Snowballed 6 Patch Tutorial

I am excited to share with you a pattern that I invented this week.  And I am sharing it free.  I ask only for you to give me credit if you use it, the pattern is mine, the blocks you make with it are yours.  Thank you….signed Dawn, Webmaster of Myquiltprojects.wordpress.com

Now, the formality is done lets get busy with the tutorial.

A 6 patch, this is probably known by another name, but for our purposes we are calling it a 6 patch today.  A scrappy simple block.  For this block you will need one 4 1/2 inch square and five 2 1/2 inch squares.

Sew the left two 2 1/2 inch squares together.  Then sew the three remaining 2 1/2 inch squares together like sew.  Press seams up and to the right.

Next sew the the left sewn two squares to the 4 1/2 inch square.

Now, you will take the bottom row of sewn 2 1/2 inch blocks and sew those to the bottom of the joined 4 1/2 inch block.  Press seams out from the 4 1/2 inch block.

Lookin’ mighty scrappy so far!  And you have completed your 6 patch block.  This is a great scrap buster.  I had so much fun pulling fabrics for this.  But best of all I used up almost all of my 2 1/2 mini charm packs.  Great variety, no cutting, win win!

The rest of this tutorial is a brainstorm I had a few night ago.  You see I am in a block swap.  These 6 patch beauties will be swapped for someone else’s.  I kept thinking, how am I going to make this my own and make it different than the other swap members?

I decided on using my Folded corners ruler.  I was playing around on the ironing board and came up with the idea by actually folding the corners of 4 of these blocks and magic happened!

By snowballing a large square and a small square on a 6 patch, and joining 4 together it makes a secondary block.  A spool!  How appropriate!

So the tutorial continues.  I chose cheddar as the spool color.  Even though the whole quilt will be scrappy, I have decided to tie them all together with a cheddar color.  You could use any color, have fun with it.

For each 6 patch you will need one 4 1/2 inch square of cheddar, and one 2 1/2 inch square of cheddar.

Place your 4 1/2 inch square of cheddar with right sides together to your 6 patch block aligning with the existing 4 1/2 inch square.

Using the Folded Corners Ruler, by Doug Leko, trim your corner.  This ruler is amazingly accurate!  Perfect for snowballing!

Now you have two seams to sew, one on the 6 patch and one bonus HST.

In the next step you will use your 6 patch and align your cheddar with right sides together in the opposite corner from your previous snowballing.   Using your ruler, snowball.  Sew the 6 patch cheddar trimmed seam as well as your bonus HST.

Finger press, and then iron.  I am pressing all of my cheddar seams towards the cheddar.

And you are now ready to join 4 snowballed 6 patches together alternating large and small cheddar to get this block below.

The great thing about this secondary block, it will go throughout the quilt making these spools magically appear.  I have always wanted a cheddar quilt.  I am well on my way.  All of those bonus HSTs will be incorporated as corner stones around the perimeter of the quilt top.  I am far from showing you that portion, but am certain it will happen soon.  Here are some examples of my bonus HSTs.

My fun has just begun with this scrappy project.  Just working a tad here and a little here, I have already sewn almost 65 blocks with cheddar goodness.  It is sew great to use up all those scraps, and to move fabric out of the stash.  I hope I have been clear on the instructions.  Please if there is something you do not understand, pose a question in the comments section.  Thank you for reading my blog!

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Snow Balls from the Sky

It hailed at my house this afternoon.  It has been years since I have seen anything here measurable or as big as today’s.  It is a sick feeling to work hard for what you have to see mother nature’s fury.  The good news, it was short….less than 20 minutes.  It never got bigger than shooter marble size.  Boy they sure did bounce off my rooftop though.  It was almost as if it was a trampoline for them.  All in all, probably no damage.  Perhaps to one car that is now 10 years old and already had cellulite for door dings and such.  Character added to that car I suppose.

If you think about it, hail is ice.  In the winter it is known as sleet.  In the summer it is known as hail.  I explained to my daughter that it happens when the upper atmosphere is cold, cold, cold, and it meets very warm moist air.  The dust in the clouds gets so cold it freezes.  The humidity causes layers upon layers to pack onto that piece of dust.  And before you know it, you have snow balls falling from the sky.  I had to change that last part, because she thought it would be fun to throw them not realizing how dense they are and could take out a window or a small animal.

