Finish #33, Comets, and Scrap Processing

 Finish #33 of 2024 is complete! If it looks familiar, there is a good reason for that. Last year, I got a bundle of 20 solid fat quarters in soft rainbow colors. I added 20 floral fat quarters from stash, matching each of the solids as closely as I could. I needed a quilt really quickly for someone on hospice, so I cut all 40 fat quarters into 8.5" strips, 6.5" strips, and 2" strips. I used my large EZ Angle ruler to cut the 8.5" and 6.5" strips into HST's. I used the 8" HST's for the quilt I needed for the woman in hospice. I laid her quilt our just like I did this one, it was just a bit bigger. I finished that quilt in just a couple of days. When it was finished, I made this quilt top from the 6" HST's, but it was put into the quilt closet, because I had no immediate need for it. I cut all the scraps into 2x3.5" pieces and made a simple rail fence quilt, I had just enough to make a baby quilt, which I have already finished. Those three quilts busted all of the 40 fat quarters. 

DH and I went on an evening drive this week, about halfway up the mountain our house faces. We stopped at a rest area that has a great view of the city, and is one of our favorite places to watch the sunset. 

The sunset had a very layered look that night. I didn't alter the color on this photo at all. A sunset wasn't all we were looking for that night though. We were hoping to see Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, a comet that won't come around again in our lifetime. 

I'm not much of a photographer, and these pics were just taken with my iPhone, but I was sure blessed to be able to see it! Sometimes remembering to take the time to wonder at the universe we live in is hard to do, but I'm glad we did take that drive.

I finished processing the fabric scraps I was given, with one exception. I have one small bin with denim scraps I haven't touched yet. Some of these scraps were actually mine, but only the ones I had in bins in the living room for whatever reason. I still have a lot of fabric scraps I need to deal with of my own, but getting these processed into usable sizes was still a win. I've now got three empty bins in my small nine cube storage unit I have in the living room, which is a huge win. One bin is crumbs, and one bin is strings. I don't have another spot for crumbs, but I can empty the string bin into my cube unit downstairs that is all strings. All of these pre-cut sizes have a place to live, and some of them are even put away now. 

I used to feel bad about throwing any scraps away, but the only bits in this bag are too small for me to ever use, and I use some really small stuff! I felt pretty good about tossing this bag of fabric bits, knowing it's that much that I would never use anyway, but now I'm not having to store it. It's funny how freeing it is to understand that an almost full grocery bag of scraps left my house, and it was really down to the unusable. Pre-cutting my scraps works for me, if I'm making a quilt with sizes I keep, I automatically go to my scrap stash first. I often have a quilt in mind when I'm cutting up scraps, but if I don't, I cut to my most often used sizes. 

I'm just starting on my Christmas sewing. I'm making two throw quilts for Christmas, and I've got both quilt tops finished and basted. I started FMQ one of those this morning. As soon as I finish this blog post, I'll be prepping pillowcases to sew up for the grands. Christmas sewing is now my priority, and hopefully I'll get it all done with a minimal amount of stress. 

27 Million Stitches

 Modern sewing machines are kind of fun, in that we know when we hit certain milestones, whereas vintage machines are a bit of a mystery. I'm getting all my machines serviced before DH retires, and right now my original Bernina 440 is in the shop. I knew my 440 was really high mileage, which is why I recently purchased a new-to-me 440 that only has 26 sew hours on it. My original 440 has almost 800 hours of sewing time on it. 

The repairman just called me, to ask whether I really wanted it repaired because of how much use it has had. He said I've sewn 27 million stitches on it. He said he's never serviced such a high use machine, even the embroidery machines he services usually have far less. Up until now the highest he's seen on any machine is 24 million stitches. Now, when I say have it repaired, you need to realize I sewed with it the day I dropped it off, it was still sewing just fine, I was just dealing with some top thread breakage. 

He said the reason I was having some top thread breakage is because the timing was slightly off, because I had worn the timing gear teeth off! Now, these are not plastic or nylon gears, these are solid metal gears! When he told me the price of the new gears, I did pause a minute, but I ran upstairs to ask DH about it. He asked me if I could find another used 440 for the cost of the repair, and the answer was an easy no. I paid twice the cost of servicing and repairing my old 440 for the one I bought used, and that was one the cheapest I had ever seen used. We decided to go ahead and have the new gears installed, and since my plan all along was to make my high mileage Bernina into my backup/travel machine, and use the low use one for regular use. I think my old one will last a lot longer now that it won't be my main machine, and it's still less money than I would have paid for a travel machine I would be happy with. I tried buying a cheaper machine for travel and I hated it, everything on it felt so flimsy. I returned that machine, and that's when I started looking for a used Bernina.

