Upcoming Zoom Workshop With Maria Shell, "Making Prints Out of Solids" + Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds Exhibit

You guys, I am SEW excited to be taking a 2-part Zoom workshop this month with quilt artist Maria Shell!  And there are still a few spaces available in the class in case any of YOU would like to join me, from wherever you are in the world!  But hurry if you're interested -- Maria will be lecturing at the guild meeting tomorrow night and the class will probably sell out once members see her work and hear her speak.

Maria Shell, "Making Prints Out of Solids" Workshop September 9th and 16th

This workshop, "Making Prints Out of Solids -- Lines, Tracks & More" is being offered by the Charlotte Quilters Guild and I helped our Programs Director set this up months ago when I was still the guild President, before moving to Florida.  I believe there are still spaces available and registration has now opened up for nonmembers.  At just $50, this is an absolute steal for a two-part workshop with a teacher of this caliber.  The workshop will be conducted via Zoom from 7-9 PM Eastern Standard Time on Monday, September 9th and Monday, September 16th, and you can register here.  There is no kit or pattern required for the class; you just need a copy of Maria's book Improv Patchwork that is available on Amazon here (affiliate link).  

So...  I have the book, I read the book, and I'm nervous about cutting without rulers (!!!) but excited to give it a try and see what happens.  My homework to prepare for class was to put together a palette of solid colors to work with, all pulled from my stash, and prewash half yard pieces of each color.  Here's what I have so far, subject to change of course.  I did have to dash out to JoAnn's for a half yard of brown fabric: 

My Fabric Pull for Maria Shell's Workshop

I have lots of other options littering my worktable, too.  Who knew I had so many solids tucked away in those fabric bins?!

September Stitching Goals: FrankenBerries, Setting Quandaries + Seven Sisters

Stuffed berry production is happening!  Preparing all 96 of the remaining stuffed berries needed for my FrankenWhiggish Rose quilt is my September stitching goal (and if I get any of them stitched onto the blocks as well, that will be "gravy"!).  

Tip: Pencil Eraser Holds Perfect Circle Template for Tracing

I'm using my Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Circles templates to make my berries (this post contains affiliate links) along with leftover Quilters Dream Poly Select quilt batting and Wonder Under fusible web (using up an old package I had on hand).  I discovered that I can prevent the Perfect Circle template from slipping if I hold it in place with a pencil eraser in my left hand while tracing around the template with a mechanical pencil held in my right hand; that photo above is to remind Future Rebecca of these neat trick the next time I am tracing around small template shapes.

I traced all 96 berry circles onto the paper side of my Wonder Under paper backed fusible web, fused the marked Wonder Under to my batting scraps, then rough cut around groups of 12 (12 berries per block) just to help me keep track of how many were needed and how many were finished.  I experimented with three different pairs of scissors before deciding that I like my ApliQuick 4" microserrated scissors best for cutting out these tight circles (that I probably shouldn't have crammed so close together when I was tracing them).

And So It Begins: Cutting Out Fused Batting Circles for Berry Stuffing

Appliqué prep work does seem to go faster for me when I do it assembly line style, so I'm going to cut out all of my berries before I proceed to the next step of fussy-cutting my larger fabric circles.

Meanwhile, I've been walking past these nine blocks on my design wall every day, marveling about how those broderie perse rosebuds didn't take me nearly as long as I thought they would, and realizing that I am going to have all of my blocks completely finished and ready to set if I just keep working on it a little bit every day.  That makes me want to revisit, reevaluate, and overcomplicate my plans for setting the blocks and finishing this quilt!

I could add one inch diamond sashing, a wide neutral border for a quilted formal feather design, and an outer one inch diamond border, as visualized in this EQ8 software rendering below:

66 x 66 FrankenWhiggish Setting with Diamond Sashing

August Goal Completed, FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds Are Done!

