Silver and Pink

 

I've known for some time that I wanted the Silver (Gray) and Pink quilt to be a Trip Around the World with rectangles. I knew I'd have to work it out in my sketchbook to get the right size for the quilt I want to make so the colors would fit. This rough diagram tells me that I need 8 fabrics.

So eight fabrics I did cut. I just cut a few. I need to work it out on the design wall before I know for sure and anybody who tells you they can work it out in their head and know exactly what it's going to look like is just plain lying. Most of us know kinda sorta what it might look like, but not exactly.

So I put the pieces up on the design wall and was decidedly underwhelmed. I  have to stress that this is in the very beginning stages. No decision here is final. I chose these fabrics because there were good changes from light to dark in each.

What I knew immediately was the dark gray took over and I didn't like it. And the whole thing was just blah, and we all know I don't make blah quilts. It was getting late, and I was tired, so I just left it there and went to bed. 

Now I have to go back and tell you a story. Way back in 2013 when I was making the Too Much Chicken quilt, I was getting bogged down in the design stage. Julie been there when I got the initial inspiration for the quilt and she reminded me that what really hit me at that moment was the words I was hearing. The SPIRIT of her very useful comment was that I had to remember exactly WHAT had inspired me to make the quilt. Same idea here. What inspired me to make this quilt was my hairdresser's comment about liking the way my silver hair went with my pink glasses. (Look at my profile photo up on the right,)

The comment was SILVER and not gray! So I knew the vibe of the original layout was all wrong. My hair is SILVER and not dark gray. I hated the dark gray fabric. I pulled those blocks of the design wall and already I like it so much better. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do next, but I do have some things I want to play with.

I met Mary Ellen Hopkins at the big Quilt Festival and Quilt Market in Houston I think back in 2003. She said something I never forgot, and it's great advice. "You need darks in your lights, and lights in your darks."

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."

Quilt PickUp

 

I drove out to Janet-Lee's and picked up Blitzen, the Christmas Macnas quilt, and Nonchalant, the white one, which had been quilted. They are quite glorious.

What I like about the Blitzen quilt is that it's a Christmas quilt, but it doesn't hit you over the head with the idea of it being Christmas. And for me, Christmas colors are red, green, gold and white, which is why those are the only colors I used in the quilt.

The Nonchalant quilt is one of my favorite quilts. It's ridiculously simple and yet stupidly gorgeous.

I love the quilting design. True and funny story: When I first started getting my quilts quilted, I did not like closely quilted designs. My pal Julie told me I might be wrong about that. Over the years I have changed my mind and once again, dear Julie, you have proven correct. When I tell you all that Julie and I influence each other, I am not joking. I have met the most wonderful friends through blogging.

I am probably going to make another one of these. This quilt will fit anywhere, and everyone who sees it falls in love with it.

The Macnas series, which was Julie's inspiration, proves that a simple shape, with its basic repetition, can be more than a "scrap" quilt - it can be elegant and sophisticated  - as both the quilts above show.

Big Red

 

When I was cutting blocks from the Lights bin, I was surprised to find how many red-on-white fabrics I had, or how many blocks I cut. It seemed obvious to make a RED quilt. So after I finished sewing up the Nonchalant flimsy (White Macnas) I went through all my bins and cut up red Macnas blocks. I cut up blocks that were mostly RED or Red with White.

Then I sorted the blocks by print. After that was done, I started pairing blocks, matching a white one (at the top) with a red one below. I started at the upper left of the white stacks, took one piece, then picked the red at the top left of those. I matched up the next white with the next red, and kept going that way until I had 112 pairs. I need 270 for a quilt the size of the Nonchalant quilt.

Then I sat down and sewed them up, then pressed them, and then put them up on the design wall in no particular order.

I stopped for lunch, then went back into the studio to match more pairs, sew them up and put them up on the design wall. I need to cut more blocks, but you can see where this is going.

Nonchalant is a Flimsy

 

The Nonchalant Macnas Quilt is a flimsy. It is 56" x 72". I guess there were more creamy WOWs than I expected. The sun was hiding behind the clouds when I took this picture.

But the sun came out briefly so I could take this photo of the quilt in the sun!

Nonchalant

 

After some very minor tinkering (removing some blocks I thought read as too dark and moving some darks and lights around so I'd have a better balance) I decided this is what I will sew together.

The quilt also has a name: Nonchalant, because this quilt is not full of itself, and not overly fussy.

So I started where I could reach, and sewed the blocks together in largish chunks.

Here are the sixteen blocks I sewed together first. These fit in the empty space in the photo above this one.

When I stopped to have dinner, I had two-thirds of the top half done.

After dinner I sewed up the last third of the top section. I have to sew the three parts together, but oh gee darn, that won't be hard at all.

I hope to get the flimsy sewn together over the weekend, but I'll be teaching on Saturday and am having some work done in my house that may start next week and will need some things moved before that can happen, so we'll see. At any rate the flimsy should be completed in short order.