It's funny to think about one of my machines having so much use on it. For a little while, I was only using that Bernina, but it didn't take long after I bought it, before I dove into the world of vintage machines. I do well over half of my piecing on vintage machines. Since 2020, I've done all of my FMQ and binding on my Janome M7. How many stitches would that Bernina have on it if I wasn't also using other machines? Some things I only do on the Bernina. All garment sewing and applique I do on the Bernina. Now that I think about it, I only use my Janome for FMQ and binding. I only use my vintage machines for piecing. Any other sewing I do is on the Bernina. Bag making? Bernina. Make a pillowcase? Bernina. Luggage tags? Bernina. I sometimes go weeks without using the Bernina, but when I'm using it, I'm often batch sewing, so the stitches add up quickly. I've got several things I'll be making for Christmas, and almost all of it will be done on a Bernina. 

Besides running up a repair bill, I did do several other things this week! 

I finished another set of twin quilts! The pattern is Twirling at the Disco, though I resized it to use 2" cut squares instead of the 2.5" cut squares the pattern calls for. All of the small squares are solids, and even though the black background looks solid in the photo, it is actually a blender fabric with a bit of texture to it. These are finishes #31 and #32 for the year. I started quilting the next quilt, but it's the last of the smaller quilts I have basted so the finishes will slow down for a bit. I've already reclaimed almost 2 jars of basting pins! 

I've got two of the grands this week, so not much sewing going on. I have been working away on cutting up scraps though. I'm working on those in the living room, so I can still be readily available while I'm working. 

I've got the autumn colored scraps cut into a quilt kit. The entire quilt will be scraps, because between all the cream colored scraps,  I had enough to make the background pieces for the applique blocks.

I think it likely I'll have to go into my Scrap User system for some more blue strips, but I've got most of a quilt cut. Someone had given me muslin scraps from a wideback, and if I use some poverty piecing techniques, I'll have just enough of the muslin to do all of the background I need. I'll never run out of blue fabrics, so I more concentrated on cutting the larger blue pieces I need for this quilt, knowing I have plenty of 2.5" strips already available for use. You can see I have plenty of blue strips cut from this batch of scraps too, I'm just not sure it's enough variety-wise. 

The red and white prints are cut into a quilt kit as well. I cut all the excess into 2.5 and 3.5" strips, which I could use in a border, or for anther quilt, I haven't decided. The whites I needed were a mix of the new scraps and strips from my Scrap User System. My goal for these quilt kits was to use only scraps for the quilts, and not to cut into any yardage. 

I've made such good progress on the scraps, that I'm cutting up the scraps I hadn't divided into colorways, and I'll just be adding those into my Scrap User System. I'm hoping I still have some scrap interest left after processing all the the scraps that were given to me, so maybe I can cut up the scraps from my own overflowing bin. Most of my own current scraps are leftovers from widebacks, and some of those I have enough of to sash or border another quilt. I'm feeling quite happy with my scrap progress, and knowing those scraps that were given to me will be put into use so soon is a good feeling. 

Oh, in case you are wondering what I do with all these quilts I'm finishing, I've donated 22 quilts to Project Linus this month, with the latest two destined to go there too! 

High Fiber, No Calorie Donuts a.k.a. Finishes #29 and #30

 It's easy to get rapid finishes when the quilts are all basted. This week I finished twin quilts.

The quilts are about as close to identical as I get. Some of the blocks are the same, the background is the same, and they are the same size, even the backing fabric is the same. I had a bunch of 3.5" strips to bust and this is a simple block to make quick work of busting those strips. I made a bunch of blocks with white backgrounds too, and those will be getting assembled into quilt tops soon. 

I'm also working on another set of twin quilts. I've got one quilted, and I started quilting the second one today. Once they are both quilted I'll bind them one after the other. After having my Janome in the shop for 6 weeks, I thought there was NO chance I'd make my goal of finishing 40 quilts this year, but now I'm thinking I'll at least be close, or possibly even make it. We'll see. 

I've been working on processing those scraps I showed last week. 

This is the quilt kit I made myself from the plaids and narrow solid strips. I added some blender strips from stash, because I didn't want to cut into yardage, but I had some blenders in my scrap user system I could cut down into 1" strips. I did need to use a few shirt pieces to add to the plaids to get the quilt size I wanted. 

I also cut up all the bright colored scraps and cut those to size. I haven't cut the background color yet, so I'm not calling it a quilt kit yet, but I did write myself a note with what I need to cut from solid white for that quilt. 

