Shady Lanes Quilt Top

Ta dah!

It's done.  It's done.  It's done.  (this sounds less repetitive if you sing it in a joyous tone of voice)  Taking a picture proved a little difficult.  It measures 91" x 103" and weighs 2.75 pounds.  At 4 yards per pound, that's 11 yards of fabric busted from the stash!  And I haven't made the backing yet.  It's too big and heavy for my design wall.  I would need two tall adults to hold it up for a pic, or two short ones holding it off the balcony (but it's dark outside), or one very tall man with the arm span of an orangutan.  Here's a few pics anyway.

It was a very long day.  Tedious.  What a struggle!  I always under-estimate the time it takes to add multiple borders to a quilt top and this one had 5 borders (2 of them pieced). If I hadn't already sewed half of them on, I don't think I would have been able to finish.  Measure the quilt top, angle piece the border strips, measure the borders for two sides, pin the borders, sew the borders, unpin the borders, iron the borders.... then start over again with the next two sides or the next round of borders....measure the quilt top again....  all of this so much more complicated because of the size.

I started at 11:00 am this morning, taking frequent breaks, stopped for lunch at the restaurant down the street.  And of course played a well-loved game of cold-cat-warm-cat.  Ever play that game?  It requires a cold winter day and an old cat with arthritis.  Every time I vacated the chair (where I did my pinning), he would snuggle in where I had warmed the cushion...

Then he followed me to lay on the freshly ironed edge of the quilt, sucking what warmth he could get out of that, and playing with the tail end of my measuring tape.

And this suspicious lump under the quilt top?  You guessed it.  I spread it out on my bed and went to get the camera to take a pic.  It couldn't have been more than a minute.

I don't know if I could have done it without ya Lucas, come and have a cat treat on me.

Patience in the Shade

I finished adding all the sawtooth borders and that required making and trimming another 16 blue/neutral HSTs. (piece of cake)  Two border strips needed to be held really taut while being attached.  The next two slipped into place like perfect little puzzle pieces, so maybe I wasn't totally off on the math.  (Great big sigh of satisfaction!)  All the points intact, everything square, no pulling or tugging.  No crying.

It's now approximately 86" square.  Once the neutral strips are added, it will have the queen size width but I still need to add 8" to 10" to the length to get to the standard 90" x 100".  I will confess that I'm getting really really weary of this project.  (Are you getting tired of reading about it?)  This is the dangerous time for me and I know it just needs a little more determined patience, so I'm digging deep.  When I'm tired of one project and so eager to get started on many other things that have captured my fancy, it's so very hard to stay the course.  I'm so close to finishing this flimsy that if I put it aside now, it could languish for years.  Half of my unfinished projects are ones that would take less than a day to pull together... a few borders here, some sashings there, just join the blocks on a few others, and they would be done.  I'm not sure what it is about not getting to those projects that are so close to finishing.  Maybe it's because they are so close... and I think, when I have an extra day I can easily finish that one up.  Of course, that extra day never comes.

Back to adding for the length.  I considered a number of things, making stars using more scrappy 16 patch centres and the left over half-square triangles for the points, or laying in a solid section of joined scrappy 4 patches.  These options just didn't appeal.  After much frustrated deliberation, I thought I'd just use up those 144 brown HSTs and be done with it all.  I'll need to make another 20 of those to do that, but I think it's the answer to my dilemma.  Two rows of brown HST at the top and two rows at the bottom plus the neutral framing, will add an extra 12" to the quilt length.

I laid them out in sawtooth fashion.

And then in a pinwheel pattern.  I like the pinwheels the best.  As with the sawtooth border strip, it turns out that simple is the solution.  I just like to complicate the heck out of everything I do before I settle on the simple is best solution.

I'm just wondering if I need to add in a narrow strip of neutral between the blue HSTs and the brown HSTs. Despite my eagerness to get this thing done as quickly as possible and in the least complicated manner, I'm thinking yes, it needs an extra narrow strip of neutral in between.  On the positive side of the argument is the fact that I won't have to butt seams together when I add the pinwheels and it would bring the length up to 100", so adding in another strip of neutral may actually turn out to be a time-saver.