Oh my gosh, y'all -- pigs have sprouted wings and Rebecca has finally accomplished her One Monthly Goal by the end of the month.  I know what you're thinking: flying pigs are much easier to believe.  All nine of my FrankenWhiggish Rose blocks now have their eight tiny broderie perse rosebuds stitched down in their centers:

Rosebuds Completed on All Nine FrankenWhiggish Rose Blocks

The block on the lower left is the only one that is 100% complete with its stuffed berries, so making 96 more of those and stitching them to the other eight blocks is the next task for this project.  Side note: I wish I'd used a greater variety of fabrics for my pieced block backgrounds, because it was annoyingly difficult to come up with a layout for the blocks that didn't put two of the same fabrics next to one another.  And I'm loving how my new-and-improved design wall is working out in the hallway:

FrankenWhiggish Blocks On the Design Wall

By the way, there's an added benefit of the white Bump drapery interlining that I used to recover my design wall, in addition to it complementing my gray walls better than the natural cotton batting.  This is one of those projects where the colors in my photos never look much like the fabrics do in real life, but it was so easy to correct that with a single click using the White Balance tool in photo editing software, just by clicking the white design wall surrounding my blocks.  

The New Design Wall, Take 2 + Slogging Along With FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds

Good Morning and Happy Weekend!  We've been bustling and busy since my last post.  Bernie and I drove eleven hours back up to Charlotte, North Carolina to move our youngest son Anders into a new apartment at UNC, spent some time with my mom in South Carolina, and then drove another eleven hours to get back to our new home in Naples, Florida.  We drove him up this time because we needed to get his car up there and we had a lot of stuff we were bringing for the apartment, but we'll be flying him home for breaks.  Meanwhile, the new bump drapery interlining fabric for my design wall was delivered from Amazon (this post contains affiliate links) and Bernie and I are both SO much happier with how it looks now!

96 x 96 Design Wall Wrapped with New Bump Drapery Interlining 

When I posted about the first version of this design wall last week a lot of you thought it was fine as long as it was functional, and if it was in a dedicated studio or craft space in my home where no one had to look at it besides myself, I might have agreed with you.  But I lobbied hard to get my husband on board with putting the design wall in a very prominent, public part of our home where everyone would walk past it and have to look at it all day long, every single day, and I promised that I was going to make it look GOOD there.  

There's a Design Wall in My Hallway Full of Deco Blocks! But it Looks, Umm, ROUGH...

First, the good news: there's a 96" x 96" design wall in my hallway across from the entrance to my sewing room, and my Deco Quilt blocks are up on the wall.  Hooray!  This is the project-in-progress that was on the design wall in my old studio in North Carolina right before I had to pack everything up and move to Florida this past December.  It's good to see those blocks out again, especially since now I can see the progress I made working on additional blocks here and there throughout the move.  Woot woot!

My Scandi Deco Bed Quilt Blocks Are Up on My Brand-New Design Wall

Now for the bad news: this new design wall did not turn out anywhere near as nice as the old one, and it's going to require immediate revision.  For one thing, we shouldn't have put it up so high -- my fault entirely, as I thought it might be nice to be able to plug a vacuum cleaner into the bottom outlet socket.  We should move it down to completely cover the outlet so it's centered nicely from top to bottom the way it's centered from side to side.

Bernie Said "Quick, Cover It Up With Your Quilt Blocks!"

Actually, what Bernie said was "I KNEW it was going to look like crap.  Cover it up with your quilt blocks so I don't have to look at it."  

FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds, Michele's Log Cabin Stars Quilt, Laundry Room Makeover, Swedish Pancakes + A 21st Birthday Celebration

Good Morning, Quilty Peeps!  As you can see by my way-too-long blog post title, I have lots of ground to cover today.  First things first, I am happy to report that I've finished prepping ALL of the remaining broderie perse rosebuds for my FrankenWhiggish Rose blocks, they are all glue-basted in position on the blocks, and the hand stitching to secure them is in progress.  That's right; I have a portable hand stitching project again FINALLY!

All FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds Are Prepped and Ready for Stitching!

