Do You Think I Could Talk The Keebler Elves Into Quilting?

 As I attempt to clean up the sewing areas the right way, by actually finishing some things, I am starting to realize how long this is going to take! It's simultaneously making me discouraged and determined. Having some elves around to help me would be great!

Right now I'm all about finishing quilt tops. That's what will make the biggest difference in my messy sewing areas. 

This was an easy win. It was already in rows, and I didn't plan on adding borders, so there's one quilt top done. 

Here's my Chilhowie Mystery Quilt top! This was a both a bit of chore to assemble and easy at the same time. Yes, I had to add sashings and two pieced borders, BUT, since I only used four fabrics there was no need to put it on the design wall. I didn't need to make sure the colors were distributed evenly, or not have two of the same fabric together like in a scrappy quilt. It just went together!

I've got the memory quilts I'm making ready for borders, which I plan on sewing today. I've got another quilt center done, but it needs two borders, and then I'm working on getting things ready to assemble the next few quilts in the assembly queue. 

My design wall is kind of a mess right now. I'm trying to alternate assembling some easier quilts with some tougher ones. The Ruby Tuesday Mystery from Quiltmaker magazine last year has different sized blocks so needs to be assembled in a different kind of way. You make chunks and sew the chunks together. I still need to cut the spacer pieces for this. I finished one chunk and it's not on the wall. I have a couple others that haven't made it to the wall at all yet. Not all the chunks are the same size, so I'm trying to keep them pretty separate. All of this quilt is men's shirts. I'm going to have to piece borders for this, but for now I just want the quilt center together. I don't think I'm going to use exactly the borders used in the pattern. I'm thinking string pieced borders. 

Once those memory quilts are tops, I really need to get them basted, and while I'm at it, I should baste several quilts. My back appreciates basting on the cutting table the best, since it's the correct height, but I think I'm going to put up the basting tables in the living room next week. I found a different style of bed risers that might work with the oddly shaped legs of my folding tables, and hopefully I'll be more comfortable this basting spree. By using the folding tables for basting, my cutting table stays free so I can cut backings and borders or anything I need without any issues. The other plus to basting in the living room is I'm more motivated to get the basting done so I can have my living room back! 

I got the January blocks done for my 2023 Murder Mystery Quilt. It may just be three blocks, but it took me much longer than I expected to sew them. Those squares on point in the side blocks finish at 3/4"! There were some TINY pieces in these blocks. The middle block was easy, and I could have just made three of those, as that was the easier option. I liked Option 2 better, and although there was much muttering in my sewing room while I was making those square in a square units, I'm happy I made Option 2. I don't mind making square in a square units, I was just struggling to keep such tiny ones lined up correctly while sewing them. 

I was going to start looking for a time to make DH new scrub tops, but he's both hoping for a work from home job, and talking to a financial advisor about retirement. Today I took all the fabrics I had put aside for scrub tops and put them in an EMPTY bin. (the bin with 3.5" strips is now empty!!!) If retirement is still years away, and the work from home job doesn't pan out, I'll still have all the fabrics together, and I'll make the scrub tops. If he can retire earlier than we anticipated and/or gets the work from home job, I'll incorporate the fabrics into stash. There's no point in doing anything with them without more information, but I'm sick of looking at that fabric stacked up! The bin fits under the stairs just fine, readily available if I need it, but not in my vision anymore. 

My temperature quilt? I needn't have worried about using the darkest purple which represents below freezing! We've been below freezing every day this week! Our highs are above freezing, but our lows have been pretty low for Tucson. We even had some snow flurries this week! Nothing stuck, but it was still fun to watch the snow fall. 

I'm pretty happy with my progress so far this week, and I'm hoping the next couple weeks are just as productive!

Row by Row

 Nope, I'm not doing the big Row by Row Challenge. I'm talking about getting quilts into rows. I can't clean up either my sewing or fabric rooms until I get some quilts assembled. It's going slower than I'd like, but I've now got four quilts sewn into rows. Once those are all pressed, I'll start sewing the rows to each other. Three of those quilts also have sashing rows, but I've got all of those sewn as well. 

