the rest of the assembly.                                                                                                                                                                    I will all add gold sequin berries at intervals and I'm wondering               if I should add some smaller leaves or would that make it too busy?                                                                                                                                That's a ponder for later.

I have also been working on a bunch of old shop hops                                                                                                                                                       On tap right now is the 2022 featuring homestead type imagery                                                                                                                                       canning jars and labels, pick-nick baskets, pies etc.

                                                                                                                                                                        The blocks are mostly done,                                                                                                                       just the hand work to finish up on a few of them,                                                                                        I will give the blocks a lattice setting,                                                                                                     then use up as much of the rest of the fabric as I can in multiple borders                        

                                                                                     Gearing up for this years Rainbow scrap challenge                                                                                      sorting out the scrap bags, I need to make that yellow one bigger.                                                      I also need to make an orange and a teal bag, those two are way to small now                                                                                                                              And how is it I end up with all that blue?                 As a rule I don't use all that much in the way of blue, yet that bag is always over full to falling over.                                                                            I don't understand.                        

                                                                                    The state of my sewing space has become a bit on the Idea laden side                                                                                                                                          I keep wondering if I should clean or leave it                                                                                                The new studio is coming along and will probably be ready to move into after the first of the year.                                                                                        So clean or pack up? Leave it until I have to move it?                                                                                                                                                                As none of it is especially in the way,                   it's just cramped, 

                                                                                                                           or do I preemptively start moving to storage, I.E. the garage,                        the things I know I don't need now?                                                                                                                                                                                                  Do the lazy bit and leave it make some room                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I'm Feeling                                                                                                                         Meh right now, though I do see the efficacy of doing a bit of a tidy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

More Paper piecing and a rant about trees

So the paper piecing started with this star

The method is a 'new to me' no waste system

Where you fold your sections and  sew along the fold and not through the paper.

I like this much better as it eliminates the annoying, to me, bits of Paper piecing

The paper waste the ripping and the picking.

I can reuse the initial paper pattern over and over 

instead of spending hours picking whats left out of the back and distorting my stitches

The pattern maybe broken up into more pieces 

but the process, I feel, is more streamlined and easier for me to wrap my brain around.

So far I have 6 full stars and one half star

only 20 more to go!

And it fulfills my RSC Quota (Self inflicted, of course) with the center star! 

I still haven't decided if I want it dens-packed with stars or 

hexie rows with diamonds in between.

I have drafted and cut a pattern for the diamonds bUUT.....We'll see

*Rant incoming*

Poplar #2 and hubs taking photos for the neighbors who weren't home

In other news I have been dealing with another power outage due to tree
fall and trying, yet again, to get the city to take down the danger trees. No one was hurt by this one either, thank goodness, just 'inconvenienced' for a few days by power and cable/internet outage issues, and the neighbor across the street now has to have the roof redone because the tree hit the ridge line, which left trunk limbs on the roof and dropped the tippy top in the backyard. Oy.

and half of it still stands!

We have finally gotten to what, we think, is the correct department to do that. But it was so obscurely hidden in the Snohomish county web page it took ages to find! and it's not like the will just give you the phone number when and if you
get a human being on the phone either. the appropriately named department "Vegetation Management" was hidden at the very bottom of the Street maintenance under several sudinonomous tabs. it's like a state secret or something they don't want you to know!

They usually have a driveway and a bush on either side

Very annoying! But finally, hopefully, taken care of. Though a week after the tree-fall and initial surveyor, we have been informed we are on the "list" for tree removal. Great you got a time line on that? there is this other 80' ft tall poplar that is just as punky (I can stick my finger through the bark!) as the other two that came down, in what I can only describe as "barely enough wind to blow out a birthday candle". Waiting for the #3 to come down on it's own, is not an option. t's bigger than the other two and the only reason they haven't managed to kill someone yet, is by providence alone! 

You know the law of threes.

The power pole down the street about 800 feet

 and oopsie-poosie, does not cut it this time!  Whew!

Anyway I am going to make of myself a pest, until this is resolved, if I have to stay on hold till the next ice age or whatever it takes to get it done!

There rant over, thank you for letting me vent.

Explorations in paper piecing

 This was an experiment in paper piecing

That i liked so much I am contemplating a whole quilt

We will see how well that goes

right now i have cut the pieces for star center 

the triangles and  strips for the rest.

I am still deciding on all hexies 

or hexies with diamond corners 

and should those be solid or pieced. 

Lets see how extra I feel like being

CQJP 2024, Starting Ellies right side

That's a lot of open realestate!

That place where 4 patches come together 

is going to be hard to sew through because it's lumpy as hell and the patch below it must be reduced 

Also, that yellow patch is too big, it need to be bisected in some way to make it seem less                                     'LookAt MEEEE!' 

 

But first This little cutie

with wings

and a butterfly

Next we tackle the lumpy patch

I knew I needed to put something over it 

so if the next part failed there was something over it to hide the oppsie-doo 

That's where the Applique heart comes in

next I need to make a slit in the backing fabric 

to get to the lump of 4 patch togetherness 

and cut most of it away making it easy-er to sew through

Then to embroider the eye right in the middle 

of all the mess to keep it from fraying and closed

I then surrounded the heart with a lace trim daisy chain

Making the patch less big, I bisected it with a willow tree

I used 2 colors of floss and chain stitch for the trunk and branches then wrapped some of it with another color to make it more knarled

The leaves are detached lazy daisies 

 And gave it a satin stitched brown bunny with Bullion ears and head

 and a crow made of bullions 

but it needs more

So I added a branch and a swing made with an outline 

and detached needle weaving stitch

and a  squirrel

I made it with bullions and satin stitch 

a little underlay for the tail 

on which I will use turkey work to make fuzzy

She really needs her fuzzy tail!

Here's the whole thing so far

Now to start on the yellow patch

I found a piece of  jacquard ribbon 

added some lace trim 

which makes that patch muuuch smaller 

And easier to deal with

Once I figure out what to put there!