In case anyone is interested in what's in my portable hand stitching "toolbox" for this project:

• YLI 100 wt silk thread in color 256, matched to the rosebud fabric
• Bohin size 12 Appliqué Needles (these are the only ones I've tried that don't bend or break on me)
• Colonial Needle Company Leather Thimble Pad stickers (I use one on my right pointer finger to help grab the needle and pull it through the fabric, or to protect my fingertip when I need to exert a little pressure on the back end of the needle to force it through a spot where the glue dried stiff)
• Thread Heaven (no longer available) or Thread Magic thread conditioner to help prevent snarling and knotting -- I don't need it when I'm using silk thread, but I have it in my hand stitching kit because it's a big help when I'm hand stitching quilt bindings with cotton thread
• My new 2.75 magnification sewing glasses from Warby Parker, so I can thread the eye of my needle and see how many threads of fabric I'm grabbing with each stitch
• That nail file in my kit is actually for my fingernails, because often I'll discover some little scratchy spot at the edge of a fingernail while stitching when the thread gets hung up on it
• Not pictured, I also have a tube of Neutrogena Hand Cream in my hand sewing kit and another one in the drawer next to my sewing machine.  I like this kind because it's not greasy, has no fragrance or dye, and a tiny drop goes a long way to just barely moisten my fingertips so I can get a better grip on what I'm stitching without gooking it up with lotion
• Either my Apliquick 4" Microserrated Scissors (pictured) or my Gingher Spring Action Thread Nippers (preferred if I'm just clipping thread and not trimming needle turn appliqué shapes while stitching).  If I'm planning to take my hand stitching kit on an airplane, I'll swap out for a cheap thread clipper (in case Airport Security confiscates it and throws it away) with a pack of dental floss that I could use as a backup thread trimmer in a pinch

(Those are affiliate links, by the way).   You probably won't see much of FrankenWhiggish for a couple weeks while I'm stitching the rosebuds to the blocks because, if you've seen one of my blocks get rosebuds, you've seen them all!  My Seven Sisters pattern and templates finally arrived from Australia and I'm planning to start on that project in September.

Instead of sharing FrankenWhiggish, I thought I might share some of the backlog of long arm quilting clients' quilts that I haven't posted about before, like Michele's version of Emily Dennis's Log Cabin Stars quilt.  Here's a teaser to whet your appetite; we'll return to this quilt later in today's blog post:

Michele's Log Cabin Stars Quilt, Pattern Available here

FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds + Random Happenings of Everyday Life

No, my Seven Sisters pattern and templates have not yet arrived from Australia, but I've been making progress on my languishing 10-year-old FrankenWhiggish Rose project while impatiently waiting for that package to arrive.  

Glue-Basting Prepped Rosebuds Prior to Stitching

In looking back through my earlier posts I realized that I never showed the step in between prepping the rosebuds and actually stitching them to the block, hence the photo above.  These rosebuds are too little to be pin-basted to my blocks and the Patchback stabilizer product I'm using makes them a little bit stiff, so I'm glue-basting them in place with tiny drops of Roxanne's Glue Baste-It (this post contains affiliate links).  I've had this particular bottle of glue for a LONG time; it lasts forever because you use so little of it on each appliqué shape.  Not sure whether you can see this clearly in the photo, but I'm putting my tiny drops of glue in the center of my turned seam allowance rather than right on the edge.  The glue spreads when I press the rosebud in place on the block and I don't really want it right on the edge where I have to push my needle through as I'm stitching.  Here's an update on where I am with this project as of today:

11 Rosebuds Glue-Basted to Blocks, Ready for Stitching

24 Rosebuds Need to be Prepped & Glue-Basted to Blocks

97 Stuffed Berries Need to be Made & Glue-Basted to Blocks

Speaking of the stitching part, I got a bit of a rude awakening when I resumed this project after a 6-month hiatus and discovered that my Magical Sewing Glasses (prescription reading glasses that I had my eye doctor order based on the distance I hold my work from my eyes when hand stitching) are no longer capable of banishing the blur!  So apparently my close vision has deteriorated significantly.  AAAARRRGH!  I went to my local Warby Parker store, hoping that I could select and come home with a cute new pair of stronger glasses for hand stitching.  I picked out these frames and ordered them in the 2.75 strength magnification, but instead of taking them home the same day I have to wait for them to be shipped to me in 7-10 days.  Probably should have just gone to the drug store instead.

