Another project..........................

While cleaning off a table in the main level studio, I found a stack of batik 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles.  I carried them to the basement to join the others in one of the boxes in the basement.  As I tried to open the blanket box on the left I decided it was one of the "difficult to open" ones and I pulled some easy open ones from the storage area to exchange them.

The first day my helper came we put all three of the large bins with trays of cut pieces in one place, under the longarm.

I started looking with the first bin on the left.  In it I found 2 trays of 1.5" floral squares.  I think this will be another of my mindless sewing projects between planned projects.  I will make 9 patches with them.  It looks like 2 or 3 nights of TV watching to accomplish that.

But, how about the rest of the trays in that box.  I discovered that they are all 2" squares.  You can see by the tray at the bottom left that I was using these for colorwash.  But wait, there is more..........

There are at least 10 more trays of 2" squares in that box.  More 9 patches?  I made 2 quilts that I love with printed fabric 9 patches here and here.  I have made lots more but those 2 are my favorites.  When I clicked on my 9 patch label to go back and look for these, I was surprised how many 9 patch quilts I have made.

The large bin in the middle is all 2.5" floral type squares, and the box at the right has batik rectangles in at least 3 sizes.  So the stack I took to the basement is with its friends.

I took advantage of a day in the 70s to bake some cookies.  I didn't have any left in the freezer so now there are.

Later in the day I decided to bake shortbread cookies.  This should hold me over until the next cool spell.  It sounds like we're going back up to 90 over the weekend.

More prep work...........................

I have been cutting more 1.5" batik squares since there wasn't a good variety left on the trays.

One of these trays was miscellaneous and the reds aren't spread out on the other tray. I can switch them over to the pink tray and just stack the miscellaneous pieces that rarely get used.

I cut 15 more stacks of 6 layers and each piece yields 4 squares so this pile will be 360 little squares when cut.

It was a beautiful day in the mid 60s yesterday.  My company and I went to my son's house for pizza and saw the 2 smallest great-grandchildren.  I wish I had their energy.

 

Creative play...................

I used a lot of the leftover 1.5" squares from the colorwash trays and tried a still life.  In the photo below you can see the scale.

I worked on the Kaffe medallion top yesterday.  I pinned up a border all around and have covered the purple stripe near the bottom with 2 options that I'll look at again this morning.

This is what it used to look like.

Sewing after the storms............

Noisy storms passed through early in the day followed by very strong winds.  I had the machine unplugged.  We got .6" of rain before 2 p.m.  There was a little more rain in the evening so I'll check the rain gauge again this morning.

I got this little colorwash sewn in spite of the interruptions.

Here are the two for comparison.  The top one has a yellow center and the bottom one, white or cream background light fabrics.  Working with the 1.5" squares has its challenges since I'm seeing the whole square when designing it and seeing only 2/3 of each square when it is sewn together.  There are pieces I can see that could be changed in both, but they won't be.  The are ready to be quilted and finished.

While it was storming and dark out I continued on my mission of going through piles and putting things where they belong.  Today I need to tackle the die cutter area.

 

Three hours of tweaking...................

I needed to cut a couple  more pink to lavender fabrics to fill in the last 2 spots on this new mini colorwash.  Then I started the serious tweaking, 3 hours of it.  At the left is after I put in the 2 pink pieces and then I started working on the light lavender area in the top center.  At the right is the final result.

Then I started working on the top right in the blue and turquoise area and the lower right side where green met brown.  I wasn't happy with the straight line between brown and green in the 3 versions above and I finally got it to a place where I was happier with it.  The three photos in the top collage were all taken in daylight from west windows.  This photo was taken with overhead lights at night.

I got the pieces webbed in one direction by 11 last night.

The rest of my day was spent with a load of laundry and putting away lots of things that have been lurking in piles for too long.  I have lots more of that to do in the next week.

Finished plus new................

This 12.25" colorwash has been pressed and is up on the design wall for its portrait.  I'm happy with it, so now I need to quilt it and finish it.

I started to clean off my table but then decided to start designing another 12" one.  I cut a bunch of brown and rust (which aren't in the first one) and this one doesn't have any yellow in the center.  It needs some serious tweaking but it is a good start.  I need to do some more cutting too.

It's really hard to get a smooth transition in a small colorwash.  12 x 12 layout is the smallest that seems to work for me but it's much easier to do a 16 x 16 layout.  I have made a lot of them in 15, 16, and 17 squares in both directions.

The shrinking colorwash................

Since the squares were 1.5" cut size, they lose 1/3 of their size when sewing them together.

Now shrinking in the other direction.  This little colorwash took me over two hours to sew, going slowly, matching each seam.

The corners were matching well until I got to the next to last seam.  I will have to pick it off and try again.

The sewn piece is laying on the same mat that the pieces were on the last few days.  It was 18" of cut squares, and after sewing and pressing I expect this to be 12.5".  The light/dark contrast is distorted by the camera and I think the transition between colors is better looking at it in person.

Even though I designed it as in the photo above, I think I like it flipped 180 degrees better.  I'll  take a better photo after I correct that one seam and press it.

 

Three variations......................

I cut reds and a few yellow, gold squares yesterday.  At 9:30 last night I thought I was done for the night playing with the layout of this mini colorwash.

Then I started adding a few pieces and took this picture to see if I was done.  On the right side I didn't like the way green met the orange.

I changed out a few pieces and kept at it until I had this layout.  I think it is ready to sew but I'll look at it again this morning to be sure.  I actually did change one piece after I took this photo.

In the afternoon I dug out some dandelions that were in my front garden.  Today I might dig out the white violets.

 

Trial colorwash...........................

