An ongoing distraction

In July, I saw this post and thought this would be a great way for someone as anal retentive as I am to make an improve-like block. I so admire them, but can't loosen up enough to be very successful.

After making a few blocks with scrap strips, I thought about making a striped quilt with applique in between. Good plan if I didn't want to finish it. Maybe a medallion. Then I remembered a very, very old UFO using similar colors.

Thank goodness I left myself a fabric legend.

This particular UFO was from a guild challenge. We put the names of quilt blocks, colors and objects into a hat, and five were drawn that we had to incorporate into a wall hanging. Green, orange, frog, mariner's compass and something else was drawn. I had about half the compass, which I'd drafted myself, done.

Why did this become a UFO? Because I drafted the pieces way too small for success.
Years later, I have learned enough to understand this. 

I finished the rest of the compass, but it didn't really work with the other blocks. Colors were right, but not the tone or scale. The compass, despite it's poorly matched points, does not work with the improve ones.

Then I found a block I'd made of leftover half square triangles. I sashed it in dark blues, and then couldn't decide if I liked it or not. I left it on the design wall for a long time before taking it down and putting it away.

This weekend, I saw this post, and decided to make a few star blocks with scraps. The colors I pulled reminded me of this summer's medallion attempt. I've pulled it out and am staring at it again.  

I don't think I like the center. I could make another, but not sure of what I'd put in it. Suggestions welcome. For now, I'm leaving this up to ponder my next move while I sew more arcs. Those arcs take a long time. Three days of quality sewing time, and I am only three-quarters of the way to having enough for a second block.

Next up?

This might be the next project. It's a UFO from 1999. I remember the year only because this was to be my millennium quilt. My guild at the time exchanged 2 1/2-inch squares so that we could get 2,000 squares for our quilt. I spent hours sorting the squares by color and value and trying to weed out all the duplicates (and squares so poorly cut they couldn't be used).

I have about a third of the blocks I need. And I found my drawings and notes about what I had planned. I need 40 squares across and 50 down to get 2,000, which will require a few rows of squares running down between the blocks and squares running around the outside.

I pieced one more block this week, and realized why this project hadn't gotten far. Kind of boring piecing, and those squares aren't all that square. Makes me wonder how badly I cut the ones I exchanged. At least I can see definite improvement in my sewing skills in the last 13 years! Wonder if I finish this if a quilt historian one day will think it was made by two different quilters.

Snail's pace

I'd been working on this (again) in April and put it away. Pulled it out again when I finished the airport carpet top. Too much work travel these last two months to get much sewing done. I have managed only a few more blocks. I'm hoping to make a bigger dent this holiday weekend. Grocery shopping done, laundry done, toilets cleaned, blog reading caught up, movies borrowed from the library, and husband is off to work later today and not returning until late tomorrow night. This top will be done when I'm out of the pieces I cut two years ago (yikes!) when I started this. There's quite a pile to go!

Or maybe I should work on the flag quilt that is now eight years in progress!

Next up

The design wall was empty for about five minutes after I finished the Aboriginal top. I had these pieces from Bonnie Hunter's Roll Roll, Cotton Boll! (RRCB) quilt piled up in the sewing room. After I got far enough along in the mystery to realize I was making almost the same block as the Aboriginal top, I stopped working on it. Don't need to add to the UFO tower though so I arranged the pieces I had into something, and this is it.

This plan will use up most of the block pieces. I have to make four more string blocks, which is doable, and trim them down. And I have to figure out whether the remaining pieces -- green squares (on the left) and pink/green/pink units (on the right) -- will work into a border. I liked Bonnie's border, but it doesn't seem to match the scale of this arrangement. Have to think about the border. Suggestions welcome. I have lots of scraps and could be persuaded to piece new units for the border.

Close up of the blocks to be.

Wish I had more than a fat quarter of the pink bird paint by number fabric you see in the detail photo (if you squint). That would have made the perfect border.

Evolution of a UFO

This isn't the UFO. This is progress on the Aboriginal quilt.

Or why the Internet is evil. Before the Internet, I would procrastinate doing something by cleaning, usually the kitchen cupboards or the junk drawer. Now I read blogs. Lots of blogs. And find lots of great projects to start. Usually I can stop myself from starting them. Usually.

But recently I was lured into beginning Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt Roll Roll Cotton Boll. Hey, it could be made entirely from stash, and I wouldn't have to think, just do whatever she said each week. A nice little break from my Aboriginal quilt and avoidance of the purse and tote bag I really needed to make for the nieces.

This is part of the UFO: Fabric and sewn units from some steps.

So I pulled lots of fabric, watched for each step to be posted, and promptly fell behind because that Bonnie is a task master. Then I saw the step that called for 600 HST (that's 600 half-square triangles!) I looked at the other steps and thought, "Oh no, I'm making the same blocks as in the Aboriginal quilt. The quilt I'm trying to take a break from."

More UFO parts with other project scraps.

After a half-hearted attempt to find a fast method to make half-square triangles that was accurate without requiring lots of trimming, I have not put another stitch in this quilt, but I haven't packed it away in a drawer yet as evidenced by the piles around the quilt room. I've seen a few finished tops, and it does look quite nice, but I'm so far behind now.

Getting the focus back on the Aboriginal blocks.

