I chose to sew layout #3 from yesterday's post. If I had been making it for myself I may have sewn layout 1 or 2 but this quilt will be a gift quilt. When I am gifting a quilt to someone I usually pull 3 or 4 quilts and let them pick their choice from them. Most people choose "safe" layouts rather than whimsical or arty layouts. Some people like order and repetition and a more modern look. I have found that a lot of people find my quilts to be too bright and the layouts too wild. And then there are the rest of you who love my quilts with their 200 (or more) different fabrics and layouts that make you look twice at them.
My main computer died yesterday. I realized about 3 weeks ago that something was happening to it so I started transferring all of my photos, documents and my email contacts list to my smaller computer that I have in the basement. I already miss it because it was still Windows 7 and now I'm stuck with Windows 10, a learning curve that I'm not enjoying.
I rearranged the blocks for a better balance of colors and prints. Since there are 3 different colors of the leopard print I wanted them distributed well.
There were 4 layouts on the pattern (pattern info on this post) so I tried 3 of them. The 4th one was really almost the same as the first one.
Here is the third layout. I like all of them so I'll just have to pick one and sew it.
I finished sewing the 20 blocks but I can see I need to move blocks around a little. There are 3 other layouts on the pattern that I should consider too. (Pattern info on this post.)
The art quilters are coming today. The cookies are baked, the basement is clean.
I sewed 4 more blocks yesterday afternoon so 2 each of 7 combinations are done. I started sewing 4 more last night but didn't finish them. Pattern info is on this post. I hope to finish all of them today in addition to baking cookies and finish cleaning the basement.
I started cataloging the Kaffe Fassett fabrics but there is a shadow (me!) because I'm photographing them flat on a table. I may start over but meanwhile I have up to #12 done. I am putting them on a new "page" on my right sidebar called Kaffe Fassett fabric catalog.
I wanted to sew some crazy pieced blocks last night but one of the 8' fluorescent bulbs is burning out and flickers. That will give me a migraine so I turned on a lamp instead but decided there wasn't enough light to make it fun. I have a bulb burnt out in the basement too so I bought 2 new bulbs yesterday and now just have to wait for someone 6' tall to change them for me.
I needed a new steel tray for my AccuQuilt Studio die cutter so I bought a new die on sale at the same time. The trays eventually become warped and the dies don't cut as well as they should because they are sitting a little too low in the tray. You can tell if you need a new one by setting your tray on a flat surface and if you can rock it side to side (or end to end) it is warped. I have had 3 trays in 5 years. The AccuQuilt company says you may need to replace it every year but it depends on how much you use your die cutter. I do a lot of cutting on mine.
Here are some of the variations using this die. Diamonds aren't a lot of fun to cut with a ruler and rotary cutter. This die will cut some nice accurate blocks.
I mixed 2 batches of cookie dough yesterday because the art quilters are coming Monday. I'll probably wait to bake them on Sunday because I like to serve fresh cookies. Today will be spent cleaning the basement.
Yesterday morning I helped my friend kit up 2 more quilts for her to take to AZ with her this winter. In the afternoon I sewed 4 more blocks of this quilt. Pattern info on this post. There are 2 blocks alike of each color combination and this is half of them, 5 more combinations to sew.
Last year I had 8 tomato plants and they were too crowded so this year I was only going to put in 5. I ended up getting 2 more and growing them in pots next to the raised bed. In the beginning of the summer they did great with way more tomatoes than I could eat so I shared with several people. Then it got too hot and the crop was little golf ball size tomatoes like 2 in this photo. The plants aren't full and bushy either. For about 3 weeks there were no new blossoms on the plants but finally they started again so I have a new crop growing. I was reading an article in the newspaper that noted the growing season wasn't ideal this year.
Yesterday was an "everything else" day. I kept thinking I would get to the sewing machine but it didn't happen. I checked out my zinnia bed when I went out to check the rain gauge. We got another half inch of rain before noon.
There was a butterfly again but it wouldn't pose for me this time and flew away after a minute or so.
I have decided that this spot will be dedicated to zinnias every year from now on.
I was pushing the lawn mower and pulling weeds for several hours yesterday. It was another beautiful low humidity day. That is all changing today, muggy and rainy.
