This weekend I was half road warrior and half homebody.
I'll share the homebody today...which really means that I was in the Quilt Lab :)
Recently I've been trying to "clean" my quilt lab by making progress on the various WIPs sitting on my table tops.
The first project I decided to "clean" was Bonnie's Leader Ender project which has been in various bins next to my sewing machine to make it easier to stitch. A few weeks ago I had decided it was time to sew the scrappy rails to the B&W rails. These piles then sat on the ironing board.
That meant I could start the weekend by pressing them all according to Bonnie's diagram. Except, when I went to start sewing them together they wouldn't nest together so I was going to have to re-press them. As if ironing them all wasn't bad enough the first time, I had to do it a second time. Ugh.
I laid out my re-pressed blocks on the design wall to make sewing the rows easier. It did get to be quite a jumble with 3 projects on the wall being covered and revealed as I sewed the rows together.
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| Better paint those tootsies, huh? |
Soon enough, all the blocks were together!! I figure this is about half the quilt. I left it on the floor to consider if it needed borders and at some point I thought it might be interesting to use a different fabric on each of the four sides. I'll make a final decision when I get all the blocks together. What I am fairly certain of is that I need to go back to the LQS I went to Saturday to get the B&W gingham for the binding. Why I couldn't have made that decision 24 hours earlier when I was at the store is beyond me...
The second project is a long term UFO that was started back when I lived in Miami. While I love the fabrics I think the knowledge I have gained in the meantime would have taught me to pick fabrics with more contrast. Oh well. Maybe the quilting will add some pizzaz and contrast.
I started this Hunters Star based on a magazine pattern but then I found Deb Tucker's Rapid Fire Hunter's Star Ruler. The blocks went together much faster but I would stitch a few blocks and then let the pile sit waiting to press the center seam open. Then the pile sat to be trimmed down with the ruler. Finally this weekend I said I just need to trim them all and get that pile off my table. Once trimmed, the blocks fit together spectacularly and I was able to stitch up all the blocks in the pile. Now I just need to make 33 more blocks to have this baby done! In the meantime it's back in it's drawer and off my cutting table.
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| Peonies are one of my favorites - how could I resist?! |
Last but not least, I've been sucked in to Bonnie's Diamond Tile block! I made the cardinal block according to the magazine directions but then wanted to make a quilt using the "Blushing Peonies" charm pack and matching fabrics I had assembled.
A little math got me to what you see here, where I needed to decide if I wanted the black/background smaller so the tile points would touch or if I wanted the tiles to "float". After consulting the owner of the LQS I was in Saturday, we went with float and that meant I could kit up some of the fabrics sitting around. Being in a sewing groove, tho, I couldn't just let those pieces sit there and stitched as far as I could before it was time to make dinner last night.
The black/green bits in the front were sewn together yesterday and you can kinda see in the back that I have 5 or 6 centers sewn together already.
I really need to get the lawn mowed tonight, if the heat isn't too bad, so I'll get back to the Lab when it rains again on Thursday...
