agilejack

Typical for me and my friend, we’ve been busy buying fabric since she’s been here. Yesterday we headed out to McMinnville, Oregon, to a lovely quilt shop there and picked up a few more Aboriginal prints. I bought a bunch of Aboriginal prints and one piece of KFC fabric. I completely neglected to take a photo of what I bought before I put it away. So here’s a photo of what my friend bought. We bought a lot of the same stuff.

McMinnville is about a 45 minute drive from my house. When we come back we always wind our way back through the country side rather than sticking to the main roads. It’s always a nice and enjoyable ride through gorgeous Oregon farm and wine country. It’s a tradition for us to share a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips on that leisurely drive home.

When we got back home we cut strips from the all new Aboriginal fabrics my friend bought since she’s been here.

This is a good time to get excited about how this quilt will turn out. I know I’m getting excited! It’s so fun to see more bright Aboriginal designs. The first ones the came out with were all darker.

Before we settled down last night we paired up most of the strips in preparation for sewing them into strip sets. We still don’t have enough pairs to make the quilt so we’ll probably have to cut more fabric and make some new combinations.

Today we drove up to Battle Ground, WA, to the country fabric store that has a ton of Kaffe fabric. My friend bought a handful of pieces of some older KFC fabrics she found there. I bought a small stack of blue KFC fabrics to include in the blue quilt I’m thinking about making.

Looking at that photo, I’m thinking one or two of those will definitely NOT make it into that quilt!

While we were up in that area, we stopped to let the dogs have a nice run in the park with the creek. It was pouring when we got there, but it let up a little by the time we left. They didn’t get a walk at all yesterday so they really needed to stretch their legs.

If you ever lose Bender, this is where you can find him about 90 percent of the time.

The dogs were soaked and happy!

Tonight we sat down and sewed 10 or so strip sets together, then finger pressed them in preparation for pressing with the iron.

I showed my friend how I use my metal ruler to keep my strip sets nice and straight when I press them.

And her strip sets turned out beautifully!

We got one set cut before we decided to call it quits for the night.

Look at how gorgeous that block is going to be! Those pops of orange are so incredible! I can’t wait to see more of these blocks come together. My friend is still not terribly excited about making this quilt. I’m hoping she’ll get more excited when she sees some of these blocks come together.

This is the point when I start getting really excited about a project… when you first see how the colors and patterns are playing with each other.

This afternoon we headed to the mall — NOT the favorite activity for either of us. My friend headed for the Apple store to buy a new iPad and I headed to JC Penney to buy some curtain rods. One for the window in my bedroom and one to hang above my bed to hang a quilt. I also bought a small one for a wall hanging in my sewing room.

We’re still trying to decide what we’re going to do tomorrow. We have some winter weather coming in so it might not be the best time to be out on the road. We’re going to play it by ear. If the weather keeps us at home we may hang those curtain rods.

It took two of us tag teaming it today, but we finished this baby right around 10 pm.

It’s not a great photograph, but it shows the full quilt top. We’ll try to get a better one in the natural morning light.

It measures 81 x 81 inches, which is right where I though it would end up. So all those calculations my friend Karin provided really did work! I’ll be adding 7.5 inch borders of the red fabric all the way around. That will bring it to around 95 inches. It will be a good size and will allow for some shrinkage with quilting and washing. Better too big than too small.

My friend did al the pressing as I sewed the seams. It went together easily but it did take longer than I anticipated it would.

It feels really good to have it done and it really is pretty. It’s so much prettier when you can see all the fabrics close up.

My friend and I were talking about this quilt last night and we decided that there are likely a couple hundred different fabrics in this quilt top.

That eclectic and varied mix of fabrics is really something special in my book.

While I was helping my friend maneuver that bulk of fabric across the ironing board I got a glimpse of my standing lamp shining through. It was so pretty.

It looks like stained glass.

It did take some effort to keep all the pieces organized and in the right order. So we kept everything labeled to avoid disaster.

The good thing is that the graduated size of the rows made it a little easy to keep the rows in order. And I had to make sure all the triangles were aligned the right way.

We ended up with three large sections at the end. One section for each corner and a four-row strip of the longest center blocks.

We used every available surface in my sewing room to keep it all in order.

And as usual I folded all the bulk up into a narrower section then accordion folded that so I could feed it through my sewing machine.

This is the entire quilt top with that final diagonal seam pinned. I hold the folded pile on my lap as I feed it all through the machine.

Again, this is not my favorite part of making a quilt. But it’s done! Phew!

And the last few inches of the final seam…

It feels good to have this done! I’ll sew the borders on after my friend leaves next week. We need to focus on her quilt the rest of the week.

And to that end we took a quick trip to Pioneer Quilts, a local quilt shop, early this afternoon to pick up some Australian Aboriginal fabrics for her 16 patch that we’ll work on this week. She brought a bunch of 2.5 inch strips with her, but they are mostly dark so we needed to supplement them with brighter colors and some lighter value fabrics.

