The Use-It-All-Up Quilt Project

I have assembled all my printed quilting fabrics. I am ignoring your laughter at this paltry amount. It seems like a lot to me, and they keep bugging me to use them. There are many dark and twisty reasons that have prevented me from doing so, but finally I have found a personally good reason to get off my butt and start a major all of February Quilt Project. And I am inviting you to Quilt Along with Melody...or QAWM*


Starting with the greens, cause I am in a green mood, I found a nice hand dyed purple to make strip #1. The prints will be the center square of my block.

Here's the concept: I am going to make a very simple quilt block that has lots of possibilities and I am not going to use any other fabric except what I have in my house at this minute, which includes loads of hand dyed fabrics too. (Yesterday I spent two hours online fabric shopping and stopped myself just at the point of making the purchase.) I am certain that I have enough here for several quilts.

My plan is to make blocks, many many blocks and then decide later how to use them. I am going to start with one colorway and add coordinating colors to make each block harmonious, whatever that means. Since I don't know how many blocks I will get from the stack of fabrics I don't yet know what size the quilt/quilts will become. I don't care at this point. I am just going to use up all these prints if I can.

1. Here is the block. The center square is cut 4.5", the surrounding strip is cut at 1.5" and the last strip is cut at 2.5". With a 1/4" inch seam allowance the resulting block is 10.25" or a finished 9.75 inch block. There is very little waste from cutting one strip of fabric from selvedge to selvedge for this last strip.

2. The possibilities for this simple block increase if later it is divided into four smaller blocks and reassembled as in figures 3. 4. 6. and 7. The smaller block can be enlarged by adding sashing, as in figure 5, and of course setting it on point is also an option.

*If you are interested in accompanying me on this quilt-along, QWAM email me at fibermania at gmail dot com and I will post your name and share your progress here. If you have a blog, a link will be included. I am going to try and keep this up for the whole stinkin' month of February. (I never make committments like this, so you know I must be serious).

Icestorm

It is already melting and under the crust of ice is mushy snow. It began yesterday afternoon and we got almost five inches before the rain and sleet began in earnest. Dave and I were sitting in the hot tub when I felt my hair crusted with ice. What a strange sensation.

My darling little magnolia is bent from the weight of accumulated ice and snow. I hope she springs right back up when all this white disappears.

It is so foggy and I tried to hold that milky quality in these images.  No one is on the road, but we did see one snowplow late yesterday afternoon. Dave says they don't spread salt here, but sugar beet granules to melt the snow. Can that be true?

Our hoped for Pampas Grass may not agree that we are in zone 7a.
I'm so glad we have nowhere to go and are tucked in dry and warm in our mountain home.

Yarn Dyeing with Brooke

We had a fun and exhausting day together dyeing wool for Brooke. We used acid dyes from Dharma Trading Company and lots of water and vinegar. Everything was dyed in the microwave, at 2 minute batches, checking to see if we needed more color. Sometimes we added additional color after the dye had cooled down and looked too close to another color. For example the lime green ended up looking too much like the yellow so we added more green to it. I loved her purple so much that I went and got another skein of sock yarn and dyed it purple too. (it's in the sink photo,  upper right)  But I should have dyed some of that lime green. It is so gorgeous.

Fun with Knitting

  Marj wore her Birthday Sweater to Southern Purls, our weekly knit-in. Isn't it fun? Love the three dimensional frosting on the cake. She always wears a fabulous knit to make her entrance.

 And Ellen our Guild President finished her mobius, which I covet and will just have to make one for myself. It is double the length but so light and airy. Knitted jewelry, if you ask me.

We have a LOUD and fun time at this group.

My sister is coming to the studio today and we are going to dye yarn ala Attic 24's collection.

Brooke wants to make this garland like Lucy made, or maybe one of her own design. But she needs juicy wonderful colors. So we'll dye them.

I have loads of worsted weight white wool including this aran fisherman knit that I have lost interest in finishing. It has been ignored long enough and I will frog it and make beautiful new colored yarn from it.

I used to paint...

My pal Mary (whom I have never met but only know via email) has retired and taken up watercolor. I think she is very brave. I have painted watercolors in my past and have a brand new set or two of them in my art-supply collection, but they have magic powers of inducing panic in me, so I stay clear of them. The closest I get is watered-down acrylics, which when dry, can be painted over without disturbing the initial layer of paint.
That's not a great recommendation for using them, but that's why they are safer to me, artwise. And you can draw over them when dry ( which is very fast) with paint pens and inks etc. and they won't gunk up anything.

I really like oil paints best, as they are pretty much fool proof, and I am the fool who proves that one. The detail of the garlic above is done in oil.

Why I bring this up, is that Brave Mary sent me a picture of her first watercolor, and it got my juices flowing. And I just got a check from the gallery for selling one of my paintings and that got my attention too.

So what is holding me back? I have a cranium full of excuses which must be overcome. One of them is lighting. Whine whine whine. My studio is bright, but not bright enough so I use spotlights on the still life set ups and they all look like they are SPOTLIGHTED.
Stupid, I know.
I have a solution, but it feels wrong. The 'posters' above are still lifes that I photographed up in my old well lit studio. I took the photos into Photoshop and made painterly adjustments and printed those out and then made the paintings look like the Photoshopped versions of the original still life. So I could do that again, if I want. But there's that voice inside that says "That's not how real painters work". That gets me every time.

