fall trails, a finish

 

when i was making my fall log cabin quilt, i started thinking about how nice some of the fabrics would be paired with a lot of low-volume fabrics. there were many leftover scraps from the 2.5" strips i was cutting for the log cabin blocks, so i decided i'd make a fall version of a scrappy string quilt i'd seen from @catelowetextiles on instagram. 

many quilters classify scraps 2.5" or narrower and about 9" or longer as "strings" when sorting their scraps. you can make things like string stars, string blocks, or spiderweb quilts with string scraps. i like the format cate used. she sewed strings of differing widths but similar lengths into rows, trimmed them, and stacked those rows vertically to create her top. there is a lot of room for improv here and just doing what you like.

i used some strips as narrow as 1" cut, which finish at 1/2". i love my skinniest little bits in this quilt. it was a great way to add a small punch of color that didn't overpower the general soft vibe of the quilt.

this is a gentle, subtle quilt. the overall pattern isn't particularly exciting. it's the kind best enjoyed up close, the one you study for the little bits tucked into it that surprise or delight you, like the marshmallows on a roasting stick up there in the righthand corner.

the quilting of this piece is my least favorite aspect. it was an experiment on my part, one that taught me more by what didn't work than anything else. 

i was batch quilting several quilts at once and was tired of doing modern loops. i thought of this pencil doodle i would do in my notes at school all the time that i thought would make a pretty quilting pattern. executing it didn't work out as anticipated. this quilt was just a fun side project to use scraps, so i wasn't worried about making some mistakes and felt free to experiment. 

it hasn't crinkled nearly as much as i expected, meaning my quilting isn't hiding as much as i'd have liked. i didn't put the rows close enough together; denser would have been better. i should have marked a center line for the rows to follow because the seams aren't continuous from one section of the quilt to the next, meaning i lost my line several times when i moved from one string row to the next. that's less obvious than the design issues.

i was lazy and could have done better. but it's okay. i'm not too fussed about it. better luck (and planning and execution) next time.

the binding is lovely.

i've used this monotone floral from amy sinabaldi's playground fabrics line for art gallery fabrics in several quilts. it's a good warm-toned neutral that plays well in many places. very nice binding that adds a feminine touch to the quilt.

the backing is maybe my favorite part of the quilt, actually. i love the pairing of a bonnie christine for art gallery fabrics painterly floral with the snow white print from heather ross's far, far, away 3 collection for windham. i was able to incorporate both selvages pretty successfully.

i had to order large pieces of both fabrics to make the backing. when using scraps of them on the front, i realized they'd make the perfect pair for the back. i had a fat quarter of the snow white print that i thought was cute, but because of the large spacing and figures i wasn't sure where it would be very useful on a quilt. the answer is it makes a great backing. that's the only way to showcase all the fun different parts that are so spread out on the print.

this was a low-stakes, relaxed make for me. it was never going to be the favorite quilt in the house, which is just fine. it's cute and comfy, which is all it needs to be. i'm quite content.

liberty mess

 

my favorite british biscuits (discovered on our UK trip in 2017 and imported regularly) and my favorite british fabrics. this is a good combination.

liberty + chambray has become my favorite way to use my precious tana lawn. another good combination.

the way this new liberty + chambray quilt is turning out is not such a good combination. i've felt this way about my improv liberty strip quilt before during the process, but this one is feeling particularly messy.

the common theme here was liberty prints heavy on blues. many are fall-feeling with tans, browns, and some oranges in them. about half are more primary centric. i was counting on the blues to tie it all together.

i had one small stack of leftover chambray strips from another project that i wanted to make use of with this quilt. because there was a limited amount of the chambray, i had to make the liberty strips much longer. i tried interspersing the long liberty strips with short chambray pieces; the opposite of my norm. i also turned the strips to run vertical rather than horizontal.

and despite the infusion of ginger and dark chocolate biscuits, this is feeling like one giant, ugly mess.

from a distance, it makes me think of holly hobbie (not a bad association, and completely unrelated to my general feelings about how it's looking).

i think i prefer smaller liberty pieces and longer chambray strips in the mix, but that was counter to my "use what i have" goal.

what a mess.

part of this is because i'm not actually over fond of several of these prints. they arrived looking different than expected (colors reading a different tone, more dull or less vibrant). some were new-to-me liberty prints i was giving a chance and found i don't actually prefer. i thought if i put them all together and threw in enough of the fabrics i do like in the mix, they'd play nicely.

second guessing myself a lot at the moment.

that red definitely needs to come out.

