Sew I See!

After finishing a few older WIP and UFO quilt tops, it felt like time to start something new.  I thought "Bitcoin", designed by Bonnie Hunter, might be a good choice for something easy and fun.   "Bitcoin" also seemed like a good way to use up some of the fabric I have that's too busy for use in most of the patterns I gravitate toward.  Some of this is fabric bought on clearance, pretty much only  because  it was on clearance.  Some of it is stuff I chose back before I had actually made many quilts, before I fully realized that wildly multi-colored fabric, while often beautiful, can be trickier to use than fabric with more subdued color schemes.  (The same thing is true for variegated yarn.  You can definitely use it, but it can be limiting and more work to find a pattern that looks "right" in a strongly variegated yarn.)   This fabric—novelty prints, oversized florals, busy and colorful designs—has been accumulating over time.  I wanted to put some of

The Disappearing Four-Patch quilt top is done— ready to fold and put away until it's time to quilt it.   Last time I wrote, I was still putting the blocks together.  That went pretty quickly, and then the step I'd been dreading had arrived:  It was time to figure out which block was the smallest and trim down all the blocks to the same size.   I'd expected this to be unpleasant.  Either boring or difficult.  Maybe even both.  As it turned out (who would've thunk it?!), it actually wasn't too bad.   At first, I thought I'd hold two blocks together, choose the smaller, and work my way through the whole stack this way until I was left with the smallest block.  I started doing this, but immediately decided that I hated that method and that it might be easier to just use a ruler.  (I know.  Using a ruler to measure things?  Unheard-of!)   I'm not a big measure-er.  I have vague memories of not liking the "learn to measure things with a ruler" lessons in

For a long, long time, I've admired the sound of the hammered dulcimer.  I don't even know for certain when I first heard the instrument or learned what it was, but I used to associate it with the Appalachian Mountains.  (More on that later...)  Maybe they were playing a CD in one of the souvenir shops we visited... Or maybe I just made that up. 😉 In any case, I liked the way it sounded, but I don't believe I've ever seen one being played in person.  It's not a particularly common instrument, around here— not like a guitar or marching band instrument or even something slightly more niche, like a banjo or Dobro.   Fast-forward to now:  Donald very sweetly built me a hammered dulcimer as a surprise for Christmas 2022!  He used a plan from the same place where he bought the kit for the harp he built a few years back— a place called " MusicMakers ".   He also bought the dulcimer's hardware from them, but he sourced his own wood for this project.  (With th

As mentioned in the last entry, the fourth UFO project of the year is underway.   I have no idea how long this one has been stashed away, but I'm sure it's been several years.   This project started with a layer cake Mom gave me.  The colors and prints are in the "shabby chic" style, I guess you could say.  Pinks, aqua, sea green, grey, baby blue, and white, with a couple of rose florals and other sweet, feminine prints.   ...I just spent a couple of minutes searching and found it:  Connecting Threads "Cottage Chic" from 2015.   I think I searched for patterns using layer cakes and found one on Jen Eskridge's old blog.  I'd link to it now, but though I can find photos doing a photo search, the page they link to is no longer available.  Essentially, it's an "exploded" (oversized, enlarged) disappearing four-patch.  Each disappearing 4-patch uses four 10-inch x 10-inch squares.  (In my case, I used two pieces from the layer cake, then two

 Yeah!  The third UFO project of the year has achieved "quilt top" status!   I suspected this one would go pretty quickly, and it did.  In the last blog entry, I had started sewing the string blocks into half-square triangles with a plain white background.  There were quite a few on the design wall, even at that point.   A lot more of that, and I ended up with a full design wall: There were too many to fit on the wall, so I arranged some on the tables, instead.  Putting them in order on cutting mats worked out well, because I was able to stack the mats and keep them all in the desired layout, but stacked up to leave room for joining and pressing.   I joined them in groups of nine, where possible.  This was a manageable size for using the webbing technique of joining.  Once I finished a row's worth of these "nine-patches", I joined that row, pressed it, and set it aside.  With all rows finished, I then sewed those together.  (I'm probably over-complicating th

My third UFO project "reactivation" of the new year is underway!   I did take a little time to clean under the needle plate of the Juki, but it really didn't look that bad, so it wasn't strictly necessary.  It's probably a good habit to get into, though, cleaning it out every project or two (or three, depending on the size of the project).   Once that was done, I pulled out the string blocks I treadle-pieced a while back.  I made them with the intention of eventually making HSTs out of them, modeled after a quilt I saw online.  The original used more pastel colors, but I worked with whatever was in my "everything" string bag, supplemented with a little of this and that from the single-hue bags. The main "rule" I set for myself was to try to use a relatively wide string for the center of each block, since they'd eventually be cut down the middle, diagonally.  (You don't want seam allowances in your way when you get around to turning the

Today I finished putting together the quilt top with the pink and blue-green/aqua strings and stitch-and-flip units.  It's now folded and put away in the closet with the other quilt tops awaiting quilting...  At some point early in this project, I started thinking of it as "Make It Pink!  Make It Blue!", which is a bit of a mouthful for a quilt name...  But it's still what comes to mind— that scene in Disney's animated Sleeping Beauty , where two of the fairy godmothers duke it out (with magic wands) over whether Aurora's birthday surprise dress should be pink or blue.  (It was one of my favorite parts of the movie, when I was a child!)   Here are a few photos of the quilt top as it now stands: I think the next thing to do is give the Juki a cleaning under the needle plate.  The next project will probably  be the string HST quilt started several months ago.  All the string squares are ready, so the next step is cutting the background squares, marking them, and

Continuing on from last time... With the rainbow strings UFO project set aside, I moved on to the next UFO.  This is another string-based project I started but never finished.  (Seeing a trend?  I get excited about string-piecing and crumb-piecing— strings especially when I want to use the treadle— but sometimes I don't start with a very specific end in sight, and even if there's a plan, momentum stalls out once the fun part is over.) I had two stacks of string blocks, one blue-green/aqua and one pink.  A while back, I'd pulled some pink and blue/aqua fabric for the next proposed phase of the project, but I wasn't sure I wanted to do the work that involved.  It didn't sound like fun, but I wasn't sure what else to do, instead.   So I wasted part of a day one weekend just thinking about it and looking a quilt blocks to see if anything jumped out as a superior alternative.  After all that, I reluctantly admitted that the original idea was still the best thing I co

I've been trying to finish up a couple of old UFO quilting projects, lately.  There are so many other new projects I'd like to start, but the backlog of UFOs was weighing on my conscience.  I'll feel better with some of the old WIPs wrapped up and scratched of that mental list.   - - - - - - - My first UFO pick-back-up of the year was the stack of rainbow-colored string blocks.  You may remember them... I originally thought I'd make them into a quilt of my own design, based on paper lanterns, but as time went on, I lost steam and didn't want to spend that much effort on them.   At that point, I wasn't sure what to do with them, instead.  I played around with ways of laying them out in rainbow order, and came up with a layout that would be "okay", but I still wasn't excited about it— and then serendipity struck, and I found something better! I had some digital rewards points to use up on Amazon before they expired, so I bought the Kindle version of