7 More Makes 29

 

After twenty-nine days my 100 Days Project is already winding up (haha) to be pretty large. 

I don't have this very tightly rolled up so it's spreading. This is going to be more than three times bigger once I'm done with all one hundred days. I probably need to re-wind it a bit tighter.

Still my favorite bit of piecing.

It's fun to see how it looks when the most recent pieced sections are unfurled. Almost like a colorful string of pennants.

Seeing the piecing in 9" daily sections is quite different than looking at the whole thing as one piece.

Continuing to sprinkle in little bits of the intense yellow hand-dye as I go.

The new fabrics from recent shopping have now made an appearance.

Adding in some scraps from the Bohemian Wife quilt block making. Goes well with the hand-dyes.

The hand-dyes and batiks work well with the more modern prints.

The blue Space Dye woven cotton by Figo is giving some interesting texture.

Some fairly successful y-piecing that took a little fiddling around. I like the look of it though.

Still Swamped

In order to ignore the excessive rain we're getting(5" in 24 hours), I cut out some extra squares and rectangles of the batiks I'd pulled to make myself some more Swamp Blocks. Then the studio assistant arrived to make sure I was putting them together correctly.

Catus-Interruptus created an emergency stop. Sure enough, I had one of the pieces turned the wrong way around. He's occasionally helpful.

After some discussion he finally allowed me some space. 

I've received a couple more Quilt Mavs blocks, and a there's a few more remaining. With these additional blocks it'll make for a nice throw of some sort. Maybe if I get crazy with a giant border, a small bed sized quilt.

Swamped Out

 I powered through and got all the cutting done and then the piecing was pretty much a breeze.

This is a very easy block to make. Although I managed to mess it up no less than two times, requiring a little un-sewing. 

I laid all of them out at once to make sure there weren't too many fabric repeats happening in a particular block.

Here are the eight blocks that I made. Seven to send out and one to keep for myself.

And here are my eight blocks plus the three I've already received from two Quilt Mavs. I love how the block just absolutely disappears when you place them together.

Swamp Time

 

One of the online quilt groups I belong to, Quilt Mavericks, occasionally does block swaps. We actually call them Swamps instead of Swaps. I believe that's because of a long-ago typo that I've forgotten the details of. One of those inside joke kind of things. Anyways...We've done this particular block a couple of times, but we're doing another round using mostly batiks.  I've already received these three blocks and I need to make my own and get them mailed out.

Time to get to cutting, I forgot how much I love cutting out batiks. This fabric is so much easier to rotary cut.

I still have quite a collection of batiks to choose from. They're mostly from the color of the month batik club from eQuilter I belonged to many years ago. Equilter is still running this club, I recommend joining for a while if you're interested in batiks. The selection was always so interesting, a good mixture of darks to lights which I always struggle with choosing not just all mediums.

I used a lot of them making the Solstice Quilt, but there are still plenty of them to choose from.

A Whole Raft of Masks

My family put in their orders for masks, and I dug through my batik stash to find the ones that would work the best. Two pieces of fabric, one inside, one outside, with a big contrast so you can easily tell which is which.

 Here they are before adding the ties to the masks.

 Ack, so that was a whole lot of fiddly sewing. The instructions are clear, but there are a lot of steps. But these turn out really well, very sturdy. But hey, I'm done and these are all in the wash right now and ready to send out tomorrow. (in a lingerie bag so the ties don't get snarled up)

Hope your mask-making is going well!

One Batik Block

A friend in an online quilt group I've belonged to for a Very Long time asked for a block. As a group we used to do block swaps way back when and she hadn't gotten quite enough of one to actually make a quilt. Batiks was the only requirement.

It's a very easy block, just rectangles and squares, and makes for a great scrappy quilt.

 I hope she likes all the new blocks that are coming her way.

Finished Jacket

 I finished the sweatshirt jacket I began at the CQFA retreat. My aunt requested ocean colors, so I did my best.

 Here's a close-up of the fabrics and the stitching and the messy raw edges.

Here's the back of the jacket. I hope it fits her and she likes the fabric choices.

Sweatshirt Update

Update on the sweatshirt jacket I'm making for my aunt, the first layer of patches have all been stitched down in one direction. Next is a whole lot of stitching in the opposite direction, and then the second layer of patches.It's a lot of bobbin's worth of thread! But the hardest part of the work is done, and the sharpest part, it's virtually impossible to stitch one of these without getting pin-pricked. Never say I don't bleed for my art....

Stacks and Stacks

Spent a long time cutting out all the rectangles and squares for the sweatshirt jacket I'm working on for my aunt. The pattern calls for 8 FQ's but I used a few more than that and just adjusted. And yes there will likely be left-overs. Maybe I can make her a matching bag or something with them?

It's going to be one of the projects I work on at the CQFA retreat at Asilomar in 8 days (count down has begun). It takes some table space when you lay it out and pin it so that'll be good.

I'm way too pleased with myself for A) Planning Ahead For Once and B) Choosing Good Fabrics
I think the selection of blues along with other colors will make for a lovely jacket once it's done.

Another Jacket

I'm starting in on making a new sweatshirt jacket. This time it's for my aunt, who has been coveting the one I made my mom a few years ago:

My aunt asked for mostly blues, royal and midnight blues. So she's going to be getting a whole lot of those blues. I actually went and bought these FQ's, since I used so much of the selection of my stash of blue batiks on the solstice quilt. The first step is cutting it all up into squares and rectangles of various sizes. As in the previous three sweatshirt jackets, I'm using the Gail Abeloe pattern "I Can't Believe It's A Sweatshirt" pattern from Back Porch Press.