Now THAT'S fabric therapy!

Love in the mail...that is what I found on my doorstep last night.  Kathie of Inspired by Antique Quilts sent me the most amazing care package.  Most of your know I lost my Mom 3 weeks ago, and I've been in a hard space.  I opened this large mailing parcel and pulled out a giant ziploc bag the size of VW bug.  I spent the first hour or so hugging it as if it was a teddy bear.  I am completely blown away by your generosity and thoughtfulness!  What is it about that fabric that is so therapeutic???  Especially when it comes in the mail from a kindred spirit many miles away...

When I stopped crying, curiosity got the better of me and I unzipped the bag.  WOW!  Look at all these lovely, bright and happy 2.5 inch strips!  I am overwhelmed!  These will make such a happy, healing quilt project!

I went to sleep last night dreaming about what to do with them.  It is so nice to be dreaming about quilt patterns and projects again.  I think that when I am sad, that feeling is like an 800-pound gorilla, sitting on my creativity.  When I opened the package, I was inwardly shouting, "monkey, be GONE!!!"  Thank you so much, Kathie!  I am truly touched!

I have been mindlessly sewing some scraps into strips for the past week or so.  I was hoping to use the Featherweight, but I couldn't find the bobbins for that little lovely...I've got to figure out where I put them "for safe keeping."  Lord, I miss my mind...

These little bits are tucked away until I get some time and inspiration.  I had an idea about a month ago of what to do with them, and I need to find my pencil-scratched "doodle" and get on with it.

I'm so touched...and inspired... by your gift, Kathie.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I am always surprised and delighted to discover just how wonderful blogland can be for finding and following quilting friends.  I just love quilting...


In stitches,
Teresa  :o)

Sewing through the blues...and reds...and greens...

In Memory of Mildred Louise Schell Yielding

November 7, 1928 - February 20, 2012

I apologize for being out of communication and the "no-show" posting.  I owe many of you replies to your nice comments and emails.  My Mom just passed away after a long decline.  She is at peace now.  Thank you to everyone who sent good vibes and sentiments in my direction.  I am in dire need of some serious fabric therapy now that I am home from Alabama, and I intend to lose myself in the quilt cave.  

There is some mindless fabric manipulation in my immediate future...I think I need to pull out Mom's pale green Singer Featherweight, and put it through a work out...


Thank you,
Teresa

Design Wall schizophrenia...

Procrastination is a killer.  This scrappy Positive-Negative Chains quilt (ala Bonnie Hunter) has been snoozing on my design wall for months awaiting two borders.  I didn't want to unpin it and take it down until I was actually sewing borders on, then walking out the door with it, taking it to be machine-quilted.  It was such a bear to get pressed nicely with all those little scrappy pieces...

I finally prepared borders and off the wall it came; first a brick red stop border, followed by a dark blue outer border cut from a length of Moda "Renewal" that I had been saving for years.  Does anyone else out there "save" things?  Afraid to actually use fabric because then it will be used up?  Those fabric manufacturers have us right where they want us...LOL.

See all my careful pressing?!?  It is worth the time and effort to press carefully and thoughtfully as I go, trying to "nest" seams when I can so they will lie flat.  That is critical for either hand- or machine-quilting.

I'm glad I pushed myself to use the outer border fabric...it is just what this scrappy, busy quilt needed.  I really like the result.  The quilt has a nice border set AND it is off the design wall.    Why is it so hard to use our stashes sometimes??  We cannot possibly take it with us when we go...what am I saving stuff for?   I should have named this post "stash constipation" instead, huh.

I had gotten "stuck" with many OTHER projects just because I could not use my design wall to study the situations.  I am a visual person, and even though I can imagine things in my head, I still need to stand back and take the whole thing in at various points in the design process...especially when I am making it all up to begin with.  Cluttered head, cluttered design wall...what's a quilt cave troll to do?

I've been wanting to lay out these blocks for a few weeks now.  I just trimmed them down to 8.5 inches this week, and I am considering setting the blocks 8 blocks x 8 rows.  With borders, the quilt would end up about 76-80 inches square.  I made this block up a few weeks ago.  It is a great way to use up scraps and I do it WITHOUT PAPER FOUNDATIONS (because I hate removing those papers).  I think I will call it "X Marks the Block" because the black scraps form very obvious "X" figures (when I lay the blocks out right!).  How did I make the blocks?  Go here to see.

