Quilty Fabricy bits

Seems weird to be right into quilting when the weather is getting increasingly hot out there. But I can hide in the living room, the Cave we call it, where it is still cool and blissfully dark.

Oh, but I need a light for stitching.

This quilt I kept having endless issues with. In an effort to use up some scraps, they were far too short for any speed strip piecing techniques. I would up spending more time fiddling with strips and ripping out seams than I did putting blocks together. I forged through until I got 16 blocks, then I stopped. It’s lap sized or wall hanging sized. It still needs a border, and then quilting. Not sure how I’m going to quilt it yet, or even what color thread. Then I think I may sell it.

I am quilting my daughter’s quilt, on my mother’s quilt frame, with my grandmother’s tools. I have decided that while I like speed piecing techniques, I adore old-fashioned patterns and quilting. I like some machine quilting as long as it’s on a small machine. I don’t like long-arm computerized machine quilting. It makes the quilt look store bought, and then I think what was the point in that?

And I am cursing myself over Sarah’s quilt. When I pieced it together, I had a new serger and sewed many of the strips together with that. then decided to hand-quilt it. If you don’t just go “ow” I’ll tell you why: serged seams are bulky and stiff. My stitches mostly skip them entirely. And there is a lot, as I also pieced the back. Yes, I have learned a ton of stuff since then.

There’s two stacks of fabric waiting to be cut for quilt tops. One, the old soft florals for Ron & I, another, reds and yellows with white. Can’t wait to see it. I keep swapping out fabric until I am satisfied, and I have an idea for the block layout, but I’m not sure I can pull it off without overthinking, and I don’t want to mess it up either.

It has to be enjoyable for me, this piecing together of fabric and pattern and color and shape, so they all work as a whole. I see it in my head, this quilt. The hard part is getting it out.

Not sure if I want to hand-quilt a third quilt, especially a big one. But either of my machines are to cranky to machine quilt with. My mom will be loaning me hers to try, as an instructor told her it would do machine quilting quite well. If it does, and I get the hang of it, I’m sure I will be doing all mine and mom’s too.

tally:
- one quilt on the frame (Sarah’s blues and pinks)
- 3 finished tops needing to be sandwiched and basted, then quilted (blues, baby and navy/yellow)
- 3 tops in process (purple pinwheels with Nanny’s dress, Amish sunshine & shadow, rainbow stripes)
- 3 stacks of fabric waiting to be cut (faded florals, red/yellow/white disappearing 9 patch, green florals for triple Irish chain)

Oh wow, that’s ten. I’ve got it bad. Right now, I’m mostly trying to use up the stash, and picking out fabric combinations and trying to be inspired.

More weekend stuff.

I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my flickr. I seem to do them in batches.

And I’m annoyed at ebay buyers. I sold a small pile of stuff, answered a HECK of a lot of questions about shipping (yes, I’ll combine) and then after they won, I sent combined shipping charges, no payment. I sent a reminder. No payment.

If it was one person, that would make sense, but out of 4 buyers, two have neglected to pay after a week. Both for multiple items. One won two auctions, the other won 4.

I may have to threaten them with neutral or even negative feedback.

But! I sold an item on etsy! I was pretty happy ’bout that.

As big as a whole shop

It’s bigger than I thought. My etsy/ebay/to sell pile that is.

See, in addition to the purging items I don’t want, some of it has been hitting another pile labeled “to sell on the internet”. Mostly destined for Etsy, but some for ebay.

I decided to do a “quick” sort of the to-sell stuff and make two piles. It was scattered around in boxes, and as I lugged each one into my craft room, it got bigger and bigger. I was laying out the “to fix” pile so I could take a picture. The “to fix” pile is any item that needs washing, repairs, a retrofit, or made up into some sort of goods (usually a tote bag) before I could list it.

I lost my floor again.

The whole time I was plowing through it all, the only thing I could think of was apologizing to the husband. You see, as we were taking things *out* of the house, a lot of my scoping out of yard sales and thrift stores has been with an eye for what sells online. (I’m not just guessing here, I’m paying attention to trends, picking up one or two to check out when I get home, and if I hit gold, grab more next time I see some.) So for that past couple of years – especially since we moved, although it started before then, I’ve been amassing things to sell online. In the words of my husband, “We’re supposed to be getting RID of things, not bringing new things IN to the house!”

