8 to Catch Up

 
The eight cards I have to do blocks for the Pantone Project are a really lovely palette aren't they? Sometimes it just works out that way. 

I got five of the blocks done today, leaving three more to do, but at least the fabric is already picked out.

For the Card Trick block (the pinky coral one) I flipped the fabric over and used the back. I think it looks okay and provides a little color contrast instead of using the background white fabric.

I'm pretty pleased with these ones, I really like how that yellow Grunge fabric looks. 

Two Big Blocks

 

I finished off sewing together the two big donation blocks (16" I think) for the BAM community giving quilt. Meeting is this Saturday and I wanted to turn them in.

It's amazing how much it shrinks up when you've sewn together 8 seams, 1/4" at a time really adds up.

I like how the two blocks look together, it will be interesting to see how the pattern of the whole quilt.

The 9x9 block, much less successful visually than the other one. The grey squares don't stand out enough to my eye. I hope I wasn't supposed to arrange the completely random fabrics in a certain way. There weren't instructions about that, so I just went for an even distribution of the repeated fabrics. But maybe overall it'll work.

I like the modern feel of this one a lot more.

I liked the way this corner looked on the wrong side when I was pressing the seams open.

There's some oddness going on with this white fabric, some strange variations in the weave or something. Also, as I was sewing the bigger pieces I was noticing that the edges were rolling up slightly and there was a huge amount of give in all directions when stretched. I'm pretty sure it's a mostly cotton along with some lycra. Aiyiyi, whhyyyyy? It turned out mostly square so it worked out on this block, but sheesh alive. I know we're working with donated fabrics and all, but this should have had a warning. I'm glad I'm not sewing this quilt top together or quilting it, no thank you very much. I'll leave that to others who are better equipped to handle that specific sort of quilting.

In-Betweens

 

Getting ready to do some sewing on the Temperature Quilt,but first I have to redo the layout for the July column. It's been up on the design wall a bit too long and some pieces got knocked down. It doesn't really matter, but I want to put the "right" colors back in the "right" place.To prepare for sewing all those pieces together,  I got out the baggie of the ingredients for two big blocks to sew for a BAM Community Giving quilt. 

Whew, a 36 square quilt block! I laid both of the blocks out and pinned pairs of pieces together to use as leaders and enders in between the Temperature Quilt pieces.All pinned together and ready to go in a stack.

It really sped things up and kept me going.

I'm loving this colorful combination in mid-July.

And now July is all done except for the last black background shapes and I'm one month closer to finishing off 2023's Temperature Quilt.

Village Bound

Back into the pre-made binding bag, time to get the Village/Japanese Houses quilt bound.

There she is, my Binding Baby is out and about again after spending all that time in the Bag O' Binding.

It went on very easily, mostly because I decided not to worry about exactly matching up the transition from blue to grey with the background.

I stopped to take pictures, reminding myself about why I made this quilt in the first place--All These Great Japanese Fabrics.

So many of these fabrics really make me smile.

Of course I had some "help" from my studio assistant

Look! She's empty once again, hurrah.

I got so excited about this quilt being bound and so close to completion that I pinned it up on the design wall. From here it looks done.

But closer up, I think the houses need some quilting.

Especially the ones that are lined up right next to each other. So, I can't count this as a finish quite yet and I have to work out what to do. I could stitch around the door and window. Or along the bottom of each roof, or both I guess. Maybe I'll do something with an embroidery stitch, like one of those circles to make a "door-knob" on the door.

Village Sky Quilted

 

I've now finished all the free motion background quilting on the Village quilt (aka Japanese Houses). Woohoo! The whole sky is now filled with cloudy foggy swirls.

There's no quilting in the houses at all, so I'm going to have to look at it overall to see if those spaces are too big to be unanchored. But now I can attach the binding while I decide.

Un-nested

 

I found out about Project Quilting last year, even though it's been going for quite a while. It's inspired by Project Runway with short term challenges, just like the show. But we don't have to all come to NYC, live in an apartment and shop at Mood Fabrics. We get to stay home and create. This is the first time I'm participated and I was inspired by the first challenge: Bird House or Nest. 

I sketched this out in Procreate on my iPad. This deconstructed nest is somewhat loosely based on the mess that the blue jays leave on our patio every year. They don't make an actual nest there, they just store their materials, ie lots and lots of sticks in a big untidy heap.

