serendipitous piles

 

another online fabric order of fabrics i randomly picked from one shop on etsy that, when arrived, strikes me as a great fabric combination for a quilt.

i love this grouping so much! i think this spontaneous syncopation happens because when i'm scanning a shop for any other items they carry that i might like, i often have certain projects in mind or specific types of fabrics i'm looking for.

backup a bit - i usually find myself shopping for fabric online when i'm on the hunt for a specific fabric i want. either i've seen it somewhere or i need to restock something i didn't have enough of/want more of. i go to etsy and search the desired fabric. when i find it, i also scan the shop for more items i might like because i'm going to be paying shipping as it is and i might as well get a little more fabric in that envelope, right?

so when i'm in this situation, the fabrics i select are going to be influenced by what the shop has to offer/their style, and any projects i might have in mind at the time. also, i am always on the lookout for good low-volume finds and basics/blenders.

considering these factors, i guess it's not really a surprise that the resulting bundle often goes together well. it's happened to me several times. sometimes i have to edit out one or two of the fabrics or add more in if the pattern calls for more, but in general it's really fun to come up with an idea for a seemingly random pile of fabrics that happen to look great together.

i've made a number of quilts from piles of fabric gathered in this way, more than i realized:

this pile of fabrics i purchased from anna maria horner's nashville shop, craft south, on a visit there the weekend she opened the store became a single block, improv log cabin. i was just picking things i liked when shopping at the store. it wasn't until much later at home that i considered that they actually looked good together.

"twelve south" is still in the "to be quilted" queue

this pile of heather ross fabrics was sitting on my pressing table for a long time. i don't remember how it got there, if it came together from a single order (very likely) or if i put the heather rosses from one r a couple order(s) together with the intention of filing them away later. either way, i kept looking at it until i decided to just make a quilt from it.

this is another log cabin quilt (i definitely had my log cabin era), still in the piecing phase.

this golden book-looking pile was a big online order that said, "pretty please keep us together!"

on mother's day weekend 2021 i made them into an aunt bet's by frankie and ray.

in early 2020, i put in an order to fat quarter shop for some yardage of these various solids. the box arrived at my house just as the world shut down and the pandemic kicked off. 

i hadn't ordered these for a particular quilt, just to stock up on some colors i was interested in. but i quickly decided they would be made together in a commemorative quilt, a house quilt i call "shelter in place," to mark the difficult but beautiful time our family spent together in quarantine. i'm still working on this one.

i saw someone else's all-solids christmas tree quilt and decided to use these same fabrics (i had plenty) to make a merry and bright christmas quilt i call "bright forest." status - still piecing.

maybe you recognize this pile from another online order because it recently became a finish. i took out two of these prints (so glad i took out the green sprig print!) and supplemented with a couple more.

i've come to really love "fall paint lake," which now mostly reminds me of our time in malibu while my son was getting medical help in LA. i think of it as our beach house quilt, not a lake quilt. i have no idea where the pattern designer came up with that name. but i can't rename it now. or can i? it still isn't labeled.

that's a look at piles becoming quilts. what should i do with my new pile?

pinwheel problems

making pinwheels for my "groovy liberty" quilt, the newest liberty + chambray chapel lap quilt. i tried three iterations of this fabric combination, switching pieces in and out until i figured out which one i actually liked. you can't always tell how the fabrics will look together in the block until you try them.

the first combo up there on the left felt unbalanced because the two colorful prints on the left blended together once sewn in the block, leaving the other two to look like christmas on the other side.

i switched out the larger-scaled print for a yellow june's meadow. this brought more contrast and color to the block, which i liked. but something was still off. maybe because there were now three prints with a similar smaller scale. i was mising that big, bold print.

so i swapped that out for the smaller scaled floral. and that where i stayed. this block feels fun and balanced, too. 

first problem solved.

