WIP Wednesday: The Power of Three

I wasn't kidding when I said I was pulling out some OLD projects.  This. Is. OLD.  Well, old for me.  It's from 2008-2009.

I remember I was working on this for a sample, and I getting frustrated with it, and put it aside.  I put it aside for so long that the fabric sold out, and as I said, "well, shit," I shoved it aside again.

Some very, very valuable lessons have been learned since then:
#1.  Keep the pattern with the project when you have to put something aside.  Lord knows you won't remember how it goes together six years later.
#2.  That 1/4" seam ain't no joke.  Learn it, live it.  Because when you have to put something away, having that 1/4" mastered means you won't spend an hour and a half ripping apart, and reassembling shitty blocks.
#3.  Take some damn notes as to which fabric is which.  Because you won't remember which pieces are which after they have chunks cut out of them six years later.

Grumble, grumble, grumble; gripe, gripe, gripe.

So this is The Power of Three by Quilt Woman.  My sample was out of the Za-Za-Zing line by I-Don't-Remember-Who.  And yes, since all I have left of this pattern is the cover, I will be assembling this by looking at the picture and winging it.  How hard can it be?

 

LOL

Actually, after about an hour of figuring, I think I have how it goes together down.  And if not?  Well, just like skinning cats, there's more than one way to assemble a quilt.  BAM.

SO here's what I have so far.  This is going back away for a few weeks until I can finish up the (several) projects I have to finish within the next 3 weeks.  

Don't worry, I took some of these apart and redid them, because WOW  o.0

Did I mention half of the blocks I found were in various states of completeness and missing-pieces-ness?  Thankfully I at least kept the extra fabric with it. 

Snow Day, Sew Day - Psychedelic Turd

Salem has called a "chains or snow tires only" day, so that means we're homebound for now.  9" total with a change of freezing rain later! So other than sew, what do you do?

 Snow angels 

Now, before anyone says anything about the name of the quilt, it was inspired by this song...and if you mishear the "Psychadelic Furs" lyric the way I did when I heard it for the first time, and once you see the quilt, you'll understand why.

Behind the Music - The Vandals

I can't remember which pattern this came from (so hey, if anyone recognizes the pattern...), because I started this 4-5 years ago too, but I was way too into this bright fabric and it's a little overpowering, but weirdly I still like it.

Here is what I started with.  NO idea why two sides have a black border and the other two don't, but whatever.  I wasn't planning on taking it apart to put new black pieces on (I don't have the original fabric anyhow).  But seriously...talk about wonky!  It was warped from ironing when I should have pressed, and my quarter inch seams were iffy at best.  But it held together just fine so I kept it as is.

All I did was finish the pink borders (originally only the top and bottom pieces were attached) and add the green one.  I figured how could it get any brighter and any more garish?  It's a psychedelic turd...how does that saying go?  If you paint a turd gold, it's still a turd? Something like that.  Well, either way, it's fitting. (And I can hear a handful of y'all from all the way over here..."how many more times is this girl going to say 'turd'?" Probably a few more times.  It's a little funny.)

Another one for the "ready to quilt, someday" pile.

Snow Day, Snow Day - Honduran Twist

Looks like the valley is in for it today.  It started kind of snowing yesterday, but it continued overnight and the roads were a little slick this morning.  I didn't think it was bad enough to not go in to work, so I did, but some 2:30 it was getting pretty bad.  Let's just say this afternoon, my usual 15 minute drive back home took about 45 minutes (I can drive in snow fairly well, since I had to learn straight away when I got my license, but I don't have 4 wheel drive).  I got to the shop just fine but it was coming down hard enough and the roads were getting bad enough that we decided to close up shop and get home. 

About 6", with more supposedly to come.

So, what to do with a snow day?  Turn it into a "Sew Day!" I know, that's terrible, but I couldn't resist. Anyway, it is time to get some old projects together and finish them. 

Nothing shows you the progress you've made than going through old, unfinished projects.  This one was a clusterbomb.  I haven't worked on this one in maybe 4-5 years. This is the pattern I was working on:

Twisty and cute! So I opened the box and found twelve finished partial seam blocks. (That's a lime green, by the way, not a heinous looking yellow)

...and then I found a bunch of these weird chopped off pieces in both the blue and green.

 I guess I must have miscut a bunch of these, got frustrated and put it away.  Your guess is as good as mine.  At this point, it was a lot of very carefully piecing these odd little square-triangles.

What I DID learn in finishing these blocks, is that 4-5 years ago I did NOT understand the difference between "ironing my blocks" and "pressing my blocks."  Holy warpage, Batman!  Some of them were warped enough from the ironing that I couldn't trim them straight enough, and I didn't have enough of any of the fabrics to redo them.  Lessons learned!  