I will take these down, in order, so that I can start sewing them together.

Here are some of my Wonky Stars...it is fun to put them on the design wall to see how they twinkle!  I need to put some of the scrappy pieces for these in my leader/ender basket by my sewing machine.  It's amazing how fast these stars appear when randomly making units while piecing other things.

These pictures seem so dark for some reason.  The fabrics in the stars are very vibrant while the neutrals stay in the background.

I forgot all about this U.F.O.!!  This is my "Poultry in Motion" project...crazy-pieced blocks using chicken fabrics.  I only have 3 more blocks to finish and it will become a flimsy.  I already have the chicken fabric strips cut and in a box labeled "chicken strips" - that box always makes me hungry when my eyes pass over the label...yummmmmm...chicken strips...

Down come the chickens and up go some of my Blackbird baskets from that ongoing project.  I'm getting a little dizzy from my revolving door quilt design wall...it's fun to see how far I've come with these projects.  I still have more red, blue, pink,green, black and purple repro fabrics to make baskets from.  I think I need about 300 in total.

But this is the main reason I wanted to clear the design wall.  It was time to put all the Lori Smith "Folk Art Applique" blocks together to see how they look now that all the hand applique is finished.  Me likey!!  I need to audition some of the swags I've drawn to see which one I end up using for the border.  I am really happy with how these turned out, and I am looking forward to finishing the top so that I can start hand-quilting.

Putting things on the design wall for a while has helped to build a little fire under me to want to work on these projects.  These U.F.O.'s need oxygen and daylight every now and then to continue the creative process.

In stitches,
Teresa  :o)

Rx for January...work with bright fabrics!

 have my 12 center blocks hand appliqued for the Lori Smith's "Folk Art Applique" quilt.  Each block will finish at 9 inches.

This has been the perfect hand stitching pattern for this time of the year in Michigan...there are a lot of gloomy, cold days with linoleum skies.

The picture on the original pattern looked as if solid, saturated fabrics were used.  I decided to use tone-on-tone bright fabrics, hoping they would read as solids, but with more zing and pep.

It's time to play with the layout and order of the blocks, sew them together, and start thinking about a border.  I think I will come up with an original border design...perhaps a swag. 

 

Should I put eyes on the animals?  I think the original pattern gave eyes only to the chicken and bird...

I've enjoyed the simplicity of the design elements.  This pattern works up nicely using the glue stick method of hand applique.

I carefully trimmed the black background away from behind the larger applique shapes, especially the yellow ones.

I found I needed to stitch in good light because I soon discovered that the black background really magnified misplaced stitches!  I'm still loving the YLI silk thread for hand applique.

 

The sunflower block just may be my favorite...

 

I have trouble with January...anyone else in the same boat??  I have a love/hate relationship with the holidays.  I had such a good mojo going with the weight loss and exercise in 2012.  Now I am on a plateau.  Lots of walking and exercise would burn me past the plateau and get me on my way again.  But the January weather can be bad for walking...and for mojo.  Sometimes it is just dangerous to be out there due to the ice, snow, and/or cold.

I whipped up this little top as a sample for the shop.  It is called "We're Chicken," by Button Weeds.  I really liked making up the scrappy half square triangles.  I love scrappy...I don't have to make decisions about fabrics...they're ALL good!  Right now the chickens are running around blindly...I will add button eyes after it's quilted.  They have little prairie point wings...so plucky!

Good-bye January...I hope you take the doom and gloom with you!

In stitches,

Teresa   :o)

Practical magic...

It's no secret that I love YLI silk thread for hand stitching my applique blocks.  It is fine, strong, and nearly invisible - it is kind of like sewing with human hair.  But I find that it tangles off the spool (not while sewing) like MY human hair, and my spools are usually surrounded by a cloud of loose thread that resembles 'Pig Pen' from the 'Peanuts' comic strip.  Desperate for a quick solution, I remembered I still had some of my daughter's hair do-dads from when she was a little girl.  One worked so well, I ran out and bought a whole bunch!