I did have good plans, I was building a site to sell my own goods from, like my own etsy, run by me. Well, honestly at this point, I haven’t done squat except tear it down and partially rebuild it, twice. Plus I don’t have the time to market it. A slight change in plans, and this past week or two I signed up on etsy, plus listed a few things on ebay – just to start things off.

Well, looking at the stack of items and realizing I could stock a small storefront tells me I’d better get cracking.

And Ron was right. (I hate when that happens.) No more yard sales for me until I make a dent in the pile. I’m feeling especially masochistic and wondering exactly how much I spent. Not all of it I bought; some is my old stuff, some inherited and willing to be let go of, and some just stuff people gave me. All told, I think there’s a good hundred dollars of investment there.

In yard sale prices, that’s quite a pile.

A small list for the curious:
- 28 items of clothing, 16 of them dresses, 21 of the items are vintage
- 6 aprons
- 73 books
- 18 linens of some sort
- 64 patterns, most 30 + years old
- 20 + different craft supply items (in my own defense, some of this is yet more leftovers from my craft store, which has been closed for 6 years)

I’ll be allocating time on the weekends to list items, rather than go yard sailing. And yes I *am* embarrassed with myself.

Some ephemera for you

Once upon a time, I bought a hundred year old Latin Grammar textbook at a yard sale for a whole dollar. Inside the pages were some notes, scribbles taken down in class and forgotten. You should see the pages of the book itself, they’re pretty awesome too.

We scanned in the notes and I’ve uploaded loaded it to Flickr.

You can download the full sized 2504 x 3229 one here. All I ask is that you use this for personal use *only*. That’s non-commerical, peeps.

As a side note, one of my “someday” ideas for a website is a place where I upload scans of all the neat stuff I find in library and secondhand books.

The easy way to attach bias binding

Last weekend, my mom brought up some binding for me to do, and since talking to her and others I realized everyone thought there was only *ONE* way to attach bias binding to a project. There’s not! Today I’m going to walk you though step-by-step, and show you how to do it in one go through the sewing machine.

Ready? (more…)

Faaaaabric

I am lost in fabric.

Mom was here on the weekend and we played with fabric. We also bought fabric, but only a little bit. I sewed some stuff for her, but I’m not supposed to tell because it was for a class and she sucks at binding. She gave me some fabric, and it wasn’t even part of my (belated) birthday present. Aw, she loves me.

And today I got up from the computer, went to start supper, then sewed. And sewed. I sewed for two hours because I was inspired to make a tote bag from a charm pack and some scraps. (Also Ron figured out why the plugs out there weren’t working.) Mom brought me some scraps from her local shop that the lady there was throwing out. I KNOW!  I can’t bear to just toss out fabric – the amount of one print and a bit was enough to completely line my tote bag. All it took was some creative piecing.

I am also jazzed that my library now emails me to tell me when my books are due. Library trip tomorrow, who’s with me? And to tie it in, I’ve made a couple of totes for the library to sell so they can raise money. I’m nice like that.

Anyone need a tote? “Seams” like I’m on a roll.

Charm pack tote:

Using moda’s Natural Garden charm pack, I made two disappearing nine patch blocks  from this tutorial.

I think the charm pack had 32 or 40 5″ squares, all different. I arranged the patches in a pleasing manner first, saving the ones I didn’t like so much for the sides of my box tote. I had 4 blocks left over, which I eventually used on the inside.

After I did the block, I sewed nine patches in a very long row for the sides and bottom of the bag. I had to carefully piece one long edge around three edges of one block, then the other edge to the other block. Then my outer bag was done. Since I need to work on my accuracy, I was extra careful to iron, pin and align seams. Iron every seam before it crosses another seam – this is the difference between something looking handmade and it looking hand crafted.

I pieced all of the scraps I had from one coordinating print all together, continually holding them up to the blocks as I went to best take advantage and minimize waste.

When I saw that I needed a bit more, as luck would have it 4 of the leftover charms fit right in. I put that strip right up the middle of one inside panel. Since the inside is pieced differently, I boxed the bottom by pinching the corners and sewing a triangle shape.

I still have to make the handles using a scrap piece and some plain fabric from my stash. All in all, given half of the fabric was free, and mom got a discount on the charm pack, this is my $7 CAN tote.

(Not counting the two hours to sew it together, and the other hour to arrange the fabric and do the math.)