Here is a closeup of a section of the quilt. The WOWs are self-explanatory - you know I love them and use them at random. The "Lights" are bright colored prints on a white background. That's all this quilt is.

The quilt is based on Julie's "Macnas" series, and you can read about them here and here.

Plans for a Macnas

 Last Monday (June 16th), I texted Julie and asked her if the Macnas rectangles were 2-1/2" x 4-1/2". I had been looking at her blog posts about her Macnas quilts. (duh)

"I am thinking of going through the big bins and cutting up those scraps into that sized pieces and making them into a bunch of semi-scrappy quilts."

As you know, I have been doing that.

A few days later I texted Julie again, "You know what would be pretty? A White Macnas. Half White with colors and...  half Cream with colors.  Or half of the first with WOWs."

Julie said she'd go with WOW and White with prints.

I couldn't go with either because I was still sewing up the Green Deco quilt. Before I made blocks for anything else, I had to get the green quilt off the design wall. Which I finally did.

Before I sewed up any of the rectangular pieces I needed white rectangles. So I dug out my WOW scrappy bin and cut a whole stack of rectangles from that box. I also got rid of a lot of stuff I couldn't use (like long strips less than one inch wide...)

Anyway I finally grabbed some fabrics, paired them up and stuck them up on the design wall to see what it  might look like.

Yeah, that's a GO!

Squirrel??

It shouldn't surprise anybody (certainly not my regular readers) that Julie and I influence each other. She is now making a pinkish version of the Deco quilt and I have been cutting up my scraps into rectangles like her Macnas quilts. 

I have a big bin in my studio that has scraps of light fabrics. Some leftover backing bits, some pieces that

are too small to go back on the shelf and some that got thrown in because I couldn't figure out where else to put them.

I saw the lovely collection that Julie is making and when I looked at this bin, I knew there had to be a quilt or two or three in there.

So knowing the wicked hot heat was coming, and that simply having the iron on heats up the studio, I dug some pieces out of the box and ironed them before bed the other night. I planned to cut them up in the morning.

The result was the picture at the top of this post. I had a stack almost six inches tall. Woo hoo!

Thus motivated, I prepared another stack of fabric for the next day. Not as big as the first, but still pretty good.

On the THIRD day, I cut a stack of fabric almost SIX and a half inches tall.

And this is just the LIGHTS bin. I have other bins. And sadly, or not, depending on your viewpoint, the Lights bin is not anywhere close to being empty.

So here are all my pieces more or less organized by color. I have resolved not to begin to plan to sew any of them together until I have gone through the entire LIGHTS bin. Already I have some ideas.

It's Julie's Fault

 

I was pinning the bottom of some of the lined drawstring bags I am making when I went into the studio looking for something.

I got distracted and the next thing I knew I had planned six or seven new bags. I'm really going to like the blue one, above. I've had that fabric for over a dozen years. I think the gold Charley Harper moth fabric will look terrific with it.

In each case the body of the bag is the fabric at the center bottom. The contrast strip across the top is the fabric directly above. The linings are at the left (I hate dark fabric as lining of a bag. It makes it hard to see what's inside.) The fabric for the drawstring is either at the right or across the top.

I planned a couple of Christmas ones too.

How Many?

 

I made four small right facing birds on Saturday. I put them up on the design wall (above) and then counted them. There are 80. I texted Julie.

"Have you updated your lifetime total lately," she texted back?

Um, I've actually never counted, I texted back. I guess I should.

Several hours later I had a pretty good number. I texted Julie, My best count is 495. Then I thought for a. minute. So, OK. Tomorrow I'll make five birds any color I want so I can say I've made 500.

"Well, duh," Julie texted back, "Of course you will."

Thing is though, I was so damned tired, I went to bed early. 8:45 early.

I woke up at 7:30 on Sunday, feeling much better. I got up, took my Fosomax and then started making my lunches for the week. Then I had breakfast, cleaned up and went into the studio ready to make more birds.

It didn't take me long to choose fabrics for five birds. Except I didn't have any leg panels for the "standard" bird. So I made four of those. 

The wing fabric on bird 496 was a scrap from the backing of the Defying Gravity quilt. The breast fabric was from the scrap bins. The beak was from the Pink Panther quilt.

Bird 497 was made from scraps from the Holiday Boxes quilt, and the backing of the first Scrap Slab Triangles quit, Fruit Loops,

  

I don't remember what quilt I used the breast fabric in, but it was a scrao from something. I literally cut around the leftover bits you see above. When I tell people the birds are very scrap friendly, I am not kidding.

The sunflower fabric for bird 498 was purchased for the Allegretto quilt, the breast is from the Golden Zebras, and the beak is from the Firebird zebras quilt.

The wing from bird 499 is from the Dinosaur quilt I made for my granddaughter. The breast fabric is from my stash and the beak fabric is from some fabric I bought last year that I haven't done anything with yet.

But by that time I was tired and hungry, so I stopped to have dinner, clean up the kitchen and write this post.

I was so pretty excited to make birds that were NOT PINK!!

If you want to make these birds, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop, It's an instant download so you can't started right away.