Warby Parker Brady Frames, Desperately Needed for Blurry Hand Stitching!

I started stitching down my rosebuds with my old glasses even though I can't really see what I'm doing.  Hopefully my muscle memory is picking up the slack from my aging eyeballs!

Actual Rosebud Progress for FrankenWhiggish Rose

Good morning, stitchy friends!  I am delighted to report actual PROGRESS on my FrankenWhiggish Rose appliqué project today!  Finishing the rosebuds is my One Monthly Goal for August.

Me Stitching an Actual Rosebud Onto an Actual Quilt Block

(In case anyone's about to ask, yes, that is a serger 3-thread overlock stitch on the edge of my quilt block in the photo above.  I oversized the block backgrounds (so I can trim them all to exactly the same size once the hand appliqué stitching is completed) and overcast the raw edges of my blocks before beginning, knowing that this project would be a long time in the making and that raw block edges would be prone to fraying as the blocks were scrunched up and manipulated in my hands during my stitching process.  The overlock stitching will be trimmed away prior to joining the blocks into a quilt top).

Four Little Rosebuds Where there Used to Be None

Each block gets eight rosebuds around that center circle but I only glue baste four at a time for stitching, to lessen the chance of my thread getting caught on an adjacent unstitched rosebud and ripping it off the block.

New Project In My Pipeline: Seven Sisters or Seven Stars Quilt for Hand Piecing

Inspiration: Seven Sisters Quilt Top by Martha Dellasega Gray (2014)

 

Isn't that Seven Sisters quilt top glorious?!  It was completed in 2014 by Martha Dellasega Gray and you can read all about it on her Q is for Quilter blog here.  I can't help myself, I have to make one, too (or at least START one!).  But before we start talking about the new project, I should do a quick recap of all my preexisting sewing projects for the sake of accountability:

• My StyleArc Nova Midi Dress: Fabric purchased, nothing cut out yet, found my Swedish Tracing Paper but still need to clear off my cutting table before tracing off the pattern pieces and making a start.  Still weighing pros and cons of sizing/pattern alteration options and bodice construction methods, and need a good stretch of uninterrupted time to work on that (I've had mostly fits and snatches of time here and there for sewing lately).
• My Deco Quilt: Remaining blocks for the entire quilt have been all cut out and ready to sew since before the move, but I haven't touched this one in over two months.  I am finding that I really miss having a big design wall where I can arrange/display a work in progress.  Seeing the quilt take shape on my design wall while working on the blocks was a major motivator in my previous studio, whereas completed blocks packed away in the closet are literally out of sight and out of mind.  There is one large wall in the central hallway of our new home that would work for a design wall, just to the left of our shared office and directly across from my little sewing room...  I have suggested a design wall in this location to my husband several times but the idea has not been well received thus far.  😞.  

My Deco Quilt In Progress, On My Old Design Wall, Boo Hoo...

Bernina Mending Magic Strikes Again + Mildred's Tarnished Star Quilt

I know mending is boring, but it's way more boring to my neighbors and to random people I approach in the grocery store than it is to the people who read my blog.  (Tip: You can scroll past my mending adventures and skip ahead to the pretty quilt at the end if you want to -- I will never even know!)

I had a ridiculously fun time reacquainting myself with some of the features of my Bernina B 790+ sewing machine yesterday while saving two of my favorite pairs of shorts, and I had to tell SOMEBODY about it.  I picked YOU!  Do you see signs of mending in the photo below?  No, you don't, because it turned out perfect!

Left Tushie Pocket of My Favorite Shorts, After Repair

These are my favorite shorts because they have an elastic drawstring in the waist so I can cinch it in just enough to avoid Back Waistband Gaposis that plagues me so much in ready to wear clothing, but also because they are made of a very lightweight and breathable fabric that doesn't get all hot and sticky in the muggy Florida summer like most of my other shorts.  They came from REI several years ago and I bought three pairs of the same style, the khaki ones pictured here as well as a light gray pair and a dusty blue green color.  I've been wearing them a lot more since I moved to Florida in February, and the buttons on the left back pocket ripped right through   the fabric on the blue pair and the khaki pair.  How do you reattach a button when there's a hole through the shorts fabric in the place the button needs to be sewn?