I've got so many quilts ready to assemble, I'm actually trying to figure out if I can afford to take all of February and make it an assembly month. My first deadline quilt of 2023 is in April, so it would put the pressure on for that one, but it might be worth it, if I can get a bunch of quilt tops done and hung in the closet. Well, folded in the closet, I'm about out of hangers in the quilt closet. If I did a simultaneous basting, assembling spree, that might work best. 

It's not much fun to show stack of quilt rows, and I don't have much to show this week. I ended up having two of the grandkids spend the night Sunday night, then I had four of them yesterday for the afternoon. Thankfully, my jury duty was cancelled, I don't even enjoy crime or lawyer shows, never mind getting up close and personal to that in the real world. 

This is how my temperature quilt is coming out so far. I used a couple different sites to track the weather, and decided I liked this one best. It's easiest to read, and also tells me quickly if there was any precipitation. I also like the fact I can zero in on the weather at the Air Force base, which is a little bit closer than the airport to me. 

So far in January we've been below freezing to 77 degrees F. At the airport it was 80 degrees, which set a record, but as it turns out, both temps were the same color for me. I tend to think the Air Force base is a little more accurate compared to our house. 

I like the random patterns that are coming up as I change the directions of the flying geese units based on precipitation. 

I found out the next baby quilt I need is for a baby girl. As it so happens, the UFO I'm quilting right now could work for that. I haven't decided for sure that's what I'm giving for this baby, we'll see, but it's an option. 

My bin of 3.5" strips is almost empty! I've been cutting a bit every day, and I'm getting through them quickly. For now they will be my leader/ender projects, although I've already sewn up enough hourglass blocks for at least three quilts, once I add in the alternating squares. I do need to cut up some background fabrics too, but I'm tackling the strips first. 

The Murder Mystery Quilt I'm doing this year seems like it will be a blast! I've already gotten the first chapter of the story, and the directions for the first bit of the quilt. I spent yesterday morning cutting out the pieces, and hoping to get those done this weekend. There's still time to join if you want to try it, come on, it's Viking themed this year, how cool is that? I know I just said I don't like crime stuff, and that's true, but I love history, and the heroine is a archaeologist which is right up my alley. They are still accepting members for 2023, but enrollment closes soon. 

Here's the view from my dirty kitchen window, snow capped mountains! I could do without the power lines in the photo (Why aren't power lines buried???), but in person my brain just ignores them and I enjoy our mountain view. 

Busting Scraps or "It Is What It Is"

As I've been doing some minor resetting and decluttering, I've been waffling on a few decisions. I've been rethinking my scrap user system for a while now, and last week I said I moved my 1.5" and 3.5" strips into a smaller set of drawers. I planned to bust them soon, but not immediately. This week that changed again.

Last year I start cutting up my men's shirt stash into scrap user sizes, but I didn't quite finish. The backs of the shirts I left intact, but the smaller bits was what I cutting up. I had been putting most of the strips into an under bed bin, which doesn't fit anywhere in my sewing room! The strips fit in into it great, but then I had no place to store the bin. It ended up on the dressers I store fat quarters - 1 yard pieces of fabric. And of course, since that took up a good amount of flat surface space, I then piled stuff on top of that! My fabric room cannot be cleaned up overnight, I don't want to just cram things into impractical spots just to make it look tidier. I want it to function better! 

After thinking it over, I decided to go ahead and cut up ALL of my 3.5" strips NOW, and they can be my leader/ender projects for the next year or so. I do a lot of subcutting in the living room, so I moved all the 3.5" strips into a bigger bin which is now in the living room. I put all the shirt strips I had cut into the drawers. It all fit, and now the under bed bin is in a donation pile. I like the scrap user system, and it works for me, but I really want to switch to mostly die cutting. The last two Bonnie Hunter mysteries I've done, I die cut almost everything, I didn't use the specialty rulers and cut that way, I die cut it, which is easier on my body. It's also faster, since there's no dog ears to trim. Now that I'm cutting up all of my strips at once, I needed to expand the four or so patterns I chose. 

Sometimes I have several strips of the same fabric, other times I can barely get a square out of it. Some fabrics are solids or blenders, and others can't be categorized by any color because it's such a large busy pattern. The first thing I needed to do was some sorting. White on whites went in one pile, cream on creams in another. One pile for solids and blenders, and then came the harder part, sorting the prints. 

