EXTREMES

Alberta is a place of extremes:
                                                              February 25                                                                        

                                                               May 29

Second finish this week:

This second QuiltSmart Midi Bag will be given to the woman who gave me the batik strips that are used in it, with the addition of some fabrics in my stash.  I had a bit more knowledge in making this bag, and it did turn out a bit better.  There are at least two more in my future, maybe more.  I will guide a class through the steps to make this bag during July at Mary's Quilt Store in town.

BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLIES

That is, a lap quilt with beautiful butterflies.  The Fabric Nook had these panels, but they weren't being noticed, so I volunteered to make one up into a lap quilt.  I think these colours are just luscious!  This goes into The Fabric Nook tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see if those panels start selling!

This will be one of their "Angel Quilts" next Christmas when they collect quilts for needy children.

Our weather has finally turned spring-like, and sure enough! the activity at the Garden Centre really "cranked up" this past week.  And it was surely time for those plants to move out and be planted in soil.  

Many of our flowering trees and shrubs are in bloom, and the landscape looks so good!  Our neighbour who farms thousands of acres has finished seeding for this year, a little later than usual.  And Friday and Saturday we had a lovely, very much needed rain.  Just in time for the newly planted crops!

PLAYING WITH KITES

This afternoon's fun was "playing with kites."  Not real kites,  fabric kites.  Since I figured out how to make 3D pinwheels, I've been "tickled" with the idea of trying to figure out some 3D kites.  And this afternoon I started fooling around with some ideas.  First I tried something very similar to the 3D pinwheels.  Here's my first effort:

Not too bad.  I had worked on this idea some weeks ago, but cut the block differently and couldn't figure out how to make the kite work.  This afternoon I cut this block square (I forget how big), then sliced it into four pieces at an angle.  The top half of the kite is 2x2" squares folded diagonally in half and sewed into the seam.  The bottom half is 2x3" squares, similarly folded.

I tried again, using the same method, and found it's pretty hard to get the points to meet exactly:       

                        

 Here's what the back looks like:

Time to try something different.  I cut a 10" square, planning to cut it up on the straight vertical and horizontal, and then trim it on an angle.  But when I cut it I followed, accidentally, the same angel cuts that I had been doing.  The top and bottom half of the kites were the same size I had been cutting.  This block would need trimming to make it look right.

I didn't have enough of this background to cut another 10" square, so this one started as a 8 1/2" square.  This one I cut into four pieces on the vertical and horizontal, not on an angle.  I sewed in the kite quarters and then trimmed the block on an angle.  It turned out at 7 1/2" square.

And now for another method altogether: I cut out the kite in one piece, folded the corners to the inside and sewed it to a whole block on an angle.  This is a much simpler, surer method!  But the folded-over corners did not reach the middle back on the bottom half, leaving a noticeable different colour showing through the kite fabric.  You can't see it on this picture, but it is noticeable.

So one more try:  This time I drew out the kite shape on paper, transferred it to a piece of manila folder.  The first try didn't work out, so I refined the shape and tried again.  Success this time!

The whole kite is double, so no background shows through.  I had also changed the shape, slightly, making it longer.  I think this might be the method I use if I put some of these "kites" on a quilt.

The surprise is the shape of fabric that needs to be cut in order to end up with the kite:    

                        

When the square corners are folded into the center, you end up with the kite shape.  What fun!

On Friday I took a pillow with one big pinwheel on one side and four small pinwheels on the other side in to The Fabric Nook.  The little ones are just too cute.  But I had neglected to take a picture before I took it in.  I'll post a picture next week.  Also will post a picture of the denim/pinwheel bag that I brought there a few days earlier.

SUCH FUN!!!

I had almost too much fun today!  I went this morning to The Fabric Nook, located in our local IDA and bought a WHACK!! of material.

This first set of fabrics, nearest the camera, are from a range of fabrics that I used to demonstrate "Disappearing 4 Patch" last year.  I have 13 finished blocks from that day, but had run out of fabrics to make more of the same.  Last week I saw this same fabric range on the cutting table and was delighted to know that I could now buy what I needed to finished up 42 blocks for a whole new large lap quilt.

Then Angie and I picked out this middle stack of fabrics for the "demo" day in June when I will show how to make the 3D pinwheels for a baby quilt.  The purple on the left will be used for the pinwheels, the inner border and the binding.  The yellow to the right of it, which is repeated later on, will be the border.  The other seven fabrics, including the repeat of the yellow will be the big 4 patch squares that make up the body of the quilt and also the background for the pinwheels.  I bought enough to make 2 quilts like that.  I will have them cut out and the 4 patch blocks sewn before the "demo" day.