When I came in I needed to pull fabrics from my flannel bins for a quilt similar to the one on the chair. I'm selling these fabrics to a friend and will be cutting the kit for her.
Some of the NO REPLY commenters leave me the nicest comments and I can't reply to them to thank them......so this is a group thank you to all of you kind people who say such nice things.
A few days ago a NO REPLY commenter asked if she was seeing real fabric swatches on my inventory cards. She said that she would photocopy the fabric and paste the picture on and make a block with the scraps. Well, the answer is yes, those are fabric scraps. AND so are those scraps in both of those containers on the table.
AND seven of these 8 containers are Kaffe fabric............................................................
AND the rest of it is in this bin that sits under the end of the pool table. That is why I'm using real fabric scraps on the inventory cards.
Question 2: several people wanted to know how large the quilt was on the design wall in yesterday's post. This post gave the full view and the dimensions.
My other niece sent me a photo of some of the mug rugs I made that her mom gave her for Mother's Day. The quilt on the couch is also one that I made. It is a Many Trips Around the World made from directions in "Tradition With a Twist" by Blanche Young.
This post has the photo her sister sent me of her mug rugs.
I went to the basement to work on some kits and decided to take one more photo of this quilt on the design walls. It has to come down because this is my best photo wall. I have really enjoyed having it up there for over a week.
I am going to give my color workshop in late September so I have been working on the kits of 100 squares (2.5"). I cut 24 kits last summer and did them with a double layer of each fabric which means I have to divide the stacks into 2 kits. The 6 on the left are divided. I do the dividing while the news and weather is on at night.
It was such a beautiful day yesterday, mid 70s and low humidity. I have started the clean up of the back garden starting with cutting down the peonies and digging out unwanted plants and volunteer trees. I only got about a third done so I'll work on it again today.
I was gone for 6 hours with the funeral, a long procession from the funeral home to the cemetery and lunch afterwards. I saw many cousins, nieces and nephews that I don't see very often. It was a nephew 65 and single that passed away. He was 9 years old when I married into the family. After all of the socializing I just needed to unwind so I spent a few hours reading this book, #25 in the Prey series. I think there is just one more book in the series to read after this one. The weather changed late in the afternoon yesterday so the windows are open once again and A/C turned off.
Yesterday I went through the little pieces of Kaffe Fassett fabric that I had separated by size earlier this year. A lot of my file cards didn't have all of the colors of samples on them. I have 2 more little bags to go through and I already have this many cards ready to sew pieces onto. One of my readers reminded me that I can put my documentation of the Kaffe fabrics on one of the "pages" listed on my right sidebar instead of starting another blog for it. If you read my blog on a smart phone I'm not sure if you see that sidebar.
This morning I have a funeral to go to. I'm hoping the predicted rain will not be at the time we are at the cemetery.
I finished sewing all of the Drunkard's Path blocks last night. I only cut from scraps for this bunch. I have plenty of yardage if I want to add more.
There are 68 of the 3.5" finished size and 38 of the 7" finished. I'm going to wait for the new Drunkard's Path variation book to see if I want to do something different with these.
Yesterday morning I helped a friend organize quilt kits for her winter in AZ. There was a little cutting to do and mini lessons on two of the quilts. Then we went out to lunch. The heat and humidity was intense when we left the nice cool restaurant. By late afternoon it was still pretty hot but there was a breeze so I went out for my daily weeding session. The peonies are starting to die back so I can start chopping them down.
Yesterday I moved my stripes and conversation prints to another location and now my Philip Jacobs fabrics are out where I can see them. The top shelf starts with PJ-02 and the pile on the right on the bottom shelf ends with #82. On the bottom shelf are left to right: Australian fabrics, a miscellaneous pile, larger pieces of PJ fabrics and lastly the end pile in numerical order. I put plastic containers with cut fabric in the cabinet where the PJ fabrics used to be.
I mowed 2/3 of the grass on Tuesday evening and finished the last 1/3 yesterday afternoon. I also did my session of weed pulling and cutting small volunteer trees. Today I'll probably stay inside all day and play with fabric.
.....this hosta with the sweet smelling flower blooms. It is the largest hosta and is always the last to come up, the last to bloom.
