Brag Sheet: 2013

I tried carrying the weight of the world
But I only have two hands.
Hope I get the chance to travel the world,-
But I don't have any plans.
–Wake Me Up, written by Tim Bergling, Aloe Blacc and Mike Einziger, performed by Avicci

I wasn't going to do a post about all of my 2013 projects because it didn't really seem like there were many. But I've enjoyed the other 2013 posts, so I looked over my index page and was surprised that even though it seemed like slow going, I got a nice bit of sewing done this year.

First are the projects I put together using Pat Bravo's Indie fabric line. I made two Stitchy Kits, designed by Lori Holt {pattern here}. I gave one away and kept one for myself. And I made a folded fabric star and put it on a tote bag. Somehow, Pat sussed me out and invited me to enter her Instagram contest, which I won. I received a half-yard bundle of Carnaby Street as my prize {by the way, I still need a sewcation} and Pat used the photo of my folded fabric star as the header on her Flickr page. The post of the finished fold star tote bag is my most popular post of all time, with 9,822 9,823 9,826 visits to date.

I put together a few other non-quilty things this year: two Christmas ornaments in January, stragglers from Christmas 2012; a Christmas table runner for a lady I know whose birthday is on December 24^th; a new reversible ironing board cover; a Magicka Wizard's robe for Grasshopper's Halloween costume; and two little booklet holders.

Although this has nothing to do with sewing, I was inspired by Shay, who included her travels in her 2013 wrap-up post, and thought I'd throw in our family vacation with a few days at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, a few days at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming and a quick drive-by of Grand Tetons, Wyoming. Fun stuff! More family travel is definitely in our future.

And finally, even though it didn't feel like it, I got a few quilts done; a Drunkard's Path, Ripples, for a friend for her birthday; a 4" square mini for LadyBug's report on Pennsylvania {which is where the Amish live and the Amish are famous for quilting} and which ended up as a quilt for her Guard Lizard, Gilbert; a scrappy baby quilt, Little Boy Blue, for a friend's new baby; a framed Double Wedding Ring, Echoes of Eternity, for a wedding gift in the bride's colors; a zig-zag quilt, Miss Butterfly's Flower Garden, for my niece, Miss Butterfly, to use on her bed; a batik quilt, Sea Glass, for a friend for her birthday; and even though I didn't make the quilt top, I'm counting the quilting I did for P. on her String Ring Dresden as a finish for me as well. At 75" x 95", it is the biggest quilt I've done.

I'm excited for 2014. My goal for this year is not to over commit. I have loads of Ph.D quilts that I want to work on and I've made out a mental list of things I want to work on, but I'm leaving it open to see what inspires me.

Today's post brought to you by:

Miss Butterfly's Flower Garden: A Zig-Zag Quilt Finish

My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already. –Dave Barry

The average time for a quilt from start to finish for me is 2½ years. I hardly ever work on a quilt from start to finish in one go. I almost always work on it a little bit here and there with a few other projects in between and then come back to it and then work on something else, until I finally decide that it is time to finish something, at which time I pick the project that is the closest to being done. This cute little zig-zag quilt is an exception {for the most part} to that rule. For the last seven weeks, it has been {almost} my sole project. I finished it last weekend and it is already in place on Miss Butterfly's bed.

Almost as soon as I got home from the February 16^th wedding reception my last project went as a gift to, I stared work on this zig-zag quilt for my niece. My sister and I planned it a year ago for her daughter, Miss Butterfly, and I've had the fabrics cut out since early last summer. And then it sat because I had other, more urgent things to work on. Miss Butterfly's birthday was just past mid-way through March, and I wanted to finish it in time for that. I missed the mark by a couple of weeks, getting it to her last Saturday. Even though I worked on in nearly every day since mid-February, and revised my “finish by” date, I still cut it down to the wire. We had a family get-together at my parent's on Saturday and I wanted to finish it by then so that I could deliver it in person, rather than mailing it to her {it is pretty heavy and the recent hike in postage rates has sucked all the joy out of sending and receiving packages}. The party started at 4:00 pm, but 4:00 was when I was putting the last stitches in the quilt. It's about an hour and twenty minute's drive to my mom's, plus all that hurry-up-and-wait while everyone gets their stuff ready to get out the door, so we didn't get there until 6:00. But it all worked out. Miss Butterfly's quilt was finished when we left and I made the matching pillow case {tutorial here} when we got there.

