Some Assembly Required

It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.
–Lou Holtz

10 yards of fabric

cut to

252 – 2” Squares

504 – 1½” x 2½” Rectangles

1,260 – 1½” Squares

1,044 Triangles

A little over four weeks ago I dropped Grace off at the Babylock dealer where I bought her for a routine physical. And they happily told me they'd give her a good work-over and have her back to me in three or four weeks. When I got home, I got busy preparing for Grace's return. I pressed open about 600 half-square triangles and unpicked about 300 more, making 600 orphaned triangles. Then I cut buddies for them so they could become half-square triangles again and put them all away in a drawer to wait patiently and dust-free, until I got my machine back.

After that, I started cutting fabrics for another quilt that has been kicking around since late 2007. At least. I pieced triangles {which are actually star points} together here and there until I finally couldn't stand it and chain-pieced the rest together one day a few months ago while I was procrastinating quilting the Zig-Zag quilt. 1,044 triangles showing here:

This quilt started out as four blue fabrics from the Toile Christmas fabric line by Moda. I came upon them at my mom's LQS and stood in the store coming up with a plan to use these fabrics in a quilt for LadyBug's bed so that I could buy them. I was going to make a quilt of maple leaves. Blue maple leaves. I still don't know what I was thinking , except that I love maple leaves. And this pretty blue fabric.

One day, six or so months later, I came across the instructions for a Checkerblock Star by Marcia over at The Quilter's Cache. And I decided that the blue fabrics would be way more cool in a quilt of Checkerblock Stars.

The only problem was that I didn't have enough of my four Toile Christmas blues to make a whole quilt. 60% of the fabric gets pulled into seam allowances. Enough time had passed that the fabric was all sold out so I visited every quilt shop along a 100-mile stretch of I-15 {which runs North and South through Utah & Nevada. And maybe Idaho.} looking for blues to match those four shades of Toile Chirstmas. Matching the exact tone of these blues was tricky, but in the end I pulled together something passable.

At the time, my eyes had not been opened to the beauty of scrappy quilts and the picture in my head for this quilt was for a smooth, subtle and uniform flow of shades. I was reluctant to break up my original four fabrics and add other fabrics to the mix to give me enough for the quilt I wanted to make. Since then, I've come to love scrappy quilts, but I still waver between thinking this particular scrap quilt is going to be really great and a great big mess. Trying to make this work with four shades of the same color in a single fabric line is a little bit tricky. Trying to make it work with those same four shades but in a of a bunch of different fabrics {34, to be precise} is a little bit crazy.

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Last Tuesday night, I had all my fabrics cut to finish the rest of this quilt. I was pretty sure that Grace would be ready for me to pick her up on Wednesday, because Wednesdays are pick-up and delivery days for the repair man. Also, three weeks was plenty of time for him to give her a tune-up. By noon on Wednesday, I was too anxious to wait any longer for a call from the shop. I called them, but she was not back yet. I guess she'd heard that I had big plans for her and wanted another week off. Reluctantly, I made a mental list of projects that did not require a machine and worked on a hand sewing project that evening.

On Thursday after work I was sitting at the stop sign on the corner down the street from my house, when the shop called to say my machine was in. I banged my head on the steering wheel several times because if they'd have called just 15 minutes earlier, I could have picked Grace up on my way home. The shop is two blocks from where I work {sidebar: on really frustrating work days, I fantasize about walking down the street and escaping in the bolts of fabric}. On Friday, I actually did leave work in the middle of the day and picked up my machine. And then I pretended I was an adult and went back to work. When I got home on Friday afternoon, Grace and I got right to work.

These are the center sections of each Checkerblock Star; 252 – 2” squares, sewn into 63 – four-patches. I used my Go! cutter and the 2" square die, but there was a little distortion because I tried cutting too many layers at a time. I was about a hundred squares in when I decided that I'd better not try to cut six layers of fabric all at once. They are kind of a mess. Not a single one of them measures the 3½” they should. I'm trying to decide if I should fudge it in the seam allowance when I put the blocks together, or if I should unpick them and sew them back together with a scant scant ¼” seam. If I had any fabric left, I think I would probably start from scratch, but that's not an option.

I strip pieced the rest. These are the outer edges and corners of the blocks, 252 – 1½” squares and 504 – 1½” x 2½” rectangles. Half of the rectangles were pieced to squares and the other half will be added to four-patches made from the remaining 1½” squares. I've only got a few strips left to cut.

These are the rest of the 1½” squares {in the rough}. 1,008 of them. They need cutting into 504 pairs and then sewing into 252 four-patches.

Did your eyes glaze over a little at all of those numbers? Mine did at the thought of all the cutting and piecing left to do. I might go back to piecing here and there again, and wrap this up in another 5 years or so. Eventually, all these pieces will become a twin-size quilt, finishing at 72” x 90”. In all, there are 3060 pieces, which includes a border using the triangle blocks.

