Author: agilejack

I’m off work for the remainder of the weekend. I’m really looking forward to some time off and hope to get a lot of sewing done, get some rest, and get outside.

I dug in after work this evening and got four of the seven rows of my batik improv quilt top assembled. I should be able to get the top finished tomorrow afternoon. Then I decide how big the outer borders will be and will get them on before I call this done.

I got another batch of blue KFC fabrics today. This package was from Island Quilter on Vashon Island, Washington. . . another one of my favorite online sources for KFC fabrics. They had some older designs that I hadn’t found anywhere else.

I realized that I already bought a piece of that Enchanted , second from the left on the top row. Oh well. I’ll use it some time.

Here’s all the blue fabrics I’ve ordered in the last couple of weeks. A quick count tells me there are 59 half yards. So a total of almost 30 yards.

One thing I love about KFC fabrics is that a big old stack of “blue” fabrics has all kinds of amazing color! I can’t wait to start putting combos together for a blue 16-patch!

I have one more order of 15 more half-yard pieces coming from Material Girl fabrics. They had some nice lighter blues and older prints as well. Once I get those, I’ll start thinking more seriously about fabric combos.

I met a former neighbor at her new house tonight and we took our dogs for a three mile walk around her neighborhood. It was nice to have a different path and see some pretty holiday lights. And the dogs were really happy to have new things to sniff.

I dug in when I got home and finished putting all the sashing pieces on my improv batik blocks. I had made some mistakes on the top row that I did last night, so I rearranged the blocks that I could and removed sashing from the ones that couldn’t be moved.

The color in this photo is terrible! I need to remember to take a photo in daylight tomorrow. I’d like to get this all sewn together this weekend. It should go quickly as these blocks are big.

(Edited to add this daylight photo for more accurate color)

Then I can get this off my design wall and move onto the next new project.

I have a couple more orders of blue KFC fabrics coming. So I’m thinking I’ll make something blue, and I’m thinking I’ll do another 16 patch quilt. I have a friend who loves blue and this would make a great holiday gift next year. Nice to be prepared and have it done in advance.

I’ve also been wanting to make a red KFC quilt. I have built up my red KFC stash since the pandemic started. So I ordered the magazine that includes this pattern a couple of days ago. I’ve already pulled some fabrics for this from my stash, but nothing is final. It’s called Bold Proposition.

Here’s one that was posted recently on the KFC Facebook page by Amy Reynolds. It’s pretty striking!

Those colors are so incredible!

I also want to make one of these quilts that are a version of a Trip Around the World quilt. I found a tutorial by Bonnie Hunter that shows how to make these out of strip tubes and with my recent 16-patch project I think I would enjoy making this… and I would LOVE putting the fabrics together!

I found this photo on Pinterest and there was absolutely no indication of who made it. It’s a beautiful quilt. I love all the spots in there. I would also make this from KFC fabrics and would want it to have a color focus, but still be somewhat scrappy.

I also found this tutorial that shows how to place your fabrics for these blocks. This is good info to have before just striking out.

I kind of feel like I’m going to go the blue 16-patch route first. But I’ll have to see how I feel once it’s time to start cutting.

There was a bit of a break in the rain this evening around 7:00 so I took the boys for a walk as I talked with a friend on the phone. Then I did my Christmas Eve dinner shopping. I typically go to the grocery store around 9 pm when there are few people in the store. There are usually only five or six cars in the parking lot that time of night.

When I got home I decided to cut some sashing pieces and start sewing them onto my improv batik blocks. And I have to say, I’m really liking how this looks!

I love the way the indigo makes the other colors make more sense. I also love how the piecing in each block stands out more when they’re separated by the indigo. I’m thinking this quilt will be finished with a wider indigo border… maybe 4 inches or so.

It’s so wonderful to see that my vision was right! This indigo sashing is making me very happy!

The indigo batik is really a soft and lovely fabric. Batiks can sometimes be coarse and stiff. This one is really lovely and the sashing is going on quickly and nicely.