I think I'll start piecing together the pinwheels this evening and try to get the flimsy completely done tomorrow, though I generally like to make Saturdays all about working with scraps and get to my crumb-along and string blocks.  I just can't face still having this one on my sewing table come Monday.

On the scrap trimming front, I trimmed for another 15 minutes today.  The piles are really growing and I've noticed a big drop in the first pile of ironed scraps.  I try not to think of what's left in the big scrap bin and just take my satisfaction from what is done so far.

All you quilters who emailed me saying that you'd be doing the daily 15 minutes of trimming to get through some of your scraps... are you still doing it?

When the math doesn't work...

When the math doesn't work, just eat another Hallowe'en candy to calm down, then pin the borders together and pull a little (or a lot) on your borders as you sew.  Ta dah!

I managed to get the neutral borders on, and all the red, but the whole math thing didn't quite work for me.  My pieced border was too long by one whole HST.  The worst part isn't that the border was too long, but that I have absolutely no idea where I went wrong.  I used to be good at math.  In the end (after much chewing) I just unsewed one HST and held it all taut as I ran the first sawtooth border through my machine because (after removing that one HST) it was then about 3/4" too short.  I still have to add another three sides...  I hope I have enough Hallowe'en kisses to get me through it all.

Oh, and the distracted part?  There's always a distracted part, it's just that sometimes I haven't discovered it yet.  That would be when I realized that by choosing to use only the blue HSTs in the border, I was going to have to make more of them.  Yup, that's right.  Double sewing the sashing sew-n-flip corners provided me with 144 blue HSTs and 144 brown HSTs.  I need 162 (or is it 164?) blue HSTs to do the entire border.  But as it is only 18 (or 20), it's not worth groaning over.

And looky here at what I got in the mail today.  An autographed copy of Quilt Retro by Jenifer Dick.  Hooray!  I've been leafing through it and marveling at Jenifer's use of colour and shapes.  There's even pages and pages and pages of step-by-step applique tutorials.  Isn't that excellent timing?!

And this is the first pattern I'm going to make from it.  Isn't it sweet?

I was thinking to make it as a food bowl mat for Lucas's corner of the kitchen floor.  Then I thought it looked to cute to put on the floor under the cat food bowl, so I think I'll make it as a placemat for myself.  If all goes well with the applique, it may be a whole set of placemats.  Then there's the fried egg shape potholders... they are just too fun.

Shady Lanes - Bordering Math

I almost made a critical mistake.  I almost cut my red fabric for the borders.  Then I remembered that the sawtooth border will be added after the red, so I can't just proceed as I would normally.  I have to finish making the sawtooth strips, then get the final measurements before I cut the red... so I know how wide to cut the red strips to make up the difference between Border # 1 and Border # 3.  Otherwise I may end up having to chop off part of a sawtooth to make it all fit.

I knew I read somewhere how to do this and had to rack my brains to remember where. Coffee helped.  Chocolate helped even more.  Quiltville, of course.  I clicked over to Bonnie's site and read through her article Border Hints.  Lots of great advice on adding borders but not the process I vaguely remember reading for measuring and adding a pieced border.  And I was so sure it was something I read on Bonnie's site... willing to bet some of my Hallowe'en chocolate on it.  Actually, I've eaten so much of it today, I'm feeling a little sick.  Then it came to me, it was part of the instructions on bordering the Orange Crush Mystery.  I am frequently amazed at the accuracy of my memory when it comes to quilting, when I can't remember if I paid the utility bills this month.

I have made pieced borders before but not one in which the pieced component couldn't be fudged, and by that I mean trimming off a little here or there to make it all fit.  I would so hate having to slice half-square triangles in half and losing the points.  I'll be joining 2.5" half square triangles into sawtooth strips this evening to finish making my border # 3 strips, so that I know how wide to slice the strips for border # 2. 

I'm glad I remembered before I sliced up the red fabric.  Some days are better than others.

Scrappy Sunday

I managed to get to the sewing machine before Lucas settled in for his afternoon snooze today and quickly sewed up another 6 string blocks.  I think I'll move on to making sashing strips and 9 patches in my next crumb/string session.

Even just making a few blocks a week and these stacked up quite quickly.  I have 30 string blocks (8.5" square) and 48 crumb blocks (6" square) since starting this process two months ago.