I designed this quilt to go together quickly. The HST's are 6" finished, making it relatively fast to pull a twin-size quilt together. I'd originally planned to quilt arcs from corner to corner of each triangle, in essence putting a “net” of flowers on the quilt. I even named the quilt Miss Butterfly's Flower Garden because of the effect the quilting would have. But once I got into it, I decided against that, worrying that my arcs wouldn't be even or pretty without marking them first. As the quilt came together I realized that the chevron or zig-zag design and the white Kona cotton are both very modern, but the calicos in the colored rows are more traditional and I wanted the quilting to be a good mix of both. Plus, I like to quilt to enhance the design of a quilt, rather than covering it. I settled on echo quilting just a hair wider than ¼" apart in the white, and then I did some loopy half-flowers in the colored zig-zags. I think it is a good fusion of modern and traditional. And the quilt name still works, which is a good thing because I embroidered the label six months before I even started piecing the quilt. The yellow row is my favorite because the quilting really shows up. I'm not sure why the quilting doesn't show up in the other rows as well as it does in the yellow, but it really pops in the yellow.

This is the biggest quilt I've quilted myself. The finished size is 72" x 96". I estimate it took me between 70 and 80 hours to put together. On the low end, 30 hours for cutting and piecing, 40 hours for quilting about about 5 hours for binding, I think I wound at least 20 bobbins. And yes, those are 1" pieced HST's {} around the label on the back {close-up here}. It is a great feeling to have this one finished and delivered to my niece!

Read more about this quilt:
A Start on Piecing
Finished Quilt Top & Label
Quilting in Progress
Quilting in Progress, part 2

Today's post brought to you by:

Random Bits: Vol. 8

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. –Mark Twain

Identity Crisis
March is having an identity crisis. I wish it would mistake itself for June instead of December.

{We woke up to a good 4" of snow today, completely covering all the spring bulbs that had started blooming. It continued to snow until nearly 2:00 pm. Then the sun came out and by 4:30 pm had melted most of the snow away.}

{Sidebar: I can't take credit for that beautiful bit of prose. A friend posted that on Facebook before the snow and it was so perfect I had to use it.}

The Continuing Saga of the Tortoise and the Snail, or Friday Night Sew-In Progress Report
My goal for Friday Night Sew-In was to finish the straight-line quilting in the white zig-zags of Miss Butterfly's quilt and to wind the bobbins for the FMQ in the colored zig-zags. I had three full zig-zag rows, two half rows {at the top and bottom}, plus one line of stitching left in a row to finish. I did make progress, but I still have one complete zig-zag and a half zig-zag along the bottom of the quilt. My bobbins are all ready to go, though. Never mind that three of the four were already wound.

In the past, I've never tried to strategically place my embroidered quilt labels on the back of the quilt. I just stitched them in along the seam and called it good. With the Pinkalicious and Little Boy Blue baby quilts, the piecing and quilting offered an opportunity to place them so that they wouldn't be stitched over. It was kind of frustrating, though, because the ultra-cuddle I used on the back of the quilts was stretchy and shifted. So when I set out to position the label for this quilt so that the colored stitching wouldn't intrude too much on the white label, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I was surprised at how well it lined up. Horizontally, it is right on. Vertically, the label should sit ¾” of an inch lower, except that when I cut the top piece of backing, I forgot to add the extra allowance and instead cut it exactly where I wanted the label to be. Measure twice, cut once never rang truer.

Favourite Things Friday: The Frontrunner {a week and a day late}
Last Friday, the Not-So-Little Bugs had the day off from school. I took the day off work and we set off on an adventure. With high spirits, ample snacks and entertainment, we set off to visit my mom and dad via Utah's light rail, the Frontrunner. We arrived at the platform early, bought our tickets and patiently waited for our train to arrive. Upon boarding, we picked seats with a table so that we could play the game Grasshopper brought.

