Making-Modern Half Square Triangle Quilt Along

I’ve been broadening my podcast horizons lately and have started listening to the “Modern Sewciety” podcast and I love it, Stephanie has such a lovely way of chatting with her guests about quilting and the quilt world (which I admittedly do not know much about).  I have made a number of quilts over the years but would not consider myself a “quilter” because, well, I didn’t use an established pattern, I made everything up and made my own patterns. And, I don’t quilt as in put the three layers together and hand stitch them on a quilting frame the size of my dining room table…no thank you.  I have quilted smaller quilts on my home sewing machine, tied a number of larger quilts and sent one out to Nebraska to be machine quilted, hmmm funny still didn’t consider myself a quilter. Well, I guess that is all about to change with this quilt-a-long I heard about on Stephanie’s podcast a few weeks ago.   I’m embarking on the Modern Half Square Triangle (HST) Quilt Along this year courtesy of  Alyce  at  Blossom Heart Quilts .

2 blocks per month x 12 months will equal enough squares for a nice sized quilt.  I’ve pulled fabrics from my stash and purchased just a few pieces to round out the color palette, I’ve also purchased a light grey fabric with white printing that will be the background fabric in each block, I am waiting until the top is done to decide on the sashing and binding fabrics.

QAL Fabric Pull

Aren’t they pretty?!  I went with very highly saturated colors for the most part which I think will give some nice contrast against the background.

QAL-block 1

Aaanndd….here is my first block!  Yay!  I have had that dark blue fabric for YEARS!  I’ve been hoarding it as it’s one of my all-time favorites but now it has found it’s perfect home as part of the new quilt!  The block is a little rough around the edges as I need to “true” the block up, I’m waiting to do that until I purchase a 12.5″ square ruler specifically to that task.  But it’s done!  It didn’t take forever!  It didn’t make a huge mess!  Everything went back onto the shelf until it’s time for the next block!  Win Win Win!

What have you been making this weekend?!

 

…It was supposed to be a quick project…

How many times have we said that??  Come on, raise your hands, I know you are out there.  It seemed so easy.

Me:  Hey honey, I decided I want to use my birthday money from your folks to help pay for a new worktop for my studio, can we go to Ikea and pick up the new furniture for my studio?                                                                         Charlie:  Sure!

That was the easy part.  Actually, I should say going to Ikea and actually getting the stuff, easy peasy.  I had made a list of what we needed.  I’d even mapped out the entire project step by step.  Yay for organized!  We brought everything home and put it all together in a few hours.  PicTapGo-ImageLooked great!!  Of course it did, fit just like I’d planned.  So excited to have drawers!  So many I’m not even sure what I’m going to put in them (ha ha ha).  On my list of things to do was to clear out the shelves and re-organize them, and take down all my notes on the wall from 2015.   PicTapGo-Image copyYay organizing project.  In addition to cleaning out, I found $6, and a bracket for the shade I would like to hang on the driveway side window (hopeful bracket #2 will turn up soon), and I cleaned.  I am going to swap the workstations with sewing on the right with the ironing board behind me and computer/memorykeeping on the left.   All was going swimmingly, until the subject of this came up… PicTapGo-Image copy 3and yes, people I went down that path.  I thought I’ll just put a coat of poly on the top so I don’t mess it up.   Um no…. old poly, wrong brush means took for.ev.er. to dry and didn’t cover well.  One new fresh can of poly later (read on the This Old House blog you should toss poly after it’s been open for a year….yeah, that can came from our old house 😉  ) here we are.  Looks much much better!!  Dried perfectly, nice and smooth, full coverage (just a tiny bit of fine steel wool polishing will happen today) All ready to go!  PicTapGo-Image copy 2Put the stuff back in that’s been junking up the upstairs hall.  PicTapGo-Image copy 5So excited, can’t wait to work on one long continuous counter, spread out my fabric or my projects, a home for the scanner and maybe the tablet, this is going to be great!  Or not, wait, it seems a little low for me.  Get out the tape, measure, yup, the worktop needs to come up 1″ – 1 1/2″, and I need a big piece of something for on top of the cart to make up the space on the back that won’t be covered by the top, since I have to move it forward to the edge of the drawers (overhang = not getting into the back of those drawers) *sigh*

Honnneeeeee  !!!  I have a little project for you !

