Author: agilejack

I’m exhausted tonight. I usually feel very much like this at this point in a radio fundraising drive.

I’ve taken my Advil PM so that I can get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep before another 7 am shift tomorrow. I was working before 7 this morning and wrapped up my work day just after 6:00 pm. The boys didn’t even get a walk until after dinner. And even then, I was so tired that it was only two miles.

I had a meeting this morning where I mostly had to listen, so I took my computer into my sewing room and cut more color wash blocks from the remaining scraps that I organized over the weekend as I listened. Then I stacked them all up into sets of six blocks.

I can manage chain piecing six blocks at a time.

Then, after a few more meetings and lunch, I had to be on the air from 3:00 to 6:00. Since I’m always on the radio from my sewing room, for various reasons, I decided to get some sewing done during my down time. When I’m on the air, I’ll be on for 6 minutes or so, then off for 15 minutes. It’s too little time to get focused on much of anything and I need to focus on what I’m doing. So I used the opportunity to sew some of the blocks together. Over three hours of short spurts I got 25 more blocks sewn and squared up.

I was so hungry when I finished up at 6:00, I immediately grabbed dinner. Then after sitting on my butt for an hour I finally got up and took those sad boys for a bit of a walk. We only walked two miles and there was a light snow falling the entire time. We may get an inch or so over night.

Once we got back I hit my sewing room again and sewed up another 12 blocks. They go together really quickly once the pieces are all cut. That’s all I could muster. I’m worn out.

That makes a total of 37 blocks I sewed today.

All in all, I have 131 blocks completed. With another 30 cut and waiting to be sewn. That makes 161 blocks. That would be enough blocks to make a 12 block by 13 block quilt. I was thinking I might make this as a wall hanging for above my bed. That would finish around 48×52. I might want to make it a little more rectangular. I’ll have to see what I have once all the blocks are done and then decide how big I want something for that space. I’ll also have to determine if I can make all these blocks all work in a good design.

Once I get the remaining 30 blocks sewn I’ll get back to finishing putting my sunburst quarter log cabin top together.

Ok. Off to bed for me!

You might not be surprised to learn that I, in fact, did not sew together the two rows of my sunburst quarter log cabin quilt that I had as a goal today.

You probably will not be surprised to learn what I did instead.

Chasing the squirrel.

I worked a couple of three-hour shifts today with our winter radio fundraising drive. In between I took Rico to Battle Ground, WA, for his herding lesson. Then we hightailed it home so I could have some free time before my 2:00 shift.

I actually had about 40 minutes before I had to be back on the job so dug into my bins of scraps to find fabrics for more color wash blocks. I cut and pressed about 50 fabric scraps. Once my shift ended I hit the fabric bins again and kept cutting and pressing. I cut a total of around 105 unique pieces of fabric for blocks today. That’s 105 unique fabrics.

After dinner and a nice walk I headed back down the hall to start cutting these prepped fabrics for blocks. I managed to get 25 blocks cut and ready to sew. I sew them six blocks at a time and chain piece as I go. Somehow, I got an extra one in set in one of these stacks.

So I just pushed ahead and sewed all 25 blocks.

I Just threw these up on the wall in no particular order. I didn’t want to take all the blocks off the wall to redesign them all together.

So now I have a total of 94 blocks done and on the design wall in some fashion.

And I have the fabric cut for around 80 more. That makes a total of around 174 blocks. To Make a generous throw size quilt I’ll need around 357 blocks. Hmmm. That’s a lot more blocks. I guess I’ll be pulling out my batiks and Aboriginal fabrics to fill that out.

Here’s a few favorites:

Here’s the stack of fabric waiting to be cut for blocks. There are some really irregular pieces in there — left over from making hats.

I love sewing with scraps. Amazingly, all these blocks haven’t managed to make much of a dent in my stash.

Here’s Bender feeling sorry for himself as I was on the radio live. He did to understand why he had been exiled.

And as parting photo, I give you my muck boots after sheep herding. Thank god I had them in the car.

No work tomorrow. I’m going to play pickleball from 1:00 To 5:00. Maybe I’ll get those rows of blocks from my sunburst quilt finished up tomorrow.

I stepped away from work a little early today since I have to work six hours tomorrow. And I started cracking away at more of these fun little color wash blocks. I got thirty more blocks made tonight.

Each fabric only appears in the outer fabric in a block once. So that will mean a lot of variety when the blocks are all done.

But for now, there’s enough blocks, 71 in total, to start to get a feel for what the color wash might look like.

