The end of the month is near and I haven't finished anything yet this month. I finally tackled the piecing of the back for this quilt. I had 3 pieces of flannel that all sewn together were the right size. I got the back loaded and the batting and top are just laying on it, not attached yet.
I got four more pairs of fabric cut for the Hunter Star. After I cut the next four I will decide which two fabrics will make each block.
It was starting to cool a little and the humidity was dropping yesterday afternoon so I carried all of my fallen and cut branches to the front of the driveway. I started cutting volunteer trees but have more of them to do. The zinnias are blooming now and it looks like they will mostly be hot pink. I'm still hoping for a few more colors from the ones that haven't bloomed yet.
Tomatoes are slowly ripening.....inside. I'm picking them and bringing them in the minute I see the tiniest bit of color changing. The squirrels are picking 2-3 a day and taking one bite and leaving them. I'm happy now that I planted 8 plants in that raised bed. If I had only planted 4 I probably wouldn't have gotten many to eat between the squirrels and the fact that this has not been an ideal summer for the tomato plants. They did much better 2 years ago. Last year they started out strong and then fizzled.
It was a rainy day yesterday. We got a little over 2" of rain by 10 p.m. More rain expected today and tonight. I did lots of pressing fabrics and cutting with my Studio die cutter. I was cutting triangles plus more fabrics for the batik colorwash squares kits.
All of these different fabrics are in the piles in the photo above. I can cut 10 layers at a time but I think I only had about 7 layers this time. I am working with scraps not yardage.
The quarter inch wide scraps are going in the dog bed filler bag.
I pressed the 20th block and put it up on the design wall with the others. I am leaving a space between the blocks on the wall because I intend to do some kind of sashing, probably narrow and in a neutral light color. I'll know more when I start playing with choices for the sashing. Meanwhile I have 15 more blocks to make.
I bought the wedge die when it was on sale. One of the uses is for a wonky Roman coin quilt or to use as a border.
I decided to put them edge to edge and see how many it would take to do a circle. It looks like 19 1/2 for a half circle unless I don't have them perfectly lined up. That is a yardstick so the circle would be larger than 36".
I could fold them in half and sew a seam across both ends.
Then push out the points on both ends.
That would make the wedge 8 5/8" tall. A ring of them could be appliqued to a background. I'll keep playing with this one.
I found a box with some leftover 4.5" strips in it and decided to die cut some Hunter Star pieces. I sewed the partial blocks and first laid them out totally scrappy.
Them I laid them out with matched pairs. Either way works. I'll keep cutting and sewing and some day have enough blocks for a quilt.
I had another die I bought awhile ago, the LeMoyne Star also on sale, and I hadn't used it yet. I cut a couple sample blocks and sewed them. Like I said, just playing......... My two friends are coming over today to sew. I may work on my Farm Girl Vintage blocks.
A friend came over to sew and use a design wall so I used my Studio die cutter to cut 3" tumblers out of flannel scraps. While I watched TV I sorted them into piles of like fabrics.
After they were sorted by fabric I pulled out the ones that there was only one of, two, three, four and five of. That left the 3 bottom rows where there was more than 5 of each fabric.
I started sewing two rows so I could figure out how many it will take to make a row about 60" long. Now I will cut some 6" tumblers from larger pieces of flannel and some 9" from even larger pieces. I'm hoping rows of all three sizes will look good in one quilt.
One of the ladies was sick so only two came over to sew yesterday. I sewed the Snail's Trail blocks into a top that measures 59" x 83". It will be a nice couch quilt to put in my gifting stack. I will look for a backing for it tomorrow.
I baked the two batches of cookies for the art quilters on Saturday night so I am all ready for them to come today.
When the Studio die cutter was first available it took up this much space all of the time and it is heavy and not easily moved.
A couple years ago they made Studio 2, a folding version and also had a kit to make the original Studio cutter into a Studio 2. When the kit was on sale at half price I bought it. Now the cutter won't take up much room when company comes to sew.
This is the before photo. This drafting table sits under wonderful lighting but it is too tall for short me to use for my die cutting machine.
Now I have a standard height 96" table in that spot with my Accuquilt Studio die cutter on it. My basement isn't fancy, just concrete walls and floor with odd carpeting pieces and foam puzzle piece flooring in other areas. It is a terrific studio with 3 cutting tables, 8 design walls and enough tables and cabinets for 6-8 people with sewing machines.
I have a shorter table under the 96" table. I have two steel trays for my Studio cutter so I store the extra one on the lower table.
This is where the 96" table used to be, totally unusable between two tables running in the other direction and two sewing tables.
