Flimsy Whimsy

The black and white, etc. string thingy is officially a flimsy — and I want to squeal like a little girl!

Seriously, it makes me happy-happy-happy.

Save those old phone books, string thingers.  They come in handy.  Yes, you could string piece without a foundation just as well, but I like the stability and size/position guide that string piecing on paper provides.  Phone book paper is lightweight and not difficult to remove; it's like tearing out a check.

For more details on the process, skip back one post.

This ended up to be about 45 x 53 inches.  I added a one-inch stop border and a five-inch outer border (cut 1.5 and 5.5).

On my trip to JoAnn for batting yesterday, I happened to "spot" a perfect backing fabric.

Linking to:





And just for the Thrill of It...the funky sound Robert Randolph gets out of a pedal steel guitar is incredible.  Have yourself a happy dance!

Getting Started

Sometimes getting started is the hard part.  Once you get going, there is a flow that carries you along, or at least that's what you hope for.

I am working on a tutorial this week for my Four-Lily block.  It's a different kind of W.I.P., but just as interesting and engrossing.

Four-Lily Block

The hard part was picking fabrics for my sample block.  You need a background fabric (that was no-brainer, Kona Snow) and two other fabrics, preferably with some contrast and variety against each other.  These were a few of the potential combinations that I pulled.

Decisions, decisions!  Some were obviously not right (too little contrast, too much of one color, etc.) In the end, since I'd already done this block for the quilt in pretty florals, I decided to go with something different.

I wasn't sure how the bold directional print of the Spintastic fabric would work in this block.  You can turn that over in your mind all you want, I mused, but there's only one sure way to find out—give it a try!

So I cut out and arranged the pieces on the cutting table.  Looks like it'll work just fine.

Part 1 of the block tutorial will be up this evening. In the meantime, you might want to start by looking over your stash or scraps (a FQ of each fabric will do).

I hope you will stop back and join me in making this fun block!

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Heart-sy Fartsy

Taking down the Christmas decorations (what few there were this year), I realized I had no Valentine's Day stuff to hang up.  Better get on that, I thought.  A wall hanging would be nice.

Enter the scrap bag.  That magical mess of snarled strips and bobbed bits (alliteration anyone?).  

I pulled out all the red/pink and aqua blue/turquoise scraps I could find and started to "make" fabric, a la 15 Minutes of Play.  Didn't really have an idea yet where it would go, but I was having fun anyway.  In a little while, I had a few swatches of made fabric, and I went "Hmm...," scratched my head, turned off the lights in the sewing room, and went on about the rest of the day.

This morning, still not sure where it would lead, I cut out a paper heart.  Now there's a skill you learn in grade school that serves you well the rest of your life.  You never know when you're going to need to cut out a paper heart, but when you do, the knowledge is right there, unlike the square root of pi.

Then I traced said paper heart randomly onto the made fabric and cut out as many as I could from what I had.  

Now what?

Go to the cutting table, grab something from the unfolded pile left from the other day's puttering.  It's convenient to be a mess-a-holic sometimes.  Arrange the hearts on the background fabric.  First I had them chasing each other in a circle, and I was just about set to go with that, but it felt like it needed something in the center.  Go have lunch and don't think about it for a while.

Come back after lunch.  Take the two darkest hearts and overlap them in the center.  Rearrange the hearts that are left.  Conveniently, there are three red/pink and three turquoise.  Fish a trimmed bit of Alexander Henry Heath in black from the garbage bin by the cutting table.  Yep, that will do for the binding fabric.

Step back.  Like what you see.  Do a little happy dance!

Now I just have to get some fusible web so I can applique them down and then edge stitch around them.

Linking to WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced today!

Playing

I've spent some time playing this week.  I looked at the mess that is my sewing room and my very random stash, and...well, it overfloweth.  So I decided to pull some fabrics for a little quilt.  I actually began with some prissy little pastel prints, but who am I kidding, that is so not me.  I gravitated then to a rather eclectic mix, the stuff that makes my heart sing!

It included a couple of cool pieces gifted by a friend, some batiks and other lucky thrift store finds, and a piece via etsy from Jenny, who was paring down her stash.  The rest were leftovers from past projects.  Oh, and the lovely hand-dyed purple piece from Vicki!

So, a bit of this and that, but all of it pretty wonderful!  I enjoyed coming up with each of the pairings, but I really wasn't sure how well they would play together.  The cutting was easy-peasy, no template required.  Just 7-inch squares, stacked into pairs, sliced twice, reassembled, and trimmed to 6 inches.  The free pattern is here.  I happened upon it quite by accident—or serendipity!

And here it is laid out on the floor.  I do believe it works!

I had one more block which I threw together at the last minute, but it didn't seem to work in the body.  I have set it aside for now, but I may bring it back into the border.  We shall see!

Linking up today for the first time to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.  Welcome visitors!  Also, this is one of my "NewFOs" for August, so I am linking to Cat Patches as well.