  

i started sewing together block pieces from the first fabrics i cut from scraps before i did my maths for the quilt and knew how many i needed for each fabric. not a great idea if i do more than a handful. i had a lot of this mitsi print in hot pink and sewed them all up, only to discover late i had done too many. 

time to unpick.

as i was counting how many i'd made, i found that these two blocks had the chambray flipped. the difference between wrong and right sides of the chambray are harder to see in this photo, but they are noticeable in person. well, i already had to unpick some anyway. this made the choice which to unpick easier.

this one is hard to tell in the photo, but it's mitsi that's flipped wrong side out this time. 

another unpick.

now can you tell what i did? the two bolder, high-value prints (on left) are supposed to be opposite each other. there are a lot of blocks in this quilt and this small switch might not be noticeable in one block. but it feels off to me when i had them balanced the way i like already. 

unpick.

putting my cute bohin rabbit/hare snips to good use. i don't use an official seam ripper. i find the tips of my snips fit in the stitches well enough, so i use those. one less tool to have around, store, and find. i like that they multitask this way. in fact, i probably use my snips for unpicking more than anything else.

by this point in my sewing time i wasn't even batting an eye when i had to unpick about one in four seams. i just wanted to get the blocks right. it made me think of repentance. i used to hate the idea of repentance as much as i did unpicking. they're the same, in a way. repentance used to feel like being forced to apologize. now i see it as an opportunity to self-correct and start over. no big deal. 

same with the unpicking. once apon a time, when i had to fight hard for any sewing time, having to unpick felt like the worst thing i could be wasting my time doing. it felt like a big setback, a lost opportunity. now i look at the need for unpicking as the way to get my quilt how i want it. sometimes i need some course correction and thank goodness i can do that! both in my life and in my sewing.

in the end, i got my set of pinwheels complete. somehow i didn't get the fabrics set exactly the same in all of them, but this is a minor "mistake" unworthy of unpicking. not everything needs correcting, after all. 

i have five more sets of pinwheels to make. i've sorted the fabrics i pulled into sets, but i'm still waiting on the last couple i ordered to arrive. hopefully the rest go quickly enough, with minimal mistakes. 

but if i do need to unpick, i'll get snipping. because i can and i will.

i've shared an inordinate amount of mistakes lately. do any of you other quilters feel like i'm just a hot mess or is this typical for you, too? it does seem i've made more than my normal share, but i can't tell for sure. either way, i'm just going to keep on keeping on.

i make a lot of mistakes, but i also make quilts in the end.

happy mistakes with anna maria

courthouse steps block for gypsy wife with inner and outer pieces of amh fabric

inspiring thoughts on spontaneity from an instagram post by anna maria (horner) perry: 

 I am thinking today about the ability to be spontaneous. I think what I feared most in writing and designing a patchwork book is that having the task of 16 projects laid out ahead of me would ruin any chance to be spontaneous. I find this youthful, often reckless, creative pursuit so imperative when I am designing. I also find that one can really only be spontaneous if you allow yourself to be continually curious. Trying out things I might be certain won’t work aesthetically but seeing something that does work in the process is part of my curiosity practice. In the book I talk a lot about structure, planning and execution. And in sharing these hallmarks of my work with you, most opportunities to be spontaneous in the projects came in fabric choices and colors. Then there are simple mistakes, that if given a moment might not be mistakes. This one project, the Spontaneity Quilt (as it happens), has the smallest delightful feature that snuck up on me when I was laying out the blocks on the design wall. The lower center Grandmother’s Fan was inadvertently turned the wrong way when I had planned to make all of them scallop around the center. But I liked it. But my plan! Never-minding the plan I gave that fan a stem and some leaves to support its insistence on being a flower. Here’s to embracing the blips. 

12 south quilt back with a large piece of a loulouthi print by amh

anna maria horner, now anna maria perry, has been a favorite fabric designer of mine for years. her bold, colorful prints are irresistible. everything is color-saturated and luscious. statement fabrics are her specialty, although she also excels at colorful, dazzling blenders and supporting prints, too.

her thoughts on spontaneity and embracing mistakes as part of the creative process sat well with me today. i love the way she is not afraid but rather curious to try ideas that might not be aesthetically pleasing. sometimes these ideas don't work out, but sometimes we're really surprised by a winning combination we never imagined would be so good. that's an exhilarating feeling!

