Sneaking past the finish line

This top has sneaked its way to a finish without much by way of a progress record, I'm afraid.  I lost heart trying to take pictures in a tiny space - most of them showed too much of the surrounding mess and the piecing itself got lost in the mix.  However, it is a completed top, which is the point of things after all, so I'm not beating myself up too much. 

Here are the couple of progress shots I managed.

It turned out to be somewhere between a log cabin and a medallion, in terms of the construction.  Seems to be a spot I'm quite comfortable sitting in.  There were lots of things I wanted as I was piecing, but this was definitely one of those quilts with its own ideas.  So, I wanted more of the green and tried adding green triangles into hourglass blocks and as flying geese, neither of which was any good.  I wanted to use tumbler blocks again, but the quilt wanted those hourglasses.  As usual, the quilt was right.

My favourite bit of the whole thing turns out to be the plaid which has worked well both in strips but also mixed into the hourglasses and as inserts in longer strips.  I think it helps to keep everything coherent but also to move the eye around nicely.

This is the second orange quilt I've made recently.  I am currently collecting shirts for a green project for AHIQ but I'm not sure I've got quite enough yet.  If not, I will have to come up with something else for the time being, so I'm off to dig around in my shirt stash and see what I can find.  

 

No scrap left behind

Right down to the wire is customary practice for me now, but this time I can barely see the wire in my rear-view mirror.  Literally every last piece is being utilised and I'm drafting in any extra bits and bobs that catch my eye too.  Blocks I tried and rejected are now a shoo-in for this quilt.  In fact, anything goes if it fills a bit more space.

Here are a few examples: this one has much bigger triangles from the mucky green fabric with the little rows of sprouts.  It's the one thing I still have a lot of, as it was only going into the black hst blocks.  

You can also see triangles pieced from two fabrics...

 here's another one of those...

I have lots of little hourglasses, as a consequence of cutting without reference to a ruler or any form of measurement.  I'm making them bigger, like this one

 or using them in groups, like here.

I'm rather enjoying the challenge.

Coming up for air

I have been sewing.  In tiny moments, here and there.  It doesn't ever feel like much at the time, but I think that when I add it all up it does amount to something.

This is where I am up to with the hourglasses.

It doesn't look like school will be going back before September, so my aim now is to establish a routine that covers all the other stuff but builds in more coherent sewing time.  Sometimes I take this out of the box and can't really recall what I thought I would do next.  That was okay for a while but now it starts to irritate me.  Let's see if I can do better.

A little self-knowledge

Having come up with one chunk of hourglasses that I liked, I did the obvious thing and made another.  Easy progress, you might think, and you would be right.  I could just have kept making chunks and then sewed them all together and hey presto, that would have been my quilt finished.  It was tempting but then I had a bit of a word with myself about my short attention span.  In all likelihood, I would get bored way before I had enough bits to make a whole quilt.  I've tried it before and it just hasn't worked, so best just to admit it now.

Also I still had one or two fabrics from my initial pull that felt like they belonged in this.

So I played around with borders, wondering if I might make this into a medallion, but it didn't quite work how I would have wanted.  Next step would be to chop into them, but I like to have more of an idea than that before I over-commit.  Smaller hourglasses?  Squares? In the end I decided to make just a few wee units and see if I liked them.

Hmm, these I think I can do something with.

Now I have my two chunks, with a little row of hsts between them.  That will do for now.

Time slips away...

...is what I am calling this quilt (with a nod of thanks to Mr Springsteen).  It's a name that seems appropriate on all sorts of levels at the moment.

I am managing to sneak in my bits and pieces of sewing time, just enough to keep my hand in and stop my head from exploding.  All I need to do now is the blogging bit, which I am determined to hold on to.  I apologise now to everyone who has waited ages for a response to their comments and also to everyone whose blog I would normally visit  - I will be back on track soon; just one humungous piece of real life work to get over and done and things should be back on a more even keel.

I am still hourglassing and after playing around with various layouts came up with this little block, which I liked a lot.

Then my machine started acting up.  Since it's an old one there aren't many things that can go wrong and in this case it was just the wiring in the bit that plugs the foot pedal into the machine.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that in taking it apart I managed to drop the worlds tiniest nut (and in nuts and bolts) onto the carpet.  Could we find it?  Oh no, not a hope.

