You knew I would try a colorwash with the Kaffe squares didn't you? I have a LOT more cutting to do before this can really happen.
Yesterday I delivered the banner to the home of the family that is gifting it to their church. Hopefully it will be hung at the church by next Sunday and they will send me photos to share.
Today I am cutting squares with my Studio die cutter for another friend for her church sewing group. I am using the 5" square die, cutting 4 piles at a time.
I had a run in with yellow jackets on Friday early evening. I got stung on my hand, my left earlobe and behind my ear. That earlobe is at least triple the size of the other one. I took Benadryl and 3 naps yesterday.
Last night I started cutting my Kaffe scraps into 2.5" squares. I have 2 projects in mind to use them with.
This is a page from my 1955 4-H project book. This is why we sewed back then; it was cheaper than buying ready made clothes as well as they fit better. Even though it only cost me $3.47 to make that dress, my babysitting pay was 50 cents an hour so that took me 7 hours of work to earn the money. There was a page to list how many extra garments we had made that year and I made 15 extra ones. I had only learned to sew one year earlier. I spent most of my babysitting money on fabric.
Now that the banner is finished and ready to deliver I need to get busy and finish some other projects. But first........some more busy work at night, sewing triangles together.
All I have left to do on this church banner is printing the label and sewing it on. I have it hanging from my backdrop stand right now and the horizontal pole is a little larger than the the wood rod that will be used so there is a slight bulge at the top in this photo. I will take another photo today in daylight.
The big dead limb on that tree has been hanging over my neighbor's driveway threatening to drop on their cars for a couple years. They called the landlord and the landlord said it is on city property. They called the city and the city said it was on the landlord's property. I guess they finally got it figured out and the city came yesterday morning to cut down that big branch and another smaller one above it.
Last night I got up enough energy to make 2 more crazy pieced blocks. Today I am hoping to finish the church banner. I will get a photo of it when I deliver it to my friend.
I wasn't home most of the day yesterday so last night I finished the 2 crazy pieced blocks I showed on my machine yesterday. Here they are with 2 that I finished a couple nights ago.
I trimmed all of the blocks to 8.5".
I will save the larger trimmings to use in future blocks.
I put the new blocks up on the wall with the previously made blocks. I have a long way to go on this one.
Today is the party with my high school classmates to celebrate the fact that we will all turn 75 this year. My birthday is late in the year so I'm one of the youngest in the class.
I had a fun day with the art quilters yesterday, great conversation, and lots of projects made progress. Last night I just needed to unwind so I worked on more of my blue crazy pieced squares. I finished 2 before I started these 2 also.
At the wedding reception Saturday night there were orchids at each place setting and they were gifts for each of us that attended. It is my first orchid so I hope I can keep it alive.
Yesterday I went out in the early evening to pull some more weeds and to clean dead leaves off the tomato plants. When I was ready to come in I noticed how beautiful the color is in this plant in the fading daylight. I have another one in a pot on the other side of the door but it suffered in the heat of the summer and stayed pretty small.
I just set pots with plants in them in the area where I dug out the aster plants earlier this summer. I didn't want to plant annuals in the ground this year.
The cookies are baked and the art quilters are coming today.
All I have is a blurry cell phone photo for today. The wedding reception was fantastic. Lots of relatives to visit with.....great cake......loud music, but good music, songs I actually recognized.
Back to real life today, finish cleaning the basement, bake cookies, etc. The art quilters are coming tomorrow.
Many errands took up a big part of yesterday. A little more clean up in the garden areas happened too. Last night I finished the last of this group of bags for World Church Services. I only got 8 bags out of 2.5 yards of 60" wide fabric. I have 3 more to cut out and make to meet our quota of 36.
I have a wedding reception to go to today for the couple I hosted the shower for in April. They got married in AZ and this is the second reception since most of us didn't travel to the wedding and first reception.
It was twice monthly sewing day today so I took my GO Baby cutter and triangle die and cut a bunch of batik scraps. The trimmings will go to the dog bed lady.