I had to pull some of the blocks for my sunburst quarter log cabin quilt off the design wall to accommodate all of these new blocks.

I stacked and labeled them carefully. I have a small goal to sew these two rows together tomorrow after my second shift of work. We’ll see how I feel. I might be completely wiped out.

I dug through a nice size bin of scraps to make these new blocks. And I have another bin that I’ll dig through once I get those two sunburst rows sewn together. I promised myself I’d do the work before I get to play.

I see another bin down at the side of my cutting table that appears to have some yellow KFC fabrics inside. I need more yellows in this quilt.

I had put some blocks blocks the were too small in my scrap bucket last night. Tonight I pulled them out and added more fabric to them to bring them up to size.

Might as well not make more scraps and get these up to size.

I’ve been using my 5 inch square ruler to square up these blocks to 4.5 inches. I put some take on the ruler to make it easier. But I ordered a 4.5 inch square ruler that arrived this evening.

It’s smooch easier and faster with this ruler that’s the exact size I need!

Today started out rainy but he sun came out in the afternoon. Rico found a nice patch of sun for his nap.

I stepped outside this afternoon to check on the daffodils in my front yard. They were up late this year. They are around four inches tall right now.

My Advil PM is kicking in. I have to be working at 7 am. Gotta go get some sleep!

Spring seems to have arrived in Portland over the last two days. And these boys are pretty fine with that. Me too!

We call it the February Fake-out. We get a couple days of gorgeous weather and sun which fools us into thinking spring is here. Then we’re plunged back into winter.

But I prefer to think spring is actually here. Here’s some proof.

Looks like spring to me.

Since it’s clearly and officially spring now, I decided to chase a fabric squirrel and play around a little tonight with a project that I’ve been wanting to do for some time. It’s just the kind of thing I love… digging into my scrap pile and making some blocks in a free form way. And here’s what I did tonight.

I’ve been seeing some people on Instagram that are making this type of quilt. And I watched a tutorial a few weeks ago on making these fun little blocks.

There is actually a series of three tutorials by Terry Rowland. Here’s the first of the three. It shows how to make the blocks. The second video shows how to arrange the blocks. And the third shows how she sews the blocks together with the web method. I might have to get really brave and try that on a quilt.

She squares her blocks up at 3.5 inches. I’m making mine 4.5 inches because 3.5 is just too small for me. Here’s the components you need for a block.

Each block is unique. The measurements for the pieces are just sort of a guideline. There’s no rules on the fabric in the center except that it should contrast with the fabric around the outside. It’s fun to build variety into the blocks with different shapes and colors in the center square/rectangle.

The blocks are really fun to make and it’s really fun to select and combine the fabrics. Have I told you I have a lot of scraps?

That’s a very small portion of my scraps.

I’m making four or five blocks at a time and chain piecing as I go. I have the pieces for the blocks arranged in a stack and then I pull each set off the pile ad spread them out on my sewing machine extension table so they’re close at hand.

It speeds things up, but you really have to pay attention so you sew the right pieces together and don’t accidentally mix things up.

I made 24 of these blocks tonight. They sew up really quickly. It takes more time to select and prep the fabric.

I don’t really know what I’m going to do with these or how many of them I’ll make. Eventually, I hope to have enough blocks and enough variety to arrange them into a sort of color wash.

I don’t have enough blocks to give you more than an idea of what that might look like. But I think it has potential. I see a couple blocks that are bothering me. Might have to yank them out of there. Or they might be less bothersome as more blocks are added.

I also think I’ll might bring more than Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics into this eventually. I might pull out my batik and Aboriginal fabric scraps. That would give me more color variation and I’m sure it would be fun to do some mixing and matching.

But these blocks are almost all KFC fabrics, except for a few of the centers. Here’s some closer looks.

I did make a couple blocks that were too small for me to square up at 4.5 inches. They have gone back into the scrap basket that sits next to my cutting table.

That scrap basket is just a little bit frightening. I’m not quite sure how to tackle it.

You might be thinking that I’m avoiding finishing sewing together my sunburst quarter log cabin quilt. And you would be right! This is much more fun!

I couldn’t stand it. I just had to add the jumble sashing to the left over sunburst blocks. So I dug in after our dinner and walk this evening. I cut the sashing pieces to 3 inches, so they’ll finish at 2.5 inches. Then I sat down at the machine and started chain piecing… blocks on one leg, sashing pieces on the other.

It didn’t take very long to get all these blocks sashed and pressed and then I tossed them up on my design wall. And I like what I see!

