Just some other sewing stuff........

A few weeks ago it became apparent that the sewing room had to be cleaned up and the fabrics re-sorted and scraps given a new storage home. So, in an 'overachiever' moment I started by tackeling the scraps. If you remember in a blog right before Christmas last year, I posted a quilt made for my son-in-law to be used as a beach blanket. That quilt with the exception of the backing, binding and a few strips was made up entirely from leftover pieces from his son's tummy time quilts and some fabrics from my ever dwindling stash. I really though that that project would us up all of my scraps, but it didn't. If anything it just created more...just smaller. So, in this sorting frenzy, I taped plastic grocery store bags to my sewing table, labled each by color and started stuffing!

Yes, there is a lot of scrap there! AND at the time this photo was taken, I still had a ways to go.
Just for the record, these are small scraps to be used for mostly string blocks. If a piece was big enough to be a 'strip' or a 'charm' it went into a different container.
After I managed to get all of this sorted, the real delima became obvious. WHAT on earth was I going to store these in????? There were no available storage bins and run to the store was out of the question. (It's 40 miles one way to anyplace that would have storage bins.)  So, being a semi resourceful person, I decided to use what was available. I had been given some of the heavy zipper bags that sheets and bath mats, etc come in. And I had a huge one that my king sized sheets had come in. These worked out great. It's still a temporary arrangement, but I'm liking it. This little goodie is setting under my cutting table and easy to add small scraps to. Being clear plastic, the color of fabric in the bags is immediately visible.

Now I just need to make a scrappy string quilt!

The rest of my stash got organized by color and placed in other containers.
Here's my FQ stash:

The quantity is pathetic...I need to go shopping. Some of these pieces aren't even full FQ's. There is another container like this full of 'novelty' fabrics. For example, all of the fruit motif fabric, and fish motif fabric....that sort of thing. I also have another container like this full of 'craft' supplies. Strange things like felt, canvas fabric, etc. And another one with stabilizers and battings.

Just thought I would share my wild and crazy organization frenzy with you!
Have a sew great day!
Kathy

Tying Up Loose Ends and Creating More

Ok, ok, I know if you have a blog, you should post to it...regularly. Shame on me for being such a slacker. I have lots of excuses, but very few reasons. I did spend some extra time visiting family after Christmas, but that doesn't explain the rest of the time lapse. And last week the computer system was down for 6 whole days, but again that's only one measley little week out of ...well, way too many.
So here we go trying to catch up.....

There has been quite a bit of sewing going on around here.

The Easy Street Mystery Quilt top is now complete. Unfortunately, it didn't get this finished in time to make the last linkup post.  I love this quilt. Just haven't found backing for it yet. It is large enough to fit the queen size guest bed, so that is it's anticipated home once it's quilted. I think my last blog post had it only through Clue/Part 4. Part 5 was easy....love that Bonnie called these "flying Turkeys" instead of geese.


The above photo is of both Step 5 and 6. Since it was my choice to use only one background fabric and make this a "not so scrappy" quilt, there wasn't any sewing involved in Step 6. Just cutting. Easy!

Step 7 consisted of assembling some of the previously constructed units and piecing triangle setting units of which some how I managed NOT to get any photos.

Step 8 was final construction of the blocks. Block A had corner units that lent themselves to assembly line type constuction. So to help expedite the blocks, I pre-assembled these units as in the photo below. Stacked them up in the direction they needed to be used and they were ready to go in each block. Just had to be careful to pull from the right stack as I went. It worked out great.

Since it was my choice to NOT go very scrappy on this quilt, the final assemble required a lot of pre-planning and thought to get the limited color pallet to work....well, I like the term "play nicely together" better than work out. So, for a couple of days, I took over the living room floor (because it was the only space large enough) and played around with laying out the blocks so the colors were spread out fairly evenly throughout the quilt. It was a lot of extra work, but came out great in the end. The photo below is one block stacked as it was to be assembled. I separated each block with a piece of pink printer paper so they wouldn't get mixed up.

 The next picture is one of my "organized chaos" putting the blocks together.

 One thing for sure, getting so far behind in the mystery, I negelected to get as many photos of each step as previously.

Once all the blocks were assembled, the rows went together quickly. And here is the final product!

I added a narrow gray border, an narrow teal border and then a narrow gray border again. This is all the fabric I had left to work with, or I would have made the borders a little wider. It looks a lot better in real life than in this photo. I do have enough of one of the teals to do the binding once it is quilted.

Again, thanks to  Bonnie Hunter for doing the mystery quilt. I thoroughly enjoy doing these. Assuming there will be another mystery quilt this year, I just really really hope I can get through it without delays or interruptions.

Right now I'm working on two bags/totes/purses....whatever you want to call them and some other little items as well as the mystery quilt being sponsored by Connecting Threads. More on that in another blog.

Until next time....
Kathy