For the prints I took a practical approach and sorted by how much of it I had. One of the patterns I chose needed 4 matching 15.5'' strips, so I needed two matching WOF strips for that one. Those I put in one pile, and I'm done cutting those strips. For another pattern I needed 2- 9.5" strips plus 2- 3.5" squares, so I needed 26" in a strip. Novelty fabrics I cut in 6.5" pieces if I had enough, and aside from those I cut squares and 2" x 3.5" pieces if I couldn't get a square. Really, if all you cut your scraps into is squares, there's still a lot of patterns you can use once you add some background. 

When I'm doing bulk cutting like this, I don't count how many blocks I'm making. I don't want to waste my time counting. My policy is to simply cut the largest pieces first, then work my way down to the small stuff. Even when I start cutting the background fabric, I won't be counting, I'll cut some background pieces, and if I run out, I'll cut some more! This is where "It Is What It Is" comes in. 

I'll give you an example. If I had several strips each of a couple blender fabrics, and they went OK together, I cut them into hourglass blocks. I put the strips right sides together, The first cut I make is with the EZ angle ruler, so I get a HST from that. I cut the rest of the strips with the companion angle template giving me QST's, then the last cut of the strip is another HST. 

I've got some blue/green hourglass blocks on top. I made as many as I could, and ended up with 58 of them. The thing is, I can make a couple more blocks from the HST's I cut, and I'll do that. If I use 60 of the hourglass blacks and 61 alternate blocks, I can do an 11 x 11 setting and use all the hourglass blocks I made. I cut all my novelty fabric scraps into 6.5" squares if I can, so I can either use I Spy squares, or the 16 patches I've been sewing as leaders/enders lately as the alternate blocks. Would I normally plan to make a 66" square quilt? Probably not, but if it uses all the scraps, it's a win! 

Underneath the blue/green hourglass blocks are some blue/gray hourglass blocks. I only had enough fabric to make 31 of those blocks, but if I match them with 32 other blocks I've got enough for a 7x9 setting. I'm just now sewing up the purple/white hourglass blocks, and when I'm done sewing and pressing them, THEN I'll count them. I already have a nice pile of purple/white HST's sewn, so if I'm short on hourglass blocks, I can fudge a few using HST's. 

My scrap user system got out of hand because for a couple years I had so many deadline quilts and so little sewing time I didn't make any scrap quilts. Of course I made scraps with every quilt I made, so my scrap system just got larger and larger. The last couple years I've done a good job busting the scraps by cutting multiple projects at once, then using those as my leader/ender projects for the year. 

Now, just to clarify, I LOVE making scrap quilts, they are easily my favorite type of quilt to make. If you don't like doing that, and your scraps are out of hand, try to find someone who likes making scrap quilts, or donate them someplace. I've bought many a scrap bag at a thrift store! One of the only things more fun for me than making a scrap quilt, is playing in someone else's scraps! 

If you like making scrap quilts, but are just overwhelmed at the amount of scraps you have, here are my best tips for busting scraps quickly. 

1) Now is a good time to toss poor quality fabrics. Scrap quilts are a lot of work, because you are handling so many fabrics. Let's not waste our time with fabrics you can read a newspaper through. (Yes I did toss some fabrics that were poor quality)

2) If you have a LOT of scraps like I did, choose a few SIMPLE patterns, no more than six, and cut for those. I'll give you bonus points if more than one pattern uses the same size pieces!  I am cutting for multiple quilts that use squares. A laundry basket full of scraps isn't going to go down very fast if you are making double wedding rings from all the scraps. 

3) If you have a lot of certain fabric, (for me, that happens a lot if I backed a twin with wideback, then I cut the extra into strips), can you use those as a focus for a quilt, like I'm doing with those hourglass blocks?

4) Don't overthink it! At this stage of the game, you are just making blocks, when the blocks are done you can figure out settings and how many you have. If you make too many blocks, you can make another quilt, or my favorite option for just a few extras, piece a row of extra blocks into a quilt backing. People use all different sizes of quilts, so make the blocks and let your scraps tell you what size it wants to be. 

5) If you have a lot of one certain color, try making a two color quilt (or monochromatic even), or just use warm colors, or just cool colors. Scrap quilts don't have to use everything together. If you want a more cohesive look, it can be done with scraps. 

