Author: agilejack

It’s been pouring here for days and I’m getting a little tired of it. I didn’t get a walk yesterday afternoon so took a long walk last night, which meant there was no sewing. There was a bit of a break in the rain this afternoon so I took the boys out for a three mile walk, knowing that we would most likely not get a walk tonight. So I had more time this evening to spend on my green batik impulse quilt.

This was feeling a little flat to me and I decided it needed some pops of color. So I dug into my batik 2.5 inch strips and pulled a few to add. Then I pulled a few pieces of fabric from my stash to liven this up.

That’s some of the more colorful strips added to what I had already cut for this quilt. THIS makes me much happier! So I sat down and sewed these six strip sets into blocks tonight and tossed them up on the wall with the existing blocks and it is making me feel better.

It’s not a ton of color, but it’s enough to give this more dimension and make it feel less flat.

I decided to get a good start on the remaining 13 strip sets. So I sewed them all together, pressed and cut them in half, and then sewed them into 4 strips in each set. That’s the most time consuming part of making these.

That photo is a much better representation of the color that I’m adding.

One exciting thing about digging into my batik scraps is that I discovered I have a fun array of fabrics and enough of them to make a scrappy batik 16 patch. I have some ideas for mixing that design up and some batik scraps are a great way to test my idea.

I sold a completed quilt to a friend today. She just got a new border collie puppy with the help of a friend and wanted to thank her. What a great way to let someone know you appreciate what they did for you.

I finished this quilt a little over a year ago. I’m happy to have sold it even though I sort of let it go for a song. I did make a little bit of money on it but I’d hate to have to make a living this way. It’s been sitting in a closet since I got it back from my long arm quilter and I’d rather have someone enjoying it.

You can see a couple of posts on this quilt here and here.

I’m looking forward to ten days of weather coming up that looks like a nice break from all the rain we’ve been having. Plus, Monday is Martin Luther King day so I have another long weekend.

I’ve been working away at finishing the blocks for my blue 16 patch quilt and felt like I needed a break so last night I dug into my green batiks and pulled out 16 pieces of fabric and got them all pressed. Today I cut them all into 2.5 inch strips, broke them out into sets, and started sewing.

I’ve been wanting to make a green batik quilt for a while now, and I’ve been wanting to try this quilt pattern too. It starts out with strip sets and goes together really quickly. I want to make one of these out of KFC fabrics, possibly in greens yellows and oranges. I’ve been thinking about that color combo for some time.

Starting something spontaneous like this is a pretty common thing for me to do. I like just deciding to do something and then just doing it!

Here’s a single block. It measures 9.5 inches by about 16 inches. I’ve made 15 out of 36 that I need for the quilt.

Here’s the 16 fabrics I’m using.

Funny, I thought I had a lot of green batiks. I have two plastic bins full. These were the best 16 for this quilt top. When the pandemic is over I’m going to be going about buying fabrics differently. I’ve always just purchased fabrics that I like, with no attention to the value of the pieces I was buying. It’s amazing to see how few light value fabrics I have. In the future I’ll be more deliberate in purchasing fabrics.

I got a lot done on the blue 16 patch quilt this weekend. I sewed up 20 duplicate blocks on Friday night and sewed up an additional 16 blocks yesterday. I have about 15 blocks left to finish up. Then I’ll get the blue blocks up on the design wall and start playing around.

I asked my brother to measure his bed and let me know how big he wants the scrappy sunburst half log cabin quilt to be. They would like it to be 84 by 1-2 inches. So I need to take some time and figure out where it is now and how many more blocks I need to make and what borders I need to add to get it up to size I made 11 blocks Friday night. I’m guessing I’ll need at least 20 more.

I met my brother and his wife in Cottage Grove, OR, this morning to take a nice long walk on the Row River Trail. It’s about a four hour drive from my house to my brother’s, so we chose a place that is almost exactly half way between our homes.

We walked for 8 miles on the trail, which is a rails to trails park — it’s a rail road track that has been converted to a walking/running/biking trail. It runs through the forest and along the edge of a lake.

We walked for 8 miles and then sat in the sun overlooking the lake and had lunch. I heated up some chili that I had made a few months ago and put it in thermoses early this morning. My sister in law brought some good bread and home made biscotti. It was really nice to have a warm lunch after a nice long hike.