I printed it out on some Dharma Trading cotton (which they no longer carry, only no-steam silk now) and sandwiched it. I used a pressing sheet just in case of ink transfer.

As you can see my printer is having a bit of a hard time, even though the paper backed fabric worked perfectly. The colors didn't come through (reminder to add more ink), there are black blotches on the leading edge and those allover pink lines, oy! It looks a bit like an instagram filter has been put over the original image.

I made it work though (just like on Project Runway, haha) and used the pink lines as quilting lines.

I like that all of a sudden I'm right back to Journal Quilt size (8.5 x 11"). 

Some closeups of the stitching. I used one of the embroidery stitches that almost looks like a Richter scale reading in a few places on the edge. 

I switched over from walking foot quilting to free motion and tried to go over my awful handwriting. It made it less clear, which is what I wanted, to make it a bit more abstracted and non-communicative.

My signature was clear though, probably because I wasn't trying to stitch over printed out handwriting.

I quite like it, even with the printing issues. Now to go post mine and check out what other people have already come up with.

Finished Edges

 

As seen on a previous post, this embroidered fabric used as a background. was something I picked up off of the freebie fabric table at the BAM Sew Day.

I turned under and stitched the selvedge edges twice.

Then I did the same on the cut edges. It was a bit harder as the embroidery is kind of thick and dimensional in spots.

And voila´, all four sides are done and nice and flat. I really love the swoopy design along the bottom edges. I thought about fringing the plain fabric, but decided that it looked better with a simple finish like this. I have a table that this is going on and it didn't need a fussy edge.

It's a really lovely overall design, and I really love the 3-d effect of that black and white thread.

I'm going to get some of this black and white Wonderfil D-Twist and try it out myself.

Pantone Project Recent Receipts

I've been remiss in posting about the Pantone Project blocks that friend Jaye has been giving me over the last few months. Here's a picture of them all in a group. Fun fabric choices, huh? 

I just want to note here that we started this project way back in July 2022, which is somehow, just absolutely wild to me. My internal clock is really off or something. 

As I remember it, we intentionally didn't set an end date or anything, so it's not like we're behind schedule or anything. Something about not putting undue pressure on ourselves to finish-finish-finish. It is a little strange to have embarked on such a long-term project though. I think it's good thing to have a mix of projects with different time horizons.

I have to keep reminding myself that it's about the process, getting to learn how to make these particular blocks and to color match fabrics to a color on a card has been a great challenging experience. The color matching reminds me a lot of one of the acrylic painting exercises Jaye and I did in art class back in our college days at Cal. The exercise as I remember it was to choose a color image from a magazine, glue it on one part of a page and then mix our paints until we exactly matched the colors in the photo on the page. Very fun thing to learn, really gets the color wheel into your brain permanently.

Honestly one of the best parts is the frequent written communication by postcard. It's rather unique these days. I really enjoy jotting down thoughts and observations on a card, popping it in the mail and then getting one from friend Jaye. A lost art in the days of email and texting and so forth.

Now to get back to making some more blocks to catch myself back up!

Gift Bag-Case-Pouch

 One of the best presents I received this holiday was another awesome gift bag, well maybe I should call it a case instead? The pattern is called the Hackney Pouch, so I suppose it's a pouch. A pouch with a very handy handle on one end.

Friend Jaye gifted me one of her beautifully made Hackney bags. It's so gorgeous, and I was so pleased to see how well it matched some of my recently dyed fabric. She wrote a post about it on her blog here with more info about the pattern and construction.

The very slightly contrasting zipper is such a great color choice, it highlights the edge like a frame when you see the pouch top from this angle. 

I love that the purple couch fabric got used again for this one because it matches the great Mini-Maker case for the mini Oliso iron she gave me in 2020. 

Match-y match-y is definitely my jam sometimes.

I  really love the two interior labels, aren't they both great?

And the interior pocket is made of a clear sparkly glitter vinyl so I can see what I've stashed in there. It held a whole lot of great gifts inside, so this bag-case-pouch is both spacious and capacious. 

In my opinion friend Jaye is no longer practically a professional at this bag making thing, she's a full-on for-real professional at this point. Amazing what making bags for years does for your skills mastery isn't it?