I picked up a few half yard cuts for myself while I was there. And I’m feeling pretty bad that I didn’t get any of the purple one, second from the left on the bottom row of the photo above. What was I thinking?

They were having an end of bolt sale so I bought all they had of this blue Kaffe Roman Glass to go with the blue fabrics I’m slowly putting together.

I meant to take some photos of the store to share here. It’s my favorite quilt store in the immediate Portland area.

While were were standing by the cutting table with an impressive stack of bolts of Aboriginal fabrics we were chatting with a woman who had brought her out-of-town friend to the quilt store. Then she held up her phone to show me this picture and asked me, “Is this you?”

I laughed and said, “Yes, but how did you know it was me.” Here’s what tipped her off:

1. She was at the fabric store because I had made a mention of it.
2. She saw the tall stack of Aboriginal fabrics on the cutting table and knew that I love those fabrics.
3. She recognized my hair from my photos on Instagram. And I had a mask on!!!

I wish I’d gotten her name. It was fun to chat as we waited for fabric to be cut.

Tomorrow we are hoping to head out to McMinnville to visit a Quilt store that has a good selection of Aboriginal and Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics. We have to wait and see if they’re open since tomorrow is a holiday.

Then we’ll start pressing and cutting from my friend’s quilt.

I left my house at about 5:15 last night to head to the airport to pick up my friend at around 7:00. I was a little early so I parked at a cell phone waiting lot at the end of one of the runways. About 15 minutes later a man approached my car to see if I had any change. I apologized that I don’t carry any cash. He was very nice and not threatening. But I decided that I should drive to a different lot that has better lighting and more people in it for safety.

It was at that time I realized my car battery was D-E-A-D. Not even a click. Dead as a doornail. And my friend was to be arriving within minutes. So I got on the phone with AAA and had them all set up to come and help within a few minutes.

My brother gave me a charge pack for Christmas a year ago. It’s in the car and charged up, so I thought I’d give it a try to see if I could jump the car myself. The guy at AAA called me at that time to see what I needed help with, and he ended up FaceTiming with me to help me jump my car with the charge pack.

Long story short, we couldn’t get it to work. But the good news is that the AAA service guy arrived about 15 minutes later. So I just had him put in a new battery. I figured it was better than spending a half day during my vacation getting a new battery installed.

Luckily, sort of, when my friend’s plane arrived they couldn’t get the door open, so she sat at the gate for nearly a half hour waiting for them to open the blasted door. She was afraid that they were going to have to use the slide to get off the aircraft.

I finally picked up my friend and we were on our way back to my house right at 8 pm.

After a good night sleep, I was on the air this morning from 7-10. Then we hightailed it down to Molalla, OR, for a sheep herding lesson with Rico. He was so amazing!!! For being in a place he’s not accustomed to, he did an amazing job. He needed a good cool of when we were done.

When our lesson ended we hopped back in the car and hightailed it for home. Then I worked as producer for the final three hours of our drive, from 2-5 pm.

So now… the drive is over and I’m officially on vacation!!! And I’m exhausted.

We ordered some shrimp tacos for dinner, hopped in the car and picked them up, headed home and then actually sat down at the dining room table like civilized people. It was a really good dinner and it was fun to enjoy some conversation while we ate.

After dinner I took the boys for a 2 mile walk. When I got home my friend and I hit my sewing room and put together two more rows of my sunburst quarter log cabin quilt. But first I had to cut some additional setting triangles.

I managed to get the two longest diagonal rows in the quilt sewn together. My friend pressed as I sewed.

I thought maybe we’d actually sew these two rows together and get them pressed tonight, but I was just too tired to tackle that long seam. So we’ll do that tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get the rest of the top done tomorrow.

That’s one long row folded over itself. Below, both rows all sewn together, resting peacefully on my cutting table.

The good news with the remainder of this quilt top is that each upcoming row is shorter than the last. So It should go together pretty quickly.

Tomorrow we’re going to get a good sleep in. Then we’ll hit a lovely local quilt shop to pick up some Aboriginal fabrics for the quilt we’ll make for my friend while she’s here.

I’m exhausted. And I’m happy we’re down to the last two days of our fundraising drive. My friend that visited late last summer, the one who helped me make my red Fractured quilt, is flying into town tomorrow night. She will spend ten days here. I’m taking next week off work and am soooo looking forward to it.

That means I’ve been busy this week getting my house in order and getting ready to be gone from work for a week… all during a stressful and demanding time at work. So I haven’t gotten too much done in my sewing room this week.

I did manage to finish up the last 18 color wash blocks over the last couple of days.

That makes 161 blocks done.

That stack is almost six inches tall.