and it's one of the prints i do like.

is it too late to unpick the whole mess?

i think so.

stay tuned.

gypsy steps

 i had a mid-week sewing fest last night. the mr took some of the older children to a sporting event so i had the evening pretty much free at home. d2 made a simple dinner for all of us (once she realized mom was in the sewing zone and might not come out to make dinner for a while) and the 3 littles hung out with me in the sewing room. i did take an hour break to help d4 create something tiny and quilty, which i'll share later. otherwise, i plodded along with my gw blocks. i was supposed to be making march's blocks, but after the first courthouse step block, i just kept going with those.

 this is an 8" courthouse step block. it turned out a lot cooler-toned than the other blocks i've made so far. i purposefully chose the outer border to include the blue for a tie in with the cool colors as well as the warm colored flowers to help tie it to the rest of the quilt. i almost got the fussy cut center right, but somehow was about 1/8" off. it's not too bad, though, so it works for me.

 this fussy cut center is also a little bit lower than i would have liked, but i cut it from a scrap, so it is as it is. i still love it! the yellow modern solids ii does not have as much color play as the teal i used on the pinwheel, but i do like it with the other fabrics.

i am becoming a solids convert! well, sort of like i am a denyse schmidt convert: i am learning how to use bits and pieces to compliment and enhance my designs. in fact, while deciding on my color palette and pull for the triangle along quilt, i realized i absolutely love solid triangle quilts! so i've ordered more of these modern solids ii and a few other almost-solids for that quilt. i'm actually pretty excited to work with more solids! (as might be indicated by the unusally high number of exclamation points in this paragraph.)

 as i was working on the courthouse step blocks, i kept trying to find a use for my goat sample piece sent to me by cia. however, it was a little too big for any of those blocks. so i hunted through the pattern book for a block that could utilize this piece. i found a courthouse step sq-in-sq block that would work. i still had to cut off a bit of one of his feet, but it was the best i could do. my 13 yr old quilting critic son had to point out the missing foot to me. i explained to him that if i had moved it over to the left a little, the goat would not have enough "room to breathe" with his nose right up against the seam. the mr chimed in with, "yes, goats need to be able to breathe." s1 followed right up with, "well, he can get enough oxygen from all these flowers around him. he could still breathe."

fussy cutting that goat at an angle was no small task. a 4.5" square ruler would have made it a whole lot easier, but i dont' have one of those. i kept thinking i was going to mess it up and then i'd be out a goat. yeah, it's just fabric, as they say, but i only had one bit of this and there was no room for error. fortunately my late night brain functioned for me. however, i did cut the squares for the outer triangles wrong and had mull over what went wrong for a bit before realizing it was a 1/4" too large on one side. oh, so that's why my triangles weren't symmetrical! fortunately, i was able to salvage them. too big is a lot better than too small in most cases. the gypsy goat still needs an outer border - green, i think - but it's looking pretty. that heather bailey dandy stripe from "nicey jane" is awesome! as i cut it last night, i was sorely tempted to go order a few more yards of it. (didn't - for the record. yet.)

i hit on one more scathingly brilliant idea for working on gw last night: i'm now cutting strips as i go. the pattern calls for 60 wof strips, 20 at 2" wide and 40 at 4" wide. that's a lot of strip cutting and i wasn't looking forward to doing that all at once on 60 different fabrics.

so far, i've only been using small pieces of each fabric so when i go to cut, i've been lazy. i've just pressed a corner of the fabric and cut out what i need without squaring it off first. it seemed like too much trouble to square a whole piece when all i needed was a few inches.

however, last night as i thought about all those strips i'll eventually need, i decided to go ahead and press and square every time i need a piece of new fabric, and also cut a strip out while i'm at it. genius, i tell you! (maybe i read that somewhere else and it just surfaced as my own idea last night?) now i have a growing pile of strips to set aside for later. two birds with one stone, and all that. i was thinking i should use each fabric in a block and then somewhere else as a strip, too, so this is going to make keeping track of all that much easier. thank you, quilting muse, for the inspiration!

fabric selections and a word about ds

 all strips are cut for the newest simple strips baby quilt - boy version. the three on the right end are even sewn together. i like the effect the added navy blues, turquoises, and oranges are having. there is a lot more depth and play in this quilt now.

this quilt started with some leftover strips of riley blake's superstar collection. there were the paisleys, a few solids, some dots, those large stars. the paisleys had a definite cowboy vibe to me, so i opted to aim for a subtle western theme in this quilt meant for a baby named Weston, after his great grandfather, my husband's grandfather. but i wanted to keep it modern-ish and not too cutesy.

