Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Midweek: it's a flimsy



The setting for the log cabin blocks (see the previous posts) continues to elude me. I have an idea but I need to let it simmer for a while longer.

Meanwhile I wanted to have some accomplishment so I assembled the black/white slab blocks.    They look more jumbly in the photo than in person . . . but now it has a name:  Jumble.

Five yards (by weight) in the "fabric used" column.   It's 54" x 69".

And, no, the shoebox of black/white strips and squares is not empty.

Linking up with Midweek Makers


Monday, November 25, 2019

Weekly update: the kitchen (still) and log cabins


The cabinets are in.  Counter tops this week  Electrical work this week.

We need to buy a dishwasher to replace the 10-year-old model which wasn't cleaning so well. The refrigerator is newer than that but because of the new location I can consider a bottom-freezer model.  (Any opinions?)

My husband caught a bug last week but seems to be over it. I came down with a cold Saturday evening -- I think the worst of it was Sunday night. We should be healthier by Thanksgiving Day. We've been invited to have dinner with friends.  I bought a turkey anyway (those pre-holiday prices are irresistible). Since the stove is out of commission I will cook it in the electric roaster.

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I made the rest of the black/white/bright slab blocks (see last week's post). I don't have a photo of those because the design wall has been taken over by the log cabins.  I made 120 and assembled them in 4's with skinny sashing (strips cut 1" that finish at 1/2", the same as the  logs).  I What's stuck in my head is using a very busy print between the blocks and for the borders -- think Kaffe Fassett.  The sample
in the photo is a wonderfully lively Free Spirit print and I have enough of it for the project.   But I will audition something lower-volume -- red, maybe? Or lime green?

I'd like to get both the slab blocks and the log cabins to the flimsy stage by Friday. That's when Bonnie will publish the first clue for the 2019 mystery.  I love the colorway -- aqua, blue, raspberry, green.

Have a great holiday! 

Linking up with
Oh Scrap!
Design Wall Monday
Monday Making









Monday, November 18, 2019

Weekly update: kitchen, OMG, stars, and SQUIRREL!

The kitchen and dining room walls are now "Gleeful." (The contrast wall at the end of the entry hall is "Lime Rickey," a shade darker.) The base cabinets are in place and the upper cabinets are waiting in the garage for the carpenters this week.

My November OMG was to make a bookshelf quilt for a former coworker who is retiring this month.  This is the 40th bookshelf quilt I've made since 2004, all using Christine Thresh's pattern (Winnowing.com)  (I have gotten my money's worth!)

I'm linking this post to the  OMG November finish .

I was pleased to get a place in the star swap that  Barb Vedder  is hosting. They're not due until mid-January but I forged ahead and made all 31 (with a couple of extras).









Earlier this month I made some black and white slab blocks. When I got to 24 I put them on the design wall.  I don't want to replicate last year's Modern Cabin.  I arranged them horizontally by accent color and realized that may be the setting -- six rows, six blocks, each row a different accent color. Since I took this photo I've made another green, another yellow, and four turquoise blocks. Orange and purple to come.

And the SQUIRREL?  It leaped across my quilting path, metaphorically speaking, when I leafed through a stack of patterns clipped from magazines.  The pattern uses 100 paper-pieced 5-1/2" (unfin.) blocks.  I didn't want to go to the effort of printing 100 paper foundations and I really didn't want to have to tear out all that paper. Instead I'm piecing the blocks conventionally. They have 2-1/2" centers (I have a shoebox of them) and 1" strips (cut from the 1-1/2", 2", and 2-1/2" strip bins, and some yardage).  The skinny strips are not hard to work with.  I make the blocks in batches and press and trim after each round.   I've made 57 blocks so far.  The random arrangement on the design wall puts me in mind of the lively designs by Kathy Doughty and Jen Kingwell .  I'm not sure where I'll go with these blocks but after all,  SQUIRRELS dash here and there.

Linking up with
Oh Scrap!
Monday Making
Design Wall Monday

Monday, November 11, 2019

Weekly update: the kitchen, BOM reveal, and a new flimsy

 Our house was built in 1972. When the original owners remodeled the kitchen in 1985 they moved the old cabinets  and sink to the basement.  The past couple of weeks that double-basin sink has come in very handy.  I can do meal prep in the bathrooms (his or mine) but those basins are not convenient for washing dishes.

