Elephant Parade

Look out! Look out!
It's elephants on parade
Here they come!
Hippety hoppety
They're here and there
Yes, elephants everywhere

Look out! Look out!
They're walking around the bed
On their head
Clippity cloppity
Arrayed in braid
Yes, elephants on parade

What'll I do?
What'll I do?
What an unusual view

I can stand the sight of worms
And look at microscopic germs
But technicolor pachyderms is really too much for me!
–Pink Elephants on Parade,
Music and lyrics by Oliver Wallace and Ned Washington

I thought I'd lead with cuteness. I am pleased to introduce my newest nephew, Baby Firefly. Adorable, no? He's such a mellow, sweet, happy little dude.

And now for the backstory. Because there always is one. In the top left corner is my cute sister, Jill, a.k.a Jilly Beans, and her family. Beginning in the 12:00 position and rotating clockwise, we have Lizard Boy, Firefly, Toad, Cricket and Mr. Jilly Beans.

When Jill announced that she was expecting, of course I put a baby quilt in the queue, right behind Christine's Flower Garden {BTW, Christine still lives in her own home, is in church every Sunday and turns 101 in just two months!}, Friendship Garden and Thoroughly Modern Lily. Jill and her husband decided not to find out the gender of the baby, so I planned to make a smaller version of Friendship Garden because I still had a bundle of half-square triangles sitting about and a multi-colored quilt would be great for either a boy or a girl. Those first two quilts in the line-up, the signature quilt and the triangle quilt, were fast to the finish {nothing like a deadline to keep you on target}, but it took me almost six months to finish the lily quilt. That was kind of fortuitous, because Lorna over at Sew Fresh Quilts started an absolutely adorable and completely irresistible quilt along about a month before Firefly was born and since I didn't finish the lily quilt until after he was born, I then knew the gender and decided that an elephant quilt was in order.

Lorna did her quilt in solids. I loved the uniformity; the mama elephants have dark bodies with light ears and the baby elephants have light bodies with dark ears. I decided to use batiks in my quilt but tried to stay true to the original design by using darker fabrics for the bodies of the mama elephants and lighter fabrics for the ears, and vice-versa for the babies. Each elephant is unique. There are 49 different batiks and I quilted each elephant with a different design in the "headdress" and "blanket." I think this is my favorite quilting.

A birdie with a yellow bill hopped upon the window sill. Cocked his shining eye and said: “Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!”
–Robert Louis Stevenson

I loved making these birds and they were fun to quilt too. I pretty much can't do a quilt without doing a few swirls in it.

Inspired by the way that Geta quilts her hexagons, I gave it a go in these octagonal flowers. Lane frequently uses leaf designs in his quilts, so I tried that too. And, of course, pebbling is all the rage these days, so that's how I did the centers. All art is derivative.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? This quilt took about 2½ months, start to finish as my only project. I was on a deadline for this, too, or it might have been longer. Work takes up so much time and gets in the way of my real life a lot. In any case, I love this little turtle! I used the shell fabric in another quilt and it was fabulous there too.

And this little frog is adorable! Lorna put together such an cute quilt pattern. It was so fun to make and the top went together really quickly.

While I was working on this quilt, the foot pedal on my machine broke. As it so happened, it was a Tuesday night. The tension was also really off on my machine and Wednesdays are service pick-up days for the quilt shop I got my machine from. I called to see how long the wait was {minimum is 1 week and I've waited 3 weeks before} and they told me it was a week. So I dropped Grace off first thing on Wednesday morning. And then I went a little over-board with the embroidered quilt label. It was OK that I did, because it was 2½ weeks before Grace was ship shape and back in working order. {They couldn't fix the foot pedal, though, so I ordered a new one and it was here in just a week. Just a bit ironic, don't you think?} I've been using Fabri-Solvy self-adhesive stabilizer for embroidery lately. It is pretty fantastic. You run it through your printer, cut it to size, peel it off the paper backing, stick it to your fabric, stitch and when you're done, it washes away.

