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I don’t know how I did it, but I’m pretty sure I accidentally deleted some comments on my last post, but wanted to take a few minutes to answer them here.

Wanda at Exuberant Color commented that she like that making string quilts is relaxing because they’re sort of mindless. And that’s exactly one of the things I like about them. If I’m a little tired at the end of the day but feel like doing a little sewing, I can make a few string blocks and not worry about accuracy and consistency. Every block is free form, unique in fabrics and sizes of strips. And they’re all pretty gorgeous!

Here’s another one that I think I deleted:

Thanks Donna! Sorry I deleted your comment!

Here’s a couple that I didn’t delete and they appear on the post, but I might as well respond to them here.

Pam; you are a very bad influence! Or a really good one!!!

BJ; so funny. I’ve never thought about it but I also have very few solids. I have a few charm packs of off white and have no recollection of when or why I bought it. I have a few pieces of white on white that I bought several years ago and never used. I’m using some now for mask linings. But I don’t think I’ve ever bought a solid color piece of fabric! Thanks for reading!

Sheila; I love scrappy quilts and have never run out of scraps! I have no idea where all these scraps keep coming from!

Regarding the tutorial, I followed a video tutorial from Missouri Star quilts that I found helpful. It shows how to do the common center strip. You can get to the video tutorial by clicking here.

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting!

 

 

 

 

 

As I’m getting close to starting another string quilt, I looked back in my photos at all the string quilts I’ve made in the past.

The second full size quilt I ever made and first quilt I ever made with Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics was this string quilt.

It was my introduction to string quilts and my introduction to KFC fabrics. I made it entirely from scraps that a friend of mine gave me. It started my obsession with string quilts and with KFC fabrics.

I’m a big fan of scrappy quilts especially when they’re made from bright and vibrant colors and patterns. And this green Kaffe Roman Glass is one of my favorites. For me, it had to be on the back of my first KFC quilt.

Every block has the black and white strip. This black and white fabric is not a KFC fabric. You may have noticed that I love a graphic black and white fabric with Kaffe fabrics! It’s kind of my thing.

I had this completed quilt in my closet for a couple of years when I gave it to a friend last fall. She had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was getting ready to undergo surgery and follow up treatment. She absolutely loves it and uses it constantly — the biggest compliment you can give me when I gift you a quilt!

My next string quilt was very similar, but made from bright batik scraps. The black and white center strip was whiter than the one on the KFC string quilt and I cut the center strips 2 inches wide rather than 1.5 inches. The combo of those two things really lightened up this quilt in my eye.

I sew almost exclusively with either batiks or Kaffe fabrics. I make a lot of zipper pouch sets out of batiks and they generate a lot of wonderful scraps. I just love the bright colors and free form designs.

The green backing on this quilt is a batik that I bought for almost nothing a few years ago. I bought a bunch of it thinking I’d make a bath robe and lounge pants out of it. I lost enthusiasm for that project and thought it was perfect for this quilt.

I gave this quilt to a friend of mine who was going through a rough patch and needed something cheerful and bright in the midst of a dark and dreary NW Oregon winter. She has embraced it as a part of her everyday life.

The next string quilt was actually two. My nephew and his wife were expecting twin daughters three years ago, so I made these adorable pink and purple string quilts out of mostly Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics. There are one or two batiks in each one.

The quilts are made from basically the same KFC fabrics in different colorways. There are a few fabrics that appear in both quilts. I had so much fun making these and was incredibly happy with how they turned out. And they are so soft and comfy.

I had so much fun picking out the quilting design for these. It’s gentle swirls with little hearts. So perfect!

The last string quilt that I made was made at the same time as these baby quilts. It was for my great nephew who would be the big brother to these twin girls. I wasn’t quilting when he was born, so this was a good opportunity to make one for him. He is a huge fan of super heroes so that was the theme for this quilt.

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I was really stumped on how to make a quilt out of super heroes and the owner of a local quilt store suggested that I buy solid colors that appear in the super hero print and use those for the sting quilt top, and then use the super hero fabric on the back. This was an approach that felt much more natural to me.

I found a really fun star fabric that I used as the center strips and borders for the front of the quilt, and I pieced it with the super hero fabric on the back.

The quilting pattern has stars in it! How perfect!

This fabric was really out of the ordinary for me. But I was pretty happy with how this turned out.