I’m going to have to make six more sunburst blocks to complete this. But it might be the quickest quilt I’ve ever made! With left overs from a quilt that has taken more than two years to complete!

Here’s a little eye candy of these blocks with that fun black and white jumble.

What is it about that jumble that’s so magic?

My design wall has two roll up pieces of heavy, plastic backed flannel. The other sunburst quilt is on the second flannel behind this one. It’s a pretty handy feature.

I actually did work on the other sunburst quilt today. I got all the setting triangles and corner triangles cut and laid out on the design wall. It’s sort of a mess because the wall just isn’t big enough. So stuff is hanging off the edges and dragging on the floor. A number of pieces are actually pinned on.

That’s the section on my portable design wall. I didn’t get a photo of the rest of it.

I started assembling with the upper left corner and I got three rows all sewn together. I’m toying with the idea of putting this together in large blocks. Four large triangles like this one (one for each corner) and then three or four smaller blocks down the center. I really hate all those long lines of blocks.

I made a couple errors when cutting the setting triangles. There were four triangles that weren’t square. I’m guessing that I cut one side of the square shorter… meaning that I cut a rectangle.

It was pretty easy to identify them as I was laying it all out. I’ll have to cut some more tomorrow. I didn’t want to do it after out walk this evening because I felt a little tired and thought that would be an invitation to even more un-square triangles.

And I discovered another error as I put these three rows together. I cut the corner triangle too small. I think I cut it 1/2 inch to small.

Rather than trim the entire quilt top to match that corner, I’ll pick this out tomorrow and cut some new triangles.

The wide backing I ordered arrived today. That’s pretty damned good service! It’s really amazing! The scale of the print is BIG and I think it’s going to be fun with this quilt.

Those blocks are 8.5 inches square, so that print is huuuuge!!! And I love it!

We didn’t have our sheep herding lesson today so we slept in a little. It was raining this morning and I didn’t get the boys out for a nice long walk until early afternoon. We walked about 4.5 miles and then came home and after a short nap, these boys were ready to go again.

But instead, we jumped in the car and took a quick trip to Costco. It’s been a few months since I went to Costco so I had a ton of stuff to unload and put away when I got home.

When we were getting ready for our shorter walk this evening, I made sure I left the light in my sewing room on so I could see my sunburst quilt when I came home.

That’s where all the magic happens!

Rico has a sheep herding lesson tomorrow afternoon with a trainer who is not our regular teacher. Then I need to do some tidying up around the house to start getting ready for my company that’s coming in a couple weeks.

Our winter radio fundraising drive starts this Thursday and goes through Saturday, Feb 19. My friend will arrive a week from Friday. I’m really looking forward to her visit! We’re trying to decide what quilt we’re going to work on when she’s here. I think we might make a 16 patch!

The sunburst quilt that I thought was ready to put together was being built to a size that my brother said they wanted for their queen bed. It was an odd size that he requested: 84 x 104. The more I thought about that odd size, the more it bothered me.

So last night I called my brother and his wife to see if they really wanted it that size. Apparently my sister in law had measured the bed and doesn’t remember why she had recorded that rectangular size. I told them that queen size quilts are typically square and around 90 inches on each side. My brother ran upstairs and measured their bed and said that size would work really well.

So, during my lunch break today I took a look at the blocks on the design wall and then put pen to paper to sketch out how to make it square and the size I want. And all I had to do was remove the three rows on the left side. Here’s the resulting square layout.

It sounds so easy. But before I did all thisI messaged my friend Karen last night, an experienced and accomplished quilter, to ask her about calculating the finished size of a quilt with blocks set on point. I was having a tough time wrapping my head around it.

Being a scientist and very math-capable, she generously provided a formula that was like a foreign language to me.

So I asked her to explain it to me like I was a math challenged liberal arts major. Here’s what she said:

And that all made sense to me. So I was able to determine, with as much confidence as someone with poor math skills can have, how big this quilt top would be once all the blocks were sewn together. It will come out to around 81 or 82 inches.

I really wish that I had a better foundation in math when I was young. It would come in really handy . In the mean time, I have my friend Karin.

Did I say that I decided to use Kaffe’s wine lotus leaf fabric for the setting triangles and border? And I’m going to make the setting triangles larger than the blocks because I want them to overlap at the points of the blocks so that I won’t lose my points when I sew on the border. The points will float in the red fabric.

I will add a sizable border in the same fabric to get the quilt up to around 95 inches to allow for shrinkage from quilting and washing.