So when I muster up the courage, which could be soon, I am going to try to paint without a spotlight on the setup and just one on the canvas, and see if I can make it work. Sounds simple enough right?

But here's the thing. One paints the light, the shadows and the highlights. What if those are subtle, which they will be without a blazing spotlight?

I quibble. Even I am bored with this thinking. Grrrr.

Cushy

The folding chairs at the knitting group sites are metal, cold and hard. Last week we met at Hobby Lobby (and I had a coupon)  so as soon as I sat on that cold hard seat I lept up and went into the store and purchased a foam cushion, unadorned. My pal Judy suggested that I make a knitted cover, but having been there and done that I decided to use fabric instead.

I had a started patchwork piece and lots of triangles ready to use, so I thought this would just fall into place in minutes. But it turned into hours since I had to make it TO SIZE. Ugh. I never have to do that anymore, so that part was a bit like work. The cushion form is 14.25 inches square, and 2.25 deep. All those fractions made me nuts. Plus I had to devise a closure, since I didn't have a zipper handy to match these colors.

But I did have buttons, so I made this flap and it works pretty well. At least I don't have to sit on the buttons. The cushion is just right now, with it's Melody-ness evident and I expect my bum will be quite happy at knitting tomorrow.

 I used some hand dyed heavier threads for some of the machine quilting. The patchwork is actually sewn, not fused, because of course I expect a lot of wear for this item. The top is quilted to cotton batting, but without backing fabric. The foam insert is covered with thicker batting to fill in the minor gaps that might occur. All fabrics are hand dyed cottons, by me of course.

I'm sewing...Come back later.

Goodwill Goodies

Saturday's grocery shopping included a stop at the local Goodwill store. I lucked out with 50% off all sweaters. This cabled pink beauty is merino and cashmere.

Lately I have been having a Pear Green desire, and this terry hoodie was just the thing to satisfy me.

     

How could I resist this Icelandic Norwegian ski sweater, despite the warm temps here. The clasps alone are worth the $3 this cost me. Totally I spent $8.97 for the three pieces.

And then yesterday I finished the second Peppermintoes sock and ended the dreaded second sock syndrome. The Mini-Mochi yarn has a long dye repeat and so it looks like I used several colors for the darker pink, but no. These garter stitch socks are fitted and hug the arch of my foot like none of my other socks. I am happy to have solved this design.

 Pattern can be found on the sidebar.

Fish Fixation

After two weeks of a completely iced over pond, my little fishies are back and stronger than ever. I love that they survive in our pond. I even saw a few frogs. Amazing.

They won't hold still for a photo, but I keep trying. You might be able to see some of the smaller goldies have black backs and fins. We have one fish I call Ms. White, as she is white not orange. I keep trying to get her photograph.

The amount of fish has increased over the years and now they form three or more groups around the pond, rather than clustering all in one spot as they did when we had fewer. It makes me wonder what this Spring mating season will bring. We feed them catfish pellets, so the pond can probably sustain quite a large population of fish, both pond fish and goldfish. And the plants such as waterlilies and rushes and iris offer tasty nibbles for them too.

Alright, I am obsessed. I admit it.

Staying Home Today

The weather has finally calmed down and just a thick mist covers the landscape. We had a super duper thunder and lightening night, with tornadoes passing near us. Thankfully no damage was done here at the Mexican Chalet, but I expect to see lots of trees downed IF I left home, which I am not.

The pond is overflowing into the drain, and I can see the fish hovering in the floating grasses. Don't worry that they will be sucked into the hole. The debris on the top of it will prevent them from getting swallowed up.

Very noisy draining sounds are heard.

The water is so clear after a big rain...

Here are the photoshopped versions of the pictures above. Click for clarity.

Purses

At knitting yesterday our guild president brought in this adorable felted purse (and wore that AMAZINGLY GORGEOUS SWEATER) and we all ooohed and ahhed over the cuteness of this purse. It was made from an existing sweater, felted, cut and sewn to make this item.

The flowers, also so adorable where cut from strips of the felted wool and applied by hand. The striped bottom (perfect!) was the yoke of the former sweater. The straps of twisted yarn were slipped through holes in the purse and because it is felt the holes held the straps securely.

I admit I am usually not much of a felt lover, and yet this one piqued my interest enough to dig out my camera. Something about the cleverness or recycleability of the old sweater sent a zing through my mind.

But it ended there. When it comes to purses, I usually leave mine in the car.

Here's my dear old purse and you can see it is tiny. I like it because it fits snugly in the door pocket of my van, out of sight, but handy should I get pulled over and need to get my license out quickly. (never happens, but you know, just in case).

I have nothing in there but 11 dollars, some change and my IDs, a pen, and credit cards...2 which I usually only take one into the store with me. What else does one need?

I learned to pare down what I carry when I was on the road teaching. The supplies I brought to class were enough lugging and I wore a small cloth pocket around my neck with my room keycard, a few dollars and my credit card. I left the rest at home and found I never needed it.