This is pretty much the only news around here.  Far better than worldly news as well as national news.  In quilty news, I did get the binding completed on the Garlic Knot Marinara quilt.  I checked off that milestone on Tuesday.

Whoa! The cosmos of angles going on here. The quilt is perfectly rectangular, not trapezoid as pictured. That is so weird!

I brought the TOGA blocks I am working on back out.  I have already sewn my 22 for the block swap.  But when laid out that is not enough 6 inch blocks to do go very far in covering anything at this house.  So I am cutting up my scraps and making more to keep for myself.  I am adding color in the place of the big neutral square.  I am kind of liking that.  I had oodles of mini charm packs which is a precut size of 2 1/2 inches square.  Most of these blocks utilized that from my fabric stash.  I never thought I could mingle purples and plums with browns and bright reds and blues, as well as pastel yellows and pinks.  It is working out fine.  I love scrappy!

I played with the layout of this and wanted to make a secondary block from the pieces I have.  I came up with the idea to fold the corners and add the same fabric in all four corners of this block.  It then forms a spool which is SEW appropriate for this swap.

I have some cheddar for the spools and probably have enough to make it contrast throughout the quilt.  This will involve carefully placing the large HSTs to the out, bringing the smaller HSTs in, or vice versa.

I don’t really have any plans in the sewing dept this week and will probably just play with what is convenient.

I did have a thought today about quilting the Jelly Roll Race quilt just using the bar tack stitch every couple of inches.  That sure would make a nice and soft quilt, not sure how labor intensive that would be?  Have you tried this?

The cat is about ready to pop and have another litter of kittens.  I love baby kitties.  And then they grow up, loose their cuteness, and find cattitude.  The momma cat is not like that, so there is hope!  Have a great weekend!

Tilda’s Girdle

Last weekend I made a Tilda doll.  I loved the process and it is nice to work on a sewing project that does not take weeks.  This weekend I attended a SAS (a sit and stitch workshop where you bring your projects and just sew).  I got the body of the doll made.

This time, during the construction I decided to go with a white on white print for the girdle portion to keep her modest if the children decide to take off her clothes.  I also used a decorative stitch on the line between the two different fabrics at the legs and the bodice.  Because I was at the workshop and only packed a couple colors of thread, I did not stitch the portion how I wanted.  I thought the lace idea up at the workshop and made do with what I had.

I had a baby sock stray that was once one of my daughter’s.  Used socks….there is really not a market for them for donation especially when they are a loner.  I decided I really wanted to use it as socks on the doll and used the finished edge of the sock to fold down over the rest of the sock just like a pair of socks.  I then saved the rest of the sock and wanted to make a turtle neck out of it.  The best idea I had was to make a dicky turtle neck, but the idea of that is ridiculous for a doll.  So I incorporated that into the collar of the dress.  I do not really like how this dress turned out.  I tried to fit it at the bodice, and the arm ratio to the bodice is not quite right, I am not tearing it apart.

This poor doll has no shoulders…..a bad fitting garment is too blame.  Garments should accentuate not flaw the body.

This doll I also made bend at the knees for a more pose-able posture.  I did not put gloves on this one either.  I did get out my chalk and gave her some peachy cheeks.  I still have to add the eyes and add a fastener at the back of the dress.  For not having a pattern it turned out ok.  Good enough.

Yesterday, at the same workshop, I showed the continuous bias binding method.  It involves only two seams and is really practical and quick.  You can take a square and turn it into yards and yards of bias tape.  If you are interested in seeing this method done, click here for the tutorial.  This is the video that taught me.

Here I am hand stitching along on the binding of the Garlic Knots Marinara quilt.  I am less than halfway and due to the use of a dull sharp yesterday am probably not going to finish that today, let the punctured finger rest.  Need-less to say I threw that needle away.  For years that stupid needle has been in my pincushion.  I did not know needles go dull and kept using it thinking my fibers were just extra thick.  I have resolved this problem and it will probably not rear it’s ugly head for a good while.