My last purchase was this beautiful blue fabric with clouds, along with the purple, red, blue, and green.  These are to make a pillow for an inspiration for another use for 3D pinwheels.  One side of the 14" pillow will be one big pinwheel.  The other side will be four smaller pinwheels.  All this just to give ideas of how to incorporate 3D pinwheels into smaller projects. 

I had made a mid-size bag over the last weekend of denim with an orange pinwheel on it, but neglected to take a picture.  That bag is already over at IDA, so I will have to take my camera in some time to get a photo of that project.

 Then I noticed some very attractive panels folded up and lying on top of some fabric bolts.  I had an idea!  If I would take a panel and make it into a nice lap quilt that they could display, people would be enticed into buying the panel and fabric for that project.  So we added a panel and some bright gold and purple for borders to my stack.

When I got home I started on the borders for the panel.  Bigger side borders and smaller top and bottom borders because the panel is quite long for how wide it is.  Then I planned equal 5" borders on each side.  I usually sew two WOF strips together for one of the long borders, trim it to fit and sew what's left onto another strip for the other long border.  I did that first. 

Then I took one of the WOF strips for the short border, but happened to notice that it was precisely the right length for the long side.  So I sewed both long sides onto the panel.  Now for the top and bottom.  And to my great surprise, the WOF strip was precisely the right length for the shorter sides, the top and bottom, JUST THE WAY IT WAS!  It fit exactly.  Now how often does it happen even once in a project the the strip fits perfectly?  

Oh, but alas!  The reason the top and bottom strips fit was because of a mistake in sewing on the side borders!  I had inadvertently used not the WOF 5 1/4" strips for both of the side borders.  One of the strips sewed on here was the remnant left when I cut five 5 1/4" strips.  It was only 4" finished, compared with the 5" finished on the other side.  OOPS!!!

I decided to use the two 5 1/4" strips sewed end to end for a binding, and trimmed an inch off the fatter side border.  So now I have a kind of goofy quilt: the inner border is fat on the sides and skinny on the top and bottom, and the outer border is fat on the top and bottom and skinny on the sides.  

Should I cut an inch off the top and bottom to even things out?  Maybe......

In the meantime I had washed the flannel for the backing of the lap quilt, using a "colour catcher" to see if that fabric would run or not.  Well....the colour catcher on the right is what came out of the washer.  It's the exact same colour as the fabric, meaning the it runs like mad.  So I put about 3 1/2 quarts of very hot water into a big pail, added 6 tablespoons of the Rit Colour Stay to the water and put in the length of fabric.  Soaked it for about 30 minutes, stirring it around once in a while.  Then I washed it again with another colour catcher, and here's the result.  In the second wash it didn't bleed at all.  That's evident from the colour catcher on the left.

I can heartily recommend Rit Colour Stay for treating fabrics that bleed colour.  I do find it important to prewash flannels, which not only tend to bleed colour but also tend to shrink up a bit.

As I said, almost too much fun with fabric today.  I feel a little giddy.  Time to sit down with a cup of herbal tea and plan our dinner for today.

ODDS 'N ENDS

Last week had lots of quilting going on.  I finished the QuiltSmart Midi Bag and gave it to my friend Shirley for her birthday.  It was a hit.

I really like it too, and have started another very similar for Karen, who gave me the batik strips for the bag.  Some of my own batiks are in there also, just for variety's sake.  I used 27 different fabrics, four 2 1/2" squares of each to make the bag.

Although I've done very little knitting the last year because of a "wearing out" of a joint at the base of my thumb, I do want to finish up a few things:  One of them is to knit new soles for this pair of Jim's socks, originally knit in 2016.      

                                       

It's much less work to reknit the sole, picking up stitches at the toe and including a stitch from the original sock at each end of each knit row.  The sock on the left has a new sole, the one of the right has a new toe so far.  You can see the hole under the heel, and there was a very worn spot under the toe. 

I started fixing the left sock quite a while ago, and had the "bright" idea of stuffing in bit of roving (carded but not yet spun wool) as I went along.  The idea was to make a nice soft cushion under the sock, but it didn't turn out well.  It was way too puffy.  So I picked the heel loose and took out the stuffing.  I should go back and reknit the heel as I was trying not to run out of war.  There's a tiny tail left, but the heel got a little scrunched up.