I’m really getting itching to start on my Aboriginal string quilt, but I’m not allowing myself to do it until I finish the scrappy hexagon top, and make some good headway on assembling my crumb quilt.

Let’s see if I can pull that off, or if I go rogue and go right to the string quilt!

I am so ready to be done with this scrappy hexagon quilt with the blue spots background. I had wanted to finish it up this weekend and move onto assembling up my crumb quilt, but I kept having all kinds of trouble.

So this is where it is as of this evening. The half that’s not on the design wall is done! All I have to do with this half is to sew these three sections together, then cut the bottom off straight.

I had wanted to do a little documentation on how I put the bottom and top rows together, and ran into all kinds of issues with the top section because I just flat out did it wrong! I had to pick out quite a few seams and redo them. But this next photo gives you an idea of how the last few rows go together. This is of the bottom section, so I did this one correctly the first time!

You sew the pieces together in diagonal rows. Then sew the diagonal rows to each other. This post shows a little more about how the rows go together.

The triangles at the bottom edge will be trimmed off even when it’s all sewn together. Then I’ll put a 1.5 or 2 inch border on the bottom and top and a wider border on the sides. This quilt is a little narrow and long so I want to add a little width.

When I made the original Kaffe Fassett Collective hexagon quilt that all these scraps came from, I remember it going together much more easily. I’ve really struggled with this one. It slowed me down yesterday and made it a frustrating process. It all seems so wonky and uneven. I think I didn’t do such a great job managing all those bias edges.

So I decided that tonight I’d only do a little bit and save the assembly of the larger pieces for later this week.

Once this is done I want to see if I can get some decent photos of it. It’s much prettier in person than it is in photos. It all feels so harsh in the photos. It’s much more friendly in person. But it is definitely bold! Not for someone who has discomfort with color!

The weather here in Portland has been fantastic. Today was such a perfect day. The next ten days look about the same. Mid 70s to low 80s and cooling down nicely at night. We took our typical two walks today — one mid day and one in the evening —  and it was pretty glorious.

I did some calculations this afternoon and realized that my boys and I have walked around 800 miles since the first part of February! That’s like walking from Portland to Salt Lake City! I sure do feel a lot better and have dropped just shy of 50 lbs in the process! And my boys just love it. They get so excited when they start seeing the signs that I’m getting ready for a walk (headset, poop bags, leashes, phone. . .) It’s going to be quite an adjustment for them if I ever get to go back to working in the office.

If you wear glasses you know how tough it can be to wear a mask. A friend of mine gave me some self adhesive flat aluminum wires last week that you adhere to your mask to make it fit around your nose better and helps keep your glasses from fogging. So far, I’m a big fan. they work really well with my favorite mask. (You can find the pattern in this post.)  I bought the flat wires on Amazon. I picked up several packages of 120 for around $8 each. I kept some and gave some to friends. It seems like you could use them on pretty much any style mask.

I broke down and cut my own bangs Sunday morning. They were really starting to bother me. They’re not really as short as they look. I’ve just pushed them up and to the side. I’m not willing to die for a hair cut, so I’ll tolerate this mop for awhile.

I took Rico to his agility lesson last week and my teacher snapped this photo of us. This is what dog agility looks like in a pandemic: a mask, crazy hair, and a dog who is REALLY excited to be out there doing agility!

 

 

I’ve got all the borders and sashing sewn onto my crumb blocks and have set them aside until I get my design wall cleaned off. I’m not going to show what I decided on for the sashing until I can get a more complete photo, but I’m really loving how it’s turning out.

I chain pieced the sashing onto two sides of each block in the last two evenings. So they’re all ready for the design wall.

That’s 63 blocks all connected by thread. I have a handy little tool that I use for separating large quantities of chain pieced blocks like this. It makes it go really fast. I got them all pressed and they’ll wait a couple days.

I will finish up the scrappy hexagon quilt top today. I only need to sew a few rows together and it will be done. It goes fast because the blocks are big. I want to get a portion of that off the design wall so I can take photos of how I put the partial rows at the top and bottom together.

My next project is probably going to be an Aboriginal fabric string quilt. A friend of mine just made one and I’m in love with it. Here’s my friend’s blocks. They all have paper on the back to she can’t put them on her design wall.

And a close up so you can see the amazing fabrics. I just LOVE this quilt and can’t wait to get going.