I’ll put these aside while my friend is here. Our plan is to make a 16 patch quilt top for her while she’s here. She hates the idea of making one, but I’m going to show her how much fun they are and how easy they are to make, thanks to the tutorial by Wanda at the Exuberant Color Blog. We’re going to make it from Australian Aboriginal fabrics.

And tonight, to prepare for my friend’s visit, I finished cleaning my living room and vacuuming the entire house. And a quick touch up of the guest room. Then I took the boys out for a nice 9 pm two-mile walk.

When we got home I hit my sewing room and pulled the quarter log cabin blocks off my retractible design wall so it will be free for us to use while my friend is here. I carefully stacked and labeled the blocks to I can easily sew the rows and assemble the rest of the top.

We might have enough time to finish up this top tomorrow and Saturday night since we’ll have two people. We can’t start on my friend’s 16 patch until we do a little shopping on Sunday.

My brother and his wife will come up for a visit next weekend while my friend is here. I have some things I need my brother to do for me… he’s very handy. I’m going to have him hang some curtain rods for me. One for my bedroom window, and one above my bed to hang a quilt eventually… maybe my new color wash. Maybe my KFC scrappy trip quilt.

I will also have him hang one in my sewing room to hang my NY beauty wall hanging. You can see it, and my KFC scrappy trip quilt in this blog post.

One other little thing he’s going to do for me is attach a new latch to my Featherweight case to replace the broken one.

This is an actual vintage latch. Not a reproduction. So the store that sells them doesn’t always have them in stock. I’ve been on their waiting list for months. And they got some in jus tin time for my brother’s visit. Once this is done I might give that case some attention. It’s pretty beat up. I might try just cleaning it. If that doesn’t do the trick, I might paint it. There’s always a chance I’ll decoupage it with come KFC fabrics. I wouldn’t do it if the case was in good shape. it’s kind of a mess!

While all my company is here, we’ll go up to the Olympia, Washington, area because I have Rico entered in a sheep herding trial. It’s time to see how he can do in competition. it should be a fun day out for the four of us.

During one of our recent wind storms, a piece of a large sequoia tree across the street from my house fell and hit the house behind it. Yesterday they removed the remainder of the tree. This was a BIG tree. You can see the guy at the top, just below the foliage.

It was fascinating to watch him work.

And I got there just in time to watch him lop off the top of the tree.

I was talking to him later in the day and he said the tree was probably around 100 feet tall. He said he’s been up in trees that are over 150 feet tall!

I can’t imagine doing that for a living. It just gives me the shivers!

It makes me so sad to see that tree gone. It’s been the best part of the view out of the front of house since I moved here almost 13 years ago. I’ve always loved having it’s shadow cast into my back yard by the morning sun. I’m goin to miss it.

The good news is that I am the proud owner of a huge pile of former sequoia tree.

That’s a whole truck load of that tree all chopped up. My yard guys will come this Saturday and move it to my back yard to cover some bare dirt areas under some trees and in the way back portion. It’s a truck load of free mulch!

It’s been colder here the last few days. it was so cold yesterday morning, the little metal birds I have on the top of my fence, were all frosty.

And a few days ago I was convinced spring was here! We’re going to have a couple of cold days next week. They’re predicting a high of 28 degrees for one day next week! That’s really cold for Portland! But it’s going to be sunny, so that’s a good trade off for me.

Vacation baby!!! Two more days of work and it all starts!

Bender’s resting up to get ready for vacation.

I’m tired again tonight. Had an early shift today and another one tomorrow.

I spent a little bit of time in my sewing room after our two-mile walk in the cold and dry air this evening.

There very well may be a coyote out there in all that dark.

I chunked away at twelve more color wash blocks.

Here’s the blocks before I squared them up.

Someone asked me if they could use charm squares to make these blocks. Absolutely! Three of these blocks were made from left over charm squares. You need to be a little more careful in sewing them together since there’s less to trim off. Here’s a picture of one of the blocks made from charm squares with a squared up 4.5 inch block on top of it.

You can see how little room you have for error. I’ve also made several of these from left over 2.5 inch strips.

Terry Rowland gives thorough instructions for cutting the fabric for the smaller blocks. I cut the two side pieces to 2 1/4 x 6 inches. The two matching center pieces are cut to about 2 1/4 x 3 inches wide. The squares for the middle are cut at about 3 inches by 2 1/4 inches. That gives me plenty of room to play with, and enough forgiveness to change the shape and size of the squares in the middle.

It’s more dynamic and interesting if the center pieces are different sizes and shapes.

I mentioned in one of my recent blog posts that each of these blocks is made from a different fabric. Well, that changed tonight. Three of the blocks in this set are made from the same fabric, but I thought they might be different enough that you wouldn’t notice.

My inclination is to use the two blocks on the left as they look very different. I think the one on the right is too similar to the one next to it.

We were supposed to get some snow last night and I was hoping to wake up to some of the white stuff this morning. I was quite disappointed.

Heading to bed!

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!