Pieces and Parts box, day 7

Here is a shot of the guest bedroom from the doorway. The room is a few inches bigger than 14' x 14'. At the left is my computer desk, just beyond that a twin bed, then the queen size bed. I usually have the TV on a pedestal in front of the window but I put it on a board on the twin bed where my company will probably lay their small bags (remember they are coming on a motorcycle). I figured the TV would get knocked over if I left it where it was. I'm sure the bedroom won't be this clean again for awhile so I need to enjoy it. I have all of the pieces cut for the border and up on the design wall. I hope to sneak in a few minutes of sewing here and there in the next few days.
Now back to the pieces and parts box: this is the group of wonky log cabins that I thought I was showing yesterday. There were 9 others that I have already made into a wallhanging. I consider these wonky log cabins but the other ones (yesterday) crazy piecing because they are more irregular in shape where these follow the traditional style of log cabin.
In about 1992 I made a series of low contrast and regular 9 patch blocks hoping to do kind of a colorwash effect with them. It didn't work out. I have made the rest of the light/pastel colored ones into a top that I haven't shown you yet. These are the leftovers.
This is the bright group of 9 patches that went with the above ones.
I have pulled out the really old leftovers and photographed them. I will be showing them on the days my company is here.

Blogger is not being nice today

Blogger doesn't want to allow pictures this morning so I'll put a few words in and post pictures later.

I guess some of you have mistakenly thought my sorting was in my quilt related things too. I have only been pulling the pieces out of the box I showed last Friday and have been taking pictures. Unfortunately the sorting is all the stacks and piles of papers, and notebooks, and pictures torn out of magazines, etc, etc, etc. I have tried to throw away some, organize and put some away where they belong, and the rest, well I'll deal with a couple boxes full that I just put into a closet later. I don't like my house to look like nobody lives there (model home) but I don't like to look like a slob either.

A couple people have asked for links to some of the quilts I mentioned when I showed the leftovers. If you go to the LABEL list on the right side of my blog sometimes you will find the quilt listed there. The other way is to go to the search box at the top of the blog and type in the name of the quilt. It will pull up any post that mentions your search word. I'm just not up to adding 5 or 6 links a day right now.

Hopefully I'll be back a little later when Blogger decides to cooperate.

Pieces and Parts box, day 6

I hate to admit it but I am still cleaning. I guess that makes it sound like I live in a mess. I am a piler, any flat surface is game to have a pile on it. I don't think guests should have to look at piles, so I have been sorting, and sorting, and sorting. My computer desk is in the guest bedroom. The desk was the last thing I cleaned off, and it was a mess. Can any of you relate to a messy desk?

So I am back to the pieces and parts box today. This first picture is the left over triangles from my Prismatic Garden series. There are enough to do another wallhanging but I want more variety so I will wait until I'm ready to work on another one and piece some more groups to go with these.
Two leftover blocks from another batik quilt.
Left over HST blocks in 3 sizes.
9 crazy pieced blocks. I had made 18 at one time and made a wallhanging out of the other 9.
9 patches, squares, and triangles left from the Blooming 9 patch quilt.
I have to finish up the cleaning today. The guest room and bathroom are done. Now I just need to vacuum and dust the living room and clean the kitchen. They won't be interested in my studio so it will remain in its usual disorder.

Borders and pieces and parts, day 5

I really am working on the border for the blue/purple crazy pieced quilt. I made a few more crazy blocks. And I made some more strip piecing.
I sliced them into 4.25" wide segments and started playing with them on the design wall. I need to make more crazy blocks to finish up.
These diamonds are leftover from the church banner which ended up being all green. I had originally thought I might make the top more like sky and then changed my mind. They will be sky in another quilt.

I had a lot of leftovers from the dotted quilt with 168 different dotted fabrics. I played around with the scraps but haven't gone back to it.
These blocks are left from the Northwind quilt that I made.
More strip piecing from dark to light. I think I just wanted to see if I could do it successfully in black and white. I'm not sure I ever had a project in mind.
And now back to the last minute cleaning for my company......

Pieces and Parts box, day 4

I had my camera with me yesterday when I went to church so I took a picture after the service. It is out in the country with its little cemetery next door. We have less than 100 members so it is a small church, small congregation. This is where I went to Sunday School when I was a small child, until I was 17 and we then moved and changed to a church nearer to our house. I came back here about 5 years ago and have reconnected with others who were in Sunday School with me in the 1940's and 1950's. Now on to more treasures. These are the leftover parts from the Lady of the Lake variation, Lady of the Garden, one whole block, 2 half blocks and triangles, all floral fabrics.
I took a John Flynn workshop more than 10 years ago on braided borders. With him I finally found someone more into math than I am. He worked to the 16th of an inch in his directions
This is 2 tubes for Trip Around the World. I made matching pillow shams for a custom order to match the quilt they had purchased. I could probably get enough slices off of these for another pillow sham or maybe a little bigger. I have overlapped them so you can see the full fabric sequence.
The first Kaffe Fassett fabric collection that we carried in the store where I worked was the stripes. When the Glorious Patchwork book came out I fell in love with the one striped quilt. However I have never made it. I made 2 sample squares, and the attention deficit settled in and off I went on another tangent.
I have a box of even older pieces and parts that I will photograph to show while my brother and his wife are here at the end of the week. Meanwhile I have pieced some more border sections for the blue/purple crazy pieced quilt from a few days ago.