The Goody Co. has the best, simplest ones, and one pack (of 42!) was only $2.49 at my local grocery store...that's just under $0.06 a piece!  That's a bargain at twice the price!

One will work, or you can put two on a spool.  With two or three on a spool, you don't have to keep moving the do-dad to cover the thread tail.  They also fit sewing machine bobbins and slender spools of regular sewing thread.

If you want to get all fancy, you can match do-dad color to spool color (until you get to the browns...).  I've stored the extra ones in a baggie until I go down to the quilt cave and fix the remaining silk spools.

I like the larger ones on my spool of YLI glazed hand quilting thread.  I usually double or triple the do-dad and it works perfectly.  I've been using one on my quilting thread for a couple of years...I can't believe it took me so long to remember the little do-dads for the silk thread...

I wonder how many human inventions came from someone being annoyed?!?

A week or so ago, I finally had dinner with 3 girlfriends (Ola, Mary J and Beth) and we celebrated Christmas and my birthday.  We grabbed attention in the Ruby's Restaurant as we opened little gifts...serious and silly (the singing and dancing elf and Santa hats were particularly fun in public!).  Beth's HUSBAND found the following little trinket for all of us at the AUTO PARTS STORE...a magnetic nut and bolt holder that works great for pins.  The base is even magnetic, so it will hold pins up-side-down and in tight places.  Brilliant!!

It just goes to show you that quilting tools can be found practically anywhere!

In stitches,

Teresa   :o)

Applique taskmaster...

Weasley has been holding my feet to the fire, keeping me company and helping me to get some applique prep work done. I've been methodically glue basting smaller units of each block, then stitching those smaller units with YLI silk thread.  By building the applique blocks unit by unit, then stitching the smaller units before glue basting further, I will be able to trim the black background behind the larger applique motifs in preparation for hand quilting...especially if my black background muddies my lighter, brighter fabrics.

Since I am using a black background for this applique quilt, my usual trick of using my light box for applique placement won't work.  I am using the 'overlay' technique instead. 

You know those clear dividers you get when you buy the deeper Art Bin satchel containers.?  They are smooth on one side, ridged on the reverse?  They make great overlays!  Since I have temporarily misplaced my pen that wipes off with water, I am using a dry erase pen (and being very careful not to smudge the ink!).

I trace just the very outside lines of the block design from the paper pattern to the smooth side of the clear divider.

After gluing then stitching the smaller units, I've glue basted everything I can by just working over the paper pattern BEFORE working on background with the overlay.  Using the "dot-dot-not-a-lot" amount of Roxanne's glue baste, I know if my applique gluing bleeds through and the piece sticks to my pattern, my dots are too big, LOL.

My background is a couple of inches larger than the finished size, so I glue the round center medallion in the center of my over sized background square (confident in having enough background to carefully place the other motifs)...

Next I place my traced overlay on top of the applique block.  Using my long tweezers, I move things around until they line up pretty well.  Then I remover the overlay and carefully lift and apply my tiny dots of glue baste one motif at a time, checking alignment with my overlay when necessary.

Now I can simply wipe to remove the dry erase pen from the clear plastic overlay.

I place the clean overlay on the next paper pattern.  The dry erase pen removes easily, but is way too easy to accidentally smudge or remove.  When I use this overlay method, I much prefer the wipe board pens that have to be removed with a damp rag.  I don't have to be so careful with those overlays.

 

I only outline outer edges.

Before using my traced overlay, I glued up the sunflowers and stitched the centers first.  This is especially important on this block with all the light yellow fabrics.  If too much black background shows through, I will trim away even more of the unseen black background.

Here are the flower flip sides.  You can see how I sewed the smaller circle centers to the larger ones, then stitched and trimmed before placing the center units on the petal layers and doing it all over again.

Now I am ready for my overlay,

 

Done...ready to erase and trace the next block...

These are a little out of proportion because the camera is at an angle, but you get the general idea of the four blocks I will be stitching now! 

Oops!  I forgot to say that these are blocks from Lori Smith (From My Heart to Your Hands).  The name of the pattern is "Folk Art Applique."

Preview of coming attractions...

In stitches,
Teresa    :o)