16 patches

How did I not see this until now?

I have heard this book mentioned a bunch of times in my years hanging out in quilt-blogland, but it wasn't until last week that I was curious enough (or smart enough?) to do an interlibrary loan search and request it.  I want to own this book, is it still in print?

there is so much in here.  I mean, so much good information/inspiration.
but this week, i'm in love with 16 patches, and the 16-patch-on-point border in specific. 

IN LOVE i tell you!

so I tried some, getting over my initial hesitation because the thought of stitching together sixteen 2" squares from a laid out block plan just seemed a bit too--- fussy (?) to me.  How in the hell would anyone want to suffer through doing that enough times to have the right amount of blocks for a border?!  (of course, you can see I didn't actually read the book before trying this, i just looked at some pictures... In my defense, I was technically reading it over Merrill's shoulder while she was here Wednesday, but I did go back and read the instructions more carefully after I made several blocks..)
Luckily, I have just spent several days cutting and piecing strip sets for the Mystery over at quiltville, so I thought I'd give strip sets a try for this too.. I started sewing strips, cutting them into 2" sections, and then piecing 4 patches, but that made my seams all nuts in the back.  So then i had a brilliant idea... why not sew two sections together on the short side, making one LONG strip of 4 squares?  Brilliant, I know! (and if I would have read the book first, Gwen & Freddy actually tell you to piece 4 strips together before subcutting, but I couldn't see that far ahead..)

One day's worth of stitching (an hour at naptime and 45 minutes before bed on Thursday) and I have 10 adorable 16 patches in monochrome turquoise.  The initial plan was to do just one long side border with them, kind of like the collaboration quilt in the book, but once I started playing with them on the design wall, I'm wondering if I shouldn't do two side borders and keep the applique only on the bottom, or do top and bottom applique..

Oh~ the design struggle!  What to do? How can I make this quilt?  But I'm loving it.. loving being so deeply involved in this project.  I've been obsessed with a quilt before, but here I feel consumed..
I know there is plenty of school work to keep me busy over the next 10 days until winter break (only 10 days!), but I think this quilt will probably steal some of my time too.  I've still been appliqueing slowly during George's baths, but at least it's something.  I know I'm headed in the right direction...

the first monochrome idea

I hesitated to show or post anything about this quilt for a long time ("long time" is relative, of course, I've been working on it since early October) because I didn't really know what I wanted to say or where this project was going, and I didn't want to be held accountable either.  But yesterday when I got ready to make my monochrome fabric for the 30-Day Challenge, I found myself staring at a full design wall and knowing that if I took it down to make room for something else, it would sit in the UFO pile forever.  Truth is, I lost momentum about 3 weeks into the project because I used up my fabric faster than I thought I would and got a bit lazy about staying creative to make the remainder into something interesting.   My original idea was to make it huge, 4 units this size (42" x 49"), all monochrome deep turquoise, in 7" or 14" blocks.  It went together quickly in the beginning and I was loving it.  Then, you know how it goes.  when momentum slows and then stops, you either put it aside or push on through.  I liked it too much to put it aside, so instead I started thinking about other ways to make this one chunk into something cool. I played around with border ideas yesterday and came up with something I like, so last night I did some cutting and sewing, and with a thin inner border attached, I came up with the great(?) idea to incorporate some hand applique in a wide outer border.  Hand applique?  I love when I have great ambitions..
You know, it's either set it aside and wait 2-3 years til inspiration strikes, or tackle it right now and choose a plan that's almost destined to stall or fail.  I feel like once the applique gets a bit stitched down I'll show it to some people and they'll encourage me to keep going, right?  Stay tuned for the next installment of the story...

A Healthy Exercise

Thanks for the comments on my last post, with a big hug of thanks going to Victoria in particular..
I didn't realize i was in a box, but once you step outside of it, MAN, things become more clear (and fun, and interesting..)

I decided to try a sorting/color exercise and enlisted my favorite little helper.  I started with just the 5" strip bin and the bag of unsorted stuff hanging behind the door.  I found as many empty containers as I could, and we got to work..

For my containers I had to get a little creative.. yes, that's an ice bucket and a gravy separator. 

 Things started out going smoothly enough.  But then he started filling anything with fabric..

 He was having fun though so I just let him play with the unsorted bits as I tried to sort as fast as I could.  He did a lot of throwing fabric all over me and tossing it into a big overturned stool.

 This would be his, "What? Me? I didn't do it." face.

