Unable to Settle

I had a reminder to back-up my laptop the other day, and it also prompted me to organise my photos into folders, sorted by month. I needed this more than I knew, I had been writing myself and this year off as unproductive but it turns out I was wrong. Up to a point. And that point was late June. Yep, I fell off the productivity/sewing mojo/whatever you want to call it bandwagon at Midsummer.

Stash pull for bed runner.

Since then I've covered every available surface, the corner of the sofa, our rarely used for the actual purpose dining table, sewing table, sideboard, etc... with must start projects. I've started each of them. None of them are finished. Few of them have been picked back up beyond the first week of starting. Honestly, I've never felt like this. I don't know what I'm doing. I do know I can't force myself to finish them all, I'll end up like a toddler or teenager rebelling against the overbearing strictures of my own self. Which is too much internal strife to bother with.

Some are more important to me than others. For instance, my dad does need a hat. His hair really is falling out, he's distracting the other bridge players and it was 5°C/41°F when he got up to walk the dog last weekend. So even though I barely ever knit, I'm the world's slowest (two Christmases passed before Paul got the scarf I promised), I've never knitted in the round before (but the newly bald shouldn't have to deal with seams), and I have real trouble paying attention to which stitch I'm on, this project is a definite priority.

I've had a 5 month hiatus from the Farmer's Wife quilt. I miss it, this block is not the most fun colours of the ten I've prepped. And that was my mistake. I meant to only prep 5 at a time from now on. But the colours distracted me and I selected for ten before I knew it, and then felt compelled to cut them all out. It went swimmingly till I reached the templates. They took me two months, and stared at me accusingly from the dining table all the while (yes, we eat on our laps).

I also knocked into it scattering the nicely laid out pieces...

I still love my colourful Death Star idea. When I started I got intrigued by trying to make my stitches less noticeable, so I tried some stuff. I got some good results, but finding a new stitch and then getting a rhythm with it is not easy. So I put this down again. Now I'm in two minds. Do I continue trying to make my stitches invisible, noble sure, I guess, but super time-consuming? Or do I go back to my FWQ regular whipstitch which I can bust out like nobody's business? I'll enjoy the process of the latter more, but will I feel annoyed with myself at the result, or once I'm more than a foot from the quilt will I even see the stitches if they're in a grey or matching thread? Ugh, these are the questions that have left this project sitting on a tray on couch, neglected for more than a month.

The others are all little projects, a giant cushion cover from leftover hourglass blocks, an elongated quilted cushion in Echino as a draught excluder, and a stash pulled bundle to make a simple bed runner just like the ones I made as wedding gifts.

One final thing, I've recently taken up and have found surprisingly meditative is free motion quilting. The #dailyfmq tag appeared on instagram, set in motion by the Crafty Planner. I've only spent like 3 ten-minute chunks at it, but I've enjoyed each of them, learned something each time, and discovered it's possible to slip into a nice peaceful state while you're at it, until you get too peaceful, make a mistake and then it all goes to hell! But everyone at the hastag is so lovely and helpful, I've definitely been encouraged to keep going. Which is amazing, because I swore right off FMQ the last time I tried (February) until I had a better machine (still the same machine).

Rio Grande Valley Turtle, pattern by Melissa of My Fabric Relish

So, I do have three big quilts in the works, one approaching top completion, one approaching block completion, and one with half the top fabrics washed (not my normal game but these fabrics apparently require it - more to come!). You've already seen Texas, so no more till I have something actually finished. The other two I'll blabber about in the next few weeks as I get a chance to take photos and get them in order in my head, more than anything else.

It's going to be interesting to see what I do manage to settle to in the rest of 2014. This year has been a test for me in very many ways, and I'm eager to see how I fare coming out of it. I think I might be growing up.

Crazy Thoughts

Melinda of quirkygranolagirl made, and then drew up a pattern for a patchwork Death Star earlier this year. It totally stole my attention as soon as I saw it. It utterly terrified me as well, especially once I saw the ones people were making under the #patchworkdeathstar hashtag on instagram. Totally amazing, making patterned fabrics interplay with colour and shading to get a 3D effect on the Death Star. Daunting. But I was so smitten, I totally wanted to dive in, but my stash of greys are sorely lacking and I couldn't figure out what we'd do with one 12" block - hot pad maybe?? Except we almost never use them, and our kitchen doesn't have that much space...

Well, late one night, long after I should have been in bed, I had a crazy thought. The Death Star's iconic right. What if instead of one Death Star I had a grid of 9? Just like the Andy Warhol prints of iconic stars and soup tins!? What if I used those colours? I didn't go to bed for another three hours.

Colour pairings and choices were made after googling a lot about Andy Warhol, reading from his foundation website, Wikipedia, and just plain old google image search. Then I pulled out my now out of date Kona colour card and tried to figure out some colour gradients. I'm still not sure how well this bit is going. There's always some variety between what's in your card and what comes off the particular bolt you buy from. Plus, asking for a second opinion, even one in the same room, lighting conditions, etc... as you can get different results. Paul and I never agree on colours between green and blue.

