Where have I been lately?

Hanging out. Cleaning up. Thankfully, few things are as life-affirming as a stack of clean tea towels:

I don’t do as much custom work as I used to. I’m happy to to do an embroidered eye quilt in a different colorway or whatever, but I’ve stopped taking most orders that are way far off my usual product line. I don’t like to seem cranky; it’s just that, for me, it’s not cost-effective. I’ve found that the most time-consuming aspect of my business is designing new product, and, in my experience, customers don’t want to pay me for the extra 3 or 4 (or more) hours it would take to, say, fit earflaps onto an eye mask. (No, that it not a request I’ve ever gotten.)

But sometimes, an opportunity comes along that I just can’t pass up, and I make an exception:

This is Trogdor, embroidered in black thread on a red hankie. No, I’m not going to get rich making this kind of thing, but man, was it fun.

I like crafting for weddings. How often can five grown women dress identically without looking absurd? (Apart from uniforms, that is.) These were commissioned for a wedding in Hawaii, providing an unexpected, but wildly appropriate purpose for the Mendocino fabrics!

Once again, lots of work means very little posting. One of these days, I’ll have to stop apologizing for that. I’m assuming no one’s particularly interested in seeing me make the same product over and over again. If I’m wrong, here’s a tip: you can make an RSS feed of your favorite etsy shops! So ever time one of your favorite sellers does a shop update, you can ogle the goods via Bloglines, Google Reader, whatever. Man, this life. It is so exciting!

I’ll also be starting a part-time job soon, which means less time for sewing (boo!) but more time devoted to putting together cute outfits. I really ought to set up my tripod to take pictures of me dressed for work, but leaving that out makes me nervous when there’s a feisty kitty with time on her hands. Maybe I’ll just beg Hambone to snap a pic of me each morning before we head out. Or maybe we’ll say to heck with that. We’ll have to wait and see.

McCall Cover, Joan Caulfield

Originally uploaded by George Eastman House

Want.

(The kitties and the sweater, not the McCall cover.)

I love binding things so much, I sometimes toy with the idea of starting a binding service. Does that even make sense?

Everyone always talks about starting the day or week right, and I don’t get it. I’m lazy and crabby in the a.m., and I don’t even feel guilty about that! As long as it doesn’t leach into the rest of my day, of course.

Yesterday afternoon, I got Threads Together fabric from Debbie, and I literally gasped when I opened the package. I’m not a Kaffe Fassett n00b or anything, but it still sometimes takes my breath away when I see how incredible his fabrics are in person.

What’s a girl to do, but dive right in?

I started with a variation on the “Road to Oklahoma” block. It’s a variation because I didn’t have enough of the fan print for the little triangles, so I swapped in the orange that you see. I got the orange in a scrap pack a few years ago, but I think, coincidentally, it’s also Kaffe. I added a border because RTO is only an 8″ block, with purple posts because I thought the eye could use a tiny break. The purple is just four fourths of a charm square, Kona cotton, no idea what color. Debbie sent everything else - can you see why I was cutting into these within 30 minutes?

Also, Debbie lives in Oklahoma, which is why is was easy to choose the first block. These prints just struck me as so bright and wild, that I wanted to ensure a good sense of proportion and make traditional blocks. When I make traditional blocks, I tend to choose them for the names. Which is stupid, in some ways, but, with so many to choose from, a method really is helpful.

For the second block, I knew I wanted a GIANT EXPLOSION OF COLOR, so I went with a star. Specifically, I knew I wanted a star with a large center block to show off this amazing floral, so I went with Aunt Addie’s Album, which is one of the blocks from the star quilt-along:

I really like making this block. It comes together really easily, for all the triangles, and it’s so pretty for showing off a fabric you really love. I made it once before, but, for some reason, forgot to take a photo. Thankfully, that can be rectified with a crappy webcam pic!

So, yeah. Debbie’s quilt. It’s going to be amazing! I have only seen two blocks so far (a bunch of people probably don’t even have their fabric yet!) and I am already super jealous. “Kaffe” and “Fassett” are apparently the words I need to remember if I ever join another bee, or we do another round of TT next year.

Remember my fabric cutting debacle? And how it quickly morphed into an effort to put 25 blocks in my Threads Together quilt, instead of just 16?

Well, who better to come to my aid than quilting genius amanda jean?

Check out what she sent:

I just keep studying these over and over, because I think they’re an excellent lesson on getting good mileage (or is it footage? inchage?) out of fabric. Square inch for square inch, these blocks don’t really contain all that much of the fabric I sent.

And yet, the fabrics she added don’t take away anything from the overall character of the quilt I “designed.” (Scare quotes because, when you don’t make any of the blocks yourself, it seems like cheating to call yourself a designer. But then, the concept had to come from somewhere.) I love the fabrics she added, and the fact that none of them overshadows the ones I sent.

Best of all is perhaps that her clever framing of all the little doggies have finally given me a name for this quilt: Chien et Chaise! Which is, of course, French for “dog and chairs.”

It sounds better in French.

March was Betty Ninja’s month to send fabrics for the Threads Together Quilting Bee, which was exciting for me, because I haven’t made any quilting bee blocks yet!

She requested triangles a la this quilt, and, at the risk of being a bit witchy, I have to admit I did not feel like doing that. At first.

But one of the reasons I’ve never tired of quilting in almost 15 years is that, even with restrictions, there’s always room for creativity.

I was concerned about the amount of background fabric I had to spread over two blocks, so rather than paper piece, I decided to use fabric-conserving half-square triangles, and mix up the placement of the red for movement.

Block #2 was truly an effort in maximizing what little background fabric I had left. I added a bit of forest floor, a bit of night sky, and some gray fabric from my own scrap pile to attempt a 12″ block. I failed, but Betty’s got more gray at home, so I’d better let her deal with it.

Remember how I said I didn’t feel like making these blocks? Not only am I glad I powered through; I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a triangle quilt in my future.

Does somebody have time to drop by this afternoon and slap my wrist with a ruler?

And can you leave the ruler? Some leprechaun stole all of mine when I was busy making triangles….

To see more progress on Betty’s quilt, check out the Threads Together Group Photo Pool.

Another view of all the blocks:

These do require a foundation for piecing, so I’ve been experimenting a bit with that. Water soluble interfacing was kind of cool, but a little pricey and can be tricky to work with. Some of it is nice and stiff, which is great for tracing and ironing, but I’m worried about the bulk it adds. I found some that was whisper-thin, but it sort of dissolved on contact with a hot iron, and shifted and wrinkled while I was tracing the pattern onto it. So I wasn’t too sorry to run out of that!

I tried freezer paper, which is super cheap, but more opaque than useful, and baking parchment, which is nice and transparent, but on a skinny roll that means a lot of waste for a 5.5″ block.

At the moment, I’m using tracing paper from a tablet, which is my favorite option so far. $2.40 buys enough paper to make 80 blocks, it doesn’t wrinkle, I can see through it to sew, and it tears away much more easily than any of the other paper I tried.

One downside of tracing paper is that I’d hoped to run it through my printer, thereby avoiding tracing out every. single. block. But it just isn’t of a weight that my printer can handle. Blerg. And, easy or not to tear, the whole tearing process takes longer than I would like.

But then, I’m trying to make 254 tiny log cabins. I don’t have much room to talk.

Just a quick update on this quilt. 54 down, 200 to go! I am feeling RIDICULOUSLY triumphant, given the scope of the project in front of me!