Mending Program 22 Stitched in Aurifil 50/2 Cotton Mako Thread

I needed to darn the hole and reinforce the area around the hole before reattaching the button, so I grabbed some Steam A Seam 2 double-stick fusible web from my appliqué supplies, fused it to the back of this pink scrap of tightly woven cotton batik fabric and cut out a circle about the size of a quarter, and fused it to the wrong side of the pocket, carefully coaxing the loose threads surrounding the tear back into place to fill the hole on the right side.  

Planning (and Overthinking) a Style Arc Nova Midi Dress

Hello, my Lovelies, and Happy Summer (to everyone in the Northern hemisphere)!  Happy Independence Day Weekend to everyone in the United States!  Today's post is going to contain zero quilting, because my creative brain is chasing a different rabbit today.  I don't have enough "Florida Clothing" in my closet and I hate the way everything looks/feels/fits that I've tried on in stores.  My sister bought me a couple dress patterns that I've had on my wish list for awhile and I've decided to sew up the Nova Midi Dress from the Australian indie pattern company Style Arc  (this post contains affiliate links).

One of the coolest things about garment sewing in the Internet age is that it's so easy to find pictures, reviews, tips and tweaks suggestions from people of all shapes, sizes, and ages who have already sewn up the pattern you're considering.  The photo montage above shows two images of the dress sewn up from the Style Arc web site (the long orange dress with 3 tiers and the short black dress with 2 tiers), but the other images came from sewing blogs and a 3rd party online shop based in the U.K. (Minerva) that sells this dress pattern as a kit in a variety of fabrics.  So, special thanks to Carolyn of Sewing Fanatic, No Idle Hands, Geri In Stitches, Indoor Shannon, and the many other makers who take the time to post their sewing finishes online along with feedback and suggestions so that others can learn from their experiences.

More Scrappy Celebration Blocks + a Big Decision

Hello, Friends!  I finished all six of my double 9-patch blocks for my Tilda version of the American Patchwork & Quilting Scrappy Celebration quilt the other day, so now I have two tidy stacks, six of each style.  The center square of my double 9-patch block is a dusty pink Tilda Solid that coordinates perfectly with the tiny ditsy pink flowers on the green print, by the way.  It's looking weirdly gray in the photo, and my cutting mat that is actually pink IRL is looking more red in the photo.  Not sure if it's some difference in the camera of my new phone or something different with the lighting in the new sewing room.

9 inch Finished Blocks for Scrappy Celebration

Having no design wall (yet?) in my new house, I am using my EQ8 quilt design software (this post contains affiliate links) as a virtual design wall instead.  Below you see the EQ rendering of the Scrappy Celebration quilt from the pattern designer, and as I finish a set of blocks I just take a picture of one of them from straight on and crop it square, import it into the software and set the scale to 9" (because they are 9" finished blocks), add the block photo as a fabric, and then change the appropriate blocks in the quilt to plain blocks that I can just "paint" with the photo of my completed quilt block.  That was probably clear as mud to those of you who don't use this software, but if anyone out there is new to EQ and wants a fuller explanation of what I'm doing here, feel free to email me for more complete instructions.  

Why do I bother to do this at all?  Because swapping out the generic solid colored blocks in the pattern rendering with my actual blocks helps me to get a better sense of how my colors and prints are working together and guides me in selecting fabrics for subsequent blocks.  I'll also be able to print out the final image, once all of the plain blocks have been replaced with photos of my actual blocks, and use that as a roadmap for assembling the quilt top.

EQ8 Scrappy Celebration Rendering Showing Finished Blocks

Not that I have any idea what I'm going to do with this quilt once it's finished.  I just thought it was pretty when I saw so many versions of this quilt online during the QAL last year -- and immediately I started thinking about how I'd want to quilt it...  so I had to go ahead and start making the top just so I can quilt it!

