Stash Management

So I didn't get another quilt top done this week.  But I did start another one.  It took me a while to decide what I wanted to work on. I thought about doing a slice and flip quilt but I don't have a large enough surface right now to do the slicing so that was put back on the shelf. Then I decided to do the Keyhole pattern from Missouri Star Quilt Company (MSQC). 

I thought I had two jelly rolls of batiks in primary colors. I was wrong.  What I had was three rolls of 20 - 2 1/2 in strips of assorted batiks. I had bought them on Ebay a long time ago. Like 15 years ago. They have been stashed away waiting to be used. This is why it is important to inventory you stash.  You just don't know what you have and what you need.  Karen Brown suggests doing it a couple of times a year.

The strips I had weren't going to work for my vision of the Key Hole quilt.  But I had seen another quilt on Pinterest that used strips and looked to be fast and easy. It was just blocks made out of strips, sashed in white with corner stones from the same prints in the blocks. I thought I would go ahead and use these strips for it.

I pressed my strips and set about putting together strip sets. Now the intelligent thing to do would have been to pull up the pinterest article and read it before starting. Of course I did not. I just started sewing the strips into sets of four.  I didn't even make the sets the same.  I had 10 different prints so I was very random in the pairing of the prints.  I made sure to put darker values together with the brighter values.  Later when I did pull up the article to show my daughter what I was working on, I saw that the block were made of only three strips.  They were also rather uniform in appearance. Oh well I persevered with the four strips and my random composition. I ended up with 67 - 8 1/2 inch blocks and over 100 corner stones. I've decided to go with an off white sashing from fabric that I already have.   

I am going to run into the same problem with this top as I have with the cobblestones and windmills quilt.  No place to lay it out.  I've decided that I am going sweep off my front deck (or back) then lay down couple of flannel backed table cloths.  I am going to get these quilts laid out and put together. 

Once that is done, I will have made 7 quilt tops this year.  That is not very many but all of them will have come from my stash. Hopefully I will be able to find backing fabric for them in the stash as well.  If I can't, I will buy some. But in the end, I will have least put a minor dent in my stash. 

I still haven't finished inventorying all of my stash.  The yardage is still in bins, the bins are in the closet of a room that currently isn't easily accessible.  But as my husband and son start finishing the family room, things will start being less chaotic.  They have another book shelf to build and we have a bunch of painting to do. I am hoping to be able to access that room next week or the week after.

I am also hoping that I will get my cutting surface back.  Kim has set up his office in the family room on my little stone table.  The table is a nice desk size surface of pink granite. It was a steal at $40.  We have found it to be really handy.  Anyways I am hoping to be able to cut some borders out this week. Not sure how much I will do sewing/quilting wise.  I expect to put in some long hours at work since our big audit is this week. I just want to have the area ready if I can scrape together 20-30 minutes.

 I am going to see how many quilts I can do from my stash this year.  Backings are probably going to be my biggest hurdle. Well that is it for this week.  How about challenging yourself to make a quilt with only fabric from your stash?

Minimizing Problems

As I predicted last week, I finished another throw size quilt top.  Interestingly enough I developed a few tricks to help me along the way. Tricks that helped minimize potential problems. Plus I had a realization that I was neglecting my machine. Here is what I dealt with this week.

Problem #1 - As you well know, I am currently without a design wall.  Which means laying things out on my full size bed. Which works okay for throw size quilts but not at all for anything larger.  Another problem that arises is the fact that my husband and I also sleep in this bed. Since I work full time, most of my sewing is done in the evening, including laying out the quilt.  I can't leave the blocks on the bed while sewing because I never finish in one evening. 

Solutions:

• Before laying the quilt out, put a sheet, flannel backed table cloth or something similar on the bed.  Lay out the blocks and get things they way you want them.  Then you can roll up the quilt and unroll it as needed.  This would be handy if you need to stop working on the lay out and call it a night. You could sew from this if you don't mind walking back and forth to get your blocks. 

• Take a picture with your smart phone. Take one in color and one in black and white.  The black and white one will help even out the values when laying out your blocks. The color one is for reference if your blocks get moved around before you get them sewn.

• Gather up blocks by rows and clip them together. I found these little clips from Harbor Freight are very useful in all sorts of crafting but I really like them for holding rows of blocks together. I even use the different colors in order to help keep the rows straight.

