Happy New Year! (Yes, I know this is 11 months late…)

Here is a post I had been working on prior to the arrival of our smallest blonde.  See how far behind I am?

Have you all made your New Year’s Resolutions?  I haven’t.  I never seem to stick to them.  I do have Goals though.  That just makes it seem like there’s more flexibility than there is in a Resolution.  I’m sure I’ll have the same Goals next year too.  Get the house cleaner and more organized, lose some weight, spend more time crafting, probably some of the same ones you have yourself.

I did do some work in my craft room on New Year’s Day.  Actually, I had convinced my husband that I had finally saved enough money to get the Ikea closet I’ve been dreaming of.  So, a couple of days after Christmas we took a road trip to Ikea and purchased everything I needed to make my dream quilting storage come true.  That means that there are now boxes lying around with their contents waiting to be assembled.  I’m also not very patient.  I also know that in order to get these wardrobe frames in the closet there is a significant amount of work to be done to said closet before they can be assembled and quite frankly I do not want to wait that long! What needs to be done?  Well, part of the drywall needs to come down and the doorway reframed and the inside of the closet needs to be taped and mudded and primed and painted (probably just white since you won’t see it for the two humongous wardrobe frames in there).  Which of course caused us to rethink the doors for the closet as it doesn’t seem that the normal bi-fold doors will be suitable.  It appears that we will just set the units inside and frame around them and pick up doors from Ikea at a later date.  Easy solution.

Not so easy solution was how was I going to get some of this unit assembled so I could start using it?  After all, the closet is full of tubs full of fabric so working on all that would be difficult at best and there really isn’t anywhere in the room to put the tubs temporarily so that work can begin.  I decided that if we moved my yarn we could set up one of the units and I could get the fabric that is in the closet put away so that it wouldn’t be so full of tubs.  So that is exactly what we did.  The results were so good that all my fabric fit in the one unit!  There’s not a whole lot of room for expansion, but everything is in there from my stash.  Seeing it all like that makes me feel like my stash is small….  Of course my husband said good thing you bought two because now you can store some of your other stuff in the second one once we get them installed.  He’s right, and I’m hoping that I can get some of those projects done so that there will be room for more fabric.  I mean, you can always use more fabric right? I even put away the bags of fabric I had sitting around waiting until the next time I convinced my husband to take all my tubs out so I could put things away.  I’m sure you are probably wondering how many storage tubs I cleared out.  The answer is 14.  Keep in mind that they weren’t all completely full.  Everything had been sorted by color or specialty (like my Civil War Reproductions, Batiks,  and Asian fabrics).  When I began thinking this project through I also went through my fabric and uniformly folded all of the fat quarter and 1/2 yards so they were the same size and we had estimated that two tubs would equal one drawer (not full tubs, just the area that fills the bottom with the uniformly folded fabrics).  However, the drawers held just a bit more.  Plus the shelves are deep enough that I could have my larger yardage not folded up a bunch and they can lay nicely with the selvage edges in the back so I can see the fabrics better on the folds.  Here’s a picture of what I mean.

See?  Isn’t that cool?  I was pretty impressed.  Of course now I want the closet done so I can get the other unit assembled and put even more stuff away.  Although now I have gotten to thinking about my yarn stash.  Whenever I start an afghan I pick colors to match whoever will be gifted.  That means that I have lots of leftovers and yarns that I have been gifted/inherited.  I’m thinking that my first stop will be to start doing some projects where I can use up that yarn and get it out of my stash.  Not sure what all I’ll make with it, but you have to start somewhere.  Plus that is something I can work on while lounging on the couch in the evening.  At least that is where my mind is taking me at this time.

Since having written this, I discovered a new book while at Joann‘s.  It is titled Crochet One Skein Wonders.  You can see more about it here.  There are a lot of scarves in there, but it also breaks things down by the type of yarn so you aren’t looking at delicate projects for your bulky stuff.  Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool and think it will help me burn through my left overs and actually make something useful.

Of course now I don’t have much time to lounge on the couch, let alone much time to spend in my sewing room.  I’m hopeful that will change soon though, that the mai tei wrap I ordered will arrive and  allow me to wear the smallest blonde so I can continue to work and still spend quality time with the smallest blonde.  That would at least help me to stay on track.  I’m certainly not giving up on it.

I would like to add that I was really optimistic when I wrote all this – I haven’t really had much time to sew at all.  I made 19 Transformers pillowcases for small blonde’s birthday party and that was a stretch.  I remain optimistic though.  Small blonde goes to school 3 days a week and smallest blonde is becoming more independent so I just might be able to start sneaking in some quality time with my machine.  It certainly let me know how much it missed me while we were at this year’s fall retreat.  Wish me luck that this best laid plan doesn’t go awry.  At least this time.

