Blast From The Past

Enthused because I actually managed to finish one of my myriad projects (see previous post), I went searching around in my closet, and managed to unearth the quilt equivalent of Stonehenge - a Log Cabin quilt that I finished back in 1986 or so. I don't know if this quilt has ever made an appearance in this blog before - I doubt it because this used to be a knitting blog, and this quilt has been buried at the bottom of my closet, underneath various strata of yarn, fabric, wreath forms, and god knows what else.

I brought this quilt out today to give it a critical (!) look. Wow. The back looks like a shag rug because I never clipped threads while sewing, and the front looks nearly as bad.

I didn't trim the blocks to size, so some of them are, er, "puffy", to say the least. The colors are amazing - including chrome yellow, poison green, and red calico. I haven't seen these colors in quilt stores in quite a while! Oddly enough, while visiting another quilt store in Burlington, I saw new fabrics in these colors.

So, anyway, I got out my extra-large mat, ruler, and a rotary cutter and got to work "evening up" this behemoth. That took about an hour, mostly because the supervisor kept parking his 15 pound furry ass on the quilt, and took exception to being moved off (read: chomped my hand!). Finally finished without cutting off a paw or a finger, and it looks better, sort of.

I'm going to have to press the hell out of this thing. I don't know how it's going to quilt, but even if I have to utility quilt it, I'm not tossing it. Many of these fabrics are from my maternity clothes (well, I was pregnant in the 70's and 80's. The 70's were my hippie years. Give me a break.), and a lot of them have other memories attached. Plus, I just love it, flaws and all. I can remember sewing on this while my 5th son snoozed in his car seat in my sewing room while I sewed this, while taking breaks to work on Halloween costumes, including an award-winning Stegosaurus, for my other four sons.

Hallelujah!!

It's finished! 90" x 80", 3,400 pieces, 3100 which are 1 inch squares, and it's done!! At least, the piecing is. Right now, it's unpressed, unquilted and unbound, but I finished it! I thought this would go on forever. Everytime I thought I had enough squares to finish, I had to go cut more! Doing a happy dance. I'll try to get some outdoor shots of it during the week, if we ever get any sun again, and when I have a few tall people home to hold it up!

I Lied...

I said I would not post for the next few days. Well, here I am. It's a short post, but a post nonetheless.

I got busy last night with my new toy and trimmed the heck out of those Flying Geese that were all wonky. I wasn't sure when I originally cut them out, but I can see on the back of them that they were traced from templates. And none too accurately, I might add. I trimmed everything up; some were not salvageable for use, so they went back into the scrap pile to be reincarnated as something else. Once I was finished trimming, I decided to sew together a few blocks so I could see how they fit:

Looks 100% better. I could have sewed them all together last night, but I don't have much of a variety yet. I need to look through my stash for more fabrics for this quilt. I'm trying to stick with blacks, grays, gold, orange, dark blue, dark greens and brown for the birds, and beigey fabrics for the sky. I have a lot of stuff from the 70's and beyond that I'd like to use up, so I'll see what fits in this top. Each block is only three pieces, which makes them work up really fast! And, this new tool makes cutting them easier, too. I found some strips that I had traced the triangle template onto, but I flipped it over, and used the tool and my rotary cutter to accurately cut more large and small triangles. I don't think I'll ever go back to pencil, template and scissors to cut quilt pieces again!

Here We Go Again

Digging around in my closet the other day, I came up with a bag of triangles I'd cut for a Flying Geese quilt. I must have cut these 10-15 years ago, or more. Once again, as I pulled them out of the bag I was wondering what I was thinking when I cut these? Was I really that math-or-measurement challenged? I'm a reasonably intelligent person, so how did I wind up with this, and why didn't I notice it then?

The bottom block is more or less the correct size - 3"x6". The top block is more like 7"x4". Unfortunately, I have about 2 dozen blocks "finished", but I will have to pick them all apart, and remeasure. I guess I'll do that tonight while watching "the Big Bang Theory".

I work for the next three days, so there will be no quilting, and most likely no blogging either, but once I get back, I have this nifty little item to help me cut these pieces to the correct size:

I took my 50% coupon off to Joann fabrics today, used it on this. Fons and Porter's stuff rarely, if ever goes on sale, but this I think is a good investment!

Kitty Cuteness

I'm continuing to work on the Thousand Pyramids quilt, so nothing really new. I'm sure you don't want to see each row as I finish it! Now that I have all the pyramids cut to the same size, it goes together well. It went from being a project I hate, to a project that I love. I was at my LQS yesterday, and bought some new fabrics for it, to replace the ones that I ditched. Heh, my bad - I forgot to take pictures of them. As usual, it took every ounce of self-control to not walk out of that store with another quilt kit - there were quilts hanging on the wall that I loved. One of them was a beautiful batik done in blues. I think it was called rainy day. That's the kind of rainy day I could love. I also tried out a Bernette sewing machine. They have a new line out that runs from about $229 - $499. The lower range are mechanical; the upper two machines, the Bernette 20 and the Bernette 25 are computerized. I liked both of them, and since a Bernina is not in my budget, and probably never will be, one of these seemed like a good replacement. I want to look around a bit though. There's a Viking/Husquvarna dealer near my Joann Fabrics, so I might look at them, too. $500 is a lot of money to plop down, so I want to make sure that I love what I get. Not just like; I want to love it. I don't love the machine I have now. It's a Singer that I got for $149 at Target four or five years ago. It's ok, but it does have some drawbacks to it. I will say that I've been reading reviews about this machine, and many people said theirs stopped working after a few months. Mine has been humming along just fine, but I want a bit more in a machine.

In the meantime, a picture or two of Mica helping me quilt. He's settling in nicely. I think he's happy to have windows to look out of, and space to run and play. My birdfeeders are set up outside my family room windows, so it's cat heaven there. They all enjoy watching.