The countdown is on

We're one month away from our guild's quilt show and I don't know whether to be excited or panicked. Probably a little of both. We had a meeting today to go over everything and we have more than 190 quilts entered! Most of them will be judged.

That's the exciting part. The panicking part is that I still have three quilts to quilt, a bunch of sleeves to sew on, and a lot of work for the show, in preparing the program and publicity. Yikes!

Speaking of quilting, I love my Davis Vertical Feed treadle. The vertical feed operates in a similar way to a walking foot, the foot has two parts, when one is down the other is moving forward with the needle. So all the layers of fabric move smoothly together. In addition to using it for quilting, the VF is my favorite machine to do binding. It's amazing how smoothly the binding goes on with it.

I used it last night to attach the binding to my bow ties quilt, and am now in the process of hand-sewing the binding on the back. I've also checked off two of my long list of hanging sleeves, about 10 to go.

This evening's project was to measure and cut fabric for backings for Cool Jazz and Boxy Stars. Cool Jazz is stitched and ready to go, the Boxy Stars backing is pinned and ready to stitch. So tomorrow another quilt gets pinned.

Back to the binding, more later.

Organizing stuff

I love containers to organize things. Bins and baskets and pencil holders and crates.

But especially pretty baskets and tins. A few days ago I was in a store and saw sets of square nesting baskets in great colors of purple, orange and lime green, on clearance, and I was ready to bring them all home. Then reality took over and I realized I had no place to put them, so I left them at the store.

Along with collecting sewing machines, over the years I've also collected various notions, including sewing baskets, and I do use them to store various specific types of supplies, like zippers and tassels and leftover sections of binding. It's so nice to see my pretty baskets and know they are useful. In my dream studio I'd have space to display all these baskets together where they could be admired and useful.

I use open baskets for other items, like crumb blocks that are pinned with double layers of batting. I use these blocks to test motifs for free-motion and get warmed up before I start quilting, then I finish them as potholders or eyeglass cases. A huge basket holds small pieces of "not-my-favorite" fabrics that I use for linings for bags or backings for small wall hangings. Another holds pretty yarn (bagged to protect it from dust and kitties). And that's just a start.

I've been thinking about organizing a lot, since I've been spending so much time in my studio. Since I do both traditional and art quilts I have a lot of supplies, and I never know what I am going to want next. So I'm spending a little time each day sorting and making things a little more accessible.

That's when I'm not sewing, of course. Last night I got back to work on my palm tree, and did some more stitching. It's hard with a piece like this to translate vision to thread and fabric, but it's moving along. After working on that for a while I was ready for some low-pressure sewing, so put together some more hanging sleeves and hand-stitched on to one of my quilts while watching television. This is one job I'll be glad to have done.

More later.

Blues and greens and purples

Well, I didn't get as much accomplished this weekend as I'd hoped, but did make progress. The biggest was finishing the top for Cool Jazz, from last year's Davis block exchange on Treadle On. I love the way this one has come out, and I am so glad it did work out well. I hosted this exchange, and picked out the color scheme. I would have felt bad for everyone who participated if it had come out blah.

I have been working from my fabric stash on these four quilts, and have been able to find everything I need for them so far. That includes finding a beautiful purple print to use as backing on this quilt. I think I bought it planning to use it for the backing, but don't remember. I also found a fabric that will work for backing for the Boxy Stars and found binding for all four. I got the binding cut and prepped for the bow ties and Boxy Stars yesterday, and have fabric out and ready for binding Cool Jazz and the Triple Star.

Otherwise, yesterday I finished the little sewing kits for our show's boutique, did some organizing and spent a little time sewing mile-a-minute blocks.

More later.

Folding and organizing

There's been a lot of discussion on a couple of my email lists about ways to fold and organize fabric. I think the best way for any individual depends on their space, resources, how much fabric and how they use it. But for me the best is this ruler folding method. I ran across it ages ago and don't remember where, or I would give credit.

With only a few exceptions (if I buy a bolt of fabric) I wash my fabrics as soon as I get them home. I take it out of the dryer, smooth it out by hand and fold right away. I don't see any need to iron when I wash because I know I'll need to iron before I use it.

