Showing posts with label hst. Show all posts

Do You Save the Corners?

Do you save your corner trimmings?  I know I've mentioned many times before that for the most part I do. The only exception is if something is much smaller than an inch.  Anyway, I wondered just how much yardage one would throw out just from the trimmings.  I am working on a small baby quilt and decided this would be a great time to figure out the answer.

 The (free) pattern I am sewing is called Charming Lucy by A Bright Corner.  The fabric line I am using is Stacy Iest Hsu's Best Friends Forever, along with a Moda Bella background.  The pattern requires 36 charm squares and utilizes the stitch and flip corner triangle method.  

On this particular pattern, you would discard about a 2" square on two corners per charm, or two 2" squares per piece.  That would give you a discard rate of 72-2" squares, or just under a quarter yard of fabric that you'd just toss out.  {Figured at 40 usable inches of fabric across the width, 20-2" squares per width, 3.33 rows, so 4*2=8" of fabric.} My cheap? frugal? thrifty? self does not like the idea of just tossing out something usable.  Consider how much you'd toss out if you were making something larger than a baby quilt!

 The solution to this is to simply take the time to sew an additional seam on each square before cutting.  You can use your favorite marking method here.  For this one I drew a light pencil line 1/2" away from my actual seam line.  Just make sure you're drawing your line in the trim area so you don't accidentally cut your working piece.

Sew on the extra lines, then go ahead and cut off your excess.
You now have a bunch of cute little half-square triangles.  In this case, the gleaned HST came out at 1.75", but you can certainly trim them to be 1.5" or whatever other measurement you like.  And, of course, size will vary based upon the pattern you are working with.
Here are my 72 cute little HST.  This block layout, if trimmed and then sewn together, would be a 10 x 11.25" block.  If I left off a row, it would be a nice 10" square.  You could also make little pinwheel blocks from the trimmings.  There are so many possibilities here.
The moral of my story is to save the corners!  Sew beauty from scraps.

This week I also finished up binding on three of the five quilts that needed it.  Of course when I thought to take pictures it is once again gloomy and rainy. The first is the Vintage Picnic mini by Primrose Cottage Quilts.  The fabrics are various Riley Blake lines and the quilting pattern is a free block design that I made into a pantograph layout.  The finished size is 24" square.



The next two are some I made for Quilts for Kids.  They both are approximately 38" x 44". The patterns are both free on the Quits for Kids website and the fabrics are all from JoAnn.  






Finally, we had our first garden harvest, albeit a bit later than it should have been due to my not going out to check sooner.  Here is some baby bok choy.  Probably this should be called teen baby bok choy.  This is our first year growing it.  It tastes good--we've tried it sautéed and as part of a stir fry so far.  We preferred the stir fry since the pieces were smaller and easier to chew.  I definitely need to harvest it younger and also stagger the plantings.  We'll try again in the fall since this is a cool weather harvest and the plants are bolting (going to seed).

Linking to Sew Fresh Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation.
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Guild Mug Rug/Coaster Swap

My guild met last week and we exchanged the coasters/mug rugs.  Here's the one I made for my partner.  It definitely fell into the large mug rug category.  I used Cotton Way's Bobbin Box pattern as a base and used Bonnie & Camille Basics for the fabrics.

I received the cutest hexie-shaped coaster.  It's perfect because the fabrics and colors are all ones I love and it's also something I would never make for myself.  
We also had the gift exchange.  Here's most of what I included in my gift.  Not pictured is one more pattern and a pin.
Here's what I received.

I was quite happy that the mug and my mug rug match.  Nice coincidence.
In other news,  I'm so relieved that Alabama came through.  I feel a small amount of hope from this.

 Also, I finished up the fish quilt top and quilted it yesterday.  I had a moment (or ten) of panic when I thought I broke my bobbin case with a row and a half left to go.  I thought the bobbin was empty, so I went to pull it out of the case and the check spring fell out too.  After reading posts in the FB group about it, I finally found a description of how to reinsert it that made sense.  Whew! Disaster averted.  I started binding last night and only have about 380 inches left to go.  I have 10 days.  No sweat, right?

I was feeling good about it until I realized that I still have to embroider 10 shirts and make a teacher gift in that time or less.  I can do this.  I can do this.  I can do this.

 At least the decorating and wrapping is done.
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Back to Sewing

My back is feeling much better.  Yay!  I'm able to drive and sew again.  

