Another Friday Finish

Hello, everyone! It’s been a while. Since I last posted, I (successfully) defended my Master’s thesis (we have a required oral defense for the MA thesis) and am cranking out some serious papers for the end of the semester.

But! A little over two months four months since I finished this, I’ve finally had the chance to take better pictures of my Strip & Flip quilt!

This is a really brilliant, simple, satisfying pattern, and I just love how it turned out. As I said before, I didn’t quite follow the pattern exactly: I cut strips that were 2 1/2″ inches wide, instead of 2″ wide, and I pieced them really carefully, so that the final dimensions of the quilt are about 42″x52″

I decided to echo the white lines on the front in the backing of the quilt, which was just enough to let me use a single cut of Kona cotton (a little under 2 yards) to back this quilt — but it was iffy in places, and if I did it again, I might opt to give myself a little more wiggle room.

I quilted it pretty simply: first I filled the vertical white columns with white stitching, which I think makes them look sort of column-like, and then I quilted horizontal lines more or less randomly across the middle column, which involved a lot of fussing and tugging to get the wider part of the quilt to fit in my sewing machine.

Then I had a dilemma. I considered doing a different style of free motion quilting in each strip, to give the back of it a sort of scrappy, varied look, but I decided it varied too much from the straight lines already present on the back of it. Instead, I picked every fifth strip and quilted across it back and forth.

It leaves about an 8″ gap between quilted sections on the wide side, which makes me a little bit nervous.

So I have a question for more experienced quilters:
Should I run some additional quilting lines down those sections? I know Warm & Natural says you can quilt it every 10″, but those are awfully LONG 8″ sections… (And before you ask, I have no idea who’s going to be using this one, but probably a child.)

I considered doing a scrappy binding, or using one of the prints in the top for the binding, but I decided that would just be too much going on. Instead, I wandered over to my local fabric shop (it is three blocks from my house: let’s just say the owner and I chat when I go in, I’m there that often.) I looked over their solids, and chose a deep blue (Kona Ocean, if I recall correctly). I tried to use Red Pepper Quilts binding tutorial but I have yet to figure out exactly what counts as 1/4″ when I’m using my walking foot, so the stitch allowance was too wide, and I wouldn’t have been sure to catch the folded over binding if I stitched in the ditch. Instead I bound it by hand, while watching the news over the last couple of nights.

Any questions? I really enjoyed this one — it’s a great chance to pick fabrics (I’d consider doing this in all neutrals, or all greys, or all reds (etc) if I had enough of them!). And it comes together very quickly without looking like it, which is always satisfying.

March Goals

Quilting has really been taking a back seat to schoolwork recently, which isn’t a surprise, but is a bit sad: I miss having the time to sit down and work on something and really lose myself in the process. Instead I have to keep an eye on the clock, to be sure my break doesn’t run longer than planned.

In any case, given my workload, my goals for the first quarter of the 2013 Finish-A-Long were … well … let’s call them ambitious. That sounds better than “insanely unrealistic,” right? (These were my initial goals for the first quarter of 2013.)

Two months into the first quarter of 2013, my more realistic goals are:
1) Finish the Scrappy Trip quilt top and backing and send it off to be professionally quilted, because it’s way too big for my machine at home.

2) Work on one other quilt top: New Wave or Pinwheels and Postage Stamps or the 2012 Block of the Month. Whatever looks like fun.

3) Relax.

Sunday Something

Just a brief teaser: this is a small-scale look at what the back of my scrappy trip quilt will look like. I’ll be doing 7×7 12″ squares on the back, in imitation of the scrappy trip blocks. Of course, the cat just had to help:

Happy (early) President’s Day and happy Sunday!

A little bit louder?

I’ve really been enjoying the Scrappy Trip-Along quilt, especially seeing all the other pictures in the flickr group — it’s great to see the different color and fabric choices!

I’ve been planning on making my quilt 8×8, to be a (really large) queen size with plenty of drape, with a narrow solid border around the edges, and a plain binding. But I laid out the blocks I have right now, all 48 of them, and now I’m on the fence. I think 8×8 might be too large!