Rebecca's New Sewing Room Tour

I don't have much appreciable progress on any of my personal quilts in progress to share with you.  I have been really busy with remodeling and furnishing our new home, since we got rid of so much worn and outdated furniture when we moved.  I'm still working on piecing those double nine patch Tilda blocks that I wrote about in March, just in 5-10 minute increments here and there when I get a chance.  I've managed to finish piecing only two of the six double 9-patch blocks that I cut out eight weeks ago.  How's that for "slow stitching?!"  

Two Nine Inch Blocks Completed, Four More In Progress

Much more progress has been made in the Herculean task of trying to fit all of my sewing and craft goodies from our 3-story home in North Carolina into our MUCH smaller home here in Florida.  The solid maple butcher block top that I had for my giant 97" x 42" cutting table in North Carolina underwent a major amputation in order to repurpose it for a cutting table that would fit in my new 11' 4" x 11' 6" sewing room:

Bernie Sawing My Butcher Block Cutting Table In Half

You can read all about my old cutting table in this blog post from 2013 if you're interested.  

New Cutting Table, 42 W x 61 L x 39 H

My new cutting table utilizes the same custom MDF base units that Bernie built for me in 2013 in a different configuration, and it measures 42" wide by 61" long.  I'm about 5’7” tall and my cutting table height is 39".  

My Slow Progress: Scrappy Tilda Celebration, Scandi Deco, New Sewing Room + Kitchen Update

Hello from sunny Naples, Florida, my lovelies!  Happy Spring and Happy Easter to all who are celebrating!  Son the Younger went off to spend the weekend with a friend in North Carolina, but Son the Elder, Bernie and I will be having Easter dinner with Bernie's dad and sister.  Alas, no little ones hunting eggs or keeping their eyes peeled to spot an Easter bunny.  Those years sure went by fast!

I haven't written a blog post in a LONG time, so fair warning -- I have lots to say.  ;-)

My Tilda Scrappy Celebration

On to the eye candy, because I know that's what you're here for.  My most recent accomplishment was cutting out all of the pieces for six of these double nine patch blocks, for my Scrappy Celebration quilt project.  The small scale green floral is Tilda Farm Flowers in Green (available here on Etsy).  This fabric is also included in the Tilda's Jubilee Mega Blenders Bundle if, like me, you are crushing on Tilda prints lately and want to add a whole coordinated assortment of these sweet Norwegian prints to your current projects (or to your stash -- no judgement!).  And now, for that icky but necessary disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.  If you make a purchase after clicking on one of my links, I might be compensated at no additional cost to you.  I feel so dirty now.  Moving on...  

The rose pink solid in the center of my little 9-patch blocks is from a Tilda Solids fat eighths bundle (not sure which shade), the little white squares were cut from my bolt of Moda Bella Solids Off White, and that low volume print with diagonal blue stripes and tiny red dots was pulled from my stash of Who Knows What Purchased Who Knows When.  I'm looking forward to piecing these blocks!

Yummy Tilda Fabrics Cut and Laid Out, Ready to Sew

I'm sure that, if I was following Lissa Alexander's pattern for my Scrappy Celebration-inspired quilt, the instructions probably involve time-saving strip piecing techniques.  However, when I began this project my rotary cutters and rulers were still packed in boxes somewhere, and they are still packed in boxes somewhere since we need to make modifications (amputations!) to my ginormous worktable before it will fit in the much smaller sewing room of our new house in Florida.  So instead of cutting strips for my nine patch blocks, I cut out all of my squares individually with my AccuQuilt GO! fabric cutting dies.  

Tilda 9-Patch Celebration, First Blocks Completed

 Good Monday morning, quilty peeps!  Remember those Tilda precut fabric bundles I bought last week?  Today I actually have a couple finished blocks to show for myself!  This low-stress chop-and-sew project is loosely inspired by the Scrappy Celebration 2023 APQ Quilt Along project, and the pattern is available here.

9 inch Finished Block

For the time being, at least, I’m limited to working with fabric pieces that are either fat quarters (18” x 21”) or fat eighths (9” x 21”) and I only have one piece of each color or print.  I also have a bolt of Moda Bella Solids Off White.  So my original intention was to make six identical blocks using the fabric combination shown above, but I didn’t have enough of the bubblegum pink solid fabric.