Here is the front and back all wadded up in the chair waiting for my nimble fingers to complete.

I was a bad girl and bought more fabric.  Precuts have great markdowns at nancysnotions.com.  I got layer cakes and jelly rolls for less than $18.  Stocking up for a rainy day.  I shouldn’t have but did.  My stash is probably not as big as yours.  But when you have such a confined space for sewing, digging through and finding the right fabric wears you out, where you do not want to sew.  A mess to clean up with the aftermath of digging is not any fun either.  I am thankful of my accumulations as I remember lean times, when the creative juices would flow and there was no fabric to sew!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

I made a Tilda!

I have had a Pinterest account for about 5 years.  It is a great resource if you get stuck when winging it like me (others call it improv I hear) with what ever craft I am making.  Usually it involves quilting, free motion quilting and the like.  For 5 years, even though I had not searched anything relating to Dolls, Tilda would be pictured in different outfits, striking a pose for the camera (practically saying “cheese” even though she is mouthless).  I finally decided I had enough, I made one!

I assume Tilda is a Scandinavian doll by her name, and could not find any websites with much info on them other than pictures.  Even though she is trendy on Pinterest, as far as clothing patterns that are printer friendly as well as the doll herself are not really out there.

So I decided I would make my own pattern.  I mean how hard can it be?  Er….my pattern failed.  Not by design but by execution.  The first Tilda had a blow out in the head and ankle.  Her injuries were too great in the sewing room, she got a proper burial much like many gold fish.  In the trash she went.  When we have time vested, setbacks like this are great because you learn what not to do the next time.

The reason why the doll failed….I used the wrong type of material.  I had a polyester blend which unraveled greatly.  The 1/8 inch seam allowance caused the blow outs during the stuffing exercise.  Stuffing this doll is exercise!!!  If you have arthritis, this would be something you could do, but may have to take many breaks.  Thankfully I had my stylus/bamboo skewer.  This enabled me to get the smallest amount of stuffing in the narrowest parts.  And the great thing is, she did not end up looking like a bunch of cellulite (although that does add character and I must have lots of character myself!  hehe)

I designed her clothing to be reversible.  The yoke can also be a hat.  I made sure when I made the doll body (in case the children decided to play with her) that she always wore gloves.)  My daughter commented that I sewed the arms wrong as the purple hands did not look right.  I informed her, Tilda is a lot like many women today.  She can scrub toilets with those gloves, and then go out elegantly with a night on the town.  Plus this Momma did not want to hunt up the gloves assisting them dressing her, let alone put the darn things on and take them off.

I used woolen rug yarn for the hair.  This yarn is chunky 3 ply.  I separated the strands and hand stitched them to the head for a gob of hair.  I will probably make additional outfits for her as the girls get interested in playing with her.  I see a woolen coat in her future as I have a bunch of wool (and with wool you do not have to hem, the edge is already finished).

This was a nice day project in between chores.  Perfect for breaking the quilting monotony.  Sometimes taking a small project and bringing it to completion gets us through those long drawn out quilty projects.

When you craft you accumulate things.  The only thing I did not have is muslin.  But I managed my scraps.  I made a huge mess digging and finding all that burried treasure in my trove of fabrics.  Note:  The purple and print fabric in these pictures were freebies I received from a co-workers Grandmother.  She gifted me the fabric, I gifted my time, my daughter will receive the benefit of this all coming together.

Happy Easter!

The Afternoon Longarm

I emailed a fellow stitcher of mine, inquiring about prices, thread color, pantograph patterns, and costs.  I wish I had known to do this long ago.  She offers half price quilting for those in her sewing group!!!  So instead of the 2 cents per square inch she charges 1 cent (hey, there is no longer a cent sign on the keyboard, when did this happen?)

So the next afternoon after work, I swung by her studio.  She has an older Gammill, but with a huge frame and stitch regulator with computer program goodness.  Her set up is excellent!  And the learning curve of the software she uses is very friendly for someone like me.