"spinning elizabeths" fabric pull, mostly amh

as jolene has said and normalized for me, i don't have to love everything i make in the end. but engaging in the creative process with an open mind and spontaneous attitude is a real thrill. you'll never know unless you try. i make my girls try on clothing they think they don'  like all the time for this reason - try it and see. only then will you know if you truly like it or not. give yourself a chance to be pleasantly surprised.

still not sure what i think of this one, but i'm excited to finish it

then there's the mistakes that turn out to not be mistakes. i love these so much. i do something not-according-to-plan and end up with a better outcome than i was aiming for. i say "yes!" to embracing the blips! 

i'm trying to think of when i've done that and can't come up with an obvious example. i think this might be because once embraced, i forget they weren't part of the plan and just accept that's they way they were meant to be and are. lovely.

so, i second anna maria:

• be continually curious
• mistakes given a moment might not be mistakes
• nevermind the plan
• embrace the blips

funny honey bears

i've reordered these pink/purple honey bears from heather ross's far, far away 2 collection for windham fabrics twice now. this is entirely ironic since i didn't even like them when i first got them. in fact, i thought they were plain weird in this colorway.

how did i end up with them if that's how i felt? sometimes i order bundles, fat quarter or half yard sets, of collections that i mostly like but don't completely like every single piece. this is usually because either i'm lazy or late.

when i'm lazy it's because there's a collection where i like the vast majority of the prints and don't want to weed through the collection for pieces i do like to go individually in my cart (very tedious and time consuming), so i decide to take the few unappreciated pieces with the rest.

other times it's because i'm out of the loop on new fabrics or not in a buying period when the fabrics first come out. if i belatedly become aware of the fabrics or decide after deliberation i do want it after all, sometimes it's too late to get anything but a bundle. or there are fabrics i really want that are only available in the bundles.

so. this is how i came to first own the oddly colored honey bears that i thought i'd never use. i mean, honey is not purple! why are these bears purple? weird. not appealing. not my jam.

along came "fall paint lake" and i needed some low-volumes to supplement m original fabric picks for it. there was already some heather ross in the pull and this was a low-stakes quilt for me, so i decided to try the honey bears because i needed some more touches of purple in the quilt.

 this top was tucked away for quite a while before becoming a full quilt. it wasn't until recently that i spent any time with it and got to like it. and that's when i started loving the honey bears. yep. they grew on me!

between using the purple bears in the "fall paint lake" top and completing that quilt came "low-volume crossroads" and the bears made an appearance. i mean, they fit in with the palette of this crazy, scrappy quilt, so i used them here. they blended right in. 

and i kinda liked them after a while.

 now i find myself making a pinky-purple quilt using the exact color of the honey bears and i reeaaally want to include them. i only got about half the mice i needed when i fussy cut them out of the fat quarter i had, so i need something else to replace them in the rest of the 16 patch blocks in "edna."

which is why i just paid something like 5x as much as the original price for the out-of-print purple honey bears i once thought were weird. seriously, this is probably per-square-inch the most i've ever paid for fabric. more than liberty, even. imagine that.

i admit my mistake! this isn't the first, second, or even third time i have come to appreciate a heather ross print i was first unsure about or unattracted to. i give in. she knows what she's doing and if she colors honey bears a weird shade of pinky-purple, she is right. it's a good idea and i'm going to love it.

eventually.

misc. little bits

some chain piecing d5 did for me. these are rows for the 16 patch blocks for our "edna" quilt.

normally, i jump back and forth between projects a lot, working on whatever suits my mood at the moment. i recently started three new projects in one day. i expected to be rotating amongst these as i went along. however, uncharacteristically, i'm actually using a different thread color for each project. so once i had this pink thread on the machine, i was locked in to working on "edna."

i dislike changing threads on my machine with a strong passion, which is why i usually piece with white thread exclusively. i'm not sure why i decided to do different thread colors on these three projects, other than that they have very different colors, but i'm actually going to have to stick with one project until the top is done! this spool is keeping me faithful for the moment. no project infidelity here. who even am i? 

 i spent a while fussy cutting these darling heather ross mice on white to use in the low-volume 16 patch squares for "edna." i'm using the ones that have pink clothed mice in "edna" and setting aside the ones in yellow, green, and blue for another project.

many of the mice are not perfectly centered, but i was able to cut the 2.5" squares i needed pretty well from this print with barely any waste. there are a few odd bits that aren't square that i can still use for scraps, and some sections in the thinner strips (1" - 1.5" i had to cut to get the 2.5" strips to come out right) that were just plain white. i trimmed those down around the printed pieces and discarded the white parts. all-in-all, i'm quite pleased with what i got out of this fat quarter.