Hitting the wall on the mystery quilt did prompt me to work on the purse and tote bag, and I've made a couple more Aboriginal blocks, which I think I'll concentrate on now. Although I just got the Material Obsession 2 book, and I want to make every quilt in there! And Lori's doll quilt is terribly cute ... and small ... and could be made entirely from my scraps ... and I wouldn't have to think, just do whatever she said.

Carbon dating my UFOs

One of the blocks is turned the wrong way. It's fixed now.

All the blocks for this string quilt UFO are done. It was part of a guild fun night, but as I didn't write the year on the handout I can only estimate that it was started before 2004. Possibly before 2002! And I still like it. Sometimes when the UFOs are that old, you aren't as into the fabric choices as you were when you first picked them out.

This is a summer quilt, meaning their is no batting. The strips are sewn to a fabric square, and the squares are sewn together with sashing on the back to finish those seams. I had enough fabric for 36 9.5-inch blocks and will set it 5 x 7 to get a quilt 45" x 63".

Not sure why I didn't finish it earlier except that the only thread I'd brought with me to fun night was a khaki grey color that I usually use for piecing and the bobbin thread shows on the back. If I'd known what we were doing I would have matched the bobbin thread to the backing squares. It bugged me at the time, but 6, 8 or more years later, I'm over it.

Hurray for change!

People in Chicago watch President Obama's speech on a giant TV near the Michigan Avenue bridge. View is from my window at work.

I don't remember an inauguration where so many people were so excited about a new president. It's exciting to be amidst people who feel hopeful and encouraged. And this despite the economy and the brutally cold Chicago winter. (It was -17 F (-27 C) the other day and that's before wind chill!)

I hope Mr. Obama lives up to his promise of hope, of healing. His speech was encouraging, especially saying that we need to return to traditional values of "hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism. ...

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

"This is the price and the promise of citizenship. "

Ah. Taking responsibility for one's actions. That would solve so much of what is wrong in the world today, would it not?

In the meantime, I will endeavour to take responsibility for my UFO list. I made one; it's quite long; I will post it to the blog at some point. Pulled one UFO to work on, and started something new. More on that later.

But first, I must deal with the computer that wouldn't boot up and had all my photos (and recipes) on it. Oh, and last night we discovered that an ice dam on the roof has caused a leak in the first floor ceiling. Not to mention a leak down the wall of the second floor. So glad PB arrived home right before me as I dealt with last February's broken sewer pipe and the flooded basement the year before while he was out of town. Next week I'll be out of town on business!

What have I done ... what will I do?

No New Year's resolutions here. Going out to breakfast and eating pancakes plus almost all of the "crabmeat" and asparagus omelette encased in hash browns definitely would have torpedoed the obligatory diet resolution. Although having the omelette made with egg whites has to count for something. On the other hand, breakfast at Gail's is always a good way to start the day if not the year.

Been reading other blogs all day and seeing what other's have accomplished or plan to accomplish. Thinking of starting Bonnie's mystery quilt because I'm itching for something new. I still have that nearly 9-year-old half-square triangle UFO that I'm close to finishing. And, it has friends. Even after several years the old projects don't tempt the way a new one does, do they?

What have I done this past year? Hmmmm. I did finish some UFOs, some baby quilts, some presents. Or was that the year before? Time sort of blurs together. I did finish a couple UFOs. Here's photographic proof of one. (Can't find the picture of the other one I know I finished this year. It's on the bed, so I could take another picture later.)

A finished UFO! This is old. It's been sitting around for more than 5 years (and probably less than 10). From a "spa day" at a quilt shop in Orlando that is now closed. Blocks done, but for some reason I didn't put the top together until this year.

Maybe the blog will help me document some of my finishes a little better. And I could go make an inventory of my UFOs to check off. Or I could start cutting that mystery quilt. ... Or make dinner.

Backing avoidance

36 two-inch half square triangles per block. What was I thinking?

Instead of making the backing for the orange maverick star quilt, I'm working on these blocks from a UFO that is three months shy of being nine years old. Yes, for some reason it's all of a sudden important that I work on this instead of cutting two pieces of fabric and sewing a very long seam so I can then baste that maverick star quilt. At the time I packed this away I hadn't made a single block, just a bunch of half-square triangles.

After 9 years, there's suddenly progress!

I'd pulled out this UFO awhile back and was using the half-square triangles to end chain piecing on another project. I'd slip a half-square triangle in when I wanted to free my other project from the sewing machine to press it. Then when I went back to the machine I could continue my piecing without a big thread tail. The half-square triangles were ever so slowly getting sewn together. Not enough of a sense of accomplishment to keep up that snail's pace -- especially when there's a quilt backing waiting to be completed.

The two blocks at the top are unsewn. Seam allowances really shrink these down. And, look! That block in the upper right has a couple triangles going the wrong way. At least I caught it before I sewed it that way.

This past week I've gotten two blocks sewn, two more partially sewn and two others laid out on the design wall. I also cut a number of three-inch squares in light, medium and dark. Still a ways to go though. The 16 blocks in this little quilt (36" x 36") will require 576 half-square triangles! That should keep the backing at bay for a bit.

The half-square triangles are made by putting two three-inch squares right sides together, drawing (or eyeballing) a line diagonally through the square and sewing a quarter-inch seam on either side of the line. Cut on the line and press the seams open. Then trim the half-square triangles to two inches.