Below, right, shows the Instant Pot and crockpot  on my 44-year-old card table. The microwave is set up in the garage.

The kitchen and dining room walls had been covered in acres and acres and acres of floral wallpaper since 1985. When it was stripped it revealed burnt orange.   That color certainly goes with those dark 70's cabinets!

The contractor says that the new cabinets will be installed this week.

I was lead hostess for the Zion Woman's Club meeting on Tuesday.  I mixed the cake in the bathroom and my next door neighbor let me use her oven to bake it. 

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The 14th Corporate Community Spelling Bee was Thursday.  I was on the library team. We came in 2nd (I misspelled "eremetic," a word I had never heard before).  I donated  Scrappy Cedar Trees to the raffle.  [It is gray and brown, not purple.] My friend and colleague Deb was the delighted winner.
In turn, I won a basket with Christmas decor (which I will donate to the AAUW holiday auction) and a basket with beauty supplies AND a gift certificate for a pedicure at my salon.







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On to quilting!

"Honey, Let's Go to Home Depot!" was Joan Cain's humorous presentation about hardware store items for the quilter -- from clips and clamps to magnetic parts bowls (great for pins).  She encourages us to save money on the tools and spend money on good fabric at the local quilt shop. 





The wonky house BOM was revealed.  It was fun to see everyone's fabric choices and colorways. (There was a cat in every window in one quilt; another was embellished with embroidery.)

Each of us who had a BOM quilt or a flimsy was eligible to win prizes.  My number was drawn second -- a $50 Home Depot gift certificate, a pattern, a book, and a fabric panel.

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In the studio:   after I played around with arrangements of half-square triangles(see last week's update) I went back to my original idea.  Here's the flimsy, 66 x 75.  Doesn't it sparkle?

The Monday link ups:
Monday Making
Oh Scrap!
Design Wall Monday

P.S.  We woke up to this this morning.











Monday, November 4, 2019

Weekly update: auditioning HST settings and aimless piecing

I made 550 black-and-something HSTs (3-1/2" unfinished). The plan was to set them in 25 rows of 22.

The design wall wasn't large enough to hold all of them.

The row-by-row setting is sparkly but I wondered what alternate designs might be.

Spectacular Scraps by Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe is one of my favorite quilt design books. They use the triangle permutations described by French mathematician Dominique Douat -- 256 ways to arrange 8 triangles (or, for quilters:  4 half-square triangles).
I've come up with these so far.  Right now I'm leaning toward the pinwheel (#3, top row) and the big round-upon-round (top right). Or the streak of lightning (bottom #3).  Because the not-black triangles vary from very light to quite dark I think I need a design that emphasizes where the blacks come together.

I will probably consider the options until I am tired of my indecision or I have to put something else on the design wall.

I pulled out the box of black/white/gray scraps. So far I've made some slab blocks, some Ohio Stars, and some 16-patches. It's nice to have some aimless piecing for a change.

Monday linkups:
Oh Scrap!
Design Wall Monday
Monday Making



Friday, November 1, 2019

The stash report and November goals




Roses on Sunday. 


Roses on Thursday, the snowiest Halloween in Chicagoland history.

(We did not have trick or treaters.)


Surely the rabbit, rabbits are hunkered down today. The temperature will go above 40 so all the snow will become a sloppy mess.

(Here is the explanation of the "rabbit, rabbit" good luck legend.)

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On the first day of  our October vacation we stopped in a small town in northwest Indiana.  There was a quilt shop so naturally I went in. They had a clearance section ($3/yd) so I indulged a little -- but just a little, since it was the first day.  It turned out that those bargains were the major souvenir purchase.   With that, here's the October stash report:

Fabric IN, October:  11-5/8 yards, $28.00 ($2.39/yard)
Fabric OUT, October:  47-1/4 yards

Fabric IN, January-October: 500-5/8 yards, $1413, average $2.82/yard
Fabric OUT, January-October: 451-5/8 yards
Net increase:  49 yards

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I thought that the final ten tote bags for the Nepal school project would be my November OMG, but I made them all this week.  (The photo shows the ten for October and the final ten.)

So my OMG is more modest:  a small bookshelf quilt for a former library coworker who is retiring this month.

I'm linking up to OMG at Elm Street Quilts where you can see what other quiltmakers are planning.