like sands through the hourglass

Wow, I got so much done during the Austin Modern Quilt Guild retreat last weekend! In an effort to avoid an overly lengthy post, I'll just show you one project today, and I'm linking up with Workshop in Progress. I meant to post this on Wednesday, but it slipped my mind with the many trips my poor car has had to make to the mechanic.

in the works

Rather than lay out the 80 double hourglass blocks that have been patiently waiting on my table for a week, I've decided to embark on two new projects.

First, I finished cutting my Kaffe Fassett fat quarters, using the template from this free pdf pattern, and got the pieces all laid out.

how many hours does it take to make 80 quilt blocks?

So keeping a time log has been an interesting exercise. If you read that last sentence and thought it sounded about as exciting as busting out the seam ripper or basting a quilt, just click away from this post now.

Last we left off, I had cut all my strip sets into 320 quarter-square triangles. I spent half an hour pairing those triangles up to be sewn (and owning Jeopardy — there was a category about Texas today!)

harsh clock

I, just like many of you, I'm sure, repeatedly get asked "How long does something like that take you?" Now, my usual answer is something to the effect of: "I don't really time myself. I do this for fun, and I don't want to turn it into a chore." But over the holidays I got asked that question so many times, I actually started to get curious. So when I started working on my doube hourglass quilt, I decided to pay attention to the clock — or to how many episodes of This American Life I listened to while doing something.

Here are the somewhat depressing results:

insomnia

I work nights. This means I don't really have to wake up before 2 p.m. on any given day. (I try to wake up before noon, though!) I get home from work around midnight, and I'm usually up until around 3 or 4 a.m. Lately, though, I've been unable to fall asleep until 6 a.m. or later.

I made this little birdie using the Sublime Stitching Kurt Halsey transfer and the floss Candi sent me. I think I'm going to add a few little details (maybe some of the stars from the pattern sheet?) and hang the hoop on the wall somewhere. I need to go to Jo-Ann's to get a bunch of cheap wooden hoops, so my walls can look like Heather's.

I'm planning to quilt this sucker today (or at least get the process started)

I keep going back and forth on whether to echo the diamond shapes (which would take longer and mean I have to go back and hide a million thread tails later), or just do organic, straight-line quilting (which I think would look awesome with the vertical print I'm using for the back). Thoughts?

Have y'all heard of PBworks?

My friend Erika told me about it a while back. It's a free personal wiki. Here's a screen shot of my home page:

Let me first say that this is not a sponsored post, and I haven't tried any other sites that offer this feature. This is just something I personally find useful.


I use PBworks to organize notes to myself about different projects I have going on, and different ideas I'm mulling over or tutorials I want to try.

You can see in the image how I have my home page organized by WIPs, UFOs, and projects or techniques I need to work on soon. Several things on the list link to pages for the project, or a page with links to tutorials or inspirational images.

In my sidebar, I have links to pages with general tutorials, free purse patterns I've found online, hexagon pictures and tutorials, photos of Amish quilts, etc.

I love it because I can add to it from anywhere, and it's easy to re-organize (which I did today, actually). It's pretty easy to navigate, and they have a lot of tutorials, though I've never worked through one. I pretty much just figure it out as I go.

How do you organize your notes, links, images, ideas?

impulse shopping leads to impulse sewing

I was naughty toward the end of August. I had already overspent on fabric, but when a Botany jelly roll showed up as the Quilter's Daily Deal for only $22 plus $5 flat-rate shipping, I really just had to have it. I couldn't really afford it, but it was a really good deal!

Anyway, while sitting on my couch Friday drinking coffee after waking up a good four hours earlier than usual, I decided to be as impulsive in using the jelly roll as I was in buying it.

I took inspiration (and some basic construction info) from this Moda Bake Shop tutorial and this doll quilt on Flickr.

I originally wanted to lay out my blocks like this:

But I didn't like it as much after laying it all out. The decision was made for me when I realized that the way I squared up my blocks meant that some of the seams would be impossible to line up using this layout.

So I played some more and wound up with this:

I'm much happier with this layout. I think the values work way better, and it's easier to see the effect. My roommate helped me brainstorm the top and bottom border.

One of my favorite parts about this quilt top is that it cost less than $30! That's pretty incredible. I think I'm going to bind it in the brown print I used for the ¾" mini-border between the blocks and the piano keys. Thoughts?

ps: Sorry for the less-than-stellar pictures. My camera has been acting funky, so I'm using my cell phone for the time being.

When motivation strikes

So for some reason it seems that when I commit to Amy's One Thing, One Week Challenge, I tend to flake out. I know Amy isn't trying to make anyone feel guilty for not meeting their goal, and I don't really feel guilty. I had an awesome week — I just didn't get any sewing done. (To quote Jaybird's last post: "as often happens... plans end up just plans.. and life happens."

My goal was to finish the top of the Garden Windows quilt and my August bee blocks. Well, all that's left on Garden Windows is the border, but in truth I had reached that point a week ago. I did knock out a bee block though!

(Sorry for the less-than-stellar quality. My camera was dead and I was running out the door to work, so I snapped this with my phone.)

Last night a switch flipped in my brain, and I went into productivity mode. I stayed up late and read half of a 300-page book that's been sitting on my nightstand for months. That felt amazing, and gave me some good stuff to think about. This morning (I use that term to loosely define the few hours after I wake up, though it's technically afternoon), my roommate, our friend Alex and I did a yoga dvd in our living room. It wasn't quite my kind of thing, but after doing that it was impossible to sit around and just hang out. (I think I'm going to try going to a local yoga studio tomorrow afternoon!)