I also decided to purchase some wide backing fabric since this is a good size quilt and I wasn’t looking forward to piecing the backing. I knew that it could likely make me delay finishing this quilt yet again.

Here’s what I bought. It’s Kaffe’s Enchanted in red. I think it will be really fun with that scrappy quilt top.

I purchased it last night and had confirmation ths morning that it had shipped.

I used one of the Kaffe wide backings on my blue 16 patch quilt that I gave as a Christmas gift a year ago.

These wide backings are a cotton sateen and they are lovely. They feel soft and silky, and the prints are a larger scale than their regular quilting counterparts. I’m really happy to be using another one since I was so happy with the first one.

I could feel the weight of piecing a large backing lift from my shoulders as soon as I clicked the button to complete my purchase on this one! Ahhhhh.

And now that I’m making this quilt top smaller, I have 26 of the sunburst blocks left over. I tossed around a couple ideas of what to do with them. Here’s one I like.

You know me. I like me some graphic black and white fabrics with these bright prints!

I would makes the sashing pretty wide. maybe finish them at around 3 inches. I’d like to be able to make a throw size quilt out of these 26 blocks without having to make more blocks!!! And I have plenty of that black and white jumble in my stash.

I’m absolutely exhausted tonight after being on the job at 6 am both of the last two mornings. I’m looking forward to more sleep tonight! And I’m really happy tomorrow is Friday!

I’m participating in a conference this week that has people attending in person and also includes people participating virtually. I’m one of the virtual folks. The actual conference is happening on the east coast so I have 6 am start times tomorrow and Thursday.

Since I need to be up and at ’em at a ridiculous hour — 6 am! (Have I told you that I stay up way too late?), I’ve already taken some Advil pm at 9 pm so I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. So not much time in my sewing room tonight.

I decided I wanted to do two things. First, I wanted to make that one block that I needed for my sunburst quilt top. Second, I wanted to cut some crap fabric to test my measurements of the setting triangles.

I ran across a video tutorial today that is a really good explanation of how to cut setting triangles. It’s sort of extra-mathy. Math is not my strong suit. But it has really good explanation of how to calculate, cut and handle your fabric to make sure you’re not putting your bias edges in the wrong place. That’s pretty important

This is a great video but a little more than I felt prepared to wrap my head around this evening. So I grabbed my Quilters Reference Guide and pulled some fabric out of a box I’ve been filling for Good Will. I selected the right measurements for my triangles based on my finished block size. Then got to cutting.

First I cut one large block, then sub cut it diagonally. This method insures that you don’t have your bias edge along the outside edge of the quilt top. Both bias edges will be sewn to the quilt blocks.

Then I tried one of those triangles with my quilt blocks, and it’s pretty much perfect!

Here’s that dark, dreary fabric making me feel like this will actually work really well!

Next I moved onto the corner triangles. I cut a square the correct size, according to my reference guide, then cut that in half diagonally.

And, again, perfect fit! The bias edge on this one is the center cut line, which is sewn to the corner block.

Here’s a look at what I’m using for my setting triangles and how it looks with these blocks.

Once that testing was done, I started looking for my sunburst fabric so I could cut ONE little sunburst to make the final block. Amazingly, I found it pretty quickly. It was in the drawer where I thought it was.

I have over four yards of this fabric. I bought it when I heard a few years ago that this was going to be discontinued. I’m so glad I have this. I don’t have plans for it right now, but there are so many fun things you can do with it!

I also have a smaller quantity of the blue color way.

So I carefully cut one little sunburst out of that fabric.

And immediately after doing that, I noticed that there were a couple strips of these sunbursts in the pile of scraps that I was using to make blocks last night.

Well, of course! Wish I’d seen that before I cut into that yardage. Oh well.

This one block went quickly since there was a good deal of fabric all pressed and ready to go.

Here’s the final block before and after I squared it up.

Then I set about finding a place for this on the design wall.

I may start cutting these setting pieces tomorrow night. Not sure how much oomph I’ll have after being on the job so early

We had a lovely sunny day today. But still quite cold.

The temps will be warming a little in the next few days and we’ll see some rainy days too.

Last night I stepped into my sewing room to look at the sunburst blocks on my design wall as I was thinking about cutting setting triangles when I noticed something. I didn’t get a picture of it before I started working on this top tonight, so I drew some illustrations.

Here’s what I noticed. At the top of the quilt, there was one block in each corner, which is correct. At the bottom of the quilt top, there were two blocks in each corner. In this illustration, the red blocks at the bottom are the problem.