This is going to come together quickly. All the hard work is done.

And look at how gorgeous this indigo is!! It’s pretty risky to purchase batiks online. I’m pretty happy with the way this purchase turned out.

I love the way the design of this batik gives the sashing movement with slight color variation. Gah! I just love batiks!

I ordered more blue KFC fabrics today from Island Quilter. They had some nice lighter tones. So I’m starting to think about a blue KFC quilt. I might go ahead and make another 16-patch while I’m in that groove. It would be fun to make one from all these new blue fabrics.

I finished the last ten sixteen-patch blocks this evening. This is half of them. The duplicates of all these blocks are in a stack on my cutting table.

My plan now is to finish the sashing on my improv batik quilt top and get that assembled so I can free up that design wall for this sixteen patch quilt.

I just love some of these fabric combos. It’s giving me ideas for future quilts.

I ended up with a really sore and painful shoulder yesterday. A friend of mine who is a therapist told me that it sounded like I had some inflammation in there that was pressing on a nerve. She said I needed to keep ice on it and take Advil for the inflammation and Tylenol for the pain. So I had ice on it almost all day today. Since it was pouring rain all day it was a good day to cuddle up on the sofa.

So I took some time to plan my Christmas Eve dinner and make my shopping list while Bender snoozed next to me.

Christmas Eve dinner was always the big holiday event when I was a kid. Every year I have a group of people over for dinner and I usually cook traditional family food. My mother’s parents were immigrants from northern Italy, so that’s where the food I cook is from. It’s usually a pretty labor intensive meal and I really go all out.

This year, I’m going to make a more simple dinner for a couple of friends who always attend and deliver it to their house. But I’m going to get everything assembled complete with cooking instructions and they can pop it in the oven and eat it piping hot when they’re ready. So it’s taken some time to plan a menu that will work.

I’m going to make poached salmon with roasted potatoes, a Waldorf coleslaw (my friend LOVES my coleslaw) and roasted asparagus. For dessert I’m making an apple cranberry crisp with some vanilla ice cream.

Two packages of the blue KFC fabric I ordered arrived late last week. I’m going to have to rearrange my fabric drawers if I’m going to get this all put away.

This group came from Glorious Color.

This group came from Sew Colorful, one of my favorite places to buy KFC fabric online.

The group of fabrics from Glorious Color seem to have more vibrant spots of color, which I love!

I don’t have a specific plan for these fabrics, but I have a few ideas rattling around in my head.

I have a short work week coming up. I’ll take Christmas Eve off and, of course, Christmas Day. I’ll be cooking and prepping food on the 24th. Then on Christmas Day I’m planning on meeting a couple of friends for a nice long hike, and then my friends will deliver a prime rib dinner later in the afternoon.

Happy holidays to everyone! It’s a tough year for holidays. I hope you can find moments of joy.

I have a total of seventy blocks for this scrappy 16-patch quilt done. The blocks shown here are only half of my completed blocks.

There is a duplicate of each of these in a stack on my cutting table. My plan is to make this quilt 9 blocks by 10 blocks, which will be around 70 x 80 when it’s finished.

I’m really enjoying making this quilt. I’ve loved putting the sets of fabrics together for each block and I’ve found the assembly and sewing to be really satisfying and relaxing. I’m pretty surprised I’m feeling this about matching all those corners!

I’ve been getting a lot done, but I don’t feel like I’m really pushing myself. I’m trying to be really efficient in making these, so I’m doing them fives strip sets at a time.

I get the sections cut out of each strip set and then assemble all ten blocks before I move onto the next set of strips. Half of them go up on the design wall and half go into the stack.

I’m making sure I finish the duplicates of each block rather than putting them aside for later because I know this would be the path to another unfinished quilt. So rather than have to sit down at the end and assemble all the duplicate blocks, when I’m done with the last strip set, I’m done with the blocks.

I really like a lot of the blocks in this quilt, but I’m pretty sure this is my favorite.

I’ve always loved those two fabrics, but I’m not sure I would have ever thought of putting together. But they are pretty fantastic! And obvious. But the combo never crossed my mind.