Another lesson learned?  Color choice.  If I had to do this quilt again, I wouldn't have gone with that green.  LOVE the blue...but not so wild about that green at this point.  C'est la vie. 

As I got it pieced together more, I was a little happier with it, but surprisingly John really loves it.  Since it's not his usual manly style, I had to ask.  He said that he loved it because it reminded him of the art from Honduras, all the bright colors and things he remembers from his childhood.  The fabric is actually called Guatemalan Flora, which makes sense...while it's not Honduran themed, Guatemala is one of their neighbors and the art style has a similar flavor to it. 

 

So here is the almost finished quilt, with John hamming it up on the top there...It would be done now, but he wants it a little larger so he can curl up in it (understandable, after all, isn't that what quilts are largely for?), and luckily we still have some of the border print at the shop.  I'll probably get the border slapped on this week and it'll go in the "ready for quilting, someday" pile.

"An elephant never forgets" (but I almost did, about this project)

Last June when we had the fire in the warehouse behind the shop, everything kind of got scattered to the winds in the hurry to get everything out of the building safely.  Fat quarters were mixed with books, mixed with patterns, mixed with cut goods...you get the idea.  We managed to keep our programs organized, but everything else had to be re-sorted when we put the store back together.

As usual, Mom and I generally each have a few projects (samples) we're working on in the classroom.  At the time, we just had to stuff those projects in bags and get them the hell out.  I found a few of the ones I was working on, but unfortunately a few were missing.  Most of the merch was stored at my house a few blocks away, but as I ran out of room, some went to my folks' place too. I looked at her house, came up empty handed and assumed that everything was out of my house at that point so, my project was among the missing.

The other day I was neatening up my sewing room and I came across a big ziplock baggie full of blocks.  Lo and behold, there was my project, which by this point, I had just about forgotten about.  All 12 elephant blocks AND the pattern (score!) had been in my messy sewing room since June! So the other day I took them into the shop...squared them up, picked a sashing and....boom. Ready to quilt!

It'll make a cute addition to the kids' room at the shop.  Just need to reorder the pattern and there you have it.  This would be cute for a little boy or girl...or make it bigger (and not a stupid 1.5" sashing) for a grown up who likes elephants too.

UFOs Are Abuducting ME! The Luray Caverns Flowers Edition

Several weeks ago I was over at Mom's house helping her clean out her sewing room.  It had gotten out of hand after having to hurriedly make room in the two spare bedrooms several months ago...things just sort of got stacked in there and she was left with little room to get around and do her projects.  So she asked me to help, and little did I know that I would be coming home with four garbage bags of fabric, another two of notions, magazines, books and patterns, and then another 5 for Diane's Secret Stash.

There was one more bag, and it was chock full of unfinished projects in varying degrees of completeness.  A few of them just need to be quilted.  Some just need borders.  A handful are mostly pieced, but need to have pieces appliqued down...and then there are several fistfuls of coordinating blocks that are complete, but she never got around to putting them in a setting.

Then there were a few rescue missions.  There were a handful of paper pieced flower blocks that, when we moved here, got tossed in with something linty by the movers and so these blocks looked a mess.  Mom decided she didn't like the blocks enough to clean them up and put them in a pile that was set to be pitched.  Now I'm no dumpster diver, and I have never previously taken it upon myself to pick through the garbage...but I did pull these blocks out of the garbage pile.  They were just fuzzy...one of those sticky paper lint rollers, and these blocks would be good as gold.  So that's what I did. Pulled them from the garbage, and cleaned them up.

Once I laid them all out, I recognized them as these paper piecing patterns that were the same as the little ones she made me stitch up when I was 6.  I looked at the paper backings and sure enough they were from a lady out of Luray, Virginia.  Hey, a little slice of my childhood, can't be throwing that away!  I remember when I was 6, we went on a field trip with my school to Luray Caverns and that is probably when she got them.

 

Luray Caverns circa 1993. The abominable snow child on the right would be me.

But she really like the patterns and bought a bunch, which are now mine to make. I did my best to stay true to her fabric choices even though now the pieces are 20 years old.  Below, the beginnings of the sashing are modern fabrics, but the white settings for the blocks are hers from back in the day.

It needed a border, and after testing a bunch of 30's prints that looked okay, I found this border print at the shop.  I do not like it at all as a stand alone piece, but with this?  It does the trick!

Here's a better look at the border:

I need to nab a backing for it, and I'm thinking I'll take a stab at quilting it myself.  I figure, if she was going to just toss the blocks, then a homegrown quilting job won't be a big deal.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

And, this is just the first of several UFOs that have abducted me!

Offset Triangles: A Hate-Hate Relationship

Whelp, I resurrected a creature from the deep...my Kaye England Block of the Month from two-ish years ago.  Some folks remember this quilt as the one I changed all the colors on in class, and got super behind on and they wanted to see it done and I wanted to see it burn.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the project and the colors but uh...let's just say my patience with getting stymied by techniques requiring superhuman precision is embarrassingly short.  Hey, at least I admit it, right?  That has to count for something.