6) Start cutting for the pattern with the biggest pieces first. If you cut too many, you can always cut some of them down for one of the other patterns. 

7) If you are the type of person to always make a test block, make those test blocks from your scraps. If you chose a certain color scheme, you can easily make a sampler quilt from those scrap test blocks, even if the patterns are drastically different. 

When I first started busting my scraps in a concentrated effort, I started out with simple rail fence blocks and color coordinated closely. You can see from this photo that even the monochromatic quilts still have character, even with the same color family fabrics and such a simple pattern. Scrap quilts don't have to be complicated, or time consuming, or use half background fabric. One of my pet peeves is a scrap quilt book where all the quilts in the book use 1/2 background or more, with just a sprinkling of scraps. The quilts in the above photo were ALL scraps, and they helped me whittle down my scraps of those sizes of strips quickly and easily. 

This bin was full when I started sub-cutting my 3.5" strips, but now it's less than half full. In just one week, only cutting for bits of time here and there, I've already made a huge dent! I started with the harder to use pieces, and the more I cut, the more ideas I had to use the scraps. Looking at so many different fabrics really gets my creative juices flowing! I have an idea for the blenders and white on whites that should give a very modern vibe, even though it will be a scrap quilt. 

There's a few things I love about scrap quilts, especially EASY ones. If you choose a simple pattern, the blocks can easily be made as leader/ender projects while you are working on other things as your main project. Since the fabric is leftover from other projects, it feels like a free quilt. Since they are scraps, I feel free to really use my imagination on the quilts, whether that means weird color combinations, odd background choices, reimagining another quilt design I've seen, or even going completely improv. If your quilt is a riot of color, it's a good place to use up mostly empty spools and bobbins of thread. Scrap quilts can also be a good place to practice a new FMQ design. You may not want to tryout quilting a new design on a wedding quilt you spent three months making, but an easy scrap quilt you made in a week? Experiment a little (or a lot) on it! 

I'm sure I'm not the only one drowning in scraps, so I like to pass along some ideas now and then about working with them. 

Operation Clean Sweep

 As I was debating what to title this post, I decided on Operation Clean Sweep and had to chuckle aloud. My sewing studio looks like a bomb went off! Let's just say, overall I'm looking to reset things 😉

Our family Christmas went great! Since everyone had already had holiday dinners, I opted for a soup and salad bar. I made four different soups, and had everyone bring a salad. The weather was cool and rainy, so it ended up being a good choice. 

The mountains surrounding us all have snow, but we don't have any down in the valley, so I busted out the "snowballs" during a break in the rain. The grands had a great time with them, and so did my sisters Christmas puppy! 

This snowball fight ended up with the snowballs in the washing machine! 

The sun came out for a hot minute, so we had a lovely double rainbow to start off our 2023.

I thought all the grands were going back to school right after the New Year, but I was wrong. I ended up having two of them for two sleepovers, and four for an afternoon. I know there will come a time when hanging out with the grandparents will be "uncool", so I celebrate the time I get to spend with them. 

I did manage to get a few things done while I had the kids. All of Christmas is put away. I don't know about you, but I get such a sense of satisfaction when I put away the Christmas decorations. I love having the decorations up (though I've paired back in the past few years). Having the house back to normal and another holiday season behind us just seems to get me going for the new year.  

Resetting the house also is a great time to think about what is working and what's not. DH worked on cleaning up his office (a Herculean feat, it was a disaster) We bought some organizational things last year he hadn't put to use, but now he's using them, and we decided the 30 year old microwave stand was not serving its purpose well enough for a printer stand so we ordered him a cabinet with doors to take the place of that. That arrives today, which is great timing, as he should have time this weekend to assemble it.

I've been looking around my trashed sewing studio and fabric room, and evaluating what isn't working. Honestly, if I get a few projects finished it will look better, but that takes time. I was looking specifically for things that had no home, or that the "home" wasn't adequate. First up was my bolts. If I need more than about five yards of a background fabric, I tend to just go ahead and buy a bolt from Marshall Dry Goods. Since they'll let you buy wholesale if you are willing to buy bulk, I can save often get a bolt for the same price as about five yards from a quilt shop. They sell rolls of batting too, and they can be a good source for that. The thing is, I have no designated place to put bolts of fabric. If it's a bolt of wide backing, I do have place in my quilting closet for it, and I also store any other wide backs in there. If I'm going to use it for a quilt top, I want it easily accessible. 