My friend sent me a bunch of her Aboriginal scraps, all neatly organized and labeled. There are strips of varying widths and lengths, triangles of different sizes, and larger pieces of fabric that I can cut strips from.

She even sent a roll of 2.5 inch WOF strips that she cut. I think each fabric only appears once in this roll, and a rough count last night tells me that there are more than 50 2.5 inch strips — so enough to make another quilt! I’m going to look at some jelly roll quilts to get an idea of what I might want to eventually make with these. I have a bunch of black and white fabrics that I might combine these with.

I’ve made several different string quilts like my friend’s in the past. One from Kaffe Fassett Collective scraps, one from bright batik scraps, one from super hero fabric for my nephew’s son, and two baby quilts from KFC fabrics for my nephew’s twin daughters – one in purples and one in pinks.

I love making string quilts. But all except one that I’ve made in the past were sewn onto paper squares. Then, when the blocks are all sewn I had to remove all that paper. Not my favorite activity. So for this quilt I’m planning on sewing the strips onto muslin squares. I used this method for the super hero quilt and it worked really well. It adds a little thickness to the quilt, but these fabrics are so light and soft that it will be fine. I’ll just have to be sure to wash and dry the muslin first.

I got a gift certificate to sewcolorful.com from a friend recently after her dog stayed with us for a few days. I used it to purchase a big piece of Brandon Mably’s onion rings to use on the back of this new string quilt… and for the center strip of each block. I just love this fabric. And anyone who has paid any attention to my quilting knows that I have a soft spot for graphic black and white prints!

This quilt will be a gift for one of my nephews.

I’ll do another post soon showing my previous string quilts.

I got the borders on all 63 crumb blocks over the weekend. Well, I actually did 64 — I made one more crumb block at the end because when I made the first set, I did 8 in one color. This was before I did the calculations on how many of each color I needed. So I ended up with 8 of darker purple, 7 of 7 other colors, and 6 of yellow. Rather than taking dark purple spots off of one block and adding a yellow border, I just whipped up another crumb block and bordered it with the yellow.I knew that having only six yellow blocks would irritate me once the quilt was done!

I just love all the color and all the spots! It’s going to be fun to see how these all look once I get them up on the design wall.

So next up I’ll finish the scrappy hexagon quilt and get it off my design wall. Then these blocks will go up. I had to order the fabric for the sashing so I can’t make any progress on this crumb quilt until that arrives.

I met some friends down in Molalla, OR, today to work Rico in a little bit of sheep herding and then we took a three-mile hike through some beautiful stands of trees. Oregon really has amazing trees.

There were wild flowers all over the place. You can just see some pink foxglove in this photo. It really felt good to get out in the fresh air and see something different.

There’s a little better picture of some foxglove. So pretty.

We had fourteen dogs out on this walk. All of them border collies except for three of them. There were five people. Amazingly, the dogs all got along wonderfully, but that’s border collies for you. You can toss fifty of them into a field together and they all just coexist nicely.

My friend Heather is a wonderful photographer. She took this photo of my boys. They’re so cute!

We were on BLM land on an old logging road. It’s right next to my friend Maddy’s property. I can’t imagine having such close access to a nice hike like that — plus, having sheep right on the property to work any time. My dogs would be in heaven.

When I got home I decided to dig into organizing my messy garage. I’ve been trying to make myself do it for several weeks now. It was getting really hard to get to things I needed. And I had a ridiculous collection of cardboard boxes that had been tossed in there. I completely filled my recycle bin and my garbage can.

I took before and after pictures, but the before picture doesn’t really show what a mess it was. There’s still a lot of stuff in there, but it’s all stuff I need and it’s all organized.

This is the before photo. A lot of the mess is hidden behind other mess. But the pile was that deep all the way to the back of the garage.

Here’s the after photo.

You can see all my pandemic panic buying in this photo. Three huge packages of toilet paper, one unopened package of paper towels (another package is on the shelf), four cases of sparkling water, and four big bags of dog food. I’m getting to Costco about once a month, so I just buy toilet paper each visit. At some point in time I’ll stop buying. Not sure what that point is.

And, of course, the stuff I had really hoped to find wasn’t in the garage. But it feels good to have it all done anyway.

Once again I’m taking advantage of my renewed interest in sewing and have started getting all these fun spotty borders put on my 63 crumb blocks. There will be nine different color ways of spots once I’m done.