Still on the hunt.

Quite a while ago I started a project.  Honestly I started quite a few projects, but there is one project in particular I would like to finish but I can’t.  I ran out of the fabric.  I probably only need a fat quarter or 1/2 yard to finish the blocks I need for this quilt, but I have been looking for a few years and I’m beginning to lose hope of finding it.  Periodically I google for it or search online quilt shops in the hope that I will find someone who is clearing out their back room and they had a bit more on the bolt.  So far no luck and to me it is pretty sad.

Here is a picture of the quilt I am trying to finish.

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Pretty cool isn’t it?  The centers of the blocks are from a woven panel I had picked up at at quilt show and held back for a while.  The panel is Japanese in origin and there is a folk tale about the rabbit.  You can find more about that here.  I really love the Asian fabrics and when I came across this panel I had to have it.  I did walk away and come back to it and thankfully it was still there.  Whew!  Of course it sat for a while waiting for inspiration to strike when I came across one of Inez’s books about two block quilts.  Actually it is called Pairing Up and you can find it for a really reasonable price here.

I very carefully cut out the rabbits and the 4 Japanese word squares. Then I was fortunate to be talking about them and Blanche knew of someone who could translate them for me because I had a hard time trying to google them.  Turns out they are the 4 seasons so I thought they would be perfect in the four corners of the quilt.  However, while making some serious progress on the blocks, the unthinkable happened.  I ran out of one of my fabrics.  Everything came to a screeching halt and has until this day.  To give you perspective, I was getting all of this progress done at a retreat in 2008.  To this day I have not found a match to this fabric and while preparing for our latest retreat I had pulled the project out and then was brutally reminded that I could not do any further work on it.  I probably only need a fat quarter or a half yard to complete the blocks (a half yard is being very generous).

I know you are wondering what fabric is it?  I might have that in my stash somewhere.  Well, here it is and I hope you do have it in your stash and that you would be willing to sell it to me.  I believe that it is a Hoffman, but I can’t even find the selvedge anymore to know for sure.

I found another website called Find My Fabric and thought I would give it a try.  You can even upload pictures to help you search.  I unfortunately did not have any luck with my search and I have been hoping for a reprint of the pattern but so far no luck for me. I did find some cool patterns though and some other gorgeous fabric, but I refrained since I really need to find this so I can get this project complete.

I was doing pretty good for a  while about getting some of my ufo’s finished and I would love to be able to get back to that.  I would love to be able to finish up this project as it should be fairly quick to finish once I get the blocks pressed and get my bearings.

So, if you happen to be going through our stash and see this fabric and you have no plans to use it, leave me a comment and I would be happy to take it off your hands.

Don’t worry, I’ll be getting to the most recent retreat shenanigans soon.  This was a project that I was going to take to retreat with me, but instead I sat in my comfy chair, fondled the blocks, and lamented that I still couldn’t finish it.  I was hoping that I had enough scrap to piece together to make it work, but that just didn’t seem to be in the cards either.

More Scrapping

Before I get to more scrapping news, I wanted to say how excited I am that we have reached 20 followers and over 500 hits for this blog!  Thank you – you are all appreciated!  Plus it’s nice to know that these words are not sitting uselessly out in cyberspace but instead are being read and shared.  That’s what makes this the most fun of all.  I guess in a way you are all part of our Monkey Tribe now.  Welcome aboard!

I see that Blanche of the Organized Stash has commented on the last scrapping post with her instructions on how she has organized things and I wanted to be sure that everyone was able to see it.  After all you may be sitting on a gazillion scraps, like me, and be on the hunt for a way to better organize them.

Now for Words of Wisdom from Blanche!  “Wow, Opal, it sounds like you are really getting things organized! I’ve found that having things organized allows me to work more efficiently when I get to quilting. Since I’ve been referred to as the “over-the-top” organizer (just ask Opal to tell you about my pin cushion sometime), I will tell you all about my fabric organization.

Before any fabric makes it to my stash, I wash and iron each one and fold it selvage to selvage. Then I wrap my yardage around a 6″ ruler so it is a uniform width, and then in half so each fabric is ~6″ wide by 12″ long…these stack on top of each other nicely. If I were to start over, I would use an 8″ ruler instead, because the larger yardage would fold flatter. I use this for anything from 1/2 to 4 yards – anything larger than 4 yards does not get folded in half – these pieces sit flat at the back of the smaller pieces. Pieces that are fat 1/8 to 1/2 yards are simply folded into 6″ by 9″ and stacked on separate shelves above the larger yardage. All of my fabric is separated by color, and then by light to dark within the color…and there are special categories for batiks, Christmas, cats, food, multicolor (can’t determine what color predominates), and flannel.

