A good sewing day........

It was still hot and humid yesterday so I had a good inside day and sewed.  I did the 2 stars and more triangle squares at night but I worked on another of the Jelly Roll Race quilts earlier in the day.  Let me clear up that I would never make one out of a Jelly Roll; that is just the name that got tacked onto the procedure.  I prefer cutting strips from my own fabrics for my projects.  I also prefer a straight seam for the joining which resembles hardwood floor planks (like I did in the one I showed yesterday) rather than the diagonal seam suggested in the video. The one I worked on today is made of 73 three inch wide strips with a spacer block sewn between the 45" strips.  It is all floral fabrics and the spacer is green.  I sewed the spacers onto every strip, sewed the strips into one big long strip and then sewed the first seam.  That took 2 hours and 10 minutes.  Now I have 4 more seams to sew at the sew in today.  Hopefully I'll have a photo for you tomorrow.  It should finish at about 80" x 103".

So far I am just working with strips that I had cut previously that were stored in plastic boxes.  I have 2 empty boxes now.  I have many full boxes of strips of various types of fabric....

Getting some practice.....

The longarm quilters group that I belong to is going to have a sew day Wednesday doing the Jelly Roll Race.  I had 3 sets of strips that I thought would work so I decided to try one yesterday to see how long it takes.  Normally you would be using about 40 strips (which is how many are in a jelly roll) but I used a lot of short pieces that were left from a bunch of different projects and then added 17 full width strips to get to a desired size.  I had 133 pieces (from 8" -30" plus 17-45" strips) to sew together into one long strip which took about 2 hours.  This is equal to about 65 strips instead of the 40 in a jelly roll.  Then the rest of the sewing to make the top took 1.5 hours.  It is 62" x 86".  If you don't know what the Jelly Roll Race is you might want to type it into Search and then watch one of the videos on the Internet.  A friend of mine put spacers between her strips as shown here.

I made 2 more stars last night while watching the news and weather.  We had some severe storms in the area yesterday morning.  We finally got some rain but the severe part missed us.  It stayed cool all morning but then the sun came out and we were back up to 90 again.  Relief is coming tomorrow if the prediction is right.

At first I wasn't sure.......

After I sewed the border on I wasn't sure I liked it.  I thought maybe it was overpowering, but the longer I looked at it, the better I liked it.  It will have the red fabric for binding like I have simulated on the upper left corner.

I sewed a couple more stars.

Before I sewed the green one I played with alternate centers.  There may be a mix of different stars in this quilt, or I might just make my favorite, the lower right star to mix in.

Audition and playtime......

I tried lots of combinations of 3 strips for the border on this top and so far this is my favorite.

I like to have some kind of project that I can just pick up at times I can't figure out what else I want to do.  I will just keep making star blocks until I get tired of them and there should be enough for a quilt, or a row in a quilt.  I have the triangle squares laid out in groups of 8 that I need for each block.

3 more blocks....

I did more playing than sewing yesterday.  I made 3 more blocks for the QOV quilt that will be the sample for everyone to see.  I only have enough of this red and this blue for 8 blocks and there will be 20 blocks in the quilt.  That means that there will be several different blues for the pinwheels and that the red ones which are formed by the intersections of the blocks will be scrappy.  If you missed this when I first showed it and the book, go back to this post.

Migraine dullsville.........

I got up with a migraine yesterday and spent most of the day in dullsville.  A cool front came through and gave us a little rain early in the morning and we really needed it.

After I started feeling better I started washing the little kids clothes that I have been storing in my attic.  I brought them down when I was cleaning up there.  This little vest is about a size 6 and I made it for my first granddaughter.

This is the other side (reversible).  I had forgotten about it.  My daughter in law gave me back all of the clothes that I had made for the first granddaughter, which were then passed down to the next 2.  My house is the only one with a storage area.  I decided I needed to wash them and make sure they are still in decent condition after being up in the extreme heat and extreme cold of the attic for about 10 years.

There was also a box of clothes that I had made for my daughter in the mid 1960s.  This little dress was made with the iron on transfer of blue dots for the smocking.  This is one of 3 dresses with smocking.

My 2 tomato plants have been loving the hot weather way more than I have.  We finally got a cooler day (only 80 degrees) yesterday and lower humidity.

I saw 2 baby bunnies in the back yard and ran to get the camera.  They were nose to nose when I saw them and by the time I got back one was running the other out of 'his or her' territory.  There is enough creeping Charlie for both of them.

2 tops completed......almost....

Target log cabin; winter is finally all sewn together.

Target log cabin; summer might be done but I have one more audition for it.

I think I want to put a 3 strip border around it.  I just grabbed 3 strips that were on my cutting table to try the idea.  I think this one needs a border to finish it because the sashing and blocks look like they are floating on the background (corner squares).  In the winter version the corner squares blend in so it looks finished.