While she oiled her machine, we talked and had great conversation.  And the we loaded the backing and batting, finally floating the top.  We opened the software program, and I picked out the pattern.  With a few stylus taps and  the machine stitched while strumming some kind of tune.  Neat listening to the tune, but mesmerizing to watch the machine travel the long length of the quilt effortlessly.  Amazed is what I am!  Quilting is a very old hobby and has merged with new technology.  A wonderous thing!

Due to time constraints after one row was stitched and the fuducials lined up on the next row, I had to head for home.  The Garlic Knots Marinara is now being quilted.  This quilt, from start to finish is less than 30 days!  I think this is a personal record.  I wish they would all be so kind on time!

I took measurements, it ended up being 68 X 98.  Nice twin size.  I can’t wait to see the final results and am very excited to share the horrendously pieced backing!  I refused to buy more fabric and used up the leftovers of the quilt top.

The excitement continues in nature.  We had a couple days of nice steady rain.  The grass is so green and lush.  The Redbuds are blooming, the trees are leafing, the wisteria smells so good and the purple flowers hanging on their vines looks gorgeous up agains the green grass.  I noticed some white tulips here and there during my back roads commute.  Spring is definitely springing here.

Spring also brings babies.  Our momma kitty is probably going to have another large litter of kittens.  She is already huge with another 30 days to go.  I look forward to the heredity lesson about dominate and recessive genes for the children.  Last time they were too young.  The other female we have I suspect is pregnant too because the toms have quit coming around.  You cannot tell of a swell with her.  We will probably get to see who the daddies were lol.

I mowed the front yard today.  The weeds were thick.  Ah…..the smell of cut grass.  Ah….mowing the lawn in Texas and not breaking a sweat.  Perfectly spring!

I am currently quilting more on the On Ringo Lake quilt.  I do a block and if I like it I repeat it a couple of times, and then think up a new design for the adjoining blocks.  I find using my chalk pencil, it helps me steer my stitches without painting myself into a corner sew to speak!

Due to no looming deadlines, I am relaxing more and not knotting myself up trying to get as much done as possible in the few hours I have each evening.  When a person feels good, everything is better.  Relaxing is better, watching tv is better, standing long hours at work is better, and standing more hours at the machine when I get home is better too!  I did not realize how much stress not feeling well was causing me.  So I suppose the stress is even better.  I would much rather have good quality stress over bad stress, and now I am wise enough to know the difference.  My hobby really allowed me to get through the last 7 years of exhaustion.  Exhaustion caused from stress, stress magnified by pain.

I think I figured out the source.  Time will tell and I will share another day.  Good Friday wishes!

 

First days of spring!

The last two weeks I cut our daffodils and brought those wonderful smelling flowers into the house along with some hyacinths that grow in the fence row.  As you would walk through the unheated, un-air conditioned house, the smell would all of a sudden find you when you least expected it.  A wonderful thing this spring.  Before you know it, it will be gone.

It has been so fair here, like I mentioned no heating and cooling.  Just fresh air!  It gives me great energy.  A fantastic feeling, you feel good, the weather is good, life is good.  I will need to probably mow the lawn tomorrow.  Ah….the first mowing!  I can hardly wait to smell that fresh cut grass (or in my case weeds).  And when the back yard gets mowed you will smell onions as they grow wild in the back yard.  That particular smell of spring only happens a couple of times a year.  A good thing to have all those smells, and sights!

For those of you suffering through yet another snow storm, enjoy that too because before you know it, it will be gone.  The cold, the wet, the cabin fever….gone until winter rolls around again.

With the high energy I have had, I have pushed through and finished my Garlic Knot Marinara Quilt.  Click here to read that post in case you missed it.

Here are the final few pictures of the top.  I have not heard back yet on getting this long armed by one of my sewing mates in the club.  If she cannot than I think I will do just a walking foot straight line quilting on it and call it done.

Without borders above and with below.

Here is the corner that I will affix some sort of quilt label to once I get it to that point.  It is rather barren.  This will be the upper left of the quilt.

I purchased this red floral for the border in a 2 yard increment.  As you can see by my piecing it was about 1/2 inch too short to make the width of the quilt.  Ah well, once it gets quilted it will disappear in with the surrounding reds.

