Sew I See!

I've been putting off doing anything "real" in the arena of piecing and quilting.  Instead, I thought playing with crumbs might be a fun post-Thanksgiving project.   There's a crumb project already in progress, but I had put that all away in shoe boxes to make room for other WIPs.  This time, I first just pulled out one of the boxes... Then thought, well, maybe I need some of the crumbs from that second box, too... And before you know it, my work surface looks like this!   Believe it or not, this is actually "organized", after a fashion.  Crumbs are sorted into their different types (skinny strings, triangles, neutrals vs. brighter/darker colors), and then there are larger bits of fabric and piles of joined crumbs, which are also sorted into smaller and larger pieces.   But it still looks an absolute mess!   I don't think I'll spend too much more time on crumbs.  They need to go back into their respective boxes so I can focus o...

This has been a disappointing autumn so far, for a variety of reasons-- one being that it's taken a while to get cool enough (around here).  It's finally cooled off a little more, but for the longest time, the mosquitoes and humidity just wouldn't budge (and there are still mosquitoes, in reduced numbers).  But whatever, world! I reject your reality, etc.  Time to build my defenses ever higher and wander even farther into fantasyland, for a while.  In other words, I'm avoiding news and other irritants and trying to make my own autumn inside with a seasonal quilt.  😉  The latest quilt-in-progress had me digging through my stash looking for a rusty red or two, and it was hard going.  This project has reminded me that the red-and-white hunter's star quilt decimated my stash of reds.  There's a lack of dark reds and rusty reds, particularly, and it's also time to build a better collection of creamy neutrals.  Next time I get a chance to fabric s...

Earlier this week, I finished applying the binding (and label) to the pumpkin quilt, so now it's done!   The pattern is "Punkin' Patch" by Bonnie Hunter.   I added in some white and yellowish pumpkins, because I love the way they look and thought it would be fun to throw some in there.   It's been a while since I started piecing it, I think, but from what I recall, the string pumpkins were a lot of fun to sew, and I enjoyed seeing the pumpkin blocks come together.  The tons of tiny green squares and the flying geese were a little more of a slog for me, personally, even though I used strip sets for the squares and made the flying geese with a 4-at-a-time method to speed things up.  It's the type of sewing that's worth it for the purpose of the finished quilt, but not as much fun as string-piecing.   In any case, it's done, now, bound, washed, and dried!  Here are some photos to mark the occasion: Now that that's done, I need to load ...

I had planned to try to finish "Punkin' Patch" (a Bonnie Hunter pattern) by Halloween, since it is primarily an October quilt.  The pumpkin theme could carry right through Thanksgiving, but the grey and black backgrounds give it more of Halloween feel.  Despite good intentions, I had some trouble deciding how to quilt it, just didn't feel in the right mood for free-motion quilting for a while, and then lost a little time in the lead-up and aftermath of Hurricane Zeta.  (We only lost power for about 12 hours, this time, and there was no problem with shingles or falling trees in our yard or across the easement. The well did lose its prime again, though, so Donald had to pour gallons and gallons into a little pipe to get it working again. Fortunately, we had saved plenty of jugs for this very purpose.)   I did finish the quilting this morning, but decided against rushing to make and attach the binding.  It'll happen soon, and that's soon enough! Even though I ...

 I don't have anything finished to show, but I have  been crocheting more of the mini doilies.  I've kind of gotten into a rut, actually.  I've made one of the mini doily patterns twice, and another of them three times! ( 99 Little Doilies , by Patricia Kristoffersen.)  At this point, I decided it was time to stop crocheting the same pattern obsessively and start weaving in the ends.  Of course, since I'd been using remnants of thread, these mini doilies have more ends than usual.  Some of them have six ends; one has eight.  They begin to add up!  But at least the process has begun.  A good podcast should make it go more smoothly.   Here's a photo of the current "bowl of thread".   It's bulked up with the latest full-size doily (also in need of end-weaving, still) and the small remnant balls of thread that... remain.  (Back into the jar with you!  Your time hasn't come yet, poor things.  ...What?  ...

Last Tuesday, I decided it was time to apply the binding to my "Hunter's String Star" quilt.  I'd had the binding ready since before the hurricane, but... Well, I don't particularly enjoy applying bindings to quilts, so I put it off.  I enjoy the sense of accomplishment when the binding is finished, though, and when that's all that's left, it feels like it's hanging over my head, preventing me from fully focusing on other projects.  The time had come to just do it!   Looking through what I had in-stash that was red and of sufficient quantity, I settled on a semi-scrappy binding-- two fabrics of almost identical red, but with different prints.  Two prints isn't really a fully-fledged scrappy binding, but I think it's fine.  It's such a busy quilt that people probably won't notice the binding all that much, anyway. The binding went on smoothly; none of my seams fell at a corner-- purely good luck, since I didn't bother to eyeball it b...