My brother brought me a table that he made for me. He was a cabinet maker for years and has been making mandolins and other small stringed instruments in his retirement.

He told me that this table was his version of patch work — the gorgeous top is redwood, and other woods used to build it include koa, walnut and iron wood.

This finish is all the natural wood that has been hand rubbed with oil. It’s like silk!

The piece on the top is redwood. It’s made from a piece of wood that my brother got from a friend of his. He’s had it for years and couldn’t decide what to make with it. I feel pretty lucky that I have it in this gorgeous table!

Once I got home and got the car unloaded, got the dogs fed and cleaned up my kitchen, I had a quick dinner and then sat down to chunk away at finishing up the 20 duplicate blue 16-patch blocks that I had left unfinished. I’m happy to say that I got all 20 of them sewn and pressed.

A friend of mine let me know last week that a local quilt store on the coast had gotten a bolt of border collie fabric in. It was fabric that I’ve used for years and am running low on. It can be a little hard to find, so I got on the phone yesterday and ordered three yards for myself and two yards for a friend who wanted some.

In conversation with the clerk I learned that they had the Philip Jacobs Silk Road Collection so I had her send me a yard of each of these gorgeous pieces. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them, but I might have to design a quilt around one of them and use it for a quilt back. A good reason to buy more fabric!

I have tomorrow off from work and am planning on heading for a hike on the Banks Vernonia trail. I should be home in early afternoon and plan on spending a good bit of time working on blue 16-patch blocks. I have 40 of 72 blocks complete. On the down hill now.

I promised myself that I would finish the 10 duplicate 16-patch dark blocks that are sitting on my cutting table… but I couldn’t do it. I was so excited to see how the lighter blocks would look with the dark ones that I dove in and made five lighter strip sets, sliced and sewed half of them into blocks and got them up on the design wall.

I was a little afraid that I wasn’t going to love this as much when I got the lighter blocks up there, but I absolutely LOVE it!

In fact, I’m so excited to see even more lighter blocks up there that I sewed an additional five strip sets tonight.

And 15 duplicate blocks sit unfinished on my cutting table. And I’m totally OK with that!

Tomorrow I’m going to start chunking away at those 15 duplicate blocks. Yup.. even before I slice the five additional light strip sets I sewed tonight.

This is sort of unusual for me, but I have no idea what quilt I’m going to make next! I’m usually itching to start the next one by this point in a new project! Maybe something red…

I had a pretty low key New Years celebration last night. My boss delivered some amazing tamales from a famous local food cart and a six pack of some Modelo Negra beer. It was so amazingly good and it was so nice to have a warm meal that someone else prepared!

I had one of the left overs for dinner tonight. I have three in my freezer and one more in the fridge. I will enjoy every one of them.

I woke up this morning and got the dogs out for a nice 5.5 mile walk before the rain started in this afternoon. We lucked out and stayed dry and had a really nice walk.

There were a lot more people out walking today than we usually see. it’s been a pretty rainy week and we’ve got a forecast for rain as far out as the forecasts go, so people really like to take advantage of a few dry hours.

Once I got home I decided to dive into a little project that I’ve wanted to sew up for a few weeks. I’ve been needing a little basket to hang on the closet door next to my desk for used tissues and old Post It notes. So I dug into Pinterest to find a pattern or tutorial that I liked that wasn’t too complicated.

Here’s the tutorial I followed. I used some of the leftover indigo batik from the quilt top I just finished and a very small quantity of my KFC scraps. I had to improvise the loop that would hang this on the closet door, but that was easy enough to do. And I actually hand sewed the inside of the binding on the top of this little bucket.

After dinner we had another little break in the rain so I took the boys and myself out for a quick two-mile walk. It was really nice out… warm and moist but we didn’t get rained on.

When we got home I hunkered down in the sewing room and assembled the first three rows of my scrappy 16 patch.

We’re going to have a very rainy sheep herding lesson tomorrow morning and then I’ll probably spend a good part of the rest of the day on the assembly of this quilt top.

I think I’ve decided on the final set of fabrics I’m going to use for my KFC blue 16-patch. So I’ll probably start cutting and pairing up some of these fabrics this weekend.

Here’s a black and white version of that photo to show the values better.