This morning I pieced together the backing.  I still need to iron the whole backing but will wait to do that when it is closer for machine quilting.

In other news, I have been invited to attend the TOGA retreat in Lone Oak, TX in the month of April.  TOGA stands for Treadle On Gathering Academy.  It is for treadle machine users as well as vintage machine users.  With the acquisition of my featherweight I now qualify for this event.  On site of this retreat will be those who will help repair your machine as well as trouble shoot any issues.  A sewing machine doctor will be onsite.  I am very excited about this.  If any of you are interested, this is totally free, they feed you supper on Saturday and there will be vendors, as well as raffle items for sale.  I am intrigued and am very excited.  Here is a blog post from last year about the events and goings on.  Click here to read that.  I was asked to participate in the block swap they are having.  Since Garlic Knots Marinara pictured above turned out so well, I am going to participate in this one too.  I will only know a couple of people in attendance, and will get to meet oodles more!

So today I got out my 2 1/2 inch scrappy squares and sewed up the blocks for this swap.  These went together quickly.  I will probably make more of these as swapping around 25 blocks that are 6 1/2 inches will not make a very big quilt.

As the temperatures have raised in the house to an almost uncomfortable level, I have stopped sewing.  Relaxing with a cool glass of water, admiring my progress.

I totally love scrappy!  I think I have accomplished definition of scrappy with these.  All of them are different.  So another project has started.  These fabrics I pulled for this effort I suspect are older fabrics.  The quality of these are wonderful!   The prints are very calico, and the cloth is very fine.  I wonder what era these are from?  I suspect some are from the 50s, and 60s.  I bet some are from the 80s too.  I have enjoyed the fabric discovery of this process too.  Touching fabrics that were forgotten about.  Glad to get them used up, and ready to marry into someone else’s quilts!

I have a sit and stitch to attend, an open workshop to work on whatever I want.  I have so many projects to choose from.  PHDs or projects half done!  I am still not sure what I will work on for that workshop.  I do know I will be teaching the continuous bias binding technique using a square and sewing two seams then making the cuts on the bias.  This will assist the sewing group for a couple of projects we will be doing before the end of the year.  I would rather give an arsenal of tools up front, so everyone’s skill set will be well equipped.

No deadines, just spring in the air and sewing time at my leisure.  Life could not get any better!  My quilty world is always at my fingertips ready for adventure!

Garlic Knots Marinara

The chronological events of Garlic Knots Marinara

• The idea was born in our sewing group.  A very talented quilt shop owner came up with the pattern for strip piecing out of 2 1/2 inch strips to make the garlic knot block.
• Two bolts of red Moda Grunge fabric was purchased to keep all the red for everyone the same color.
• It was deemed each participant in this block exchange would purchase 3/4 of a yard of white with black fabric, or black with white fabric (no gray allowed)
• It was deemed each participant in this block exchange would purchase a different piece of white with black fabric, or black with white fabric measuring 1 1/2 yards
• At the meeting before our block making, if you brought your black and white fabrics, the stitching club dispensed the red already cut 2 1/2 inch strips (I believe it was three yards total).  And we also had our black and white fabrics cut using the June Taylor ruler, which made them all the same for everyone….no slipage!
• We were then given some homework to sew our strip sets per the instructions.

• Here are my blocks minus the 4 1/2 inch bar of red.

• By showing up the day of the garlic knot block swap, we received the red 4 1/2 inch bars that would finish out this block.
• The day of the group sew,  one person pressed (I called her a pressing goddess as this is not a favorite task of mine.)  For those that showed up without doing their homework they were assisted by the leader/pattern producer of this workshop.  She cut all the strip sets at 2 1/2 inches wide.
• Some sewed two sets of 40 that day.  I chose not to do that many as it was so much red.  Red matches NOTHING in my house, and thought it would make a good quilt for the children’s bed.
• I left the sewing group early that day, left others still sewing away.  I left behind my 40 perfect blocks awaiting their swaps.
• When our sewing group met for our Thursday follow up meeting, I had a bag of 40 different blocks in a brown paper sack.  Not all the blocks were created equal either!