And can I point out how good my corners look? I can’t believe how well these are going together!

My birthday flowers have been here for three weeks and they are now just barely starting to fade. I’ve never had cut flowers last this long.

I had to go into the office last night to drop of something for a co-worker to pick up so took the opportunity to snap a photo of my boys in front of the building. They were so excited until they realized it was just a photo op.

As I add more blocks to this design wall, I’m liking this quilt more and more. The image I shared in my last post had me thinking the blocks were all too similar. I’ve been adjusting pairings of fabrics as I go along, cutting a few lighter fabrics along the way, and I’m liking where this is going.

I’m thinking there are some blocks in here that will ultimately be removed. But I want to see all the blocks I have planned before making a final decision.

The blocks are more defined now. I think the addition of those lighter fabrics really made that happen. The previous set of blocks all just sort of blended into each other.

I’m really loving some of these fabric combos!

I have 34 blocks done, but only 25 are shown in the photo above. I have the duplicates of 15 of these that still need to be sewn.

Clearly, I spent some time on these blocks this weekend. I’ve been trying to be efficient in how I’m working, so I’m sewing multiple strip sets at a time, then cutting them all, then sewing the blocks.

This means that I didn’t finish the sashing on my batik improv quilt. But I did rearrange those blocks on the design wall so they were more random. The first layout had them all in a diagonal pattern by color. It was too structured. I like this more random arrangement better.

As I was looking through my Kaffe stash to find a few lighter fabrics to add to my sixteen patch quilt I realized that I have essentially NO blue fabrics. so I went online today and ordered a bunch of half yards of KFC blues. I’ve recently sold a few items and thought that was a good way to spend that money.

Tomorrow night I’m going to clean my living room so I can put up my little LED lighted birch tree and some lights on the mantle. I may put up a few holiday decorations, but I’m not going to go crazy. My lighted birch tree will stay up well into March. I just love having those lights in the room when it gets dark so early. Here’s a picture from last year.

I only need a little holiday cheer!

It poured rain here all day long so instead of taking my mid day walk with the dogs I did a little sewing. And after our misty walk after dinner I did even more. I’ve completed 18 16-patch blocks: the nine in this photo and their mates. I’m having really good luck getting two blocks out of one strip set… with about an inch of strip set as waste.

I’m really happy with how these blocks are going together. I’m being really careful to make sure my strip sets are straight and my seam allowances are accurate. The blocks are all coming out almost exactly 8.5 inches square and I’ve avoided wonkiness. So they will eventually go together nicely.

Gah! That blue spot with the tangerine paisley jungle is so good!!

I’ve been using a metal ruler to make sure my strip sets are straight before I press them.

If there’s a bit of a curve in the strip set I can just manipulate it with my hands until the edge lines up with the ruler. then I gently press, making sure to not move the fabric. The I remove the ruler and give it a more thorough pressing.

Then I go through the same steps with the four strip set.

I learned this method of keeping strip sets straight from watching tutorials from Jordan Fabrics.

And the last thing I’m doing to keep my blocks accurate is pinning the rows before I sew them. And my points are looking pretty good!

OMG! These fabrics!!!

I’ll probably make a few more of these blocks this weekend, but I have a goal to get all the sashing on my improv batik quilt and get it off my design wall. I’d like to at least make some good headway on that.

I’ve wanted to make a sixteen patch quilt out of Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics for a while now. So tonight I dug into my KFC scraps that I had cut into 2.5 inch WOF strips and put them into light and dark pairs. And then I sewed the first strip set and first block.

I’ve hesitated to dig into a sixteen patch quilt because I’ve never been very good at sewing straight strip sets and I thought it would be impossible to construct blocks that would go together well. But my sewing skills have improved and I’ve learned some tricks for making strip sets straighter, so I decided to dig in.

There were two other things that encouraged me to strike out and take on something that I thought would be more challenging for me. The first was that Liza Lucy posted on the KFC Facebook page that the pandemic is a perfect time to try something new and make something that is more challenging than what we usually make.