Anything smaller than a fat 1/8 goes to the scrap box, and when it is full enough, I try to spend some time cutting it down . I cut all my scraps into squares in sizes 1.5″, 2″, 2.5″, 3″, 3.5″, 4″, 4.5″. 5″, 6″, and the largest 6.5″…these are sorted into boxes and stored at the bottom of my shelving. I tend to have the most squares in the smaller sizes up to 3″. I do not sort these by color – they are just all piled into the correct box, just waiting for that charity scrap quilt or any other purpose I need.

Now, I started this system when my stash was relatively small (maybe 2 – 30″ wide bookcases), and have tried to maintain it…it would be a very daunting task to start to organize a large stash by this manner. And so far I haven’t tried to organize my threads or rulers by any system…hmmm, maybe that is the next step…hmmm…”

As you can see, Blanche does deserve to be Blanche of the Organized Stash.  As for her pin cushion, it really deserves its own picture.  Unfortunately, I thought I had one but after searching through my archives I found that I do not have one!  Instead I will have to leave you with a picture of Blanche’s chicken quilt.  She would bring it to retreat after retreat to work on.  I have to admit that I was fascinated with that quilt.  So, here is the chicken quilt.  I believe it was some sort of challenge.  I know it doesn’t make up for the lack of a photo of her organized pin cushion, but I promise to snag one at the next retreat.

As far as the big to pre-wash or not pre-wash debate.  Well, that’s up to you and none of us will judge you.  However, I know for fact that Blanche has two laundry hampers in her quilting closet where she can sort by light and dark so she can wash as she has a load rather than coming home from the fabric store and wash.  It gets sorted into one of the hampers and waits until there is a load or half of a load.  At least that’s what I remember her explaining providing she hasn’t changed her methods.  Hopefully I haven’t mis-remembered what she had said…

If you are looking for still other methods for organizing your scraps or patterns for which to use your scraps, let me suggest Bonnie Hunter.  You can find her website here.  Bonnie is a very very generous quilter.  She shares lots and lots of patterns on her website and if you look carefully, you will find a link to her post about organizing and cutting your scrap stash.  If you are having trouble, you can find it here.

I think there are numerous ways to organize your scrap stash, but it can be an overwhelming task to start.  Especially if you are like me and have 2 Rubbermaid tubs of scraps to take care of.  Of course after reading Blanche and Bonnie I’ll probably have to go back to my large squares and cut them down into more manageable sizes.    Just when I thought I had really made some progress.  Of course I could save that until the end.  After all, it’s not like you would really know…although I would probably tell you….

I happy to share that I did somewhat finish a project from the scrap bins.  Right now it seems to be all the rage to make these jelly roll quilts.  Maybe you know the one I’m talking about, where you sew the ends of the strips together to make one long strip and then sew the long edges together?  If not, you can find an example here.  I don’t have any jelly rolls.  However, as I was clearing out my fabric scraps I put all my 2 1/2″ strips together thinking I would use them for something.  The good news is that I did!  I put together one of those easy jelly roll quilts!  I didn’t quite follow the directions from that link.  I kinda just winged it from what I heard other quilters talking about.  Anyway, I’m pretty happy with my result and the only thing left to do is find a border for it.  Curious?  Well, of course I have a picture to share!  The best part is that now they are a mostly assembled project and not strips waiting to be sub-cut for the scrap bin.

  Once I decide on a border I’ll have to decide if I want to jazz it up with applique.  I may not though.  I may just leave it as a neo-modern strip quilt and just practice some different quilting ideas on it.  We’ll have to see how long it takes me to find a border.  In case you were wondering, I did not count how many strips I had.  I know a jelly roll has a certain number of strips and that is part of how this pattern works.  I just had a stack of strips and some of those were assorted lengths as they came from other projects.  I think it all worked out fine.  I did put the strips in a bag and pulled them out randomly to sew them together.  I only allowed myself to put it back if it was attaching two of the same fabric.

If you would like to share your scrap organization methods please feel free to do so!  You never know who you might inspire!

Scrap-Tastic!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been letting my scraps build up for a while.  Like years.  Now I have a gazillion scraps that I need to cut into usable sizes, otherwise they will sit for more years never getting used.  I really don’t mind cutting them up, what bothers me is how long it seems to take.  I don’t know if you have ever sat down with a gazillion scraps to cut them into more usable sizes, but it takes a really long time.  Plus you can cut for hours and not really see any noticeable difference in the pile that you have cut or the pile you have cut from.  I’m not exactly sure how that works.  I think there is some sort of fabric division similar to that of cell division going on so that the pile to be cut never gets any smaller.  If you have any insights into this fabric phenomenon, please let me know.