New Fabric, New Project (Maybe): Scrappy Celebration Quilt in Tilda Prints and Solids

Good morning and Happy Thursday from sunny Naples, Florida!  🌞. I’m in limbo right now, moved out of our old house in Charlotte, North Carolina, but we don’t close on our new house here in Naples, Florida until next Tuesday the 20th.  My entire fabric stash, all of my rotary cutting tools and rulers, and all of my current works in progress are packed up in boxes that have not yet been delivered, but I do have access to my AccuQuilt GO! fabric cutter and all of my dies, my Bernina 475QE and my vintage 1935 Singer Featherweight 221 sewing machines, my travel iron, Best Press, and a tabletop ironing mat, and a bolt of Moda Bella Solid fabric in Off White.  These items traveled to Florida with me in my car so I have them in our temporary housing situation.  My husband is abandoning me for a couple of days for a business trip to Ft. Lauderdale, so I decided to self-medicate my moving jitters with a quick fabric shopping trip to my new LQS/Bernina & Baby Lock dealer, Flash Sew & Quilt.

New Tilda Precuts for Scrappy Celebration Quilt (Maybe)

I know, I know — if there’s one thing a quilter becomes acutely aware of when packing for a household move, it’s how much more fabric she already owns than she could ever reasonably use within her lifetime…  But medical science is making advances every day, and the cost of fabric keeps going up, so I’m rationalizing that I am wisely buying fabric while it’s still affordable, before global warming makes the planet too hot to grow cotton anymore, and I need to buy enough of it in case scientists cure everything and I am still here quilting away in my 200s.  Ahem.

In all seriousness, though, I was judicious with my purchases.  I bought precuts because they will be easier to manage with my GO! cutter on a kitchen table than yardage, and I didn’t want to buy enough for a whole new quilt, just enough to give me something to cut up and sew back together again for stress relief over the next couple of weeks until I get my hands on the rest of my stash.  I bought a fat quarter bundle of Tilda Solids and several fat eighth bundles of the newer Tilda print collections that I don’t already own, knowing that I have bundles and scraps of older Tilda prints (leftover from my Halo quilt) that will coordinate with the new stuff.  I also bought myself a pair of fabric scissors (the purple handled micro serrated Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Scissors) so I can rough-cut my Bella Solid Off White yardage and my fat quarters before running them through the die cutter, and I bought some pins and a spool of neutral Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread because I’m pretty sure both of my travel machines are current threaded with the dark navy I was using for my Deco quilt.  (Side note: TOTAL BUMMER that I packed my Deco Quilt and my FrankenWhiggish Rose projects in boxes and loaded them into the moving pod, because either of those projects would have been ideal to work on right now).  

The quilt you see on my iPad in the photo above is Scrappy Celebrations by Lissa Alexander for American Patchwork & Quilting, and it was a quilt along project in 2023.  I haven’t purchased the pattern and don’t intend to — I like the idea of mixing up a variety of 9-patch and 4-patch blocks but I’m not interested in making the exact quilt, and I definitely don’t need any instructions for such simple blocks.  I’m sure the pattern instructions call for rotary cutting and strip piecing anyway, which I won’t be doing since I don’t have any of those tools available right now.  

You know what else I don’t have access to right now?  My computer!  I’m writing this post on my iPad right now and it’s really annoying.  I am missing my big desktop monitor where I can do photo editing and have multiple windows open for adding links etc.  And by the way, my email subscription service is still paused (need to work some kinks out with that) so that’s why this post wasn’t delivered to your in-box even if you’ve subscribed to receive my blog posts that way.  Honestly I don’t know when I’m going to have time to deal with that, so please check here on the blog from time to time for new posts.  Thanks for understanding.