 I think it only took 40 minutes or so to go through that pile, but that was the limit of his patience with this activity (or, with mom paying more attention to fabric than to him) so I was glad I didn't bring down the other bins to sort.

 Now I have nice piles of color and not only was it fun to find fabrics I thought i had used up, but I learned a lot about my scrap stash as well.. for instance, I thought I had more purples.  I was expecting to have lots of green and blue, but I had no idea I had so much white.. the red & pink bin is a lot more red than i was expecting too..

Once they were all nicely sorted, someone decided to "water" the bins with the gravy separator.  How thoughtful of him.. Now I just need to get the bins upstairs and behind closed doors before he wakes up and wants to throw them all around the room again..

I would like to sort my other bins into these, but I'm more than a little hesitant-- first off, this haphazard arrangement of containers is not going to work.  Granted we probably don't need to ice bucket until we throw a party and the Halloween candy bowl is good for another 11 months, the whites are overflowing from the sand bucket, so I need better storage if I'm going to adopt this system on a long term basis.  Next, I really worry about sorting only by color and not by size.  Sure, by stepping out of my "size only" box i realized that my definition of a "scrap" is probably too limited and a lot more of my larger pieces would probably get used faster if I added them to this mix.  But what about when i want to make a multi-colored scrap project again?  I think I'm losing my control of the "random" factor when things are sorted by color.  wait, yes, i did just reread that.  Control of random?  is that my secret to quilting success?  hahaha. 
what i really need is for a few of you to come over and mess my stash up a bit.  then when the threads settle I'll see it all from a different light and get out of my old habits & predictable patterns...  What do you say? fabric party at my place?

My design wall is shrinking

or maybe i should try finishing one project before starting a new one and then they wouldn't have to fight for space and attention up there..

This weekend I went a little berzerk with a new variety of wonky log cabins.. Inspired by the upcoming bee at 15minutesplay, I wanted to work sew through some ideas and see what would happen if I tried "making" strips of color by crumb piecing my logs.  Here's my first:

nice, but I needed another go at it, I wasn't getting what I wanted in terms of the proportions:

I really liked how the fabrics played together in this one, though that bit with the house was a pain in the neck.  I also liked the light-square-in-a-dark-square thing going on once I put it on the design wall.  At this point I was feeling a sort of addiction take hold..so then I made a third:

As much as I wanted to do these, by the third round I was feeling a bit frustrated in the amount of time each "log" was taking to construct.  See, since last year (the start of my Spiderweb piecing, incidentally), I have been sorting my scraps by size and then shape:

• smaller than a Fat Quarter
• strips (separate piles for width of fabric, wider than 3", long and narrow, short and narrow, over 6"..)
• bits (in the same drawer go odd shaped pieces less than 10" square, stacks of same sized squares, baggies of leftover pieces from my own or inherited projects)
• small strips (5" or less)
• crumbs
• small triangles & corners

then there's a tub for unsorted scraps (freshly washed but not ironed, etc), and a big bag at the back of the door for any scraps i found on the floor when I rearranged the furniture-- mostly washed but unsorted. 

These are the bins, shoeboxes & drawers I usually pull from before I go to yardage.  I like having them all sorted by size because I can always find the size I need without having to wade thorough a huge scrap bin of irrelevant fabric when I'm looking for 2.5" squares..  But here I was challenging myself to stick with a specific color... and I found that starting with the crumb box just made me really frustrated.  who wants to sew together 2"x1.5" tiny bricks to make up big logs?  Yeah, they'll look great, but i couldn't find enough of the right shade of blue to make 2 logs the thickness I wanted.  so I pulled out the small strips bin, and then started rooting through the unsorted scrap bin, and for the life of me i can't find the small triangle & corners shoebox and it was driving me nuts!  Now don't get me wrong, I love crumb piecing and I'm a huge fan of the concepts behind the 15minutesplay group.. but this was taking waaaaay longer than 15 minutes, and I was getting more and more frustrated and discouraged that what i wanted/needed wasn't within arms' reach and it was getting tiring having to get up in the middle of every log to search for the right shade/right sized fabric scrap.  All the sudden my exercize in free piecing wasn't very freeing..
So after the third block I gave myself a rest and just zipped through some mindless wonky log cabins with no real thought to color, only choosing logs that were the right size and shape. 

ahhh.  now that was fun and relaxing.
Visually I love what the crumb logs can do for a block, but I think I'll need to do more prepwork and get really organized before I try them again.  maybe I'll spend an afternoon teaching George about colors as we sort crumbs into 10 different tupperware bins..