And… knowing myself… I’ll probably make a few of the blue blocks this weekend too because I’m getting anxious to see how these fabrics will play together. I’m getting a little excited to see how those little bits of color in the blue fabrics will pop!

I’m hoping for a much better year in 2021 than we just had… for all of us!

I had a good sleep in this morning, got up, showered and had a healthy breakfast with some really good coffee, then took the dogs for a 5.5 mile walk. It was a gorgeous day, sunny, and almost 50 degrees. With more rain coming later this week, I wanted to take advantage of the glorious sun!

When I got home I pulled the improv batik quilt off the design wall and folded it up with the backing I plan to use with it. Then I moved my KFC 16-patch blocks to the larger design wall.

I’ve tried fixing some spots that are bothering me and I can’t seem to fix them. I’m thinking it’s because I have a number of problematic blocks — blocks that are muddy because the two fabrics don’t have any contrast. It’s amazing how they stand out in the quilt. I’m probably going to pull them out and make some additional blocks. If I don’t, I won’t be able to stop thinking about them.

Here’s a black and white version of the photo above. Turning the photo to black and white helps me see the value and contrast in the blocks and not be distracted by the color.

I also pulled some blue fabrics for the 16-patch I’m probably going to make. I solicited some advice from Wanda at the Exuberant Color blog and she was nice enough to tell me how she selects fabrics for a 16-patch. So this is my initial pull based on the difference I’d like to have in values of the blue fabrics. It’s not quite right yet. There are a few pieces in there that aren’t quite right, and I haven’t decided yet how many fabrics I want to use. But this is a good start. I’m also waiting for one final delivery of a few lighter and medium pieces that may work as well.

Here’s a black and white version of the same fabrics. This really highlights a couple changes I’ll need to make.

I took the boys out for a short walk with a nice view of downtown Portland yesterday. They were only happy to pose because I had some tasty salmon cookies in my hand!

Back to work tomorrow for another short work week. I’m also hoping to take a couple days off the following week. This is a really busy time of year for a fundraiser!

All I had to do tonight was to sew one final horizontal seam and then put on the borders to finish this quilt top.

It’s a little too big for my design wall, but this photo gives you an idea of how it looks with the border s, which I cut to 3.5 inches. I like the way it makes the blocks look like they’re floating.

I just can’t get over how pretty this indigo batik is.

I really don’t love the final stages of putting a quilt top together because I don’t like managing all that bulk of fabric. So I’ve some up with some tricks over time that make it a little easier for me.

First, when sewing the final two pieces of a quilt together or when putting borders on, I fold up the fabric so it’s a long narrow roll with the pinned edge at the top.

Then I accordion fold that roll up.

Then I put it on my lap at the sewing machine and feed it into the machine from there.

Another package of blue KFC fabrics was delivered this morning. This one was from Material Girl fabrics. I was really happy to find some older KFC blue fabrics there and love the older and lighter designs they had available. I had never even seen the pencils in the blue color way before.

I spent just a few minutes today playing with some of the blue fabrics I have now. I’m getting excited to firm up my first plan for these gorgeous fabrics.

My plan for tomorrow is to get my ninety 16-patch blocks up on my bigger design wall and see if I can get it ready to start sewing it all together.

I had a pretty quiet holiday. I made dinner for friends on Christmas Eve and delivered it to their house. I prepared everything but didn’t cook it. I delivered it ready to be put into the oven and on the stove top at different times, according to specific and simple instructions. I made poached salmon, a Waldorf coleslaw, oven roasted potatoes, and oven roasted asparagus with lemon and garlic. For dessert I made an apple cranberry crisp and vanilla ice cream. My friends loved it and said the prep was really easy and they loved that they could cook and eat it when it worked for them.

I had hoped to meet some friends for a nice hike with our dogs on Christmas morning, but it was pouring rain here all day. So I stayed at home and had some phone calls with family and friends. The rain did let off in the afternoon and we got our for a nice four-mile walk. My friends delivered a prime rib dinner for me on Christmas day… complete with a wonderful glass of wine! I haven’t eaten beef since February, and it was really tasty. I had the left overs for dinner tonight.

These boys kept me good company over the holiday.

Bender, in the Santa hat, is a very good and cooperative poser. Rico, on the other hand, hates posing. Poor guy. Look how uncomfortable and unhappy he is. They both got lots of salmon treats for this.