(Keep in mind that I’m talking about the top and bottom of this quilt top as it’s oriented on my design wall. It’s actually flipped on it’s side. So what I’m calling the top and bottom are actually the sides… in case you’re wondering why my quilt is so short and so wide!)

And why is it a problem? Well, when it comes to adding triangles to finish the corners, there will be a smaller triangle in each of the top corners. But the bottom corners will require a larger triangle to make the quilt square. So it will look really odd and unbalanced.

So I started noodling about the best way to solve this problem, and I decided that adding another row of blocks to the bottom would solve the issue.

In that illustration the green blocks are the additional row. you can see how it fixes the issue on those bottom corners.

BUT… this would require making additional blocks. Don’t ask me how many because I’m so confused by this time I can’t keep track.

So I was thinking this was the way I would proceed, but I wasn’t in love with making more blocks because I thought I was done. My brain said, “We’re done with these blocks and we’re moving on.”

When I took the boys for our afternoon walk this puzzle was on my mind. I kept trying to figure out if there was a way to solve this without adding another row of blocks.

And then it hit me… the solution! THIS is the moment when the solution. hit me.

Look how happy I am! It must be a really good solution! I thought that if I just moved the vertical row from the right side to the left side, the problem would be solved.

I was so happy for the remainder of our walk, satisfied that I wouldn’t have to make those additional blocks.

So after work I started drawing this out to demonstrate how brilliant I am. Here’s the result…

By moving the far right row of blocks to the left side of the quilt, I had managed to move the problem corners from the bottom of the quilt to the top.

Well, hells bells.

Back to the drawing board.

So it looked like my options were to add a row to the bottom of the quilt, or add two rows to the sides. That second option would mean I’d have to make even MORE additional blocks and would probably make this already long quilt much too long, and it would make me have to do some odd stuff with the borders I’m planning.

So I submitted to the plan to make additional blocks and add them to the bottom of the quilt.

So after our chilly walk this evening I hit the sewing room. I dug out the small pile of sunbursts I had cut previously and started sorting scraps.

So many scraps!

Once I had everything pressed I sat down and went at it.

I think I made nine blocks. I might have made seven. Maybe is was six.I lost track because I had some that needed a row added to get them up to size. But anyway… when I finished up to night I had nine blocks to square up. I think.

These blocks end up pretty wonky and need a good squaring up. Just my kind of sewing!!!

But they are beautiful once squared up.

There’s just enough wonk in there to make me happy!

And what is it about squaring up blocks that I love so much? I find it terribly satisfying.

Here’s all the blocks I either made or finished tonight. All squared up and lovely.

Ok. It WAS nine.

So then I set about getting these blocks up on the design wall.

The good news is that all four corners now look hunky dory. Phew!

The bad news is that I’M ONE BLOCK SHORT!!!!! Dammit!

If you look back in the corner at the lower right, behind my sewing table… you’ll can see it.

So now I have to make one more block!!! But first, I’m going to have to dig into my stash and see how long it will take me to find that sunburst fabric so I can cut one pathetic little square from it!!! Good grief!

I’ll make myself feel a little better by celebrating how pretty these blocks are and feeling good that I have 118 blocks done. That’s a lot of blocks! But not quite enough.

I decided that I’m going with the original layout for my starburst blocks. So I hit the sewing room after dinner and tossed all the blocks up on my design walls.

Here’s where they are without any adjustment.

Have to use my additional design my retractible wall isn’t big enough to handle all these blocks.

I pinned on the far right and top row of the blocks on the portable board so they won’t fall off when I move the board.

I have to move that board because it’s covering the door to my sewing room

I think I have enough blocks to finish this quilt. I might have to make one or two. I was too tired tonight to figure it out tonight.

I have a few blocks that aren’t quite big enough to square up to 8.5 inches. So I’m going to have to add an additional strip of fabric to each one.

I think I might have exactly the number I need. That would be nice. I will probably start sewing this bad boy together tomorrow.

Here’s a close up view of these blocks. They’re really pretty!

After breakfast this morning and before our walk I threw a batch of tomato basil soup into the crock pot.

I made sure I sprung for the good quality tomatoes.

It smelled really good as it simmered away all day.

I had some for dinner and it was really tasty. Here’s the recipe. I doctored it a little.

After I finished up in my sewing room tonight I found Rico sound asleep on the sofa.

I think I disturbed him.

I’m going to go and play some indoor pickleball at a middle school tomorrow. I went there last Sunday and it was pretty good.