I have a number of pieces of batting hanging about which are too large to throw away and too small to use in a quilt, so I did something I haven't tried before. I pieced the batting. Vicki over at Sew Inspired talked about doing that once on a very large quilt, so I asked her about her technique. She told me how to do it by hand and also by machine, but warned me that sometimes when you do it by machine one side gets stretched a little bit. Not wanting to take any chances I joined three strips of batting together by hand to make a piece large enough for the quilt. It took forever. I may or may not try it by machine next time.

It is a very old tradition, dating back to 2010, to use satin blanket binding and minky or ultra cuddle on a baby quilt. This was no exception. I found a pretty silver sating binding that matched the grey background. And I bought a flat-fold remnant of extremely soft ultra cuddle for the back. You can see a peek of it in the photo with the quilt label above.

I suppose that about does it in the way of talking about this quilt. I would like to welcome the handful of folks who have started following my blog lately. I haven't done much in the way of posting since I started working full-time about a year ago. Nevertheless, welcome, and I hope I keep you at least a little bit entertained. Like with this super cute photo of Grasshopper and LadyBug with their new cousin. I can remember when they were that little and hardly believe I have two full-fledged teenagers.

LadyBug loves to hold the babies. I think that is awesome! And I think more cuteness is the perfect bookend for this post.

Today's post brought to you by:

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.

--

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.

I Demand A Re-Count

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
–Benjamin Franklin

Grace, my ever faithful sewing sidekick, is away on holiday. It will be three weeks tomorrow since I dropped her off for a nice spa retreat. I'm hoping she'll be ready for pick-up tomorrow. In her absence, I've been doing a lot of prep work on quilts I hope to someday finish. One of those prep projects is the result of a half-square triangle swap I did almost a year ago. I got my triangles-in-the-rough back about 5 months ago, and I've been pressing. A lot. Approximately 600 freshly pressed HSTs showing here:

When I put together my triangles for the swap, I formed a plan for what to do with them based on the instructions of putting together a light and a dark fabric for each set of HSTs. I actually heard “neutral and print” and was pretty meticulous with how I put them together. I did roughly the same number of HSTs of every color and split my white and off-white neutrals evenly between the two. As is always the case with swaps, there is room for interpretation and some of what I got back didn't fit in my plans. No matter. The fabrics were still really great, so I unpicked about 300 HSTs {yes, I know }, which left me with 600 orphan triangles who needed neutral buddies to become HSTs again. Enter the Go! Fabric cutter, and in a few hours, I was all set to go {yeah, I know. Bad pun, but I couldn't resist. I ♥ puns}.

I also put together a few fabrics to fill in on some of the colors I didn't get much back on and will sew those up using the triangle papers we used originally to put our HSTs together. But I'm not showing those because that passes up “particular,” “picky” and “persnickety” and crosses over into “obsessive,” “complusive” and “just plain nutty.”

As I've pressed and cut and sorted, I've been turning over ideas for how to use up 1400± 2½” HSTs. While I was getting my swap triangles done last year I saw a quilt called Triangle Confusion and decided that I wanted to do that. Now that I have the raw materials to work with I've tried a couple of Triangle Confusion layouts. I liked the explosion of triangles with all its patterns and sub-patterns. Then, just for fun, I arranged the HSTs into a more obvious pattern and put it up for an unofficial vote.

I was kind of surprised at the results. Everyone who expressed an opinion chose Diamond Illusion. Although I didn't really know which layout I favored until people started offering opinions {which is why I ask for opinions; it helps me to know what I really want}, I realized that I was leaning more towards Triangle Confusion. It was so bright and cheerful, if not somewhat frenetic. Diamond Illusion was very drab to me even though you could see a definite pattern. Perhaps here was too much brown and orange and green and not enough yellow and pink and turquoise. So I laid it out another way. What do you think?