By doing a trial layout of the 1.5" squares I can judge whether I have enough of each color cut.  I knew there weren't enough in the red before I started.  This layout is 11 x 11 and I wanted 12 x 12.

I analyzed where the problems were and moved the left and bottom rows out.  Then I started playing with a rearrangement.  I will cut reds today and figure out what else I need.

I spent over an hour outside yesterday breaking off all of the dead coneflower stalks and other stalks that were littering the back garden.  I also realized I hadn't trimmed the Annabelle Hydrangea in front of the house last fall.  it got up to 82.  We have had the most 80+ days for the beginning of a year up to this date in Chicago's history of weather records.  The closest contender was 2012 which had one of the hottest and driest summers in the records.  I hate to think we are headed for one of those again.

A lot of trays..................

I continued on with my sorting on the 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles which I usually use for colorwash wallhangings.  They are all batik fabric.  The brown and purple fabrics are on one tray each.

Yellow/orange and pink/red each have their own tray.  When I'm actually ready to use these I'll pull 3 empty trays to use to spread out most of the pieces from one tray in single piles instead of overlapping piles.

It took 2 trays for all of the blues.

The greens filled 2 trays and they are prettier than they look here.  I counted the stacks on one tray and there were 82 different fabrics.

There are 2 trays of turquoise/teal or any other name you like to use for blues that lean a little toward green.

I don't have a name for these 2 trays.  The tray on the right is mostly red-purple toward burgundy but there are some pieces that I can't categorize.

Here are 2 more trays of miscellaneous.  Some are multicolor, some are unlikely to work.  There is one more tray I didn't photograph that has black/gray and light fabrics.  I could do more sorting with the trays but they are in much better shape then they were so they will probably go back into their bin.  There are also trays of 2" x 3.5" pieces and trays of 3" x 6" pieces.  They stack well in the large bin.

Behind the scenes work.....................

I have been avoiding a lot of the behind the scenes work that leads up to a successful quilt.  I have the choice of not posting on my blog until I have a project in progress but I choose to continue to post every day, a safety net for me.  There are a few of my readers that contact me if there isn't a post some morning and ask if everything is OK.  Occasionally I forget to click on Publish or forget to change the time of the post to 3:30 a.m.

Last night my task while watching TV was to sort and straighten the rectangles on 17 of 19 trays.  The tray on top is multicolor and I like the trays to be only one color.  Now that the other trays are straightened, I can work all of these pieces into the correct trays.  That will take another evening of TV shows.  Earlier in the day I sorted the rest of the 10" Kaffe collective fabrics into 3 groups.

Sometimes I cut pieces that I think will work in colorwash but after making a couple wallhangings, I identify some that just never work.  I pulled all of those while sorting.  These are the 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles.

I showed photos of the Yellow Salsify a couple times but I thought I should show you what it looks like after noon.  It only blooms in the early morning and closes up around noon.  This plant first appeared in this spot in the middle of summer last year.  Somehow I never saw the flowers opened up last year and I couldn't identify the plant with my app without a bloom.  I had to wait until this year to see if it was a weed or a plant I wanted to keep.

Sorting and stitching........

These trays are the 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles of batiks, most of which will be used for colorwash.  There was one tray of a previously cut group and I added another tray and worked the newly cut rectangles into them.  On the right is the stack of trays with one color on each and they are a mess and need to be sorted and straightened.  I'm spending a couple hours a day on organization in the basement, nothing to take photos of.

Last night I continued on the hand stitching of the binding of this Bow Tie quilt.  I got one long side and half of a short side finished.  That's a total of 2 1/2 sides done now.

Earlier in the day I did some clean up on one section of my front garden.  A couple plants didn't make it through the winter so I'll be transplanting something in there from the back garden.  The cold front came through around 5 p.m. yesterday so today might be a good day to work on that section.

Basement doings....................

 I was in the basement doing laundry and finished up a few other tasks.  One was stacking the trays with the 2" x 3.5" rectangles.  I store these in a large bin with trays of 2 other size rectangles.

I found this partially sewn project.  I could slice and sew the strata and make another section like the first or I could cut it into 2 sections and add stripes to both sides of the sewn section, lining up the fabrics to continue the design.  The first option would make one piece 24.5" square.  The second option would make a piece approximately 24.5" x 35".  Either way it could be finished into a baby quilt with a border or two.

I finished knitting another dishcloth last night.  'Anonymous' wanted the pattern for this.  My email is on my right side bar.  I would be happy to share it if you email me. 

I also planted pansies in 2 pots yesterday.  It was in the high 50s and the pansies love the cool weather.  In the 40s overnight.  The same predicted for the next 2 days.

Small projects.................

 I finished quilting the second table topper last night and will get it trimmed today and get the binding sewn on.  This one is more scrappy where the first one had matching strips at the corners.

I pulled out all of my trays of 2" x 3.5" rectangles and worked on feeding the new cuts (shown at the center on top of the trays) into their color group.  The trays were all a mess, not straightened up after making the last quilt.

This is what they all look like now, ready for the next project.

Now I need to get the 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles taken care of.

I'm anxious to get my porch pots planted but we are in for some more cool days and nights.  No frost warnings, but just a little cool for new plantings.

A finish for January 2025..........

I'm so happy to finally have this batik colorwash finished.  I finished designing and sewing the quilt top in April 2023 and it waited 1 3/4 years to be basted and quilted.  I chose the back and cut the batting 6 months ago.

It is 31.25" x 50.25".

The pieces in the colorwash are 1.5" x 3" finished.

I need to record the details in this online journal.

The backing is a green/orange/gold batik and the binding is a brown design batik. The batting is Warm and Natural.  I used Invisifil thread to ditch quilt it.

I'll prepare my January monthly recap today and post it tomorrow morning.