I looked around my space and specifically looked for anyplace that could fit bolts. 

My ironing station is atop two low bookcases, and by rearranging them, and moving a shelf, I had space for bolts on one of those. I even had space for my interfacing bolts! If I did another magazine purge, I could probably use both bookcases for bolts if that is ever needed. 

I also did a swap of two sets of plastic drawers. I moved a wider set into my sewing studio, and now I'm storing all my rolls of bias binding and cotton cones of thread in there. I hadn't had a good storage solution for the large cones of thread, and nowadays that's all I buy. That set had been in my fabric room holding my patterns and scrap user system. I've purged enough patterns that they easily fit in a smaller drawer, and I've been busting my scrap user system over the past couple years. At one point I was completely out of 2" strips, though now I have a few. I'm not out of 2.5" strips but I've busted them down to a small amount. I bought different containers for my 2" and 2.5" strips, so they can be sorted and stored in my cutting table. I've decided I'm going to bust the rest of the 1.5" and 3.5" strips and no longer save them at all. I'm sure I'll cut them for projects in the future, they are common sizes to use. I've just decided I don't like my scrap user system taking up so much space, and I tend to use the 2" and 2.5" strips faster. Since I now have a smaller set of drawers to temporarily hold the scrap user sizes I don't plan on saving anymore, I took the time to sort through the 3.5" strips. Anything that read as one color got put in the drawers. Those are the easiest scraps to use. Anything that was a novelty fabric or had a bunch of colors I pulled and put into a bin. I chose four easy patterns and I'll be cutting for those over the next few weeks. I may end up with multiple quilts from the same pattern, but since I'll likely be donating those quilts, it doesn't really matter. Once I've gotten the 3.5" strips busted, I'll tackle the rest of the 1.5" strips, but I had already busted a lot of those, and I had stopped cutting those about a year ago. The nice thing about the 1.5" strips is when I get down to just a few, I can mix them in with my strings and use them in string quilts. 

In my sewing areas, I'm trying hard to not bring anything new in right now. Switching a few things was a better solution. With the current economy, our plans of buying a new house are on an indefinite hold. We still haven't ruled it out in the future though, so it's still in the back of my mind that I may have a smaller sewing space someday. We actually really like our current house, and it works well for us so staying here is no hardship. Someday we'd like to have a smaller house that's single story though, something more suited for our later years. If we ever do move, a good sewing space will be the number one on our list of requirements for a new house. 

Other areas I'm doing a clean sweep? I'm doing a freezer/pantry cleanout this month, and possibly into next month. I tend to do that the beginning of each year, making sure I use up what's in the house to make sure we aren't letting food go bad by forgetting about what may have been shoved into the back. The best part of that this year, is I will use all the grocery money I'm not spending towards paying off the new dishwasher we just got. We'll still be buying milk and produce, I'm just planning all the meals around what we already have in the house. I know we have enough meat to make it at least a month. 

I did get in a little bit of sewing this week.

I got all of these blocks done for the Chilhowie Mystery. The reveal came out today, so my plans for this afternoon are to get the rest of the cutting done for that. Once I have the cutting done I can put the fabrics away and clear off at least a bit of my cutting table! I really need to have a basting spree soon. I've started quilting a UFO, and I only have one other quilt basted and it's a small one. Unless it's bigger than a twin, I do all my basting on my cutting table, so I need to get it cleared off. I don't want to just dump stuff elsewhere, I want to actually finish up some things instead. I need some real sewing time to do that, and I haven't had that this week. 

I did start my temperature quilt. I'm always a day behind because you could have a low near midnight so I can't do the unit until the next day. I haven't looked up yesterday's temps yet, and it's not very impressive, but here's what I've got so far.

We started the year with two days of rain so those point down. The first four days all our lows were within the same 4 degree spread, but all our highs were different. I'm looking forward to see how our year shapes up, and how the weather designs my quilt. 

Are any of you doing some resetting of your house? Starting a new project or just determined to finish up old ones? Let me know.