Green was the color I'd gotten the most back from the swap, so in my first layout I used that for all the small diamonds. It just wasn't working for me. In this new version, I used a different color for each diamond and I think I like it a lot better with more color.

Triangle Confusion is still on my mind, though. I mean, there has to be some way to make it work. So I tried organizing the colors a bit more. I am totally in love with those partial diamonds. The shape is incomplete but the eye finishes it. There's still a lot going on there, though, even with an attempt to make it play nicely by using color to force the sub-patterns. Do you see the large pinwheel in the center?

Still, there is something I really like about Triangle Confusion.

As you can see, I'm still undecided on what to do with all these half-square triangles. Unless I make a king size quilt {which would require another 1700 HSTs and I've almost entirely ruled that out}, I have enough HSTs to make two nice lap-sized quilts; one Diamond Illusion and one Triangle Confusion. The only problem is that I don't have enough of some of the colors to use an even amount in both quilts. Only one of the quilts could be rainbow bright. The other one would have to be mostly green and brown and blue. I could break up the left over browns, blues and greens a bit with solid {meaning unpieced} blocks between pinwheel blocks made of the HSTs and come out with two baby quilts to donate, plus one lap-sized rainbow-y HST quilt for me {design yet to be determined}.

Or, if I decide that I absolutely have to make both a Diamond Illusion and a Triangle Confusion quilt and they both have to have a balanced amount of color, I could make more HSTs, in which case, Jeanette, a swap would definitely be in order .

And there would probably be enough left-over HSTs for a donation quilt.

Diamond Illusion or Triangle Confusion?

He puzzled and puzzed till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. -Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Once upon a time, I made 936 - 2½” half-square triangles for a swap. Our group used a semi-paper pieceing speed method to put together groups of twelve HSTs at a time. For each set of twelve, I used a different main print fabric and I only repeated my neutral white or off-white fabrics in two sets of twelve at most. In the end, I had 78 different sets of 12 HSTs. I kept four HSTs from each set and sent the rest off to the swap hostess. Six months later, I got a box back full of half-square triangle treasure. They sat in that same box for about 3 months, and then in a drawer in my little sewing area, just waiting to be discovered. Last Wednesday, I dropped Grace off for a three-week spa vacation, and when I got home I started pulling the papers off and pressing them open on my spiffy new ironing board cover.

As I've worked, I've been puzzling about exactly what to do with these 936 HSTs when they're all pressed. Actually, I'll have more like 1250 HST's when I'm done. I think there was some room for interpretation in the instructions, which were to pair a light and a dark for each set of HSTs. I heard “print and neutral,” and kind of formed a plan around that. Some of the HSTs I got back don't work for what I had in mind as they are, so I'm unpicking a few more than 300 of them {yes, I know } and am going cut a bunch of neutral {white or off-white} HSTs with my Go! fabric cutter {the die that came with it has the perfect triangles} and put them with the prints that I've unpicked from each other. I only have about a hundred more to unpick.

When we were in the planning stages of the swap, Candace at The Double Nickel Quilt Challenge linked a really cool quilt called Triangle Confusion to my monthly finishes linky party, and I decided that's what I wanted to do with my half-square triangles. But as I have been pressing, I've been turning over options for what to really do with these HSTs now that I'm in the process of pressing and sorting. So I laid them out in a diamond pattern to see what it would look like. I really liked it, except it lacks a bit of variety. I chose green for the small diamonds because far and away, green is the color I got back the most of. I'll probably mix it up a little if I go with this layout, but isn't this a cool design?

It is fun to look at each block close up.

As I opened each HST, I tried to guess who made it. Some were easy to guess. Others, not so much.

I love how from far away it gives the illusion that it is a series of interlocking diamonds, but close up you can see each triangle and each print.

I ♥ orange. It is a highly underrated color.

I'd really almost made up my mind to go with the Diamond Illusion layout. But just for fun, I laid out a little Triangle Confusion. You can still see the diamond pattern, which I love, but it is an explosion of color.