• At first I laid them out on the floor like this and my oh my, that was a bunch of red.  In the upper right corner you can see another layout option.

• Above, is a sewing club member that had decided to lay hers out in this format.  The black border was a nice touch and framed it nicely.  But gosh there are large patches of red.  How does one break up all that red?
• I decided with the layout above, but separated it with sashing which created a secondary block

• I decided to purchase some well matched red fat quarters for the sashing as well as a few fat quarters for the black, white, and grays.  Here is my ironing board with a few rows stitched together.  Making mine as scrappy as possible!
• Here are a few more rows stitched together.  At this point I am working the edges  and only have a few more to go.

• Notice the lower left corner.  There is no secondary block there.  I actually did forget to put one there.  No worries though.  Because this quilt was a group effort I will affix a label to the front of the quilt in that location.

• And below is almost done with the small pieces.  I do have that done now but have not had a photo op yet.  I still am going to add a 6 inch border all the way around of red to add size to this.  Laying it on a twin as it is now is a tad small.  This will help cover and drape whomever sleeps under it.

• A tad un-ironed around the edges.  I still have that to do as well.  A lady in our sewing club owns a long arm and I am going to contact her and ask if she would quilt it for me, of course me paying whatever fee she charges.
• I have named this Garlic Knots Marinara.  I am happy with the break up of the red.  There is actually more red in this quilt than the other layouts but because of the placement of contrasting fabrics, it breaks it up, showing off the black and whites.
• This has come a long ways in a short period of time.  I might have 3 days of time broken up working on this.  Working with strips is easy and fast, most importantly fun.  It would have went faster but I found inaccuracies in the 1/4 inch of all the different machines that sewed these.  I did scrap one as the pieces cut where way off and not salvageable.  I spent a whole day tearing down and building back up.  I spent another of cutting and sewing sashings to the individuals blocks and then making rows.  Two more evenings were spent sewing to this point.
• I am so close and my goal is to have a finished top over the weekend.

Red in Knots

In the month of March I was involved in a Garlic Knot Block swap.  At home we sewed our 2 1/2 inch strips.  Each person supplied the black and white fabrics, the red was supplied by the workshop.  (We all know that red is a difficult color to match).  Now, here I am trying to get these together.

After playing with the layout, I determined there was A LOT of red.  To break up the red, I am zig-zagging the blocks and sashing them with other 2 1/2 inch scrappy strips as well as black and white.  The way I am sashing is creating a secondary block which breaks up the red nicely.

The pro’s I have listed above, the con’s I will list below.

For those of you who have participated with swapping blocks, let me tell you, all 1/4 inch seams are NOT created equal.  *SIGH*  There were people there who did not know how to sew, and I knew this would create a problem.  I was unsure of the magnitude.

So far I have reworked more blocks than blocks that are good.  Two blocks I tore down all the way and realized when they cut, the cutting skills had not developed properly and so I kept the red, and the rest went into the scrap bin.  I then proceeded to sew two more blocks from the black and white fabrics I had on hand.

It is frustrating, and I am experienced.  I feel sorry for those who have no sewing skill set at all as these will not go together without being trimmed down as much as 1/2 and inch (YIKES!).  I have decided that trimming down blocks is not frugal.  Someone just paid $10 per yard for this fabric and trimming them down would just be such a waste.  This would equal 40 inches in the quilt.  That is throwing away one yard of fabric.  I refuse! Sometimes, things do not go as planned or the easy way.  Sometimes the best lessons in life as well as quilting are learned the hard way.

Will I participate in one of these again?  I have been invited to attend the TOGA association of treadlers in Lone Oak, TX.  I have no idea the skill set of the individuals attending as I have never met, messaged, emailed, or spoken to anyone from this guild.  They are having a block swap.  The blocks look simple and so perhaps I may delve into this again.  I would be required to make 20-25 blocks by April 21st.  Not sure if I can make that deadline.

I am excited about this meeting as I will get to meet a doctor of old machines who will give valuable information for caring for your old featherweights, treadles, and old machines in general.