 Monday I took advantage of the free Craftsy class viewing and watched many hours of instruction. I'm not the best at sitting and watching TV and classes are also like that for me.  So I worked on the fish quilt a little bit.  I finished trimming the blocks I'd already pressed and then ironed all the rest.  There's still so much trimming to be done--I'd say well over 400 of them.  It's quite daunting.
I also sewed and pressed part of these blocks.  There are 28 of them.
And for something a little different, I am participating in Threadbare Creation's seven-day-mystery-sew-along.  I shopped my stash for this one!  At the end I should have a mini top.  Want to participate?  Check here to get started.
And I'm trying to be better about working on something rather than just sitting and playing with the iPad in the evenings.  I've about finished my Super Koala (pattern by Sewing Seeds on Etsy).
I finished the Windermere #2 quilt a few weeks ago and have updated my 2017 finishes page with that.  

 My new furniture is being delivered tomorrow.  I hope it looks good!  We sold our old furniture and delivered it to its new owner on Monday, so the living room is looking quite large and somewhat bare at the moment.  Surprisingly, my son was very upset that we sold the old furniture.

 FLL is going well.  Our team works wonderfully together so far this season.  It makes everything so much easier and much more pleasant.

 I still haven't had a chance to try out the long arm with the new plates on it.  Sigh.  I really need to get on that.  I'm attending MQX in a few weeks and taking some classes.  Anyone going?

 Last week we had to get our front porch lifted.  It is cement and had settled over an inch in four years (due to the installer's lack of care).  Anyway, now it's back in place and guaranteed for five years.  I figure that means that at five years, one day, it will start to settle again.  Ha!

 In basement news, the insulation is almost totally done.  We finally got a drywaller to return our calls.  We'd called several who didn't respond and it was getting a little disheartening.  Hopefully this one will work out and we can progress.  Can't WAIT to have my own space where everything can be in one central location and the mess will be contained to one room rather than spread all over the main floor.

 Finally, it is guild week!  Yay!  Love my guild and meetings.



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I've Been Busy

Now that the kids are back at school (a week already!) and things seem to be settling down, I've been pretty busy working on things.  Some sewing, lots of FLL.  

 I successfully free hand quilted a quilt from the front of the machine using something other than loopy meandering.  I'm about 2/3 done binding it.  Fabric is Windermere by Brenda Riddle for Moda along with some Kona Snow.  Pattern is all HST.
I quilted and bound my Thimbleblossoms Vintage mini using Bonnie & Camille's Handmade line of fabric.  It's about 15" square.  This pattern was a lot harder than it looked!
I made a pieced backing out of some of the leftover charm squares and trimmings from the blocks.  I got some weird ripples.  I think I may need a new walking foot.  How do you tell if it's gone bad?
I've been slowly working on a Kate Spain Paradiso quilt made using Carlene Westburg's Labyrinth pattern.  This pattern uses charm squares and is really easy to sew.  I used five charm packs for the version I am working on.  I made one several years ago using B&C Bliss and finished it last year. I feel like this is a good pattern for making a quilt that you know you will use a lot but not feel bad or worried about using because it goes together so quickly.  Anyone else scared to use their "favorite" quilts--ones that took FOR-EV-ER or ones with a super special fabric?
Anyway, I'm actually almost done--half of it is completely sewn (as pictured in this really poorly lit and poor color-representation laundry room picture) and the other half needs to be pressed and rows joined.  I have been working on this in bits and pieces since January, one charm pack at a time, in between projects or when I needed a break.  I had my daughter choose the fabric pairings for the last pack since I did the last two at the same time.  This strategy worked really well because I did not find any blocks that came out the same!  My daughter also did the majority of the layout with a few tweaks from me.  Mostly I just left it. I have four leftover blocks that I think I'm going to use to make a pillow.

 We took the plunge and ordered new living room furniture over the weekend--a navy couch, navy/turquoise nubbly fabric for two chairs and an ottoman, and a recliner in a pattern called "very cherry" which is actually a dark fuchsia pattern.  I'm hoping that the Paradiso quilt will kinda blend with the furniture colors.  And I really hope I like the furniture in person because I will be in debt for some time and it had better last the next 20 years at least!  

 I've been busy prepping for our upcoming FLL season.  We are starting on Friday.  I'm not really ready yet.  I still don't really understand the programming, so I'll be learning that as my husband teaches the kids.  My part is more teaching Core Values and supervising their project progress. And discipline and assigning homework.  It's a pretty intense program for elementary kids and for us adult volunteers as well, what with all the prep and stuff.  If you know someone who is a coach or a participant, please recognize all the hours they put in.

I got my Juki dampening kit last week.  We have opened the box but have not gotten it installed yet.  I'm planning to wait to quilt anything else until it's on.  Once we get installed I plan to share photos of what's in the box, the installation, and my opinion of the change.

