Left over Right, Right over Left...

 

I am tying the Field of Dreams quilt with crochet cotton. I use a needle with a big eye and a sharp point. I am tying the quilt at the corners and center of each block. First I do the corners, going. up and down the rows.

I have a little pair of scissors that are designed to remove stitches (in people), so the bottom edge can slide under the thread and not risk cutting the quilt underneath. I cut all the threads.

Next I tie the knots. Square knots. Left over right, right over left. I pull the threads to one side. 

When I'm done tying all the knots, I go back and grab the threads and trim them. Then I go back and do the centers of the blocks. This way I have threads long enough to grasp comfortably to tie the knows.

This is the color of the crochet cotton I'm using, and if you can't see the knots in the photos above, then that's a good thing. It means I picked the right color. I've got about three quarters of one half the quilt done. This is rough work for my hands, so I do it in smallish doses.  

When I was much younger I used to do this with the quilt spread out on the floor.

Not anymore!

This is a Nightingale quilt, in all greens. It is one of the easiest quilts you will ever make, and it is fat quarter friendly. You can get the tutorial here.

Needs Must

 

I finished sewing together the Field of Dreams flimsy. The thing is enormous. I didn't know how I was going to lay out the backing and place the top on it without moving any furniture in my house.

But I had an idea. I knew a place that was big enough, and empty enough, and had a nice clean floor. I made a call. The answer was yes.

Later, after my Tai Chi Quan class ended, I unfolded the back of the quilt, and taped it to the very slippery floor of Studio C at the YMCA in my town. With the help of the instructor and another student, we placed the quilt atop the backing and centered it.

Both the instructor and the other student couldn't get over it and kept complimenting me on how beautiful it was. They laughed as they pointed out fabrics they liked. "Look at those pretty flowers!" "Oh how cute, there are dinosaurs..." My instructor asked me how long it had taken me to make it, and were shocked when I told them less than three weeks.

They left and I got down on my hands and knees and used safety pins to secure the top to the backing at regular intervals. After about half an hour I folded it up and brought it home. I'll work on tying the two layers together over the next couple of days, then I'll fold over the excess backing and sew it down. I expect to have this in the mail early next week.

The folks at the Y were more than happy to allow me to do this between classes in that studio. Sometimes the answer to a thorny question is easy and nearby, you just have to ask.

Field Of Dreams Grows

 

This is the top half of the Field of Dreams quilt I am making for my son and DIL.

The parts on the floor in the top photo are represented by the dark area in the diagram above. It's getting closer and I am getting excited.

Because this quilt is so wide and I decided not to use a wide quilt backing fabric, I needed to add a strip of leftover blocks down the middle of the back.

I like it. You can see I included some Dino fabrics from my DGD's quilt.

I got some green crochet cotton for tying the quilt. My goal is to have this finished and on the way to the City of Angels before work on the studio floor starts.

The Field of Dreams quilt is a Nightingale quilt, it's just green. You can make one too. It's super easy. You can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away. It's fat quarter friendly, too!

Bird Class at Night Owl

 I taught a bird class at the Night Owl Quilting Studio this past weekend. Here are some of the students and the birds they made.

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If you want to make birds, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

More on the Studio

I figured as long as I was doing a head to toe deep clean in the studio, I might as well update a few things.

If you have a cutting mat you use regularly you know it gets worn out. You can see the worn area above on my mat. It's a blob of gray. The mat is very large, and covers most of my worktable, which is about 39" tall by 51" wide. The rest of the mat is in terrific condition, so...

I detached it from the table (it was held in place with double sided adhesive tape) and rotated it so the worn part is at the top. then stuck it back down again. I can't reach that worn spot, so I'm good. I bought the mat about five years ago, so I have another five years before I'll need to replace this one.

You can see where I do most of my ironing on my ironing table. If I don't replace this soon, the worn area will start to crack and tear. I could simply rotate the table top, but that won't really work. I've ordered some heat resistant ironing board cover fabric, and will replace this in the next few days.

Trays are useful for organizing. I keep all my business cards and postcards together on the bottom shelf of on of my bookcases, but when I want to get at them, I have to get down on my hands and knees because invariably something has fallen to the back of the shelf. Now I have put them on a quarter sheet pan and when I want them, it's easy to get the whole stack.