Incidentally I have decided on a name for my new/old machine.  I am naming this machine Abacus.  I am really going to count on this machine for a long time, hence this unusual name.  Abacus will stay in the family, hopefully for at least one more generation to count on.  I had never heard of anyone naming their sewing machine a masculine name, but have come across an individual who calls her old featherweight Dean Martin (because he was a singer—too funny).

So, what have you named your machine?

Star Capella Finish!

Last night I put the final stitches in the binding.  I will be able to completely remove this one off my sewing work surface and make progress towards finish on something else, yay!

I started by making my own label from twill tape.

I then used my folded corners ruler for my scrappy binding.  I decided NOT to use bias as the majority of the edges on this quilt  were bias.  All those funny angles, this was quite a challenge for winging it.  But it all came together and worked out.

Sorry for the glare!

I had fun quilting this one.  It was so full of angles, the stitching came easy from the sewing machine.  And to make it look like it had movement I did lots of loop-de-loops as well as C swirls and random asters and stars in the star.  A star comet moving through the atmosphere, with gases burning off in a swirly trail.

And I chose a more traditional backing for night time, but less traditional for a baby quilt.  It all came together, and here you see the label affixed as well.  Spring has sprung at my house, just look at those weeds!

I hope the parents to be will like it.  I will make the delivery tomorrow.  What are your thoughts?

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

Paralyzed by the accumulation

My little sewing corner, is just that.  A small space to tune out current events, and therapeutically stitch and cut (I cannot say ironing as I am forced to do this in the kitchen).   Last weekend was crazy.  My sewing hobby corner temporarily uprooted to a workshop for half a day.  The remainder of the day was a whoosh of time flying by.  Time was flowing so fast there is not enough time to put up and back how you had the corner before.

My sewing space is a constant shuffle, and acquiring a new machine this week, I had to make room for it while it is not in use.  I have 2 totes, and 3 boxes of fabric.  Anything I have sewn in the last 3 weeks, whether it was from on rings lake,

butter and eggs,

garlic knots,

star capella,

or fanciful flight,

or the tumblers quilt top

Remnants were strewn about.  I was armpit deep in a mess of my own making!  All of it here and there amongst my stack of stuff, that had become a pile.  I dislike throwing fabric away, and much of this pile was a direct result of the pile of scraps.  I had too many projects going on at once with no focus.  All of the above projects have been worked on since Feb 11th.  That is my problem.  Of this grouping, I have one needing to be quilted, one ready for hand quilting, one completely finished, and one almost finished, and lastly one waiting for fabric to come in the mail to finish piecing.

I should have slowed down my pace.  It caught up with me today.  I knew if I did not reorganize the mess I made, the creativity would die, and then cleaning would be more of a chore.  It was yet another joyful process to touch and remember why I had this piece of cloth out.   I have strategically put everything back where it belongs.  I should have done this as I went along.  Do any of you get paralyzed by your stash?  I have too many WIPs going right now.  Is it easier to just focus on one thing at a time?  I am a woman, a mother, and we learn to have eyes in the back of our head.  We can be on the phone while telling the children to stop whatever behavior they are doing, while cooking supper, and paying attention to what is blaring on the TV.  I suppose this mother lode dose of mom training is parlez-ing into all corners of my life, including the sewing corner.

So today was the day where I dared to cleaned up, and take a breath, slow down.  I am left with only one deadline.  The Star Capella baby quilt is being bound now almost ready for an April due date.  Sigh…… Slow and steady hand stitching the binding.

Now I am flummoxed with which project to proceed and enjoy.  The oldest?  The easiest to finish?  Aaaaaaarggghhhh!  Perhaps I am overthinking this.  This hobby is my enjoyment in life.  And the featherweight I just acquired needs to have a bag sewn for it.  After researching this, supposedly the wooden case weakens since its construction in 47.  Another fork in the road.  Eenie, meanie, miny, mo………

Well at least everything is tidied up.  What to work on next?  What should I select?  History shows when I pick just one to work on, all of a sudden out of no where a new quilt with a new deadline arises posthaste.  It is not a question if that is going to happen again, the real question is when?