 

I’m considering three things and I would love opinions: please weigh in!
– 6×8 with a 6″ border = roughly 81″ x 104″ Concern: I worry that 81″ x 104″ is lopsided.
– 8×8 and a 4″ border = a neat 100″ x 100″ Concern: I worry that this is too big!
– 7×7 with a 6″ border = 92″ x 92″ Concern: I have an irrational dislike of odd numbers.

 

I laid the blocks I already have finished and trimmed out on my kitchen floor (after moving the kitchen table out of the way). This is what I had to do to get a picture of the whole thing:

That’s an 8 foot ladder. But from the top of it, I got this picture:

And after moving some squares around a little bit, I got this one:

I tested the layout in black and white, and I think it’s almost right:

This quilt is going to be a gift, and I want it to be something the recipients can really use, not something that’s just not quite right. So I have to make up my mind: 6×8? 7×7? Or 8×8? Let me know what you think — please!

I have the fabric all cut for the other blocks, so the time or work involved in making the next blocks is absolutely not a concern: I want this to be as good a gift as it can be, not something I think about later and wonder “what if?”

One (unexpected!) finished project

We recycle plastic bags, and the plastic bag full of plastic bags hanging on a door handle have been getting on my nerves. So I did a little digging online, checked a couple of tutorials for ideas, and made a plastic-bag holding tube!

I started off with a fat quarter, and backed it with fusible fleece. I picked fleece because I wanted a little extra sturdiness to the bag, and the roughness of the fleece on the inside of the tube should help keep the bags in place better than a smoother interfacing.

I cut off three inches from the long side of the fat quarter, to make a narrower tube. I sewed that 3″ strip into a tube (wrong-sides out) and turned it right-side-out to use as a loop for hanging the bag. Next time I do this, I’m cutting the 3″ strip off first, and then fusing on the fleece. Turning a 1 1/2″ tube that’s backed with fusible fleece inside-out was really exasperating.

Then I dug into my scrap box, cut two pieces of black fabric 2″ x 15″ and made them into 3/4″ draw-string tubes at the top and bottom of the soon-to-be tube.

Two pieces of elastic later, (8″ on the bottom, for a small opening, 12″ on the top, to make putting bags in easier) I sewed the whole thing up the side, and flipped it right-side out, and ta-da!

Now it lives in the coat closet, where it hangs very nicely on one side and is up high enough that we can all reach it easily, and the best part? It doesn’t clutter up the hallway anymore.

Another verse, same as the first

I haven’t been making much progress lately — I’ve done eight more blocks for my scrappy trip quilt, for a total of 38 blocks finished, and I made up two more blocks for the INSPIRE circle of do. good stitches, because my first two got lost in the post.

What are you all working on?

Fabric Friday

On Wednesday I mentioned that The City Quilter was having a 20% off sale (psst: it’s still on today). And yesterday was also Visit Your Quilt Shop Day, which a lot of people blogged about.

Between the two of those, well, I practically felt an obligation to go see what they had. I’m sure you know what that’s like.

I have to admit, I am trying not to buy anything unless something leaves my stash, because I am simply flat out of space for fabric, but yesterday I made an exception. (For better or worse, I’m good at those.) But I could always count it as part of the replacement for the fabrics I pulled from stash for my scrappy trip quilt, if I really need to rationalize it.

I did go in with restrictions in mind: blenders and grays. I was hoping to pick up some Simply Color sprigs in graphite, but couldn’t find it. Instead I picked up a number of different grays (and one text print) in one-yard cuts:

And I picked up some half-yard cuts of Flea Market Fancy, Madrona Road and the City Quilter’s subway map print in white:

I’m planning to use the madrona road prints for a pincushion, with a solid neutral as the third color. I have no idea what I’ll do with the others, but my stash was low on grays, and I love the Flea Market Fancy flower dot print so much that I’m sure it will get used up quickly.