Squares Plus in Progress

WIP Wednesday, it has been a long time. It’s nice to see you again! I’ve been working this week on a quilt for my son – with his arrival within the next month or so, I’d like to finish this sooner rather than later! I have a coworker that thinks the minute I complete the final stitch will the the minute I go into labor – it’s a nice idea, I gotta say.

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.jsThe pattern is Squares Plus from McCall’s Quick Quilts Feb/Mar 2015, which I found originally on Pinterest. It calls for F8ths, which made for easy cutting. I’m also decreasing the size of the top from 5×6 big square units to 4×5. The finished top is somewhere in the vicinity of 55″x67″ //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

The fabric is Lizzy House’s Natural History line, which I love. My husband and I are both science people – he has a geode/rock collection, I studied environmental biology – so this fabric line seems perfect for us.

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

(Why yes, that is an Aquaman print by Jonathan Reincke we’re going to hang in our kid’s room!)

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

Meadow Thoughts

Now that I’m finished with Christmas projects, it is time to break out my Meadow pile. I did a lot of thinking over the last few months and the melon fabric (Lizzy House Jewel in Clementine) I was going to use for the background is too bright. Instead, I’m using the lovely soft grey Cat Mint print from Cat Nap for the background, and swapping out green flower centers for grey blue.

I think these color choices will make the rainbow gradient pop! Last night, I cut all the rainbow pieces; I still need to cut the petals and the flower centers and then sewing can commence!

Happy New Year! Here’s hoping 2015 is filled with light, love, and good things.

Gathering Flowers Fabric

My cousins are expecting a sweet baby girl next spring, and my grandmother has asked me to make a quilt for her first great granddaughter. The nursery will be done in happy, springy colors: pink, sky blue, and apple green. She picked Anna Maria Horner’s Gathering Flowers pattern and I pulled this fabric.

I’m debating about the background pink mosaic print – it looked much paler online. It will alternate with Kona White, but is it too busy? I may alternate with some other low volume prints in my stash a la this Gathering Flowers made by Cindy at Hyacinth Quilt Designs. Thoughts?

In other projects, all of my secret block segments have been cut and now the trimming begins!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Metro Rings FMQ

You guessed it, I’m still working on my Metro Rings. I’m filling in spaces with free motion loops and stipples and it is going well!. Here’s a little sample:

I’ve also been cutting and sewing for my QCR blog hop post, but you’ll have to tune in next week for the reveal(s)! In the meantime, I’m linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Thanks so much for your thoughts on work and craft. It seems like a lot of us are in the process of thinking on this issue and living in this tension. This week for me at least feels more hopeful; I have a game plan for some additional creating on the side of my 9-5. Within my 9-5, my manager told me yesterday that she knows I’m creative and wants to use these juices in a few upcoming projects. So my mindframe is hopeful. Here’s hoping for creative outlets for you as well!

Last night’s Arcade Fire show included Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) which I’ve been humming all morning. Yes.

Work in Progress

I’ve been thinking a lot about my work lately, both my 9-5 job and the time I spend making things out of yarn and fabric. I would love to have a job that would allow me to to use my time and energy more creatively but I’m not sure how to get there. This has been an ongoing discussion between me and my husband for the past few months and I don’t yet have any firm plans on how to scratch this itch.

When I get blue about my voice as a maker or when I doubt my ideas or skills, or when I fear that I’ll spend all my days staring at spreadsheets in a cubicle, I have to remind myself that I’m comparing my beginning with someone else’s middle. I’m working and I’m in progress.

Quilting Metro Rings is coming along, still. I feel like I’ll be saying that for a while yet, but I really want to finish it by the end of the month. And in the meantime, I wanted to start something new, so pulled the following fabrics for a Metro Medallion quilt.

A good half of those are personal favorites. There’s some Tula, some AMH, some Rashida, Melody Miller arrows, Patty Young bumblebees, and Lizzy House stars. And then I needed an extra magenta and had to seriously give myself a pep talk to pull my one precious Mendocino fat quarter. But good, lovely fabric is mean to be turned into something good and lovely, wouldn’t you agree?

This introspective WIP Wednesday post is being linked up with Freshly Pieced! Boom!

Cutting for Metro Rings

After troubleshooting the Metro Rings pattern, I got right down to cutting the fabric needed for the quilt. I’m using Pure Elements solids in Linen White and Ash for the background, Honey and Burnt Orange for the triangles, and a Botanics jelly roll for the ring segments.

Then I cut more fabric.

Then there was a brief interlude of sewing and ironing.

And then back to cutting.

I still have four curve sections to cut and then I’ll get down to sewing. I’m really liking how this is coming together! And all this trimming is leading to some interesting possibilities for the leftover bits.

I may stitch them together as well and see what I can make!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Two Foxy WIPs

Last Friday, I got the rest of the top and bottom edge triangles pieced from leftover strips and scraps. Mostly, the joins are a bit obvious in the busy patterns of Fox Field but look!