The elephant ear plant has 3 large leaves now but doesn't grow much in height. Maybe it will keep growing taller with 2 more months of good weather.
I'm still playing with the idea of posting all of the Kaffe fabrics. I think maybe this might be the way to do it. A piece of the yardage shows the pattern better than a tiny swatch and the ruler gives you the idea of the size of the print. I think I will look for a solid ruler (not see through). If I start another blog with the photos on it then all of the photos will be in one spot instead of scattered all through this blog. This print is in quilts in a book published in 1999 by Westminster.
Becky @ the beach, you are a NO REPLY. I can't contact you unless you enable your email address in your profile or you can contact me with my email link on my right sidebar or the email link in my Blogger profile.
Several years ago I started documenting which Kaffe Fassett fabrics I had by sewing a snippet onto 5" x 8" index cards. I got as far as #100 and never went back to finish it. A few of his fabrics have had new colors added in recent years and I haven't added them. Here you see fabrics 1 and 2 which were produced in the 1990s. The only sites that have lists of his fabrics on the internet start near #100 which was produced in 2009. A few of his early books had photos of the current fabrics. I can't put a scan of the pages on my blog unless I contact several sources to get permission and I'm not interested in spending my time doing that. I will just show photos of actual fabric.
Last night was girl's night at my granddaughter's house. She and her sister (my oldest and youngest granddaughters-both in their 20s) had me over for stuffed shells (delicious!). I baked brownies so we had sundaes with the brownies in them. The only guy there was my cute little great-grandson. His new brother will be born in a couple weeks.
I made 4 more blocks yesterday and tried some layouts. There are 2 blocks alike of every combination of fabrics.
I won't decide on a layout until I have all of the blocks made.
I have six blocks sewn, 14 to go.
Information about the pattern on this post.
There was a question yesterday about a place to go see all of the Kaffe Fassett fabrics and as far as I know there isn't one. I have thought about starting another blog where I will post photos of every number (which is up in the 100s now) with the colors I have in each of the numbers. It will be a long process, meaning pulling out all of the fabrics, arranging them, taking a photo and then putting them back and then the next number, over 100 times. *Added at 7:30 a.m.--Carol (no reply commenter) gave a link to Kaffe's fabric but it only goes back to 2009. He started designing fabric in the 1990s. That link only gives the fabrics starting with #100. I have fabrics 01 - 99 that I can document also.
I'm still sewing the Drunkard's Path blocks made from the Marcia Derse fabric scraps. I have all of the 3.5" ones sewn and have now started on the 7" ones.
Several people yesterday questioned why I want my Philip Jacobs fabrics in numerical order. If you have been a long time reader of my blog you have seen this photo before. It is just 2 of the boxes of Kaffe Fassett fabric in numerical order. If you are fairly new to Kaffe and Philip fabrics you may not know that there are collectors of their fabrics and the earliest numbers go for $30+ per yard and are only sold by the fat quarter on ebay. I have several people who contact me to see if I have yardage of some of the early numbers and they pay me big bucks for them. It is certainly easier to find them when they are in numerical order. I use the valuable ones too; I don't just collect them. I have every Kaffe fabric except #5 and I have most of the Philip Jacobs fabrics too. I'm sure some of you have favorite designers too and you probably have large collections of their fabric lines. Even though I will mix these fabrics into other groups in my quilts, I still like them stored separately.....and in numerical order.
My friend came over yesterday so I could cut 2 quilts, one for each of us from the Stonehenge fabrics. I didn't have enough very dark fabrics so I added 4 batiks. She pressed and I cut 30 fabrics. Then we sorted them into their groups of 3.
The blocks are 16" square and the pattern is "It's Good to be Square" by Roxanna and Stephanie Prescott for A Quilter's Dream. I had to piece 2 blocks to see how they would look. I'm always fascinated by the floating square type patterns.
When my friend was done pressing and I was still cutting she started sorting my Philip Jacobs fabrics by number (on the selvage). She got these 3 stacks done.
There was this much more to sort and I did that last night. Now that I am re-acquainted with all of the fabrics I need to decide what I'm going to make with them.
