agilejack

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.

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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!

I’ve been waiting and waiting for my indigo batik to show up so I can get moving on the sashing for my improv batik quilt. A week after I placed my order, I finally got an email letting me know it had shipped. I’m guessing that I won’t actually receive it until next week.

I did cut some ugly batik scrap into a block to test the size I need for the setting triangles for my scrappy quarter log cabin quilt made from KFC scraps with the happy little sunbursts.

I need to get moving on the final blocks for that as I wait for fabric to arrive.

Over the last few days I’ve been dealing with a leak in the water line coming into my house. After dealing with all kinds of logistics, the plumber had a cancellation and had someone at my house this morning and had it all taken care of in about three hours. Initially, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to get a plumber to my house for at least a week.

This photo shows the water from the leak that had pooled near my porch and foundation. They found a huge tree root in there that had basically pushed the pipe to the side and broke it! I was really happy when they told me that my crawl space was dry as a bone!

I’m always quite anxious when dealing with issues like this. The unknown makes me very uneasy and I’ve been on edge for over a week now. It feels good to have it fixed so I can stop thinking about it!

I have been doing a little sewing over the last few evenings. I’m working on finishing up four zipper pouch sets that I’ve had all cut and ready to assemble for over a year. This is a total of 12 pouches in various sizes. I’ve been making these four sets assembly line style and I should have them all done tomorrow evening.

Here’s four sets, partially done.

Here’s one partially assembled set.

I’ve sold a lot of these pouch sets over the years. I’m guessing I’ve made at least a hundred sets, mostly in batiks. I’ve sold them during the holidays and during my summer vacations for several years now.

I have 8 sets that I made last year and didn’t sell. I’ll add these four new sets and will try to sell these this year.

I’m hoping people are looking for gift ideas with the pandemic affecting their ability and desire to shop. But if I don’t sell them all it’s ok. It’s really nice to have a few sets on hand for last minute gifts.

Each set had three pouches of various sizes.

Last night I picked out some Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics to make Smarfs for holiday gifts for some of my team at work. You can see previous Smarfs I’ve made here. They will make nice gifts and they are quick and fun to make out of these amazing fabrics.

I’m working on some goodie packages for the people in my department at work and am making a hand painted holiday card for each of them. So I got started tonight. These are water color, are about 4×6 inches and will be glued to a blank card. I have eight more to make.

I love painting dramatic skies!

This weekend will be filled with sheep herding. I have my regular lesson on Saturday and then a special lesson with a trainer from Washington on Sunday. The weather looks fantastic and I’m looking forward to being outside with dogs and sheep!

I did it. I FORCED myself to finish sewing this quilt to together this evening so I can move onto other projects that make me happier.

I will eventually add a small off white border to this and then add some wider indigo borders to make this read more blue.

But I have no plans for it so am not in a hurry. And Bender agrees that this quilt is quite boring.

The second I got this done I tossed it back onto the design wall to snap a photo and then folded it immediately.

Next I put my sunburst scrappy blocks up on one of my design walls because I wanted to see how many more blocks I need to make.

That’s all 60 blocks that I have made. It looks like I need at least six more blocks, plus the setting triangles… which will be made from full blocks cut in half. I have plenty of scraps to finish this up and these sew up fast for me.

That photo really doesn’t do this quilt justice.

That’s closer to true colors.

Next I tossed my improv batik blocks up on the design wall, just because I wanted to see them all together.

I still need to figure out how wide I’m going to make the sashing and then decide on a final size for the quilt. I’m thinking I’ll cut the indigo batik sashings to 2 inches and then I’ll add a wider border of the indigo batik. I’ll have to play with it once my sashing fabric arrives. I do have enough pieces of these batiks left over to make one more block in each color combo. If I don’t need them for the front, I’ll use them in the backing.

These blocks will eventually be arranged in a more random manner. This quilt will look completely different once the sashing is added.

Of course I’m thinking about what quilt I’ll make next. It will certainly be from KFC fabrics. Yellows or reds, flying geese or big blocks. So many options!