Month: September 2020

Today I started on the repeat of the Aboriginal quilt I made a few months ago. I got the sashing and cornerstones put on all the blocks and got them all up on the design wall. I was able to get the bottom two rows sewn this evening.

I got a message from a friend today who used to run a long arm business that she wanted to buy my Ruffled Feathers quilt top. So we made a deal on a price, and it’s a done deal. She bought the backing along with it and will quilt it and keep it for herself.

I didn’t set out with the intention of selling it, but I’m happy that it worked out because I didn’t have any plans for this quilt.

Plus, quilts are starting to stack up in my sewing room!!!

We’ve had some severe wind warnings for today and Tuesday and they’re worried about forest fires. There’s an area around Mt. Hood where PGE was cutting off power so that any lines downed by the wind wouldn’t start a fire.

Most of the day here was pretty nice and then the wind picked up around 4:00 and the air got really smokey really fast. I can even smell it in the house tonight.

I flipped all of my big agility equipment over so it wouldn’t get caught by the winds. They were predicting gusts up to about 60 mph earlier today, but on the news tonight they said the biggest gusts would be around 39 mph.

We did get a few big gusts earlier today. It was enough to bring some small branches down in my back yard and enough to flip a heavy metal patio chair.

It seems pretty quiet outside now that it’s dark. I occasionally hear a pine cone hit the roof, but that’s about it. I’m guessing there will be quite a few boughs down around the neighborhood in the morning.

It was nice to have an extra day off today. Back to work tomorrow with a really busy day.

After doing absolutely no sewing yesterday, today I dug in and finished the last four blocks then sewed the whole thing together. And I was right. It did go together really quickly and easily.

I’ll try to take some photos outside tomorrow night and hopefully they’ll show this quilt top better. The photo above doesn’t really do it justice.

This more close up photo gives you a better feel for what the quilt looks like. It’s definitely busy, but I think I like it. This might be one that has to be completely done, quilted and bound before I have a good idea of how I feel about it.

I think I may make another one of these some day out of different Kaffe fabrics with a more calm background… white or off white. And I’d like some really saturated Kaffe fabrics with lots of color variation. It’s formulating in my head.

So what’s next? I’m going to finish the second Aboriginal quilt with blocks left over from this one. All I have to do is put the sashing and cornerstones on the blocks, toss it up on the design wall, and then sew it together.

A friend of mine loved the scrappy batik wedge quilt I made recently and decided to make her own. The blocks looked pretty much exactly like mine, but she laid them all out differently… and I love it! I’m wishing I had done something like this with mine. This is her quilt…

I dug into one of the drawers in my sewing room earlier today and ran across these two Hoffman Dots batik fat quarter bundles that I bought several years ago when they were first out on the market. I had completely forgotten that I had them. So now I am thinking about fat quarter patterns. The fabrics aren’t very exciting since the patterns are just small dots, but the colors are really pretty. I’ll have to be careful in the pattern I select.

Hmmm. Maybe another Ruffled Feathers Quilt…

Several days ago I ordered some new Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics from one of my local quilt stores. So I went and picked them up yesterday. They’re so incredible! A few of these will probably end up in the black KFC quilt I’m thinking about. I don’t have plans yet for the others.

And that’s the last of the fabric that I’ve ordered. Now it’s time to dig in and get busy. Well, busier!

I finished two more blocks for my Ruffled Feathers quilt tonight, which means I just have four more blocks to assemble. I’m looking forward to wrapping this up this weekend and moving onto the next project. Still haven’t decided what that’s going to be.

I received an order of fabric yesterday and another one today.

Yesterday’s order was these fabrics, mostly in the black color way. These will eventually be made into a quilt, along with all the other back color way fabrics I have.

The two fabrics at the right of the top row will not actually be in this quilt. They just happened to be in the same order. I just LOVE these fabrics! It’s a different feel for me, but the pops of color are right up my alley.

Look at the detail in this new KFC Agate fabric, designed by my pal Philip Jacobs. If you haven’t seen this fabric in person you really need to. it’s so incredible.

Bender likes it too!

These are the fabrics that came today. I’ve wanted some of this older Kaffe map fabric for several years. I found some on Etsy the other day for a price that was pretty reasonable, so I ordered a yard of each. No idea what I’m going to do with these, but I’m happy to have them in my stash!

By the end of the work day today Rico was ready for some action. He was looking at me and I asked him if he wanted to go out and play and this was his response…

I’m looking forward to a long holiday weekend. I’m a little sad, though, because this is the time of year that I usually take my vacation. I’m really missing my friends and a little different view.

I finished the last of the remaining flying geese units for my Ruffled Feathers quilt on Tuesday night and have started chunking away on the last ten blocks. Tonight I finished four blocks. So this means I have only six blocks to finish and then I can get this top done.

The blocks are big, so once they’re done and I get them moved around where I like them, the top will go together really quickly.

It’s nice to be on the downhill slope of this quilt top. But I am thinking about replacing those yellow jumble rectangles with other fabrics. They are annoying me a bit. I’ve stopped sewing any more of them into blocks.

My friend and I were laughing the other night that we’ve gone a little crazy buying fabric online during the pandemic. So tonight I went into my sewing room and organized all my new fabric to take a little inventory of what I’ve purchased.

Most of these pieces are half yards, some are yards, and there are a few two and three yard pieces. There are also three quilt back size pieces in there. My rough calculation tells me that this is over sixty yards of fabric!

WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING??? I can’t even fathom how long it’s going to take me to use up that fabric. Plus, this is only the Kaffe Fassett Collective fabric I’ve bought. I’ve also purchased an Aboriginal quilt back, a batik quilt back, and nine one-yard pieces of white on white fabrics. And… some Kaffe fabrics that’s I’ve purchased online since I’ve been isolated at home have been sewn into two different quilts.

I’m a little embarrassed to say that I’m currently waiting for three separate packages of Kaffe fabric to arrive. I’m not sure I could tell you what’s in each of them.

But I’m ok with it all… it’s all a bright spot in a difficult time.

I am really getting itchy to start a new quilting project, but I am determined I will finish this Ruffled Feathers top before I move onto my next quilt. I know myself well enough to know that if I set it aside, it will sit for months.

So I gave it a little thought and since the most time consuming part is making the geese units, I decided to dig in and get the remaining needed geese sections completed. And then the blocks will go together really fast from there.

I have completed seven of the ten sets needed to complete the final ten blocks for this quilt top. I will probably finish up the remaining three sets Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and then I’ll trim all the units and start removing the paper.

Before I started working on these final sets I selected fabric for each pair of templates. That way I can really get through them quickly as I don’t have to stop to select fabric for each one.

If all goes well I could finish this quilt top this weekend and then move onto the next project.

I would have gotten more sets done tonight except a friend of mine is choosing fabrics for a black Kaffe Fassette Collective quilt and she wanted me to help her select fabrics. So I pulled out my black Kaffe fabrics and took photos to send to her. Then we spent an hour on the phone looking through online stores to find black Kaffe fabrics.

And now I want to make a black quilt!!! Look at these amazing fabrics!!!

I’m pretty positive there will be one of these in my future.