Currently, I'm cutting up the autumn colored scraps, and I'm hoping it will be 100% scraps too, just like the plaid quilt. I also chose patterns for the red and blue quilts I'll be cutting from scraps. 

These were the September units for the Greek Murder Mystery quilt. I think the idea of the murder mystery quilts are awesome, and reading a book written to go with the quilt as the year goes on is very fun. The only thing I don't like about it is the designer and I have very different methods of getting things done. I like to cut accurately, sew and it's done. I use a lot of specialty rulers to help me do that. The designer doesn't want to require purchasing specialty rulers, which completely makes sense, since there are a lot of new quilters every year doing her mysteries. Also taking the new quilters into consideration, she does a lot of oversized piecing than trimming down to size, which is NOT my preference, I kind of hate doing it that way. To make these units, the designer had everyone doing Seminole piecing, which wastes a lot of fabric, so a lot of women ran out of fabric and had to use substitute fabrics to finish the units.

After running through her cutting instructions, I didn't have enough pink fabric left to do it that way either. I used my Ominigrid On Point ruler to cut the center squares, my EZ Companion Angle ruler to cut the side setting triangles, and my EZ Angle HST ruler to cut the corner triangles. I ended up with fabric left over, I sewed it up, it came out the correct size, and I only had a few dog ears for waste instead of large waste pieces.

Honestly, the mysteries are a lot of fun, and if you 1) enjoy paper piecing and/or oversized piecing and trimming down, you'd love the designers instructions (in the facebook groups one of the moderators makes paper piecing patterns available for all of the blocks) or 2) if you are experienced enough to tweak the method to your preferred methods like I am, you'll do fine with the Murder Mystery Quilts. I don't plan on doing the mystery quilt next year, because I would rather tackle more UFO's next year, so I'm not planning on doing ANY mystery quilts next year, not even Bonnie Hunter's which I do more often than not. 

I've been trying to be good and not buy fabric unless it's for an imminent project, but I went and looked at Hobby Lobby's clearance section today, and these fat quarter bundles were marked down to $4.99. Each bundle has 5 fat quarters, and fat quarters for $1 each are pretty much extinct these days, so I splurged. Almost nine yards of fabric for $35? Yeah, I'm going to take advantage of that. 

I'll have two of the grands for half of next week, and they are off school for fall break, so that should be fun spending time with them. DH will be busy all weekend with The Scooter Zine, so I can get some extra sewing in this weekend, which might make up for the no sewing days while we have the grands. I bet I can still get some of those scraps cut up with the grands here, so even though I may not be sewing, I'll still be doing something!

Finishes #27 & 28

 It's amazing how fast I can finish quilts when they are all basted and ready to quilt!

This quilt was up on the design wall in February, when we hosted a family reunion. One of the cousins saw it and really liked it. She jokingly told the others that I was making her a quilt. She wasn't serious, and she wasn't asking for it, but she did genuinely like the quilt. I decided that when it was finished I'd send it to her. I got her address from her mom, who never gave her any idea it was coming. I finally finished the quilt last weekend, and we mailed it off on Monday. I've already gotten a thank you message from her, she was so surprised, and that made it really fun for me! 

I originally thought to put a border on the quilt, though I never planned on the designer's pieced border. When I got the center together, I decided it was large enough for the couch quilt I had planned, so I skipped the border entirely. The piecing is all done with men's shirts. I felt like this design was really busy, so I wanted to use calmer setting triangles, and I had just enough of a shirting fabric to get oversized setting triangles cut. If the center is busy, I like using oversized setting triangles to "float" the blocks a bit. 

Now that I got the baby quilt and this gift quilt finished, I'm just quilting my way down the pile of basted quilts, since none of the rest have deadlines. 

This was the next in the stack, and I got it quilted this week, and I sewed on the binding this morning. That's finish # 28 for the year. The next couple in the stack are smaller, so they should finish up quickly. 

I was supposed to babysit this week, but that got cancelled do to the family having a stomach bug (SO glad they didn't expose me!) I'm supposed to be hosting a birthday dinner for DD#2 this Sunday, but we'll see if everyone is healthy. With those two things going on, I decided to hold off on the Christmas sewing for another week. 

So what did I work on instead? I finished sewing up the blocks I was making with Bonus HST's, and I've got the quilt on the design wall almost assembled. I also started looking through a box of scraps I was given. 

Earlier this year, I was given a bunch of scrap fabric by a family friend. She's close to my mom's age, and I cracked up when I saw they had some of the same fabrics. I've had a really busy year, so after washing all the fabric, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I just tossed all the wrinkled fabric in some cube storage bins. I didn't sort it, didn't iron it, just tossed it in the bins. To clarify, I tossed all the scraps in the bins, she also gave me some yardage, and THAT I put away correctly. 