But you can also see, among other patterns, pinwheels intermingled with the diamonds. Pinwheels are awesome.

Time for some more close-ups. I haven't posted much lately, so it is picture overload today.

It is an interesting block design.

I'm not sure why, but I only took close-ups of three of the four blocks, so this is the last one.

In the first layout, I kept the diamonds each a single color, but I mixed the other colors in everywhere else. I wanted to know how it would effect the overall design if I paired colors in the non-diamond areas {corners} of each individual block.

It is still an interesting pattern, but not quite so much of an explosion, which I think I maybe like. I didn't notice until I was editing photos, that with the colors paired as they are it makes a secondary diamond pattern; or rather, a large pinwheel on point between the diamonds.

That has me wondering what it would look like if I paired it so that the large pinwheels were all one color. I think I might like that best of all {control freak here}, but I'll have to lay it out to see because that might suck all the joy out of Triangle Confusion. I'll probably wait until I get all those other HST's unpicked and the neutral triangles cut, though. I only have about a hundred left.

Even though my puzzler is a little sore, I'm also puzzling over what size to make this quilt. My original plan was a 6 x 8 block layout with a 1" stop border and a sawtooth border beyond that, which finishes at 54” x 70”. That's a really cozy lap-size quilt. But that will leave me with 375± extra HSTs, which I will have to use up in something else. I've pondered other sizes, right on up to a 9 x 11 layout {with no borders} which finishes at a nice 72” x 88” twin size quilt. That will require an additional 300 HSTs beyond what I'm already working with. I kind of like the idea. This quilt is scrappy and patchy and full of calicos, which makes me think of quilting at its roots — quilting out of necessity and using whatever was on hand. Of course, I'm not trying to kid anyone here. I have bins and bins of fabrics and I don't need to quilt, except for the sake of my sanity. I really want this to be a useful quilt, though, because I'm excited about it. A lap size would be used for snuggling under to watch TV or read. I don't know whose twin-size bed this quilt would go on. Maybe I should open an Etsy shop . Do you think anyone would pay $2300 for a twin-size quilt?

My next thought was to make it square. I really like square quilts. 8 x 8 finishes at 64” square. I even have enough HSTs for a 9 x 9. But then, we're almost back into the bed size quilts, at 72”. So why not go super-size and make it a king? I happen to sleep in a king size bed that needs a pretty quilt on it. But for that, I'd need another 1900 HSTs .

Anyone want to swap?

Random Bits: Vol. 9

If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found.
–Unknown

Thoughts On Boston
My heart is heavy for those who were effected by the bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It is difficult to make sense of such a tragedy. My thoughts and prayers are with the families whose lives are forever changed.

In the wake of such an event, and with things like this becoming more and more common, it is hard not to let fear become the overriding influence. It is hard to think there might be hope for a world so full of bad. But there is hope. It comes from faith. For me, faith is knowing that God has a plan for me and that even though life is full of hard things and bad things, with His help, I can carve out my own little haven within my own home and I can overcome the hard and the bad. I will do my best to be prepared to help my family and myself when something bad happens us and do my best help others when something bad happens to them and leave the rest up to God. However you define it, faith is the opposite of fear. I choose to act in faith.


New Ironing Board Cover
Almost three years ago, I made a reversible ironing board cover for my small ironing board. Since then, I've done a lot of ironing. I've washed it several times, and worn a hole clean through the fabric. There were still a few good patches here and there, but the main ironing space was pretty much done for.

The other side was even worse.

It was time for a new cover.

I finished this up last week, but haven't had much time for posting. Isn't it pretty? This cover is reversible as well, but I used the same fabric on both sides so I don't have to feel bad when one side gets worn out. I can just flip it over and have the same pretty fabric all over again. I used three layers of pre-shrunk Warm 'n Natural in the middle. I did three layers on the last cover and there was pretty much nothing left in the end. In order to hopefully give the fabric a little bit more wear, I used the last bit of the 10-yard package of Mistyfuse I won three years ago to fuse a layer of white muslin to the back of the fabric. It gave the fabric a nice body, which I'm happy with. Only time will tell if it makes a difference in the wear.