My sewing machine table is directly behind my cutting/work table. Because the work table is at an angle, I often place my rotary cutter on the sewing machine table directly behind me. It's normally OK but sometimes the rotary cutter gets knocked to the floor, and we know that can sometimes be hazardous (not just to me, but to the rotary cutter blade.) I now use a one-eighth sheet pan as a tray for the small tools I find handy to keep there. As you can see I also keep a pair of snips, a seam ripper, and a pencil and eraser there as well. The tin holds small safety pins.

I put another one-eighth sheet pan directly to the right of my sewing machine. As you can see I have snips, seam rippers, a ruler, bodkin, tweezers and other tools I use the most often. The chocolate tin on the right holds bobbins of colored thread.

You can't always see it, but underneath the long wall of windows is a shelf that extends the length of the room. I keep all kinds of good stuff there.

While my sewing machine has an automatic thread cutter sometimes the needle unthreads itself when I use it. Many of my students complain their sewing machines do the same thing, and it doesn't seem to matter what kind of machine they have. So rather than piss and moan about it, now at the end of each seam, I run it through a scrap of fabric. I keep those in the yellow plastic bin. 

You can see my small container of bobbins threaded with gray thread. They are within arm's reach. Normally I keep the little container closed, but I left it open so you could see.

I'm the kind of person that if I don't see something it doesn't exist, so the empty blue cone is a reminder that I need to order some more of my favorite thread for piecing. When I order the new thread I will throw away the empty spool. Unlike many quilters, I do not feel the need to collect empty spools of thread.

Well that's it for now. 

More on Black Light

 

Turns out I had a black light. It was nowhere near as powerful as Randy's but. I bought it years ago when one of my cats (pre Millie) had issues with the litter box.)

Here are the WOWs I bought yesterday. Hard to tell what they look like, right?

My little black light only worked in complete darkness, and then not very well. However...

When I ran the photo through my photo editing software, add added a bit of light... I got this. I mean it isn't terrific, but you can see the patterns of the WOWs I bought.

I think it's pretty cool!

Randy is BRILLIANT!

 

While I was waiting for my sewing machine at the sewing machine spa (Aka Bittersweet Fabric Shop) I was browsing their fabrics. 

While I am trying to work my way through my stash, my collection of White On Whites is getting bit thin, so I decided I would get some. The WOWs at Bittersweet were on a shelf just above my eye level and I was having a hard time seeing what they looked like. When I mentioned it, Randy, the owner, said, "That's why we have a black light right there." So I took the light down and pointed it at a bolt of fabric. 

OH HOLY HELL!  Randy is BRILLIANT!

I had to share. I told Randy I was going to post it on my blog. "Oh right," he laughed, "now quilt shops everywhere will have to have black lights available for their customers. You'll start a trend."

Hell yeah!

Anyway, I bought 10.

Little Brother Macnas Quilt

 

The Little Brother Macnas quilt is back from the long arm quilter. I really like this quilt.

I love the quilting.

Here is the quilting as seen on the back of the quilt.

In case you don't know or can't remember, here is the Partly Sunny quilt, (made by Julie Sefton) which was the inspiration for the "Little Brother."

Field of Dreams Progress

 

This is the diagram I am using to keep track of how many blocks there are in the green Field of Dreams quilt. I told my son and DIL that I would mark this diagram and send them a photo so they would know my progress on their quilt.

These are the blocks on my design wall. It isn't big enough to lay out the real blocks the same way as my diagram, but these are the blocks I have made so far, and you can see where this quilt is going.

Sorry the lighting is terrible, I've packed away the lights I use to illuminate the design wall. It's getting there, and it won't take long.

I did it!

 I started cleaning the studio a week ago, on Saturday June 6. I worked my way around the room and left the bins for last. This photo was taken on Wednesday June 10. I was done everything else, and the bins were left.

On Thursday I started with the bin for Light fabrics. I had already made several quilts with fabrics from this bin and I felt it was pretty well picked over. I was ruthless, applying the rules I listed in yesterday's post to determine what I kept and what I tossed.

By the end of the day on Thursday this is what I had left. I put the "Maybe" stuff or things I knew I wanted to keep in the bin on the far left.