A completely accidental pattern match! I’m rather tickled with it.

Husband helped me lay out the quilt and make sure that the colors were balanced and then I got to sewing the top together.

It is probably going to be around queen sized, especially if I add a nice border of the leftover cream geo print that I didn’t use to make the top and bottom triangles. Husband really likes this quilt too and might insist we keep it.

Fields of Foxes is my June Lovely Year of Finishes goal. Go big or go home, right? I need to work out backing; part of me wants to splurge for a great whack of the Fox Trot print and another part of me insists on using what is in the stash, which is probably wiser and more thrifty.

While I’m pondering backing, I started on another WIP project. You may remember that I wanted to requilt my first quilt ever, Foxes Out My Window, which I got started on this week as well. I removed the binding and ironed it, and then started pulling out the quilting. I’m starting from the middle and working about a block of space at a time. Luckily, it’s pretty easy, because my old machine had such terrible tension! The quilt still a little crinkly from the first time I washed it, but I like the crinkle and it doesn’t seem to be hindering anything.

After these Foxy WIPs done, I have a whole bunch of ideas of what to cut next: a plus quilt, Ring Toss, Metro Rings, something using Tula Pink’s Salt Water or Acacia lines, experimenting with the Quick Curve ruler… I think the planning and drafting stage may be one of my favorite parts of all this!

I’m linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Oh and hey! Lee also started hosting #WIPWednesday on Instagram too – I’m lucymade over there as well!

Many WIPs on Wednesday

This week has been about finishing some projects, starting others, and thinking about long-term projects.

I finished quilting Fortunate Granny and got it bound. I’m hoping my husband will help me wrangle a couple finished shots tonight – look for a FO post soon!

The spinning urge hit me this week, so I grabbed this Friends in Fiber braid I got at VT Sheep and Wool last fall and got to work. It is 6 oz of BFL, which I split evenly and am spinning the two halves on two bobbins. The plan is to ply them back together to get a 2-ply barber pole yarn. I love braids that have a lot of complimentary colors!

I also started matching fabrics and cut into my Fox Field Craftsy workshop kit.

I adore the colors in Tula Pink’s latest collection, Fox Field, and the log cabin diamond pattern is exactly what I want to sew. I’m going to try to stretch the fabric to make top and bottom log cabin setting triangles instead of the plain cream print in the pattern. We’ll see if that works out according to plan.

The only WIP I don’t have in process right now is a knitty WIP. I frogged the handspun socks out of fear that I’d run out of yarn. The yarn really wants to be armwarmers, anyway!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Sock Musing and Fabric Choosing

After finishing my Rye socks, I waned to knit something else with my handspun. I grabbed a 2-ply skein made from a Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sheep to Shoe kit in Christmas Balls, spun a way long time ago.

Here’s the fiber, which I think I got sometime in 2010.

And here’s the skein.

Ravelry tells me that this skein is 304 yards, which may not be enough to make a full pair of socks. I split it evenly and started knitting a pair of simple toe-up socks.

That toe may not look like much, but I’ve knit it three times already. The first two times felt too big, but the stitch count was still smaller than I usually knit, but I’m concerned about running out of yarn. Another option is to knit the toes and heels out of a contrasting color. I should probably bite the bullet and just do that already.

In quilty WIPs, I figured out fabric counts for my Tula Pink Fox Fields quilt. The pattern is Fox Tails, a tutorial from Craftsy, and it is exactly what I want to sew right now – bold colors and diamond pattern. I’m planning on at least two more diamond/triangle quilts in the near future, so watch out!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

Busting a (Quilting) Move

A few days ago, when I wrote my ALYOF and Q2 Finish Along goals, the world was a bright and shiny place full of weekends and time and possibility. Of course I would get three quilts quilted and one quilt entirely finished in three months. Of course! And that pair of socks on the needles? Done! And those books I’m reading? Read! And those dinners I need to cook? Totally doable!

I tend to dream big, and that’s OK, because all this stuff is fun, relaxing, free-time type business for me. And there aren’t really issues if I don’t finish things on my self-imposed deadlines.

But I’m about to add another project into the mix, Colette’s Crepe dress, sewn bee-style with fabulous friends from college (hi Anna!) to figure it out together. It has been a long time since I’ve sewn a garment and the fitting of the bodice is making me nervous, especially after reading through Gertie’s Sewalong. It all seems very doable, but I would really like the finished garment to fit and be flattering and be wear-to-workable.

With that in mind, I busted a move on quilting Spring Stripes II. The goal is to do a different pattern in every stripe (or only duplicate patterns across stripe sections, not within a stripe section).

So far, I quilted seven different patterns: spirals, orange peels, figure 8s, flowers and leaves, bubbles, flame-like “zippling” (to use Leah Day’s term), and round-corner boxes. I think the flowers and leaves are my favorite; I may use it to quilt Fortunate Granny!

None of the patterns are “perfect,” especially not the orange peels. But I’m breaking out of my stipple rut and I’m pleased with the results so far.