Shower Epiphany

I always get the most amazing ideas in the shower.  It must be the timing of when the subliminal stuff from my dreams hits the morning caffeine.  Friday morning I solved 3 quilting dilemmas at once.

I had designed a fall themed quilt for my friend Carol.

The idea was to make the gold, orange and red as long strips of crazy patch with solid greens between.

I had finished about 30 inches worth of crazy patch before I decided that I wasn't loving the idea.

Last night I drew out the design that popped into my head in the shower,  and today started cutting out fabrics.  The idea is to make the stripes in smaller sections (typically 8-12 x 12-16 inches) and use those blocks for my FMQ Challenge blocks (project solution 1). I need more than 12 since I also want to try Trapunto this year and I want to try some designs to use on my Ojibwe Beadwork Inspired quilt which is waiting for me to become good at FMQ before I attempt to quilt it (project solution 2).

 By lunch time I had managed to cut out all the gold and yellow sections that will go into the quilt.  After I got those sections cut to size, I had enough yellow fabric to use on those stripes on the back of the quilt too.   I had another idea for the extra fabric....

...but first, I needed to finish 2 sections of yellow crazy 8x24, which I accomplished by early afternoon.

Meanwhile, I've been admiring string quilts on line.  And I absolutely loved the yellow zig-zag quilt that I made for my sister-in-law.  So all that gold fabric I had left over seemed a perfect candidate for a yellow & white string quilt.  Plus I could do a quilt-as-you-go method AND use up the bin of poly batting that I just found in the garage (project 3...maybe 4 & 5 too if using up terrible batting counts as a project as does learning an new QAYG technique).   I found a great QAYG technique tutorial at Welsh Quilter that I will use for both the string and the FMQ project.

Technically, these projects also solve quilting dillema 4 (or is that 6?), which was that I bought the green, red and gold fabric originally to do a Baltimore Album Quilt.  I've been collecting fabric for that quilt for so long though, that I'm now disappointed in the quality of many of the fabrics I collected.  This can be my excuse for only making pillows rather than a full Baltimore Album quilt.

I need to get all that done, because I've been taunting my brother Rick that since he was retired, he could send me a bunch of his old and/or ugly silk ties.  They arrived this week.  These are the ones that I think I can manage to play nicely together.

I'm still deciding on a pattern.  I'm planning to stabilize with a lightweight fuseable.  I'm psyching up to pre-wash so it won't have to eternally be dry cleaned.


OK...back to the sewing machine.  No, wait, football and hand quilting.

WIP on Wed Oct 19

Last night was my last of 4 batik classes.  It was a Parent / Child class through the local Community Education program and taught by local artist Cindy Peterson.  If you go to her online gallery, you can see that she uses batik as an art medium instead of just a fabric design element.

The first assignment was to paint the dye on and blend 2 complimentary colors.  The second week, the dragonfly was waxed off and dipped in yellow.  Week 3 was a teal dip to get the green.

This fabric is cherry red in real life and was the result of my playing with some of her stamping tools while I was waiting for my daughter to finish her project.

We have 2 collaborative pieces that Skater Girl and I did together - a lion in tan & red, and a toucan.  They both spent the night in the black dye and I have to go back to pick them up tonight.

My TV time for the past couple weeks has been spent trying to finish up this Crazy Quilt from the UFO bin.  The blue fabric is leftovers from the Hawaiian Quilt Samplers that I made for the girls in 2003.   It has probably been in the UFO basket that long.  I had decided to do all hand embroidery on every seam in a variety of stitches (click on photo to enlarge).  Like traditional Crazies, it will not include a batting.  There is fuseable interfacing on the back of the piecing for more stability.  I have to finish the outer frame stitching (pink & blue) on 7 more blocks.  Then it will be tacked at intervals to a blue Minkee back and bound in hot pink.

Last, but not least, ever distracted by bright shiny objects....  When I read Leah Day's Pea Gravel Path post, I immediately ran to the machine to try it. Yes, I read and immediately ignored the "Advanced" level warning.  And I did really try it on paper first.  Aside from my swirls looking "Seussian" rather than "Smoothly Swirly" I'm quite pleased.