I’m sure you are probably wondering why I’m cutting years worth of fabric now as well as how much a gazillion really is.  Well, I have been steadily working on getting my craft room organized and realized that I have 2 Rubbermaid tubs full of scraps.  Yep, two Rubbermaid tubs full of scraps = a gazillion.  I figured that I could get them cleared out and then there would be two less things taking up space on my floor.  However, it hasn’t really worked out that way.  So far I have spent 3 days pressing them so they can be cut.  Yep, you read that right – 3 days.  Thankfully my ironing board will work for a sitting position so I didn’t have to stand the whole time.  The nice thing was that I did find some squares that had already but cut so they could just be put away.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find enough of those.  Even more unfortunately I found some scraps that became projects.    More projects, just what I needed.

Now I have 1 Rubbermaid tub and 1 small-ish box of scraps to cut.  Now that they are all pressed and sorted, I realized that i have more flannel than I will ever really use.  I just don’t work in flannel.  So, that is a tub that will hopefully find a home with my quilting friends that do use flannel.

  Here are the two tubs I started with.  The one that doesn’t have fabrics peeking out over top is the one with the flannels in it.

  Here is my smallish box of scraps.  You can see that it is pretty full.  I don’t even want to guess how many hours it will take me to do just this much.

  Here is the inside of my cotton scrap tub. I know what you are thinking – those look like pretty darn big scraps!  Well, they are, but most of these are cuts off of borders and backings and so they are larger (and longer) but still not wide enough to make up a fat quarter so in the scrap basket it went.  At least it is now nicely pressed and folded.  Sorry I don’t have a true before picture for you of the heaping mess of tangled unpressed scraps that it was.  I’m sure you can imagine though.  You’re good like that.

I don’t know if you are a scrap quilter (or scrap saver) or not.  There are some folks out there who are not stash gatherers.  Instead they just purchase what they need for whatever project they are currently working on and that’s it.  I’m not sure what they do with their leftovers.  I have a feeling that they end up in the wastebasket. I am not so much of a scrap quilter.  However, I don’t want to waste the left overs of those fabrics I have lovingly purchased so I am a scrap saver.    So, I dumped them in the black hole of Rubbermaid tubs where they have waited years to again see the light of day.  I am taking a page from Blanche’s stash organization.  If you don’t remember, see here.  See how everything is so nicely organized?  Sorted by color?  I don’t know if you can tell by the photo, but it is also uniformly folded too.  Vera and I were completely in awe of how she has things organized.  If you look closely you can see some white storage boxes under the shelving.  This is where Blanche keeps her scrap stash.  She brought some to retreat once because the box was full and that meant it was time to do something with them.  I don’t have those type of storage units though (although I’m sure I’ll be storming Ikea at some point or placing an online order with Vera) to get some of those type of containers for my scraps.

What was funny to me was that I didn’t know Vera was also working on taming her scraps.  We are both part of a sit-and-sew group and at my first gathering I brought my small-ish box of scraps to cut so I could visit and not worry about getting a lot finished.  Vera also brought her scraps.  Then we started talking about Blanche’s stash and how she stores them.  I’m not sure what Vera’s plans are for her storage, and I’m not sure that I described what I was currently using overly well.  So, Vera these are for you!

 Pics of where my cut up scrap stash is hanging out.  Ignore the plastic shoe boxes – those aren’t scraps.  At least not yet.  Those are projects and I’m sure they will donate their leftovers to the scrap bin.  This is one section of the little storage boxes I have.  I believe the brown ones are all 5″ squares (I have a lot of those).  The smaller black ones above are 2″ – 4 1/2″.  Yes, I know that is a little nutty to cut them into whole and half sizes.  I was just trying to get the most out of the scrap as I could.

  Here are the other drawers.  They hold 5 1/2″ – 9″.  Mainly because 9″ was the biggest I could fit in the drawer without folding them.

Now I’m faced with the task of finding patterns to work with assorted sizes of squares.  I’m sure something will come to mind soon.  I know where I’m going to start looking though – Bonnie Hunter the scrap queen.  You can check out her website here.  She gives lots of tips and patterns on her site.  It’s a nice site to visit.  Yep, I’m sure that’s where I’ll start.  Maybe you will find some inspiration for your scrap bins too.

The Power of Design

I’ll bet you are thinking that I found some moving picture of a totally gorgeous quilt that I had to comment on.  Nope, I’m going in a completely different direction.  Besides, what I find to be completely moving you might not be as interested in.