Pieced another 4 crumb blocks today.  Tonya's book is in the mail so I will get back to trying out more letters and words when it arrives.

My crumb bin is filling up fast from all the scrap trimming I've been doing.  Some of the quilters on the Liberated Quilters Yahoo Group mentioned that they sort and bag their small fabric bits by colour and keep them with the larger pieces and yardage in their stash.  That would certainly make it easier to make a more co-ordinated looking crumb quilt.  Mine is looking more like a dog's breakfast really and not a good representative of what can be done with crumb blocks.  There are some real beauties in the pics at the Crumb-Along Flickr Pool.  I have to say, though, that the very idea of sorting out the crumbs by colour isn't very appealing to me.  It might make a good take-along chore at Christmas time when I'll be away from my sewing machine and slowly going mad from the withdrawal.

And the final choice on the Shady Lanes borders?  I didn't like the black floral afterall.  I figured that out after walking past the display just a few times.  I thought it looked too dark and with none of the scrap fabrics in it, it made me wrinkle my nose every time.  I've decided to go really simple.  Some of the neutral, the dark red stripe, the half-square triangles and some more neutral to stabilize the sawtooth piecing.  The last time I had piecing that went to the edge of the quilt, I lost my points when the quilt was squared and trimmed.

Tomorrow I'll start adding borders.  Tonight, I'm going to spend some time exploring in my 2" strip bin, to see if I can come up with 100 different co-ordinated fabrics for the 100-patch block.  I don't get to start sewing anything new until I finish a couple of projects, but it's a good sitting in front of the television activity.  At least it keeps me from snacking.

Scrappy Saturday - more border fabric auditions

I was going to sew this afternoon, but I ran into a roadblock - a furry one.  So decided to do an early blog posting instead.

Guess who is fast asleep (and snoring) in the sunny puddle under my sewing chair?  He's been sickly for the last week, favouring his arthritic legs, and uncharacteristically morose.  And, feeling sorry for him, I decided to do something else until he wakes up and moves on his own.  That should be fairly soon.  If he doesn't wake on his own, I'll start cooking something and that will get him to move fairly quickly into the kitchen.

Remember the big pile of ironed scraps from my huge scrap bin on wheels?

This is what it looks like now.

I found some more scraps today that will work in my Modern Monday sampler.  Hooray.

I also found a wide strip of the little floral I'm using in my Traditional Tuesday Sampler.  I don't know whose scrap bin it came from originally, but they have great taste.

Here's a pic of the scraps I've piled up with just 15 minutes a day of scrap trimming so far.  When I come across a chunk the size of a fat quarter I just fold that into the yardage stash.  A couple of days ago, I came across a stack of strips 4" wide of all the same Thimbleberries golden neutral (at least a yard's worth) - those went into the stash bin with brown and tan yardage without being cut further.  So far, the biggest pile is 1.5" strips, followed by 2.5" x 4.5" bricks and 2.5" squares.  All in all, it's a very respectable showing for the trimming to date.  There's some bigger chunks of fabric at the top of my pile now, so I may be able to get some larger squares in the next few days.

I starched my foundation fabric for six more string blocks (if I can get to my machine).  This is all I have left in the smaller than 1.5" strings.

The bag of strings smaller than 1" that I separated out for my experiment with fabric knitting or crocheting... I tucked this bag away in the UFO bin for that future day when I'm bored with everything I have going and just feel like experimenting.  I have some serious doubts about the attempt.  Let me put it this way, I'm not saving this size string in my scrap trimming under the mistaken delusion that I'm going to take up crocheting fabric rag rugs.

Pulled out the 1.5" strip box for today's string piecing session...  Lucas is still asleep.  If it wasn't for the snoring, I'd have to check to see if he's breathing.

I discovered that the dark blue I used in my sashing and laid out as the final border of my Shady Lanes quilt is down to the last half yard - not enough to border a queen size quilt.  I used to have so much yardage of that fabric (I loved it so).  So I pulled out some other fabrics to audition.  Absolutely hated all the browns I tried.  Looked for more blues to audition.  This bright blue floral with the red and yellow wasn't bad in person but I don't like it in the pic below.  There's quite a bit of red and yellow in the scrap patches.  Yeah - I'm trying to hard to make it work.