And I spent some time the last several days cutting up scraps and sorting material.  This is the pile to be given away: some whole pieces and two big plastic bags of scraps.  The scraps have the potential to become lots of cut squares of various sizes, but I've done so much of that kind of cutting I'm finished!  These bags of scraps will go to a quilting group that can use them.  OUT THE DOOR!

In the meantime the weather has warmed up nicely and we've had some very nice days.  Mother's Day was pretty much a perfect May Sunday, except for about an hour in the afternoon when a band of rain showers blew through.  But once that moved on east, the weather returned to a lovely Spring day again.

With the warming weather comes an increase in Garden Centre customers.  Well, we've been waiting for that.  The greenhouse is quite full of blooms and it's time to move them on to their new "homes."  Hope the good weather continues!

A VERY BIG TREAT

No sewing so far today, but I did have a very big treat.  A young woman friend of mine came for a visit with her 5 1/2 week old baby.  And I had the pleasure of holding him for a good long time.  I do love babies!  Because our grandchildren never lived near us, I have a deficit of baby holding.  Some of that was alleviated today!

He's a real little "chunk" and weighed 8 lbs 13 oz. when he was born.  Now he's around 12 lbs.  What a sweetheart!

AARGH!!!

This was the scene when we got up this morning:

Actually it was snowing big fat flakes, a repeat of last Saturday when Alberta had a big, bad snowstorm.  Calgary reported over 200 vehicle accidents; the ditches along the highways were littered with stranded vehicles, even big semis and tankers.  Our neighbour drove through the storm to the airport (75 miles) to pick up his daughter and her family who had spent the last week in California.  They did not risk the drive home but stayed in Calgary with friends overnight and came home Sunday morning.

I took several videos of the falling snow--it was actually quite pretty.  But my program won't allow me to upload them to the blog without purchasing some kind of update.

This poor robin was all "scooched" up in the snow on the balcony railing, wondering if he had miscalculated his trip north.

Well, guess what!  It's another good day to spend cutting and sewing.  Good thing I like it so much!  And maybe make a few loaves of bread for next week.  Sounds good!

THREE NICE THINGS

Three nice things came together for me yesterday in a very pleasant way.  First, a friend had given me a set of 2 1/2" Batik strips some time ago.  Then another friend emailed me a picture of a bag she had made--so very attractive, and she shared the pattern with me.  Then I received an invitation to a birthday party for another friend for next week Wednesday.

The three events meld perfectly into a new project, begun after lunch today and brought to a pretty good state by tea time.  The first step was to cut the strips into 2 1/2" squares, four of each fabric, and 27 fabrics in all:

Next step was to sew the middle row to the bottom row, in four sets:

 Chain piecing is the way to go!  After there were four sets of those fabrics, I added the top row in the first picture to the sets.  These were all pressed in opposite directions, so when I sewed the sets together across the three fabrics, all the seams "nested."  Here are the four sets of squares.

The seams need to be pressed, but I wanted to see first which pressing direction will work, so I lined the sets up the way the way they will be sewed together.    

                        

Now this looks quite strange!  How will that configuration ever result in a bag?  That's the neat thing about this pattern.  You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how this turns out!

PINWHEELS AND PATCHES

Just now I finished the blocks for the newest quilt, Pinwheels and Patches.  I miscalculated slightly, thinking that I needed 14 right-hand pinwheels and 14 left-hand pinwheels.  I actually needed 12 of one and 16 of the other.  I removed two the worst right-hand pinwheels and made two new left-hand pinwheels.  Now all the blocks are complete and just need to be sewed together. They are laid out on the flannel back of a cheap tablecloth.  This can be rolled up and the blocks will stick to the flannel and stay in position.

I plan to add a narrow inner border of colour then a wider border of beige and bind it in a coloured binding.  This was a quick quilt to make as I had most of the squares for the 4 by 4 blocks already cut and in a container.

The weather continued nasty until today, so I got lots of sewing in this week, and also managed two days of sorting and cutting scraps.  I will give away a whole lot of scraps, as that's as much sorting and cutting that I care to do.  Now I'll discipline myself to cut scraps as I cut out a quilt.  Everything is nicely organized, so then I just need to "file" them in the right box or drawer and they will be ready to be used.

Next up: finish the blocks for the Disappearing Four Patch and put that quilt together.  Then I can get at a tote bag and pillow with 3D Pinwheels for IDA to show prior to the "demo" day for 3D Pinwheels.  The two baby quilts with those pinwheels are complete.  The tote bag and the pillow shouldn't take much time.

So many interesting things to do!