Fold along the length, just like it comes off the bolt, and lay on a table with one cut end toward you. Even up the edges and smooth out any wrinkles.

Lay a 6 x 24 inch ruler across the fabric, about three inches from the end. Fold the end over the ruler, then, holding the folded edge, turn the ruler over, "rolling" it in the fabric. This is just like the fabric is folded on the bolt.

When the whole piece is folded, slide the ruler out of the center, then fold the fabric once in the middle.

You end up with a unit about 7 inches by 10 inches, with the thickness depending on how big the piece of fabric is. It is easy to stack on shelves or in containers.

I wish I had a really fancy set of shelves to show off all the fabric, like some I've seen. But most of my fabric is stored in shallow bins (the under-bed style) in my storage room. The bins are sorted by color for basic prints or type of fabric (30s, Civil War, novelty, sewing theme, Orientals, animal prints, batiks, florals) The two shelves shown are in my sewing area and have the brights and the ocean and beach theme fabric I've been using most lately.

At least this proves you don't have to have the perfect arrangement for your fabric to be able to make quilts!

Speaking of, I finished the quilting on the border of the bow ties yesterday. I tried doing an outline of the wreaths, but decided against it. So it is ready to bind, as soon as I pick out the binding fabric. I got the borders cut, sewn and attached to the Cool Jazz quilt, but was getting tired, so decided to save sewing the miters until today.

Lots to do today, so more later.

Another flimsy - almost

It's amazing what you can get done when you wake up at 5 a.m. and can't get back to sleep!

Last night I worked on assembling the sashed blocks from the Davis exchange. I named this one Cool Jazz, because it was the only term I could think of relating to the cool colors when I was filling out my quilt show form.

This morning I hit the studio about 6 a.m. and finished sewing together the rows, then cut and attached the outside sashing. Next step is to cut some more purple for the inner border, and the green for the outer border, and then I'll be done.

After I got away from the sewing machine last night I finished sewing the sleeve on the quilt I had started the night before. One down, about a dozen to go, should keep me busy.

Lots more sewing to do today. More later.

Just stitching away

Well, it's a good thing I'm almost finished with the bow tie quilt, because I'm running out of things to say about it. I worked for a while on quilting the border last night, but decided to spend most of my time on other projects.

The main was was starting to attach sashing to the Davis exchange blocks. I'm sashing in white muslin, with no cornerstones, so the blocks will appear to float in the white. I got the sashing attached, top and side of each block, last night and the next step will be to sew together the blocks.

I love the colors in this one, rich tones of blue, purple and green, with a bleached muslin background. It's like having a handful of emeralds, sapphires and amethysts, and who could complain about that? The only issue is that the whites have slight variations in color. I don't think it will be too noticeable when everything is put together, though.

To finish the night off, I got started sewing hanging sleeves on one of the quilts while I watched Project Runway. I have about a dozen quilts that need sleeves for the quilt show, so I'll probably be working on them every night.

That's it for now, more later.

Heading to the finish line

Another good quilting session last night. The finish is getting close. I finished the feathered rows, following the rows of bow ties and there are no more pins in the body of the quilt – my gauge for how close I am to the finish. I still have to quilt the borders and have decided to do an outline, in off white, around each of the wreaths, as there's just a little too much space between the wreaths and the bow ties left unquilted. I think using an off white will fill the quilting, without reducing the impact of the wreaths.

I'm just having one regret about the quilting now. I used the same tan on the bobbin as I used on the front, and it doesn't show up at all on the tan/gold print I used for backing. I kind of wish I'd used a contrasting thread on the back, I think it would have looked fantastic. Oh, well, no going back.

A little progress on a couple of other things. I pulled out a bolt of coarse muslin and started cutting pieces for the quilt sleeves. I'll be seaming this into tubes and hand-stitching them to the backs of my quilts as hanging sleeves. With new television shows starting up over the next couple of weeks, this will be my handwork while I watch.

Speaking of television, today is a big Project Runway day. Today is the show at fashion week, and I understand all the remaining designers will show, so we don't know who are the finalists and who are decoys. I'll be following updates all afternoon on the Tom and Lorenzo blog.

And tonight's the show – right now I can't even remember what the challenge will be. I'm sure it will be interesting though.

Have a great day, more later.