Full of Soup

In my last post, I posted a pic of the Scrappy Star pattern I’m planning to make. The quilt is made up of 10 smaller stars, and one large central star. I used the bundles of solids I bought in Lancaster as my starting point, and then I started pulling out fabrics from my stash to build the ten stars.

I started ironing and laying out the fabrics to cut them, but then I chickened out! I’ve only ever cut at a 90 degree angle, and cutting at the 45 is intimidating. As I’m writing this out, however, I’m feeling bolder. How different could it be? I’m still cutting straight lines! We’ll see.

There are so many wonderful fabric shops in Lancaster! We stayed in the town of Bird in Hand, just a few miles from Intercourse, and both towns had so many great shops.

A few of my favorites are The Log Cabin, The Old Country Store, Zooks Fabrics, and Burkholders.

I went to Lancaster with my Pinwheel project ready to go, so when I went shopping, I was keeping an eye towards my next project. This pattern from The Log Cabin absolutely blew me away.

I have been dying to do a star quilt since I went to the Super Star exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum. This one seems a bit ambitious, but the instructions are very clear and I am excited to start. I also bought a few fabrics that I just thought were beautiful:

I bought enough yardage of the pink flowers fabric to make a skirt. Now I’m on the lookout for a pattern!

The Country Store was such a wonderful shop with a great collection. I bought two bundles of solid fat quarters. I noticed there are a lot of solids and tiny prints in the Star Pattern, so I’m using these as a base to pull all my other prints together for that project.

I also found the backing fabric for my Bounce quilt. It’s an electric blue that I absolutely love. I have to start pinning all the layers together soon!

I also found this chicken pin cushion. She is filled with walnut husks and she sharpens your pins as you use her.

As we were driving home, we stopped at Burkholders. It is about 45 minutes away from Bird in Hand, but we had heard it was worth stopping by on the way out of town. The shop is plopped in the middle of miles and miles of farm land. We weren’t sure what to expect.

This place was room after room with rows and rows of fabric. It was insane! I had already purchased all the fabric I planned to purchase, but I bought a few packages of batting.

As we were checking out, the man behind the register told my mom and me to each take 10 rolls of fabric from a bin near the register.

Indy LOVED my choices.

I spent the past week in the town of Bird in Hand, PA with my mom and her quilting group.

I learned SO much and had a really wonderful time. I feel like I’ve been sucked into a bit of a quilting vortex. I barely communicated with the outside world for six days.

Just lots of these guys everywhere.

There’s my mom cruising.

We sat across from each other. My pinwheels and I are on the right. You can see my mom and I have different organizational “styles.” To be fair, I was using her machine because I forgot parts of my machine at home, so my organization style is definitely flawed.

Many of the women worked on this project. The picture doesn’t do it justice because the fabrics have shiny gold in them and the projects were coming out lovely. It was a really manageable project to complete in six days.

My mom worked on this log cabin quilt. She bought these fabrics when we went to Lancaster three years ago, so she was happy to finally piece them into a project. The picture, again, doesn’t capture the shiny gold in the fabrics which give this project a very rich texture. She left the top of the quilt in two separate parts so they would be easier to hand quilt. She’ll put it together once the quilting is finished because she is a wizard. I didn’t get  a picture of the other quilt she was working on which is quite sick. She brought it to the store to search for a border and the Amish ladies were gathering around with praise. Rain check on that pic.

I finished my pinwheel top!

Most days, my mom and I were the first ones in the sewing room and the last ones out. She was with me after everyone packed up their machines and left helping me mark the rows and iron.  She cheered me on as I sewed the final rows together.

The cows were surprised to see me on their fence.

As I was pulling the project together, I started freaking out about the colors. I really didn’t see how it would all go together.

It was a major case of cold feet. I worried I worked all week on something I wouldn’t like. (Wouldn’t be the first time…)

But in the end, I’m really happy with how it came out.