Grasshopper refused to smile, and if we look a bit rough, well, that's because we were. Part of our adventure was to get hair cuts, all three of us {and I got a color}, from my sister. The ride took 1 hour and 57 minutes, traversing 81 miles. This is 37 minutes longer than it takes to drive, but I was all for taking the train since that meant that I didn't have to drive. Before we were barely underway, though, I got a mite queasy. The motion sickness triggered a massive migraine, which I tried my best to medicate and ignore. After our hair appointments, we had a little party at my parents' house. My dad cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and the weather was so lovely {mid-60's; see also, Identity Crisis} that we ate outside. All of my siblings and their kids were there, except for one sister and her family who live in Idaho and who did not have the day off school. It was so nice to be all together. We played games after dinner, and the Not-So-Little Bugs and I caught the last train home. It was definitely a favourite, in my book.

Random Bits: Vol 7

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony. –Thomas Merton

Absentia
I think about blogging a lot. I write posts in my head all the time. But getting them down “on paper” is another matter. This post is a patchwork of the things that have been on my mind the last week or so. I've often wished for a USB port behind my ear, so that I could plug in and download my thoughts. Then I could blog things one at a time. It's been so long, I don't know if anyone is left out there to read this. I hope you all haven't given up on me. There is still a ton of traffic here and I check at least once a day to see if there are new comments. I stopped getting excited a couple of weeks ago, though, because all there is is spam, spam and more spam. I know some of you are also getting spammed into oblivion. Do you think if we asked nicely, that Google/Blogger would put anonymous commenting in its own category to be turned on and off at will and independent of any other commenting options?

A Pocket Dial and Other Telephone Related Chatter
At work yesterday afternoon I answered the phone, but couldn't understand what the person on the other end said in reply to my “how may I help you?” spiel. This isn't uncommon; lots of our customers speak English as a second language, so I took a deep breath and prepared to do my best. However, the unintelligible reply was followed by a long silence, to which I answered “hello?” Then there was a snippet of a conversation, in perfect English, about bone spurs on someone's heels. I tried another “hello?” but it was obvious that I was not included in the conversation.

I'm still scratching my head over it. You have to be a very persistent pocket dialer in order to get to me. First you have to dial the main number, which could be on anyone's speed dial. But then you have to select option 4 or dial my direct extension. And bone spurs, even ones on heels, have absolutely nothing to do with how many people we billed them for last month.

There seems to be a funny phenomenon going on at my desk. Aside from the occasional pocket dial, no one ever calls me at work unless I'm in the bathroom. It's getting so I'm afraid to even go, because I know I'll have voice mail when I get back, which is ten times more work to handle than a straight up phone call. Three times this week, I've come back from a quick potty break to find I had a message. How is that even possible?

My New Best Friend
I'd like to introduce you to Mel. She's my new best friend, which I'm sure she'd be interested to know since we've never met. Mel has a food blog. And not just any food blog. It's a good food blog, which is just what I've been missing in my life.

A couple of months ago, I gave up dairy due to intolerance. Thanks to some great advice from Regan and P., who are both dairy free, I survived my first few weeks of wondering what I actually can eat. {Sidebar: there are milk or milk products in everything, from chocolate to bread to taco seasoning packets. Strangely, there is not milk found in Oreos.} Regan hooked me up with a good dairy-free “butter” and gave me lots of advice on how to live dairy free. P. commiserated over the loss of most chocolate products in our diets. And I muddled through, hunting down every last allergen ingredient list that could be found on the internet for fast-food restaurants. When nothing was available on-line, I called ahead to places I was contemplating eating at and harassed the poor employees into giving me the low-down on what was dairy free. I mourned the loss of pizza and ice cream and my favorite casseroles, which all have cream-of-some-kind-or-other soup in them. And I kind of quit cooking on a regular basis.