Not to be discouraged I pulled this pretty little thing out of its case.

It's a funny thing - a Singer clone with Arabic script, which I bought, to be perfectly honest, because it was a lovely yellow colour (the case is the same shade as the base).  Not the swankiest machine in the world but it does a fair stitch and is seeing me through.

Detour over, I made a few more blocks and joined them together.  Now I have this.

I notice now that I have one deliberate pinwheel in here, but one has happened without any help from me too.  I love it when that sort of thing happens.

Keep well, everyone, and keep sewing.

Precious little sewing

Locked down, like most of the world, it seems.  Ah, my foolish dreams of sewing, reading, wafting around the house thinking deep thoughts and learning fifteen new languages before lunch.  In fact (of course) I am feeding more people, more of the time, clearing and cleaning more (not my forte but even I have my standards) and spending quite a lot of time supervising school work.  Sewing, not so much.  

I am grateful, though, that so far we are all healthy and hopeful that I may eventually find a rhythm that allows for use of a sewing machine and/or needle and thread.  

In the meantime, just before this all started, I did a bit of sewing that I haven't had a chance to blog.

Sadly these are mostly pictures of that phase at the beginning of a quilt when, basically, I am still a bit stuck and am making bits in the hope that light will dawn.  

I made some hourglasses - different shapes and sizes.

Then I went away, thought about it and decided that, for now at least, I didn't want to go down that route, which felt a bit predictable.  So, second start involved lots of hourglass the same size (I use the term lightly, since they are not being measured, just eyeballed).

 Once I had a few, I could play around a bit...

 or this?

Nearly, but not quite.  Still, it feels like I am groping towards something that will satisfy me.

Maybe I will start getting up half an hour earlier, or going to bed half an hour later, and carve out some time that way.

What I found in my boxes

I'm sitting here waiting to hear if our schools are going to be closed and wondering whether this blooming virus is going to result in extra sewing time or less.  I guess I'll know fairly soon.  

I have been rooting about and found quite a lot of fabrics that I think might go with my three shirts.  In a perfect world I would probably go out and look for another shirt, but this time I'm going to go with what I have. Probably one or two of these won't make it into the final quilt and probably I'll have to go away at some point and find something extra.  But for now, this will do.

I don't have any clear ideas, beyond hourglasses, so I'm going to make a few blocks to get myself started and wait for something to occur to me.  

Moving swiftly on

Actually, it's more like moving on after another week of procrastinating about my hand quilting, but that's another story.  

Back to the beginning I go and this time rooting around in my shirt box turned up these three.

The nice plaid on the left means that as well as yellow, purple, white and that lovely petrol blue I could search out greens, blue, grey/black, pink-y red.  That seems like enough possibilities to send me off to see what there is in my stash.

I know this will be an hourglass quilt of some variety (since that's the current AHIQ theme) but more than that I can't yet guess. 

Hourglasses: done and dusted

Hooray - first finish of the year!  I hoped briefly that it might be the last finish of 2018 but that idea didn't last long. I'm very happy it's done now though.

I especially like the colours in this: the black print and those gold and purple triangles against all the sort of pastel colours, which rather smoosh into each other. It's really hard to get a good photo of the pale shades, even in  daylight, and this is the best I can manage.  If you want to check out the photo of the bundle of shirts I kicked off with, which gives you a much better idea, you can find it here.

The back is pieced, but unremarkable; the quilting is another go at cross-hatching, though this time I've used single lines, rather than double, and tried to be slightly more regular.  

The binding is this brown and white stripe.

As for the timings:

I started this on July 7th 2017 - and finished piecing on October 9th.

Started quilting on 1st of December 2017 and finished on 13th January this year.  That is pretty fast for me.

The wadding is my standard fallback 70/30, totally recycled option. It's quilted with perle cotton, in several neutral shades plus a bit of a yellow-y one. Basically I just went through my box and pulled out whatever took my fancy. 

I can't think of a better way to kick of my quilting year.

Hourglasses done for now

It's amazing how being short of time can concentrate the mind.  I looked at this first thing and wondered if I even liked the HST-ish blocks I was adding around the edges.  But I knew that I might not get another good run at it this week and decided to keep going.  Now I'm pleased I did: I like how they look and the top is done for now and heading for my quilting pile.  