The hot weather is getting to me and I was so tired yesterday. I just played with stash. This group is my Philip Jacobs fabrics. I had them all in number order at one time but they are all mixed up again. I need to get them out on shelves that I can get to easily so I'll be moving some things in the next couple days. I have some boxes of cut pieces that I can store in this cabinet.
I decided I needed to stick with it and finish this quilt top yesterday. It was too hot and muggy to do anything outside. This Kaffe/Brandon/Philip/Martha and plaids/stripes quilt top ended up 72" x 95". The triangles (cut with my Studio die cutter) are 6" finished. To recap the process, I first randomly sewed 2 triangles together making sure one was darker than the other. Then I designed and made 2 identical halves since I had 4 of each combination so one half is flipped 180 degrees and sewn the the other half. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.
I'm linking to Scraptastic Tuesday since this definitely looks like a scrap quilt! A good share of it was cut from scraps as well as some from yardage. Check out all of the other links.
I dug out some more tall plants in the front garden yesterday morning and then I saw this butterfly in my zinnia bed. I ran in to get my camera and the butterfly didn't seem to mind me standing close and taking photos.
I sewed off and on during the day and got all of the vertical seams in the other half of the triangle quilt sewn. Now I have 11 horizontal seams to sew to complete the top.
I mowed the grass late in the afternoon when it was 84 degrees. The humidity and temperature are supposed to rise the next 3 days so I had to get it done. Part of the back yard is shade grass that doesn't grow as fast and I skipped that part so it only took 38 minutes to mow.
A friend stopped by yesterday morning and we decided to cut a quilt for her and one for me on Friday. We pulled out my Stonehenge fabrics that have been collected over the last 5 years. I need to study the pattern to see if we need more yardage to add another row to it.
I went to church sewing circle yesterday afternoon. I knew there was going to be a detour because a railroad crossing was being repaired. What I didn't know was the the detour headed us into a construction zone. What a nightmare! I was 15 minutes late and I took a different route home, a much longer way to avoid the area.
Last night I worked on cleaning up a front flower bed. It is in the sun until late afternoon so evening is the best time to work there this hot summer. I cut many volunteer trees, pulled out yards of bindweed, and dug out a large plant. One more night and I think it will be a lot more presentable.
I sewed the final 7 vertical seams and then did 4 horizonal seams on one half of my Kaffe and plaid/stripe 6" triangle quilt. It always looks so much better sewn than it does on the design wall with cracks between some pieces. I took the other half off the wall and have it in numbered stacks ready to sew.
I had to go back to the preemie layette sewing because our meeting is this afternoon at church. If you want to see the preemie things, click on Preemie Pattern on my label list (right sidebar of my blog) to see the outfits and the pattern. I realize a lot of people read my blog on their phones and don't really go to my blog but read it through a reader and therefore don't see all of the additional info that is on a blog. That is why I prefer reading blogs on a computer where I can see it all.
I sewed some of the rows of the triangle quilt, made a few more of the small Drunkard's Path blocks, cut some pieces for a project for a friend, and cut more preemie outfits for church sewing circle. Add to that my hour of pulling weeds and it was a full day yesterday. Even though the humidity was down and it wasn't quite as hot there was no doubt it is still summer.
This is the almost final layout. After I took this photo I changed one piece. If you look in the 5th horizontal row, piece 3 and piece 5 are the same. I just exchanged 5 and 6 to move them a little farther apart. The other half of the quilt is going to be identical to this since I have 4 blocks alike of every combination. I am making stacks for the second half and will sew that one first, then I'll sew the one on the design wall and one will get turned 180 degrees and they will be sewn together. This will reverse the pieces on the joining seam so I'm hoping it will look great. If you want to see the other variations go back to yesterday and the day before. The change from yesterday: I darkened the zig zag border corner pieces and tried to match colors somewhat. This gave me the lighter pieces to put in the diamonds for the sparkle (or shimmer).
I thought I would move the lighter blocks out to the edge to make the zig zag border more consistent. That left all of the darker blocks to use in the diamonds. I think it has lost its sparkle and life. Below is the photo from yesterday. Even though it does need a few blocks moved it is more lively than this new layout. I'll give it another shot today and hopefully hit a happy medium.