What I want to talk about is the act of design itself.  Such as in EQ (Electric Quilt) or Quilt Pro (if you are a Mac user like me).  Design is powerful.  We can walk through quilt shows and find some totally amazing designs (and color placement – let’s face it sometimes it is the color placement that really  makes something speak to us) that inspire and wow us to go home and try our very best with the project we are working on.  Sometimes we are even so inspired to try to find the same pattern the quilt artist used and give it a go ourselves.

We have programs available that enable us to come up with our own stellar creations.  Perhaps even modify some our favorite traditional blocks into something completely different.  There is a bit of danger with these programs.  It is so easy to sit down and start designing and having a “finished” product at the end that we turn our creativity on high and open the gate to let our imagination out and then next thing you know it’s 1 o’clock in the morning and you have designed 15 quilts and not touched one thread of fabric.  Then you start to obsess, “if I just move this one line I wonder what would happen…”.  It’s definitely a hazard and one that they don’t warn you about on the cover and they really should.  WARNING: Playing with this program is so much fun that you may just forget about making real quilts out of fabric.  Or maybe, WARNING:  Be sure you have a set of new ink cartridges on hand because you will run out of that color you need after all the stores have closed and it’s too far to Wal-Mart to justify a trip for one ink cartridge.  If you have played with these programs, you know what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t, please keep the above warnings in mind as you consider whether or not your quilting would benefit from having such a program at your disposal.  Oh, I should also add, WARNING: If you have an obsessive type of personality you should not use this program without supervision as you will forget to eat and use the restroom.

I have now decided that Pinterest is the same.  You can get so lost in pinning pictures of those fabulous fabric creations that you don’t make it to your stash (or local quilt store) for patterns or fabric.  It should come with warnings as well.  WARNING: You will find more stuff than you will ever make so get up from your computer and go outside to enjoy life.  My favorite would be: WARNING: You will not need to visit other websites to find cool stuff to pin, you can roost on Pinterest all day finding plenty of inspiration while repinning other people’s pins.  You should also heed the warning about making sure your printer ink is fully stocked.

There is no doubt about it – design is powerful.  We can see it at work in the composition of photos and paintings as well as color choices and placement in quilts.  Our houses will never look like the ones in magazines and we may never have a quilt juried in for the show in Paducah (although I’ve not given up that dream just yet).  Programs and websites like these can be very useful tools to help our inner artist as it yearns to put on paper the how-to of that dream quilt floating around in our minds.  Just don’t let yourself get so caught up in the element of design that you neglect the actual creation.  They do look great on paper, but seeing them live (and of course larger than 8.5 x 11) is so much more powerful.  Not to mention the process we go through to bring these creations to life.

Of course I have some examples! Here are some quilts I photographed at MQS.  I do not have the quilter/piecer’s information but they are most definitely not mine.  They are beautifully designed (in my opinion) and inspiring.

That should hold you for a little while.

We’re Baaaaaack…….and a public service announcement

However, before I embark on a play by play from our latest retreat I wanted to share in case the cyberworld can help recover what this fellow quilter has lost.  Yep, I’m talking about stolen quilts.  You can read about and see pictures of the missing items here.

As a quilter I completely understand the heartbreak of having someone steal your quilts.  Those outside our craft are not necessarily keyed in on how we go through our process of finding a pattern, painstakingly choosing our fabrics, and the hours it takes to assemble our fabulous fabric creations.  It’s not always about the money we spend at the quilt shops or for our long-arm quilter.  It’s about the process.  I think for most of us quilters being able to piece and quilt is our way of saving our sanity.  It gives us a creative outlet and a medium for creating art.  It enables us to escape the world or our troubles for a little while and create something beautiful.  Even if it is only beautiful to us.

What makes the doubly disturbing is that when quilts are stolen chances are that those who are doing the taking don’t really know what they have and might use what is a priceless treasure to us as something for their dog to sleep on or left in a car to be sun-bleached or wrap oily car parts in.  What a sad ending for our hard work.

What makes this particular theft even more disturbing than that is that the items were stolen from a quilting teacher who is now also missing her class samples and step outs to use in class for illustration.  Hours and hours of her hard work that will have to be replicated for her to continue teaching us her techniques so that we can also create quilts like the ones she has had taken from her.

Faithful readers, please keep your eyes open for these quilts or any other quilts that you may find at yard sales or flea markets that could match those that have been taken from our fellow quilter.  You can also find more information at this website, dedicated to helping those who have lost quilts get the word  out to others so that their quilt may once again  find its way home.