And by the “end” I mean, I still have to add borders around the edges, pick a fabric for the back, and quilt the whole thing. I have a lot more to say about Lancaster, so stay tuned!

I’ve been working really hard on my little Kenmore the past few weeks when it suddenly started stitching like this:

Which looks fine, except I heard a terrible clunkedy clunk sound while I was stitching and when I turned the fabric over, I found this:

I pulled it apart and cleaned it.

Then I asked Anthony to look at it and pull it apart and clean it.

Then I asked my brother, Michael, to pull it apart and clean it. We found a lot of this:

However, removing “this” did not mean the machine would start working again. I found a local repairman to tune it up, but it meant spending a few days without my machine. I dusted off my Singer, and started thinking about a project I’ve been putting off for some time that would require the Singer’s strong, straight stitch.

Pants!

These are Anthony’s old pants, which I’ve been collecting and keeping under my sewing table for months.

They are too damaged to give away, but I love the colors and the softness of the broken in khaki.

In my defense, that wasn’t a legitimate attempt at a repair job. We were just messing around with the Singer to see how tough it is.

I cut the pants into pants into “square,” ahem, panels.

Then I laid the “shape cut” over it.

And cut strips in 1″, 2″, and 3″ sections.

After I decided on a pattern, fabrics, and the technique for my next quilt, I was ready to start ironing. And ironing and ironing.

The quilt is made up of two sizes of pinwheels, so after the ironing, I cut a set of 3 & 7/8″ and a set of 6 & 7/8″. There are hundreds of pinwheels so it was a few days of cutting, and I am careful not to have any of that work go to waste so I keep everything very flat and organized.

I keep my things in a shoe box. The larger the foot, the better.

Keeping everything in one place makes it easier to start and stop my projects without worrying about my cats getting into everything. They fit snugly, but they aren’t squished.

After I remove my leftover fabrics, I’m left with my two sizes of squares.

The green fabric on the right is all the same fabric and it will make up a background for pinwheels made out of the blue and grey fabrics on the left.

Because I will use one green piece and one blue piece for each pinwheel, I only had to mark the greens. (Don’t make me do all the work, see previously linked technique)

The larger pinwheels won’t have a background color, but two competing colors. I only had to mark half of them, but I obsessively made sure an equal number of each fabric is marked.

So now she’s all cut out and marked. Time to start sewing!

I bought some new toys at the quilt show.

I was recently cutting out a quilt with stacks of different fabrics and wishing I had one of these boards. I would line the fabrics up by the top fold, then make a cut down the right side of the fabric 90 degrees to the top. I would then have to pick up all the fabric, flip it over so that I could make a cut three inches to the right of that straight edge. With this board, I can keep everything as I originally lined it up, and just spin the board around so the fabric all stays in place. A couple great things about this model is that the mat isn’t attached to the board, so you can just buy a new mat once it gets all cut up instead of buying the whole thing again. Also, as soon as you put pressure on the board, it has a lock so it can’t spin. I was worried about it spinning while I was trying to cut, but it’s not possible. I wanted to purchase this board at the last show I went to, but it was sold out. This time, I made sure to hit up the vendors first.

I saw kits similar to these online just before Christmas time for $45! I think they would make great little gifts for friends or just nice storage for my quilting things, but I was not about to pay $45. This pattern was $8

I also purchased 3 clasps for about $5 each. So pretty!

I love the newer army camo print and I was wondering how I could get my hands on some. I was so happy to score this! I’m not sure what it’ll become.

I went to the Quilt Fest of New Jersey on Saturday and FORGOT my camera. I took some great shots last year, so I was really disappointed when I walked into the show and had that forehead-smacking moment. I had my phone which has a pretty terrible camera. HYPE.

Trike Quilt! This buddy was two sided. Did I take a pic of the other side? Nope.

That tree is looking pretty mean.

This quilt was called, “Ten Year Odyssey” because the woman who created it made it during her commute back and forth from New Jersey to New York City over ten years. I’m so inspired.