the colors in the original strips i started with from the line were faded navy, orange, yellow, deep tan, pale grey. but i wanted to add the turquoise/deep teal stars strip in because 1) it had stars and looked mod western, 2) i liked the dimension the color added, 3) it's a favorite print right now that i love to use whenever i can (from riley blake's sasparilla collection).

 however, nothing i had in my stash helped tie the color of the sasparilla star print in with the other strips. some more navy and orange was also desired for further overall contrast. i carefully selected a few quarter yards of some denyse schmidt fabrics i found at 40% off at jo ann crafts. (if youre here from the fabriholics anonymous, my explanation follows later.) the ds fabrics had just the right vintage vibe to blend well with the western theme of the quilt. and i found one with a navy blue field (background) and turquoise dots - my perfect blender to tie in the sasparilla stars! it's also going to be my backing for the project.

here's the deal with me and denyse - i realize that she is hugely popular, almost to a cult level, among quilters, but i never see her designs as an entire line and think "i have to have that!" usually, there are one or two prints that i like, but i don't get giddy over her the way i do about a few other designers (SH, JD, HB, AMH, AB). now i realize i just committed some sort of quilter/fabric lover sacrilege with that statement, but - and there is a but here - but whenever i approach her fabrics with a specific project in mind, i almost always find the perfect print or two which really bring that project together. apparently i just like her mixed in with everything else and not as one great whole. really, she's brilliant for that in my work. (my work? like i'm some sort of professional or real artist here? ha, ha, that's funny! i'm just a girl playing with fabric for kicks.)

even after finding the great ds prints, i sort of wanted to see if i could locate one really cool retro western novelty print to slip in the mix. thus, when i was at my local scrapbook and quilt store (double deadly temptation) for some project life supplies, i looked for a cowboy print. i did find one print in just the right colors from sasparilla, but it had girls in it, too. i got a fat quarter with the intention of fussy cutting a few horses or saddles out of it. after putting all the other strips up together, though, i don't think it has the right feel for the project, so it's stashed instead. i also located four more prints that had just the right feel and colors that would round out the quilt.

 above are all the fabrics i added in: the navy with turquoise dots is for strips and backing, the pile on the left is some other prints that added the right touches of color and a bit more of a modern but western feel, and the pile on the right is my ds prints.  the two fat quarters are the pieces i culled after consideration.

the whole time i was at the cutting counter, i kept thinking, "after my public fast declaration, i'm going to have to confess to this purchase, even though it's allowable. i have to be honest about this." ugh. i am really happy with these additions to the quilt, but also feeling the guilt of making some purchases. despite the fact that i gave myself permission to buy specifically for projects in progress, i really had hoped to go the whole six months, or at least a couple of months, before spending on fabric. if i'd quit starting something new and stick to my pile of wips maybe i'd do that! what i can say for myself is that these purchases were very intentional, not in excess, and i did not get sucked in to any "gotta have" item of the moment. this is certainly more responsible than my previous purchasing habits. it's a step in the right direction, for sure.

i'm finding that as huge as my stash is, because the majority of it was impulse buying before i had actually quilted much, it has several holes in it when it comes to color, variety of style, low-volumes, and blender fabrics. it's not very useful for the way i actually quilt or how my quilting is evolving. i have a whole lot of fabric, just not a whole lot of the "right" fabrics. for this reason, it's going to take me some time to work through the stash. this is teaching me about how to purchase in a mindful way.

i guess i could have either not made this last minute baby quilt or just made it up with what i had. however, as one fellow faster said, "i'm not going to make ugly quilts just to use up what i have." ditto. i quilt because i enjoy it and i want anything i make to be enjoyable to me. especially if i'm going to gift it. i'm not going to gift a quilt i don't like just to give away a quilt. i could buy something else instead. really, the aim of fasting was to find ways to use what i had (which i did with those leftover strips here) and stop impulse buying exciting new fabrics or sale items. perhaps what i'm really doing is more akin to "fabric dieting".

also, i've realized i really prefer to work with 1/4 or 1/2 yd cuts. they are so much more manageable when it comes to cutting than anything bigger. i despise trying to square off big cuts! however, i find working with smaller cuts has improved my accuracy and my attitude about cutting, too. thus, lately i usually only purchase 1/4 or 1/2 yards, unless it's for a backing or it's a versatile or favorite print i know i will be using a whole lot.

now it's time to go sew, sew, sew those strips together and get this baby done!