Eventually, I found a new-age hippie herb shop that sells lots organic and whole foods, as well as lots of dairy free food items like vegan “cheese” and “sour cream.” I was able to make some of my favorite dishes with the diary free substitutes, but there were still some serious holes in my menu.

Then I met Mel and her fabulous food blog. She has menu plans and a month's worth of meals that take 30 minutes or less. She's not dairy free, but her recipes are fresh, without a lot of processed foods. And she doesn't cook with cream-of-anything soup {at least not that I've seen}. Everything we've tried so far has been delicious. The wraps {with dairy free cheese and sour cream substitutes} we had on Monday were so good, I ate the left-overs for breakfast on Tuesday morning. And the Sweet & Sour Chicken we had for dinner on Wednesday night was also lunch on Thursday and dinner tonight. I've never been so excited to have left-overs. {Sidebar: whoever invented sweet & sour sauce is a genius. Seriously. On the one hand it is so innocently sweet that you want to take it home to meet your mother and on the other, so sour that your eyes roll back a little in your head.} {Sidebar: P., the sweet & sour chicken is gluten-free if you use the right soy sauce. And I'm wondering if you could use honey instead of sugar. This recipe seems to be saying “use honey in me.”} I've pinned about a dozen other things to try from Mel's, and I'm looking forward to it!

I've bookmarked a few other food blogs that look promising, and as soon as I stop drooling over Mel's Kitchen Cafe, I'm going to take a serious look and see what other food adventures I can take.

Quilter's Favorites
You meet the most amazing people in blogland that you might not otherwise ever encounter in real life. Have you met Geta yet? She is a seriously amazing quilter. In a little under two months, she is hosting the Quilter's Favorites linky party.

It looks to be quite the blog event. Anyone and everyone can participate. Geta's put together a list of questions that you can print out and answer as you quilt over the next few weeks. Then during the week of May 10^th, you can post your answers, link up and then go learn something new from the other quilters who link up. I'm looking forward to clicking around the blogosphere to see what new project I just have to start.

The Tale of the Tortoise and the Snail or, What I'm Working on For Friday Night Sew-In
I haven't officially participated in Friday Night Sew-In for a year now. But with Mr. Bug on 3^rd shift {midnight to 10:00 am}, pretty much every Friday night is Friday Night Sew-In at Bug Cottage. {Sidebar: I am so happy to announce that Mr. Bug is working days again! Do a little happy dance with me!} Even though Mr. Bug is home tonight, I'm doing Friday Night Sew-In, because he's still transitioning from being a nocturnal animal. We'll catch up on our TV and I'm going to see if I can get a little quilting done on Miss Butterfly's Zig-Zag quilt. I was hoping to be a little farther along on it by now.

Since I last posted {11 days ago}, I still had to put the back together before I could baste the quilt. Then I had to make the binding and I decided that I needed to pre-wash and dry the batting {for shrinkage purposes, and not at all because I was procrastinating; see also, persnickety}. After that I was distracted by some chain piecing on a really, really, really old Ph.D quilt that I hope to finish sometime this decade. I was certain that the Zig-Zag quilt need to rest for a little bit, kind of like bread dough. And I knew that basting it was going to be pretty hairy. I was right. It took 2½ hours. I procrastinated that until last weekend and have been working on the straight-line quilting a little bit at a time this week. I had a couple of no-sew days {I must have been really tired or busy to have a day go by without sewing at least a little bit; see also, Mel's Kitchen Cafe}. I have just shy of half of the white zig-zags finished. My goal for FNSI is to finish the rest of those and then wind bobbins for the threads for the FMQ in the colored zig-zags. I will probably bind the quilt before I do the FMQ {the quilt should be pretty stabilized by then and it is just that much less bulk to work with. Plus, it keeps lint from building up on the quilt as it rubs off the extra batting around the edges} , but it is always good to be prepared.

Why, yes. That is a twin size quilt, all 72” x 96” of it, balanced on my little sewing table. When I quilt, I hold as much of it as I can in my lap and then fold or roll the rest of it to fit on the table. This is the biggest quilt I've done, but so far, it is working out nicely.