Pray for me…hoping to have this all sorted out on the weekend and be making stuff in here soon… this wasn’t going to be on of my 52/16 projects but it is starting to verge in that direction!

December Daily …yes, another project (!)

I’m excited to start working on our 2015 December Daily album, it is finally December (my birthday month for which I wait patiently all year!)  and time to dig in to the project.  This will be the 6th or 7th year I’ve done a December Documentation album and this project is one of my very favorites.  If you’re not familiar with the project, hop on over to Ali Edwards Blog and read about the project and her approach.  Love Ali, Love this project and Love December!!

Let’s begin… I’ll apologize for the crummy photos, I will try and re-shoot everything at another time but it’s pretty much dark here at 3:45 because of the weather so not so good for photos.   My goal for this year is really to tell one story a day.  Some years I’ve told one, some years I’ve had several things going on and some years it’s just been a piece of pretty paper (not that there is anything wrong with that).  I’m really starting my album with Thanksgiving but those pages aren’t done yet, wanted to get a jump on December stories and try and get into a daily rhythm .

DD2015-Day1blog

The story of December 1 was a story of being able to laugh at yourself, being able to not take yourself too seriously, and being gracious in the face of extreme goofiness.

DD2015-Day1ablog

Why you ask?  Because my hubby last night took a photo of me nodding off on the couch and posted it on Facebook (!)  general consensus?  He is in very big trouble.  Everyone thought it was hysterically funny (In my defense, it was well past 10 and it had been a long day with a glass of wine at the end).  So not only was I a good sport about the whole thing, It was the perfect story to document general everyday silliness around here….and I will note that when I asked him to take down the post this morning, he did it right away.

This year I’m using Ali’s December Daily Kit as well as the One Little Bird Mini-Kit for my album, along with other supplies I have around the studio.  Hope you give a project like this a try, it can be as simple or as ornate as you like!  I’ll post more general photos/thoughts/ideas later…time to go pick up the girls from basketball practice…one bonus of December here in New England…sports (at least the ones the girls play) move inside!

What are you working on this December?

 

Layout a day for Lent complete!!

 

Tonight I just finished my last layout for my layout a day during lent challenge. I actually made more layouts than I had planned and will post another day on that. 

I’m very happy that I was able to fulfill my goal with only one layout half-done and finished the next day. I’m very happy with doing something positive and creative as a Lenten practice. 

Now, for some sewing!

Happy Easter and Passover everyone… Enjoy your Easter candy!  

A page a day for Lent

List-photo

It all started quite innocently enough.  I was chatting with our new pastor at church, we were talking about art and making things and what we do, and she mentioned that she had made a collage a day for lent last year.  hmmmm interesting.  You see a) I am not a terribly religious person b) I grew up presbyterian and we did not observe lent in any participatory way (my mother thought that was only for catholics) c) have I mentioned I’m not a terribly religious person?  Pastor Stacy talked about adding a practice during lent, rather than just always focusing on sacrifice.  That, I thought was very interesting, never had I heard about adding something, it was always about punishment.  So I go to thinking about what I could do that would be realistic and meaningful to me, and I came up with doing a scrapbook page a day every day during lent.

I have done layout a day challenges successfully several times in the past, so I knew I could get through 30 days with out too much craziness, but 47 is more challenging.  I decided to take it on.  I’m keeping track just so I don’t make myself crazy.  I include traditional “scrapbook layouts” as well as mini-books (December Daily) and Project Life pages under the umbrella of Scrapbook Layouts …I should really call it just Memory Keeping.  Anyway, I’m happy to report that I am on track.  I had a minor glitch a few saturdays ago when I had a layout 3/4 finished on my desk, then life happened, the day got super busy, friends came over to exclaim over the hole in the dining room wall (that’s another post) and have a little hangout and before you knew it, it was almost midnight.  So 3/4 of a layout that day…but, I did not just throw in the towel.  The next day, I got up early, finished the layout and got back on track with one layout every day.

Working on this project has helped me streamline my process(more fodder for another post) and honestly, kept the idea of lent more at the front of my feeble little brain rather than floating around the ether.  Now that it’s Holy Week, I’m coming to the end of my project, which will be Easter Sunday.  Do I keep going, or leave it at 47 consecutive layouts (plus an extra 7 I made at the crop on Saturday)???  Can’t decide but the feeling of getting projects done and memories recorded is pretty darned awesome!  I’ll keep you posted!  Are you working on any long-term memory keeping projects?