Friday, January 29, 2010

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK?







Yesterday, after coming home from the dentist I looked through so many patterns for using my Marameko print that I was dizzy thinking of which way to go.

I looked at a lot of blogs and quilt patterns that seem to use the cobblestone in a lot of different ways, so Idecided to make mine this way too.

I am on a roll at the moment and only the tension in my shoulders has driven me away from the sewing table.


I've only made one with white as the border but I think
that it's too stark for the rest of the blocks I've made,
don't you?


I'm not making this quilt large as I'm thinking lap quilt here which is the most popular of the quilts I make. I suppose living in a winter climate, we all like to cuddle under these little quilts to keep warm while watching tv, or doing homework....


I actually have enough of the fabric to make two quilts if I use the retro fabric sparingly. I didn't realize, (surprise, surprise) that I actually had so much of it.


I'm also thinking that so many quilts are made using 2 1/2" wide fabrics as it is so versatile. It must be why
those jellies are so popular.

I did cut out some plain yellow fabric to use, but it too is just a bit much with all the blacks. I'm loving this so far.

Have a great weekend you all!



Thursday, January 28, 2010

NEW PROJECTS!










Starting a new project for me anyway, is always a bit disconcerting as I don't always have the completed quilt down pat in my brain, such as it is.




See the colours on the right there? Well they are what I want to use, especially the top fabric as that's one of the pieces I received from my grandmother's stash.




It's very Meramiko retro and I just love the colours, so was thinking that the black fabrics would just be perfect for putting together a simple modern quilt



But, I also have this little piece that I bought the other day
at Fabricland. I like it too and although it's a piece that would
go with the blacks etc of the little stash, I wonder if the
original thought would be better.







I have lots of bright pieces to put with the blacks and even have some more blacks. It's so hard to decide isn't it, considering that my stash pile is relatively small compared to some quilters' stashes.



I keep putting this and that together thinking outside the box as they say, or trying to at least. I do keep going back to the first pile as the one I want to go with.





You can see from the last photo that I don't keep much fabric on hand. I just don't like making all the choices that go with making quilts from say, following a pattern.








I think I'd have trouble with the Dear Jane blocks if I ever started on to just put the little blocks of 57 pieces together....I'm exhausted just thinking of a block of 57 pieces. Karen and Crispy who hand quilt do this sort of thing as do many others on my blog roll, but I'm not that good....yet.











So, I'm going to look at the fabrics that I have and maybe add a couple more colours to my original thoughts of making a simple little quilt.











On the other hand, I may make butter tarts, or a pear with ginger cake.




Yep, that's me, not able to get my thinking on straight
and focusing on the tasks at hand.





Of course all this rattling in the brain is probably due
to the fact that I'm going to the dentist today to have
him replace a cap which has cracked, having to sit
for the better part of 2 hours while the dentist pokes
around my mouth and extracts almost what amounts
to someone's mortgage payment for 2 hours of work!



But first, I'm going to have a cup of coffee, sit with my dog !






































Monday, January 25, 2010

DEJUNKING...AND I FOUND THIS!





I've been in a funk lately, you know, not sewing, not quilting, not doing much of anything pertaining to my addiction....then I received my copy of the Better Homes and Gardens Quilting magazine and down I went to look at my sewing room.



It was a mess and as you can see from the photo on the right there, and this was only one binn! I started by just folding all the fabrics and then sorting through the binns that were filled with all the leftovers of previous works and of course in there was all the fabric that I inherited from my grandmother.



So, I cut 3 1/2 " squares for nine patch little blocks,
then cut some lengths of fabric to match this. I also
cut 2 12" strips to make a coin quilt sometime when
I'm in the mood to put them together.



While I was dejunking I found these triangles from when I first started quilting. I found these from the first quiltS (the orange) and the second quilt (the reds) that I cut out to make quilts for Tory and Alex. the granddaughters who picked out the fabrics for themselves. It's almost three years now. Hard to believe!


I have so many of these left, enough to make a couple more small quilts as a matter of fact. But, I just ironed them ...once again... and put them into one of the storage binns.



Now, I've always, well almost always made a top and then
I quilt it. I found this quilt top in a pile of my junk and
couldn't even remember when I made it, so I decided to
just finish it while I was at it. I used red from one of the
junk bins to bind it and it really looks perfect. I think I
must have done this last spring because Pat Sloan had a weekend quiltathon using orange...of course you know I always have orange...and then I think I made this one because the pattern looks pretty much like Pat's.



I now have a huge garbage bag of little pieces, fabrics that I know I won't use but do feel bad about getting rid of them. I had to be brutal! I don't have a huge amount of fabric and don't know what people do to use up their stash that they have on hand!


Now, I'm all tidied up, have everything in place, almost, which makes the space look so much better than I ever
expected.

I wonder how many of us ever go out of our favorite colour schemes. You know I look at some blogs that are always using, say, greens with blues, or whatever makes us happy. I seem to be a bit of all over the place although I do have lots of pinky type fabrics. Of course I have tonnes of white fabric as that seems to make me happy when quilting. Do you find yourself using the same colours, the same designers, or do you often go out of the box and go for it....Just wondering.

We went to see It's Complicated with Alec Baldwin and Merryl Streep, and Steve Martin. Very funny, and it's an adult comedy. I highly recommend it, even though I'm not doing a review, I liked it.