I put a pretty yellow binding on to house the cord that pulls it tight around the ironing board. And I left the original cover and foam padding on the ironing board under my cover to prevent any rust that might occur, due to condensation of steam, being transferred to the side that is down. Every time I wash my cover, I decide I'm going to take that old foam and cover off because they are ugly from the underside, but then I get in there and remember that the metal rusts a bit and decide to leave it.

I've already put this cute little ironing board to use. I dropped Grace off for a three-week holiday last week. She's one of those “fancy” machines that don't require oiling, except by professionals, who take their sweet time and charge you an arm and a leg for it. While she's getting the royal spa treatment, I've got plenty to keep me busy and I'll show you what I've been up to tomorrow. Or as soon as I get the pictures edited.

Today's post brought to you by:

I Am Way Too Old {and LadyBug is way too young} for General Admission
or Lindsey Stirling Live
It's been almost three weeks now since we had a little adventure with general admission concerts, but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

Lindsey Stirling is one of our favorite YouTube musicians. So when I saw that she was going on tour, I thought it would be fun to go and see her. I bought tickets in mid-January, 2½ months before the concert, and smiled to myself every now and then at the secret I was keeping. Mr. Bug was in on it and we waited until two weeks before the concert for the big reveal. We gave two tickets to my dad for his birthday {hoping he'd use the spare to bring my mom} and at the same time told the Not-So-Little Bugs that we were all going to see Lindsey.

I was certain it was going to be beyond awesome.

People started asking where the concert was, and when we told them the venue, we were informed that there was no seating. At all. I was certain this couldn't be the case. A Lindsey Stirling violin concert certainly would not be without seating. I mean, how could you enjoy the music? I searched the FAQ's on the venue's website, and even tried calling & e-mailing to find out about seating. I hoped they might set up folding chairs or something. But I never heard back. I'm sure they just laughed at my inquiries. Besides the question of seating, there were other objections to the location, namely that it was a bar and we were taking children. But as the concert was billed as “all ages” we decided to take our chances and hope for the best.

As promised, there was no seating. And it was a bar. Fortunately, there was a separated 21-and-older area, to which the alcohol was confined. But there was nothing to be done about the lack of seating.

The opening act was 30 minutes of pure torture. I'm certain that there had been no sound check for this group, because all you could hear was the bass, which vibrated in a very odd place at the base of your throat in the center of your collar bone.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you. Oh, and by the way, I'm subjecting you to cruel and unusual punishment as a gift.

We'd managed to find a spot behind the “sound booth” that wasn't overly crowded, relatively speaking, and the shorter persons in our group could climb up onto a raised platform sort of thing and see over the very tall people who crowded in front of us as Lindsey took the stage. As people pressed in, trying to get a better look, it got warmer and warmer. I tied my hair in an actual knot to keep it off my neck. I stood on my tip-toes and peered between the abnormally tall people in front of me to see.

And Lindsey was awesome.

After about an hour, LadyBug had pretty much had her fill of standing and being too hot. She literally melted into a puddle of tears. She doesn't do well with excessive heat and all those bodies were producing a lot of it. She and I went to the back of the venue where the crowd was thinner and sat down by the open doors to cool off. My parents followed shortly and after another 20 minutes or so, we coaxed Mr. Bug and Grasshopper, who was having a marvelous time, out of the mosh pit, via text, and headed home right in the middle of Phantom of the Opera.

I learned several things from this experience. Number 1: check out the venue before you buy the tickets. Number 2: general admission with no seating should be designated as appropriate for ages 13 to 27. Period. Number 3: Lindsey Stirling is really that awesome, and I am determined to attend a concert of hers that has seating.

For now, I'm going to sit back and enjoy her from the comfort of my office chair.