Normally I'd take a wee break from piecing now and just quilt for a week or so, but since the next project is already underway I am thinking I'll just move seamlessly (!) on.  

No geese, but a solution of sorts

I must have tried twenty fabrics this morning, in an attempt to find something that I could use as a wider border for this piece.  I realised that what I really wanted was more of the black floral, but I didn't have nearly enough, and am too stubborn just to order more.  

Then I tried the flying geese again, then various other permutations, and nothing was quite right. Though I really, really wanted geese to be the solution I was looking for, this quilt wasn't having any of it. Finally it occurred to me that since what I wanted was more black, I should find a way of using what I had left, and started cutting black triangles and adding them into the mix.  I have also laid them out as squares, so that they echo the units already in the quilt.  

This is just a tiny section, to give you a feel for things without exposing the enormous mess all around; it is possible to take warts and all photography too far!

Really, really slow sewing

It's been one step forward, two steps back today.  I added black borders on the last two sides, and am happy with how they look and the way they seem to bring the centre into focus.  

But I'm less happy with my next steps.  My initial idea was something triangle-based, on account of how I've got lots of triangle-y leftovers so it would be an efficient use of precious scraps.  I wondered about a  flying goose border, then something like the arrangement in the picture below (okay, they're all just slapped down willy-nilly, but you get the general idea).  Somehow though nothing is really grabbing me.  

I do know that I want to use more of the deep yellow, both because I like it and because I've got a fair amount.  Looking at the photos now I don't dislike the arrangement as much as I thought, so maybe I'll stew on it for a few days and then look again.    Or I could stick with the HST squares I've already used.  See?  Completely undecided.  

Ticking over

It was the hourglasses turn today, and I've made some good progress.  It is now the desired rectangle shape (not as long and skinny as in the pic - that's just the camera angle).  

Next up is a skinny border - first bit on already at the top and I'm playing around with the other 3 sides.

 After that I'm going to lay out all my leftover bits and see what I can do with them.

Keeping time

I knew that if I tried working on too many things my brain would start to overheat and that's definitely what's happening.  I thought I would keep it simple and only work on one project on any given day.  The problem with that theory is that it would mean I didn't finish printing my words until 2018. Honestly, it would have probably taken more time if I had decided to hand embroider a prolonged rant about the state of the universe (and don't think the thought hasn't crossed my mind) but it would be a close call.  So I am trying to get a bit done every day.  As a result my poor hourglasses are a bit neglected and when I do look at them I am finding it hard to remember what I thought I was doing.  

However, I made a bit of progress this morning.

These two bits have actually been sewn together, but the sun came out and all my photos featured a large white diamond of light plus darkness all around - not much use at all.  I also need to point out that the curve between the two bits is just a feature created by my slapping stuff down on the floor willy-nilly, rather than the shape of the pieces.  

I know that I want to make it a bit longer next, and have a random selection of hourglasses sitting in a pile, but when they are used up I am out of the purple.     

Time is flying past

Back to the hourglass quilt,having not looked at it for nearly a month, one way or another.  As usual I laid it out without much regard for where things had gone previously, but all I have at this point is several biggish chunks.  I moved them around a bit and went from this...

...to this.

Some of the considerations driving me now are practical: things were getting very square and on balance I prefer to end up with a rectangle; I'm trying to think about the spread of my fabrics and don't have masses of the strong purple left now.  At the moment I could easily turn this into 50" square, but am aiming to get to 50"x60" and then maybe see what I can do by way of borders.  I probably need to use more of the dirty yellow and have lots of the black floral and a fair range of scraps, but I'll fill in up the side and across the bottom first and then see where the fancy takes me.  

What I found

When I dug in my bag of shirts I came up with a blue floral which, while much more sedate than the original fabric it is filling in for, will do okay, I think.

It doesn't have quite the same sparkle. but interestingly it allows some of the other fabrics to step up: that orange-y plaid in the bloc above really benefits from it.

Before I found it, I played around with the last blocks made with the original blue/purple floral.  The block at the bottom started there, then went up onto the side...

...and then ended up on the bottom again.

However it is now taking a bit of a back seat as I concentrate on trying to finish All at Sea.  