The math is a little bit boring, and sometimes mind boggling, but I kind of like knowing what sort of dragon I've got to slay. It is highly satisfying to come out on the other side of a project this big and not just see, but know exactly how much work went into it.

I just wish there were some way to measure how many yards of thread I'm using.

Various and Sundry Monday: Vol. 5

Sometimes the best lessons learned in life are those intended for others. –Unknown

Project Polka-Dot

{140 different polka-dotted fabrics. Really. No repeats!}

This polka-dot quilt has been rattling around in my brain for nine months or so. I guess you could say it was gestating . I've been puttering around with it for about five months now, refining the idea and figuring out a layout. I used my Christmas money to buy the small Drunkard's Path die and will use both sizes of Drunkard's Path pieces in it. I've also been assembling the perfect polka-dotted fabrics for about the last three months. I rummaged trough my stash and came up with about 70 different polka-dots and then begged, borrowed and swapped for dots from anyone who would let me {a huge thank you to: Annelise, Iris, Jerrilynn, Michelle, P., Sara & Wanda}. I cut the fabric into 3¼ or 6¼ squares and distributed them into piles with no repeats {fabrics from the same line — like Moda Essential Dots — in different colors don't count as repeats}. This weekend, I got out my Go! and did a little cutting. And as usual {}, I decided that if one was good, more was better, so I cut enough dots for more than one quilt. I'm not saying how many more than one quilt. But more than one. Let Project Polka-Dot begin!

Tweet Tweet Tweet

{A week into May still counts as April, right?}

I've kind of stalled on the Tweet Tweet quilt. Not because I don't love it {which I don't yet, but I'm going to finish anyway because as Shevvy pointed out, it isn't over until the binding is on} but because I'm going to try some new free-motion quilting and I'm nervous. I had the label finished weekend-before-last and the back was all put together last Monday. You can see by the date that I'd planned to have it finished long before now. But I spent last week finding other things to do during my quilting time {I even did laundry a couple of days instead of sewing} and I realized it was because I was nervous about thread choices and trying some new quilting. I don't want to stuff it up. Friday, I finally bought a spool of chocolate brown thread {which I'm still not sure about} and Saturday night I doodled out five or six pages of the quilting I want to do. I've got the quilt all laid out ready for pin basting, which I'll have a minute tonight to finish if I can get off the computer. And then tomorrow I can quilt and hopefully it won't be horrible.

Technically It Is A Scrap Quilt

{Someday this really will be a quilt.}

Last June, I decided that I wanted to work on a quilt I'd started a really long time ago. I'd shopped every fabric store from here to my mom's to find the perfect shades of blue to make an entire quilt of Checkerblock Stars because I didn't have enough of my first choice of fabrics to do the job. I had all the triangles cut for the top and borders, and half of them put together. And then I got bored. But I was motivated by leaders and enders projects by Susan and Lane to get back to it. It has been really slow going, because you only sew one block at the beginning and one block at the end of whatever project you are working on. But it still adds up — if you remember you are working on leaders and enders. After 11 months, I have all the small dark triangles pieced with the small white triangles to make a bigger triangle, and have started to piece those with the larger light blue triangles. I did the math and the quilt top {not counting the borders} has 3520 pieces in it. At this rate, it will probably take me another five years to finish this quilt. Or, I might decide to chain piece myself into a coma and get these triangles finished up so I can move on to the four-patches.

No Worse for the Wear
As you can see, my flowers didn't seem to mind the snow we got last weekend. The early bloomers are hardy enough to withstand a little bit of cold weather. The blossoms on the fruit trees, however, are another story. I hope that the orchard farmers aren't too hard hit this year because I know the trees have started to bloom and if the cold kills off the blooms, there is no fruit. It has been a really weird year for weather.

The List
I just realized that today is the 2^nd of May and I have a list of quilts that I've committed to finish by the end of June. It started out at 3 Ph.D's and 3 completely new quilts, but as lists tend to do, it has sort of grown. The new quilts keep taking precedence over the Ph.D's, and I think I'd better get my booty in gear and get some quilts done. It helps me to look at the list and see what's done and what is left. So, here's the run-down.

New – Grandpa's Candy Dish quilt: Done
New – Gracie's Pinwheels: Done
New – Cozy Posies Stacked Coins quilt: Done
Ph.D – Magic quilt: Done
New - Tweet Tweet Stacked Coins quilt: ready to be quilted
Ph.D – Mr. Bug's Navy T-Shirt Memory quilt: top is finished
New – Polka-Dot quilt: in progress
Ph.D – Pinwheel Sampler quilt: in progress
Ph.D – Snowball quilt: in progress
Ph.D – Woman's Work quilt

As discussed, I'm going to quilt the Tweet Tweet quilt this week. As soon as that's done, I'll work on the embroidered {} tag for Mr. Bug's quilt {something I've been procrastinating because I wasn't very concise}. That will be the next to quilt {another something I've been procrastinating because I'm not looking forward to marking it, even though it is just straight lines }.