So I busted out the graph paper, made a quick sketch, did some math, and whipped out Julie's first block for the Bee in my Bonnet. It felt good! Julie asked for interesting squares inspired by these two quilts. I had been putting these off, waiting for inspiration to strike, and this one just came to me today. I think we create better things using that process, so I'm trying not to force myself too much. If I don't feel motivated to work on something, I know I won't put as much care and attention to detail into it.

ETA: Speaking of bee blocks, pop over to Deanna's blog and see the first finished Bee in my Bonnet quilt!

I'm going to leave you with a somewhat-depressing (sorry!) quote from the book I'm reading, because it really resonated with me. That's all I'll say on the matter. here ya' go:

Many people want desperately to believe, but just can't. They may feel tortured that their faith has evaporated, but they can't will it back into existence. If an autopsy could be done on their spiritual life, the cause of death wouldn't be murder or suicide. It would be natural causes — the organic death of a belief system that collapsed under the weight of experience and reason.

design help?

I've been in the process of designing something for my Fandango jelly roll. I got the "craving" for a jelly roll after seeing Aneela's quilt at Comfort Stitching. I've been wanting to do something with flying geese for a while, and the other night while perusing the Fresh Modern Quilts Flickr group, I found myself being drawn to stacked coins quilts, too.

I designed a geese and coins quilt that could be made with a jelly roll and some background fabric. I really love the problem-solving that comes with pre-cut fabrics — how many 4½" strips can you get from a jelly roll? It's fun to play with the math and try different ideas, maybe a border or make it taller and thinner or wider and shorter? There seem to be two types of quilters: those who love the math and geometry of it, and those who hate it. I am definitely the former! As such, I have a hard time playing around with color — I always try to make it mathematical in some way. For example, my Fandango jelly roll has 18 blue/aqua strips, 13 red-orange/pink strips, 3 yellow strips, 3 mostly cream strips, and 3 brown strips. A pre-cut is like a puzzle to me, and it's so fun to solve! Does anyone else do this? Or am I just crazy? :)

OK, so this is where I need your help:

Now that I've counted the colors/values, I need to decide how I want to play the color values in the quilt. I could do columns of geese in particular colorways, and have the coins be a mash-up of sorts, like this:

Or, I could make all my geese be my cooler colors, and have the coins be warmer tones:

I could also have warm-colored geese and cool-colored coins. ("Warm geese and cool coins" has a ring to it, no?) Or I could do a kind of gradient from cool to warm across, like this cool stacked coins quilt ... The possibilities go on, those are just the ones I made up in inDesign last night. I'm also hoping to avoid using white sashing, because I think the prints on creamy backgrounds will get lost, and also because I don't have much experience playing with different background/sashing colors. I really want to try using a darker background, possibly with a different texture to it. I ordered a few small cuts of quilters linen, moda crossweave and kaffe shot cotton so I could see and feel the textures and test some different colors. (I'm not telling yet which colors I got, because I want unbiased advice!)

What would you do, color-wise? What color/type of background fabric would you use? Any other thoughts/advice/questions?

Crafty A.D.D.

I feel like I've had crafty A.D.D. lately. I get to a mid-point with a project and then just completely switch gears! Does this happen to you? I was so psyched about my hexagon QAL quilt, but I keep finding ways to put off basting and quilting it. Though I did finish one of my distraction-projects last night:

This started a week or so ago. I came home from work one night and thought "I finally want to do something with that cute robot fat quarter I won a while back." So I started putting together a haphazard log cabin block. (Side note, I think I'm liking "haphazard" better than "wonky." Thoughts?) I was planning to make a small wall hanging, but then I remembered I had a naked pillow form in my closet, and it just grew from there.

Here's a close-up of the quilting. It took a while, but I really like the effect. I just quilted straight lines within each "log." And since it's a pillowcase, I didn't have to hide the thread ends, I just pulled them to the back, tied them off and trimmed them. Gotta love that!

I was walking home from work last night and the craziest thought popped into my head: "I'm craving a jelly roll." For those non-quilters reading, no I was not craving a pastry. I was craving a lovely roll-up of 42 2½"x44" strips of beautiful fabric. I think a huge part of the reason is that I kept coming back to stare at this beautiful patchwork table covering that Aneela at Comfort Stitching made with just a jelly roll and some background fabric.

I ended up ordering a Fandango jelly roll from Piece N Quilt. Natalia is de-stashing and has a few bundles of 10 fat quarters that she's selling for only $15 (that's only $6/yard)! I had to pick up one of those, too, of course!

So no more shopping for me for a while, but at least I have a billion projects to work on in the mean time. I just need to work up the motivation to quilt some stuff that's already pieced. The quilting is definitely one of my least-favorite parts of the process. Encouragement in the comments is always greatly appreciated :) How do you power through your least favorite part of the process?

hexagon progress!

A lot of people have been taking the "process pledge" and writing more about their process in creating a quilt. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to fill you guys in on my process.

I quilt in a corner of my living room, and I don't have space for a design wall. I also don't have any quilt design software (I don't think they make it for Macs). So I either sketch or use Adobe InDesign to lay out designs. Here's an example of an Adobe layout I made for the ORB Hexagon Quilt-Along:

I took individual photos of each of my hexagons, did a little photoshop magic, then arranged them in an InDesign document. Once I had everything arranged, I got it all put together:



I know it seems like a lot of work, but it would have taken most of my living room floor to lay it out, and then I would have been stepping on everything whenever I wanted to move something. It's just so much easier for me to drag the pictures around on my screen.

In other hexagon news, I was bored the other day after work, and I made myself a little bookmark:



What's your latest impulse project?