Famous last words

I don't know whether having to clear everything into a box between sessions is always a good thing, but I do like that each time I get a project out I see it with new eyes. So the bits which sat on the left in my last post have migrated onto the right hand side of things today.

You might argue that it's all fairly arbitrary, but in this case I have figured out that I am interested in the placing of the dark yellow bits and for that reason this version feels better to me.  I added another little black strip and two sizes of bigger hourglass. 

Virtually my last thought in the previous post was that I had more of the blue floral fabric than I had thought, but it turns out that completely the opposite was true and without realising it I have used every last scrap. I was convinced there was one more piece lurking in the box, couldn't find it, enlisted extra eyes to check but have to accept now that there isn't even one tiny triangle-sized piece left.   I have a couple of sets of blocks pieced but not joined together, then that's the lot.  I have started looking at what else I could introduce to replace it but nothing seems quite right.  I revisited some of the fabrics that were in the initial pull but they all seem a bit too loud or harsh for the way this feels now.  If I can I'd like to keep things soft and gentle.  For now I'll just keep working with what's in front of me, but if I don't add something in I'll just run out of some of these others too.  Maybe there's something in my bag of shirts that will fit the bill.

Hourglassing

It's a good thing I quite like making these hourglass blocks, as that's pretty much all I've been doing.  

I've sewn one column of slightly bigger hourglasses down the left-hand side of my starter piece, but other than that I've just made the three bits you can see in the picture, plus a pile of odds and ends that haven't yet turned into something bigger.

When I get tired of hourglassing I sit and ponder, and shuffle things about.  Looking on bright side of things, I am still working with the floral fabric; there was more in that blouse than I thought.  

I am hoping that I can keep going at this, albeit it slowly, and also get my head around this quarter's AHIQ challenge.  I guess we'll have to see how that goes!

Patience is a virtue

It has emerged during my quilting/blogging life that I am not the most patient of people (hand quilting aside). So at the start of a project, when I'm feeling my way, I occasionally  need to take a deep breath and remind myself that it always begins like this: with the germ of an idea but not much more, and definitely not with a clear plan.  

That's a roundabout way of saying that I am still groping around, trying things and discarding them, sewing, unpicking, resewing.  As a result, I'm not sure how edifying these photos will be, but nonetheless here they are.

I messed about for quite a while with these bits...

 

Finally I decided that big piece was just too much brown all in one place, so unpicked it and turned what was left into this.

I'm wondering about using the fabric on the right to fill in a few spaces.  I can't get carried away as I've only got 1/2 metre, but I'm playing around with how it might look.  

I am making the hourglasses in a range of sizes, which I like and will keep doing.  I am also slowly adding in extra fabrics. What I haven't yet worked out is whether I want to keep going like this or throw something else into the mix. If I keep fiddling then at some point it will all become clear, but until I have a lightbulb moment I'm keeping the seam ripper close at hand.

Linking up with sew stitch snap share today.

Unpicking

It's going to take me a while to figure this quilt out, I think.

Here's what I've been doing.  First I made enough hourglass blocks to make a block of 9 and a few extras, then I started to play around, 'what if-ing'.  I'm happy for some parts to be kind of blurry, which is to say that the soft colours run into each other a bit, but also need some definition.  So I tried the floral (which I had been pretty sure was out of contention) and that darker blue stripe.

It didn't blow me away, but I thought I'd keep going for a bit, so added the extra row at the bottom and the strip down the right hand side.  You may notice I've added in that mucky yellow colour.  It looks a bit out of place now, but once there's more of it I'm pretty sure it will work.

I liked the yellow, but after a cup of tea and a think I didn't like the floral and blue strips at all, so out they came and I tried again, this time using striped shirting instead.

And got to here.  You can see a tiny strip of the floral sneaked back in.  This was largely because I wanted to make the original group of 9 just a smidge longer, so that things would fit together nicely.   It's only about 1/2 wide and I think if I keep to skinny bits like this it might do the job.

This is where I stopped, after my two steps forward, three steps back kind of a morning, but I'm feeling okay about it. I am thinking about possibly making some larger hourglasses (the ones here are probably 5"-ish); adding something to the top of this chunk; maybe making several bits like this and floating them on a more simple background, though I'll probably end up complicating things.  This is  literally just a brain dump though, so anything could happen next.