This quilt was my favorite. It looks so simple, but there’s stars inside of stars inside of stars. The points are perfect. The colors are lovely.

Maybe my next quilt will be stars…

The back.

The front. This quilt was enormous and the photo doesn’t do justice to those circles at the top. They were around the whole border of the quilt and gave it a really dreamy effect.

Cats and hearts and houses. I have a kindred spirit out there.

I love samplers.

This quilt looked so different from every angle

Right? The quilting was beautiful, but you had to be there. Reminded me of this guy.

Here was a show stopper!!

A gorgeous, accurate replica of the Dear Jane Quilt. My mom was feeling inspired to start one. Then we laughed.

Crazy Quilts are made up of silks and velvet fabrics and the stitches are much more ornamental. If you are too lazy to click on the link, at least know that it was popular in the 1880’s.

Most “Crazy Quilts” do not use traditional patchwork blocks and I’ve never seen one like this. I love the nod to both styles. Again, this is another one for me to bookmark. I’ve fallen into some beautiful fabrics and this would be the perfect venue, but that’s a story for another post.

The dolls!

Nice Frock!

Teeny, tiny stitching!

This quilt was designed to commemorate the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The red circles are falling off the Japanese flag and pictures of the disaster were incorporated. It reminded me of this powerful quilt tribute to 9/11 I saw at the Brooklyn Quilter’s Guild Show.

Details..

Zoomed Out.

There it is!

Lemon Grass.

I thought the use of color and greys in this quilt was so interesting.

But it was her quilting that stole the show.

This is a blurry detail on a big, beautiful quilt. You can see each patch is a separate hexagon cut from a different fabric.

To give you an idea of how tiny the hexagons are, I put my hand up. They were about the size of a nickel!

The back was all pieced too.

Holy Bananas.

JACK!

Best in Show! I don’t know how anyone could decide that. My mom thought the hexagon lady was robbed.

Hello, ladies.

There was a whole corner of the show devoted to quilts that were designed to look like specific tile floors. I really liked that idea.

This quilt is one of the ones that looks so different in a photo. I think seeing it through the “lens” actually helped me see how cool it is. The background fabric is made from a photograph, and the circles on top use different fabrics for a more colorful interpretation of the fabrics. I love the Warhol-style flowers and the striped fence in the back.

Great use of color.

There was a vendor at the show selling antique lace doilies and I was wondering how a quilter could use them. Here is a fabulous example. This quilt was breathtaking.

It was a great show, and I think the quilts were a little more diverse than they were last year. My mom and I spent six hours walking around and spending dinero. I am getting SO excited about working on my pinwheels.

The pattern I’m using for my pinwheel quilt calls for cutting triangles and then sewing them together to form the pinwheels, but I am going to use a tool called the Quick Cutter for a short cut. I was a little confused about how big I should cut the blocks so that I would come out with the right finished sizes when I used the tool

I found the instructions online and they said to add 7/8″ to the final block size I want.

I was a little skeptical if this would work so I tested it out on some scrap fabrics. I cut these blocks 3 & 7/8″.

I laid the blocks on top of each other with the colorful sides (right sides) facing each other and the backs of the fabric facing outside. The blue ruler is the Quick Quarter.

I used a fabric pencil to draw lines through the center of the ruler and on the left and right side of it.

I sewed the outside two lines with my machine.

Then I used my rotary cutter to slice down the center line.

Then I clipped the edges of the triangles with a scissor. This is so when I press it open, the corners of the square won’t be bulky.

Press!

Then sew them together for 1/2 of a pinwheel! These squares measured 3 & 1/2″, which means when I add the other blocks, they will be finished at 3″ square. Perfecto.

Time to start on the real stuff!

I have been pulling together ideas for a pinwheel quilt for the past couple months.

I really love this one, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pull off the blank space between the pinwheels.

The intricate quilting is showcased so well in the solid fabric. That type of quilting would take me twelve long years, so I was thinking about other ways I could lay out pinwheels “on-point” (diagonally, rather than square), without having a blank square.