Extreme Shepherding
Confession time: I started this post in December. I knew that in my next hodge-podge post, I wanted to show you this funny video. So I threw the HTML code in to a draft and have been moving the scheduled post date up by a few weeks every time the draft got old enough to drop down into the list of already posted stuff and get lost. There wasn't anything else in this post until today. And I'm hoping this is still as funny as I remember!

Zig-Zaggity Woop Woop

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. It transcends all barriers. –Ed Sullivan

Over the last three weeks, I've been working on a quilt for my cute niece, Miss Butterfly. It's a zig-zag quilt. I've been kind of persnickety about my process, and I think it paid off. None of my points have gone missing and the seams—the whole quilt really—lays so flat. I kind of ♥ how it turned out.

I finished the top this week. It's twin size {72" x 96"}, and will be the biggest quilt I've ever quilted on my little machine. I'm looking at the throat space {or harp, or whatever it is called} and wishing for a Sweet Sixteen.

I've been thinking a lot about how I will handle a quilt this size. In my early quilting days, I was a roller. The instructor at the beginning machine quilting class I took said that's how to do it, so that's what I did. But then I read something Leah Day said in reference to rolling a quilt into a log for quilting. She said the reason that logs are floated down a river is because they are so hard to handle, and rolled quilts are equally hard to handle. I didn't believe her. A huge puddle of quilt in the machine seemed like it would be more difficult to maneuver and just in the way. At the time, I was working on my Polka Dot Quilt , and noticed while I was working on the quilting in the larger circles, that the whole process was kind of cumbersome. I decided to give puddling a try—not a complete puddle, mind you, but I unrolled my quilt a little, giving me a little more slack to work with while still maintaining the tidiness a roll creates. It helped, and since then, I've become a hybrid puddle/roller, leaning more towards the puddling, because really, Leah's right about logs being hard to handle.

I'm a little worried too, because the half-square triangles are 6", and that means they are going to require gross free-motion quilting skills, and I'm better at fine free-motion quilting {like how I am in life; better fine motor skills than gross motor skills}. I'd originally planned to quilt arcs in each of the triangles, from corner to corner, making a "net" of flowers in the quilt. But the long side of the triangles is 7½", and to get pretty arcs, I'll have to mark the quilt {see above reference to gross free-motion quilting skills}. So, I've revised my quilting plan and hope to incorporate a bit of modern quilting {straight lines} with something a bit more traditional. I think this will fuse nicely with the more traditional calico fabrics and modern chevron/zig-zag quilt design.

This quilt has been in the works for a while. Or at least the idea of this quilt has been in the works for a while. I cut all the fabrics for the half-square triangles early last summer and I worked on the label a few months later, before any sewing actually began. I named the quilt before I even started working on it, thinking of the quilting I planned to do in it. Now that the top is a reality and I'm going to start quilting {and not stop until it is finished}, the name still works, but I did have to do a little tweaking to make the label a little more accurate. It used to say "September 2012."

I usually baste my quilts on my living room carpet {which also doubles as a design wall}. I know that some of you are being carried off in stretchers at the moment, due to shortness of breath, dizziness, pain in your left arm and tightness in your chest, but it works for me. But there isn't enough floor space for a 6' x 8' quilt, so I mopped the kitchen floor yesterday. I'm still putting the back together and seriously considered banning any food or drink in the kitchen until I can get the quilt basted, but decided against it because food and drink are already banned in all other areas of the house and I didn't want the Not-So-Little Bugs to starve. I'm hoping I can get it all together and basted before too much more time passes, otherwise, I'll have to mop the floor again, and frankly, I'd rather be quilting.

Speaking of which, here's a bit of funky swing {which gives this post its title} to quilt by.

Persnickety

Persnickety: /pərˈsnikətē/
Adjective
1. Placing too much emphasis on trivial or minor details; fussy.
2. Requiring a particularly precise or careful approach.