Fast forward to this month, where someone else, also about my mom's age, also gave me box of scrap fabrics. Again, she had a few fabrics I've seen in my mom's stash. This fabric was much more quilter oriented, in fact, there was a quilt kit in there. I've never seen a quilt kit like this before. The price tag tells me it was purchased at the quilt shop closest to me, but I have NO idea when. The kit was in a large zipper bag, and it had an OLD quilt book in it, probably from the 1980's, primitive style. A page in the book was marked, and there were fabric amounts for that particular quilt in the book. They were labeled, sashing fabric, border fabric, etc... I've only ever seen quilt kits with individual patterns, never wrapped up with a whole book before. 

I looked up the quilt pattern, which I didn't care for, but I do like the fabric. It's all autumn colors, which are my favorite. I'm donating the book since none of the patterns inspired me, but I'm keeping the fabric. There was also a bundle of plaids, and another bundle of bright blenders, , plus several red and white prints. The box the fabric was in was really dirty, so I washed all the fabric, so now I have about two laundry baskets worth of other peoples scraps, all wrinkly and a mess. What to do with these? I don't want them languishing, and as long as they are a wrinkled mess, that's exactly what they will do, just sit there. I decided to take out all the scraps I was given earlier this year, and see if any of those scraps would play nicely with the new scraps I was given. 

I have all these plaids, mostly 1/4-1/3 yard pieces. A lot of them are pastels. I also have a bunch of solid scraps, most of which are really narrow. HMMM...I saw a YouTube tutorial the other day that might work really well with these scraps. I rewatched the video, and now I'm cutting up all of these scraps to go with that pattern. I need 1" strips of the solids, and 5" squares of the plaids. If I run short of the plaids, I'll raid my men's shirt stash, and I'll look through my 2" strip bins for more solids which I can easily cut down into 1" strips. 

As I go through the combined scraps, I'm seeing more color combinations. 

 

Most of the bright blenders are fat 1/8ths. I saw a jelly roll pattern, also on YouTube, that I think I can make work with the bright scraps along with some white yardage from stash. Next to the bright scraps are quite a few red and white prints, I may have to add some stash to that, but perhaps that can go into a red, white, and black quilt. I'm still mulling over a pattern for that. between both sets of scraps there are a lot of blues. I always have a ton of blue scraps, so I'm thinking I'll do a blue scrap quilt, and combine these scraps with mine for more variety. Again, I haven't chosen a pattern yet for the blues. 

See the big pile of scraps in the back, it has all the cream colored fabrics, along with anything that could possibly be autumn colors. Between both sets of scraps, there were quite a few fabrics I could toss in this pile, along with the whole quilt kit worth of fabrics. In the first set of scraps I was given, I had most of an applique panel.

These are autumn colors, and I even have some of the ones that were cut out loose in the fabrics. I think I'll use fusible raw edge applique, fuse these onto the cream fabrics I have in the scraps, and then alternate the applique blocks with 16 patches, or 25 patches or whichever size blocks I need. If I cut all the autumn colored scraps into 2.5" strips, I can make the pieced blocks easily, if I have a lot leftover, I could do a piano key border on the quilt, and anything left after that would easily mix in with my scraps. 

I still have some scraps left that don't fit into any of these categories, but by grouping what I have a lot of, I've got it sorted into several projects. I'll start by cutting these projects now, and they can be my leader/ender projects for next year. Once I've gotten all of these scraps cut for specific projects, I can much more easily tackle the remaining scraps and cut them up to go into my scrap user system. The amount of scraps that don't fit into these categories is much more manageable now, and not overwhelming. I really did sort most of the scraps into these piles. 

I've seen amazing quilts made from scraps, really amazing show stoppers. I've also learned that not all quilts are meant to be show stoppers. It's a lot of fun to play in other people's scraps, and I'm blessed to have been given them. That said, I was given these scraps because people knew I would USE them. If I choose some simpler patterns but get them sewn up into quilts sooner rather than later, I think I'm doing what the women who gave them to me wanted. There will be at least five quilts going to charity from these scraps, maybe more. The important thing is that they are used, not that they are intricately pieced. By mostly sticking with sizes that work with my scrap user system, any leftovers can easily integrate into my scrap stash. 

Now that I've got a scrap plan, I'm pressing fabrics during breaks during the day, and I'm cutting fabrics at night while DH and I watch TV. I'm making myself some fun pre-cut quilt kits, that I can work on next year. Taking the time to make a plan can really bring you from being overwhelmed, to productive and excited! 

So, Did I Run Out of Pins?