So. Offset triangles are thee devil. Mom is so very wrong...my seventh level of hell isn't chickens (long story), it's a project with offset triangles in it.  Think I'm kidding?  Check out this entry from 2011.  This time, ironing isn't the problem...yes, this rookie cookie finally broke the press-not-iron code.  It's the quarter inch on the ends.  Somewhere, I am massively screwing it up despite my diligent (I swear!) measuring, pinning, careful stitching and pressing-not-ironing...because it's looking like a damn staircase. 

Of course, when I looked online for a half decent tutorial on prepping and sewing offset triangles, I got directed to engineering websites and sewing equilateral triangles.  Well, both of those help me exactly not at all, because I am sewing the squatty isosceles variety and as my brain is pretty busted in the math department, I can't seem to extrapolate the procedure.  Someone needs to get on writing up a tute for that...I'd do it but I am the absolutely wrong person for the job.

This looks like a quilt for another day.  Maybe it'll be done by the time I'm 30 (fat chance, I'm staring down the wrong side of my 20s)

Spring is in the Air...

I WISH!  Anyone else tired of this cloudy/rainy/one day chilly, next day chillier crap? At least it's warmer today :-)

Anyway, I have been trying to blow through old projects and get them finished, quilted and to wherever they were supposed to go.  This little beauty I have had for about a year and a half just sitting in a ziplock bag and I got it done.  

Now it's off to the quilter to get quilted up with some flowers in variegated yellow thread.  I'm not a huge fan of pink or yellow, but I LOVE those big dots. 

The Case of the Mysterious Vanishing Quilt

I have never, ever, ever ever ever made a quilt just for me. None. So now I started making one for me.  The colors are bright, weird and garish and I LOVE them.  They are some remnants of the sales pieces from reps that didn't sell and they hated, so they gave them to me because hey, they know my taste can be a little left of center.  And it is.

I haven't been this excited about a project in a long time, because it is 100% my style, and I love every single little weirdo piece in that quilt. It clashes, and it's supposed to.  I love it because it's bizarre and there's so much for the eye to try and focus on.

So I cut these into 2.5" strips and squares, made 16 patches and 4 patches...arranged them how I wanted...

...pinned them together... and took them home from the shop to sew at home and to figure out how much black accent fabric I needed for those blank spaces...

Then...it vanished. Straight up disappeared, somewhere between the shop, my car and my house.  I turned my car upside down, shook it out, found nothing.  Checked my bags, the shop, my living room, my sewing room, my yard, the bathroom...nowhere.  John looked for it.  Mom looked for it. No one found anything.  It vanished into thin air.  David Copperfield's got NOTHING on this quilt, I swear.

So apparently some UFO has floated down and stole my U.F.O. So far that's the only logical answer yet.  lol.  I'll find it eventually when I least expect it, and I'm sure it'll be somewhere completely stupid.

Next time I walk into my kitchen, it'll show up on top of the fridge. (just kidding, I already checked)

Hand-Me-Down UFOs

Lately a very common statement I hear at the shop and with quilting friends is that either A) they need to use up their stash, or B) they want to finish UFOs before getting anything new. I've even tried to commit to those ideas too, with medium style success.

But even with a lot of determination, we look at our old projects with mixed emotions. Sometimes we see them with renewed vigor and get back on track ...but then other times... we look at those unfinished projects and just groan and shove it back to the back of the bin. And if we reeeeeeally never want to see the project again, we "donate" it to family or friends who sew and who we hope will finish them so we don't have to!

Well, in the past few months lots in my life and in the lives of my family and friends has changed - people have moved, gotten ill, had surgery...all that great life event stuff. So as folks cleaned out their sewing rooms and revisited those UFOs, I ended up taking a handful of them and I'm glad I did! They may have hated them, but I sure don't. Some of them are sets of completed blocks, and others are close to finished.

Here are a few of them. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me!

This one is an old project of Mom's that she started when I was...a toddler? It's definitely from the early 90s and it was one she utterly detested. So instead of her scrapping the blocks, she gave them to me to do whatever with...so I made it. All I added were the borders:

   
 This one is another from Mom. She just decided she was never going to get to again and again, instead of roundcanning it, she gave it to me to finish. Really all that needs done is stitching the applique down:

And this one a customer brought in for me. She just wasn't happy with where it was going, had run out of fabric and was just not inspired to ever work on it ever again. As luck would have it, another customer completely unrelated to the one that gave me the quilt to finish, gave me the very same fabric the other quilter had run out of - 6 1/2 yards to boot!

So if you really hate one of your UFOs, you might just find it a home with someone else! Not me though...looks like I've got plenty to keep me out of trouble :)