• Use pins as directional markers.  On this quilt, I sewed a print square to a plain square and then laid 2-block units out in a 6 x 14 grid. I knew that I wasn't going to sew 14 rows together so as I took up each row, I flipped the bottom row onto the next one up. When I got all the blocks for those 2 rows clipped together I put a pin in the side that would be the seam.  That way I could take them to the machine and still know which side to sew on.

How do you lay out your quilts? Do you take a picture? Do you use the black and white camera technique?

Problem #2 - keeping the blocks in the right order as I sew them. I have a tendency to twist things around and /or flip them over. Then there are the little helpers I have that move things around as well. 

Solutions:

• Colored clips - Again I try to use the clips in a certain order such as blue, yellow, green, then red.  I actually try to do the same pattern every time. That helps keep the rows straight.

• Stacking blocks in order - As I picked up the rows I picked them up from left to right.  I would take the first block and set it on top of the second block. That meant the top block in the stack was the the first block in the row. 

• Pin marking - I knew that the solid squares should be in the lower left and upper right of each block. But since the print squares didn't match, I could actually end up with the prints in the wrong area. So I as I was getting ready to sew the blocks, I folded back the used a pin to mark which square would be in the lower left square. 

• Chain piecing in order - I would chain piece each block in the stack, cut them apart and press open maintaining the order. The pin marking in the lower left corner allowed me to keep the stack of blocks facing in the right direction.

How do you keep your blocks straight? What tools do you use? 

Problem #3 - Lint build up. There are all sorts of guidelines out there for how often to change needles (every 8 hours of sewing, every new project, etc) or replacing rotary blades (again every new project, when the cuts aren't clean, etc)  But how often should you clean your machine?  As I was busy sewing this week I noticed little bits of lint on my sewing ledge. I was using pre-cuts and the edges were pinked. As I was sewing, little threads from the pinked edges were catching on my sewing ledge. (It is made of masking tape therefore sticky). I got to thinking, when was the last time I cleaned the bobbin area.  After breaking a needle trying to start a new project, I took a hint from my machine and opened up the bobbin area.

 This was what I found. All sorts of fuzz all over the the bobbin area.  It was on the mechanism. It was underneath the mechanism. It was everywhere. See how furry everything looks.

Then I took the bobbin case out. It was even worse. Lint was not only built up but compacted.  That means the shuttle is not spinning as smoothly as it should.

Lastly take a look at the feed dogs. The lint between them was like felt.  That meant the feed dogs were not pulling as well as they should have been.

Solutions: Take time to clean. I use a lot of cotton fabric and it sheds lint.  Lots of lint.

• First I grabbed a soft fluffy paint brush and started collecting as much of the loose lint as I could.  
• Then I moved to the cleaning brush that came with my machine.  It used the pointy end to clean out crevices and in the small areas. 
•  Then I switched back to the soft paint brush to pick up the loose lint.  
• After that I went to a smaller and stiffer paint brush to get hard to reach areas. In the end I had a ball of lint about the size of a cherry pit.   
• Then I took the time to oil the moving joints of the machine.  Just one drop of oil in each moving point.  As I was doing this I was turning the wheel by hand to get the oil worked into the right places.  
• After oiling I ran the machine without the needled or bobbin to continue to work the oil into place. 

This morning, as I sat down to sew, the machine sounded so much smoother. I had forgotten how nicely it can purr when it is taken care of.   I am sure that as I start my next project, I will be much happier with how my machine performs.  If we want our equipment to last and preform correctly we need to take care of it.

When was the last time you cleaned your machine? What do you use to clean it?

Going with the Flow

It's been over two weeks and they have been busy ones. I don't know about anyone else but my house is in complete disarray.  Projects that we've talked about for ages are actually getting done.  My husband, who is having to work from home, is feeling all sorts of urgency to get things done. So my plans are changing daily. Plus we spent one weekend with family in Alabama.  It was a really great trip and I really enjoyed the break.

When last I posted, I was working on UFOs.  I did work on one.  The Church Ladies Aprons in the blue colorway is assembled and waiting for a back. That makes two quilts needing borders and backs and two quilts needing backs.  But right now I can't get to my bins of yardage fabric.  I am trying to use what I have first so I want to go through the bins and see if I have something to use for backs. If not they may have to be set aside until I can get some fabric ordered. Heaven know that right now fabric is not readily available. While in Alabama, I got to see all of the work that Tatianna got done on the quilt we are tag teaming.  I asked her if she wanted me to take it back but she is determined to sew all the little black squares on first.

