Sew I See!

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 squ...

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 ...

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...

There's a new sewing machine in the house!  And this time it's an actual new machine, not a "new" vintage machine.   I bought my "old" computerized sewing machine-- a Brother Designio DZ2400-- during a Black Friday sale in 2014.   It's been a good machine, and it's still going pretty strong.  So much so that I'm keeping it as a back-up machine-- especially because it has some features that, while I don't use them often, are occasionally very useful.  (Zig-zag and decorative stitches, mainly.) However, it does sometimes make some squeaky noises, and... well, it just felt like a good time for an upgrade to a better machine for piecing.  That upgrade, bought in another sale around Black Friday, is a Juki TL-2000Qi.  Be Advised: This is a long, rambling post about the features of the new sewing machine, comparisons between the new and the old, and so on.  It's probably not interesting to anyone who isn't considering buying the same sewin...

The Christmas Gnome Quilt is a finished quilt top! Originally, I planned to make this quilt in a 6x8 layout, but once I reached that target, I still had so much fabric left over that I decided to make it a bit wider-- 7x8.  (Probably a more pleasing pair of dimensions, anyway-- not so skinny.)  I pieced the extra blocks and decided that the quilt was large enough.  (It will be a couch quilt, so no sense in making it too large.)  Some of the left-over strips will serve as binding, and the rest can either be worked up into a table runner/table-topper or used as strings.   There were too many blocks to fit on the design wall, so I had to put some of them on the table for the final layout arranging.  After it was all joined up, I spotted a cluster of red that I probably would have rearranged, had I noticed it earlier.  It's not really a problem, though, and I'm not sure I could have done much to improve the layout, even if I had noticed in time. ...

I didn't quite finish the Halloween quilt top by October 31st, but it was pretty close!  Here it is hanging over the lighting rail on the quilting frame: And here's a final "in progress" shot of the layout that spilled off the design wall and onto nearby surfaces, including the floor... I'm satisfied!  Just need to get around to quilting it (and another autumn quilt-top that's still lurking in the closet) before next autumn!  (Easy, right?) - - - - - - - Immediately after finishing this quilt top, I dove into some crumb strip piecing, because there were crumbs accumulating and I was in the mood for something spontaneous and carefree.  I already have enough crumb strips saved for the planned quilt, so I guess these will be saved for the next one... They're nothing special, but they were fun to make! - - - - - - - Since I didn't finish the Halloween quilt before October 31st, I thought I'd better start the planned Christmas quilt a little earlier!  I...

The Halloween quilt is still coming together, a few blocks at a time.   I've been selecting the fabric for three blocks, then cutting out the pieces (stacking them as I go). This is how I've been "storing" the fabric for this project.  😁 It's worked out well.  Makes it easy to see what I have available without getting the fabric wrinkled or having to dig through a pile.   I mark the squares destined to become hourglass units with one of these handy little rulers.  You do have to draw two lines per square, this way, instead of drawing just one down the middle and sewing a quarter-inch from each side of it.  Personally, I prefer this method.   Then I sit down and sew all three blocks-- put them on the wall-- and start the process over again.  As it now stands, the final three star blocks are ready to put together.  Even the hourglass units are prepared and trimmed down!   I don't think I've ever made hourglass units be...

Well, I wasn't happy with how the quilting machine was behaving (skipping some stitches), so I've left it for now.  Soon I'll need to get back to it, but for now, I've allowed myself to start another quilt, instead.  I had a set of Halloween-themed fat quarters bought on clearance a while back, and this seemed like a good time to finally use them.  Looking for pattern inspiration months ago, I found a starry quilt that seemed like a good match.  I selected a slightly larger block size, to make it come together a bit more quickly-- and also because I thought larger blocks might better suit the fabrics.   There are two types of star blocks in this quilt.  The pattern book I'm using calls them sawtooth stars and variable stars, but maybe they're known by other names, too.  So far I've only made some of the sawtooth stars.   Progress photos taken along the way: That's where I am, at this point.  I may not finish this quilt top by Hallow...