Now the 5' table that the cutter used to be on and the drafting table are in the spot where the 96" table used to be. The 5' table becomes an extension for one of the sewing tables and also a storage spot for my water bottle and spritz bottle for my iron.
Now I can get busy and cut these stacks of fabric into 2.5" squares.
First though my two friends are coming over today to sew and have fun.
Yesterday afternoon I cut 12 more Snail's Trail/Monkey Wrench blocks. I sewed 9 of them last night while I watched TV and added them to the three I showed yesterday with the die that I used. The name on the die is Snail's Trail, other people call it Monkey Wrench. I'm going to have to do a little research and see if one of them is the name of the layout rather than the name of the block.
I sewed a border onto this little quilt top yesterday. I took the photo on a gray design wall. I'll photograph it on a white wall when it is quilted. I last worked on this one in November 2013. Now it is around 44" x 50" so when it is done it will go in the baby quilt stack. I made several quilts with this block here and here and here.
I spent some Christmas gift money on a new die. I have always wanted to make this block but with all of the different size triangles I never got around to it. Some triangles have the grain on the long edge and some on the short edge so it seemed like too much work to cut it until I got the die.
This is the GO big die on top of an adapter so I can use it on my Accuquilt Studio die cutter. I have 6 layers all face up so with one pass through the machine I have 3 blocks.
People who don't have a die cutter are always concerned with the waste fabric. I used fat quarters cut into a 11.25" width x 18" so I have the long grain heading into the roller. This is what is leftover.
After I cut away the skinny strips here are the scraps. The 3.5" ruler gives you an idea of the size. The piece to the left is big enough to cut a 1.5" strip, a 2" square, and two 1.5" squares (times 6 layers). There are lots of shapes I can cut out of the 4" wide piece. I keep similar size scraps together and after I'm done cutting with this die, I'll put on another die and cut up the scraps.
It was a good day to work inside. My driveway still had ice on it at 4:30 p.m. yesterday. It was supposed to be warmer all night so today it should finally be melted off. I talked to one person who couldn't stop on the ice and ran into a garage door.
I have started the new year with a second purple quilt. It has the same fabrics as the 16 patch I finished last month. I only sew on the blocks at night during TV time so it will be a few days before I'm ready for the design wall.
I made this quilt once before with Kaffe Fassett fabrics but I didn't have the ruler at that time. It was designed after the book was printed. I bought the ruler at a blog garage sale several years ago and wanted to use it. This is in Karla Alexander's book "Color Shuffle".
This was one project on New Year's Day for me.
This photo was taken while I was still down on the floor after putting it together. I had seen the IKEA carts on many blogs and when Target showed one on sale in their Dec. 25 flier in the Tribune I decided I needed to check it out. I actually got 2 of them, one for the main level studio and one for the basement. They were $24.99 on sale with an additional $5 off reusable coupon. Since I was going by 2 Target stores that day I used the coupon twice.
This is a top view of the trays with a metal mesh bottom layer.
This is my idea for the one in the basement. It has GO dies and the GO adapter so I can use them on my Studio die cutter. Also there are some Studio dies and the plastic sheets that are used on top of the dies. Awhile back I moved my Studio die cutter to anarea with more room but I have found that the lighting is bad in that location too so I will move it again. This cart will have all of the smaller dies at my fingertips when needed and rolled over to a storage spot the rest of the time. AND, yes I have a lot of dies. I cut with my die cutter at least 3 times a week and for an average of 2 hours a week. I don't just own a die cutter, I use my die cutter. In 2 hours I can cut the pieces for a couple complete quilts. If I'm not cutting a quilt, I'm cutting scraps in shapes I will use later or I'm cutting pieces for my colorwash quilts.
The waxed bulb Amaryllis is still standing up straight. The first four blooms are fully opened.
I turned it so you can see the fifth bud is getting ready to open. I think the sixth one will bloom too.
I'm trying to clean up and finish up several things. I did some more tweaking on this colorwash and I'm ready to sew it together now. The center blends a lot better than it looks like here. The camera loves to play tricks with value and color. As soon as I get these squares off the wall I will clean the stray threads off the wall with my lint roller.
I was cleaning up near the Studio die cutter and cut a bunch of 1.5" squares to clean up the small scraps.
Here is the prettiest tree in my yard. The leaves look like maple but most of the other maple trees around here turned orange and red. It is a volunteer tree than Mother Nature planted for me and she didn't leave an identifying tag on it.
I still have tomatoes growing. I picked all of the green ones when we had the light frost 2 nights in a row a few weeks ago. I wrapped them in newspaper and they have been ripening about 3 a week so far. Even though they aren't as good as the summer tomatoes, they are better than the ones at the grocery store.