I cut out all my border strips as I was live streaming my nephew’s wedding Friday afternoon. It was a Catholic mass so there was plenty of time for pressing and cutting! they were married in Wisconsin with about a dozen people in the church… just immediate family, with hundreds watching on the internet.

(This is the couple who received my recent blue and green batik quilt as a gift. they opened it while we were on a Zoom call this morning and the bride loved it! She said the colors are her colors and she LOVED the fish quilting! I told them that the biggest compliment they could give me was to USE it! They promised they would.)

These crumb blocks are squared up to eight inches. The spot borders are cut to 1.5 inches wide. Each block gets two cut to 8 inches and two cut to 10 inches.

I’m chain piecing these borders onto the blocks in sets of seven — all with the same color border so that I don’t accidentally mix the border colors on any given block. That sounds like something I might do!

I sew the eight inch pieces onto opposite sides of each block. then press those pieces and add the ten inch pieces to the two other sides. I can whip through a set of these pretty quickly. It’s amazing how each color of spots makes the blocks look completely different. Amazing how this plays with our brains!

I have been using Best Press prior to cutting my strips. This helps me keep the blocks more square and it’s a little harder for me to press wonkiness into the strips once they’re sewn on.

I had done a lot of debating previously about what to do for the sashing for these blocks. After a lot of debate and auditioning a lot of different options, I decided that I would use black and white Jumble with black spots for cornerstones. See a blog post about all this deliberation here.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ve decided NOT to use the graphic black and white option! I almost always go to the graphic black and white option. But I’ve been thinking about it and I just don’t think the jumble is making the blocks sing.

So I dug into my stash to try some other options and had a friend on the phone while I texted her photos of options. I’m not going to tell you which one I decided on, but I HAVE made a decision and I’m ordering the fabric as we speak! But we were both in total agreement on the one I chose!

I should have a pretty good start on getting the borders on all 63 blocks done this weekend. Then I’m going to finish up my scrappy hexagon quilt top so I can get it off my design wall.

 

I’m taking advantage of my recent enthusiasm for sewing to finish up some UFOs I promised myself I would get done during pandemic isolation. Today I finished the backing for my scrappy batik star quilt and it’s all ready to go off to my long arm quilter.

I just love this dark blue sunflower fabric. I bought it in Utah during my vacation last summer. There’s a little quilt store in Bountiful, just north of Salt Lake City, that has the most amazing selection of batik fabrics. I always go just a little crazy when I’m there. I bought this specifically with this quilt in mind and I think it’s perfect.

I always suffer a little anxiety when I make a quilt back, worrying that my calculations are wrong and the back will be too small. I always measure, double check my measurements, do the math again, and make sure I have left plenty of extra size for the quilter to deal with. When I finish the back I fold the quilt top and back in quarters and lay the top on the back to verify that I’ve made it big enough. Even as careful as I am with my measuring and double checking I’m always a little relieved when it’s all correct. In the photo above you can clearly see the backing fabric extending beyond the edges of the top. Phew!

I really dislike making quilt backs because I hate managing all that fabric. So I’ve come up with a few methods that help me keep it all organized and ready to move through my machine. This frequency of pins makes those long seams stay together really nicely for me, and it makes it all come out much more even. Once pinned, I fold up all the excess fabric so I have many layers thick, but only about 12 inches wide. I leave plenty of room between the folded fabric and the edge I’ll be sewing. the I accordion fold the whole thing so I can more easily feed it through the machine.

I put this folded pile in my lap and feed it through the machine, adjusting it as I go, making sure it’s not catching on my extension table or piling up as it goes through the machine.

I also don’t love matching prints for a backing and it would be pretty impossible to match a batik anyway, so I often use blocks left over from the front to make a strip to connect to larger backing pieces. But for this quilt, I used a strip of batik that plays well with the colors in the sunflowers. I like the bold contrasting strip on the backing. The strip is sewn in between the two larger pieces of backing fabric.

And it’s times like this that I really love my cutting table. It’s actually a stainless steel restaurant table that I bought online a few years ago. It has a shelf underneath where I put bins with all my batiks. It has plenty of room for my cutting mat, it’s a really comfortable height and it’s durable as all get out.

I’ve also decided to start chunking away at putting the spots borders on all of my crumb blocks. I think I have 63 eight-inch blocks. With the borders and sashing this will end up being a generous size quilt. I started cutting the various spots fabric this evening before our walk and got a few strips sewn on before I ran out of bobbin thread. I can’t wait to see this quilt come together.

