Which border? DECISION MADE !

Yesterday I was in a quandary about how I was going to border my Scrap Dance – Two Step Mystery Quilt.  When I went out to the sewing room mid afternoon, I was still pondering yardage or scrappy.

I decided to stick with the scrappy theme, and make a string border.

I put on my “Bonnie Hunter” thinking cap, grabbed the calculator and a measuring tape and determined an approximate number of inches I needed to get “around” the quilt.  Then I divided that number by 10.5 and pulled 12 pages out of the old telephone book I keep on hand for these kinds of projects.  Anyone familiar with Bonnie Hunter knows that old phone books are valuable tools in the quilting room!  This is a funny post from  Bonnie Hunter and String Blocks and explains the “why’s” of the phone book pages.

Anyway, I digress.  I have boxes of “strings”.  I use Bonnie Hunter’s scrap storage system, and my left over strips go into storage boxes based on their width. I have a box for 1.5″, 2″, 2.5″, 3″ and larger strips.  These are all fairly straight, longer pieces, so perfect for what I wanted.  I think Bonnie’s strings are “random widths” sorted by color in her storage system.  Anyway, I pulled out several boxes so I could get varying widths. Sewing strings is kind of “mindless sewing” in my opinion.  No need for absolute perfection.  The only thing to consider is starting with a FULL bobbin, and reducing the stitch length to much shorter (I went with 1.5). Also, I swap my 1/4″  foot, as it has a blade that catches the edge of the paper and is annoying.

I stitched the 12 pages, pressing between additions of strings, working on about 4 pages at a time.  Once all 12 were stitched, I cut them to size “lengthwise”.  Since the paper was 8 .5 x 10.5, I went with a 4″ strip.  Yes, I had a little waste, but I am ok with that. Once cut to size, I ‘de-papered’ the strips, and started joining them end to end.  After all the pieces were joined I had about 280″ of border to use.  I gave them a good “starch” and press (with my new OLISO PRO that arrived late yesterday…) and then cut them to length for attachment to the side borders first.

First border is on and I love it!!  Note that I “stay stitched” around the outside edge after I pressed the border.  I set the stitch length to 3.5″ to keep all those sections from “opening” their seams as I work with the quilt top. (It is best to do this on the wrong (back) side….ask me how I know!)

Anyway……….By midnight I had 3 borders stitched and pressed, and the 4th one pinned on, waiting for me to do the stitching when I gave up for the night.   I got a lot accomplished from late afternoon until MIDNIGHT.  (I forgot to eat dinner………..until midnight….thank goodness from the leftover crockpot roast & carrots. ) Since the hubby was off playing with model railroad trains, I didn’t have any interruptions.

No, I didn’t get the Grandma’s Kitchen block # 6 done.  I was anxious to get the borders on this project!  In fact, I left the pattern sitting on the kitchen counter. There is always today!

Note – the pattern for this quilt pattern is by Carole –  From My Carolina Home

I am working through this project as part of my August OMG (One Monthly Goal)!

 

 

 

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I love the 3rd Friday!

I look forward to the 3rd Friday of the month.  I “book” time in my calendar especially for the release of the “next step” in the Scrap Dance Mystery Two Step quilt by Carole – From My Carolina Home  .  Carole writes such great instructions, and today was the day for Step 5 of our mystery.  I love the way she breaks down the instructions into “Two Steps” !  It’s not to late to sew along!  Check out the blog post from today-use the button on my page or the link above.

I am making the twin size, (I think….) and this afternoon before dinner, and after dinner I got all 12 blocks constructed.  Of course, in the photo they are randomly placed, and this is not the final arrangement as there are 2 more months to go on the mystery!

This is a pure SCRAP project, and I pulled from my “already cut” items in my Scrap Storage System!  (I am an avid follower of Bonnie Hunter and have been cutting the scraps for a couple of years and storing them in containers waiting for the “right” projects.)

Speaking of Bonnie Hunter, I played a bit with my Talkin’ Turkey quilt that I started in her class in Dover DE last September.  I have started the sashing of the blocks, and have 2 rows sashed.  The first row is stitched together, and I still have some joining of blocks on the 2nd row. I like the way the sashing puts a little 9 patch between the blocks.  More to follow on that project.

There are 30 blocks total to sash and join.  I have all the sashing made, but need to spend some time attaching it to the blocks etc.

I had to take the Talkin’ Turkey “off the wall” earlier in the week to lay out a quilt during my quilt bee with the Material Girls.  Our guild is making a quilt top for the outgoing president, and we all did a string block and signed the blocks.  The president of the guild is in my Material Girls bee, so we had to “keep her from looking” while we worked on the quilt.  I put her to work on “Second Time Around” fabrics, ironing and trimming and folding and pricing donations for the quilt show. She and a few other other ladies did an AMAZING amount of work while the rest of us focused on the president’s quilt top assembly.  Of course, since we were at my house, I had to flit from person to person, making sure my “Second Time Around” helpers were on task and answering questions.  I did manage to sew 3 rows of the President’s quilt, so I can safely say I wasn’t goofing off the whole time.  I tasked one member of our bee to take a wide assortment of 4.5″ squares, and to “bundle” them into groups of compatible colors.  She was amazing and got 99% of them into bundles that we will sell at the quilt show.  (I just knew she was the right woman for the job, and she was committed to NOT leaving the job unfinished!)

I’ve had 3 days this week of working on 2nd Time Around in preparation for our quilt show in July. Today I tackled all those “non fabric” items that have been donated.  I ended up with 3 shoe boxes sorted & filled with various rick rac, hem tape and packaged binding.  Any of the packages that were already opened went into a box for donation to a charity our guild supports in Tanzania, Africa,  Sifa Threads .  I am boxing up notions, thread, zippers, seam rippers, and LOTS of rick race & prepackaged binding.  A member of our bee & guild will have her son take a suitcase full of sewing supplies to Tanzania when he returns later in the year. We are inspired by the Sifa Threads mission to teach young women to sew and at completion of the course, they earn a sewing machine of their own to take home. Hopefully they will find a way to earn a living for their families through the training and equipment provided.

Last week I was able to work on quilting my Pet Mosaic quilt – “MITTENS”.  I was inspired at a sit & sew the end of April to get it layered up and quilted.  I ordered a wide backing from Marshall Dry Goods . com and it arrived early in the week. I did a lot of “thread painting” on his (Mittens) ears, and general quilting of his fur.  I still have a lot to do, but on Monday, I turned in my entry for the quilt show.  He is coming along nicely, and I think if I have just “one more day” to work on the quilting, I will be able to knock it out.

I am working on my Janome 8900 doing free motion quilting, trying to capture the way the fur on this cat grows. (The squares in the quilt are 2″ to give you an idea of the scale).

I hope you are working on something fun, and have fun things to look forward to as well.  I find it so important in my well being to only do those things that bring me joy.  Not always possible, but I am striving to do away with the things that stress me (like those stinkin’ wisdom teeth)  and focus on the fun.

Happy Scrappy Quilting!