Pieces and Parts box, day 3

I don't know why I keep these blocks. The upper right one is a leftover from my oldest granddaughter's first big quilt, 18 years ago. The one on the top left is the same pattern and made later for a class sample. They are all 12" blocks. Leftover strip piecing from several things.
Checkerboard borders that I made to try out on a quilt, a leftover from a group Easy Pieces quilt project, and light to dark strip piecing from ????
I'm not sure what project these are from either.
I moved this lily from the front sunny spot to a semi-shady place in the back yard. I am only going to get one set of blooms from it I guess after 2 years in this spot. I may have to move it back to the sun area.
It is a beautiful sunny day with low humidity again. I have an outdoor wedding reception to go to, to deliver the flannel quilt that I finished a couple weeks ago. Happy Sunday everyone.

Pieces and Parts box, day 2

I used to teach a braided border class, back in the early 1990's. Then in Georgia Bonesteel's "Bright Ideas for Lap Quilting" she had a quilt and the instructions that showed how to piece the rows together without cutting off the ends. I showed an all beige one awhile back that I made with this method. I squared up these samples a couple months ago but still haven't made them into anything. These are the triangles that didn't work in my Aug. 9th,2007 post titled Progress. You can go to Archives on the right side of my blog and click on the arrow, and then click on Aug 2007 and follow down until you come to the 9th.
More sample basket blocks, 2 sizes, and pieces to continue on.
The first block for my winter Lady of the Lake. I pieced this about 6 years ago so you can see how excited I am about continuing. I have a summer Lady of the Lake and an autumn one already made. I'm too lazy to go back to make links, so you can try the search box at the top, type in Lady of the Lake and click on Search Blog and it will take you to my Oct. 12 post for pictures of both of them.
For one of my Nancy Crow workshops we were to bring our favorite block pieced in black and white. The block on the left is Lady of the Lake and that is the one I ended up taking with me.
See you tomorrow with 5 more parts.

Fixes and a box of goodies

I pieced some irregular width strips together yesterday and pinned them next to the quilt with about 1" of the purple border exposed. Then I folded that strip in half again for a narrower border and added a section of a crazy pieced block. I think both of these work but the narrower one wouldn't take away any glory from the center where the wider border might pull your eye to the outer edge. I will piece some more and play with it.
This is the box I took off the shelf to look for a crazy pieced block in the right colors. It is a "pieces and parts" box.
This is the view from the top.
Here is one of the blocks that was in there. I made this block about 15 years ago. I like it but have never decided what to use it for. I love pulling it out and looking at it so I guess it is just some eye candy for me.
I will be spending the next few days deep cleaning the guest room to prepare for a visit from my brother and sister in law. I will post 5 things from this magic box each day for the next 3 or 4 days while I play with the vacuum cleaner and feather duster.

I've been digging

Remember the bottomless box of "ready to finish" that I showed last year? Well I haven't made any progress on the current project so I went digging and found another that I haven't shown yet. I was so sure this purple border was going to be just right, and I didn't want a wide border, so I cut and sewed and afterwards was so disappointed. I put it back in the box. I made all larger squares for the main part of the quilt and half size blocks for the 2 ends, alternated with a print batik square.
I should probably just quilt it and forget it, but it keeps nagging me that I could have done something better.

Added later (10:43 a.m.): Thanks for all of the comments and suggestions. I had considered having no border when I made it. This purple could become the binding (or not). I had tried at least 50 fabrics for a border and nothing seemed to do anything for it. It is 53" x 78" now, 49" x 73" without borders.

Well then I'll just take a walk in the garden and maybe I'll know what to do when I come in. The coneflowers are in their prime.
I noticed the center of this one has another circle of little nubs. I wonder if it is a different variety or is just a little older than the other bloom I pictured.
The weather is beautiful again, low humidity, nice breeze. It has been a good summer.

More blocks added

All I got done yesterday in quilt related activity was 3 more blocks to finish the layout. I am still contemplating making 2 wallhangings instead of a quilt. Right now I think this one would be in the range of 64" x 80". If I made 2 wallhangings they would be in the 50" square range. I will play with setting triangles and then make my decision. Actually I could go back into my photo program and crop this and see what it looks like with half blocks as setting triangles. I always check Sitemeter in the morning to see how many people visit before I post. This morning there were already 120 visitors by 8 a.m. I checked the referring URL's and a bunch of people came from a yahoo group. Since I can't find out what anyone said that would bring so many visitors, I want to think they said something good, and welcome the new visitors.

Look at what I just got for lunch

I was on the south side of town and spied the fresh sweet corn stand, fresh picked this morning. Since I was a child from a farm, grocery store sweet corn just doesn't cut it for me. Cathi mentioned my garden must be magnificent in its entirety so I decided to take a picture of it all the way across. Please don't mention the weeds to me if you click on it for a closer view, LOL.
The back garden is a shade garden so it is hard to get a picture of it without it looking dark, and just green. It is very pretty in person.

Cooler and less humid, at last

I went outside in the nice clean, fresh air and took some more flower pictures. The brown eyed Susans (rudbeckia) are in full bloom now with a little dwarf phlox peeking in on the left side. I actually took this picture a couple days ago from the kitchen window. It is a little blurry, sorry. I haven't seen very many butterflies so when this one just hopped from flower to flower I had to take a picture.
I planted this ground cover in a little section of my front garden. My landscape contractor up the block tells me this one is invasive. I have seen it move across the space in the last couple years. I think it is really pretty but I'll probably start digging it out little by little.
I have a nice cool spot in the shade of a tree where the pansies are still going strong. They don't like the hot weather so I'm surprised they are still here.
I will have enough tomatoes for my salad for lunch today.
I need to do grocery shopping for my parents and me this morning and then I hope to work on something quilty.