Last night I vacuumed the basement and finished sewing the sleeve at the bottom edge of the banner. Since the width of the banner is about 69" I think 2 yardsticks overlapped and taped together might work as the rod at the bottom. It only needs to be stiff, not necessarily heavy. In fact since the banner is 90" tall we really don't want to add any weight to it. It is really lightweight at this point because I used Thermore batting which is a lightweight low loft polyester.
First I sewed the purple facing strip on the bottom edge of the banner and flipped it out and edge stitched it. Then I sewed the sleeve for the rod to the facing strip by machine. Next I pressed the facing to the back of the quilt and hand stitched the facing to the backing. Then I flipped the sleeve up and started hand stitching it to the backing. I have 16" left to do today. I just couldn't sit there one more minute. The banner is a few inches less than 6 feet wide so it takes awhile to stitch.
After my 2 friends left yesterday I mowed the grass for the first time since July 30. The weeds were taller than the grass and it looks a lot better now.
A generous friend gave me a gift certificate and one of the items I spent it on was Kaffe's new book. It is always interesting to see how he uses his own fabric as well as Brandon's and Philip's.
I played photographer for one of my friends yesterday morning and devoured the book in the afternoon. I have the bottom rod sleeve and facing ready to sew on the banner when my 2 friends come over today. I need to cut the pieces for the top edge and get them sewn on also.
Hopefully I can clear up some confusion about a facing, especially for the NO REPLY commenters that I can't respond to.
A facing is sewn on just like a binding.
After sewing the strip on, press it out away from the quilt and edge stitch about an eighth of an inch from the seam line through the facing strip and the seam allowance.
Then press the entire strip to the back of the quilt. The edge stitching makes the pressing easier and gives a nice crisp edge.
This finishes the quilt without a "frame" of binding. I hand stitch the facings in place on the back. Corners can be done many ways and I'm not getting into that here. A binding would be distracting on this banner so the facing was the best choice of edge finish.
I finished the quilting of the banner for my friend's church. I still had 5 rows to quilt when I took this photo. I pulled all of the basting out too. Now I'm ready to trim the excess batting and backing and sew on the facings. I explain facings on this post. I will then put a hanging sleeve on the top edge and a rod sleeve on the bottom edge. If they want it to float freely they won't need a rod in the bottom sleeve. If they want it nice and flat against the wall they will insert a rod in the sleeve.
I have just 3 more half rows to baste and then I can start quilting. This is one area I especially like.
This is another area I like. I have purple handled scissors and kept losing them on this area.
I needed some standing up straight time as a break from basting. I had these 3 trays of squares that never got put away.
I decided to see how far I could go on a design with just that limited batch. I need to pull out other trays of squares now and fill in the value spots that aren't right.
I finally got the backing pressed, the fold marks out of the Thermore batting and the layering done. I am at the halfway point of basting now. I know it is better to break it into 2 days instead of stretching across the table too many times in one day. If you have questions about my hand basting, visit this post.
I did lots of miscellaneous stuff yesterday and didn't take any photos. I'm preparing the backing and batting for the church banner and that would have been a mighty boring photo.
This is my aunt, my grandma and 2 great grandmas. My aunt was born in 1910 so this photo was taken a few years after that.
I needed a day to recover from all of the busy days I've had lately. I decided to tackle the big box of magazines from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s. This particular magazine ceased publication many years ago. I tore out pages I wanted and am taking the rest to the recycling bin. This quilt is the inspiration for the quilt I made (top left) on this post. This original is an antique and mine was made as a charm quilt in 1989.
I think I have seen something like this offered as a "new" pattern lately. I could do this with the rectangles that I have been cutting. This is an antique quilt too and was published in 1983.
Here is another idea for rectangles, again an antique. Doesn't it look like a quilt you would see at a Modern Quilting guild? For those of us who started quilting in the 1950s - 70s, we can see the old patterns being revived as "new", names changed on the patterns and sometimes new settings.