Rejected the blue/green/silver paisley, yet again.  I've got enough yardage to back two quilts with this fabric.  It's really pretty but doesn't seem to play nicely with anything else.

This large floral on black wasn't bad.  The red still worked with it.  There is some black in the blue half square triangles.  Definitely worth considering...

But this vintage floral on cream was just waaaaay too light.

I'm thinking the floral on black and the dark red zinger may be the winner.

Lucas is still sleeping... think I'll make myself something to eat.

Or maybe I'll indulge in a nap myself.

Shady Lanes - now for the borders

All the blocks and rows are joined making a 72" x 72" top and the bulky seams pressed into submission with a heavy hot iron and a little elbow grease.  Now I'm auditioning fabrics for some simple borders.  It's too big for my design wall, so I laid it out on the kitchen table.

I tried a plain dark border next to the blocks and didn't like it.  Then I remembered the 288 bonus half square triangles and threw in a few for a sawtooth effect.  Liked that a little better but thought it needed lightening up a little so added in a strip of the neutral between the quilt blocks and the sawteeth.  Ahhh.  I liked that much better.  But it all felt a little blah and dark.

Then I remembered that Grace of City Mouse Quilter Blog suggested a red zinger.  So I pulled out some different red hues to see if I like the effect.

The brighter red I tried first didn't do a thing for me.

Neither did this one.

I auditioned a red/pink remnant.  I  have just enough for a narrow frame around the entire quilt and wouldn't mind using this up because it's been in my stash forever and has been used a lot of projects. There's a lot of pink and purples in the scrap squares so this one surprised me by playing really nicely - much more so than a pic of just this much quilt can properly display.

I also liked this darker red very much.

I've narrowed it down to the last two and will leave it all laid out on the kitchen table and walk past it a few dozen times while I mull it over.  Adding this many borders is going to make this one queen size in width, so I'll need to add in a row of something to increase the length - maybe a row of sawtooth stars that use up more 4 patches and bonus HSTs.  Sometimes the quilt top dictates how it wants to be finished and this one seems to want to be queen size.  Amazing how those little four patches I randomly pieced from 2" strips grew up to be something so big.

Quilter's Tool for Bulky Seams

They're cheap and you can find them in numerous stores.  Every quilter needs one and it works like a charm on the bulkiest seams...  I recommend placing a piece of garbage fabric over top of what you are going to whack because it can actually leave black metal staining...

Okay, I didn't actually use my hammer today though, believe me,  I was sorely tempted.  And I have been known to pull it out when making pillow cases.  (I'm not kidding about using a piece of garbage fabric over what you are hitting.)

I started joining my Shady Lane blocks today.  I put a lot of thought into how to place my four patches to avoid bulky seams, and all that brain effort worked out beautifully.  But it didn't occur to me to think about the seams in the sashing strips.  I should have ironed towards the neutral on half the sashing strips.  There's six layers of fabric at the corners where the two brown angles meet.  I'm hoping that ironing the joins flat will help.  Now I know I have to make this pattern again, if only to put everything I've learned about this one into effect.

I finished joining the blocks to make six rows.  I even took the extra time to pin all the seam joinings before sewing.  Normally I just sew and tug as I go, but the extra time in pinning was definitely worth it.  It ensured that everything butted up nicely.  I decided to put off joining the rows until tomorrow.  I can feel my energy sagging right now and that suggests the potential for making mistakes is growing.  I want to make sure I don't sew two same fabrics together as I join the rows. And I want to take the time to pin all the seams as I go.

I've enjoyed the everything goes scrappy approach to making the 4-patches and 16-patches for this project.  There is something very liberating about not caring what colours or fabrics line up with each other.  The 2" strip bin is still full to overflowing though.  Deanna of Wedding Dress Blue Blog (a sister Stashbuster) has a tutorial for a 100-patch quilt block that I'm considering as a future everything goes scrappy project.

Speaking of scraps... I put in about 20 minutes of scrap trimming today.  The pile of ironed scraps doesn't look any smaller yet.

Fat Cat in the Stash

There's a new fat cat in the stash...  and every time I see him I have to laugh.