I hope you’re all sewing and quilting up a storm wherever you are today!  I’ll be linking up today’s post with the following linky parties:

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt  

WEDNESDAY

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

 TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Deco Quilt Block Three Interrupted, Quilting Studio Dismantled

Well, I got nine of Block Three for my Deco Quilt completed in the green/indigo colors before I had to take all of the blocks off my design wall and pack this work-in-progress up in a moving box last night.  Here's one last glimpse of the design wall:

Deco Quilt In Progress, 9 of Block Three Finished

The only reason I'm sneaking time for a quick blog post when I still have so much packing to do is so I can refer back to this once our move is completed and the dust settles -- I really want to finish my Deco quilt this year and I don't want to waste a lot of time looking for the fabric pieces I cut out, misplaced pattern instructions, and otherwise reinventing the wheel.  I packed everything I need for this Deco quilt as well as everything I need for my next NewFO Star Upon Stars (fabrics, templates & pattern) into one box labeled "Current WIPs" or something like that.  Fingers crossed that I didn't miss anything!

Okay, here's the real reason for today's blog post, a quick photographic reminder to myself of how I decided to press my seams for Block Three because I'm very pleased with how nicely it turned out:

My Personal Pressing Plan for Deco Block Three

You may recall that I'm not following the pattern instructions for this block.  The Deco Quilt Pattern from Lo & Behold instructs you to press all of the seams open, and I don't do that because I want crisp, sharp points and corners and perfectly matched seam intersections and that is much easier to accomplish when your seam allowances are pressed in opposite directions so they nest and lock together when joining rows of patchwork.  So I've pressed my seams towards the Indigo fabric in each of the strips.  However, to reduce bulk and ensure my blocks lay nice and flat, I did press the seams between rows open as shown above.  The Indigo strips that frame the patchwork have their seams pressed to the outside.

Another point I should mention is that I did not employ strip piecing techniques per the pattern instructions for these blocks.  Instead, I cut out little squares and rectangles and pieced each strip of each block individually.  Honestly, I don't 100% remember why I decided to do it this way.  I think it was because I wanted to make Block Three A and Block Three B in two different colors, whereas the pattern instructions call for all of these blocks to be the same.  It was easier for me to calculate how much dark green and light purple I'd need for these blocks with old-fashioned slow poke cutting and piecing than it was for me to figure out how many of the different strips and strip sets I'd need to make in each colorway if I was following the directions.

I'd show you a picture of the front of the block but I forgot to take one, and now it's packed away!  I have made 9 of these green/indigo Block Three and will need to make 27 more of them.  Then I'll need to make 18 Block Three in the purple/indigo color combination.

Wanna see a scary picture of chaos and destruction in my (former!) quilting studio?

This Used to Be My Playground...

That's what my studio looked like this morning.  My husband is in the process of completely disassembling my Bernina Q24 long arm quilting machine so the machine head can be safely packed for transport in the original shipping carton.  All my quilting thread and rulers for rotary cutting are off the walls but I still need to pack up my acrylic quilting ruler templates that you see on the wall behind my long arm frame.  My vintage Singer Featherweight machine, all of my AccuQuilt GO! dies and my Bernina 475QE machine are already in Florida, but today I'm packing up my Bernina 790 Plus, my 700E embroidery machine and the embroidery module into their protective luggage bags.  I have the original shipping cartons for my Baby Lock serger and cover stitch machines but I need to figure out how to get the thread stands off those machines in order to fit them back into the styrofoam packing inserts.  

My house in Florida is only about half the size of my house in North Carolina and my sewing room is going to be a LOT smaller than this one so I'm going to have to get really creative with how I set up and use the space that's available.  Wish me luck!

Oh and by the way -- if you have subscribed to receive my blog posts automatically in your email and you're wondering why this one didn't show up that way, no worries -- I paused my email delivery service so I don't have to pay for it while I'm more preoccupied with moving than with writing blog posts.  I'm switching back to MailChimp and I don't have time to get that all set up and tested right now.

Also, quick reminder for my long arm quilting clients that I am not able to accept any customer quilts until further notice -- see photo above of my dismembered long arm machine!!  Please do not ship any quilt tops to my address in North Carolina.  I will let you know when my studio in Naples, Florida is set up and give you my new address.  

Happy quilting, everyone!  I'm linking up today's post with my favorite linky parties:

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt  

WEDNESDAY

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

 TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework