Basting

 I just looked over last weeks post, and it seems so much longer than a week ago! I promised myself come August I would get serious about the scooter rally projects and start cutting out the pajama pants for Christmas. This last week of July was my last chance (in my head at least) to work on stuff just because it's what I wanted to do. 

I've been doing well with the FMQ the first hour of my day. I now have three quilts ready for binding. I'm trying to see how many quilts I can quilt in a month, so late August I'll put aside a couple days and machine bind all the quilts I have quilted. I don't usually get a chance to FMQ on DH's days off, but even just doing it on his work days is helping me see progress. 

I was going through the fabric I bought at the thrift store, and realized I had enough of a couple pieces to back some of my smaller quilts. I ended up basting six quilts this week, and three of those were backed from that last thrift store haul. That was worth the $15 right there! 

My goal with the thrift store fabric was to have as little of it as possible go into stash. My drawers that hold fat quarters to one yard pieces have plenty of room in them, so anything those sizes I did stash. Anything larger than a yard, I've already used, and everything smaller than a fat quarter I am cutting up for the scrap user system. I've already processed about half of the smaller pieces. 

I've spent a good part of the last two years busting my scrap user system, and I've done such a good job of using it up, that now when I'm looking for strips in it, I'm not finding what I need. It's time to build it back up again. 

I did get the cloak made for my grandson, but I haven't given it to him yet, so I've got no pics of it yet. I think it came it better than his brothers, which makes sense because I learned a lot making that one. I didn't use a pattern for either one. 

I finished assembling the rag quilt for DS the Younger.

It is too hot to clip seams with the quilt on my lap, so I'm piling it up on the ottoman, sitting at the front edge of my chair, and clipping it that way. It's not great ergonomically, but I just can't handle the quilt on my lap when it's 100 degrees. Rag quilts never look very good until they've been washed a couple times, but I've made enough of them to know it's going to look fine. 

I have a rag die for my studio cutter, but I'm not actually in love with it. You pretty much have to clean the die after every cut, so it this case it's faster to rotary cut the squares. I find sewing the quilt together with the fringe already cut quite fiddly, and no matter how hard I tried I still got fringe caught in the seams. So overall, the cutting and sewing takes longer using the die, but you don't have to clip the seams at the end, so you save time there. I've made a couple rag quilts using the die, but decided to make this one without using it. I've got spring loaded rag scissors, and so far I'm not regretting my decision to do it without the die. Of course, I'm only about 1/4 the way done clipping seams, so I still have time to decide the clipping wasn't worth it! 

Next week I'll be making all the scooter projects DH needs me to make my priority. I also plan to start cutting out pajama pants for Christmas. I'm hoping to get all the pajama pants cut out in August, as well as making good headway on the scooter projects. We'll see, things don't always go as planned. 

More Prepping Than Sewing

 I haven't sewn much in the last week. I did sew some. 

I got all the blocks from the most recent Ruby Jubilee mystery quilt clue done. It won't be long before the next clue is out, but I got these done before it did, so I'm counting that as a win!

All the quarter blocks for a resized Strip Twist are finished. I need to snip dog ears before I can sew the blocks together. I also got a few misc. units sewn as leaders/enders. 

Mostly I've been prepping for other projects. DH had five days off, so I knew my schedule would be off, and I can often get more prepwork done while he's here than sewing. 

I have about 60 luggage tags ready to sew now (could be more, per usual I didn't count). Most will have scooter appliques on them, and I've got all the applique cut and fused into place. I was really wishing I had a Cricut to cut my appliques for me. Making 2" tall scooter silhouettes was fiddly and my hands were hurting pretty badly after each cutting session. 

This is a stack of rectangles that will become 61 drawstring bags. Eleven of them (the scooter ones) are for promotional events for DH's scooter magazine, the other 50 are for a scooter rally in November. The scooter rally has a western theme, so I went through my stash and pulled anything remotely western and busted a lot of fabric I won't miss at all. I've never been a fan of the western esthetic, and most of the fabrics I had were leftovers from my scrub making business from years ago. I'll have busted 20 yards of fabric when those are finished. Any leftover bits are already cut to scrap user system sizes and I'm thrilled to be moving this out of stash and into usable forms. I've had lots of people tell me how they are still using their rally bags years later, so I don't mind making them. Drawstring bags can be used for all kinds of things, and they aren't hard to make. I feel better about busting stash for them, than using single use plastic bags. 

My last thrift store haul of fabric has already made its way into projects. DH and I went back to the thrift store with the great prices on fabric, and I got all of this.

All of those bags and bundles of fabric, plus 3 men's shirts I'll use for quilting, came to a total of.......$15 I've found I really love playing in other's people scraps, so although I used to mainly look for yardage at thrift stores, I'm finding the bags of scraps more fun than I ever expected! Most thrift stores have raised their prices so much, that using men's shirts for fabric isn't as reasonable as it used to be. This one has clothes for 78 cents per item this month, so adding three men's shirts to my shirt stash was very affordable, and, as a bonus, one of the shirts was PURPLE! 

DH goes back to work tomorrow, and my goal for tomorrow is to finish the hooded cloak for one of my grandsons. His brother got one last year, and now he wants one. I've got it cut out and quite a bit of it pinned and ready to sew. 

Over the weekend I'll be working on the rag quilt for DS the Younger. I've got a ton to do, but I'm hopeful I can get it all done by the deadlines. 

Five Cans of Starch

It's too hot to iron, it really is, but I've been doing a lot of it anyway! I've gone through five cans of starch since I last blogged. I started buying starch by the case from a dry cleaner supply house. I do NOT like Best Press, I like spray starch, but I'm particular because the brand from Dollar Tree gives me asthma attacks. Faultless and Niagara I have no problem with, but I've had problems finding it locally for a decent price. It also has to be the cans with the blue cap, the gold cap starch gave DH a migraine. Since I starch all my fabric before cutting, buying starch by the case makes sense. 

I've got this mountain of flannel washed, starched, pressed and cut for a rag quilt for DS the Younger. I don't normally make flannel squares this large for rag quilts, but I'm in a time crunch, so bigger squares mean less sewing and less seam clipping, so there ya go! I couldn't let my son get deployed to Eastern Europe without a new quilt. I'll be praying for his safety, but aside from that there's not much I can do, so a new quilt at least makes me feel like he's taking some of my love with him. The top of the quilt will be superhero prints. 

I've kind of lost count of how many quilts I've cut out in the last week or two. Lately, whenever I'm dealing with a bundle of fabric, my goal is to use it all and not put anything back into stash unless it's the scrap user system. After I cut out one of the quilts, I had some fabric left, so I cut the scraps in the sizes for Bonnie Hunter's leader/ender challenge Triple Treat. 

I didn't sew the four patches as leader/enders, but I am sewing the blocks together as leaders/enders. I only had enough fabric left from the quilt for about 20 or so blocks, so I'm thinking table runner. I did like the blocks though, so while I was cutting some of my fabric birthday cake up for a Carolina Chain quilt, I went ahead and cut more Triple Treat blocks from another colorway. I"ll make a quilt from those blocks, if I don't have enough blocks after I count those, I'll simply cut more. I cut so many Carolina Chain blocks I may end up with two of those quilts. 

I finally got the first of the latest Ruby Jubilee blocks together. These blocks were my main project and the Triple Treat blocks were my leader/enders while making the Ruby Jubilee blocks. I have a fourth of these blocks sewn, but it's still under my needle, I was interrupted while I was sewing and never got back to the machine today. 

DH decided last minute to hold a scooter rally this November, we usually take a full year to plan those, so my sewing list just got VERY busy! I always make a rally quilt to be raffled off, and I've always made rally bags, and usually something to go into the rally bags as well. The quilt is a definite, I've already got a plan for it, but it's not cut out yet. I'll be making some scooter themed luggage tags again, but this is the last time for those, I had a bag with cut interfacing and the straps already sewn for a batch of luggage tags. I'm just going to make however many I can and then I'll be done with that. When I run out of the parts I've got ready to go, I'll be done for good. I am cutting fabric for those. He's already decided to hold a rally next year as well, so I'm already thinking of what I'll do for that one. I'm super excited about next year's rally, because he's finally going to let us do a steampunk theme, and I've been wanting to make a steampunk scooter quilt for years now! I'm glad he's holding off until next year for that though, I don't want to be on a time crunch for that quilt. 

