Free P.O.T.S.

 

You just never know what's going to be on the Free Table at the Bay Area Modern Quilting meetings and Sew Days. This time it was this kind of large, two sided opening thread organizer box. I think this will be a much better solution to corralling all the embroidery threads I've accumulated instead of digging around in a bag for the right one. It won't be one that I carry around with me for a project on the go. And, Yes it's yet another P.O.T.S. (Plastic Organizer ThingieS) but one that I'll hopefully actually use. If not I'll put it back out on the Free Table.

I like the idea of the two-sided doors too. I'll have to fill it up and show how it looks.  It seems like it will hold a lot of different size/shapes of spools which is a good feature. 

Also seen above another of my favorite batting Hobbs 80/20 fusible that I just bought to replace the last one I used earlier this year for both my SAT 25 piece, Our Mistake and Sky Structure, made for the Sister Artists auction.

Ready To Quilt

Running Out of Rain Cloud is all ready to quilt.

I used this fun print for the backing (not at all pieced for once!) because it actually kind of goes with the solid colors used. I used fusible Hobbs 80/20 batting as per usual for non-bed-sized quilts. Now to figure out how to quilt this thing. All I know is I'm starting out with hot pink thread...
 

Hunt For Gray

I'm on the hunt for the right gray to finish off the sashing for my City Sampler. This was the closest Kona gray (Haze 94580) that they had at my LQS, Hart's Fabric. I thought it would be worthwhile to try it out in my workroom and see if it was close enough. Nope. Much too light.

I used a Fabric marker to write the solid info on the selvedge before washing it. Also one FQ ended up coming home from Harts. I also received my order of another fusible batting roll and a new roll of Scrap Tape, just in time to finish off my 100 Days.

I'm glad I kept the fabric marker in the package so that I could find my highlighted note.

The fabric marker did fade a slight bit, but not much. So washing didn't help matters as far as matching up grays. I'll take another swing at finding the right gray at Golden State next week. Luckily I have lots of other projects to work on. But I'm so close to getting the top assembled.

First Last New Fabric

 

The last fabric purchased in 2023 arrived in the first week of 2024. I'm just going ahead and leaving it in the 2023 category so I can start with zero on my database for the new year. I was running low on Hobbs 80/20 fusible batting, so I ordered the maximum quantity of two from Hancock's of Paducah (they always have a good price) and needed something else to get to free shipping. Thus the fabric purchase. But the delivery time is almost always a bit, shall we say...delayed.

I had seen these beautiful Tilda Bloomsville fabrics last year and refrained from buying them several times.

Finally my resolve wore out and I snapped these up. 

The color combinations are great and I really love the flowers and illustrations taken from/inpsired by vintage Chinese vases and porcelain.

The selvedges really tell the color story, don't they?

Sandwich Workout.

 

Two more quilts are now joining the To-Be-Quilted-Queue, Trinket and Made It Work. My first step is re-ironing the top and the back that have been sitting around waiting to be sandwiched. Then I pin the back up on my design wall, smoothing out all the wrinkles (hopefully).

Then I place the quilt top onto the fusible batting and cut it out to size with some extra batting all around. I use Hobbs 80/20 fusible as it has the fusible on both sides of the batting unlike some others out there. I really dislike using pins to baste so I just go with what works for me.

Then the quilt top and batting are pinned up and smoothed out. Then I get some weight lifting in as I iron it on the wall.

Once it's all mainly fused up, I take it off the design wall and iron the front and back smoothing out any remaining wrinkles. So to be honest, all of that is a whole lot of ironing.

Then I put them in the To-Be-Quilted-Queue pile and think about the quilting designs and threads I'll be using. Whew! It's a workout for sure.

Fuse On

 

Amazing the difference a small border makes isn't it? To my eye, the border completes the total image in this case and ties together the dark blue pieces in each of the four big blocks. Using a thin dark blue binding around the edge would not have been enough visual weight to have the same effect.

Pieced together some fusible batting to use for this one. Reminder to self, check for threads under the off-white parts of the quilt top before fusing the batting on.

And since this quilt is 51"wide, I had to piece some backing fabric together as well. Now it's all fuse-basted and ready to quilt

Fusible Shop

More fabric shopping happened, but I had kind of forgotten until the package showed up and surprised me. It had been nearly 3 weeks since I ordered. If you need something very fast, don't order from Missouri Star Quilting. They are not super fast on shipping, but they have a great selection. They did have something I saw in a lecture and wanted to try out. So these super on-sale fabrics landed in my shopping cart, free shipping at a certain $ point really works on me psychologically. 

A Tula Pink, a Kaffe Fasset, and two mum prints that I liked the colors of. Stacking them up together, it looks an intentional fabric pull for a quilt...hmmm. Usually my fabric choices in online shopping are rather random.

I also ordered another type of fusible batting that I've never tried, Quilter's Dream 80/20. And Missouri Star also carries American Made solids which I really like. One is just black, and the other is PFP white, prepared for printing. Since I'm doing this printing/quilting quilt I thought it would be worth a try.

This cute little canister is the reason for the whole order. It's sprinkle-able fusible powder, Free Fuse from Quilters Select. In one of the quickie lectures in the Global Quilt Connection sampler, I was really intrigued by the fabric fusing technique presented by Julia McLeod.

Now that I've been sewing more with solids I've encountered an annoying issue. Solids don't have the usual ID on the selvedge that prints have, so it's hard to tell who is who and which is which. Sometimes I'd remember and pin a little piece of paper with the info, but invariably those fall off.  So, I used my alphabet stitches and stitched it out right onto the selvedge. My plan is to cut from the other end first and once I get to the stitched area, I'll trim the label off, and baste it to the remainder pieces.

Steamy Fresh

Got the backing together for the Faux Goose Chase and spent a steamy half hour with the iron and fusible batting.

 The fusible batting really works well, I love not having to remove pins as I quilt. Now I'm ready to start in on getting the quilting done. I think I'll keep the quilting design pretty simple as this is such a wild n' crazy quilt top to begin with.