I have never worked with pieces so small.  The piece with fussy cut eyes was less than 3/4" square.  I had no choice on the size as there were other eyes all around them that needed to be kept out of the finished block.  I kind of messed up the head.  You'll notice it's a little square rather than heart shaped.  But those eyes are fantastic.  I have been struggling with getting back to my Crumb-Along piecing, and this little block got me all motivated again.

It wasn't lack of enthusiasm for crumb blocks....  I'm supposed to be making words, but I'm not very good at it, and I don't have the book.  (I'm guessing that having some instruction might make the process more enjoyable.)  Making letters is really a long process for me, fraught with a lot of grunting, teeth clenching, head scratching and seam ripping (and quite a few bad words being spoken aloud).  As a result, I seem to have come up with every excuse in the world for not making them (including housework so that should tell you how hard it is for me).  I've decided to skip them, finish making enough crumb blocks to make this quilt project the right size and not worry about word blocks for now.  I do want to make letters and words - even have an all-word project in mind.  And I will learn how to do it (sez I, with determination).  I just need to get a copy of Tonya's book if I want to maintain what little bit of sanity I have.

And crumb blocks are going to be part of my regular routine from now on.  There are so many fantastic liberated piecing designs I've recently discovered and want to try out in the next crumb quilt.  There's a fantastic long list of tutorials linked here on Michele Bilyeu's blog With Heart and Hands.  I left the crumbs out for some more piecing tonight (with the baseball game on in the background, of course).

In addition to the new cat block, I finished making the next six blocks for the Shady Lanes project today.

And substituted half-square triangle trimming for my usual daily scrap trimming.  Another day of trimming these bonus HSTs from the Shady Lane sashing strips and I will be getting back to the pile or ironed scraps from the big scrap bin.

In recognition of the inspiration he provided, Lucas received 3 cat treat goodies, and nearly took off the end of my finger in his enthusiasm.  He's still out of sorts about the diet I've got him on, but has stopped making pitiful yowling noises around the empty food dish between meals.

Cranky Cat and midnight musings on symmetry

Thinking about border options for my Shady Lanes quilt is keeping me awake...

My sleep isn't being helped by another little fact.  I put Lucas on a diet.  I always said I wouldn't try doing that again, but I don't think an adult male (neutered) cat should look like he's pregnant with puppies.  On a more practical side, the extra weight is aggravating his arthritis.  From personal experience I know that diet food is the least satisfying meal imaginable, so have elected to reduce the volume of what he normally gets rather than change formulas.  It's for his own good, not that you can have a rational conversation with a cat.  Give them enough food, a clean litter box, and a sunny puddle to snooze in, and they pretty much ignore any words of wisdom you would choose to share with them.

He's the size of a well-fed beaver, minus the flat tail of course.  And when he walks on me, I notice just how much he weighs.

He woke me repeatedly last night with what can best be described as aggressive grooming.  I think this had less to do with helpfully taming my curls and more to do with sucking off my fruity hair gel for sustenance.  He's also out-of-sorts about the new bed quilt and yowled repeatedly from the centre of my bed yesterday afternoon, until I put the old wool-filled comforter back on the bed for him to slink under for his afternoon nap.  I tried holding up the corner of the new quilt for him to walk under.  All I got for my trouble was a glassy unblinking cat stare which I interpreted as "you can't fool me - that's not my blanky".

All those repeated wakings did serve one purpose.  As I lay in the dark, half-asleep, wondering if Lucas was working up to taking an experimental bite out of one of my ears, I analyzed what's been bothering me about my Shady Lanes quilt blocks and all the bordering options that just won't work.

It was pointed out to me by more than one of my Stashbuster pals and a few interested commenters, but it's something I knew already.  It needs another column of blocks - both for width and for symmetry.  I wouldn't say I'm a slave to symmetry.  I don't have the two night tables with matching lamps on either side of my bed, for example and am more likely to use three candles when decorating rather than two (after wiping a sleeved arm over the table to dust it).  But, I'm not immune to the graphic appeal of a balanced quilt and I think this one needs to be balanced.  So, I will be cutting sashing strips and sew n' flip squares to make sashings for another six blocks.  I'm also pulling out the strings and crumbs to work on a few Crumb-Along blocks today...

... after I google product information on my hair gel to find out how many calories it contains.