A smattering of recent projects

Turns out summer means way less time for sewing. I'm almost looking forward to winter so I can guarantee time in my studio more regularly. Here's a round up of what I have been doing recently.

- Dresden Plate table runner!

I've mentioned before that Dresdens are my favorite, and sunflowers are my favorite, so this has been on my to do list for a long time! It was all stash, and at just over 17" across, the biggest Dresden I've ever done. I hand quilted this one with a simple running stitch. It sits on my coffee table, and makes a great backdrop for my many charcuterie plates...

- Flags for a themed campout!

On the left is what I was working from, and on the right are the completed banners. The camp theme was castle based, and what's a castle without a crest and banners? These were made from ripstop nylon which behaves VERY differently than what I'm used to. The appliqués were cotton though. Lots of needle turned appliqué. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with myself.

(Bonus castle shot!)

- Drawstring bags!

I also made these little guys as gifts. Super quick and easy, and a great way to use scraps.

- Still in progress: Picnic blanket

This is getting close to being done. It's a picnic blanket using Eat Your Veggies by Pat Sloan. I wanted a crisp way to use these charms, so I went for half square triangles set in the Barn Raising pattern. Should be about 5' square when it's finished.

- A new sewing machine!!

This is Tweety.

Tweety is a Janome DC 1050. I killed my old machine (RIP) working on the nylon flags and decided it was time to upgrade. Tweety is computerized and has a host of fancy features that are already making my life easier. My local sewing machine repair shop demoed one of these for me, and then I purchased on Amazon. As much as I want to buy from the local shop, Tweety was $150 cheaper online. I will be taking it in for repairs and maintenance to the shop though.

One more order of business: I finally joined Pinterest and you can see my pinning feed over on the right hand side of the blog. I'm trying hard to only pin things I can see myself doing, or is something I want to learn to do better. We'll see how it goes!

Scrappy Four Seasons with Into the Woods by Moda

This started out as just a proof of concept. While knocked down with a dreadful flu, I mainlined Missouri Star Quilt Co. tutorials. This one in particular blew my freaking mind.

I get mega bored during repetitive cutting, especially of small things (I know I know) so this was a real life time saver! Once I could be upright again, I rummaged around in my precuts and decided to give this a go with Into the Woods by Moda, and some Kona charms in Snow. But I was tired of pinwheels, so I decided to have a go at the Four Seasons block from this MSQC tutorial. And I'm so glad I did!

I have a hard time with scrappy quilts. I like things to be clean, and symmetrical, and orderly. But I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and try a scrappy quilt. The Into the Woods line has all of these fabrics in it:

(pic from Emerald City Fabrics)

As you can see there's seven different patterns and 4 different color groups. Making this quilt perfectly even color and pattern-wise was not going to happen. But all the fabrics go well together (as is the point of a charm pack.) So I decided to just have at it.

First you make the small units, then you separate your big stack of half color, half white squares into 2 equal piles. One of those stacks you'll sew color to color. (Photo above left.) The other half you'll sew white to white. It's imperative for this block the the parallelograms you're creating all go the same direction. (See photo above right.) These 4 square units become the building block for the overall pattern. I had a *really* hard time putting the 4 square units together. I kept trying to make them all a perfect balance of patterns and colors, which math has proven would be impossible with 2 charm packs. My quilting friend, PM, was watching me try to mix it up, then stall, then sigh, then mix them up, then try... She finally came over to my work table and gently moves a few around to help me get out of my head. At any rate, four of those become your full block. 

There's your block! And when you put a bunch of them together...

I love how this pattern comes out! All told I ended up with 21 blocks. And, that's all she wrote on that one for now. I don't have a specific plan for it, so I'm going to tuck away the completed blocks until inspiration strikes again.

One thing I want to say about using MSQCO's method for making half square triangles: all your edges become bias edges. Take special care to not stretch or tug your fabric as it goes through the machine. I tend to be a little lax on such things and my final blocks were all slightly wonky as a result. I'll probably use this technique again but I'll be much more careful about the bias stretching.

On to the next project!