 

Run out? Not exactly, I had six pins left after basting 11 quilts! I certainly didn't have enough pins to baste any more quilts though!

Here are ten of the quilts I basted all stacked up. The bottom couple are actually in the tote, but obviously ten quilts aren't going to fit into one tote, so I just kept stacking them. The 11th quilt was already on my sewing machine to be quilted, and now it's finished.

I may not enjoy the drag minky causes when FMQ, but I sure like how it looks quilted. I told DH minky makes me look better at FMQ than I actually am. This is finish #26 for the year. Now that I've got this quilt finished, I've got pins again! 

My goal while DH was out of town was to do the basting spree, as well as work on the quilting closet which you couldn't even walk into when I started. I finished the basting spree on Friday, and I worked on the quilting closet most of Saturday, and part of Sunday. I forgot to take a before photo, but here's the after photo.

I used to have a very shallow set of shelves on the right hand side of the closet, and it was handy, but I decided it just made the closet too narrow to walk in easily, so I removed it. It's leaving the house completely. I used to store basted quilts in the black laundry basket, but larger quilts really didn't fit in there. I've been using minky as a backing more and more often, and minky is too slippery to stack well, so I moved all my minky into the green tote and black laundry basket. I'm quite happy with that change.I think after thee next basting spree all the minky will fit in just one of those. I went through all my batting scraps, of which there were a lot more after that basting spree. I have one hamper of cotton batting scraps, and I still have two of poly scraps, but now the poly scraps are at least 12" wide. My sister already took two trash bags of smaller batting scraps, and I have another bag about half full that I haven't given to her yet. 

As you can easily see, I have no shortage of more quilt tops. On the top shelf in the back are my king sized quilt battings, plus a bolt of Insulbright. The Insulbright is about to take a big hit with Christmas sewing. The second shelf is all fleece, but that used to be two shelves, so this is improvement. The third shelf is quilt backing, as the right side of the floor, and those bolts on the right are all 108" quilt backing. That set of shelves in the very front left hand side of the closet also has three shelves of 108" wide quilt backing. 

Some wins for the week- I used up all the leftover flannel yardage from last year's Christmas PJ's sewing, I used it in two quilt backs. I got all the newest quilt tops actually hanging in the closet, no more piles of quilt tops. I used up quite a bit of fleece in quilt backs as well, so that stash is going down nicely. I finished off two rolls of batting, of which I had spare rolls, so those are restocked and the storage room is looking better too. 

I've been trying to move any stuff that is mine out of the storage room and into my sewing spaces. Some of our storage room is normal household stuff, luggage, coolers, extra folding chairs for entertaining, etc... DH has a bunch of scooter parts in there. I used to have a bunch of vintage sewing machines in there, but now I don't, most I've gotten rid of. I think I only have one machine in there now, plus a couple cases for vintage machines I have on display as decorative items. I've got a big pile of stuff to be donated as I clear things out. Some things I'm working on using up, others I'm moving out, and there's always organizing of what you want to keep. I'm hoping I have a lot of years left to quilt, so I have no plans to ditch my stash, but I am trying to keep in mind what I will actually use, what I actually WANT to use, and what is better off being passed on. 

I'm also reminding myself on a regular basis that I am no longer in the accumulation stage of life. Some things that I now have in stash, I don't want to keep on hand anymore. King sized batting is a great example of that. I bought a bunch of king sized battings when a supplier was going out of business. I'm glad I bought them, and they were a fantastic price. I have about the correct number of king sized quilts in the works to use up all the king sized batting I have on hand. I just basted two king sized quilts last week. Once all the king sized quilts already started are finished, and my top shelf is empty, I only plan on buying king sized battings as I need them. I normally make twin sized quilts and smaller, so I just don't need a bunch of king sized battings on hand. I'm glad I have the ones I do, because I've already got quilts started for them, but knowing how long it takes to make a king sized quilt, I can just buy them as I need from now on. 

One thing I am getting rid of is a really nice bobbin winder. I was going to try selling it on ebay, but when I looked, there are now a bunch of cheap Chinese ones on there for $30. The one I have was neither cheap nor imported, but I no longer have a longarm or size M bobbins to wind. This bobbin winder can wind most bobbins, not just M bobbins.

If any of you are interested in it, let me know and we can see how I can get it to you. It's a great bobbin winder, I just don't need it anymore. I really liked that it can wind bobbins off the large thread cones. 

This week I've got two of the grandkids, so it's not quite as productive, but I did finish the baby quilt, and I've got the Janome ready to start FMQ another quilt tomorrow! I'm glad to have the grandkids here, and SO happy to have DH home again!