The other week, I left a comment for P. on a quilt top she'd finished, using thrifted men's shirts. I admired how all her corners matched, how nice and flat it laid and how all the prints went in the same direction. She did a really beautiful job on it. She replied back and said that she'd been rather persnickety about how it went together, and I thought that I really liked that adjective.

I don't know about you, but there are certain things I'm very particular about when I quilt. Well, I'm particular about everything, really. I like things a certain way, but I won't go into all of that. For sewing or quilting, I wash all fabrics before using. I piece with Gütterman 50-weight cotton thread and I quilt with AURIfil Makò 50-weight thread. When I lay out a quilt, I put a pin in the top left corner block so I know which way is top and which way is bottom, and I'm very careful to sew the pieces together in the right order. I make sure all the stripes go in the same direction {usually vertically} and that any directional fabrics go the same direction.

Lately, I've taken to making sure that the lengthwise grain and the crosswise grain of each block all go in the same direction throughout the quilt. The cross grain has slightly more give than the length of grain and it seems like everything lines up so much nicer if the grains are all going the same way.

Case in point: I'm working on a fun zig-zag quilt for my niece, Miss Butterfly.

I cut the fabric for it sometime late last spring or early last summer, about the time I decided that the grain should all go the same way. I just started assembling it last week. As I've made the half-square triangles, I put the squares together with the cross grain going one direction on one square and the lengthwise grain going the other direction, so that once they were sewn on the diagonal and opened up, the entire block has the same grain. What I didn't plan for when I penciled in the diagonal line on the white fabric, was that the triangles would have to go in alternating directions in the quilt. Even though all the blocks have the grain going in the same direction in both halves of the half-square triangles, all of the half-square triangles on the left side of the chevrons have the lengthwise grain going up and down and the half-square triangles on the right side have the crosswise grain going up and down. It bothers the persnickety quilter in me just a little. I considered re-marking half the blocks, but decided that I didn't want a pencil line dissecting half of my white triangles. I'll pay closer attention next time.

All of this makes me curious, and I wonder what you all are persnickety about, quilting or otherwise.

Zig-Zag Flag and Other Patriotic Quilt Blocks

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
–Francis Scott Key, The Star Spangled Banner

Last Wednesday {July 4^th} was kind of a big deal around these parts. There are parades and flags and fireworks and red, white and blue everywhere. I had the day off work {it's a national holiday, after all} so I decided that I wouldn't be any farther behind on my quilting to-do list if I took a break from what I am currently working on to do a little something fast and fun, but still on the to-do list. You see, I was distracted inspired by a super cute door hanger by Karen at The Recipe Bunny, who'd linked up to my July Finishes page. I thought her zig-zag flag block would fit perfectly in my Patriotic Sampler quilt. I had picked a couple of blocks that I just wasn't feeling the love on, which is probably why it has sat in its box all sad and lonely for . . . a really long time. I pulled it out, thinking I could throw together a scrappy 12" block with 108 HST's in an afternoon.

I tend to over estimate my powers of fabric persuasion. It took me the afternoon just to cut the fabrics. I got the HST's and the blue section {which may or may not have appliqué stars added to it later} put together before fireworks. I had a busy work week last week, so I fit in a bit of sewing time when ever I could and finished the rest of the block over the next few days {instead of hours}.

When I open my box of red, white and blue fabrics, I always wonder why this quilt isn't finished. I've been working on it since before LadyBug was born. I love the fabrics and colors and theme so much. So while I had it out, I put together a couple more blocks. I did a banner flag, which finishes at 5" x 12" {odd size, I know}, and I love it! Getting a good photo of it is another story.

I also put together a Patriot's Star and I think this is my absolute favorite block of the whole quilt. I reduced the pattern to 5" and omitted the black stained-glass effect outline. I just love how it turned out.

I've got 13 of the 15 blocks finished now. I'm pretty sure what the last two 12" blocks will be, and then after that I've got to paper piece 27 - 1" five-point stars for the sashing. I'm not really looking forward to that.

This quilt is on my list of quilts to finish this year, so hopefully I'll get back to it soon. In the meantime, I'm off to work on another distraction important project.