You can see posts about the crumb quilt here, here, here and here.

 

I’ve decided who I’m going to gift this scrappy little star quilt to so I thought I would get it ready to go to the long arm quilter. I have been toying with the idea of putting a border on it because it turned out just a little small. So I tried out some fabrics I had and landed on this gorgeous blue, red, fuchsia and orange batik. It’s such a gorgeous fabric and ties in with a lot of the scrappy batiks in the quilt.

It also ties in nicely with the dark blue and sunflower batik I bought for the back. I chose a bright yellow to be used for the binding. I love a binding with a nice pop of color!

Here’s a look at what the binding will look like.

I messaged my quilter a week or so ago and she is actually keeping quite busy during the shutdown. She has saved a slot for my two quilts. All I need to do now to have this one ready is to get the back pieced.

For the quilting design, I’m thinking of something floral and curvy, maybe with a golden thread. I have time to ruminate on it as this is planned for a holiday gift.

 

I was looking at Pinterest last night and you know how it happens. You go down some rabbit hole and pretty soon you find something you’ve always been looking for but didn’t know it. Well, last night I ran across this fun little fish pillow pattern and decided that it would make a quick and fun little project for today.

The pattern included options for a checkerboard or tiger stripe body, but I opted to improv piece my own from my Kaffe Fassett Collective scraps. The pattern has you top stitch the pieced panel onto muslin. I just did a quilt as you go technique instead. Then cut the body pattern out of the resulting piece.

I always love the way an improv piece looks after you trim it up. It’s the part of the process I love the most. It looks so clean and tight!

It went together pretty easily, but there were a few curves to sew. I don’t mind curves, but these are curves with some bulk and some interfacing. So they were a little bothersome and didn’t go together as well as I would have liked.

I was going to use some yellow Aboriginal Dots fabric for the face, tail and fins, but I couldn’t find the piece I KNOW I have. Also couldn’t find several other colorways I know I have. So the first one I found was this purple, and I think it’s pretty perfect!

Here it is… all ready to sew the two sides together. It seemed like I got to this point pretty quickly.

Finally! All those fins tucked in where they’re supposed to be tucked in! Ready to stuff.

All stuffed and sewn closed. I used a long handled wooden spoon to shove the stuffing into all the nooks and crannies.

Not really sure what I thought I’d do with this when it was done, but I’m thinking it will end up hanging from the ceiling of my sewing room.

Here’s the pattern. I found it on Etsy.

I’m really fascinated by paper piecing and have seen some really amazing things made with this technique. I’ve dabbled a little but haven’t done anything too difficult or large. It really goes against the type of quilting I like to do. I’m not attracted to really fussy quilts with lots of tiny pieces. I can appreciate the work and skill that goes into making them, but it’s just not something I’m very interested in making.

But I have made some small paper pieced projects — a lot of them have been used as panels in my zipper pouches. Here’s two on a leaf template that I just love. I sewed them into nice little tailored zipper pouches with lots of details, and a zipper pocket on the back.

There were a lot of pieces in these blocks. It’s amazing how many seams it takes to make the curve on the lower part of the leaf. You can see all the seams.

(I went into m way-back machine and found that I purchased the pattern for the leaf on Etsy. You can find it here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/637507460/geometric-leaf-foundation-paper-piecing

I just love making panels like this for a zipper pouch. It’s a fun way to experiment with a new technique or a template. I like that I can try something new without a huge commitment to make an entire quilt.

How pretty is this?!?!

And this one too. I love the gorgeous batiks, but there’s something about that chambray that just makes me so happy. I love the way it comes out so crisp and tailored. Gah!

I just love all the detail of the quilting on the paper pieced panel, the top-stitching all over he pouch, and the zipper finish on the top and pocket. I just love all these crisp details. They really make a piece like this special.

These pouches have a generous zipper pocket on the back. It’s a great size to hold an extra set of circular knitting needles, your stitch markers, darning needles, scissors, and all the other stuff you need when you’re knitting. And I just love the pop of color from the lining. Nothing like a little surprise in a lining.

Click on these photos for a larger photo and take a look at the details on this pocket. It’s a really easy and quick way to make a pocket and it looks so good!

I’ve been collecting other paper piecing templates that I will make at some time. I have a really fun one of a fish that’s all bones. It’s so cute and so different. I expect to see it on a pouch some time.