while doing all this cutting for so many different projects at once, i've been so good about cutting small leftovers for scraps and filing them away in my scrap drawers (which i recently expanded). all the cutting mistakes or change-of-mind cast-offs have been going straight in the scrap drawers, which makes me feel like they aren't wasted after all. give them a new purpose and it makes me feel a whole lot better about not being able to use them wherever else they were going to go. i should have the precut makings of some scrap quilts on hand pretty soon. this is exciting! i'll need to figure out which patterns to use (hello, jolene's books).

the leftover strip pieces or squares are easy to put in their place. it's the larger pieces i don't want to reshelf but almost could that i'm having trouble making decisions about. for example, this piece that was 6.5" wide. 

because i don't have any specific scrap projects in mind that this fabric would be good for, i'm hesitant to commit it to any certain sizes of strips. i could cut a large variety and combination of sizes from this since i store scraps in increments of 1" to 5" wide. how do i decide what to do with this one?

i finally landed on cutting one 2.5" strip as that's the most versatile width. then i could put the remaining 4" strip away in the 4" drawer. in the future, if needed, i can cut it down to something else smaller. yes, i like this solution.

tip: bonus hsts when stitching-and-flipping

i realized a long time ago that i could make hsts out of the trimmed triangle bits you get when using the stitch-and-flip method to add points to corners of blocks like flying geese, houses, or snowballs. i have been saving those triangle trimmings from projects like "shelter in place" and "olmstead's geese," using them for leaders-and-enders. 

recently, at some point as i was trimming tips off and then sewing them together, i realized i should just do both seams before trimming the tips. when making hsts two at a time, i make both seams and then cut. this is the same idea. if you don't know what i'm talking about, read on.

this method works when you're adding small squares on to larger pieces. mark the small square from corner-to-corner as you already do for the shape you're making. this is the line you'll be sewing on.

then move the ruler 1/4" further out toward the tip you're trimming off and make another diagonal line. this is where you'll be cutting the tip.

sew along the corner-to-corner line.

then use the inner diagonal line, the one closer to the tip, as your marker. sew a 1/4" to the right of this line.

*two notes about the above photo: 1) i don't know why my seam looks wonky at the end because it's not. it's a straight line. some sort of optical illusion with the print of the fabric and some bending, maybe? 2) there is another line to the left of the first seam in this photo. ignore it. that was just another mistake in the series of mistakes i made while working on this quilt. i marked a whole set incorrectly but i couldn't erase the pencil line and it's on the back of the fabric anyway. ignore it.

once you've sewn both seams, trim the outer triangle off by cutting down the second pencil line. now that seam is wobbly. no optical illusions here. yikes.

mistakes to avoid: 

do make sure there's not other fabric under the piece you're trimming or you'll cut something you didn't intend to.

 also, i may have cut on the wrong side of the outer seam a time or two. pay more attention to where you're cutting than i do.

press open and (eventually) trim all your cute little bonus hsts you just made.

i'm going to incorporate mine into the back of the quilt or maybe save them for another project. i'm undecided.

isn't this better than tossing all the trimmed tips? i think so. if you don't want yours, send them to me.

partnership

i was cutting away in my sewing room one morning when d5 walked in to chat. she started looking around at the projects and such, and began examining my gypsy wife pieces on the design wall (since 2016). "mom, promise me you'll work on this one next! it's so good. you need to finish it. this piece is so cute! wow, you did a really good job on the courthouse steps on this one."

the fact that she can accurately identify the difference between a courthouse steps block and a log cabin block makes me so proud! many adults/experienced quilters interchange/mislabel those all the time and it's a bit of a personal pet peeve of mine. but this girl knows.

she watched me cut and chatted about fabric for a while, then asked if she could piece anything for me. she's very meticulous, a bit of a perfectionist (a little too much so), so i was happy to have her do it. she pieced all the strip sets i had left to do. it was a bit of a squeeze with her in the sewing chair and me at the cutting table, but we managed.

she was pretty pleased with herself, and so was i. how fun to have some help and spend time together making and creating. i hope this continues. my bestest little sewing buddy is turning into a sewing partner.