The Woman's Work quilt has been removed from my Ph.D Challenge committment because I had only planned to finish the top by the end of June and have it ready to be professionally quilted. That is still my goal, but tick, tock already. I substituted the Magic quilt in its place, so I have one Ph.D finish. I think to meet my Ph.D. goal of four, I'm going to have to move the polka-dot quilt to the bottom of the list and finish the snowballs and the pinwheel sampler quilt first. I quilted a meander in the first snowball quilt and planned to do that for this one, but I've been contemplating other things. Suggestions? And I'd always intended to quilt the entire pinwheel sampler in straight lines ¼" on either side of the seams. But now, I think I want to do something much more fun, like feathers. And while that is exciting, it is also scary because I really am just a beginner at free-motion quilting.

Considering the size of my list, I think that's enough gabbing. And if there is an inordinate amount of typos and incomplete/nonsense sentences, it is because I didn't do a final proofread. Leave me a note in the comments and I'll fix it later. I'm going to quilt instead.

xo –E

Checkerblock Star: Not A Scrap Quilt

When life gives you scraps, make a quilt. -Unknown

This is one of my oldest Ph.D's. I bought these pretty Modas more than 4 years ago with the intention of making a maple leaf quilt for LadyBug's bed. Yes. Blue maple leaves. It's art. And no. Even though it seems like I talk about her more, I don't favor LadyBug over Grasshopper. I made him a quilt for his bed and he doesn't like it. He wants a new one, but he'll have to wait his turn because I haven't made LadyBug a bed quilt yet. I've got all the fabric for a Star Wars 'cuddle quilt' like LadyBug's HSM quilt but he doesn't bug me about it as often as LadyBug did about hers, so it isn't getting worked on much. But I digress. I didn't get started on the blue maple leaves right away and so when I came across a really neat pattern on The Quilter's Cache I decided to use that instead. I pulled out my calculator to see how much fabric I would need for the new layout; I had at least a ½-yard cut of each of the blues but it wasn't enough for the new blocks. I asked my mom if she'd stop by the quilt shop near her house where I got these prints, which are incidentally called Toile Christmas, and pick up a bit more of each one. Unfortunately, it had been more than six months since I'd gotten them.

Still, I was determined to make this quilt. With these fabrics. Using the really cool Checkerblock Star pattern I'd found. Tiled. With a pieced border. I mean, if my test block was this cool:

then imagine how cool would a whole quilt be.

So my insane and desperate quest began. But I was determined. I searched every quilt shop from here to my mom's, an 80 mile stretch along the interstate, with no luck. I looked on-line. Still no luck. But I couldn't give up the dream so I started playing around with the layout. I tried it with just the center blocks tiled and alternating white blocks with the stars on the outer rows. But I didn't like that. Then I did alternating blocks throughout. That was no good either. The only way this quilt was going to work (at least in my head) was if the blocks were tiled. I found it necessary to begin a new quest.

I took swatches of my four colors and re-visited all the quilt shops between here and my mom's, trying to find fabrics on the same color scale. Lots of fabrics of the same color scale; I have a small stash because I try to only buy what I have a definite plan to use. That way I don't end up short on a fabric that I love for a project I just have to do. But since I was in that very boat, I decided to turn this quilt into a scrap quilt. Eventually, I got enough different fabrics in each of the four blues to begin work. I washed all my fabrics. I pressed all my fabrics. I cut squares. I cut the square into triangles. And I started to chain sew. There was no speed-piecing because half the pieces would

come out the wrong way. I finished all the star points with the darker fabric as the larger triangles. Then boredom from all that cutting and chain piecing and pressing set in. I had other projects. So, I put this one away for a really, really long time.

Then one day, a little over a month ago, I got inspired by a blog I follow. Susan had made the most gorgeous scrappy Irish Chain quilt using leaders and enders. Leaders and enders is a book by Bonnie Hunter, that gives you a productive way to use your scraps. The concept is that you piece your scraps instead of using a 'thread bunny' or 'anchor scrap' at the beginning and ending of each bit of chain piecing. Susan keeps a box of scraps by her machine and while she's working on her main project, she pieces the scraps together in between chains. I remembered I had about 947,282 triangles cut and

waiting to be pieced, so I pulled them out and over just the past month, I've finished about a fourth of the smaller triangles in the next set of star points using them as leaders and enders. These triangles are for the star blocks and for the border. It feels really nice to be passively working on this quilt again. My little pile of pieced triangles grows bigger and my stacks of triangles waiting to be pieced grows smaller and I'm not taking any time away from the projects that need to be finished right now, but I'm making progress on a project that has been sitting for a really long time. Thank you Susan! And Bonnie. She wrote the book, after all!