This quilt breaks up the solid square by splitting them into stripes which I thought had a really interesting effect.

This quilt is square, but I liked the idea of using two different block patterns in one quilt. The criss-cross block, in particular, forms almost a basket weave around the stars. This kind of turned me on to my final idea: a criss-cross sashing between the diagonal blocks.

I started sketching out my own pattern, but then I came across this one in Kaffe Fassett’s book, Country Garden Quilts. The pattern is available for free here.

I love the idea of tons of tiny pinwheels framing the larger ones. I gathered a pretty extensive collection of blues and grays that I wanted to cut up for the smaller pinwheels (aka the sashing), but I wasn’t sure what color to choose for the background, solid fabric in the sashing. I headed to City Quilter!

I auditioned maybe twenty fabrics and four different women who worked there all walked up and down the shop pulling options to help me. I felt like I was buying a wedding dress. In the end, I went with this limey-green.

One of the women suggested that I decide on a fabric for the larger pinwheels and pull out an element of the large pinwheels to use for the background fabric.

Genius, but I was hesitant because that is a lot of things to choose in one day! I knew the larger pinwheels would have to be a somewhat different color scheme so the sashing pinwheels will pop, but I didn’t want them to clash and I wasn’t quite sure how to do it.

Hello, my beauties. I had originally wanted a burnt orange or brown to be the opposite color for my blue/grey sashing pinwheels, but I wasn’t able to find exactly the right shade. I loved the way the middle print, above, looked with the fabrics and then decided that maybe the brown/orange scheme was better for the large pinwheels.

When a woman helping me (thanks, Andrea!) picked that second fabric from the left, we had our first hints of a green element! I chose a punchier tone of green for the smaller pinwheels that I think will really pull this whole thing together. I’m really excited about these beautiful fabrics, but a little nervous about how they will all fit together. I am trying to remind myself that I remained nervous throughout the entire piecing of my last quilt, but I am super happy with how that top came out, so let’s see!

I may have woken up extra early before work this morning just to pull them all out, lay them out, and refold them again.

When I was a kid, I made simple friendship bracelets by braiding three strands of floss. I always envied the girls with thicker, more colorful bracelets and I remember trying to learn how to make them, but never meeting anyone with the patience to really teach me. I forgot about them until I saw this post about friendship bracelets on the Purl Bee. The link contains great photos and step-by-step instructions. Man, I wish I had the internet when I was coming up!

As usual, I think I messed up every single step possible.

Mistake 1.

I went to City Quilter to buy a few colors of embroidery floss and only saw these beautiful hand-dyed colors.

They are beautiful, made in America, and use environmentally friendly dyes, but they are also double the price of regular floss.

I am all about paying more for better quality and supporting smaller businesses, but not the first time I’m making a new project. If I looked six inches to the left, I would’ve seen drawers and drawers of cheaper floss which would’ve made much more sense to practice on. I wish I saved these fancy flosses for an actual friend.

Indy, as always, was helpful.

Mistake 2.

I have no idea how to tie a slip knot. I watched many a youtube video on it, but still had to do it four or five times until it was centered and small enough.

Mistake 3.

For some reason, I imagined it would take me 15 minutes to tie these knots and finish this bracelet. It took more than three hours mostly because of Mistake #4.

Mistake 4.

I tried to keep all the colors laid out flat and pulled tight as I made the knots, but somewhere along the line, I realized the entire right side of the bracelet was messed up and getting worse and worse with each row.

I had to pull out most of the bracelet and start again. This brings me back to Mistake 1. If I wasn’t using the designer label floss, I would’ve just started fresh. I literally cried.

Although the process was a rough first try, I am really happy with the final result.

I ended it with two braids that slip through the slipknot and tie in a bow.

The hand-dyed fabrics gave the final product a pretty interesting look. The green, for example became paler or deeper in different sections.

Although the inconsistent colors made the bracelet more interesting, the inconsistent knots are more YIKES than interesting.