I will be making some drawstring bags, because DH has several promotional events coming up for his scooter magazine. Drawstring bags are great for putting prizes in, that way the winners feel like they got two prizes. Whether or not I make bags for the rally is uncertain. It depends on how much I can get done. 

Since I'm now starting SO MANY THINGS, I needed to be able to work on finishing some things as well, so I'm back to FMQ the first hour of my day. I finished quilting a twin sized quilt this morning. Most of the quilts I have basted are smaller, so I think I'm going to quilt several, then set aside a day to machine sew on binding. At least with quilting an hour per day, I make steady progress and get some things actually finished! A lot of what I'll be sewing isn't quilts, so they won't take as long as that, but by having a bunch of quilts cut, when I do have time to piece I can work two projects as once because I'll have my choice of which quilt to use as leaders/enders. 

Epic Birthday Cake

 I didn't think I'd be blogging this week because I didn't think anything quilty would be going on between out of town company and watching two of the grandkids for three days this coming weekend. Boy was I surprised when my sister made me a birthday cake!

My sister was a cake decorator for years and years, but I don't like cake so I never ask for one for my birthday. She was determined to make me a cake I would like, and THIS cake I like!

The top layer is a jelly roll surrounded by fat quarters. The bottom layer is all fat quarters, and the trim on the bottom is folded layer cake squares. It was such a fun idea, and a great gift!

My out of town company didn't stay as long as expected, they left yesterday, and took the dogs I was watching for them back home. The house is quiet after watching dogs for almost three months. 

Since the dog crate was gone, I could move the totes back under the stairs. They were making my fabric room really crowded! Once I got that done, I worked on cleaning up what I could of the fabric room. 

This morning, I tackled my "birthday cake". I was separating the fabrics by size, when I decided rather than put them away, I would just use them immediately. The layer cake squares are going to be used with my wonky heart die. I added some layer cake squares from stash so I could make a quilt the size I want. I chose an assortment of fat quarters to be used with my crazy quilt die. I made another stack to use for the Triple Treat leader/ender challenge, and I'm using the jelly roll for a strip twist quilt. 

About a month ago my sister and I had gone shopping. I picked up the remnant at Joann, thinking it would make a good border. I found two different fat quarter bundles at Tuesday Morning that would work with the remnant. The photo only shows the fabrics I bought that day. While I was cleaning up the fabric room, I came across this stack of fabric, and I added a couple fat quarters from my "birthday cake", and a few more from stash. I just bought a new fat quarter book, and there are several projects in there I'm anxious to make. I was inspired and cut out the whole quilt today, even the borders!

I'll be cutting the other quilts as I have time, but the fabric is sorted and the fabrics to be used with dies are stacked with the required die. 

I have some deadline quilts now, so likely all these projects will be leader/enders for the deadline quilts. I started cutting one of the deadline quilts today too. 

Right now I'm cutting the easier stuff. I'll have a three and five year old Friday-Sunday, so no cutting will get done while I have them. I'm sticking with easier stuff on these two days I didn't expect to have available, just so I can keep track of where I'm at when I get back to it next week. 

I have a lot of projects coming up with flannel, and flannel can shrink so much I wanted it all pre-washed. I washed 45 yards of matching flannel for the Christmas PJ's I'll be making, then I washed another 12 yards of flannel for a rag quilt. I'll be using more flannel than that for the rag quilt, but I'm using some stuff I had in stash that was already pre-washed. The bummer about pre-washing is all the ironing I end up having to do, but I was careful and most of the flannel really only needs pressing along the edges. It will still be a lot of pressing, but it could have been worse. 

It's time to go make dinner!