lemonade at sixes, a start

this fresh and cheeful project was inspired by a denyse schmidt quilt i saw at quiltcon. i took the color palette and fabrics from that quilt and put them into my own choice of pattern. i think one of the things i like best about the original quilt is how prominent the "lemonade" background color is combined with the small, scrappy piecing of many printed fabrics. 

i considered a couple different patterns for this fabric combination and landed on one that seemed familiar and easy for me to do: crossroads. only i wanted the colors to be more mixed up, the printed pieces to be smaller, so i was going to need to downsize the original pattern. i worked out new sizes for all the pieces and came up with a mini version of the crossroads block. i call it "meet in the middle" to differentiate from the larger block. but i guess "mini crossroads" works, too.

i made a few test blocks shortly after i got home from the coast, back to my sewing machine, but then i changed the thread on the machine to a pink thread and could no longer work on these blocks without the bother of switching up threads constantly. a few days and many pink blocks later, when i was getting a tad weary of pink, i got smart and remembered there are three machines available for piecing in my sewing room. so i threaded d5's machine with a pale grey and got to work on some more of these little darlings. they make me so happy!

patchwork panel 6 separated in fat quarters

the printed fabrics denyse used in the original quilt came from this patchwork panel number 6 from her patchwork panel club (that i have subscribed to for 2 years now) and also from her latest collection, "pretty.things." i went through my ds stash and pulled out several more green prints and a couple blue-with-green prints like those used in the original quilt.

you can probably tell from the top photo that i'm making alternating pairs with the "lemonade" background fabric and the prints. what i mean by this is each pair has the two fabrics in alternating positions: one block with the "lemonade" as the background with the print as the roads, and a second block with the print as the background and the "lemonade" as the road. i think this will help the "lemonade" shine strongly and mix the prints up effectively. we'll find out soon enough!

 

i need 196 of these little gems to make my quilt. i have 28 print fabrics, so the math works out to me needing 3 sets (6 total) of half the prints and 4 sets of the rest. or i could downsize the quilt slightly to 12 x 14 blocks and i will only need 3 sets each of 24 prints.

i've started making 3 each of the alternating pairs sets and i'll figure the details out as i get further along.

making these alternating pairs has a nice bonus feature - i can easily remember how to press for nesting seams. i always press toward the print fabric for every block. this allows the pieces within the block to nest. when i assemble the top, the alternating blocks are all going to nest together, too. so nice for me!

i do all the pressing within the block assembly at the machine with my little seam roller. i give each block a nice press when it's done. there seems to be minimal distortion so far. i did all my big crossroads quilts this way and had no issues. it just saves time while chain piecing the blocks to not get up and down to the pressing table every other piece i sew. a lot of time is saved, actually.

d5 and i had a girls night in together, at her request, in the sewing room. i took a photo of her at my machine piecing 16 patch blocks for "edna" with my chain piecing pile in the foreground. 

quilter's concentration face happening

she took a photo of me across from her, sewing "lemonade at sixes" on her machine. 

she didn't like my concentration face and made me smile for another photo. i guess the photography tables have turned.

 we had a great night together and got a lot of piecing done. good things are in process over here.

oh, about the name! obviously the lemonade part comes from the "lemonade" solid i'm using. many of the printed pieces come from the patchwork panel number 6, which got me thinking about how hobbits have a mealtime called "elevenses." i turned that into "sixes." it's a stretch, i know. but it works for me!

lemonade at sixes

chain piecing the gypsy child

these are the last sets of fabric pairings for my "gypsy child hst" quilt. the fabric has been sitting in a pile by my pressing table for months and months. finally, i got to them this week.

i now have all the blocks i need for "gypsy child hst" quilt. in fact, i have several dozen extra blocks. that seems to be a theme for me and my quilting life lately. all three projects i'm currently piecing are either in this state or came from leftovers in this state. even when i do the math ahead of time and know what i'm going to need (which i did with this one - 567), i tend to end up with overage.

and then projects beget projects as i try to find a use for them. (as if i didn't already have enough quilt ideas to make.) that's why this is called "gypsy child," after all - it came about because of a block from the "gypsy wife" quilt.

although i suspected i had near enough blocks for the quilt already, i spent an evening earlier this week making the last pairings of hst blocks i wanted to include in the quilt. most of them were the ones i most wanted to include in the quilt, so i wasn't going to leave them out in place of others i wasn't as keen to use.

i ended up with a very long chain of squares. i just love how this happens when chain piecing. i will never get tired of making bunting out of it until it gets snipped apart, a job for my littlest one.

i really do get a kick out of the bunting effect and want to photograph it every time it happens. this IG post from @thencamejune reminded me of this the other day. i'm glad to know i'm not the only one!

i like photographing it so much, that once i had the chain done, i put it aside to photograph the next day in natural light, and pulled out another project, also begotten from another quilt, to work on the rest of the night. besides, my little one wasn't available to cut it apart for me and i don't like taking up her job.

the next step to getting this baby gypsy finished is to trim the several hundred hst squares i have pieced and pressed.

i wish i was as excited about this as i was about the chain piecing.

but since "little quilting chores make big quilting finishes," i'll keep going.

sewing room scenes

caught in the act!

d5 was playing with my phone whilst i was playing with fabric, and she took a photo of me at work.

you can probably tell i'm asking for my phone back. like most women, i wasn't feeling ready for a photo at the moment, but it actually turned out alright, so i kept it. you can't be too picky over 40.

i take little photos of bits and pieces in my sewing room that please me all the time, but as 1) i'm usually sewing at night, and 2) even in the day there is so little natural light in my sewing room since we installed the doors, the quality in the photos is always lacking. but i still like them! they aren't instagram post worthy, but they please me. so i thought i'd share a few on the old blog, here.

at the end of last year, once i'd gotten all those "stella grande" quilts to the point of basting, and then gifted for christmas, i didn't want to look at a star again for just a bit. so i broke into my stack of fabric for my "gypsy child" quilt and cut like mad. once i got chain piecing, that pretty thing where the squares start folding up and making waves and ripples out of the back of the machine was making me smile a whole lot, as were all the little piles of fabric pairings all over my sewing table. so i snapped some pics.

and another fun sewing room photo - 3 generations of sewers. my mom stopped by whilst d5 and i were playing with liberty and crossweave scraps, leftover from my "liberty makes do" quilt. more chain piecing, which d5 always cuts for me. i managed to get all 3 of us in one photo. you can see me, right?

what you can also see is how much my sewing room needs a good clean up and some rearranging. plans are in the making for that, but its always slow. first, construction on some built-ins for the master bedroom have to be completed so i can get loads of stuff out of this room. then, some storage needs to be built for this room. until then, i'll inch my way around and squeeze through stuff and take crummy pictures in this overstuffed space.