My plan for 2024 is to not start any large projects, and continue to “finish” up those that are still “hanging around”. In between I will enjoy working on some small projects, and things that are somewhat “quick finishes”.
I started January off with an apron to wear when I am “running trains” at DelMarVa Model Railroad Club. Yes, I like to play with trains occasionally. My husband is the leader of the HO group, and sometimes I tag along when they need an operator during their annual open house season. I would much rather run trains than sell raffle tickets at the front counter.
The apron is two sided with LOTS of great pockets, on both sides. They are big enough to hold my phone, some information on the digital controller I am using to run the trains, and one pocket holds my coffee cup or bottle of water. The pattern is a bit of a “mash up”. One of the other members shared her pattern with me, and then I also used some elements from a couple of other patterns used in the past. I went double sided because I was using quilters cotton and I wanted the apron to have more body or heft to it. I had an entire bolt of the track fabric and just a yard and a half of the other print with the train lines names. I was able to get it made in a couple of afternoons, and use it for the following two weekends. It worked well for me, and I am pleased with how it turned out.
Our quilt guild, Ocean Waves Quilt Guild, Lewes DE had a community service “scrap sewing day” in January during our regular meeting time. I was assigned to a table that was making string blocks and was in my element.
There were 3 of us sewing and we got 48 blocks made , and partially assembled on the sewing day. I brought home the 2 halves and finished the last seam and quilted and bound the project.
I brought home a kit for our bee, the Queen Bees to work on at our next gathering. Two of us worked on this funky 4 patch project together. (We didn’t pick the colors!!) We only got about half way thru the project before our time ran out.
The kit had 40 charm squares and 80 of those orange check pieces, along with the white. They gave us instructions on a method to make a 4 patch using the charms. I have to report that those 5″ charms were terribly cut. PRE-CUT by Moda and they were 4 7/8 x 5. Not square. We ended up trimming every block.
After trimming all the bits and pieces to 4 3/4″ I was able to get the blocks assembled and quilted.
I used some pieces of leftover wide backing that I pieced together for the quilt backing, and the same for the binding.
Next up was another quilt top from the Charity quilt sew in that I took to quilt and bind. The blocks had all been donated and someone else had set them with black sashing. There was a lot of poof in those blocks, but I spent some time with my steam iron and managed to get the top flattened out.
Our next OWQG meeting is March 4th and it will be fun to hand off these 3 projects.
When I cleaned up after finishing those 3 quilts, I still had a lot of “leftovers” hanging around the sewing room, and I put as much as I could fit in my own string block boxes. Well, the blue and green were over flowing, and I didn’t want to dig into anything too serious, so I made a bunch more string blocks, trying to empty the green and blue bin. Truth be told, it didn’t make a dent in the volume! I work on 6″ string blocks, using old phone book pages. At our bee in February we were doing 8″ blocks, using paper from kids tablets at the Dollar tree store. Here is a peak at the fun!
After a couple of days of sewing string blocks, pressing and removing papers, I laid them out for a final photo and then put them all away. String block sewing are what I call “mindless sewing” and I had enough for the time being. I cleaned the sewing desk and table and machine and vacuumed up all the debris that eventually falls, paper bits, threads etc. I needed to pack up for my next gathering of the Queen Bees, where we were going to use Blues, Greens and black and grey for string blocks. We worked on them on Tuesday this past week, and I brought home more things to finish! I think we will sew string blocks at our next bee gathering too.
That’s it for me, all the small projects. Truth be told I haven’t been to my sewing room at all this week, other than to pack up and to unload my gear for going to the bee.
If you like string blocks, you can use paper or a pellon product for stabilizer. If using paper, I recommend you switch to a new needle when you are finished sewing the blocks. It’s easy to remove the paper from the blocks, where pellon stabilizer remains in the quilt, and the seams.
Bonnie Hunter has great information on her blog and in her books on sewing with strings. One of her books is called String Fling, and she may have a better explanation than me. I think of a string as anything from 1/2 inch to about 3″. I sort mine by color into shoeboxes. I like the look of varying widths on my blocks.
If you are tidy, you can get a lot into a shoe box. I like to “straighten them out” when I put them in the box, and after I am finished working in a set of boxes. To take strings with me to the bee, it was easier to transport them in big ziplock style bags.
What’s happening in your sewing room?