Fabric Monster

I've been plugging away on my split nine patch, making at least 10 blocks a day, then I work on my string blocks. I made a bunch of mixed color ones, then yesterday I divided them by color. I divided them as it was getting dark, and I was working in my sewing room until about 11 last night. I don't ever think about how the room looks until I go back in there after doing other things. This morning when I got up and went into the hallway, the sun was lighting up my sewing room: I looked in there and just burst out laughing! It's a bit tacky, but all I could think of was that a fabric monster had pooped piles of colored strings in my sewing room :-)

I have all my white and cream strings set aside for a specific project, so they are not out here. I didn't have a lot of yellows, oranges, or browns, and I love fall colors so I mixed them together.

Here is my autumn mix. I am adding a few green and burgundys now and then for variety.

I made 20 autumn string blocks yesterday, after I finished my 10 split nine patch blocks of course. Here are a few of them. I'm hoping to finish off this bucket of strings today, so tomorrow I can start with a new color. It amazes me how many blocks you can get from a pile of strings. I really want to get these strings sewn up, because I am going to work on using my pre-cut strips this year. If I can manage to use mostly pre-cut pieces this year, I won't be making a bunch more strings, so getting these sewn up now, will hopefully keep things neater in the long run. I have given up on cutting any more of my scraps up, until I make room in the drawers for them.

I took the Juki off of the frame, and quilted a quilt with it. Besides the fact that I was doing it on the kitchen table which is much too high, so my back hurt, it went fine. I don't think I am a frame quilting kind of gal. Well, maybe someday, but not now. I am going to keep the Juki and sell the frame. I want to get a cabinet for the Juki, but I'll wait until they go on sale. I quilted the quilt with a walking foot. I ordered a new walking foot for the Juki after doing this one quilt. The Juki was sewing great, but I really don't like the walking foot that came with it. You can't attach a guide to that walking foot, it makes a weird noise, and it just seemed very cheap to me. I have walking feet for my two other machines, and they are both better than this one. Unfortunately, neither of those will fit the Juki so I had to order another one. After the quilt was done, I dropped the feed dogs, and switched to the darning foot. I wanted to see if I thought I could ever gain the skills to free motion quilt. I just used the extra batting I had trimmed off the quilt I finished, and the photo above is some of my scribbles. Well, my name is legible at least! I think I might be able to at least become proficient enough to do normal throw around quilts. I have a couple of very big quilts in the works right now, and I am planning on sending them out to be quilted, but with the Juki and it's 9" of space I think I could do most of the quilts I make without too much trouble. Hey, there is always crosshatching, which I like to do, and it looks good :-)