I've also discovered that despite knowing my grey stash is dismal, and thinking my solids stash was ok that I actually require to buy a bit of every colour to make each Death Star. So far I can make green and pink. I'll slowly add the other colours in dribs and drabs. I did splash out and buy all the backgrounds though, in case they sold out. They're the only patterned fabric in this quilt - Dear Stella Confetti Dot, dots as a starfield do you feel it?? I'm not sold on using the Peony as the pink background and might go back and buy one of the other pinks to see if they fit better. But we'll see.

The whole thing is planned to finish at around 45" square. Baby quilt size, though with the amount of effort it's taken so far, and I actually found the cutting fabric and wrapping the pieces (even with glue) to be tedious, this is not going to be seeing any babies. I'm thinking it's definitely going on a wall. Which is crazy for whole other reasons I won't go into here.

Anyway, this is a project that has at once trapped me in its thrall, is scaring me into picking it up and putting it down but I never actually walk away, just circle, considering it, until I go back and pick it up again and think well you can always start over. I think it has the possibility to look great, I also think I have the possibility to balls it up royally. I'm still not sure which side of that we're going to fall more on. It's certainly not going to be speedy.

But if it scares me I'm growing, right. Right?


PS yay for having internet back after almost a week!!!!

Knowing When to Throw In The Towel (or bag)

Months ago, my sister-in-law asked me to make a doll's nappy (diaper) bag for my 2½ year old niece. She hasn't been able to find one for her in Australia. I picked up fabric for it ages ago, but with lacking sewjo and nerves about re-sizing a bag pattern when I've only made one bag it's taken me too long to get around to starting.

Skipped stitches because my machine didn't like using a denim needle
when sewing denim...

This was the week, and up until the last hour of yesterday afternoon it was going swimmingly. I'm making Sew Sweetness' Velocity Girl bag. I've made it before, in fact I took it out for its photoshoot last Memorial Day! And when my sister-in-law saw it she told me that with a flap it and a little bigger it would look just like the expensive real-life diaper bags that were all the rage. So when she requested a doll version for Grace, I thought, well I'll just make a scaled down version of Velocity Girl, add a flap - how hard can it be!??

And the answer is not that hard, there's some maths and counting, but Sara's pattern is so well written that it actually makes putting it all together still really easy when you're taking your little added extras into account. A fact I'm now eternally grateful for, because I find bags really difficult to keep a hold of in my head. It's their 3D-ness. I can't quite grasp the why, until twenty steps later I'm like, 'OHHHHHHH, that's really frickin' clever!!'.

Fighting the Pins

Anyway, the balls up. I made all the various panels and pockets, and added piping (a first - yay!) and it went grand. Then, I started to assemble them, into a bag form. It was when I was adding the second outer wall that I realised I was using half the recommended seam allowance, cos I'd gotten kinda cocky with how well it was going. Part of me was like, well, it would be a pain to unpick and it's fine so far, so maybe we'll just go with it.

Offending Hole

But, no. I missed the underneath layer in three spots, and one was a whopper. I was so cross. Grumpy for well over an hour. That feeling of wanting to break a piece of china, or maybe kick a wall... Grrrr. But, a rant at Paul, a stomp around the supermarket, dinner, Dr Who, and a walk all improved my mood. As did, surprisingly, turning the offending item right side out. It needs to be unpicked, and sewn with the correct seam allowance. But it's shaping up to be really cute when done right, so it will be worth it.

Mollified by the Cute

But it won't be worth it today. Or for the next week. Too much frustration. It's time to metaphorically throw it at the wall. Wait for pay day, grab some Joann's vouchers, take Sara's instagram advice of yesterday and buy some Clover Wonder Clips. So that instead of bending my lovely quilting pins, and trying to figure why I can't push one through, only to discover I've created a small groove in my thumbnail, I can just clip and unclip, and not curse.

Let's Not Forget the Hole of Shame

Last night, after I'd ranted and stomped and walked it out, I had 45 minutes and so I continued the calm with a little bit of English paper piecing. I've been cutting one square from every scrap of the Farmer's Wife Quilt that's large enough, and I'm beginning to sew them together. There's no plan to the colours, and I'm finding the outcome very cottage-y cosy.

This post is getting unwieldy now, but one more picture and a couple of links. The Deep in the Heart of Texas Roadtrip QAL kicks off on Sunday, June 1st. Melissa has cutting directions and the quilt layout up on her blog as of yesterday. Today I got out the fabrics I've chosen for this quilt. I bought a lot of Lazy Day charm and mini-charm packs (one of my oldest friends is having a baby, and I panicked earlier in the year) which were going spare, but which I think on a navy background are going to make a lovely Texas. I've only bought a few extra half yards for the city blocks so far, but this morning I ordered a few more colours for variety. I'm excited to get going and will check in once a week with my progress, and links if you're following along :)

Have a good weekend y'all, x

(did you see what I did there!??!?)