The second thing was that Wanda over at Exuberant Color has started another sixteen patch quilt and wrote a blog post about it today. I remembered that she had done a tutorial on making a sixteen patch quilt some time ago, so I found it and took a look earlier today.

This will be scrappy, which makes me very happy!

It makes me laugh that I was so tentative in striking out on a sixteen patch. It’s not like it’s really precise piecing or a really complicated pattern. I just wanted to make it well and didn’t feel that I was quite ready for the task.

The photo above is all the 2.5 inch WOF scraps I have, divided into light/dark sets of two. Below is a sliver of a view of the combos.

I remember reading somewhere that the pairs for a sixteen patch quilt don’t have to read light and dark compared to the other fabrics in the quilt, just to each other within one block. So some of these combos are close. It’s entirely possible that these pairs will change as I make more blocks. And rather than waiting until I have enough scraps of the values I need, it’s likely I’ll cut some fabric at some point to finish some blocks. I made a few black and white photos to see how my fabrics looked together and that made me make some changes and omit one fabric.

I’ve been really busy at work and with sheep herding lessons on the weekends and getting my Christmas cards and gift shopping done, so haven’t done much sewing in the last couple of weeks. I have two different sheep herding lessons in two different locations on Saturday, so that will take up most of the day.

I am planning on working on the sashing for my improv batik quilt this weekend so I can check that quilt top off.

The weather the last ten days or so has been glorious! But we’re heading into another rainy streak. Rain is really typical for us this time of year so the nice weather is really a treat. We had an absolutely amazing sunset last night.

I also felt the need for a little more light in my outdoor holiday display so I ordered these cute little trees online. They arrived today… about a week earlier than they were supposed to get here. So I got them assembled and put in the planter box after work tonight. I love them!

I’ve really enjoyed seeing all the pretty Christmas lights around my neighborhood on our evening walks.

A friend of mine sent me these flowers for my birthday two weeks ago. And they are still absolutely gorgeous! I’ve never had flowers last like these.

It’s so nice to have flowers in the house this time of year.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

If you’re on Bloglovin, you can follow me there.

And it’s perfect! This photo doesn’t show the richness of the color, but it does show the design. There’s just a little more variation in color than this photo shows. It’s a nice true indigo, but not too dark with touches of aqua and purple. It’s perfect!

I may start getting this cut and onto the blocks tomorrow, but I have to do some arranging on the design wall first to make it feel more random.

Last night I painted another set of four little water colors for holiday cards for people at work. This batch was done with a really pretty teal color, but on the same design. I love this color! It really feels like a cold winter day.

Here’s a close up of one card. I just love these!

I need to paint five more. I’ll start them tonight and finish them up tomorrow.

Tomorrow I’m also going to finish the gussets on the four pouch sets that are nearly done. I have a sheep herding lesson with a guy from Washington at 11 am and have the rest of the day to hunker down at home.

Rico had his weekly herding lesson today and he was awesome. We took a nice long walk in the sun after the lesson. It was so gorgeous! I was in shirt sleeves the entire time and we walked over four miles.

This field is on the campus of Washington State University but it’s sort of isolated and not in view of the campus buildings, which means I don’t have to worry so much about getting cited. So I let the dogs off leash and let them run while I walk laps. Four laps is one mile. It gets me another mile under my belt and they get about 20 minutes of running. We’re all happy.

It was a little cool in the woods. There was actually some ice on the trail in the shady spots, and some of the trail was wet and slick. These boys dumped me on my butt on one slope! I dug in to keep them from pulling me too fast and my feet slipped out from under me. Down I went!

I got my lighted wreaths up when I got home this afternoon. I had to borrow an extension cord from my neighbor to get the last wreath lit. I don’t have any power outlets on the front of my house so I have to run these cords through the garage. They are all on a timer now. It’s not much but it’s nice to not be completely dark in a neighborhood with more lights being put up every day.

Bonus Christmas border collies on the porch!