Yesterday morning I sewed parts for school bags for World Church Services and in the afternoon went to church sewing circle where we assembled some bags and filled others with the required number of school supplies. On the way home I stopped at a couple stores and then sat in a parking lot waiting for a heavy rain storm to clear up. We haven't had any rain to speak of for a couple weeks and we got 1.2" in a very short time with this storm. By last night I was so tired sorting rectangles into color groups was all I could handle.
I decided to make a collage of some of the quilts I have made with rectangles and designed one piece at a time. I have made others that were made from strip piecing which aren't included here. I have shown all of these in posts previously. In the top row the first two were in posts in 2007, the year I started my blog. The bottom right piece was in a post in 2008. Several people asked what I am going to do with the rectangles I cut during my garage sale. Most likely the first thing will be a mini colorwash.
I finished cutting the batik scraps into the little rectangles (finished 1.5" x 3") yesterday during my garage sale. It was quite busy several times and I sold some of the bigger items as well as small things. I am really pleased with the total. I did a partial clean up so I could pull my van into the garage and started packing things to take to Goodwill.
Some of you questioned why I would do a garage sale. I have lived in this small town almost 56 years and about a fourth of the people who came to the garage sale are acquaintances from the past and a lot of them I hadn't seen for a few years. I realize if you don't know the people in your town, it might not be as much fun.
I set up a little workstation for my GOBaby cutter in the garage. When I didn't have customers I was cutting the rectangles that finish at 1.5" x 3". I was a lot busier yesterday than Thursday and a lot of stuff went out the door. Only one big ticket item has sold, the push mower. 4 more hours and I can close the door and pack up the leftovers for donation......and get back to quilting. The garage sale is definitely a success for the amount of stuff that doesn't go to a landfill. It is all a matter of finding someone who wants what you don't want. I always have a free table out on the driveway and it gets cleared off every day.
A friend came in the afternoon yesterday to keep me company at my garage sale. She said a mutual friend wanted to purchase a quilt top of mine. I showed her some candidates and this is the one that left with her for the friend. One more I don't have to finish........
I guess I'm ready for the garage sale. It is going to be a 2 1/2 day sale this time because I have a lot of bigger ticket items and hope to sell all of them. Nothing quilt related in this one, just household and craft patterns. I didn't realize the value of my bicycle until one of my son's employees told me it was vintage and that they don't make them like it any more. It is a Ross which stopped production in 1989 and it is in pristine condition. On a popular Internet auction site there is an identical one for $150 with $100 shipping cost.
I worked really hard yesterday finishing the cleaning of the garage and hauling sale items out there. I also took stacks of magazines to a local paper collection bin. I am SO happy to have that done. When I needed to collect my thoughts I sat down and knitted a few rows. I love the coral color in this yarn, not quite orange, not quite red.
Most of the day yesterday I worked on preparing for my garage sale, pricing items. Today I need to vacuum the garage and set up the tables. By last night I was ready to unwind with my mindless sewing project. Purple was on the menu.
I finished going through all of my patterns, tossed a few, some will go out for the garage sale, but there were a few I couldn't part with. On the left is the first skirt I made at home after learning to sew in the 1954-55 home ec. class my freshman year. I used our treadle machine and made the view with the ruffle out of a red print. This pattern preceded printed patterns. There were just series of holes punched in the tissue for identification. The western shirt pattern was used many times for shirts for my dad. It is from 1956. On the right is my wedding dress pattern.
I worked on cleaning the garage and moving a few sale items part of the day. It got pretty warm by late afternoon so I gave up and sewed 2 more of the crazy pieced blocks, mixing a little purple in this time.
There is still no project in mind, just mindless sewing so my machine doesn't get lonely. The color is more accurate in the photo above.
I didn't get anything quilted in July, just made new quilt tops. The double 4 patch is 87" x 95" and the church banner colorwash top is about 68" x 89".
I finished sewing the 2 little colorwashes, 28" square and 24" square.
I knitted 2 dishcloths and was almost done with a third one. It will be an August finish.
August needs to be a finishing month. First up will be the church banner. I am waiting for the backing fabric and then I'll start basting it. I'm also going to do another garage sale next weekend so I'll be working on that too.