By Friday morning I had got the fabrics I would keep down to one large bin. A friend had come by to take the quilt batting and the bag of notions and trims. I had packed some orphan blocks to send to Julie.

I had set aside some things to donate. so Friday morning I loaded up the car and did errands, dropping the donated items to Savers. I had a lot of errands to run, so I did them all, and then paid all the bills and did the usual housework.

I had two other smaller, sweater box sized bins that stored orphaned blocks and extra pieces that I didn't use in quilts. Not shown here are dozens of purple HST's from the Amethyst quilt and blue long rectangles from Needle in a Haystack as well as leftover blocks from Pizzazz. 

Orphaned blocks were everywhere, not just in the Orphan bin. Getting them out of that bin required a lot of hard thinking. WHY was I keeping them? If I was willing to discard fabric I knew I would never use why was I keeping tumbler blocks from the Easter Basket quilt I made in 2017?

In the end I applied the same rules to the orphan blocks as I did to the fabric bits. But some seemed so basic I bagged them and will bring them to my class next week and as if there are any takers. If not, they'll go in the trash or to the recycling center that accepts craft supplies.

It took all day to sort through the very last big bin, and I pressed and put fabrics in the stash, the little bins and the medium bins, sorting all by color and size. What I had left is shown above, one deep sweater bin, and it's in this bin because I simply couldn't jam any more fabric into the other bins.

So this is the way that side of the studio looks now, and remember, the bookshelves and the bottom two shelves of the stash have been blocked by the giant bins for the last four years, so you can imagine my delight that the task is done.

The UPS guy brought this on Friday. It's the backing for the Field of Dreams quilt. I have three weeks before they come to replace the floor in the studio, and that's plenty of time for me to complete this quilt

So that's a really big job done. I will have to remember to "complete the task" when I finish a quilt, and put the excess fabrics away instead of throwing them in a pile to be dealt with "later." I have learned that

"For Now" becomes "Forever," and like the dishes, they are much easier to do if I do them right after dinner than if I let them sit until the next day.

The Bins

 

I don't know how long these big bins have been taking up prime real estate in my studio, but I know it's at least a couple of years. As I am cleaning the room with an eye to the floor install (now scheduled to start on July 6), I knew I wanted to clear these out. I've been digging through several of them and made a few quilts already (Nonchalant, Big Red, Yellow and Pastel Macnas, a couple of Scrap Slab Triangle quilts among others) and I'm sick of looking at the bins.

I knew I was going to have to get ruthless.

Ruthless I did get. The smaller bin now has all the leftover Macnas blocks and the larger one has bits of stuff I think I want to keep. That bin does need to be sorted, but I have time to do that.

How did I go through the bins and decide if something stayed or not? I had a series of questions.

1. Is the piece of a useable size? Yes, keep; No, toss.

2. Do I like it? Yes, keep; No, toss.

3. Do I have more of it in yardage? Yes, toss; No, keep.

4. Is it easy to work with? Yes, keep; No, toss.

5. Have I had it forever? Yes, toss; No, keep.

6. Have I got six thousand pieces of this already? Yes, toss; No, keep.

7. Am I likely to use this in the future? Yes, keep; No, toss.

8. Is this fabric in several quilts? In other words, has it paid for itself already? Yes, toss; No, keep.

I filled two garbage bags full of bits and threw them away. I filled another bag full of reasonably sized pieces and donated it.

When I was talking about getting rid of some stuff to the gals in my swim class, one lady came over and told me about her daughter who makes "stuff." A couple of days later I gave her my business card (kind of tricky when you're already in a swimming pool.) A day or so after that the daughter came over and happily took all the leftover batting pieces and the big bag of notions and trimmings. I was SO happy.

I have two smaller bins that need sorting. One of "orphaned" blocks and another of things I once thought I would take the time to cut up to reuse. That probably won't happen (the cutting up and re-using; not the sorting.)

Lastly will be the stash itself. Mostly it just needs refolding and restocking, but since I will have to remove all fabric from the bookshelf (because the work will be dusty and I want to keep the fabric clean), I will do that only when putting the studio back together after the new floor is installed.

The guys are replacing floors in three rooms, my studio, my office and the master bathroom, so it's going to be a logistical challenge moving things OUT of one room and then putting them back IN and then emptying our the next room and doing it all over again. We'll see how it goes. We think we have a plan.