Still no rain. Maybe today…
And I’ve spent the better part of the last two days reviewing my Medicare Advantage plan and comparing it to others that might be better for me. That switch will be made tomorrow morning at 8 am! Whew!
But, I’ve also had a lot of sewing time in the past week, which has been fun. Here’s my design wall right now:
These are blocks from Tara Faughnan’s online class where she gives us a block a month with which we can play and explore. The first was “Zipper,” and the second one Serpentine. You can certainly see that I have been playing,
When I started the class I pulled a large fabric palette from my stash, thinking that there might be a way to combine blocks into an improv quilt. And that may or may not happen. Here’s the palette–separated into warm and cool colors–and with attention to dark, medium, and light values:
I’ve already had to replace some of the fabrics with bigger pieces I’ve ordered online. LOL. That’s how that goes.
Maybe an improv quilt can happen. Maybe not. I am also playing with combining the classic 2-color big blocks with scrappy ones. And I made a few extra scrappy blocks to have better color placement choices. Each block has a warm and cool combo.
And, last night I cut out a 2-color lime green block, which means I’ll have to make another one–probably in Kona Thistle, the medium purple/lavender.
A new block will come December 1, and that should tell me if any kind of improv quilt is possible. If not, I’ll make Zipper a wall hanging and see what happens with Serpentine.
Meanwhile, “Red Positivity” is on the longarm.
This quilt is right at the edge of a length I can do on my Innova–which is 10 feet long. It’s right at 90 inches. And as it is going well, I’ll now confess that I sewed my finger on the longarm the first go-round with this quilt–something I have never done in 12+ years of having a longarm. I sewed right through the nail and out the other side on my left hand index finger. (No worries, it has completely healed now with no sign of any damage.)
I was struggling with a very bad wide-back fabric that must have been the end of a bolt. It was just wrenched out of all of my ability to make it lie true–and that effort took off about 20 inches of the length. (I ripped 1 inch on the top and bottom to get a straight-of-grain line, and by the far end 10 inches came off the top and the bottom.) And I had to shorten the side-to-side width to fit my frame. By now, the extra strip I was going to sew to the batting didn’t seem needed. BUT, by the time I basted down the sides, the batting was way too narrow, leaving me only about 3 inches on the right side near the bottom as the batting wasn’t straight either. By then I was tired and should have just…stopped. Instead, I sewed my finger and then stopped.
So, for a while, I was gun shy about putting this quilt on the longarm, even with a new backing and a new batting. But this week, I ironed everything and began again, having removed all the basting stitches from the first effort.
All is good now, and the quilt (knock on wood) is looking beautiful. Perhaps I’ll finish it today. I have the binding for it all cut and ready to go.
I’m nearing the end of hand-quilting Traverse, but will have a few more weeks of night-time sewing. I have the big “Bonanza” binding to sew down–followed by “Red Positivity” and the little unnamed quilt top of 1-inch squares, which will go on the longarm next. After these quilt bindings, I’ll start to hand quilt “Happy,” formerly known as “the quilt from hell.”
And I’m cutting into the 1020-1930s fabrics to make blocks for a quilt. The extra fabric to fill out colors is here, washed, and ready to go.
I now have fabric in orange, blue, red, and pink.
So, my quilty plate is quite full. As is usual.
Louisa Enright's Blog 