A slow day...........

 

Yesterday started out productive, a load of laundry and preparing a package for mailing.  The rest of the day was miscellaneous tasks.

I realized I hadn't sewn the flying geese with the dark fabric shown here.  All 5 are from the same fabric but I used 5 different fabrics for the small triangles.  Four more strips sets are sewn for 8 more blocks.  I didn't get any more African fabric strips cut so that has to happen today.  I moved my African fabrics from a big plastic storage box to an open shelf and I can access them so much easier.

Awhile back I was going to move one of my wire storage racks from the basement to upstairs and I emptied off 2 of them and put a lot of the fabric into temporary containers.  What I removed from the basement was all of the Kaffe Fassett fabrics (not Philip Jacobs and Brandon Mably, the other 2 in the Kaffe collective) and purchased a new shelf unit for them. I still have 2 color groups to put back on shelves, purple and brown/gold/rust.  I think I see a spot for the purple but still looking for a spot for the brown/gold/rust group.  These are beautiful prints, so rich.  I need to see what groups I can consolidate to make room for them.  I may just decide which fabrics I want to keep and sell the rest.

16 patch sewing............

 The 16 patch stratas were cut into pieces for 28 blocks while I watched the noon news.

I sewed one of each pair.  I wasn't ready to take the other African quilt off the design wall so I just put the blocks up next to it to see how I liked them.  I need to cut more strips so I can make some more blocks.

I had a little sidetrack in the afternoon and cut 2" squares of Kaffe fabric from scraps for some future fun sewing.

We had rain almost all day yesterday and got 1" total.  We are still at several inches deficit for the summer.

Going through the African fabrics..............

I found a group of 2" strips in the bin with the larger pieces of African yardage.  I did find a small piece of the same fabric I used to border the elephant panel but there wouldn't have been enough to use for another border later.  I decided a different fabric would be better and found these 2 strips, also in burgundy, that would work.  The big pieced panel is 40" square and some of the African fabrics weren't that wide and these strips are long enough.  The flying geese border will be next.

I found more of the strip piecing left over from a previous project.  They might be used some way as another border all the way around the top.  That is thinking ahead and no final decisions were made.

I have enough of this fabric to use for more borders as needed.  All in all, it was good to get to the bottom of the large bin of fabrics and now they may go up on one of the shelf units instead of staying in the bin.  Another day, another decision.

Outside I started cutting down the peonies.  I have about 30 plants and only 3 had been cut previously.  I'm just doing a few a day, no long sessions of bending over.

First finish for September 2023..............

I didn't realize how hard it would be to get accurate color on this quilt in a photo.  This is close but it is prettier in real life.

This quilt ended up at 58" x 72".  It has Hobbs 80/20 batting in it.  The Kaffe yarn dyed woven stripes are very lightweight so this one feels like a summer quilt.

I used a 40 wt. cotton variegated thread on top and green Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.

I'm so happy I kept looking for a backing in my stash and found this Brandon Mably print that matches the colors on the front so perfectly.  The binding is a stripe (I showed it on yesterday's post).

I spent some quality time with the new Kaffe book. This is #25 in his series.  That doesn't include his hard cover books.  In this book the new quilts were remakes of one quilt from each of 20 of the books and 3 cushions with a design from 3 more books.  I had fun going back to see the original version of each one since I have all of his books.

 

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

It was cloudy and cool (high 60s) yesterday morning so I mowed my front yard.  My neighbor mowed his the day before so now mine matches his.

After that I trimmed this quilt.

I found a 1 yard piece of this stripe to do the binding.  You can see by the block below it, that it is in the quilt.  It's probably one of my least favorite of Kaffe's stripes so I will be happy to use 1/2 yard of it.

Last night I didn't want to think hard about anything so I did some mindless sewing.  This is enough strip sets to make the first 28 African/solid 16 patch blocks.

Overnight we were down to the high 50s, cool enough to put a quilt back on the bed, windows open wide.

Switching projects........

This quilt had been loaded on the longarm for about 5 days and I had to get it quilted.  I knew I wanted to do straight line quilting but I doubted that I would be able to keep the channel lock quilting parallel to every seam and I knew it would be obvious.  So, I decided to do organic straight lines free hand.

The lines don't show up much on the photo above because they are following stripes part of the time.  I have unpinned the quilt and will trim it today and search for a binding.  I'm not sure if I have enough of any one of the stripe fabrics for binding so I could use several.

We only got up to 71 degrees yesterday with low dew point.  What a pleasant change.

A crooked trial layout.....................

I put this quilt top on the design wall at a level that I could reach above it to put a border up there.  That meant bending over to add the border audition to the bottom so it is quite crooked.  I think I will need 13 Geese blocks so with the new batch I sewed I have enough for a top and bottom border.

A new book arrived yesterday, a gift from my daughter.  I might spend some quality time with it today.