 And finally, I've officially broken the 20 pounds lost point.  I'm now back to pre-babies weight, but would still like to lose another 15-20, taking me closer to my wedding weight.

 "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."--Martin Luther King,Jr.
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What I'm Up To

Last weekend I spent a day sewing with some of my quilting friends.  I didn't want to arrive empty handed, so I made pincushions for each of them using some of my scraps.  I was inspired by Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.  I adore her blog.  Go check it out!  The top center pincushion below was made using one of her tutorials.  I was inspired by some of her other pincushion pictures to make a few of the others.  I used some previously made HST on a few and tried improv piecing (or as close as I ever care to get) on another.

Hopefully you can tell this is supposed to be a spool of Aurifil.  I should have quilted diagonal lines on it to make it look more realistic though.
This one is all made from Lori Holt fabric.  The HST finished at 1/2".  I may be crazy.  Ha ha!  It didn't seem so bad when they were 1" squares before sewing.  These HST were all trimmings from previous blocks.  Any time I trim off triangles, I sew the extra seam in to make new HST.  I'm happy to have used some of them.
Last week I mentioned I'd pulled out a project from 2005 (designed by Kimberly Einmo).    I think every block was a different size!  Since my piecing wasn't the best, I decided not to worry overmuch if things didn't line up just so, and just went for it.  So now the bulk of the top is assembled.  I have the first row of the borders assembled and partially sewn on.  Then there are three more borders after that.  

I also have been spending a lot of time this week trimming the blocks I sewed over the weekend.  I'm quite thankful for the rotating cutting mat and the Bloc-Loc ruler on these!  It felt like the never ending cutting job.  In reality there are around 240 of them.  Next up on this project is deciding on a layout.
I'm more than halfway done with the binding on the S'mores quilt, so I decided I needed a new handwork project.  I'm planning to work on this cross stitch kit.  I think I previously put in about 30 stitches before setting it aside a good number of years ago.

I'd also mentioned that we bought a bunch of magnets from Harbor Freight to assist me in putting quilts onto the longarm frame.  We purchased three of the magnetic tool holders (free this week with coupons!  Boo, missed that one!  Those things are like $12 a piece) and also some rectangular magnets.  We found a 3D printed magnet holder pattern on Thingiverse, and I wanted pink, so we ordered some filament from Monoprice.  It finally came last Friday and it took a good day to print four handles.  Here they are, mostly ready, but probably needing another coat of clear over the magnets since they were giving off black smears and I don't want that on my fabric.  By the way, these puppies are STRONG!!!  I was trying to set them near each other and they snapped together like this.  So if you choose to go this route, please exercise caution!


Oh, and I signed up for round 4 of the BC Barn Quilt Swap and should receive my partner assignment soon.  This is my favorite swap, and the only one I seem to sign up for at all anymore, with the exception of my guild swap.  I'd be open to a private swap of mini minis as well.  Follow my Instagram feed (over at the right---->) to see my progress on the barn quilt swap.  

Enjoy your long weekend!  Our school summer starts this weekend and right now it's looking like it will be a whirlwind of activities, appointments, and, unfortunately, jury duty for me. :(

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Let's Talk HSTs

It seems that a lot of the projects I've been working on this year require half-square triangles or use the "stitch and flip" method to add corners to blocks.  I've made these in so many ways this year...my 365 Challenge quilt uses them on an almost daily basis and with a variety of construction techniques. Sometimes we will make them and only need an odd number of finished HST. Sometimes we are just doing a "covered corner" aka "stitch and flip" and we trim off the excess, as has also been the case with the Aviatrix, Fig Tree Mystery Quilt 2016, the heart blocks I made for Pulse, some of the blocks from The Aqua Umbrella QAL, and the Cluck, Cluck, Sew Pumpkin quilt.

 What do you do with all the trimmings?  Keep or toss?  I know some people just throw them out, and I do if the resulting finished HST would be smaller than an inch, but that is A LOT of fabric to toss out.  So I've been sewing all my trimmings into HST. Just look at some of the piles I have made recently!
This is the trimmings pile from my pumpkin quilt.
Here are the trimmings and extras from my 365 Challenge quilt so far.  Sometimes
we get lucky and can use the leftovers in another block.  I've done a couple of those so far.
These are the trimmings from ONE border of the Aviatrix quilt.  There will be more.
We all know I am cheap and can't toss things I might use again.  :P  Since I like most fabric and don't work with strictly one palette, I think I'm leaning towards minis or pillow covers with all these extras.  Putting them all together could yield a rather yucky end product!  
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