Because of the construction zone that is my living space, I don't have room to to cut out the borders for the two quilts needing borders.  In, fact I am rather limited in what I can do. I don't have a surface I can cut on, so no borders or backs can be made, even if I could get to my bins of yardage. I don't have any surface either vertical or horizontal that I can lay a large quilt out on. So that means I can't finish working on the Cobble Stones and Windmills quilt.  If I still had a key to the church meeting house, I'd be tempted to take it there and lay it out in the cultural hall.  In fact once church starts meeting again, I may ask to be allowed to do just that.

So what am I to do.  I need to sew for my mental well being. Well I have lots of pre-cuts. So this week I grabbed some charm packs and started sewing.  I expect that by this weekend I will have yet another UFO waiting for a back.  But at least I am still sewing.

Sometimes we just have to find a way to create despite all the chaos around us.  When fate throws us a curve, we need to change and adjust. So I will continue to go with the flow for now.  I will get myself a timer and get back to my 30-30-30 to get things cleaned up and organized so the clutter doesn't drag me down.  There is always more than enough to do and never enough time so I am just going to chip away where I can, sew when I can, and find my bliss where I am.

How about you?

Depression, Sewing and Plan Changes

Well these past two weeks have flown on by.  I'm not sure just where they went or what I've gotten done.  I start out with the best of intentions and just can't seem to follow through.  I'm dealing with some depression and I am not sure what is causing it.  It could be any number of things.  I am sure part of it is that I am tired and stressed.  Work has been very stressful and I probably need to adjust my attitude there.  Currently we are down two techs due to COVID-19. Not that they are sick but the company is taking intense precautions. Plus I am trying really hard to stay healthy. I really don't want to catch this virus.

But one thing that does seem to lift my spirits is sewing. So why on earth don't I do it more.  Because I am tired. Because I am a bit lazy. Because my house is a mess.  Because I am depressed and therefore very apathetic to everything.

Two weeks ago I re-evaluated my UFO list.  I had hoped by writing them down, I could plan them out. I don't seem to have done a very good job of that.  Lately it seems that when I get home my little gems are here and I need to spend time with them.  I love that time. But by the time they leave, my energy is gone. So very little got done on my UFO list.

Let's take a look at it again.

1. Star quilt - Just needs a label. - DONE
2. Irish Chain quilt  - need to add borders to make it more bed friendly
3. Arianna's HS quilt - being tag teamed between me and Tatianna
4. Mom's Quilt - need to get some black fabric and some muslin as well as darn some holes
5. Betty's quilt - repair the block with the hole and find some backing
6. Star 9-patch quilt - need to add something to make it bigger
7. Aurora's quilt - needs borders, backing and quilted
8. Scrappy Joy quilt - needs borders, backing and quilted
9. Cobble Stones and Windmill quilt - Blocks need laid out and assembled
10. Church Ladies Aprons quilt - blocks need laid out and assembled - Changed

I think I need to do a little rearranging. 

First we'll take off the Star Quilt.  I finally got the label on it. It was last night but it is done all except for taking the picture for my quilt album.

Next we need to divide the Church Ladies Aprons into two quilts.  I decided they would make better throws than a bed size quilt.  I chose to do one in the red color way using half of the yellow and the other one in the blue color way using the other half of the yellow.  I managed to get both quilts laid out. I even managed to get the red one sewn into a top. It was very cathartic for me.  I look forward to getting the second one together this week. So those two need to move up in the list.

1. Church Ladies Aprons quilt (red)- needs back and quilted.
2. Church Ladies Aprons quilt (blue) - top needs assembled
3. Aurora's quilt - needs borders, backing and quilted - decided on border fabric
4. Scrappy Joy quilt - needs borders, backing and quilted
5. Irish Chain quilt  - need to add borders to make it more bed friendly
6. Cobble Stones and Windmill quilt - Blocks need laid out and assembled
7. Arianna's HS quilt - being tag teamed between me and Tatianna
8. Mom's Quilt - need to get some black fabric and some muslin as well as darn some holes
9. Betty's quilt - repair the block with the hole and find some backing
10. Star 9-patch quilt - need to add something to make it bigger. 

This is probably a better representation of how I am going to work on the list.  I hope to get 4 tops ready by Memorial Day weekend. I also want to review the Quilt path videos before putting the quilts on Millie.

I may not have gotten much done on the UFOs but I did get the zipper mended on two lunch bags. I put two buttons back on one of my blouses. And I even cleaned up a little in the studio.  So not too bad. Progress is progress. Plans some times need to change to fit our moods.

Hope your two weeks went well.  How are you UFOs coming along?